Gates of Hell (24 page)

“There isn’t.” Roxy kicked piles of discarded clothing and datacubes and wafers out of the way. “Whoever he is, he isn’t particularly neat. Look at this place. Eamon would not approve. Eamon.”

She sighed, and the life went out of her eyes. Martin watched worriedly as she went very pale. He leaned forward and asked gently. “What about Eamon?”

She stood frozen on a pile of bright clothing, staring at nothing. “Never mind,” she said after a minute. “Eamon isn’t—important—right now.”

“We have to concentrate on the situation,” he agreed quickly, fairly certain she had more on her mind than focusing on escape. He caught onto the memory of something she’d said earlier, asking about it to distract her. “Poison. What about poison?”

“He was poisoned,” she answered. “Pyr. That was what was killing him, not the plague or the Rust addiction—though he had both.”

“Poison.” Martin rubbed his jaw. “Someone tried to assassinate him?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Someone in his crew? Was there a mutiny attempt? Can we use that? Join up with some faction onboard?”

“Couldn’t we just break out of here, steal a cutter and go?” she asked in turn. “I need to go,” she added, with an unreadable look deep in her eyes. “Soon.”

Martin scratched his chin. “Doubt it’ll be that easy. Even if we could escape from the
Raptor
, we wouldn’t have much chance in something as small as an escape pod or whatever they might have in their docking bay. The Bucon pirates and slavers and factions of trading lords are raiding everything that moves. We need a big ship with big guns to get where we need to go. A Shireny cloak wouldn’t hurt, either,” he muttered. “Maybe I can do something about that if we can get control of the ship. One thing at a time,” he added.

She glanced toward the door. “I think the first order of business is getting out of here.” Roxy knew very well that Pyr intended to keep her isolated, but living in
purdah
was not her idea of a good time. Mingling with the crew of an alien pirate vessel didn’t sound like much fun, either, but doing something was preferable to the passive role she’d been forced into in recent weeks. Or was it months?

“Years,” she admitted to herself, with a grinding ache of bitter regret. To Martin she said, “Can you do something with the lock?”

“We’ll know in a few minute,” he said and rubbed his hands briskly together as he approached the door. “I’m going to look around some more and see if I can find anything useful to open the lock.”

———

“Is she pretty?” Linch asked, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his long legs. Pyr gave his exec a stern look across the table. Linch jerked his chin at the navigator seated on his left. “Pilsane says she isn’t.”

“Then why are you asking me?” Pyr replied, but found that he’d shifted his annoyed gaze to Pilsane. “She’s alien,” he found himself going on, when he hadn’t gathered his men together in the common room to discuss the koltiri. “How can you tell if an alien woman is pretty?”

“You look,” Mik advised. He took a long drink from a glass of beer. “That’s how I do it.”

“Works for me,” Pilsane agreed, and swallowed an orange capsule with a sip from his own beer glass. “Helps to look at them when they haven’t got any clothes on.”

“In case they have five or six breasts, or something,” Mik said.

“Or interesting new erogenous zones,” Linch said.

“Or concealed weapons,” Pyr contributed to the ridiculous conversation. “No, she isn’t pretty,” he added when they all looked curiously at him.

“You weren’t so pretty yourself a few hours ago,” Linch reminded him. “Pilsane said he looked up what she is. You should stop telling me things,” Linch added to the navigator before he could protest. “If you don’t want me to pass them on to Dha-lrm.”

“I was going to mention it,” Pilsane answered. Then he leaned forward eagerly, but when he spoke it wasn’t with his voice in a room where other members of the crew were gathered.
Is it true? She’s one of them
?

It’s true you won’t be needing Rust much longer
, Pyr responded.

Linch looked around the room. The commons was far from crowded, with no one seated at the nearby tables. “More Rust for them?” he questioned quietly.
Or do you plan to use her on everyone
?

Pyr considered the question, and remembered Roxanne’s physical condition.
If she has to absorb too much more plague and Rust, it will kill her. Or give her permanent mind damage
. He was certain of this, that there were limits to her powers, and that it was his duty to protect her. Stupid of him to have claimed her as Kaddani.

A
romantic gesture, perhaps, Dha-lrm
?

Shut up
, Pyr responded to Linch’s amused question. He eyed his wiry, hard-muscled friend critically. When was it, he wondered, that one of the most dangerous men he’d ever met had become an inveterate matchmaker? Pyr folded his hands on the tabletop and looked at each of his men in turn. “We have business to discuss.”

“Robe Halfor,” Pilsane said, very quietly. He glanced at Linch. “Tell him what you found out from Bruis.”

“Halfor has ambitions beyond running the Bucon pirate guild,” Linch reported. He strummed his ligret quietly as he continued. “The Bucon’s ambassador to the United Systems was aboard the yacht the slaver intercepted. Halfor had a contract out on him, so Bruis killed the man and was going to claim the reward. Bruis didn’t know why Halfor wanted Glover dead,” Linch went on. “Wasn’t curious, either. But he did give me the names of other people Halfor has targeted. Not your average pirate vendetta types—except you, Captain.”

“He’s getting rid of people allied to the Monolem monarchy,” Pyr guessed, and Linch nodded. “And anyone else he perceives as a threat to his taking over the throne.”

The worry and fear he’d told himself he couldn’t afford to indulge reared up again, fiercer than ever. Pyr beat it down with equal fierceness. There was hope in the world, he told himself to counter anguish. Hope of victory. He would prevail. Even if he had to grab that hope by the throat and shake it until it gave up being so damned elusive and fickle. He knew Axylel lived, the glow of his lifethread was still a part of the weave of clan’s identity. Even if that glow died, Pyr’s duty was to safeguard the People. Halfor was the key, he knew, or Axylel Kaddani, who had one of the finest minds in the galaxy for intelligence work, would not have found his way into a trap Halfor had set for him.

“This will make it harder for us to get to Halfor,” the ever-practical Pilsane pointed out. “His security’s already the best this side of the Emperor’s. If he’s planning to be emperor—”

“More guards, more ships, more levels of security,” Mik contributed.

“No doubt he has the same allies we do,” Linch said.

Pyr nodded. “He’d be a fool not to court the League.”

“And let the League court him,” Pilsane added. “But…” He stroked his jaw thoughtfully. Pyr and the others waited while the one person among them who truly understood the Bucon mindset considered what a man like Halfor was most likely to do. “Maybe they’re still in the middle of the courtship dance,” Pilsane finally said. “The League is more likely to promise him toys like they let us play with, but how much are they really going to give the man who would be emperor? Enough to make him pretend to trust them while he works on ways to keep them from controlling him when he does reach the throne.” He glanced at Mik. “Does Halfor have his own technicians who can improve League toys? Invent new ones? I think not.”

“You’re making my head hurt,” Mik complained. He slapped a meaty hand on the table. “Do we fight or fool these people? That’s what I need to know.”

And what kind of telepaths are on Halfor’s payroll
? Linch wondered.
Axylel, perhaps
?

It was a painful, dangerous question, and only Linch could have asked it and lived.

As it was, Pyr was on his feet, hands reaching across the table before he caught himself and stopped. What buzz of conversation there had been in the room had dissipated into tense, excited silence. Every eye was on him, some frightened, most of the watching crew eager for any diversion. Pyr noticed that he’d knocked over his chair, and that Mik and Pilsane had grabbed up their glasses to keep their beer safe in case of a brawl. And that Linch hadn’t moved, and was still idly strumming his damned ligret.

Pyr let his hands drop to his sides. He was about to say something sarcastic, possibly conciliatory, even agree that Linen’s question had needed to be asked. What he’d been about to do became moot as the common room door opened and Kristi came in, talking animatedly to the man and woman who stepped in after her. Roxanne. And Martin.

Pyr stepped around the table as Kristi came marching past him. She spoke over her shoulder as she headed for the galley entrance. “Look at these two,” she announced cheerfully. “Skin and bones, the both of them. They told me they’d been starved on that slave ship when I went to check on your lady friend, so I told them the easiest thing to do was come down to the common with me and raid the kitchen. You two take a seat,” she called back to Roxanne and Martin. “I’ll be back with something for you in a minute.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Martin called after her. He didn’t look in Pyr’s direction.

Pyr stood rooted in place. His men came to their feet and looked from him to the koltiri. Martin hastily moved to a table. Roxanne had the audacity to smile at him in a way that was far too smug and triumphant as she followed her brother-in-law. Pyr snarled.

He started toward the woman, but Linch touched him on the arm, and drew his attention first. “What?”

Linch tilted an eyebrow sardonically at him. “I thought you said she wasn’t pretty.”

“Looks like we interrupted something,” Martin whispered as they took seats as far from Pyr’s table as they could.

“Definitely,” she whispered back, almost overwhelmed by the mental energy flying around the room. She’d been aware of it even before they’d entered. Drawn to it, in fact. Drawn to him. Because he was furious, and hurting, and afraid. And that was a very bad development. Compassion was all very well and fine, she told herself, and took a seat with her back to Pyr, but the big fella could take care of himself. She knew that he intended to approach her, felt his attention focused on her like a laser, but his men spoke to him. He turned aside for now, sat down, and resumed talking to them. He wasn’t finished with her. Though his thoughts were shielded, his emotions made that abundantly clear.

She sighed, and tried to relax a little, to ignore her own focus on Pyr and look around at the other people in the room. The door opened several times while they waited for Kristi to bring them the promised meal, letting in a motley mix of off-duty personnel. Typical pirate types, she supposed, a dangerous and edgy-looking mixture of men and women who separated into small groups at the tables. The noise level in the room increased, drowning out any chance of picking up the already quiet conversation from Pyr’s table in the center of the common. All that could be heard was the sound of a stringed instrument, played by the one that had to be Linch. It sounded like a love song. How odd, for a pirate.

She wished Pyr and his men would get up and go. Get out and leave me alone, she wanted to scream at Pyr, even though he was doing nothing to interfere with her at the moment. She kept her thoughts quiet, and her hands clasped together in her lap.

After a while, Kristi brought the food, and Roxy concentrated on it gratefully until she was finished. Renewed energy flowed through her, but she remained ravenously hungry. Martin hadn’t yet mentioned that she was recovering far more quickly than usual from serious healings. Which was good, as she didn’t want to explain why, and he probably didn’t want to confirm what he suspected. He was linked to a koltiri himself; he understood that some things were not to be discussed. Unless it affected their survival and mission, of course. Damn, but she was still hungry!

Rather than calling attention to herself by getting up to go to the galley to ask for more, she watched Martin watching the crew of the
Raptor
. This was safer than turning to return the stare from the blue-eyed man across the room. And what difference did it make that Pyr had blue eyes, other than the laser analogy? Eye color didn’t necessarily help identify humanoid subsets. She wondered if finding out what world he and his officers came from held a clue to what they were really up to. Martin didn’t trust them, and Martin Braithwaithe was the best judge of people she’d ever met, for all his claims that he wasn’t a classic empath. If anyone could manage to organize and lead a mutiny onboard the
Raptor
, it would be Martin. But there was a lot they had to find out first.

“What about Kristi?” she asked him after the woman smiled his way as she brought a tray of food to one of the other tables. “She could be useful. She thinks you’re a cute boy.”

They’d already learned a lot from the woman who’d walked in on them while they were trying to get out of Pyr’s quarters. Kristi and her husband were Terran, like Martin, and they were being held as slaves on board the
Raptor
. Roxy found this news even more appalling because she sensed no resentment from the woman about her condition. In fact, the talkative Kristi seemed to hold the pirate captain and his senior officers in high regard. Roxy suspected but hadn’t sensed telepathic brainwashing. If that was the case, she
might
be able to fix it, but Martin, shrink to all problems telepathic, surely could. Roxy worked better with bodies than she did with brains and souls. In fact, Eamon always said he wasn’t sure she even had a brain.

No. This was no time to think unkind thoughts about Eamon.

“I can at least work on Kristi for more information,” Martin answered. “What about Sagouran Fever?” he asked her. “Am I being exposed to it right now? Have I already caught it again? Am I going to end up needing to go to Pyr’s people for Rust?”

She shrugged. “Good questions. We’re in an enclosed environment. I don’t know what caused you to be reinfected on Bonadem. It’s likely it was airborne contagion. Maybe it was contact from someone already infected but not taking Rust. Does Rust stop the spread of the plague? I haven’t exactly had a chance to ask Pyr if he has a lab where I can run some tests.” She reached across the table to touch Martin’s arm. “You don’t have it yet,” she told him after a moment, and heard the door open once more as she spoke. Martin switched his gaze from her to the newcomer.