Gates of Hell (30 page)

“No. I won’t do that. I can’t. I don’t blame him. From his point of view, he’s doing the right things, but I can’t let it matter.”

“Why not? Not everybody is our enemy, Martin.”

“I assume they aren’t friends until I’m ordered otherwise. That’s my job. You can’t let yourself trust him, Sting.”

She whirled around to face Martin. “And what have we been driven to do to protect the Systems? Our solution for the Trin doesn’t give him any reason to trust us. And I don’t trust him, Commander,” she added. “I just—”

“Love him?”

She made a helpless, futile gesture. “Doesn’t matter, does it, Commander?”

“No, Physician,” he had to agree. “It doesn’t.”

“I think,” she said, “that we have a lot of work to do.” She turned stiffly back to the workstation.

Martin moved to take the place next to her. The ship’s late doctor had been Terran, and Linch had seemed genuinely fond of her.

At least he sounded that way when he told them he’d pillaged the regulation Systems medlab equipment they were using as a present for her. They worked quietly and efficiently together for a while, Physician and doctor. They ran tests and simulations, checked data, exchanged insights, suggested new areas of investigation. The work was almost exciting and engrossing enough to eclipse the tension between them. He couldn’t help but notice her occasionally glancing toward the door.

Eventually she pushed her chair away from the console, stood up, and stretched. “Time for another volunteer, I think. Why don’t we call in that nice engineer-torturer and let me save his life.”

Martin turned his chair around and looked her over carefully. “You up to another healing?”

“I feel fine. Actually,” she admitted as she rubbed the back of her neck, “I
feel
like shit and I think a little fading to black will do me good.”

“You
want
to be unconscious?”

“No. I
want
to kill something. Taking on Mik’s fever and addiction will do. Why don’t we give him a call?”

“Good morning.”

“Is it morning?”

“On this ship it is.”

“The mighty one has spoken.” Roxy felt warm and safe and not alone. This was not a feeling she was used to when waking up from a difficult healing, and she allowed herself a few more moments to savor it, eyes closed and mind free, Pyr’s essence surrounding her like a dark velvet blanket. Pyr’s hand was on her shoulder, large and warm and outrageously comforting. She knew they were alone in the sickbay, and that it was hours after she had performed a healing and given Martin more information about the basic structure of the Sagouran construct. Apparently it had been good news, as the last thing she recalled was Martin whooping with joy before everything went black. She sighed, reveled in the feel of the sickbay bed beneath her, and said, “I’ve actually been asleep.”

“For about nine hours,” Pyr answered.

“Good for me.” She opened her eyes. “I think I might have saved the universe.” She turned her head to look at Pyr, who was seated on a chair beside the bed. “Or did I dream that?”

He smiled, the gentleness of it transforming his normally stern features. His mouth was too attractive. So were his thickly lashed, dark-blue eyes. His shoulders were far too unreasonably broad. His burgundy red hair was held back by a sapphire-blue headband that matched his eyes. His shirt was the same color. She really wished she could find something massively wrong with his face and form and personality, or even his taste in clothes. She had to fall back to recalling that he had tried to torture her, and that he wasn’t likely to let her off the
Raptor
at the next planet even if she asked him nicely, but these seemed like flimsy excuses. She didn’t feel like a prisoner or a victim. She felt—safe. No, not safe. Eamon had made her feel safe and protected after every battle. She barely remembered what Eamon looked like; she regretted that. What she felt when she was with Pyr was not safe. If anything, being with him made her even more aware of danger, and she did not mistake his genuine concern for her as a promise not to use her as ruthlessly as he had to.

Roxy forced her thoughts away from emotional analysis. There really was no point.

Pyr took his hand from her shoulder. She was sad for a moment, until his fingers twined with hers. That was even nicer. “Martin said you were close to a solution. He says he’s cautiously hopeful.”

“Oh.” She’d hoped the work was over, but if they were close… well, she’d better get up and check over her own data. “Where’s Martin?”

“Even one with his youthful enthusiasm has to sleep sometime. Just how youthful is he, really? Did I dream his reminding you he was in his thirties, or is that a memory?”

She ignored the questions as she looked at him suspiciously. “You haven’t locked Martin up somewhere, have you? Cause if you do anything to him,” she went on as he continued to smile, “my sister will get you.”

“While several of my crew are locked up,” he admitted. “Your Martin is not among them. Kristi would never allow it.” She laughed, and he tugged on her hand, helping her to sit up. “Of course I did have to have him escorted from your side at gunpoint. Family loyalty? Or doesn’t he trust you not to betray the Systems because you want to sleep with me?”

“Lucky guess?” she asked, looking him steadily in the eye. “Or were you monitoring our conversation?”

“He should think better of you,” was all he answered.

“I don’t want to sleep with you; we want to have sex. Sleeping with someone implies an intimacy we are trying to avoid.”

“Good point.” After a moment, he added, “What I feel when you heal—that’s an intimacy I don’t want.” His hand touched her cheek, briefly. “When you were with Linch, and with Mik, I felt—something. Intimate.”

“Nothing you can put into words, even thoughts.” she said, and he nodded. She longed to feel mortified, violated, at least a little embarrassed for both their sakes, but what sang through her was elation. Not to be alone—in that place where she was most vulnerable and most herself—that was wonderful. At least, when he—

“You’re wonderful,” he said, and shrugged, and gave her a sardonic grin. “I’ll try not to tell you again.”

“I’d appreciate that. Ours is an adversarial relationship.” He thought she was wonderful! Damn it, damn it, damn it. She looked down at their linked hands. “Maybe Martin can help. Martin understands our problem, better than we do, probably. He specializes in taking care of telepaths. And he’s linked to my sister,” she explained. “Not bonded, but he understands the differences.”

“Differences?”

Of course, he wouldn’t realize that there could be differences in how telepaths and empaths from different worlds could bond, meld, link, and mate with each other. He and his wife had shared whatever link was natural to their people. She could sense that there was definitely some connection between himself and his men, especially with Linch, but he had no reason to be aware of all the nuances, gradations, and variations that could link telepaths from many worlds. For the most part, sharing thoughts between races was difficult, if not impossible, except where bonding was concerned. Sometimes it didn’t matter where you were from: it just happened. Some links were light, and fragile as gossamer. There was a koltiri bond that went so deep that, to form it, minds and bodies and souls blended in one ecstatic instant, and severing the connection was fatal. Her parents had shared that bond for nearly two hundred years, and losing it had burned away her wise and powerful koltiri mother’s mind and stopped her heart in the same instant the accident killed her Terran telepath father.

“What old hurt is making you so sad, Roxanne?”

She waved away the question, and the concern. “I don’t think I’m going to try to explain about the type of bond we could have,” she told him. “We don’t have the time. But if we want some—counseling—Martin’s our man.”

“Martin doesn’t want us to be together.”

She blinked at him slowly, several times. “Your point?”

He laughed. “Yes, of course. I do agree with Martin. But sometimes I forget I agree with Martin.”

“Your wife’s memory, my husband’s existence, our being on different sides,” she reminded him, too aware that these were becoming flimsier excuses with every passing hour that they were connected to each other. Then she stomped her foot. “If you were half the villain you pretend to be, you’d force the completion of the bond on me and then we could live happily ever after and not have to worry about our ethics!”

He snatched his hand away from hers so he could make an extravagant gesture. “I’m sorry! I will not bond with anyone simply because it’s best for the People. Not against your will. Or mine.”

It was definitely time to change the subject. Roxy looked around frantically, and spotted a neatly folded pile of clothing on the end of the bed. She noticed that she was still wearing the red tunic and black pants from Glover’s ship and turned her attention to the fresh clothes. And she wanted to wash her hair. Of course the man didn’t want to bond with her—she was a mess!

“I’m really quite vain, you know,” she told him as she picked through the selection he’d brought. “And flighty.” Apparently he wasn’t the only person on board the
Raptor
who favored bright colors and soft, clinging materials. She held up a saffron-yellow skirt that looked like it
might
fit. “Little short.”

She was all too aware of Pyr’s eyeing her long legs. “Not on Tinna. She and Kristi have been raiding closets.” He didn’t need to tell her that some of those closets had belonged to crew women who’d died of the plague. It was a reminder that she didn’t have time to worry about fashion, or her own private life. “That’s pretty,” he said as she shook out a length of gold embroidered purple silk. “I promised you pretty dresses.”

She could wear it as a sari, she thought, or as a sarong. She found an emerald-green crop top that would also do. There was a head with a fresher unit in the sickbay. “I’m going to get cleaned up now,” she told him. “Then get back to work. You don’t have to be here when I get back.”

He was still there when she got back, clean, with her thick hair neatly braided down her back. Dressed in fresh clothes, she felt ready to face Sagouran Fever, but not so ready to encounter Pyr Kaddani again. He was seated at the medical computer. She walked up behind him and saw that he was looking at data of one of the simulation tests she’d set up.

“It’s very pretty,” he said of the scrolling colors on the holoscreen, “but I haven’t the faintest idea what it means.” He sounded a little sad and disappointed when he added, “I was trained to be a warrior and nothing more.”

“Then why aren’t you off being a warrior?” she asked. “Instead of checking to see if I’m really doing my job?”

He turned the chair to face her, and his lips curved in a slow, appreciative smile as his gaze swept over her. She quite deliberately did not preen in response. “Pilsane is monitoring this computer station,” he told her. “He thinks you’re doing your job quite diligently. I was admiring your handiwork.” He waved his hand through the holo. “What does this mean?”

“It means we’re close to developing a vaccine for Sagouran Fever.” She sneered cynically at the thought of all her and Martin’s hard work. “Truth is, this is redundant. Whoever tailored the disease and the drug already has a vaccine. You don’t develop something like this without immunizing yourself.”

“But isn’t the point that you’ll have something you can give to people who don’t yet have the disease?” She nodded. His features lit with eagerness. “You’ll have this vaccine for me to send to my home-world soon, yes?”

His enthusiasm warmed her, and helped tone down her frustration at repeating someone else’s work. Having their own preventative for the disease made hunting down those responsible a bit less complicated. Less complicated in that they could kill the bastards instead of having to consider making deals with them.

“We will have something we can send everywhere,” she informed him. “Your world and the United Systems.” His expression and emotions blanked, and his eyes narrowed warningly, but he didn’t argue the point. She didn’t, either. She’d wait until she had the actual vaccine before bargaining with Pyr about it. “It still won’t be a cure for the plague or the Rust addiction—having to deal with that combination is tough—but we will be able to prevent anyone else from contracting the original variation of the disease. We will have to assume that the Trin who oversaw the development of the disease and Rust has also developed newer and nastier variations waiting to take Sagouran’s place if Sag Fever is stopped.”

As she said the word ‘Trin’ she was very attentive to his reaction on every level she could fathom. It was not that she didn’t believe that he hadn’t knowingly dealt with the Trin, but what she believed and her duty to the United Systems could not be allowed to mesh. Experience told her that anything as massively destructive as the plague had to be a Trin strategy. Complete trust was out of the question.

He knew that she probed him, and accepted it, even opened his shields for an instant while he looked her in the eye and said, “Your hatred of this enemy is truly frightening.”

“And necessary.” She felt nothing from Pyr in response to her mentioning the Trin, nothing except disgust at her paranoia. She had not expected to uncover any deeper connection than his having unknowingly worked with Kith, but was still relieved at finding only a reaction to her. She was not offended by his disgust.

“For a while, after I found out it was a construct, I thought it was the Bucons who developed the disease, but it really isn’t like them. I suppose its seeming like something the Bucon would do buys the Trin some time and camouflage.” She sat down beside him and flipped off the datascreen. “Let me tell you about the Trin.” She kept her hands busy setting up another a series of simulations. It was best not to look at Pyr, or let herself be too aware of Pyr looking at her. And it was certainly best not to let herself remember the nightmares she’d lived through while she described them. “The Trin are arrogant. That’s the one thing you have to remember when you deal with them—and it looks like you’re going to be dealing with them to stop the plague.”