Pirate Nemesis (Telepathic Space Pirates Book 1) (26 page)

“What a bitch.”

Vashti gave her a sad smile. “I loved all of my consorts, Mercy. I couldn’t have loved them more deeply if I’d loved them each in their own time or turn, instead of all at once. We never had any children. I had five pregnancies, and each ended in miscarriage. After the last, I was barren.”

“Consorts didn’t save you.”

“Oh yes, they did. Lilith couldn’t stand what she thought of as competition. I was her sister, and no queen, but she still feared me. She feared the children I might have. And she resented me for Darius and a hundred other little sibling rivalries. By my count, she tried to have me killed at least six times. My consorts protected me. It was the real reason she killed Darius. And that ship that disappeared into otherspace? I was supposed to be commanding it. I wasn’t on it because we suspected the trip was a trap of some kind and Arturo insisted he be the one to go in my place. When I refused, he used his Talent to put me to sleep and went anyway.”

Vashti took a moment to pour them each more tea, though Mercy’s cup wasn’t yet empty. Her hand was steady, despite the emotion gleaming in her eyes.

“Dogs or bodyguards serve a purpose. I would never say they don’t. But they are no replacement for someone who loves you, who would sacrifice anything to keep you safe.”

Mercy was appalled. “You want me to have consorts so they’ll be willing to die for me?”

There was nothing gentle in Vashti’s eyes now. “You are a queen, Mercy. You have no idea yet how necessary you are for our survival, but you will eventually understand. Consorts are essential. You aren’t just important to our future. You are vital to us having one at all.”

T
alking to teenagers was torture
. If she had to listen to one more rambling explanation that didn’t actually answer her questions, Mercy was going to scream. Somewhere, she was sure, the old Wolf was laughing his ass off. He had to be. More than once, he’d spoken the fateful words “Someday you’ll be having this conversation from my side”.
He’d been right, and sooner than Mercy ever expected.

Were all teenagers this difficult to communicate with? Had she been? Given all of her secrets at the time, she’d probably been worse. As she listened to Kator ramble on without actually saying anything, Mercy decided enough was enough. She sat forward and slapped her hands onto the desk.

They were sitting in Cannon’s office, which he’d graciously donated so she could speak with her new – she didn’t even know what to call them. Followers? No, that didn’t feel right. She was sitting at Cannon’s desk, an antique if she wasn’t mistaken. Probably lifted from some high-ranking officer in the Commonwealth Navy. Max and Kator sat across from her, and for the past hour had managed to avoid giving her a single straight answer. It was unreal.

Kator fell silent at her movement, and he and Max exchanged uncertain looks.

“Forget about that,” Mercy said, forcing herself to smile as she waved a dismissive hand. “Let me ask you this: why me?”

“Why you?” Max looked like he didn’t understand the question, which had Mercy biting back a sigh.

All she wanted to do was take some time to herself and process the information she’d been given in the past few days. So she could be prepared when Reaper returned, for whatever that conversation entailed. Instead, she was trying to fulfill her obligation to these two, and it wasn’t going as smoothly as she’d hoped.

“Yes,” she said. “You have a lot of people you could have chosen to swear yourselves to. People a lot more experienced than I am. But you two chose me. Why?”

Neither boy moved to answer, and Mercy thought maybe she’d actually stumped them. Then Kator shifted in his seat.

“Well,” he ventured hesitantly, “you’re the Queen.”

Max nodded emphatically. “Exactly.”

Mercy just stared at them. “That’s it?”

“Er…what else would it be?” Max looked at Kator again, but the other boy shrugged.

Mercy closed her eyes for a few precious seconds. When she opened them again, both boys were looking at her with identical awkward, earnest expressions that left a sinking feeling in her gut.

“If you guys just picked me because I’m a queen, I’m not sure what I can do for you.”

“What do you mean?” Panic flashed in Kator’s dark eyes. “You can help us, right? I don’t want to learn mechanics. I want to be a pilot!”

Finally, a real answer. “So, go be a pilot.”

“You don’t understand.” Max’s shoulders slumped. “That’s not how it works.”

She looked back and forth between them, wishing Cannon had explained a little more to her than “You’re responsible for them now. Mentor them. Sponsor them. Figure out what they want and how hard they’re willing to work for it.” She wished, not for the first time, that Reaper was here.

When both boys sat looking as morose as if she’d kicked them, she leaned forward. “Well, someone better explain it to me.”

“It’s like this.” Kator looked like he was struggling with how to put it into words. “Max’s family is powerful. His Uncle’s a Core member, another is a dog, he’s related to the king. So he gets to train as a pilot.”

“Whether I want to or not,” Max muttered.

Kator pointed to himself. “Until me, my family didn’t have anyone born with a powerful Talent in years. My Dad can barely float a wrench with his telekinesis. He can’t talk to people telepathically unless we're in the same room. My telekinesis is powerful, but that isn’t enough on its own. I have to prove myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I come from a family of mechanics and engineers. We fix stuff. We build stuff. So I automatically get assigned to learn those skills.”

There was definitely something she was missing here. “Those are good skills to learn.”

“Maybe somewhere else.” Kator looked down, dejected. “But a mechanic doesn’t get many opportunities to do stuff.”

Mercy bit back a laugh. She knew a lot of mechanics and ship techs who would argue against that statement, vehemently. She looked at Max. “Define
stuff
.”

“He means like fighting, taking ships. Bringing valuables back to the fleet. Stuff that gets you noticed.” He jerked his thumb at Kator. “He doesn’t just want to be a pilot, he wants to be a dog. He has to get special training if he ever hopes to earn that place, and to get special training, you have to get noticed, or…”

“Or?” But Mercy was pretty sure she finally knew where this conversation was headed.

“Or be sponsored by someone powerful enough to get you the training.”

She sat back and contemplated both boys. She thought about the first time she met Max, and his conversation with Cannon about a secret project. She thought about Kator setting Max up and their fight in the arena. Their body language since then had been anything but antagonistic. Sometime between the arena and swearing themselves to her, the two boys had put aside years of bullying and antagonism. They were at least allies now, if not friends. How did that happen?

“Kator.” He looked up at her. “You’ve spent your whole life bullying Max, until now. Why?”

He looked away, ashamed. “I was jealous. He had everything I wanted, and he didn’t even care. He just kept hanging around my engineering classes, taking notes, being the teacher’s pet even though he didn’t have to be there.”

“Max, you don’t want to be a pilot?”

“Sure. It’s useful. But I like messing with stuff. Taking it apart to see how it works. Making it better. I needed to know more to do what I wanted, so I crashed his classes. Even though it got me beat up a lot.” There was no animosity in what he was saying, just a mumbled statement of fact.

“Sorry,” Kator said. He sounded genuine.

Max shrugged, like it was all forgotten. Mercy wasn’t sure she’d be as forgiving in the same situation. It impressed her that a kid Max’s age could be.

“After the arena,” Max said, “we started talking. We realized we both want the same thing, and working against each other wasn’t going to get it. But you could.” He looked at Mercy with shining eyes. “You could get Kator flight sim time. You could even get him the type of training to help him become a dog.”

Mercy raised an eyebrow. “And you? What do you want?”

Max shifted his eyes away from hers. “I need some specialized equipment for a project. Really difficult to find stuff.”

“
Dangerous
stuff,” Kator muttered. Mercy was surprised, again, that Max had apparently shared so much with the other boy. She upgraded their relationship in her mind from allies to friends.

“What’s dangerous about it?”

Max sent Kator an accusing look. “Nothing much,” he said. “You just have to be really careful with it, that’s all.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Mercy favored Max with a smile. The kind of smile that had him scrunching down in his seat as though to avoid her gaze. “Try again,” she said. “And remember that if you want my help, you’re not getting it if I don’t know
exactly
what you’re doing.”

He mumbled something she didn’t quite catch.

“What was that? Louder, please.” She paused. “Or maybe I’m going about this all wrong.”

She’d spent this conversation reveling in her new shields, in how airtight they were and how easy it was to keep her own thoughts locked down. Now she tested Reaper’s assertion that she could read thoughts with her shields still firmly in place. Especially if the other person was thinking loudly enough.

Max was thinking very hard about what he didn’t want to tell her. She stared at him as the thoughts crystallized in her mind. Just stared. She was pretty sure her face was going pale as faint worry quickly escalated to outright fear. Fear for Max, fear for the entire ship. Playing with jump drives was something even serious mechanics took every precaution doing.

“Does Cannon know about this?” Her throat was dry. Max had gone pale as well, but probably because he realized from her face that she’d picked up what he was thinking. He nodded, then shook his head.

“Which is it?”

“He knows what I’m working on. Theoretically. It’s supposed to be a mock up, and theoretical. He doesn’t know I’m asking you for the parts.”

“Because he told you absolutely not.”

Max’s pale face told her everything she needed to know. She stood up so fast it sent both boys scrambling to their feet.

“If you swore yourself to me because you thought I’d get you what you needed to create a portable jump drive inside some hold on this ship, you are going to be sadly disappointed.” Mercy was pleased her voice came out sounding calm. She’d done enough ship repair, talked to enough mechanics over the years, to know exactly how dangerous those components could be. To have heard horror stories.

Every ship with a jump drive took certain risks using it. Every time they entered otherspace they ran the risk of never coming out again. Any captain worth a piss had their drive inspected in every space port, just to be sure and catch any anomalies, errors, or bad components before something catastrophic happened. As long as regular maintenance and inspection took place, jump drives were relatively safe to use. But it only took one mistake to lose an entire ship and crew. One miscalculation to be lost forever. Building one aboard a ship was idiocy.

“I am issuing an order here and now: under no circumstances are you to proceed with building a working model aboard this ship, or any other.”

“But—”

“No.”

“If you’d just listen to the possibilities. Fighter-class ships equipped with jump drives could—”

“Max.” He stopped, his face dejected. Mercy took a deep breath. “I’m not saying you can’t ever build one. Just not on a ship. On a planet somewhere. In a workshop designed for building jump drives. With the right tools and the right training.” And the right supervision, but she figured that didn’t need to be said. “I won’t get you the parts. But I will make sure you get the training.”

Max looked up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“Wolfgang is trained in jump mechanics. I’ll speak to him about giving you lessons.”

“Really?”

“Don’t expect it to be easy. He’s a hard taskmaster, even when the subject isn’t something that could get you and thousands of people around you killed. And I want your word you won’t try to build one aboard a ship. Ever.”

“I swear. Never.”

Mercy eyed him for a long time, but it felt like he was telling the truth. She switched her gaze over to Kator.

“I’ll get you sim time.” She paused. “And I’ll look into the rest.” To prove it, she reached out to the dog standing outside the door. Jaxon was on duty today. But to her surprise, she didn’t feel his presence. She’d gotten used to the feel of his mind in the past few days. She expanded her reach, but still didn’t find him.

She’d noticed that when he wasn't with her, he visited the infirmary a lot. At first, she’d thought it was to sweet talk Nayla with Doc being gone, but the dog rarely spoke to the young woman. In fact, he spent a lot of time just sort of hanging around the area cordoned off for Atrea. Mercy had meant to ask him about it, but she’d been too wrapped up in her own thoughts lately.

Surely Jax wouldn’t abandon his post just to visit Atrea. Reaper would have his ass when he found out. She frowned at the two boys.

“I need to go check something.”

“Sure,” said Max. “Can we, um, go?”

“Yeah. I’ll be in touch about things.” She gave Max a pointed look. “And you remember everything we talked about.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The two boys escaped quickly, chatting excitedly together. Mercy followed them out the door, but turned the opposite way down the hall. Getting to the infirmary these days was a bit more complicated than taking a lift. As long as they were still repairing the explosive damage, it meant taking a lift at the other end of the very large ship, or using emergency ladders.

She felt odd moving through the ship alone. She hadn’t been alone since boarding
Nemesis
, especially since the bomb. A dog shadowed her everywhere. But not today. An uneasy feeling washed heat up her spine. She realized she’d moved down several corridors and not run into a single person. That, too, was unusual. She reached out further with her mind, probing.

Cannon?

Vashti?

And, because if anyone would be sure to hear her, it would be him.
Treon?

Nothing. A resounding silence answered her. The unease turned into full blown adrenaline. She took a couple of calming breaths. Whatever concern she felt, there was no need to panic yet. Maybe everyone had been called to some kind of emergency meeting…and she’d either missed the summons, or not been invited. And somehow, Jax had failed to tell her before he left for it.

No, that didn’t sound plausible at all.

Not sure what else to do, she continued to the infirmary. It was the most likely place she’d find Wolfgang, at least. And, in stasis or not, Atrea was there. Mercy picked up her pace to a jog, feeling the whole time like she was one step away from something disastrous happening. Another explosion. A Killer jumping out from the shadows. Reaper seemed concerned about the man she’d met as a child. He was looking into it because apparently no Killer ever gave up on a contract.

But that still wouldn’t explain the emptiness of the halls, or the way everyone had fallen silent. She made it all the way to the emergency ladders and still hadn’t run into anyone. She stopped mentally reaching out, because now she was afraid of what she might find. She needed to regroup. Hopefully with Wolfgang. The old Wolf would know what to do.

But when she entered the infirmary, it was empty. Nayla wasn’t there. Nor was Wolfgang or Jax. Only Atrea, silent in her stasis cocoon. Mercy stood beside her for a few minutes, thinking.

What the hell was going on?

Mercy.
The mental voice was familiar and soft.