Priestess of the Eggstone (8 page)

“Doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that Belliff would start using a courier, an unarmed courier, to fly sensitive cargo in an area with active pirate raids?”

“So we look suspicious to the Patrol. Belliff didn’t make it secret that the cargoes were sensitive and expensive enough to justify special courier flights.” I smacked myself in the forehead. “How stupid can I be?”

Jerimon wisely said nothing.

“It doesn’t matter what we tell them or what Leon says. They’ll never believe we’re that stupid.”

“They’ll believe I’m that stupid.” The Patrol commanders would believe I was a complete and total idiot once they saw the record of my activities on Dadilan. Despite that, they’d never believe I was completely innocent of Belliff’s scheme. With charges of piracy, I was sure I’d be facing pretty much the same panel of judges as I had after Dadilan. I was still in their sector. “So what are we going to do? I don’t know if this ship will make it far even if we do manage to come up with a course that the computer will accept.”

“I’m not stealing a ship,” Jerimon said flatly.

“We may have to, but I doubt Belliff will complain. You take the cargo to the Patrol and say whatever you have to. I’ll bribe someone into programming our nav computer and get the engines fixed. We sneak out under the Patrol’s nose before they have time to file charges against us. But where are we going to go?”

“I’ve got a sister on Nevira who’s a navigator. If we can make it there, she can find us contacts.”

“We’ve got to find the Eggstone to get rid of the Sessimoniss, then find the executives of Belliff in exchange for the Patrol dropping charges against us. Either that or start looking for somewhere to hide. Neither sounds like it will work. How did I get into this mess?” I muttered, running a hand over my short hair.

“You’ve got blood in your hair. What happened?” Jerimon moved my hand. His touch sent shivers across my neck.

“It’s nothing. I just banged it when I was climbing around the engine.”

“It’s still bleeding. Let me get the medkit out.”

“Don’t touch it.” I backed away. “I don’t need you nursing me.”

“I didn’t do a good enough job before?” He stepped closer, backing me against the wall; the handle of the cargo bins dug into my shoulder blades. Jerimon looked cocky. “I don’t know if I prefer you sick and incoherent or well and argumentative.”

“I don’t know if I care.” I put my hands up to shove him back.

“Turn your head and let me see.” He grabbed my hands, holding them against the cargo bins on either side.

“No.” I squirmed, but not very much. I licked my lips, wondering what it would feel like to have him kiss me.

“I’m only trying to help.”

“Is that what you call it? What were you trying to do earlier when Leon interrupted us?”

“You mean when the ship was threatening to blow up?”

“Yes. It’s about time to check on things again. Let me go, Jerimon.”

“Why? The engine sounds fine to me.” He shifted closer. “This is what I was going to do earlier.” He leaned towards me. Our noses almost touched.

“Don’t you dare, Jerimon.”

“Don’t dare what, Dace?”

“Let go of me.” I twisted my wrists, but not very hard.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the captain and I told you to.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll have you shot for mutiny.”

“No, I don’t think you would.”

He leaned closer and our lips touched. It was like grabbing hold of a charged wire. I closed my eyes, giving in to the heady sensation. He ended it too soon, but not soon enough. I tried to slow my breathing.

“That isn’t where I’m bleeding,” I managed to say.

“You want to be kissed there?”

“No, I want you to let go of me.” But I didn’t.

“Why?”

“Because I can hear Leon trying to break down the door. And it sounds like the valves need adjusted again. And because I don’t know if I like you or not.” I found him attractive, very attractive, but that wasn’t the same as liking him.

He stepped back a pace, his smug look wiped away by his professional mask. He turned my chin to the side with one hand, prodding at the scrape on my head with the other.

“Do you want it bandaged?” His voice was cold, impersonal.

I wanted it that way, I insisted to myself. I wanted distance between us. The ship was too small as it was. “Has it stopped bleeding?”

“Just about.”

“Then leave it, Jerimon.”

“Whatever you say, Captain. I’ll let Leon out and check the gauges.”

“Fine.”

The door hissed shut behind him. I leaned against the wall. Didn’t we have enough problems without Jerimon complicating it even further?

The rest of that trip was a nightmare. What sleep I got was usually interrupted to adjust the engine valves. Leon slept through most of it.

He and Jerimon talked, heads bent over the tiny table. Both of them avoided me, which took some very creative maneuvering on a ship smaller than most people’s bedrooms. Every time I had to talk to Jerimon he was very cool and impersonal. We talked engine pressure readings and that was it. I tried to pretend I didn’t care. It was his fault, he should have been the one apologizing for his behavior. I would have been within my rights to slap him when he’d kissed me. It was maddening that he was the one acting offended.

I had a lot of time to think. I sat in front of the flickering yellow lights in the cockpit and brooded. I listened to Leon snore and Jerimon mumble in his sleep. I played solitaire until I was sick of it. I never knew four days could last so long.

I was in the middle of a shift, staring at the wriggling colors in the viewscreen and watching the engine pressure slide up and down when the reentry alarm suddenly beeped. I jumped, banging my elbow on the edge of the console. I rubbed at my stinging arm and shouted for Jerimon.

“What now?” He rolled slowly out of his bunk, yawning. “The valves acting up again?”

“We’re about to find out if the sublight engines still work.” I pulled on the headset as I pushed buttons. The beeping cut off abruptly as Jerimon took his seat.

“Is it really going to matter? Dead in space beats life in prison.”

“If we were important enough to send message capsules. Maybe they haven’t heard about us yet.” I pushed a final button, then waited for the countdown to reentry to finish.

“Do you want me to do the talking or the flying?”

I shrugged. Either was likely to get us killed. Shot down or blown up by our own engine, we would be just as dead.

“What’s Leon doing?” I asked. His snores cut off in mid-gurgle.

Jerimon glanced back as he pulled on his own headset. He grinned. “Hoping he doesn’t have to pay up when we land. He owes me three-hundred-twenty-two credits. Lousy card player.”

I said nothing. If I’d been playing, Jerimon would owe me more than that. He was terrible at cards. I’d watched him when he thought I was asleep.

The ship shuddered to the slow pulse of the engine. He fingered the edge of his board, flickering with yellow and red lights. I hoped my face wasn’t as white as his.

“You fly,” he said abruptly. “They train you for this kind of thing at the Academy, don’t they?”

“Didn’t you go?”

He shook his head and punched a few controls. “I got my license working as a shuttle pilot for a backwater shipping company. I took the commercial tests on a dare and passed.”

“Then you’re as good as most Academy pilots.”

The ship jerked wildly as the hyperdrive shut down. The bubble collapsed, pushing us through the transect boundary. Normal space twisted. We waited, we couldn’t do anything else, except maybe pray. The ship hung on the edge for a long nerve-wracking moment before finally slipping all the way through.

Every light on the board winked red and yellow. Alarms shrieked as I cut the sublight engines in and tried to dump speed. The ship wallowed unsteadily even as it hurtled across the system. More lights burned red as I tried to slow us with the landing thrusters. Nothing else responded.

“Tebros Main, we’ve got a problem,” Jerimon said, his voice unnaturally calm.

I wrestled with the steering while he talked. Ships dotted the viewscreen, extremely close on our tail. I tried the standard maneuvers again without result, the sublights still wouldn’t respond. It was time for something drastic. Jerimon’s hands danced over the controls as he talked with Tebros control. I caught his hand in mine.

“Hands off a minute,” I said. Our eyes met briefly. He nodded, his gaze sliding away.

I punched buttons across both sides of the board. The maneuver was risky, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Slamming into a planet at hyper velocities was a sure way to die. I flipped the row of manual bypass switches over my head. The lights on the board glowed steady red. The alarms shrilled until I hit the cutoff switch. Dead silence filled the cockpit. Not even the whisper of air ducts broke the sudden stillness.

“Dace?”

I held up my hand. “Get ready on the sublights.”

“You’re going to kill us,” Leon cried.

I silently counted to five.

Jerimon watched me, hands poised over the controls. His face was dead white.

I hit five and slammed all the switches back to automatic. The engine gave a slight hiccup and started running. The lights flickered yellow, as if unsure, before most of them faded back to green. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The controls were sluggish and responded slowly, but at least they responded. Jerimon’s hands shook as he booted the sublight engine controls. I dumped speed as fast as I could.

“Twinkle, this is Tebros Control. What is your status?” a voice crackled over the headsets.

It didn’t sound even close to snickering. The voice sounded very, very worried.

I flipped my headset through the stations while Jerimon talked to Tebros Control. Judging from the chatter of the other ships, we’d disrupted a lot of travel plans. No major damage reported, though, which made me feel a bit better.

Jerimon adjusted the engine controls. “Coordinates should be coming through.”

I glanced at the screen by my left elbow. Numbers scrolled across the tiny square, feeding into the computer.

“Did you tell them the autopilot isn’t functional?”

“Yes. It’s a fairly simple flight pattern. They’ll call if we wander too much.” I checked our position against their numbers and made some adjustments to the flight vector. The engine whined briefly.

Jerimon flinched.

“Is that a standard method of dealing with problems?” he finally asked after the engine readings settled down.

“The instructors called it certain death,” I admitted. “Because even if you get the ship down in one piece, ground control is sure to murder you. Or so they claimed.”

“Great.” Jerimon still looked a bit pale. “As if we don’t have enough people and creatures trying to do it already.”

“Would you rather be splattered all over the planet?”

Jerimon reached for a switch. His hands shook.

“It worked, Jerimon. Isn’t that good enough? What’s Leon up to?”

Jerimon looked behind us. “He’s passed out on the floor.”

Chapter Six

Sector Commander Tayvis cut an imposing figure as he stepped off his ship onto Viya Station. His flawlessly pressed black uniform drank in light. The muted sparkle of gold at his throat only underscored the air of authority he radiated. His boots, polished to a high gloss, clicked across the docking bay to where the station master, Gervon Tiyl, and his assistants waited nervously. Malcolm Tayvis had arrived in style.

Master Tiyl rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, his eyes darting around the dock like tiny fish around a shark. Dock workers scurried about their tasks, not lingering in any one place. Patrol uniforms prowled through the muted chaos.

Tayvis stopped a pace away from the shorter master. Frown lines bracketed his mouth.

The station master waited, twitching at every sound.

Tayvis let the silence stretch, deliberately baiting the other man. Nervous men said things they didn’t intend, and Tiyl was very nervous.

Tiyl wiped sweaty hands down his thighs. “We put them in the guest suites, under guard of course. Their ship is being repaired. We aren’t quite sure what to do. You came awfully quickly.”

“Who?” Tayvis asked, confused.

“The Sessimoniss,” Tiyl replied. “You were sent to deal with the situation, weren’t you?”

Tayvis studied the man for a long moment. “I’m here in pursuit of a suspected smuggler.”

Tiyl swallowed. “But the Sessimoniss. I don’t know what to do with them. I sent messages to the Patrol base at Tebros. You didn’t get them?”

Tayvis forced a smile. “I’ll see what I can do for you. May we discuss this in your office?”

“Of course,” Tiyl said with obvious relief. “Right this way, Commander.”

The dock workers watched with unconcealed interest. Tayvis left quiet orders for his assistant. He needed information; Tiyl didn’t look like he’d provide much.

“Everything was normal yesterday morning,” Tiyl began after escorting Tayvis to his personal quarters.

Tiyl’s secretary scrounged through the kitchen, searching for something suitable to offer a high-ranking Patrol officer.

“Mostly,” Tiyl added thoughtfully.

“Explain,” Tayvis prompted when the man paused.

“It’s difficult, so much has happened. Viya is normally the most peaceful, quiet post in the Empire. It was just all so sudden.” Tiyl’s anxious look begged Tayvis to understand that Tiyl was not at fault for any of it.

Tayvis nodded, pasting a look of sympathy on his face to mask his growing irritation. “Yesterday? What happened?”

“I knew about the raid on Belliff’s offices, of course. Admiral Shoonis came a week ago, warning me about it. Someone tipped off the Patrol that Belliff was behind smuggling in Praxi Sector. They apparently had more connections with the underworld network than just that. I heard Belliff’s owners were part of the Targon crime family and that’s how they got into the smuggling. I was shocked to learn that they were actually using Viya as part of their route. We were suspicious of them all along, of course. I had station security watch their offices very closely. Admiral Shoonis was most grateful.