The Down Home Zombie Blues (35 page)

Jorie strode into the bathroom to retrieve a glass of water, wondering how much of Rordan’s story was true. Wondering how she was going to prove it was—or wasn’t. Any error in judgment here could be fatal.

“Oh, I could definitely tell you if he’s lying. That’s part of what I do as a Homicide detective,” Theo said, half listening to the thrumming of the shower behind him. It was now almost six o’clock in the morning. He and Jorie had agreed letting Rordan get cleaned up didn’t pose any immediate threat. If he tried to escape through the bathroom window, he’d get zapped again.

“But I’d need to speak Alarsh, and I don’t,” Theo continued. “So all I can do if you ask him about that Tresh feeder cup is watch his body language. But I suspect he’s had training just like I have. It’s not a foolproof method.”

Jorie, with a pillow propped up behind her, was leaning back against her side—as Theo already thought of that half of his bed—of the wrought-iron headboard. He sat at her feet, the small G-1 pistol still in his hand, still set for stun.

As was Jorie’s rifle. He noticed that too.

“All Guardians get interrogation training,” Jorie confirmed. “We’ll wait on that, then.”

“Does he have an implant?” Theo asked, wondering what else might affect Rordan’s responses if and when he decided to confront him, for Jorie’s sake.

“None my scanner could find—and, yes, I checked, right after I took his palm print. But as Rordan noted, much of our tech is keyed to relay or booster through either our ship or the ’droids we put in your atmosphere for that purpose. With both of those gone, our range and capabilities are reduced.”

It would be like having a cell phone with no cell-phone towers. That had happened to him on vacation in the Virgin Islands. He understood her frustration.

“So you’re saying he could have an implant and you wouldn’t pick it up.”

“I can’t rule that out.”

“How did he walk right into the house shields if he has a scanner?”

“That’s easier. The scanner verifies that the shields exist but not their perimeters. I use my oc-set for that.” She flipped the band up from around her neck and pushed the eyepiece down.

He’d noticed her doing that, never knew why. “Rordan doesn’t have an oc-set?”

“He owns one, all trackers do.” She pushed the band back down around her neck. “I haven’t seen him wear one since this mission started, no. But he’s also stayed in standard ship uniform, not tracker gear.”

He’d noticed that too. He also knew cops on patrol wore a lot more gear than detectives did. Evidently there were similarities with the Guardians.

“Have you ever heard of a beam-up go wrong and send someone elsewhere on the planet, like he said happened to him?”

She pursed her lips and blew out a small sigh. “Rare, but yes. If Ronna—our PMaT chief—knew the ship was under attack and knew Rordan and Tamlynne were in danger, she could have simply tried for an emergency relocate. If we have several field teams operating on a world, an emergency transport could take an agent from his location back to field base, rather than up to the ship. But there’s no other base here that Ronna could have locked on to. To blindly send him somewhere—it’s horribly risky.”

“Because you don’t know what’s in the spot you’re sending him to,” Theo guessed, hearing Montgomery Scott’s accented voice from various
Star Trek
episodes giving the warning about materializing inside solid rock.

She nodded.

“So—assuming that’s what happened—why didn’t this Ronna send Tammy?” Theo asked.

“She may have tried—assuming that’s what happened. But if Prow already had a security field around Tamlynne, Ronna wouldn’t have been able to get a lock on her bioresonance.”

The sound of water ceased, the shower door slammed.

“What’s your gut-level feeling?” he asked her, his voice low.

She sighed again. “He still hates you. If he was a Tresh operative trying to ingratiate his way in, that’s not the way to do it. He’d try to befriend you, find out what we were planning.”

“Or he’s been a Tresh operative and part of this zombie-breeding program all along and this is just a continuation of his usual, delightful personality.”

“That would be hugely coincidental. We had no plans to come to your world. But, yes, it’s something I will consider. The sad thing is, if none of this is true, we’re hampering ourselves. Rordan’s experience with reprogramming darts far exceeds mine. He’s also an excellent tracker. I could use his help with this, desperately.”

Theo knew that. He also knew he had to look past his personal dislike of the man and try—for Jorie’s sake, for all their sakes—to figure out if Rordan was telling the truth.

He also knew one more thing: his private time with Jorie was over. Until they knew whose side Rordan was on, one of them would have to be awake and keeping an eye on the man at all times.

The bathroom door opened and Rordan padded out in a pair of Theo’s gray sweatpants and a plain gray T-shirt. His long hair was unbound, hanging wet past his shoulders. He was scrubbing the towel over his face but stopped. Theo saw his eyes shift from Jorie with her rifle to himself with the G-1, sitting rather closely on the bed. Sooner or later—probably sooner—the man was going to figure it out, Theo knew. The only room in the house that was shielded was his bedroom. And there was only one bed in the room.

Rordan said something in Alarsh.

“Vekran,” Jorie told him. “Become used to it. It’s the language of the world where you live.”

“As I learn for four days,” Rordan said gruffly. He wiped the towel over his face one more time, then draped it over one shoulder. “So. I am not yet worthy of trust?”

“There’s a lot at risk here,” Jorie said.

“A long time you know me, Jorie Mikkalah.”

“Yes.”

Rordan said something in Alarsh that sounded unpleasant, then turned away. Jorie’s gaze didn’t waver. Theo could almost sense her anger and disappointment with one more problem she didn’t need right now. He had to remind himself this was her teammate. He had to let her handle Rordan her way.

“You need food,” Jorie said to Rordan, then looked at Theo. “Coffee?”

Theo nodded. “Drop the shield and I’ll start a pot.”

“We’ll all go to the kitchen.” Jorie tapped her scanner. “We all need food. And we need to talk.”

“I do not work with Tresh,” Rordan said as Jorie stood, adjusting her rifle.

Theo watched the man’s eyes, watched his expressions, tried to read him as a detective should. Rordan was reacting as most innocent people would when accused. But Theo was also very aware Rordan was not “most people.” He had military training. He was a Guardian. And he was from another galaxy.

But if there was a way to break him down and get at the truth, Theo would find it. He knew they were almost out of time to deal with the zombies. They couldn’t afford any more mistakes now.

24

After a full day—and night—of trying to work around Kip Rordan and watch him at the same time, Jorie knew she had no choice. As much as it made her nervous to do so, she had to trust him. She pulled herself off Theo’s bedroom floor, away from her blinking and humming and uncooperative tech, slipped her feet into the sandals Theo had bought for her, and headed back for the kitchen, where Theo and Rordan were finishing off midmeal—lunch, Theo called it. Probably giving each other a good case of indigestion.

Their mutual dislike was obvious. Worse after Rordan watched her get the into Theo’s bed last night.

She’d “turned grounder.” A derisive term for an agent or tracker—or any spacer, really—who’d chosen to be planet-bound. Dirt-locked. Forgotten what they were and adopted the ways and culture of a nil-tech world. Or worse, taken a grounder lover.

She hadn’t forgotten she was a spacer. She never could—not even clad in the shorts and sweatshirt so indigenous to this locale. But she had taken a grounder lover. And now she was about to turn their only weapon against the zombies and the Tresh over to a man who might be a Tresh agent.

Life just became more blissful from one moment to the next.

She pulled out a chair across from Theo and sat. “I’ve come up against another technical problem,” she said to Theo without any preliminaries. “One I can’t solve alone.”

He’d been leaning back in his chair, sipping that orange fizzy drink he so loved from a metal can. He let the front legs of the chair hit the floor with a thump. That was the only noise in the room. Neither he nor Rordan had bothered exchanging any mealtime pleasantries that she could hear.

“The dart?” Theo asked.

She nodded and noticed Rordan looking at her now. He knew about the dart. She’d brought him up to date over firstmeal—breakfast—but without too many specifics. And without letting him look at her tech.

Rordan’s gaze was neutral, as if he sensed she’d come to a decision but didn’t want to let any emotions play on his face.

She knew how that went. She’d worn the same expression herself many times with Captain Pietr.

She raised her chin slightly as she spoke to Rordan. “I am going to check everything you do. But I need your help. Or we’re going to lose an effective time frame in which to confront the C-Prime.”

“We’d be closer to a resolution if you’d let me work on it since yesterday,” he told her in Alarsh. Rordan waved one hand before she could berate him for using their language and glanced at Theo: “I tell Jorie she wasted much time to come late to this decision.”

“You’d be just as cautious if the situation were reversed,” she shot back. They both knew damned well he was the one always spouting gen-pro regulations at every turn.

Rordan arched one eyebrow. “But also I would place traps,” he said in Vekran. “So have you. Good.” He stood. “I only hope, once you believe again that I’m with you, we still have enough time to stop the C-Prime.”

So did Jorie, desperately.

She hunkered down in front of her main unit, with Rordan on her right, and showed him what she’d done. He nodded, asking very Rordan-like questions, then scrolled back through her work, making notations on his scanner. She watched him and listened to Theo pacing in his main room, talking on his cell phone to either Martinez or Gray. She wasn’t sure which.

“Ah,” Rordan said softly. “Here’s your first problem. We’re using a Hazer, yes?”

She nodded.

He pointed to a line of data. “This range parameter is too low.”

“No, that’s correct.”

“No, it’s not.” He glanced at her, mouth pursed. “Where
are
you, Jorie?”

Hell and damn. She was on a planet aptly named after dirt. And she was working with regional atmospheric and environmental settings for Port Lraknal.

That corrected, he kept scrolling, now and then muttering, “Good, good.” And on two occasions a short laugh and, “Excellent!”

After a while it ceased to register in her mind that neither she nor Rordan was in uniform, that the tech they worked on was cobbled together and limping at best, and that he’d been missing after last being seen confronting Tresh agents. It was as if this was just another Guardian field mission. She fell into an easy patter of exchanges with Rordan and so was surprised when Theo knelt down by her side.

“Will it work?” he asked in Vekran.

Vekran. She’d been speaking in Alarsh, and the words jarred her momentarily.

Not Vekran. English.

“Yes,” she told him, feeling more confident than she had hours before. “If we get a clear shot at the C-Prime, yes.”

He nodded and she saw his gaze flick toward Rordan, then back to her again, his expression unreadable. “David Gray has the reports on what might be zombie attacks in Pasco County, but I’d need to go to his office to view them.” He hesitated. “He’s in Tampa. That’s at least thirty, forty minutes travel time each way.”

He’d mentioned that information yesterday, showed her this Pasco County, north of their current location. Any expansion of zombie activity concerned her.

“I need that data,” she told him.

“It would be risky to get you into his office. It’s a secure facility and you don’t have workable ID.”

Yes, there was that. Jorie understood security requirements.

“And I definitely couldn’t get you both in,” Theo continued.

Jorie thought she saw what he was really asking: could he leave her alone with Rordan?

It was now late afternoon. If Rordan was allied with the Tresh, they’d had more than enough time to take some kind of action. Things at Theo’s residence had been blissfully quiet.

“I need Gray’s information,” she repeated. “Commander Rordan still has work to do here. Bring back copies of whatever you can.”

She could sense his indecision, his discomfort. He didn’t want to leave her alone. Finally, he nodded. “I’m turning the answering machine off,” he said, motioning to the small square object on his bedside table. “Phone rings, you answer. Every time. Got that?”

“I have acquired knowledge,” she replied with a small smile. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone—other than her brother—had worried about her. Jorie Mikkalah, ex-marine and Guardian Force commander, was well known for being able to take care of herself.

Yet Theo tried to take care of her, anyway. That amused her but warmed her at the same time.

“You don’t answer, there’s going to be a shitload of trouble on your doorstep, quickly,” he said, but he was looking at Rordan. “I can do that, no matter where I am.”

“I have same interest in staying alive as you do,” Rordan said with a quick glance away from his scanner.

“It’s not your life I’m worried about.”

“And same interest,” Rordan continued as if Theo hadn’t spoken, “in Jorie’s life.”

Theo pushed himself to his feet, grabbing Jorie’s arm as he did so. She rose with him.

“Answer the phone every time,” he said, his dark eyes serious. Then, taking her by surprise, he pulled her against him, his mouth on hers, one hand threading up into the back of her hair.

Her “Oof!” turned into a hard but quick kiss of passion and desperation that set her heart hammering. Theo pulled back slightly with a whispered, “No regrets,” as he brushed his mouth over her ear. Then, in his normal tone: “I should be back no later than six-thirty or seven.”

She waited until Theo disappeared into the main room before turning to look down at Rordan, expecting disapproval, and finding on his face what she expected. She knew she should be annoyed at Theo for staking his claim, as her brother would call it. Part of her recognized the childishness—or the very maleness—of his actions. But she also knew he cared, very much. And the kiss was not so much a message to Rordan as it was a message shared between themselves.

For if something were to happen, she knew that, yes, she would regret not having kissed him again.

She settled back down on the floor, aware of Rordan’s gaze on her. She turned and awaited one of his usual remarks.

“Why?” was all he said, and that surprised her. Bothered her. She didn’t understand and so gave him a perfunctory answer.

“What’s between Theo Petrakos and myself is my personal business.”

Rordan stared at his scanner. She could see his mouth thinning, she could see the tension in his fingers wrapping around the scanner’s edge. Finally, he looked back at her. “You question my allegiance because I’ve been gone for four days. Now I’m wondering, should I question yours? This is not the Jorie Mikkalah I’ve worked with on the
Sakanah.
If Lorik were here, I’d understand. A revenge game. Stupid, but it might work. But he’s not.” Rordan shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment.

“This has nothing to do with Lorik.”

“Then what does it have to do with?” His voice rose. “We call you the Ice Princess on board, you know that, don’t you? We had bets years ago, when Lorik wanted you, how long it would take—”

Jorie shot to her feet and spun away from him, knowing if she didn’t she’d smash her fist into his pretty face.

She was aware of the nickname a few of the men had bestowed on her. She’d heard the whispers, the snickers. She hadn’t cared—it was almost a badge of honor on the
Sakanah.
Shipboard affairs fueled the long times between missions and filled the need for excitement.

When she was bored, she’d grab her Hazer and pull up a zombie-attack sim in the ship’s weapon’s range. She’d never bed-hopped.

And then there was Lorik.

She didn’t care to know if he’d won or lost the bet on how quickly he’d bed her.

“Jorie.” The hard tone was gone from Rordan’s voice. “Regrets. I spoke without thinking. It’s just that I value you—”

“You value me?” She spun back to him. “So much that when Lorik was cheating on me, you said nothing? You even helped him in his duplicity! Tell me again how much you value me, Kip Rordan.”

“Jorie—”

“Pietr offered you a captaincy too, didn’t he?”

He studied her before answering. “I was aware of the offer, but that’s not the only reason I took the assignment.”

She bristled at his admission, but part of her anger, she knew, should be directed at Pietr. He’d deliberately made a difficult mission more difficult by pitting two teammates against each other—a method he’d been known to use before. And now look where they were.

She almost said as much, but it was useless. Pietr was gone, and the offered captaincy was a moot point.

“The assignment has changed,” she said tersely. “I doubt it’s one you would have signed up for originally. But it’s what we have to do now: finish the dart, infect the C-Prime, and keep this world from being overrun by the Tresh.”

“And Petrakos?”

She almost asked, “What about him?” but didn’t want to let the conversation get personal again. “Gen-pro regs no longer apply. It would be different if the Tresh weren’t involved, if the zombies were dormant. We could stay covert, wait and see if a ship comes looking for us in a year. But that’s not the case here. We need the locals’ help if we’re to have any chance of success.”

“That’s not what—”

The phone rang, interrupting Rordan’s remark. She grabbed the handset and hit the button as Theo had showed her. Only as she opened her mouth did she remember to switch from Alarsh to English. “This is Jorie.”

“Everything okay, babe?”

Theo’s deep voice was like balm to her frayed soul. “As usual,” she said, a small sigh accompanying her words.

“Rordan behaving?”

“That is as usual too.”

“Being a pompous asshole, is he? If you zap him with your stunner, I won’t complain.”

She could almost see his feral, delicious grin. “Sadly, there’s too much work to do yet.”

“Well, keep it in mind. I’ll check in with you later.”

“Got it,” she said, using his phrase.

“Very good!” He chuckled. “Later, babe.” A click in her ear signaled the disconnect. She tapped the button again and replaced the handset in the holder.

Rordan had turned back to his calculations on the main unit. Jorie stared out the bedroom window for a moment, at the street bathed in late-afternoon sunlight, at the tall, thin trees with their long fronds, at the stouter trees with thick foliage draped in dangling gray mosses, and at the residences, neatly kept, that lined the street.