The Gilded Cage (13 page)

“Not unless you want to learn to curse in a few new languages, sir.”

Sir? Yeah, I suppose I did just become a sir to them. I’ve gone from a slave on their ship to an officer in charge of things, responsible for their lives, to breaking them out of jail and rescuing them from a date with the hangman
.

When the hell had he turned into one of them?

Navarre’s eyes caught Djamila Sykora on the bed. Wilhelmina had covered her with a light blanket. He could see her closed eyes going back and forth, trapped in some nightmare from which she would awake to find she had traded her fate with Tamaz to a new fate with him.

I wonder which one would be worse, from her point of view?

Still, he was one of them. He was in charge. He would captain this mess to the bitter end.

Now it remained to see if he was Bligh or Christian.

Navarre reached down and activated the comm. He made sure it was a standard navigation channel this time, so everyone in the system might listen in.

“
Salekhard
,” he growled. “I’m still waiting to dance. Or are too big of a coward to even come out to fight me, Tamaz?”

Across space, Tamaz gasped with rage, and then continued his stream of never–ending invective.

Navarre quickly grew bored. Javier would have at least been impressed that the pirate could go that many words between repetitions. There was a skill to that.

Tamaz was still an ass.

Navarre shut off the comm for now. It served no purpose now but to goad the man on further.

He had probably done enough already. If not, it would be there waiting.

Afia served him a mug of coffee.

“So where’s the rabbit?” she asked innocently.

“Rabbit?” Navarre blinked down at the tiny woman.

“I’ve played too much poker with you, sir,” she said. “You aren’t bluffing here. So you have a rabbit you’re going to pull out of a hat soon.”

Navarre smiled cruelly at her, let it warm some.

“You saw that vial of liquid, Afia?” he asked conversationally. “I don’t suppose you saw where I threw it?”

“No, sir,” she replied firmly. “I was busy helping load the dragoon so we could abandon ship. What was it? I saw green.”

Wilhelmina rose from the bed to join the conversation. She looked tired.

“It was a biological agent, Afia,” she said. “Captain Tamaz was going to infect Djamila with it and then send her back to
Storm Gauntlet
to infect the rest of the crew and kill them.”

The woman’s dark eyes got large. “Seriously? Plague?”

“Correct,” Navarre said. “Plague. We ruptured the liquid into the air intakes for
Salekhard
’s life support blowers.”

Afia Burakgazi was an engineer by trade, an expert in the care and feeding of complicated mechanical systems. Navarre watched her eyes flicker back and forth as she traced the equivalent systems on
Storm Gauntlet
. Their Strike Corvette home was a purpose–built warship, instead of an up–gunned freighter, but the equations were similar.

“Biological weapon,” she muttered. “Vaporize it into the wet air off hydroponics, feed it with all the right nutrients, blast it all over the ship. Infect everyone in under an hour unless they shut the whole system down.”

“They can’t shut the life–support systems down.”

Her normally dark skin paled as she stared mutely at him.

“How do you know?”

Navarre felt a cruel smile overtake him.

“They could have, but that would have required them to vent everything and pipe in clean air from the station. And we know they didn’t do that…”

“Because they detached from the station and are chasing us,” Afia finished in a whisper.

“Will they even realize they’re dying?” Wilhelmina inquired.

Navarre shrugged.

“We didn’t go into details, ’Mina,” he said simply. “Knowing the kind of man Tamaz is, it would be something extremely painful, but fast acting. He would want to kill everyone on
Storm Gauntlet
quickly enough that he could board her, fill Sykora with the antidote, if she wasn’t just the carrier vector to begin with, and then steal the ship. He’d have a brand new warship in his fleet, as well as his revenge on everyone. Letting people linger runs the risk that someone cures it, or Sokolov blows the
Gauntlet
in place.”

“How long do you suppose, then?” Wilhelmina asked.

Navarre counted the clock in his head.

“Slightly over two hours since exposure,” he said. “Piet, how soon until they catch us?”

The navigator tore his eyes away from Navarre and consulted his console.

“We accelerate faster,” the man replied finally. “They’ve got bigger engines so I would guess thirty percent higher top speed in this solar wind density. Maybe four more hours if nothing changes at their end and then…”

Navarre watched him stop talking, his concentration somewhere else. One hand came up to an ear.

Navarre hadn’t realized that Piet had an earpiece in, listening to Tamaz on the comm all this time. That took intestinal fortitude, considering the company.

“Sir,” Piet said. “You need to hear this.”

He reached over and punched a button on the console, dialing up the sound.

A howl of pain filled the cabin.

It was a wail, an angry
ban sidhe
calling for your soul, wordlessly, mindlessly screaming. It took a second for Navarre to realize that a human throat was making it.

Navarre let the chill etch itself into his soul before Javier took over again, relegating the pirate persona back to the dark places inside where a man like that normally resided.

Javier looked individually at his crewmates. Navarre would have scowled at them. But Navarre was gone. He gave them a hard, purposeful smile instead.

His eyes linked with Wilhelmina. He felt warmth there, but it was across a distant sea, lost across horizons.

“Paladins,” he whispered, just loud enough to be heard, “are men and women of the sword.”

Part Eleven

Javier stood to one side of Sokolov’s desk and watched the blackness of deep space out a porthole.

Salekhard
was gone. Obliterated. Shattered under a rolling salvo of
Storm Gauntlet
’s guns. Purification by immolation. But at that point, it really was just putting down a lame horse. Tamaz and his mad dogs were already dead.

Locals would mark it down to a turf battle between pirates. Those were common enough in places like this. Tamaz had gambled and lost. That was the price you sometimes paid.

“Everyone pays that price eventually, Aritza,” the captain replied.

Javier hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud in his musings.

“And we might have been able to salvage her,” Sokolov continued, almost hopeful.

“No,” Javier said firmly. “Better the purging fires. Let hard vac and radiation cleanse the carcass. Anything else risks too much. Who knows what else that bastard had cooked up?”

“So now what, Mister Science Officer?”

“Now?” Javier mused. “We send Sykora and Wilhelmina to complete their mission and sell that ship. Plus we sell the stolen runabout. Then we go on with our lives.”

“Are you ever going to tell me the whole story about what happened, Aritza?”

Javier smiled ruefully.

“Not this side of hell, Zakhar. Not this side of hell.”

Ξ

The black hair was disconcerting, but she was still beautiful. Javier still saw traces of Hadiiye in the way she moved, but this was Wilhelmina standing before him.

They were alone in his cabin.

He held out a hand, almost shyly.

She took it, almost as carefully.

Silence passed as he sought the words.

“I want you to do something for me,” he said finally.

“What?”

“I want to send Suvi with you, ’Mina. She can help protect you out there, and she deserves a chance to escape. I’m going to be stuck a slave for years at this rate. She should live.”

“No,” Wilhelmina smiled softly at him. She could be a stubborn woman.

“No?”

“No. We talked, her and me.”

“You what?”

“Suvi and I talked, while you were with the Captain. I asked her. She wants to stay with you.”

Javier turned to face the remote, resting quietly on the charging ring.

“Are you freaking nuts?” he asked.

Suvi’s running lights came on.

“You need way more protecting than she does, boss,” his first mate, his comrade in surveying, his friend said.

Javier refused to cry as he engulfed Wilhelmina in a hug.

It was good to have friends.

Ξ

Javier watched Wilhelmina walk down the airlock tube to the little runabout, just like last time. And just like before, he would never see her again. Although he had made arrangements with her to be at a specific bar on a specific day, five years from now, with a rose in his lapel.

Just in case, you know.

Afia Burakgazi and Piet Alferdinck were already aboard getting ready, like nearly a month hadn’t passed since the last time they had tried this. Luck was better the second go round.

He was alone in the airlock.

A tree suddenly appeared behind him, almost silently.

Javier turned.

Djamila Sykora. Dragoon. Ballerina of Death. Angry, angry woman.

She was almost close enough for him to stick his nose into her cleavage. He almost did, anyway.

He looked up.

There was a mad hatred in her eyes.

It was good to be home.

“I’ve heard most of the story,” she growled under her breath.

“Those parts were lies and innuendo,” he replied, feeling the heat rise up in his stomach, like bile turned to napalm.

“I have no doubt, Aritza,” she snarled. “Especially around you. I want to know why.”

“Why what?”

“Why did you agree to it?” she said. “Why risk your life? Why not just walk away? You might like Teague that well, but not Alferdinck or Burakgazi.”

“Why did I risk life and limb, freedom and forever, on you, Sykora? Is that it?”

“Exactly, Aritza. Why?”

Javier reached up with his right hand and grabbed her by the shirt front. There was nothing remotely man or woman here, he wanted her down at his level.

He pulled. She came.

They ended up nose to nose, snarl to snarl.

“Because nobody gets to kill you but me,” Javier rasped.

Sykora stared hard at him for several seconds, delving as deep into his soul as he went into hers.

He watched the hatred burn in those eyes. That mad, burning rage that overwhelmed every bit of rational thought, of care, of survival. He saw the primal creative energies of the universe. Creation myths unfolding. Pantheonic wars playing out.

Götterdämmerung
.

She lunged forward suddenly and kissed him hard on the mouth. It was passion without romance, fire without warmth.

A promise of forever.

Lovers in hatred.

“Deal,” she said.

Read the first story in “The Science Officer” series:
The Science Officer
.

When pirates commandeer Javier’s starship, they give him a choice: corpse, slave, or volunteer.

Javier chooses to survive, as well as keep his honor and his sanity intact.

However, when things get rough, will he save the pirates from someone even worse?

Available at your favorite retailers.

Read the second story in “The Science Officer” series:
The Mind Field
.

Javier sometimes enjoys being a pirate, but he never forgets they made him a slave.

Trapped in a forgotten mine field left over from an ancient war, he must work with the people he hates to survive. Even if it means saving them as well.

When they find an unbelievable treasure at the center of the mine field, all bets are off.

Available at your favorite retailers.

Author’s Note

Life sometimes happens. It intrudes. I had always intended to quickly follow up
The Mind Field
with this book. I just never planned for it to take me nearly a year to get there.