Kim dug her fingers into the back of her shoulder, trying to soothe an ache from leaning over the microscope. “Another time, I’m sure I would find that interesting. But right now…”
“I understand. Where is Casmir?”
Kim blinked, surprised and then wary by the question. “Why do you care?”
“Believe it or not, I found myself wishing his robot was here to help with the search. It wouldn’t have been afflicted with anything, I’m sure. I could use an army of those robots. But I gather his army is busy invading, oh, where was it? Stribog Station.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The last I talked to my ship, they mentioned it. Stribog Station wanted to hire us to get rid of them if we were in the area. It seems Jager has a couple of ships there, trying to get a toehold in System Augeas.” Rache’s tone was icy with disapproval.
“I see.” Kim wasn’t sure if she believed Rache or if it mattered even if he was telling the truth. It didn’t have anything to do with their current problem, and it would upset Casmir if he heard about it. Maybe she wouldn’t tell him. “Casmir isn’t in System Augeas and doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“He made the crushers, didn’t he?”
“When he worked for the military, he was always told his inventions would be used to defend Odin from outside aggressors, not to start a war, or whatever Jager is doing.”
“Then he was naive,” Rache said coolly.
“I guess he couldn’t be the paragon of perfection that you are. By the way, you never gave me your blood sample.” Kim looked at his faceplate, though she couldn’t see anything through that stupid mask he wore. What a time to worry about his super villain costume. “I assume you’re as affected as the rest of us, but I’d like to verify that.”
He gazed back at her and didn’t respond right away, then looked over to Dr. Peshlakai, who was snoring softly. None of his other men were in the shuttle. It made Kim a little uneasy to know she was essentially alone with this killer who had kidnapped her, but she told herself that he wanted a cure for himself and his men. He shouldn’t pester her or do anything but assist her.
And there was a part of her that had a hard time believing he’d be a sexual deviant if he was related to Casmir. More than related to him. That was something she could confirm if she ended up being able to keep a sample of his blood. Not that it was anywhere near the top of her priority list right now.
“I see no reason why I wouldn’t be affected,” he finally said. “I’ve been here numerous hours now.”
“I agree, but it’s foolish not to gather all the data on hand. A blood test isn’t going to tell me your real name, if that’s what you care about. I haven’t even got a network connection right now.” She waved overhead, indicating the towering walls of the canyon. “If that’s like other combat armor I’ve seen, you can have your suit take one and send me its analysis, but it would be better for me to have the sample itself so I can run tests.” She pointed toward the vials she currently had being run for everything from vitamin deficiencies to who’d been vaccinated with what in their lifetimes.
Rache hesitated another moment, then removed his helmet and stepped toward her. He pushed up his hood enough to reveal his neck and flicked two fingers toward a syringe on the counter. “Go ahead.”
“What, you want me to take it from your jugular?”
“It’s a pain in the ass to take off the armor.” He lifted his gauntleted hand. “Peshlakai has done it this way.”
“Peshlakai is a medical doctor. I’m a researcher. My degrees are in microbiology and pharmaceutical bacteriology. I minored in literature. You don’t want someone who takes blood draws once every five years sticking a needle in your neck. Though I’m sure many people fantasize about doing so.”
She thought about pointing out that they could wake up Peshlakai, but Rache started taking off his chest and arm pieces and the gauntlets.
“Literature?” he asked.
“I needed electives, and I like books.”
“Ah yes, you’re a Moby Dick fan.”
“I analyzed it for a class. I wouldn’t say I signed up for the fandom.” Kim grabbed the syringe, drummed the vial on her arm, and waited for him to finish undressing his top half.
“What books do you like?”
She couldn’t keep from giving him an exasperated look. “This isn’t a date at the coffee shop. You’re my captor. I’m not discussing literature with you.”
Though she would probably do it if it meant she was drinking coffee at the same time. Good coffee. It was almost embarrassing how much she missed it.
“Fair enough.” Rache bowed an acknowledgment as he continued unfastening his gear.
He was right. It took several minutes just to remove the top half. Underneath it, he wore a thin black long-sleeve shirt that hugged his lean, muscular torso.
“You’re really Casmir’s twin?” Kim asked skeptically, then promptly grimaced, both because she wasn’t sure how he would react to finding out that Casmir had told her, and because she didn’t want him to misconstrue her comment as some kind of sexual interest.
“So Dr. Peshlakai’s DNA test said.” His tone was more amused than annoyed. “I don’t usually get grimaces from women when I take off my armor.”
“No? Given your occupational choice, I have a hard time believing you get hordes of voluptuous females flinging themselves at you in a sexual fervor.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then laughed. “You’re very blunt.”
“I’m not good at editing words before they come out of my mouth.” Kim waved for him to push up his sleeve. “Fortunately, nobody where I work cares, and my inability to schmooze people, as Casmir would say, rarely matters.”
“I actually do get targeted by voluptuous females—more often than you might think. Females with low standards, clearly.”
“Clearly.” She waved at his sleeve again, finding it surreal that they were having this conversation. What a nut.
“I’ve learned to avoid them. Every now and then, there’s an assassin in the mix.”
“I’m shocked,” she said.
She managed to catch herself before pointing out that he could hardly expect anything less when he’d decided to make himself King Jager’s personal nemesis. He was still her captor, and it would be better to keep her mouth shut and avoid antagonizing him.
Not responding to her sarcasm, Rache finally pushed up his sleeve. “Now that you’ve told me how much experience you’ve had at this, I’m wondering if I should be concerned.”
“A bruise from some spilled blood is the least of your concerns right now.” She did the draw without trouble; the veins on his arms stood out and made it easy. “After I run this, can I get that tour of the wreck? I hate to admit it, but I’m stymied here. I’m hoping for some elucidation in there. Or to find something emitting a previously undiscovered relative of cosmic radiation.”
Kim supposed that was a possibility. That they had discovered something new.
“I’m not aware that tests on the gates have shown that they do that.” Rache started dressing again.
“Did you find any pieces of the gate in there?” Kim well remembered that video with her mother waving what Casmir had believed was a gate fragment, but she didn’t bring it up, also remembering that she’d stolen the chip with the video on it from Rache.
Had he realized it yet? He’d probably been busy since then.
“Not yet.” He sounded frustrated.
Kim divided his blood into smaller containers for the tests she would run and made a slide—she’d had no trouble seeing everyone else’s cellular damage under the microscope.
“We believe we’ve found the molds that held a disassembled gate for transport, but someone cleared everything out. It’s hard to tell if it was done thousands of years ago or last month. I’m hoping my team will come across a forgotten piece, so we’ll at least get something out of this diversion, but I’m hypothesizing that
someone else has been here since the original archaeology team came, and that they took everything valuable. It’s possible they did something to cause this… not-a-disease.”
Kim was skeptical that this was a manmade phenomenon, but all she said was, “What happens if we don’t find a cure for it? Any chance you have a brilliant backup plan?”
“No. But I suppose I might, in a spurt of vengeance, fly to Odin and take a kamikaze run at Jager’s castle. Unfortunately, I don’t think I would live long enough to make the trip. People have been dying quickly from this.”
“No kidding. I’d appreciate it if…” Kim grimaced, hating the idea of asking him for a favor. Of asking her kidnapper for a favor. “I have a father and brothers back on Odin. Friends and colleagues. I’d like to be able to get a message back to them. I guess if I could even send something to Casmir, he’d make sure they got it.”
She swallowed, irritated at the lump welling in her throat at the thought of never seeing anyone again. Emotion wouldn’t help anything, and she needed her mind calm and clear to work.
“You two are a couple?” Rache asked, his tone hard to read.
She fought down the urge to bristle and say it was none of his business, and why did he care anyway? Then it occurred to her that he might be curious about Casmir. Casmir had said that was at least one of the reasons he’d put the bounty out to collect him, at least according to Rache. Well, she wasn’t going to answer questions about Casmir, not to this man. Who knew what his true motives were?
“Just good friends. We’ve been roommates for seven years.” Kim slid his slide under the microscope and leaned in for a look.
“If we’re not able to find a solution here, I’ll fly you and the group back up to orbit. There will be reception for sending messages there.”
She couldn’t bring herself to thank him. He was the reason her life was in danger.
Rache tugged his helmet over his head. He’d never removed the mask and hood. She felt a twinge of disappointment, mostly because she wanted to know if he truly looked exactly like Casmir. Since she didn’t have a blood sample from him along, or a DNA sequencer, she couldn’t compare the two side by side to see if they matched.
But what she saw under the microscope made her forget all about that. “What the hell?”
She squinted, not trusting her eyes, and had the linked computer run a quick analysis.
“Something weird swimming in there?” Rache asked.
“You’re not showing the same signs of cellular damage that everyone else is.”
“Oh? Huh.”
Casmir trailed Asger down several levels and through the corridors of the sprawling warship, not paying attention to their route or the stares of people they passed. He was trying to tell himself that Kim could take care of herself and that he’d done all he could, but he couldn’t help but think of the Stellar Dragon, perhaps even now flying to catch up with the Osprey.
Because he’d asked Bonita to come get him. And now, he couldn’t meet her for a transfer.
He needed to send her a message before he was tossed in the brig with cell walls that would muffle transmission, and let her know he wouldn’t be joining her. But it was frustrating to admit defeat. If he could just get a ride over there, or convince someone to let the freighter attach to one of the airlocks…
But who besides the captain might be able to approve that? Some admiral back at Kingdom Fleet Headquarters? Casmir didn’t know any admirals. All of his connections were in academia, and he couldn’t think of any military officers on the board at Zamek University.
Asger slowed down, and Casmir stopped before bumping into him. Zee stopped behind him. There weren’t any crewmembers in their current corridor to give curious looks to their odd party. Had they arrived at the brig?
As Casmir looked around, seeing a large doorway rather than a bank of cells, Asger turned to face him. And gaze thoughtfully at him. For several long moments. Casmir grew self-conscious and had the urge to comb his fingers through his hair. Or maybe his beard. He hadn’t smeared hair removal gel on his jaw for several days and was bristly.
“If you were a woman looking at me for that long, I’d get my hopes up for a kiss,” Casmir said.
Asger closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe I’m contemplating this.”
“Er, it’s not kissing, right? Because that woman thing is a requirement for me.”
“I hope I’m right,” Asger muttered and pressed his palm to a print reader beside the hatch, then leaned in for a retina scan. “He should have added me to the database since I’m parked in here,” he muttered, seconds passing slowly. “I can’t promise Ishii won’t get an alert.”
Abruptly intrigued, Casmir studied their surroundings again, looking for more clues as to where they were. 1A was all the label by the door said. The corridor was wide here, the ceiling high, and he spotted a few insulated doors that might be for refrigerators or freezers farther down.
“Approved,” a computer voice said. “Welcome back, Sir William Asger.”
The door slid open, and Asger walked into a dim room. Lights came up, shining on two sleek shuttles resting on magnetic plating. One was a match for the blue-and-gold exterior paint of the Osprey and clearly belonged. The other was white with royal purple highlights, the color an exact match for Asger’s cloak.
Hangar doors on the far side of the small bay offered an exit into space, and Casmir’s stomach flip-flopped.
“Are we going somewhere?” he asked as Asger strode toward the second shuttle, a hatch in the side opening automatically.
“Not if you don’t hurry up. Someone on the bridge will probably get an alert, since we’re entering the captain’s private bay, and Ishii can override the doors from up there.”
Casmir convinced his weary limbs to jog to catch up. “This is your personal shuttlecraft?”
Being a knight came with more perks than he’d realized.
“It’s one from the knights’ ship stable back on Odin.” Asger led the way inside and jumped into one of two piloting pods up front. His fingers were flying across the control panel before he sat down. An articulating arm with a chip interface swung toward his face, similar to the setup in the Dragon.
As soon as Casmir and Zee entered, the hatch swung shut, sealing them into the shuttle.
“Put your helmet on and pod up,” Asger ordered. “Even if the bridge doesn’t object, this is going to be a tricky takeoff. The warship left orbit a while ago and is accelerating for the gate.” His voice lowered. “At a constant, I hope.”
“How much piloting experience do knights get?” Casmir smiled, but he couldn’t help but feel nervous as he sat in the pod next to Asger’s and the intelligent insulation wrapped around him like a cocoon.
“Enough.”
“Zee, sit in one of the pods, please,” Casmir called to his silent robot friend. “Having you go flying across the shuttle and crash into us would be extremely painful. For us.”
“I’ll bet,” Asger muttered, firing up the thrusters. “Let your friends know we’re coming.”
Casmir almost said that they should see if they survived the takeoff first, but for whatever reason, Asger was helping him. He had better keep his sarcastic thoughts to himself.
“Will do.”
Asger looked over at him. Was Casmir supposed to add on a sir or a my lord? He thought my lord and my lady had fallen out of fashion over recent centuries, but he also didn’t interact with the nobility often. Most of the qualifying people that he knew in academia acted like normal people, the main difference being that they lived on some centuries-old family estate in town or the countryside instead of faculty housing.
The shuttle-bay doors opened. An indicator flashed on the control panel.
Asger sighed and rotated the shuttle, so its nose pointed at the doors, before answering. “Yes, Captain?”
“Are you going somewhere, Asger?” Ishii’s voice came over the speaker.
“For a jaunt
to stretch my legs.”
“My security officer reports that Dabrowski wasn’t delivered to the brig. Don’t tell me his legs need stretching too. It’s not like they’re going to get any longer.”
“I know he’s not poking fun at my height,” Casmir whispered.
Asger didn’t answer. He flew carefully around the other shuttle and toward the exit.
“Answer me, Asger,” Ishii said.
“It’s Sir Asger. And I’m not in your chain of command, Captain. I answer to the king and queen.”
“I’m positive the king and queen don’t want you to take a civilian roboticist off on some harebrained mission,” Ishii said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Asger said.
The bay doors started closing.
Asger growled, and at some silent command he gave via his chip, the shuttle surged forward.
Casmir squinted his eyes shut, imagining them smashing into the doors. But the shuttle cleared them and shot out the back of the warship like a bullet. The Osprey continued on its course, and Asger turned them toward the bright blue dot of Saga, the planet far more distant than it had been the last time Casmir looked out a porthole.
“If you go get yourself in trouble with Rache,” Ishii said, his voice glacial, “don’t expect us to come bail you out. We have bigger problems.”
“I’m certain you’ll do whatever Fleet orders, Captain. Asger, out.”
The comm light went out, and Casmir sagged in the pod.
“Your friends?” Asger brought up the scanner display to show ships in the area.
“It’s the Stellar Dragon. I’m letting them know we’ll meet them now.” Casmir hurried and sent a message to Bonita, chagrined he hadn’t already done that. “We’re still going to the gate to help stop that cargo ship, right?”
Ship of Ruin Page 11
