Kidnapped

by Megan Derr

  "I'll send them back to Winter, see what else he can dig up on them," Karmikel said. "My points are on Adalsteinn or Pall, though. They're both perfect for it. Adalsteinn has a permit to travel wherever, whenever, and then has nothing further attached to his name? Not even a job history. That is a pirate if ever I've caught one."

  Laughing, because Karmikel had excelled at pirate capture before he'd been seduced away by Internal Affairs, Sean said, "I guess if Winter can pin him down, we'll go for him first. Anything else we need to do? Where are we headed?"

  "Bangkok," Karmikel replied. "We should be there in a few hours. So you know this guy? Is he really the Cyan Alexander?"

  Sean nodded. "Yeah, he is. I couldn't believe it the day he told me. We were a little drunk, sitting in our room in Bangkok. I made a joke about the points he had; Rehabbers earn high wages, but even so, Cyan has a lot. He got bitter, then quiet."

  "You can't tell they're related," Karmikel said. "They're night and day." He punched a couple of buttons and brought up the two Alexander brothers. Sean stared in wonder, to actually see the brothers side by side. Other than their pale gray eyes, and a bit of something in the shape of their faces, it was impossible to tell they were related.

  Cyan had black hair and gray eyes and was handsome in a rough and tumble sort of way, short and built. Any sign of the noble he had once been was long gone. Well, mostly. Sean had wondered for years what was so weird about Cyan's accent—something about it just seemed off. It wasn't until Cyan told him his real identity that Sean figured it out: when Cyan got pissed off, his clipped Zero accent came out. But Cyan had always been so proud of mastering 'common speech' that Sean had never had the heart to tell him.

  Beside him, Lower Chancellor Jade Alexander was a cool, breathtaking beauty, the very definition of what it meant to be Zero elite. He was tall and willowy, with dark gold hair that fell to his thighs and was woven into a braid. He was dressed in an ornate violet and lavender robe, the fastenings holding it shut shaped like the infinity symbol of the IG. His nails were long, sharp looking, and painted the same violet as his robe.

  Stories of the Lower Chancellor were legend, and Cyan had never confirmed which of the tales were fact, fiction, or exaggeration. Sean had never asked, not when speaking of his twin brother put that look of pain and anger on Cyan's face. Though there was no love lost between the brothers, Sean knew enough to know that the Lower Chancellor would rip apart the stars to locate Cyan. In Cyan's words, only Jade was allowed to make Cyan's life a living nightmare. No one and nothing would take that pleasure from him.

  Sean turned away from the screen. "I'll be in the engine room; there's a couple of things worth picking up if we're going to be in Bangkok, and I want to be sure I get the right serial numbers." He walked off, once more ignoring the way Mendel tried to catch his attention.

  If Mendel wanted to repair things, he was just going to have to try harder. Sean wasn't in the mood to make it easy.

  Chapter Seven

  Custom class starship X-11944654, the dragonfly

  Einn was going stir crazy. He did not like that Jade had not contacted them for days. They were going to need their next dose of the serum soon; he could already feel the fever creeping up. It was the first of many symptoms, and they would get progressively worse.

  He rubbed his forehead with one hand, restlessly pacing the bridge. Lark was off sleeping, and he had last seen Cyan reorganizing the mess because apparently he was that bored. Einn kept trying to sit still and do something constructive, but it just was not working. He wanted to know why Jade was ignoring them; at the very least, he should have sent them a new job.

  What if the silence meant he was done with them, and he was just waiting for the poison to do its work? Fear made Einn's blood run cold, and he spun anxiously back around, stalking back toward the u-shaped arrangement of consoles. Sitting down, he pushed his chair over to the comm station and called up news feeds, desperate for any distraction.

  For half an hour, Einn clicked through various feeds, nothing in particular catching his attention. He was always afraid the kidnappings would reach the media, but so far, they had escaped detection. He did not want to know what Jade would do to them if they ever slipped up enough they alerted the media to their activities.

  Clearly there was nothing capable of distracting him—

  Einn froze over the off button as Cyan's image flashed across the comm screen. He activated the sound with a thought to his in-lens. –missing since yesterday, when the ship he was on exploded just outside of Bangkok. Foul play is suspected, especially with his brother, Lower Chancellor Alexander, deep in policy revisions. This will be the second great tragedy to befall the Alexander family, the last being—

  "Cyan!" Einn bellowed, storming from the bridge. Cyan appeared from the mess, looking startled—but not surprised, Einn noted. He flew down the hall, grabbing Cyan and slamming him against the wall. "You're all over the stars-damned news! Lord Cyan Alexander, brother of a fucking Lower Chancellor!"

  "Damn it," Cyan said, letting his head thunk against the wall behind him and staring up at the ceiling. "I was hoping they would manage to keep it out of the fucking media."

  Einn shook him hard. "Why in the stars did you not tell me who you are? Do know what could happen now?!"

  Cyan sneered at him. "Forgive me if I don't feel sorry for a couple of pirates-turned-professional kidnappers."

  "You don't understand anything!" Einn snarled, letting him go to haul back and punch him—

  —only to somehow wind up on his back on the floor and staring up at Cyan, the hall lights right behind his head, forcing Einn to squint. "Fucking Rehab."

  Cyan only grunted in reply. "A criminal is a criminal, and I'm trained to deal with all of you. Don't forget it." He stood up, letting Einn go.

  "I don't care what you are," Einn said, slowly standing. "A deal is a deal, and you don't strike me as the sort to go back on your word. We give you transport to Kreska, you don't turn us in. Not fucking telling me you're really the Lower Chancellor's brother counts as turning us in. If they find us, they won't arrest us, they'll just kill us! I've worked too fucking hard and lost too fucking much to lose now because of a brat prince!" He pushed past Cyan to wake up Lark, because they needed to figure something out fast before Jade really did finally let them die a very slow, very painful death.

  Einn swallowed, all his old fears returning. Stars in the sky, cliffs that reached toward them, he was tired of being afraid all the time. It was one thing to live a life of piracy, stealing back from the bottom dwellers too powerful for the law to control; it was quite another to kidnap people because he was poisoned with something only Jade knew how to fix.

  A hand caught his wrist, stopping him. He jerked free and whipped around. "What?" he demanded—then stopped, because Cyan's expression gave nothing away, but Einn saw the fear in his eyes. He had begun to think Cyan didn't know how to fear. Even locked up and with his life in danger, he'd just been pissed.

  "You're right, I'm sorry. I kept silent because I was hoping like hell they would keep it from coming to light. I haven't been Cyan Alexander for eleven years. Get me to Kreska; I'll do what I can to help, and once I'm there, I'll assure everyone I'm fine and just could not contact anyone 'til then."

  "Fine," Einn conceded, because what else was he supposed to say? Admit that he was working for Jade? Cyan wouldn't believe him, and even if he did, what good would it do? It wasn't as if Cyan would help them or something. Einn didn't really get the whole family thing, for all that he'd seen it more than most Fornarians, but he knew one thing: family stuck together. Cyan would choose his brother over a couple of pieces of space junk without hesitation. "Wait, what do you mean you haven't been Alexander for eleven years?"

  Cyan looked at him in surprise. "Have I actually managed to meet the only person in the IG who doesn't know all that old gossip?"

  Einn made a face and strode past him back to the bridge. "My apologies for having better things to d
o with my life than keep up with space gossip. Zero and its precious cave stars are of no interest to me."

  "Cave stars?" Cyan repeated, staring at him blankly.

  "Sorry, I don't think that translates well," Einn said with a sigh, in-lens flashing as he called up a manual translator. He sighed again after a moment and gave up. "It's a type of lizard, I think. That's the closest I can find. But it glows in the dark, that's why they're called cave stars. They're rare, easily spooked, and anyone who accidentally hurts one gets in trouble."

  Cyan laughed. "Sounds like Zero to me."

  "No wonder you have the fancy accent when you're pissed off," Einn groused. "I'm honestly surprised you didn't have it when we were fucking, too, as bossy as you get." Only after he said the words did he realize he probably should not have brought that up. One, he really did not need to be reminded of just how much he enjoyed fucking Cyan.

  Two, he really did not need to be reminded just how easily Cyan could kill him. Cyan looked as though he wanted to do exactly that for a moment, then he just turned on his heel and strode off. Einn followed and saw him slumped at the comm station, watching the news on the main screen, arms folded across his chest. He winced when he saw an old picture of himself dressed in Zero finery, standing alongside his brother.

  Einn could not believe they were related. "You don't look anything like him," he said, then wondered when he had started speaking without thinking.

  "I'm aware of that," Cyan said tightly. "He's five minutes older and fifty times—" He cut himself off, but Einn heard the unspoken better-looking anyway. Cyan certainly did not seem to doubt his looks, but Einn imagined anyone would feel at least a little inferior standing next to Jade. "He looks like our mother."

  "Too pretty for my taste," Einn said. "I like my men to look like men." Cyan seemed to ignore him, but his fingers eased where they'd been digging into the fabric of his shirt. Einn forced himself to look away because otherwise he'd try something stupid. Despite the galaxy-wide problems between them, it was hard not to remember their one-off, or avoid thinking about how much he wouldn't mind a second round. He was not generally into repeats, but something about Cyan would not leave his head.

  Or maybe he was tense and afraid and stuck on a starship. Einn sighed, and for a moment, wished he could have been like every other Fornarian back home, content to spend his life climbing and living in dark, quiet caves away from all but the most essential of technology. Of course, thoughts of home quickly reminded him of all the reasons he had wanted to leave—

  But honestly, cliffs and caves did not come with the great big mess his life had become, and stars, he wanted a drink. Or to hit something. Or both.

  Cyan sighed, breaking Einn from his light-jumping thoughts, and turned off the main screen. He tilted his head back over the chair, staring up at the ceiling and looking so lost that Einn wished he knew what to say. "So, tell me this gossip I'm supposed to know. Unless you don't want to talk about it, I mean. But I think you'd give a better accounting than the media feeds."

  Behind him came the sound of boots on metal grating, and Lark spoke before anyone else could. "Six and a half terms ago, High Chancellor Carmine Alexander and Lady Isabelline Alexander were assassinated via sniper fire at the Eternity Ball. The assassin was never caught, and those responsible for it were never discovered. That particular Eternity Ball was celebrating the execution of the last Temperast. The extermination of the Temperast was a lifelong goal of the Alexander family, despite the controversy they stirred up by supporting it. No one knows why they were killed, but everyone believes it was largely due to the Temperast."

  "The Temperast were pure evil," Cyan said, his voice the flattest—the coldest—Einn had ever heard it. "My parents did the right thing by wiping them out; that's the whole fucking point of Heartstone's Law." Einn said nothing, though he at least knew that law and that race. Heartstone's Law was the most notorious code in the IG:

  Any race deemed beyond all shadow of a reasonable doubt to be a threat to all other races, with no discernible purpose for their existence, or if said race is found to have been artificially created with no vital purpose and no place in the natural order is discovered, is to be annihilated.

  The Temperast were a genetically engineered race based on the Kemperast but contorted to horrific proportions. If he recalled correctly, the Temperast had been able to 'eat' the magics energy of all magics capable races, a traumatic assault that usually left the victims dead.

  He hadn't thought anyone was particularly upset that the Temperast were gone, but as he had told Cyan, he didn't pay attention to such things. The only rumors that had concerned him were those involving the sorts of people who could stand to be pirated and Auths.

  "No race deserves to be exterminated," Lark said.

  Cyan looked at him, expression fierce enough that Einn and Lark both took a step back before they caught themselves. "You never met a Temperast, and for that you should be grateful to my parents."

  "I still don't get why you're here, wishing you weren't Lord Alexander."

  "I'm not Lord Alexander," Cyan snapped. "My name is Cyan McCracken. I walked away from that life one term after my parents died, when I could no longer take it and I was old enough to make my own decisions. I switched my citizenship to Mars the day I turned eighteen, which made me legal in all quadrants, and I joined the Rehab Guard program the next day. I am not Cyan Alexander anymore."

  Einn fell silent, not at all sure what he should say in the face of such vehemence. Beside him, however, Lark just snorted with impatience. "Poor little prince, unable to live without mummy and daddy?" Einn reared back as Cyan moved. How in the stars did he keep forgetting the bastard was Rehab?

  Lark struggled to breath, pinned to the wall in a way that gave him no chance of escaping despite the fact Cyan was at least half a head shorter and not quite as broad. Einn moved to help, but then stopped, because he sensed that would only make matters worse. "I can and will kill you if you persist in shooting your mouth off about things you do not understand. My parents' deaths are not the reason I left." He threw Lark to the ground and walked back to his seat, ignoring the sounds Lark made as he struggled to breathe properly again and pull himself to his feet.

  "Are you all right?" Einn asked, helping him up. "Cyan, knock it the fuck off, or we'll put you back in the hold."

  Cyan smiled at him. "Try it, rock spider. Just try it."

  "That's enough," Lark said, voice hoarse. "You're out of control, Rehab. There's no call for threats and violence. Stars, I thought the criminals were supposed to be the danger in Rehab."

  "Not if you're a criminal," Cyan said, and Einn shivered—partly from fear, but also, he acknowledged in annoyance, partly from lust. He did not enjoy seeing Cyan rough up Lark, but he didn't mind Cyan a little on the hostile side.

  Lark grimaced. "Stars. Your parents saw to the annihilation of an entire race, you have anger issues…is your entire family unstable?" Einn almost rolled his eyes because they both knew the answer to that fucking question.

  "My parents were good people," Cyan said quietly, going from furious to depressed in the blink of an eye. "You'll never know just how much they cared about everyone, to take on an issue they knew would probably get them killed. What's left of the family has issues, yes. Be grateful I'm not the sadistic, crazy one." He stood up and stormed out, leaving them in another ringing silence.

  Sighing and taking the seat Cyan vacated, Lark fumbled through drawers until he came up with a med kit. "What in the name of the Wings are we supposed to do?" he asked. "If you haven't noticed, we're fucked harder than a Kreskan virgin going half price at a Bangkok flesh market."

  "Succinctly put," Einn muttered, and collapsed in the nav seat. "I don't know. Tell him?"

  Lark shook his head. "No way. I say we dump him on Kreska and pretend he never existed. That means you really need to stop giving him all those 'fuck me' looks you think you're hiding."

  Einn made a face but did not protest the accusatio
n because it was true. If Cyan made him an offer, he'd accept it in a moment, even knowing all the reasons he should not. "But if he doesn't like his brother—"

  "It's a bad idea," Lark snapped. "Zero sticks with Zero, no matter what they say. There is absolutely no telling what will happen if we find ourselves stuck in the middle of some sibling feud. We drop him on Kreska, then we run like hell and hope to the stars that Jade does not kill us for kidnapping his brother."

  Nodding, letting the matter drop, Einn said, "Speaking of our boss, he hasn't contacted us in far too long. We don't have long left before—"

  "I know," Lark bit out.

  Einn thought again of Cyan, the way he had looked watching his brother. "Are you sure—"

  "What do you think will happen if we tell him? That he'll magically fix all of our problems? Forget it. Either he'll turn on us or he'll be dragged down into the mess with us," Lark said. "Ignorant people are happier for being so."

  "Those who never fall, also never climb," Einn countered.

  Lark made a sharp, impatient motion with his hand. "He ran away from his damn brother; I don't see it playing out well for anyone—"

  "But Jade must already know, or will soon, given he's the one who sent us after the Huntress," Einn said.

  "Which is probably why he hasn't contacted us," Lark said. "He must be mired in the matter of his missing brother, never mind all the ghosts they're pulling from graves. There's nothing people like more than reliving the old tragedies of others."

  Einn shook his head, not quite following that one for a moment. Graves, burial, right. Not something he saw on Fornar or in space. On Fornar, bodies were thrown to the ground well below the shrouding mists, and in space, bodies were incinerated or thrown into the nearest sun. "Dealing with people talking about his dead parents won't keep Jade busy forever. I don't like keeping quiet, not now when I know he might not side—"