“Okay. I am going to turn it on. I’ve never used one, but from what I understand, it tingles. Don’t touch it. Ready?”
Taymar sent her answer, remembered he wasn’t a telepath, remembered that she wasn’t either at the moment, and opted for a nod. Instantly, the sheet on her face turned to what felt like sludge and started sliding into the tiny cracks along her nose and eye. Without thinking, she reached up to wipe the stuff off, but caught herself. The sludge melted over her face and started tingling, first around her cheek and then across her temple and eye. Weird as it was, it felt great. Pain she hadn’t realized was there disappeared in welcome relief.
While the sludge worked its magic, the doctor scanned her nose and the rest of her body. He poked at a couple of places, but apparently decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and put his scanner away. By the time he finished with his scanning, the sludge had finished its work. The doctor held some sort of bowl up to her face, and Taymar suppressed a shudder as the stuff slid off her skin into it. When she reached up to feel her face, she expected it to be wet. Instead, it was dry but spongy.
“It will take a while for the elasticity in your skin to return,” the doctor said. “It might feel a little…droopy until then, but it will be fine. Eventually.”
Taymar dropped down off the table and poked at her cheek. The way the skin squished around made her wish she still had the swollen black eye.
“Wow. That is just...” Nevvis reached over to poke at her drooping skin, but she slapped his hand away. “Weird. Really weird. Wait until you see it.”
“Sir,” said Ensign, standing at the entry to another portioned off section of the room. “The captain is on the com. He needs to speak to you.”
Nevvis nodded and turned back to Taymar. “Stay here.”
She rolled her eyes and started looking around the room for a shiny surface. Nevvis paused for another moment and then disappeared behind the partition. The tray the doctor had pulled over was shiny; when she tried to look at herself, she blocked the light from the wall. She was about to move the stuff off of it so she could pick it up, when she saw the red hypo insert. Who knew what it was. Could be vitamins, for all she knew, but it could also be a tranquilizer. Maybe the doctor set it out in case he needed it once he knew she was coming. What she could do with it without an injector, she didn’t know, but it was more than she had.
A quick glance right told her that Ensign was watching a little too closely, but he didn’t see the insert, so that was good. Still pretending to be looking for a reflection, she moved into position and stood up, knocking the tray over and something off of a shelf in the process. As the one called Ensign rushed over to help, she bent over to help clean up the mess, snatched the vial from the floor, and shoved it into her shoe. By the time Nevvis got there, both Ensign and the doctor were assuring him that they could clean it up, and pushed them both out the door.
“I was just trying to see myself,” Taymar said as the medcom door closed in her face.
“Maybe next time, wait for a mirror.” Nevvis turned and headed for the deck shuttle. “Come on. We need to talk.”
Taymar adjusted her foot so she didn’t break the vial, and smiled as she filled her mind with the memory of their faces as they kicked her out.
Chapter 19 - Run
Ranealla met them halfway down the corridor leading to the cabin. Whatever she was sending to Nevvis didn’t sit well with him. He was so distracted he swiped open the door and started walking through it before it had time to fully open, knocking his head on the upper panel in the process.
“Dicci!” he swore, waving Taymar in. “Come on, Tay. Get in here.” With his hand on his head nursing the bump, he turned to Ranealla. “Would you slow down? I can’t unravel your lumps that fast.”
“I don’t know what you hope to accomplish without the wave variances of the flux or at least the means to send information back here,” Ranealla said in her husky, rolling voice. She glanced over at Taymar. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“What do you mean?” Taymar asked, poking her face.
“It’s drooping on the left side.”
“Telepathy is fine,” Nevvis interjected. “Just not so much of it at one time.”
“That’s the only way I know to send. I am sorry that you can’t keep up.”
Nevvis dropped his hand and sent something telepathically that was not well received by Ranealla. Taymar decided to take advantage of the distraction and hide the vial. Somewhere. Somewhere she could get to it without thinking about it. She headed toward the waste room, filling her thoughts with images of sword fighting as she went and made it all the way to the door before Nevvis stopped her. “Where are you going?”
Taymar pointed at the door. “The waste room. Obviously.”
“Why?”
She swallowed and put on a show of dismay, knowing full well that her act wasn’t reaching her thoughts. There was no lying to a telepath, but there were half-truths. “Are you really asking me why I’m going to the waste room?”
He started toward her. “No. Not really. What I am really asking is what are you hiding from me?”
A wave of panic washed over her, and she glanced around for something that could help her, but the room was as frustratingly barren as it had been when she left. “You caught me,” she said, wielding the only weapon she had. Her mouth. “I stole a sword from the rec-com. I have it right here in my pocket.”
Ranealla rounded the partition. “We don’t really have time for this.”
“No, we don’t,” Nevvis agreed. “Taymar, what don’t you want me to know?”
And with that, he had her. Even without the klonide-softened mind, she could never keep her thoughts from going to the exact thing he was asking about. He would see the vial in her mind. She had only two options: fight or surrender. She had never been very good at surrendering. “Shani Utue!” she swore, jumping straight at him and planting a side kick in his abdomen. His breath rushed out as he doubled over, and she bolted past him toward the door, shoving Ranealla against the wall in the process.
She leaped the couch and managed to not trip over the couch table. The door wasn’t locked and the field wasn’t up. Where she was going to go once she got out was anyone’s guess, but she had to at least try.
The tag to her shaki was so sudden and intense that she collapsed forward in agony just shy of the door. Shaking off the wave of nausea that always accompanied a hit that hard, she scrambled up and tried to swipe the door open. Her hand barely brushed the sensor when the second wave hit. Black spots swam along the ceiling, which was odd because she didn’t remember falling. The spots moved to the wall as she tried to roll onto her side to get up, but a hand on her shoulder shoved her back down. Nevvis’s face blurred into focus as he hovered over her to straddle her midsection, pinning her wrists above her head.
Despite his heavy breathing, Nevvis kept his demeanor calm and quiet. For Nevvis, calm and quiet were never good. “Where is the drug, Taymar? Don’t make this any worse than it is. Just tell me where it is.”
Taymar glared up at him, ready to spit in his face, but another blast of pain left her screaming instead. “You know where it is,” she yelled, closing her eyes against the fire crawling under her skin. “Just get it.”
The pain vanished, leaving the black dots as a reminder. “One more time, Taymar. Only one. Where is the drug?”
With some wiggling, she managed to kick off her shoe. “There. Now let me go.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Ranealla grab the vial off the floor.
“What is it?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder.
“No idea.” Ranealla stepped out of Taymar’s view. “It could be anything. Or nothing. I can’t believe she had this. How did she even get it?”
“It’s anyone’s guess.” He turned his attention back to Taymar. “You are straining our relationship, and I’m finding patience increasingly difficult to find. You have tried to slit my throat, implode me, bash m
y head in with a chair leg, and now poison me. Enough.”
“I didn’t try to bash your head in. You just thought I was. That’s not my fault.”
The look Nevvis gave her made her blood cold. “I have had it. I am a patient man, Tay, but you have pushed me too far. We’re going to get up now, and may the gods help you if you struggle.”
Slowly, Nevvis moved to the side, watching her as he went looking for any sign that she was about to fight him. He didn’t need to bother. She was done. For now, at least. When he reached down to pull her up, she climbed to her feet and turned to meet his amber stare dead-on. “You should just term me and get it over with. I am not ever going back to Drani. Not alive. I will do anything that I have to do to keep that from happening. So just do it.”
He stared back and she watched a series of emotions play across his face, but none of them were readable. After a long pause, he pointed to the bed. “Just go sit on the bed and stay there. Do not get off. I mean it. Do not get off that bed.”
Taymar tried to read him for another moment with no success, and finally turned and scooted past Ranealla to go sit on the bed.
“Why didn’t you?” Ranealla said. Taymar didn’t know whom she was talking to, so she decided to just ignore her. She slid to the back corner of the bunk to lean up against the wall, and stared at nothing.
“Why didn’t I what?” Nevvis asked. Apparently she had been sending to him.
“Why didn’t you leave her in the containment cell?”
He glanced over at Taymar, but she ignored him. “Because it wouldn’t have taken long before she figured out how to get out of it, and she would have done serious damage trying. Possibly fatal damage.”
“So why didn’t you just drug her with this klonide stuff that makes her essentially harmless right from the beginning?”
“I didn’t know when we would…wait. What are you doing? Are you seriously chastising me for not being hard enough on Taymar?”
Ranealla circled around to face Nevvis, the vial still clenched in her fist. For a second Taymar wondered if she was going to punch him, but she didn’t seem the type. “No. I am trying to understand where all of this intimidation is coming from. Every time I see you with her, you are acting like she’s some sort of animal to be tamed and controlled. I want to know why. Why can she not be a person?”
“You are unbelievable.”
Taymar had to agree with him. She was having a hard time believing it, and she was watching it happen right in front of her.
Nevvis shot a scathing look over his shoulder and then turned back to Ranealla, who was still standing calmly in front of him and, but for the clenched fists, looking completely unperturbed. “Ranealla, you have seen her in action. She has tried to kill you personally once, and inadvertently another time. You have seen her one-track thinking, and yet you stand there accusing me of abuse? Are you serious?”
“I did not accuse you of anything,” Ranealla said, standing taller and looking him dead in the eye. “I was simply thinking there is a lot of room for it in this tidy little setup you have here. And besides, those were my thoughts, not my words. They were not meant for you.”
“Well, you’ve been thinking very loudly!” Nevvis took a step back and visibly collected himself. That was always a bad sign. The fact Ranealla seemed unimpressed with his behavior told Taymar that the woman had no idea whom she was dealing with. Or maybe just didn’t care. When he continued, he was quiet and composed. “Before you stand there and make your accusations, maybe you should consider what would have happened had I not been on this ship to stop her.”
Ranealla’s expression turned to ice. “Up until now I have made no accusations, but since I am being charged with them, maybe I will.” Her already clipped speech became a series of sounds punching the air as she spoke. “To begin with, why don’t you try asking Taymar to do things, instead of ordering her around like a poorly trained pet? Please and thank you are words that can make a big difference when trying to garner cooperation. Also, if she had wanted me killed, I am certain I would be dead. She was only scared, as she is now. And that kind of fear doesn’t come from her imagination. She is afraid of Drani. Why? What did you do to her there that you can’t do here?”
“What did I do to her? Me? I am the one who saved her!”
“From whom? Other Dran?”
Oh! Point for Ranealla, Taymar thought. The please and thank you thing was a great warm-up, but that last part was the real damage.
Nevvis spun around to face her, his entire body rigid with rage. The second he made eye contact with her, Taymar knew what had happened. Her klonide-soft mind had just broadcast her narrative. Had it only been Nevvis in the room he probably would have let it go, but Nevvis had little tolerance for being slighted in front of others. This was going to be bad.
“I am not finished!” Ranealla said, moving around to block his view of Taymar.
Nevvis turned to face her. The dismay on his face would have been comical were it not going to end so poorly for Taymar when their fight was over.
“Nevvis, Taymar has made your point. If other Arleles are even a little bit like her, I can see where they would need…to be controlled. But you go too far.” She gestured over her shoulder to Taymar. “She is not an animal and doesn’t deserve to be treated like one.”
For the first time in her memory, Nevvis went slack-jawed. He stood staring at her for so long that Taymar thought they might have moved to telepathy until he finally spoke. “You think this is going too far? This?” he pointed to Taymar, but didn’t look at her. “You should see…”
“I know,” Ranealla said, waving her hand in the air. “She has seen worse. Well, in all of your self-righteous pats on the back for not being the one who caused those ‘worsts,’ have you ever stopped to wonder what you have done to make her life good? Not survivable, but good?” She paused, but not long enough for Nevvis to answer, not that he was going to. “I didn’t think so.”
A thick silence passed between them. Nevvis drew in several long, slow breaths and shoved his hands in his pockets. That was his signal. His emotions went in his pockets right along with his hands, and he was about to become the logical disconnected larna that only he could be. The look he gave Taymar over Ranealla’s shoulder could have melted metal. She had been thinking too loudly again, but when he turned his gaze back to Ranealla, he was a cold and calculating ki. “You have no idea…”
Whatever brilliance he was about to bestow on the still fuming Ranealla was cut short by dimming lights. She glanced down at the communication pad on her inner wrist and swore. “Not good,” she said.
Looking back at Nevvis, she threw her hands in the air and sent him something telepathically as the captain’s voice rang out from the wall. “All personnel, level four alert. Report for battle.”
Without another spoken word, she ran out the door.
Nevvis watched the door for a long moment before turning his attention to the floor in front of him. Taymar wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to scoot closer to the wall, but it didn’t help. When he finally leveled his golden stare at her, his agitation was still written all over his face. “I like you better when you’re not on klonide,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and running them through his tawny hair. “At least then when I pick up one of the stupid things you think, I only have myself to blame.” He dropped his hands and headed around the partition.
What he did back there was anybody’s guess. Taymar pulled the pillows around to make herself more comfortable and was starting to get sleepy when the hum of the converter snapped her back to the present. Every part of her body hurt. Even her hands hurt from holding the sword, but she loved every second of the pain as she shifted on the bed. It kept the memory of her victory and the sword fight fresh.
“Here,” Nevvis said, handing her a sandwich. “You need to eat, and we need to talk.”
She grabbed the offered sandwich and peeked under the bread. Something tan and creamy peeked
back. It didn’t look terribly appetizing, but he was right. The smell of food started her stomach grumbling, and she took a bite before she lost her nerve. It wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible.
Nevvis leaned against the side of the couch and watched her eat. She was halfway through the sandwich before he finally spoke. “Is the klonide wearing off?”
A jolt of panic shot through her system. She was mid-bite, and suddenly had a mouthful of sand instead of food. She had been working hard to hide the headache that signaled the end of the klonide’s effectiveness, but not hard enough, apparently.
“That’s probably for the best,” he said. “This conversation is better had telepathically, but it can’t wait. If my guess is right about why the alert sounded, you will need to be klonide free.” He picked at his sleeve for a few moments before continuing, but he didn’t look up. “All of this,” he said, waving his hand to indicate the entire ship, “it’s all a mistake. None of this was supposed to happen. Not like this, at least.”
Looking around the room, he seemed to collect his thoughts and then finally looked over at Taymar. “Eat. You need to eat.” When she took another bite, he continued. “I can’t explain all of it. Your mind is too soft and it would put you at risk, but the simple version is that I knew the war between the Shreet and the Alliance was coming to Drani, and sooner rather than later. I tried to warn…them, but it turned political. I knew we didn’t have time, so I tried to bring a controlled version of the inevitable to Drani’s doorstep to make them take action. And it worked.”
“Them?” Taymar said, nearly dropping her forgotten sandwich in the shock of the moment. “You are a member of Sinku. I knew it.”
“Taymar, don’t. Just don’t. This is too important, and we don’t have time to deal with another one of your conspiracy ideas. If I were on the Sinku, do you really think I would have said that? Would I even be here in the first place? Eat.”
Shield of Drani (World of Drani Book 1) Page 29
