by Tamsin Ley
She chewed her lip. “So, there’s no hope for him?”
“Not if he’s a carayak.”
“You think he might not be?” She couldn’t keep the edge of hope from her voice.
“I can’t say. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell from the tissue sample he gave me.”
Keeping the tremor from her voice took every ounce of strength she had. “What about his idea to create an artificial frequency that destroys the nanites?”
The sound of a stool sliding across the floor. Mek finally answered, “The idea has merit, and I’ve already begun preliminary research. Ionic frequencies are very complex. For mating purposes, they’re accompanied by pheromones and hormones within both participants. I’m not sure we’ll have time to create and test a procedure before you run out of time.”
Her throat tightened. Although Lisa had warned her about the time limit on the nanites, Joy had never imagined the things would take over this fast. She was supposed to have time to prove herself to Kashatok. Not just as a mechanic, but as a woman. Although she’d never thought of herself as attractive before, after he’d kissed her, she’d believed she might be able to tempt him.
If only she’d known.
Footsteps approached the bed. “You can have your pick from our crew—probably either crew—when the time comes.”
Just not Kashatok. She turned her head away, needing to grieve in private. “I’m going to try to take a nap. Maybe the blindness will wear off.”
“I’m here if you need me.” He patted her hand and she heard his footsteps once again move to the far side of the room.
Her nanites were heating up—an almost prickly sensation inside her head—possibly because of her agitation. God, what was she going to do? As sweet as Tovik was, she felt no desire for the ginger-haired Denaidan. None of the men on either ship had ignited her imagination like Kashatok had. A small voice in her head sounded like her mother saying I told you so. Her chest tightened.
What if she contacted Mother?
The CEO of the corporation that had created these nanites would probably be able to tell her how to purge them. She’d bet the ‘corp already had a machine to do it. But contacting her mother without the pirates finding out would be a challenge. How would Joy even locate a comm if she couldn’t see it?
You have something stronger than your eyesight. The thought made her heart pound. In engineering, she’d received information from the console from clear across the room. What if she could use the nanites to access a comm? Dare she?
Envisioning the comm’s circuitry in her head, she released the brakes on a few of nanites.
Amidst all the bits of information hammering at her from cyberspace, the comm connection lit up like a firework.
She shifted, wishing she could see what Mek was doing. Could he see her? Would he know if she tried to make a call? And how could she make a call without talking out loud? Would her thoughts translate into words on the other end?
Deciding she had little to lose, she sent a request to connect to her mother’s private polycom, adding her own personal identification tracer so Mother would know it was her.
Mother’s thin face came into focus as if Joy was looking at a screen. Joy bit down on her lip to keep herself from calling aloud. Mother had never been a nurturing type, but her familiar face provided some comfort.
“Joy? What’s wrong with your connection?”
Concentrating, Joy sent, “Mother, I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
Mother could hear her!
The lines on Mother’s face deepened as she brought the polycom closer to her face. “And why aren’t you on video? Aren’t you supposed to be a reporter or something now? You need all the practice you can get.”
Joy’s relief twisted into the more familiar sensation of self-doubt. “I’m undercover. I’ve been…” she chose Mek’s preferred term, “inoculated with cyber-sensitive nanites from one of Syndicorp’s test labs. I need to know how to get rid of them.”
“You did what?” Mother’s eyes widened. “That technology is still undergoing stage two testing. How did—”
“Never mind that. I don’t have much time. Do you know how to destroy the nanites?”
“How did you even find our biotech lab? They told me it was undetectable beneath the gold mine. Well, that will teach you to poke around where you don’t belong. I ought to leave you there to learn your lesson.”
Joy clenched her teeth. Mother never helped just because Joy asked. “I’m not at a lab. I’m doing an exposé on pirates. Now, are you going to help me or not?“
For the first time Joy could remember, her mother looked truly worried. “Pirates? Are they asking for ransom?”
Shit. I shouldn’t have mentioned pirates. “I’m fine. I told you, I’m undercover. They’re going to drop me off at the next space port. Please tell me—”
“Don’t worry. I’m getting corporate security on this right away, honey. We cannot allow these dirty pirates any leeway. Stay on the line so they can start a trace.”
“No!” Joy’s eyes flew open and she sat up, too late realizing she’d spoken aloud.
Jhikik chattered loudly, claws digging into her thigh where he’d latched on after her sudden move. She swore Mek’s concerned face flashed before her eyes.
The doctor’s voice spoke from her right. “Are you hurt?”
Joy couldn’t answer. Images were flickering through her brain; Mother, Jhikik, comm circuitry, Mek. Her head throbbed as if she was having a root canal done on her brain. What the fuck was going on? She gritted her teeth and focused on one command. Kill switch!
Kashatok crossed the boarding tube in a single stride and passed through the empty cargo bay as if he was flying. Where the hell were his guards? If there was one thing being in the cartel had taught him, it was never expose your back, not even to a fellow pirate. He had some words for Aleknagik next time he saw him.
As he passed the weapons locker, he thought of Joy, blind and unprotected on the other ship. Yet jealous as he was of Tovik, the kid would watch out for her and his gut told him she was better off with a doctor who knew what he was doing. Damn her for taking the nanites, anyway. He’d known the Syndicorp tech could be nothing but trouble. Right now he had to think about Gassy.
He took the corner into the Kinship’s med bay so fast, he had to hold the doorframe as he entered. The room stank of disinfectant and blood. His gaze scoured the room, finding the old engineer alone and lying beneath the sterility shield just as before. “Gassy?”
Gassy opened his eyes. “Hey.”
Settling on the tall stool beside the bed, Kashatok assessed the steady heartbeats on the vitals monitor. He wasn’t a doctor, but the lines and numbers there seemed the same as before. “Where’s Doc? I got a call that something was wrong.”
“I heard a bunch of noise earlier, but no one came in here.”
The back of Kashatok’s neck prickled with ionic awareness and a sickening weight settled in his gut. Someone stood behind him. He rose slowly and turned toward the door.
Aleknagik stood just inside, legs wide and arms crossed. In the corridor behind him, Doc and Manopup held pulse pistols.
“What the fuck?” Kashatok ground out, blood running cold.
“Crew’s voted you out,” Aleknagik said.
Behind him, Gassy coughed wetly. “Why didn’t I hear about a vote?”
“This is mutiny.” Kashatok took a step forward, halting when the two men in the corridor trained their pistols on him. “Aleknagik, tell them to stand down.”
“This isn’t a Trooper ship, Captain.” Aleknagik raised one eyebrow. “We’re pirates. We all have a share. We voted. You betrayed us by breaking your own rule.”
“You son of a rakwiji whore.” Kashatok clenched his hands. “You had as much part in hiring her as I did.”
“Yep. And I’ll bring her aboard again, just as soon as the nanites are done with her.” Aleknagik grinned. “Different captain, d
ifferent rules.”
Kashatok jutted out his chin. His first mate had nothing good planned, but perhaps the rest of the crew could see reason. “She can’t be your mechanic. She’s blind. Useless.”
“Nobody’s useless.” Aleknagik’s grin widened and he placed a palm to his chest. “Besides, she’s crew, wounded in the line of duty. We take care of our own.” The first mate flicked a glance over his shoulder at his men. “Right?”
“I am sure she will find new positions among the crew.” Manopup’s tentacles writhed. Someone Kashatok couldn’t see snickered from the corridor.
“I’ll kill you all first.” Kashatok took another step.
A pulse blast hit him in the shoulder, spinning him around. Men moved into the room. Gassy called out from the bed. “Stop!”
The cold, hard point of a pulse pistol jammed into Kashatok’s lower spine. He struggled against rough hands. The pulse blast had left his entire arm unresponsive. Aleknagik cinched a zip tie around his wrists. “We need you alive—at least for now. But if you do or say anything we don’t like, Gassy gets it.”
At the bedside, Manopup held his pistol loosely trained on the engineer.
“Doc,” Kashatok twisted, boring his gaze into the Denaidan who’d remained in the corridor. “How can you do this?”
Doc shrugged without meeting Kashatok’s eyes. “The crew voted.”
“To the brig.” Aleknagik shoved Kashatok toward the doorway, sending a flare of pain through his shoulder.
“The Hardship won’t hand Joy over once they find out what you’ve done,” Kashatok said as he moved down the corridor.
They rounded a corner and Aleknagik yanked Kashatok close to hiss in his ear. “You think I really give an anaq about the female? I have a fresh piece of ass in every port.” Aleknagik jammed a hand between Kashatok’s shoulder blades and sent him reeling into the tiny room used for a brig. “The men want her aboard. And a good captain listens to his men.” The door shield engaged with a subliminal crackle. “It’s about time the Kinship had a worthy captain.”
“You will never be worthy,” Kashatok righted himself and stood tall in front of the glimmering shield, glaring at his first mate. How could his crew do this? He’d never been tight with his men, but they’d always respected his authority. Or wanted your cartel connections. After the most recent failed job, they obviously wanted him gone. Uminaq, a drink would go down well right now.
Aleknagik leaned forward, his face millimeters from the door shield. “Tell you what. Make this easy for me, and I won’t insist on bringing the female over.”
Kashatok grit his teeth and clenched his fists. “You want me to hand over my ship.”
Nodding his shaggy head, the first mate looked as pleased as an ohn-cat who’d drunk all the cream. “Just keep things friendly with the Hardship until they cut us free.”
“And what happens to me when this is over?”
“Hm. The punishment for bringing a woman on board is space-locking, I believe?” Aleknagik grinned. “But if you’re good, I’ll try to make sure we’re in hailing distance of the Hardship when we do it. Perhaps they’ll pick you up.”
Chignik’s voice came over the ship-wide comm. “We burn in six. Stand ready.”
“The captain’s needed on the bridge.” Aleknagik shot Kashatok a mocking glance. “Oh, that’s right. That’s me.”
With that, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the hall.
Still reeling from the pulse shot and burning with fury at his crew, Kashatok stabilized himself for burn.
Joy had been through countless burn cycles in her life, but never one that’d felt like this. Even with the nav-grav buffer, the burn drive emitted a frequency that drove her nanites crazy. The little machines seemed to spin and swarm like insects looking for a hive. Whenever the machines touched each other, they arced, creating strange flavors in her mouth, making her skin heat and cool, speeding or slowing her heartbeat. Her camera flickered on and off in a random pattern that felt like it would send her into a seizure at any moment. How had Lisa survived this chaos?
Clutching the bedsheets at her sides, she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on the 3D layered structure of one of the nanites along her optic nerve. The things were acting like the actuators in a bio-responsive holo-suite she’d once repaired. Sure enough, the gel-metal composite in the one she examined was flexing in response to the ship’s burn frequency. What if she lined up its molecular structure with a second nanite? Could she alter the frequency receptors?
The two tiny machines clamped onto each other like puzzle pieces, calming immediately.
She lined more nanites up. Behind her closed eyelids, steady pinpricks of light, like illuminated micro-pixels, appeared. Opening her eyes, she was disheartened to see only the same colorless pixels. She needed more nanites engaged.
There were thousands, however—hundreds of thousands. She’d barely begun and was already sagging with fatigue.
As suddenly as it had begun, the burn frequency cut off. The nanites slowed. Settled. Joy’s head throbbed as if someone had taken a jackhammer to it, but she let out a gusty sigh of relief. She had some time to recover.
A voice from the comm pierced through her headache. “Mek, how’s our passenger?”
“Joy, you still with us?” Mek asked.
“Working on it,” she mumbled, surprised she still had control of her tongue.
“Excellent.” His hand patted hers. “The buffers appear to work, Captain.”
“That’s good news. But I have some not-so-good. Troopers somehow picked up our trail as we left the asteroid belt,” Qaiyaan said. “We need to burn again immediately.”
Joy couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard herself whimper. For a moment, she actually yearned for the Troopers to catch them; she was the daughter of the CEO, after all. It would be like running home to Mother. Then again, the Troopers hadn’t paused to talk when they’d approached the slave ship before trying to blast the Kinship out of space. She bit her lip, trying to be brave. The only way to survive this was to keep going.
Mek moved quietly beside her, checking monitors. “You heard him. Need anything before we go?”
The nanites were relaying her medical information from the sensors. Elevated blood pressure, high levels of cortisol, increased respiration. Would another burn cycle kill her? She didn’t think so. “Just get it over with.”
“Ready when you are, Captain.”
Her nanites jolted once more to chaos.
Chapter Twelve
The first burn was short, exactly what Kashatok expected for a piggyback. His arm and hand still tingling from the pulse shot to his shoulder, he dropped his ionic shielding and began prying open the door’s force shield control panel. He didn’t trust Aleknagik to keep any promises, not about keeping Kashatok alive, and certainly not about Joy. Getting out of this cell was top priority.
Suddenly, his balance was yanked out from under him and his vision went blurry. He staggered sideways, hitting his head on the wall. His knees buckled and his stomach heaved as space folded in on itself and the ships’ frequencies adjusted to the new location. A second burn? Ellam Cua, why hadn’t anyone announced it?
Raising his ionic shield, he sat on the floor with his back pressed into a corner, head throbbing as he rode out the burn. Such a quick cycle could only mean trouble. Was Joy all right? Was the Hardship’s crew onto Aleknagik? Had the Troopers managed to catch their trail? He loathed not knowing; not being able to make decisions.
When the burn ended, Kashatok crawled to the door’s force shield and peered down the hall through the glittering curtain. “Hey! Someone?”
A cut from his scalp trickled down his forehead, dripping blood into his eye. He swiped at the sting, hand coming away turquoise. A soft chirp to his left drew his attention.
“Jhikik?”
Another chirp rose from a floor vent no bigger than his palm. He crawled over to find two glistening eyes staring up at him through the gra
te. Poor little guy. The netorpok generally sat on his shoulder during burn, wrapped in Kashatok’s ionic shield. Or cuddled up to Joy. Why wasn’t Jhikik with her? Had Mek or Qaiyaan chased him away? Anger simmered in the pit of Kashatok’s stomach.
Siphoning what little ionic power he could dredge up past his nausea, Kashatok yanked the grate free.
Jhikik squeezed through the opening, tail clutching a sock behind him. He scampered up Kashatok’s arm and nestled against his neck, trembling.
“Caught you unaware, too? Why are you here?” He stroked the creature’s downy head.
The tip of the netorpok’s tail raised the sock in front of Kashatok’s face like a peace flag, the fabric full of shredded holes. Jhikik chirped again.
Guilt swept through him. “Anaq. You’re hungry, huh?”
When was the last time he’d fed his pet? Hell, when was the last time he’d eaten? Too much had been happening too fast. Legs unsteady, he rose, praying there wouldn’t be a third burn without warning. At the door, he resumed efforts on the shield control panel. A shadow of movement from the corridor made him thrust his hands into his pockets a heartbeat before someone rounded the corner from the cargo bay.
Chignik. The Denaidan carried an open bottle of rum, his multiple braids hanging limp and a line of blood darkening his chin. “Hey, Cap.”
Kashatok glared at the man, betrayal washing through him all over again. He crossed his arms. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”
Chignik took a long swallow from the bottle, swaying just a little. “I voted against it, just so you know.”
Exhaling slowly, Kashatok met his crewman’s bleary gaze. Not all his men had mutinied. There was still hope. “Get me out of here, then.”
“Can’t.” Chignik shook his head. “Aleknagik revoked my codes.”
Kashatok closed his eyes a moment, previous hope stretching thin. “Anyone else on our side?”
“Gassy, but he’s not good for much right now. Ekwok maybe.” Chignik took another drink. “He abstained from the vote. Cooper kept saying he didn’t like it, but in the end, he voted with Aleknagik.”
