Your angel is saving us by reanimating Meen. Her skills are a bit stronger than yours in that area, Synar said.
I follow your logic. What will become of her female host if she must keep Meen alive?
Synar didn’t answer. He looked back, saw Meen’s chest heave with breath. The evil male’s eyes opened at the same time as his mouth formed a terrified scream. The countdown sequence aborted seconds later.
The worried breath Synar been holding during the count-down shuddered out of him. Gwen and Dorian rushed out of the elevators, their gazes frantic at the chaos. Synar knew the destruction sequence had likely woken them. He met their gazes across the room and motioned with his head. Seeing Karr’s body sprawled and damaged, they headed to render aid to it until Chiang and Boca were free.
“Ania, will you come put Meen in some sort of trance sleep so we don’t have to talk to him? I’d like to make it back to the Peace Alliance without any of us killing him again.”
His mate walked calmly back and looked down at the paralyzed figure. “I would really love to take your worthless life and maybe I will once you are no longer useful to us.”
Synar watched as Ania drew back and hit the male far harder in the forehead than was probably needed, but he didn’t reprimand her. He just hoped Ania hadn’t made the emissary’s job any harder than it already was in keeping Meen alive.
Angel can’t leave the general’s body until we figure out the ship’s connection, can she? Malachi asked.
No, unless the two of you trade places, but that’s too big a risk to take with his heart somehow connected to the ship, Synar said. I regret this situation, Malachi. We’ll try our best to keep her host body alive until we find the answer. Maybe you can help Warro figure it out more quickly.
Could I try going into Ensign Vetin’s form? Information about codes might be retrievable if his brain cells haven’t all died, Malachi suggested.
Good idea—go, Synar sent and watched the black mist streak away. The glazed eyes of his entire Engineering crew looked up as Malachi went over them. The demon’s existence was no longer a secret. Maybe it was for the best. Secrets had caused him a lot of damage lately.
He looked around and found Kefira staring at him calmly. He walked to her and stared directly in her pain-filled eyes. “No more secrets, Kefira.”
She bowed her head, then lifted it to meet his gaze. “I agree. No more secrets.”
“If I find out you could have prevented this, I will find a way to punish you,” Synar warned.
“Meen told me it was my father who ordered him to retrieve the Allurean from us,” Kefira said, frowning. “I knew there was a traitor. I just didn’t know who it was. Even when I suspected my father, my mind refused to accept it as a possible truth.”
“High Ambassador Jilco sent Meen to kill us?” Synar asked.
Kefira shrugged. “Yes, if I believe General Meen. He said his orders were to take me with him, then set off the real self-destruct to take out you and your crew. Meen was heavily involved in the renovations to the ship. I wish it were not so.”
“We’re going to talk more about this later. Help where you can. Call one of your infamous emissaries to you,” Synar ordered.
“Watching you deal with this situation, I wish I had such power,” Kefira said. “They do not come because I call them.”
“Then what good are they? I’ll take my demon over them any day.”
Synar snorted as he walked away.
“Captain?” Kefira called. She bowed her head when Synar stopped and looked back. “Make sure the last Allurean stays dead. I intend to report her as being that way.”
“Aye, I too see wisdom in her death. Don’t worry, my crew is good at killing all manner of creatures. If you need more proof than what you saw today, let me know. When we get back to the Peace Alliance docking station, I intend to kill Meen all over again,” Synar said.
Kefira hung her head as the angry Norblade went to help his crew.
Chapter 24
“Does she live? Tell me, Boca. Before Synar sends me away, I must know what happened to her,” Karr said.
“Sit still, Karr. I can’t heal you when you’re thrashing around all over,” Boca said. “You know you’re going to be demoted for what you did. I spoke to Captain Synar in your defense, but he is still livid about what happened.”
“The captain has a right to be angry. I’m going to be leaving the crew and you know that,” Karr said, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t deserve to be healed. The pain would remind him of all the mistakes he’d made. Maybe he would never make them again.
“You can wish for that fate, but I do not believe it will be yours. Leaving is too easy. No one is going to let you leave. They will keep you here and torture you about your mistakes until you go mad.”
“Boca, stop torturing our patient,” Chiang said. “You’re enjoying it too much.”
“What do you care, Doctor? You requested Karr be put in a holding cell instead of just confined to Medical,” Boca declared.
“That was just the first day when I saw all the other hurt crew members, and I’m over that now. Weren’t you also just reminding me that mental health is important to healing? I’ll replace Karr’s bandage. You need to go talk to Malachi. If he gets any more depressed, I’m going to move the stasis unit into his quarters and hook it up there. At least I wouldn’t have to watch him mooning over the decomposing body.”
They both looked at Karr who held up his hands. “It’s okay. You can talk about Malachi and the emissary in front of me. Synar told me about the demon during the first lecture about what I did wrong. He also said that Malachi’s not the only entity like that among us. This was no great surprise to me. There’s always something strange happening on this ship, right?”
Ignoring Karr’s outburst, Boca turned back to her mate. “The emissary’s body is doing fine. It may lose some skin and some nails, but the internal organs are holding up. Malachi needs to stop worrying and do something productive like she’s doing.”
Chiang put down his portable com on a counter next to Karr’s table. “Malachi needs a friend to help him get through this, Boca.”
“Then you talk to him,” Boca declared.
“I already did. He needs a female friend, and no—Ania and Gwen have already tried. He needs you. Somehow I think you understand him better than the other females in his life.”
“Can’t he talk to the emissary while she’s in Meen?” Boca demanded.
Chiang shook his head. “Evidently not. The body is in a sleep trance and hooked up to life support. The emissary isn’t saying anything to anyone. We can’t take any chances since it’s something in the heart implant that’s connected to the programming on the ship. How the hell that’s possible eludes me, but I plan to find out when we dissect his dead body.”
“I say we carve out his heart now and just hook that part of him up to a machine to keep it pumping. I’d happily help dispose of the rest of him if no one else wanted the job,” Boca said, noticing that both males had paled at her pronouncement. “Fine. I can see you two don’t appreciate the justified irony of that plan. Perhaps the demon will.”
“No doubt,” Chiang said, as he watched his fierce mate stomp off. Sometimes he worried that he really didn’t understand the female he had mated. It made him a tad concerned about the potential of losing body parts to her one day.
Karr looked up to see Chiang’s wistful stare in the direction Boca had exited. “I am a reformed male about secrets and will share one about your mate if you swear to never reveal its source. I would like to live long enough to make amends for my wrongs.”
“You have my attention,” Chiang said. He actually felt sorry for Karr. He knew why the younger male had acted so irrationally. Karr’s mating energy had been all over the Allurean. He wanted to tell Karr what he’d explained to Synar and Zade, but he was afraid the younger male might be too immature to handle it.
Karr studied his hands from his propped up position. “
Boca wept for you every night. We were pretending to be mates to avoid conflict in the village. She slept on some sort of tiny couch in our lodging room the entire time. For all her harsh manner around you, it is obvious to me that her compassion is completely yours. I thought you might want to know that even if she keeps denying it.”
“Aye, and you would be right. I like knowing I have my mate’s full compassion,” Chiang said. He would never tell Karr that he had lovingly extracted his own confession from Boca herself two sleep cycles ago. The younger male was trying to be noble. It was good for his character.
“Will you tell me the truth, Doctor?” Karr asked. “Boca won’t say anything. None of the other medics seem to know who I’m talking about. What happened to Dayena—I mean, I-eeta—or whatever her name is? I have to know. My gut is telling me something has happened to her. We have a weird connection. I think about her all the time.”
Chiang clapped the male on his shoulder. “I can’t tell you, but I can teach you how to find out for yourself. Want to learn?”
“Yes,” Karr answered quickly, eyes fixed to the Greggor’s.
“Search your gut. The feeling of illness from your thoughts is just your instincts talking loudly enough for you to hear them through the rest of your body’s chaos. Do you think the worry would still exist in so large a form if the object of your concern was no more?” Chiang asked.
Karr put a hand over his middle. “No. I think I would feel an empty hole with nothing to fill it if she was dead.”
“Congratulations, Karr. You answered your own question,” Chiang said.
“But is she okay? Someone from Engineering told me Meen threw her across the docking bay and she didn’t get up after,” Karr said.
“You have all the answers I can give you, Karr,” Chiang said. “Synar wants you to suffer.”
“Well, he’s getting his wish then,” Karr said, frowning at his captain’s enjoyment of his pain. That didn’t seem to be Synar’s style, but what did he really know about a male who was master of a demon?
***
Ji’s back was turned, but he still felt her approach. He just didn’t want to look at her. He couldn’t. Not after what happened. They had been attacked in their sleep because he’d left the door unlocked.
“Ji,” Seta said, crossing her arms when he just ignored her. “This is ridiculous. Turn and face me.”
“Go away, Seta. I don’t deserve to look at you,” Ji said.
He tried to totally block out the swearing behind him, but he wasn’t being successful. He’d never heard it done in Ethosian. Her spewed venom sounded like a series of animal noises to him. He had tried to master her language so he could talk to her, maybe even apologize for pressuring her to be with him before she had been ready. Like everything else where Seta Trax was concerned, he had failed miserably.
The hand grabbing his shirt and spinning him around to face her was a surprise. So was the finger pressing into his gut as she lectured him.
“I’ve had enough of your male pride. I know what true humiliation feels like and what we endured wasn’t even close. A Peace Alliance general and his crew surprised us while we slept. That kind of treason usually doesn’t happen on most ships. It never happened on yours.”
“All the more reason I hate myself for allowing you to be exposed and placed in danger. Meen almost shot us—shot you,” Ji said. “I still can’t believe he was so corrupt. He killed Vetin just to show me that he would kill without remorse if I fought back. The ensign did nothing to deserve his death.”
“Aye,” Seta answered. “I am well aware. Ania Looren said I could maybe have called up the demon’s power to help me. The possibility never even occurred to me. So if you want to measure our failings, mine is probably greater than yours. I cowered and let them overtake us when I might have defeated them if I had used all the resources at my command.”
Ji crossed his arms and stared at a place over her head. “I am unworthy of your sympathy.”
“And I am a vile female who hosts a demon she’s been avoiding,” Seta said. “Rena and I argued about that all the time. Now she’s not here to advise me and I have to make my own decisions about the creature keeping me alive. Ania has offered to teach me to harness the demon’s power. I plan to start training with her as soon as we get the Liberator back.”
Ji shook his head. “We’re not going back to the Liberator. Synar is just mad. Rightfully so, but giving up this fine ship is not the right answer for him or the crew. If it had been the Liberator with its intimacy, Meen might have killed the entire crew instead of just a couple in the dock area. All in all, Synar did well at minimizing the harm inflicted.”
“I agree,” Seta said. “I felt the same about his actions. Did he explain about the emissary?”
“Yes, he did,” Ji said. “Don’t ask me if I believe all of that until you’re ready to hear me arguing with my logical mind.”
“Meen’s body rests in Medical in a trance state. Rena’s body is nearby in the stasis unit. I know there was an entity animating it and now it’s vacant again. It’s strange and my gut hurts when I see that body so still and lifeless. I still wish it was Rena, but if it can’t be her, I guess I’d rather some good spirit be in it.”
“That’s a really enlightened view,” Ji said.
“Almost dying for a third time will do that to a being,” Seta proclaimed as she stepped back from him.
What she wanted was to ask Ji to hug her, but she couldn’t bring herself to show him how weak and needy she was. She took another big step back just to show her body that it needed to stop longing for his.
“I’m starting to think that I’m serving on this crew because I’m just as big a misfit as everyone else here. I can’t keep pretending that I’m the female I used to be back on Ethos, or the one I was on your ship. I’m certainly not either,” Seta said, sweeping her hair back behind both ears.
Ji reached out, gathered the loose strands she had missed and moved them to where she had tucked the others. “Okay. That may make all kinds of sense for a variety of reasons, but you are not vile.”
“Okay. And you are not as infallible as you like to think you are. Failure comes to all of us, Lieutenant Warro—even you,” Seta said.
“Noted, Lieutenant Trax. What do you want to do now?” Ji asked.
Seta smiled softly. “Well, recently my choices for what to do expanded greatly. I can’t indulge those again, but I thought I might incorporate my improved feelings into my character.”
“Indeed,” Ji said, bowing his head at her laughter. “This is funny?”
“No,” Seta said, “but you sound exactly like Lieutenant Zade when you say that. I would suggest you not let him catch you mocking him.”
“I’m not mocking him. Why would I mock him? This is how I always sound,” Ji said, frowning at her amusement.
“Maybe it’s a Siren thing,” Seta said, shrugging.
“One day I intend to make you an expert on Sirens,” Ji said.
Seta grinned. “I think I know all I need to know.”
“Well, when you’re ready for another lesson, you know where to find me,” Ji said.
His reticence wasn’t just that he had allowed Seta to fall into the hands of Meen’s warriors, though that was still bothering him. It was that he had logically discarded the idea of claiming the emotionally conflicted Ethosian, even though the desire to do so still raged within him still.
The libido control implant and Rylen ale were both starting to fail. Soon he would have to leave her and go see if he could cure his addiction before his baser urges took over the rest of his noble ones.
Seta had improved, but she was far from being ready for another mate, even if he was a more true one. Instinct told him that she needed more positive bonding experiences like the ones he’d given her. He was never going to allow those to happen with other males while he was on the ship with her.
No, his leaving would be the best gift of his sincere compassion for her.
He just had to screw up his courage to act on the sentiment.
***
Gwen frowned at the fearful ensign. “What do you mean, they refused our request for information?”
“They sent that single statement accompanied by their estimated arrival time,” Ensign Dre said. “That was all the communication they allowed me, Commander.”
“Well fuck that shit. We’re the good guys. What the hell is their problem?” Gwen yelled, stalking to the main com. “Shift primary com to me, Ensign.”
“Aye, Commander,” Dre said.
“Attention all crew members. Go to level three alert status immediately. For all new crew members, that means go to your normal duty stations and wait for further orders. Captain Synar, please report to the bridge. Repeat. Captain Synar, report to the bridge. This is not a drill. We are on level three alert.”
Gwen released the master communication control, returning it to Dre. “Fucking politicians are probably behind this. ‘Stand down until we get there.’ I’ll show them how we stand down. We’re not in the Liberator anymore and we’re not going to be bullied by fucking politicians.”
“Commander? Any further orders?” Dre asked.
“Keep sending the message I told you to, Dre. Remove the swearing, though. We wouldn’t want the sanctimonious Peace Alliance bastards to think the Guardian 13 was being less than friendly.”
Dre nodded and turned back to his panel, grinning as he initiated the message exactly as he had been told.
Chapter 25
Synar swore and dug his soiled clothes out of the pile on the floor again. He hadn’t had a full body cleansing or more than a few hours of sleep in almost a week. He thought longingly of the days on the Liberator when his greatest worry had been lieutenants grumbling about having to do bridge duty.
“Stay, Ania. There’s no need for both of us to be tormented by this latest crisis, whatever it is,” he said. “You need your rest even more than I do.”
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