allies and enemies 02 - rogues

by Amy J. Murphy

  This was his room. The jin-ji’s lair.

  “Better?” He muscled her over the threshold.

  Not really. Erelah froze with her bound wrists pulled up to her chest, terrified to touch anything.

  “My valet has the day off.” He backed into the hall. The door clanged shut.

  She heard muted off-key beeps of the lock.

  Erelah sank to her knees. Helplessness threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to collapse and sob until her throat was raw.

  The Tyron-voice was stronger than ever.

  You are not beaten. Not as long as you draw breath. There is work to do.

  Erelah rose from the floor on legs that seemed to belong to someone far stronger.

  8

  “She taste as sweet as she looks, Korbyn?” Spivey ventured.

  “Tastes of healthy payday, brother.” He smirked, keeping his secrets. “And…yes, very sweet.”

  The girl was his boon as jin-ji. Best to carry on as if he’d made expected use of her. In truth, he’d never considered it. Of course, it did not mean the rest of his clan were not pining to do it.

  Spivey snorted, flexing his hand. A bloody half-moon was left of the girl’s bite. “That little queenie is in need of good teachin’. Hope she’s worth the risk in temptin’ Ix.”

  “Lucien will never know we were here,” he snarled with sudden ferocity, leaning over Spivey. Zenti were like any other pack animal. It was important to let them know who was alpha.

  “Maybe you make fair and grant all us a taste of that little pale thing.”

  “She’s mine. My boon.”

  Although Spivey was considered tall for a Zenti, he was a full head shorter than Asher. Spivey held a particular dislike for him that went beyond their typical distrust of non-Zenti. It was no secret that Spivey believed Asher held himself as his better. In truth, he did. Spivey had been a vile beast when they first met. Asher had been forced to give him licks that rounded his edges, but the beasty was still in there, hiding, waiting for his chance to attack.

  “Some says you’ve forgotten our coda,” Spivey said. “You’re not Zenti, but you took on clan-law when you vowed as jin-ji and set us against Ix. Some of our brothers see you as setting your own—”

  “I know coda. I’ll see to your share,” Asher returned. “The woman’s not to be touched. I’m jin-ji and I give law.”

  Their ship, the Nyxa’s Mercy, had been forced deeper into the buffer region of Ix-controlled territory and the Splitdawn Guild. A move that was less likely to get them any more targets, save the occasional disabled freighter or scaved-out cruiser. Things on the ship were tense, to put it mildly. In-fighting, common by Zenti standards, seemed more frequent. Things were not getting dire…yet.

  “Strange things in the works in finding that ship.” Spivey moved out of his reach. “It’s all off in the black on its own. No weapons to it. No carrier. No base. All new tech. Vessel that small can’t run velos. Not that there’s a flexer out this way worth use.”

  Asher picked through the bundles of wires and nodes on the counter, listening to Spivey tell him things he already knew as he nodded absently.

  Then Spivey prodded: “Heard you use her speaks. Is there something that we all have want to know, jin-ji?”

  “Spivey, you challenging me?” The bastard had been eavesdropping and had heard him use High Eugenes with the girl. Not good. His second was definitely getting bricky. It was a matter of when, not if, when it came to another member of the crew coming to challenge him. He was vaguely surprised it’d taken this long.

  “Korbyn,” Spivey stretched a nervous smile. “There’s no call for that, brother. You’re jin-ji, same as ever. Just worry on your brainbox.”

  “My thinking is just fine.”

  “A relief, brother.” He might as well have rolled onto his back, belly up.

  “Right.” Asher was unconvinced.

  He regarded a wasted stack of components strewn across the table with a surge of annoyance. A mishmash of service nodes and filaments from the stryker littered the surface. They’d better put everything back the way they found it.

  “The stryker. What did you find?”

  “That metal beast keeps its secrets.” Spivey shook his head, a notably unZenti habit that spoke of his time spent with a renegade jin-ji. “The ship is a worry. There was great power in its inner tinkering. The work is vast from my conjuring.”

  “How long?”

  “It’s no question of time. It’s a question of if at all,” Spivey confessed. “The queenie holds all the tiles. Without her the stryker is pretty silver scrap.”

  The vessel, as he’d suspected, was useless without her cooperation.

  That led Asher back to his original question from the moment he’d first glimpsed the girl. Who is she? He thumbed through the screens of useless data lines on the handheld, feeling Spivey’s scrutiny.

  “There’s an auxiliary file in the FDR. Is there an ident for the pilot?”

  “All lines of heavy-learnin’ nonsense. Reckon its brains got scrambled when the files were copied.” Spivey studied the screens on the handheld, his lip thrust out under the effort of concentration. Asher had taught him some Regimental. His ability to read Common was not much better. With a disgusted grunt, Spivey tossed the handheld back to the bench.

  Asher glanced at the document and shrugged into Spivey’s expectant gaze. “Nothing helpful.”

  Spivey watched him in a measuring silence.

  “Keep working.” He moved to the hatch.

  “Bad ju, having a female onship,” Spivey called after him.

  “Spivey, that woman is bad luck no matter where she is.”

  The girl had probably ransacked his quarters by now. Not that there was much in there worthwhile. You learned to be creative with hiding spaces when you lived on a ship full of Zenti. He had to question her, something he did not relish. Torture was out. It stood against his nature, regardless of the exterior he presented for the Zenti. That meant he needed leverage, something to trade her.

  He paused. “Where’s Tril?”

  9

  This changes nothing. You must move. Be ready.

  The Tyron-voice wedged to the front of her thoughts. Erelah knew it was right, but still she did not obey it. Fear nestled against her ribs. She stared at the chronometer found amid the untidy piles in Korbyn’s quarters. The blue-green glow of the reads ticked away. It was the year that had grabbed her attention.

  It was advanced by one year and 303 days.

  Nearly two years, Origin standard. I’ve lost nearly two years.

  The chrono could be wrong. She doubted it. These devices were cast-bonded, set to precision and unhackable. They were usually part of the compsys and integrated into the velo systems to aid in calculating the FP entries. For those reasons, you never wanted to hack a nav-chrono. She was hard pressed to think of why someone would.

  The chrono-slip. Using the jdrive had caused this. But how?

  The explosion caused by initiating the singularity so close to the engines of the Questic must have had some sort of bearing on the formation of the nascent conduit. She had seen data like this once before, with unmanned Jocosta test flights. Back in a time when she knew nothing more than working on the jdrive project and encouraging the flirtations of Adan Titus, her protégé.

  Before Tristic.

  Two years. Jon thinks me dead. All of Origin, for that matter.

  Korbyn will be back soon. You have to be ready.

  The urge to act was an impulse now. Driving her. Undeniable. The part of Tyron she had absorbed, for better or for worse, had become a voice of self-preservation. She moved to obey it.

  Dropping the nav-chrono to the deck, Erelah resumed her search of the dingy quarters, the insistence pounding more forcefully in her head. Her hands shook and her knees were watery. Her throat baked with thirst. A coarse sob threatened to crawl up her throat.

  Don’t panic. Panic and you’re lost. Focus. What do you know?


  She stopped, standing in the middle of the room over the contents of an upended drawer. She shut her eyes and willed her thoughts to flatten. Now she pictured the section of the ship that Korbyn had just dragged her through.

  The corridors were oversized, intended to move automated cargo pallets. The junction box that the Zenti were gathered around had seemed antiquated. Their bloodthirsty glares were more the center of her attention at the time, but it was a transfer station from a larger vessel. Most likely a Specter class that was once a cargo freighter in the service of Fleet. Under her bare feet, she sensed the heavy rumble of the engines and counted cycle times. Although powerful, they strained under a hard burn. They were using sub drives and not velos. It meant they either couldn’t do, or were purposefully avoiding, conduit travel.

  There was a muted shout from the hallway. Her eyes snapped open. She crept up to the hatch and pressed her ear against the metal. There were raised voices, shouted curses followed by harsh thuds. A view screen at the door sensed her presence and fluttered on; a sound security measure for a leader of cutthroats.

  The screen showed a desaturated view of the corridor beyond. Two Zenti argued. They shoved at each other, faces etched with murderous fury. Erelah stopped watching when a knife came out.

  She rested her back on the door. Korbyn, for all his theatrics, might have shared valuable insights into the mood of this crew. Things just “felt” unstable here. They turned on each other, snapping and biting like uneasy animals.

  Certainly trying to unlock the door and fleeing to the Jocosta was suicidal, or worse. The stryker was in no danger. A sophisticated security matrix protected the compsys. After too many unsuccessful attempts at an override, the compsys would turn to slag and the jdrive would be rendered inert.

  She ran fingers over the cracked skin of her lips. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. Even if she did not feel drained, she lacked the physical strength to defend herself like a soldier, although nooks of her brain had collected information on hand-to-hand combat and weapon use from her exposure to Tyron. There had been at least some safety both in Korbyn’s presence under his perceived protection and while locked in his chamber.

  How long that safety would extend was uncertain.

  A weapon. Something…anything.

  You are a weapon.

  Again, it whispered in her mind, the quiet unnerving patience of the Tyron-voice. It was self-possessed, full of confidence that would have filled Erelah with awe were she not at war with paralyzing fear.

  The Sight is your weapon now.

  And so, she waited.

  10

  Erelah startled awake to the crash of something inches from her head. She sat bolt upright, instantly crabbing back along the floor as best her bound hands would allow. In the dim light cast by the wall units, she noticed what had landed in front of her: her boots.

  “Let’s deal.” Korbyn stood in the doorway. His face was unreadable. Those same maroon eyes studied her. If he was angry about the condition of his chamber, it did not show. Perhaps he didn’t notice, didn’t care.

  Erelah looked from the boots and then up at him.

  Offer the subject a desired resource to earn trust.

  He’s manipulating me. This was the play he was making, wasn’t it?

  First he had set himself up as the savior standing between her and his men.

  Create a sense of dependence in the subject.

  Rage boiled in her gut. It did not belong to her, but it was justified nonetheless. It was the Tyron-voice again.

  Erelah twisted around and kicked the boots away. They didn’t go very far, considering the effort she put into it.

  “Keep them. They’ll look great with your new stryker.”

  “Fine.” He offered a feral smile. “How ‘bout I sweeten the deal?”

  She cringed as he brought his arm back.

  He tossed two more items down on the floor to land near her bare feet. She recognized the slick-coated packaging: e-rations like the ones her brother had aboard the Cassandra. The icon stenciled on them listed them as property of a vessel called the Arcadian, probably decades old and lost to memory. Clearly Regime issue.

  “You have to be thirsty at least.” The door shut behind him with a solid clang. “You’re not stupid. They’re sealed, safe to eat. ‘Sides…you were out for nearly half a day on my boat. Why would I dose you now?”

  She regarded him, then the packets, swallowing against a throat that felt like sandpaper. One bore the Regimental symbol for hydration matrix.

  “No?” He shrugged, then reached for the packets.

  Erelah snatched it up, ripping it open with her teeth. Wary of any sudden moves from Korbyn, she took a greedy swig and almost immediately gagged at the flat metallic taste. She forced herself to drink more slowly. The package was nearly empty before she came up for air.

  “This doesn’t change anything.” She wiped her chin against her shoulder. Her hair fell across her eyes and she tossed her head in a vain effort to move it back. The chunk of hair flopped back down.

  He maneuvered closer, his steps cautious. Korbyn raised his hands, palms open, as he crouched down in front of her. More appraisal with those clever maroon eyes. Slowly, he reached his right hand toward her face. She jerked back.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” He reached forward once more. Erelah froze. Quickly, he pushed the fallen hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. He settled back. “That was bugging the crap out of me.”

  Erelah stared at him. Again, she imagined that pity just beneath his hard surface. “Please. Just let me—”

  “What do you think I want?” Any perceived softness had disappeared.

  “I honestly hope not to know,” she stammered.

  Korbyn chuckled.

  He really hadn’t made any demands beyond trying to guess her name. As the hours drew on during her time alone in his quarters, her imagination had kicked into high gear, well fed by her fears. It had created a cycle of panic that even the Tyron-voice could not override.

  The slim blade rested against the inside of her wrist, just beneath the shackle. Something she’d found in her rummaging. It made a pitiful weapon. Practically a butter knife. She had tried with increasing frustration to use it as a means to pick open the locks on the shackles that bound her wrists, but the angle was too difficult and robbed her of dexterity.

  He rested his forearms on his knees. “I’m not a monster, Tilley. I’m in a tight spot here. This is just—”

  “Business. Got it.” She seethed. “You want to know about the stryker.”

  Erelah glanced at the e-ration packet on the deck between them. She swallowed, turning wide pleading eyes up at him.

  “That’s right. This doesn’t have to be like this. You decide how this plays out.”

  Place the subject in a perceived position of control over circumstances.

  “And if I tell you, what happens to me?” Cautiously, she picked up the e-ration.

  “Like I said. That’s up to you.”

  Clumsily she pulled at the slick edges of the packet. The symbols stenciled on it threatened that some of those dreadfully bland protein wafers could be found inside.

  “Will you let me go?” she pleaded, chewing her lip. There was no way in Nyxa’s name he’d let her go willingly. She knew that much.

  Again, she struggled with the packet, making her moves clumsy and slow. It slipped to the deck.

  Korbyn gave an exasperated grunt. “Here.”

  He grabbed her forearm with his right hand. With his left, he produced the key to the shackles and moved for the lock. The shackles fell free, along with the small blade secreted in her sleeve.

  He made a low, rumbling chuckle and plucked the blade up between his thumb and forefinger. It looked like a toy. “You plan on attacking some pastry?”

  Now!

  She lurched forward, plunging the palm of her hand against the exposed skin of his chest. Long held in check, the Sight pushed out at him. The force came
from the black space hollowed out in her skull. The Sight burned through her and into him, greedily tasting and seeking to absorb everything.

  Asher’s expression changed to wide-eyed surprise, then panic. He froze.

  “Help me get back to the stryker,” she said through clenched teeth.

  A giant invisible hand grasped the base of her skull. And squeezed.

  Erelah gasped at the incredible jolt of pain. The world blasted white, shimmering and painful.

  He was fighting her. And winning.

  A solid wall had fallen down to protect his thoughts. She was vaguely aware of warmth spreading under her nose. A drawing sensation from her body, as if she were made of air and it was escaping every pore and all going to him.

  Asher’s arm shot up, shoving her back. The moment her hand lost contact with his skin, the squeezing sensation disappeared. The pain rolled in her skull like a thunderclap. She flopped onto her side with a groan.

  Asher crashed onto his knees. Blood seeped under his nose. “You wanted to be dead. It was a one-way trip,” he gasped.

  Blearily she watched him plant a hand on the deck. The veins bulged along his neck. “What was that? What did you do, woman?”

  Erelah rolled onto her stomach. She wanted to push up, crawl away from him. But her limbs were lazy animals. She managed a painful sob.

  His voice filled with fury, incredulity. “What in Nyxa’s name are you?”

  He grabbed her ankle and lurched up, dragging her along the floor. Back in the direction of his bunk.

  “No!” She flailed against the floor, hands sliding uselessly across the surface.

  He let her leg flop. Then he lurched from view. The deck beneath her pounding head telegraphed his movements. He gathered her wrists up, pulling them behind her. Shackles bit into her skin, tighter than before. There was another more solid click, felt and heard, as she was bound to the leg of his bed.

  He stepped back into view, panting. His voice crept up an octave. “What did you just do to me?”

  Erelah sobbed under the blanket of pain. It was growing thinner, allowing rational thought to invade in small trickles.