allies and enemies 02 - rogues

by Amy J. Murphy

  “And what sort of hour do you call this?” Rachel propped her hands on her hips.

  He was wasted.

  Selto strode in with his guard dog, Ceric, in tow.

  “Rachel, yes?” Selto smiled. For some reason she thought of a reptile.

  She gave a cautious nod.

  “You introduced yourself as a healer yesterday. We have been without medical help for some time. May I ask your assistance?” Selto used the same cattle-appraising stare he’d employed at the landing site yesterday. But this felt different; there was some calculation going on behind it now. The price of the cow had just gone up.

  She suspected Korbyn had had something to do with that. She made a mental note to castrate him.

  “If you might join us at the med bay?”

  Rachel looked from Selto to Ceric, then back. The request felt more like a demand.

  Behind her on the sofa, Korbyn let out a lusty snore. No help there.

  She gave Selto a humorless grin. “Well, how can I say no?”

  45

  “Here. Look straight ahead.” Rachel trained the penlight into the eyes of the painfully thin man seated on the table. Instinctively, he flinched, but the pupillary response seemed normal. Then, again, normal was all relative out here.

  Her patient was one of the “contract laborers.” The story given was that he’d been struck on the back of the skull with a heavy piece of equipment. Accidentally.

  She straightened. Realizing she was frowning, she tried out a non-threatening grin on him. The outright fear in the man’s grimy face reappeared the moment the guard stepped closer to the table. The worker looked down at his lap where his cuffed hands rested. Rachel had lobbied to have the restraints removed, but the guard refused with a dismissive grunt.

  She’d guessed the worker’s age at something approaching forty, but his profile on the reader indicated he was about half that. What could a kid do at twenty to end up in a hard-labor camp? He was not about to volunteer that information. None of his injuries jived with the story she’d been told of an “accident.”

  So far, she had uncovered evidence of blunt force head trauma, a poorly mended broken jaw and numerous rib fractures in various stages of repair. And that was just her first two patients of the day.

  During her internship, Rachel had worked in the onsite clinic of one of the corp-owned lunar mines. The neglect there had been rampant. The workers were so desperate for the income, they were willing to hide any abuse by the guards or the company.

  She sighed inwardly. The universe did have some constants. Awesome. I’m back to playing mob doctor again.

  “You seem very experienced with our equipment.” Selto attempted to pull her into a discussion. He had spent the morning hovering nearby, occasionally called away to other matters. If they felt she needed a babysitter, one of his underlings would have sufficed. Selto had taken a particular interest in her. That couldn’t be a good thing.

  His bearing and manners reminded her of the brass that worked the installations on Vesta. Like those men and women, he was someone used to getting his way, no questions asked. Unlike them, however, there was a base layer of sleaze. Somehow, he managed to keep it under wraps and still pretend at being the concerned leader.

  At least Ix had had the decency to own his corruption.

  “Helps to be a quick study.” She peeled back the grime-covered bandage from the young man’s forearm. The wound beneath had been a painful burn at one point, but the skin was well on its way to healing. Other than changing the bandage, there was nothing more that she could do to keep the poor guy here. Considering his reaction to Selto and his guards, he might consider going back to work the better end of the deal.

  “You say you are seeking a people called the UEC.” Selto sauntered closer to the examination table. She turned sideways. His habit of standing behind her was unnerving. “It has the sound of a tribe or conclave.”

  “United Earth Coalition.” Rachel might as well have been speaking Greek. How many times had she explained this before? Back in the early days of her captivity with Ix, when she was foolish enough to think she could have made someone listen, it’d been a common explanation. “My home planet has a lot of different countries; I mean, what’s left of it. Many nations form that group.”

  “So you are not Eugenes, then.” Disappointment curdled in his voice.

  “No.” She was reluctant to hand out more information. She squared off to face him. “That a problem?”

  Under the low ceiling of the metal box they called a med bay, Selto’s shoulders seemed impossibly wide, like a cliffside. A lot of Ix’s gang had been giants, but none of them had the same penetrating coolness behind their eyes.

  “You ‘bout done with this one?” The guard broke the tension. “He’s got a shift starting soon.”

  “Sure,” Rachel muttered. The worker stumbled as he stepped off the examination table and she moved to help him.

  Selto grabbed her wrist. “Caution, doctor. These men are far more dangerous than they appear.”

  “You seem to have everything under control.” She pried her arm away and watched Ceric roughly pull the worker out the door. The chains around his ankles dragged and clanked against the grating of the deck plates.

  Selto nodded, as if she had paid him a compliment. “I wonder how it is that you survived so long under Ix’s employ without…detriment. A woman as attractive as yourself certainly must have drawn a certain amount of unwanted attention.”

  She nearly laughed. He was honest-to-God flirting with her. Oh, buddy. You got me pegged for the wrong team.

  He’d gone from reluctant host to Mr. Hospitality practically overnight. Now he was even trying to land a date. Something had definitely changed during Korbyn’s meeting with Selto.

  I never thought I’d miss Liet.

  Rachel gave him what she hoped was a simpering smile. Her flirting skills were considerably rusty, never mind that she was dealing with the wrong sex.

  “I’m a doctor. Keeping me alive is always your best bet.” She batted her eyelashes, feeling ridiculous.

  “Besides, if you mess with me, I know how to make it look like natural causes,” she could not resist adding.

  Selto erupted in a practiced, see-I’m-an-okay-guy laugh. “Your spirit has served you well, separated so long from your people.”

  “About that.”

  His smile faltered. “Yes. Of course, my coms-tech has input the data on the distress frequency that you provided. Admittedly, we have little in the way of knowing if the message was received. It may take some trial and error.”

  Fuck my life. Another lasting gift from working with Lucien Ix, she’d reached the pro level of guessing when people were lying out of their fat faces. He had no intention of sending a message to the UEC, or anyone for that matter. This whole morning had been an exercise in him feeling her out, trying to get info out of her without damaging the merchandise.

  “Guess we’ll be spending a lot of time together then.” Rachel forced a grin.

  46

  Rachel raced into the bathroom the moment she crossed the threshold to the quarters.

  With a swift grunt of acknowledgement to Erelah, she slammed the door closed.

  If their quarters were under surveillance as she suspected, this room was the least likely to be monitored. Hands clutching her med kit to her chest, she elbowed the lights off and dumped the contents of the kit on the floor. Under the penlight’s narrow beam, she made out the shape of the device she had stolen from the med bay. They’d called it a tissue density analyzer.

  It was essentially a handheld MRI. This little beauty had been sitting in Selto’s surprisingly well-appointed medical bay, practically ignored. It nearly broke her heart that no one here knew how to use it.

  Therefore, boosting seemed justified.

  Humans might have figured out interstellar travel but still this comparatively low-tech device used to determine damage and disease in the Human body was indispensable. B
ut the two things did not jive well. She’d fought like hell to get a pared-down MRI onto the Agamemnon. The pilots had pushed back, saying the device played holy hell with their comms array. MRIs were funny things.

  Her hands shook with excitement. Oh. This could work.

  47

  With another curious stare at the shut door of the waste rec, Erelah rearranged the blanket around her shoulders. She considered knocking to see if Rachel was well, but was distracted by the loud sound of snoring from the sofa beside her.

  She frowned at the lumpy form beneath the familiar battered-looking duster. Booted feet poked out from the edge.

  Korbyn.

  She wrinkled her nose. He smelled like a tavern. Erelah stood over his end of the sofa. She carefully pinched the edge of the duster between her thumb and forefinger.

  And yanked.

  Korbyn sat up with a grunt, grabbing a fistful of her clothes. She pitched forward and found herself balancing on the sofa’s edge to keep from landing on him.

  “Oh? You’re up.” She kept her voice bright beneath his glare.

  With a disgruntled sound, he released her. Instead of lying back down, he maneuvered himself to a seated position.

  “Your next words had better be ‘the building is on fire’.” His voice was muffled as he rubbed his face.

  “I’m afraid not.” Erelah allowed his duster to drop to the floor. “Where did you disappear to?”

  He sank back into the sofa. Squinting up at her, he gave her a strange half-smile. “Wondering when I’d see you again.”

  She frowned. If he knew her memories, he knew about the voices of the others trapped in there with her, and their influence. He’d witnessed Tyron’s first hand. “This is me. You’re talking to me.”

  Steadying himself on the back of the sofa, he stood. The action forced her to step back. Wordlessly, he strode to the table and pawed through the food containers.

  “You spoke with Selto. Tell me. Will he help us?” she pursued.

  “He needs to feel out his contacts, majesty.” He mocked her accent.

  “You said that Ironvale Guild had power here. That they could help me—”

  “Listen. You’ve got to know the lay of it. Ironvale is strong. Has the biggest fleet, but the flexers are the problem. You want to get to Hadelia. That’s in Poisoncry territory. There’s very little love ‘tween Ironvale and those crazy witches. Getting passage there takes some deal making.”

  She squinted. “Deal making?”

  He took a lusty draw directly from the decanter of water. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he ripped a ration packet open with his teeth.

  “What sort of deal making?” Irritated, Erelah snatched the packet from his hand. He reclaimed it, pulling her against him in the same motion.

  Near the door, she sensed Brilta take a move forward, her attention keen on them both now. Korbyn noticed too. He gave the guard a dangerous grin before turning it on Erelah.

  “Got yourself a new pet there?” It was a low whisper against her neck. “You do that nasty little sight-jack trick on that one too?”

  Brilta shifted uneasily, watching.

  “I wouldn’t. Not to her.” Erelah pushed away.

  “But it was fine to do that to me?” He jabbed a thumb at his chest.

  “I had no way of knowing who you were or your intent. I was protecting myself,” she shot back. “You wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same. You’re more like me than you know.”

  Asher tossed the emptied packet aside.

  “So, what are we then? Soul mates?” His chewing curled into a lascivious grin. “Shall we make babies?”

  Erelah blanched. He was deflecting her answers, trying to unnerve her and make her give up.

  “Outcasts. Survivors.” Her own words surprised her. In that moment, she was struck with an overwhelming connection. It was something that dwelt far deeper than the Sight. The sensation of belonging to a world and not being a part of it, all in one complex breath. He was a hybrid, an outsider. Even in the Reaches, it seemed to mark you as something less.

  “Don’t pretend you’re like me,” he snapped. “Don’t say you’re like me. You have no idea.”

  “Then tell me why you’re like this. You play a brigand, but then risk your life to help me. You could have left me to a far worse fate.”

  “You’re some spoiled crester who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t know what I saw or what happened. All I know is that you touched me and now I can’t get you out of my head.” He tapped his temple, leaning into her face. “People I’ve never met. Places I never seen. I know you read all the books in your house, even the ones you weren’t supposed to, before you were eight. And once, you tried to climb to the roof because you wanted to see the stars. You slipped and hurt your wrist. You still remember the snapping noise it made. Tried to hide it because you’d get in trouble.”

  She backed up. Her thighs connected with the edge of the table. “Stop.”

  “And your best friend was this poor little girl with a crooked leg. She died of the hard fevers the same year your brother ran away to enlist.”

  The edges of her vision blurred. “Stop.”

  Fury burned in him, but was not meant for her. It focused within, eating everything. He leaned over her, his hands at either side of her, trapping her against the table. “And there’s that dark place in your head that you step around, and pretend doesn’t own you anymore. It’s filled with all those things that Tristic did to you.”

  “Please stop—”

  “She said stop.” A thick hand landed on Asher’s shoulder. Brilta.

  He righted himself and shook her off.

  “And I know you lie. So many layers and you don’t even remember the truth anymore,” Erelah called after him as he strode to the door.

  He paused at the interface. “You don’t know a damned thing.”

  “You can come back from it.”

  Korbyn paused long enough before ducking out the door. His spine stiffened. In that moment she knew it. Her suspicions were correct.

  Some deal had been made with Selto, not one that any of them would like.

  48

  “You’ve not eaten much. You feeling okay?” Rachel’s announcement came without preamble. That was her custom.

  “Not hungry.” Erelah pulled away before the woman could attempt touching her again. As if the answer to the mysteries of the Known Worlds could be found by prodding someone’s forehead. Did all Human healers function that way? “It’s unwise to touch me so.”

  In the corner of her vision, she sensed Rachel’s stare. Some internal argument was going on there. Finally, the woman shrugged and turned back to the bag of medicines and equipment. Her boon from Ix’s vessel. “Fine. Guess it’s none of my bees wax.”

  Erelah waited for an explanation for this curious remark. None came.

  The healer had been abnormally quiet after emerging from the waste rec. This was quite the difference from her incessant questions and curious observations. It was as if she were biding her time, casting calculating glances at Brilta.

  “You’re contemplating something, aren’t you?” Erelah was careful to whisper.

  Rachel ceased her rummaging in the bag. “Am I? You’re the mind reader.”

  Erelah’s brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You and Korbyn. Getting a little chummy?” She planted a hand on one hip and tilted her head. “Say…didn’t he hold you hostage?”

  “He just found me. That’s all.” Warmth filled her face. “And we’re not chummy…whatever that means.”

  “You been staring out that window since I got back, so something must have happened. He mention how his buddy was going to help you find your brother?”

  At that moment, Erelah realized how wrong she was about Rachel. This was a woman who was truly lost, but had managed to survive against the staunchest odds in the most unlikely of circumstances, not by might, but with her wits. This was an
ally she should be heeding.

  “I suspect he did something…regrettable.” Erelah allowed her shoulders to sag.

  Rachel stepped closer. “Korbyn only looks out for Korbyn.”

  Erelah’s blood pounded against in her ears. The woman’s scrutiny made her feel so juvenile and naive. Why am I so hurt or surprised by his betrayal?

  “I’m sorry he turned out to be a dick.” The healer’s sentiment rang false to Erelah.

  “I think he meant to try. I think there’s a part of him in there that,” she shrugged, “meant to, at least.”

  Rachel nodded. “The road to hell…”

  Erelah frowned. “Where?”

  She waved a hand. “Just an expression.”

  “Selto is hiding something. Everyone here is hiding something. It’s as if our arrival is an inconvenience.” Erelah finally spoke the impression that had been plaguing her.

  “You don’t have to be a mind reader to know that,” Rachel agreed. “Ulrid asked a lot of questions about my people. Where they are? What they’re doing out here? I ducked what I could, but he saw through it. I don’t think they’re interested in helping us.”

  “It doesn’t bode well for Asher either.”

  Rachel leaned into her view out the window. “You got Stockholm syndrome or what? He doesn’t care. Why should you?”

  Erelah frowned at her tone. Although the meaning of her words was unclear, it was plain she was being mocked.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Rachel prodded. “You gonna mug at me, or you want to hear it?”

  Erelah glanced at Brilta. The guard was consulting a station interface. One of the locked-out systems that even she had not been able to access in the brief time she had been left alone to examine it. It was curious to see the woman’s attention elsewhere, but it also meant she wasn’t observing them.

  “We got to make our own way.”

  Rachel turned her back to Brilta and the entrance. From the interior of her jacket, she withdrew a handheld device. Its subdued gray-and-blue casing suggested it was medical in nature, a portable scanner for field use. The style was common nearly three decades ago but had been abandoned after considerable issues with interference with sync drives on atmospheric vessels and with certain types of communication devices. Most of the tech of the installation used randomized quantum elements, invulnerable to such simple interference.