by Loren Rhoads
He finished his coffee and returned to bed to wake Eilif once more.
* * *
When Taki came around, his pupils were uneven. Curcovic was still out cold. Lim was bleeding, but it didn’t look too bad, more a flesh wound than anything else. Lim was lucky: if Curcovic had caught him in a kidney, Sloane would be looking for a new engineer. Kavanaugh wondered if they would have buried Lim here, amidst the looted tombs. He never mentioned any family that might claim his body.
Then again, none of them had anyone who cared about them, or they wouldn’t be working for Gavin Sloane.
Kavanaugh shifted the men out of the tomb and settled them on the loader. He drove to the bunker, carried everyone inside, and set about doctoring them as best he could. Seven Earth years on a tramp medical ship as a kid had taught him everything he needed to know about battlefield medicine.
Thinking about the past made him suspect who it was they had just rescued. He hadn’t thought about Raena Zacari since he’d seen her walk away from a bounty hunter twenty-some years ago. But what she was doing here on this gods-forsaken world, locked in a tomb? And why did she still look the same as she had twenty years ago?
* * *
Across the galaxy, the comm beeped as soon as the hour could be considered decent. Eilif’s hand dropped on it, stifling the second beep. She said softly, “Yes?”
“I must see my lord at his earliest convenience, regarding the long-range scan he commanded.”
Thallian reached down to the comm and covered Eilif’s hand with his own. Hollow sickness twisted in his stomach. “Five minutes. My office. Bring Revan and Jain.”
Releasing the comm, Thallian stepped out of bed and pulled on a robe. Eilif glanced over her shoulder at him, then hastily tugged on the leggings she had worn last evening.
Thallian took her chin in his hand. “This information isn’t for you. Yet.”
She froze at his touch, except to turn her eyes up to him. “How long-range was this scan?” she wondered.
“Outside the system.”
Eilif frowned. “Are we at war?”
Thallian smiled at her, but his heart wasn’t in it enough to make it truly menacing. “Not yet. Perhaps not at all.”
He swooped down to kiss her, purposefully cutting her lip on his teeth. The familiar taste of her blood steadied him a little.
“Bring breakfast to my office,” he ordered as he stepped through the door into the internal corridor.
Eilif left his thoughts before the door closed behind him. So someone had tampered with Raena’s tomb. The thought made his eyes feel strange, as if he might cry.
In the solitude of his office, Thallian reconsidered the haste of calling this meeting before he had properly dressed. Would they read his eagerness as weakness? Was it weakness, sentimentality, paranoia? If the dream hadn’t woken him in the middle of the night, his feelings would be clearer now.
He settled into his chair and keyed in the command to unlock the door.
Thallian’s oldest brother entered first and took the comfortable chair. Revan ran his fingers through graying hair still tousled from sleep. His clothing was rumpled, but at least he’d dressed. He smiled at Thallian and said nothing.
Fourteen-year-old Jain quivered with barely contained energy. He was Thallian’s favorite son, the fiercest. He wore loose black exercise clothing and the sidearm Thallian had helped him to build. He’d teased his blue-black hair into standing straight up this morning and his gray eyes shone with excitement. It always pleased Thallian to recognize his own facial structure and coloring echoed in his sons.
The scanner tech came last. Nerves drew his mouth into a grimace. He stepped forward to place a handscreen on the edge of the desk, then retreated behind Revan’s chair.
Thallian didn’t move forward to retrieve the screen yet. “When did this information come in?” Galaxy-wide FTL communications might be commonplace, but the flow of information still slowed and bunched up around the shoals of Humanity’s limited capacity to examine and act on it.
“My lord, as you know, the Templars’ tombworld is not under constant surveillance. We spot-check the data once each month. Last night, during the scan you requested, I noticed that the scanner had gone offline.”
“When?”
“I estimate that it cannot have been more than three weeks, my lord.”
Jain repeated, “Three weeks!”
Thallian silenced the boy with a glance. “Revan, take Jain and a well-armed escort to the Templars’ tombworld. I want to know what happened to my scanning equipment. I want to know if anyone dared meddle with the Templar Master’s tomb.”
Revan pushed himself to his feet. “At your command, my lord.”
“Are we going to war?” Jain demanded exuberantly.
The scanner tech protested, “It may be only a malfunction, my lord. The equipment was antiquated and due for replacement.”
“Perhaps,” Thallian agreed smoothly. The speed at which he’d convened this meeting demonstrated that he thought not. To Revan, he added, “I want to know if anyone has been on that planet. I want to know if anyone has opened that tomb. I want to know if they removed anything. I want to know where they’ve gone. I expect your report in four days.”
Revan bowed. Jain echoed him. With less grace, the scanner tech jerked down to follow them. Thallian opened the door, but did not watch them leave. Instead, he turned his attention to the data screen.
CHAPTER 2
Night was drawing in when Raena appeared outside the bunker’s hatch. Kavanaugh couldn’t guess where she had been in the intervening hours—other than checking to see if she could steal their formerly operational hopper. Sloane had wrecked the little ship in a fury when he decided the men were likely to steal from him. Luckily, Kavanaugh had been able to salvage enough parts to build a backup transmitter, in case Sloane left them behind when he hauled his loot away. Which assumed, of course, that Sloane left them alive when he abandoned them.
No wonder he couldn’t sleep, Kavanaugh thought. Maybe Raena would let him come with her when she ran away this time.
She stood outside the hatch, black rags tied around her face against the gritty wind. Kavanaugh recognized her stance, her slight angular body, and the heeled boots she wore to give herself some height. She was thinner than he remembered—she’d been pretty thin then—but that could be expected. They hadn’t found much to eat in any of the Templar tombs. Which begged the question: how she could possibly still be alive?
The Raena he had known had been fleeing an Imperial special envoy, who had sent a string of bounty hunters after her. It was a safe bet that he hadn’t gotten a hold of her. Whatever Raena had thought Thallian wanted do to her, she expected it to be worse than being buried alive.
Or maybe there wasn’t anything worse than that.
As he palmed open the lock, Kavanaugh thought about all the night creatures and tomb denizens he’d heard about across the galaxy: things that survived on flesh, on brains, on creatures slower and weaker than themselves. Kavanaugh checked to make sure his gun was charged before he opened the hatch, for all the good that would do him.
She halted in the doorway, looking both directions down the hallway to the cabins and the galley. Then she began to peel the rags from her face, dropping them to the deck. Kavanaugh watched the unveiling with curiosity. What would the fragile, high-strung girl look like now?
Her black eyes met his gaze. She looked sane, more serene than she ever had, but weary. As the bunker’s harsh lighting revealed her arched black brows, Kavanaugh remembered the scar that ran between them, where, save for luck, Raena would have lost an eye. Above the scar, her forehead was still surprisingly unlined. No crow’s feet surrounded her eyes. When at last she unwrapped her mouth, she looked exactly like the girl of his memory, twenty-odd years in the past.
Kavanaugh gasped. “You haven’t changed a bit, Raena. I mean, you haven’t aged a day.”
She raised her hands to her face, slowly exploring h
er features like a woman woken from a coma. Her hands were smudged and raw from being out in the wind. Her knuckles stood out beneath the skin. Then she focused on him again. “Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know me?
“I’m Tarik Kavanaugh. I use to be on the Panacea with Doc and Skyler. We rescued you from a bounty hunter’s ship, more than twenty years ago.”
“Twenty years,” she echoed.
After a pause, he asked, “Are you dead?”
“I don’t think so. Being dead wouldn’t hurt so much.” She held her hand out. After a moment, Kavanaugh took it. Her skin felt cool and dry, but it seemed alive.
“We should run the med scan over you anyway,” he said.
“What do you expect to see, other than malnutrition and dehydration?”
Whatever the hell had kept you alive, unaging, for twenty long years. Instead of saying that, though, Kavanaugh asked, “Want some stew? I made it a couple of days ago. It’ll warm you up inside.”
“That sounds good. It’s been a long time since I felt warm.”
Rubbing at the grit that always seemed to find its way into his beard, Kavanaugh led the way to the galley. He noticed she hadn’t commented on his name or their shared history. He had a moment of doubt. If this was Raena, wouldn’t she recognize him? Acknowledge him somehow? Maybe it wasn’t her after all. How could it be? But if it wasn’t her, it was a damn good facsimile. Why would anyone bother to make an android that looked like Raena Zacari? Why would they shut it in a tomb? Why would they whittle the weight off of it so that it looked starved half to death? It had to be Raena. Unaging or not, she looked like hell.
Kavanaugh’s first thought was that this was a problem that he’d be relieved to turn over to Sloane. Then, horrified at himself, he hoped he could think of a way to smuggle her off-world without Sloane ever finding out about her. That would be a favor worth thanking him for.
“Are your men all right?” she asked.
Kavanaugh glanced back at her, wondering that he was so comfortable with her behind him. “They’ve had worse hangovers.”
She smiled. That made him certain this truly was Raena. There had always been something sad about her smile, something apologetic for who she was and what she felt forced to do to survive. For the briefest instant, Kavanaugh felt like the tongue-tied adolescent he had been all those years ago, awed by the mysterious drifter.
He busied himself with taking the pan of stew out of the fridge and setting it on the burner to warm. That didn’t fill enough time, so he asked, “Want some coffee?”
Kavanaugh swirled the murky liquid around the bottom of the coffee pot, frowned, and dumped it down the drain. While he busied himself with making a fresh pot, Raena lit on the corner of the mess table, arms wrapped around her ribs. She didn’t look too good in the harsh artificial light.
“No, thanks.” She gestured at a swivel chair, its stuffing leaking out. “Come talk to me, Tarik. You can’t imagine how starved I am for the sound of someone else’s voice.”
He took the chair. “I used to work for your sister.”
“Sister?” She seemed surprised.
He frowned. He hadn’t realized she had more than one sister. Ariel never mentioned that. Brushing it off, he said, “The War dragged out for a long time. Ariel did what she could, shipping materiel for the Coalition, trying to change the balance of power. I ran deliveries for her for a while.”
“Do you keep in touch?” Raena asked. “How is she?”
“She’s good. She’s got a swarm of kids now. . . .”
“And how many husbands?”
Kavanaugh laughed as he got up to pour the coffee. When he returned with two mugs, he said, “No, they’re all adopted. There were a lot of orphans after the War. Ariel bought them out of slavery, like her family did you.”
Raena’s smile was more enigmatic than usual. She held her coffee in front of her heart, gratefully inhaling the steam.
“Drink it. It’ll warm you up while the stew is heating.”
She shook her head. “I’m enjoying it just like this. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Nah. I woulda made a pot anyway.”
“Where are your people?” she asked.
Kavanaugh shrugged. “Around here someplace. They’re all on the mend. Thank you for going easy on us in there.”
“No, I’m sorry about that. If I’d been paying more attention, it wouldn’t have been necessary to hurt anyone. Believe it or not, you startled me.”
Kavanaugh didn’t know what to say to that. He looked down into his coffee, around at the jumble of equipment on every flat surface, at the rusting, slapped-together walls of the converted cargo container. Avoided looking at her, because she could’ve come out of that tomb like a caged animal and killed them all.
Raena asked, “What do you need to tell me about Gavin Sloane?”
Caught off guard, Kavanaugh looked straight at her. He’d never been certain if Raena could read minds, or if she just found it effective to act as if she could. Her gaze was level and non-threatening. Something about her—her stillness, her calm—was so out of character for the Raena he remembered, the hairs crept up on the back of his neck.
“It’s just—” Kavanaugh started “—well, you knew Sloane a long time ago.” How to say this? He finished lamely, “Sloane’s changed. He’s not like he was during the War.”
“Changed how?”
Kavanaugh shook his head, unprepared to say more.
Raena set her coffee on the tabletop and leaned forward. “Tarik, I appreciate your discretion, but I owe Sloane my life now. I need to know what sort of bargain I’ve made.”
Sipping his coffee, Kavanaugh tried to frame years of disappointment into one careful phrase.
Not content to wait, Raena said, “Tarik, you and I both know that I can make you tell me. I’d much rather you’d simply be honest with me, as a friend who needs your help.”
He stared at her, amazed at how easily the threat passed her lips. He didn’t doubt that she could force him to do anything she wanted. “It’s just that . . . a long time ago, I thought of Sloane like a brother. I was just a kid, and he was just a smuggler, a pirate—space trash—but I felt like I could rely on him. Probably it was just luck, but he was always there when I needed help. I thought he was a good friend. . . .”
“And then?”
“I thought working for him would be fun. But he’s not Sloane any more. Everything I liked has been systematically replaced by this businessman I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. He’s cutthroat now. Dangerous to cross. And he doesn’t have any friends left.”
“What changed him?”
“I don’t know. Ariel warned me not to take the job an’ she was right. It’s like he thinks money will make me forget the past.” He looked up at her, finally realizing what it was he needed to say. “You’d be safer if I didn’t tell him you were here.”
She gave him that sad smile again. “No,” she said firmly, “I need to see him. We have some things to work out.”
Kavanaugh gulped his coffee and went to stir the stew. After a pause, he said as seriously as possible, “Get away from him as quick as you can.”
Raena nodded. “Thank you, Tarik. I’ll try.”
The comm beeped. Kavanaugh sighed. He’d been expecting it. He got up to answer, taking his coffee with him.
A young woman on the comm screen asked, “How’d things go today?”
Kavanaugh drank deeply before answering. “We found something.”
“You’re supposed to find things,” the voice on the monitor teased. “It’s your job.”
“Yeah,” Kavanaugh drawled. “This is something special. I’d like to bring it up to show him.”
“Can I see it?”
Kavanaugh turned toward Raena. “Are you sure?”
She nodded and presented herself before the comm.
The young woman on the monitor was blond and hazel-eyed, absurdly pretty like a doll. She always reminded Kavanaugh vague
ly of Ariel. He wondered if Raena saw the resemblance, too.
Zilla gazed at Raena appraisingly and said, “Welcome back.”
Kavanaugh watched Raena standing before the monitor. He’d used to think he had a crush on her, but he didn’t feel any of that any more. He recognized that a lot of what he’d felt had been envy. Raena was quick and lethal. Remorseless. Kavanaugh had been awed by her ability not to care who she killed. As a scared kid in the middle of a war, he had found that inspiring. Now as an adult, he was horrified by her callousness.
He wondered what had happened to Raena back then that made her so broken. He didn’t expect he’d ever know. Those who had been closer to her—Ariel, Sloane—didn’t seem to know. Or care, for that matter.
Raena smiled at something Zilla said. “I’m looking forward to seeing your boss again.”
Kavanaugh touched her shoulder gently and Raena faded back out of his way. “Send a shuttle down, would ja, Zilla?”
“All right, Kavanaugh. Give me fifteen to get things arranged up here. You okay down there?”
“We’ll keep.”
* * *
After she signed off with Kavanaugh, Zilla Olangey commed her boss. “Kavanaugh’s coming up.”
“I don’t fuckin’ want to be bothered,” Sloane growled back.
“You want to be bothered by this.” Zilla waited while her boss scrolled through the comm record she’d made. She wished she could see his face, but as usual he hadn’t turned on the screen. “That’s the girl you’re looking for, isn’t it?” she asked.
“The girl I’m looking for,” Sloane growled bitterly, “would be old enough to be that girl’s mother. I don’t know who this impostor is, but I’m sure as hell going to find out who put her up to it. Send them in as soon as they land.”
Sloane turned back to the spreadsheet on his monitor. This whole boondoggle had been extremely expensive: hauling the equipment out to this rock, buying his employees’ silence, bribing the right galactic officials to look the other way as his crew looted the Templar tombs. Sloane had hoped to find enough collectibles to subsidize the excursion, but two decades hadn’t been enough to make Templar mementos very rare. If he could have afforded to hang onto things another lifetime or so, he might have made a killing.
