Shades of Honor (An Anomaly Novel Book 2)

by Sandy Williams

  “Ah, a reaction. Wasn’t sure if you were going to acknowledge my existence,” Ash said. “Not now and not a few hours ago when I was dirtside.”

  Teal raised her eyes to glare. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “How pissed was Furyk?”

  The crypty dropped her feet to the floor. “What do you want?”

  “A truce?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the only other anomaly on this— Well, that’s not true. There is another, but he might hate me even more than you do.”

  “Another enemy? What a surprise.”

  “We should stick together,” she said.

  “You already suggested that.” Teal snapped her cuff around her wrist. “I already shot you down.”

  “But we know each other so much better now.” She gestured to herself. “You know no prison can hold me.” She gestured to Teal. “I know you inserted illegal c—”

  “Enough.” She slapped her palms on the table, almost rising out of her seat. Her face reddened a shade.

  “It’s an obsession, isn’t it? A little itch you can’t help but scratch. Every anomaly has one. Yours happens to be to push the limits of permissible code.”

  “And yours must be the infallible ability to piss people off.” She stood.

  “Do you want to prove how good you are?”

  The casually delivered question stopped Teal from leaving the table. She stared down at Ash. A frown pinched her mouth.

  “I know how good I am.”

  Ash let her held breath slowly leak from her lungs. She’d judged Teal correctly. She could be baited by curiosity and a jab at her technical skills. Now Ash just had to take the final leap, trust the crypty, and pull her the rest of the way into her snare.

  “I have a project that might prove you wrong.”

  Teal’s eyes darted across the rec deck.

  “I don’t need your validation,” she said stiffly.

  “Fair enough,” Ash said. “I need a favor then. In return, I’ll teach you how to fight.”

  The offer had its intended affect. A wrinkle of confusion appeared in the center of Teal’s forehead, and she was no longer rigidly on guard.

  “I’m a crypty. I sit behind a console all day. Why would I need to learn how to fight?”

  “You were worried before about people finding out what you are. You said it would make you a target. If you know how to defend yourself, you won’t have to worry about discovery.”

  Anomalies were faster, stronger, and smarter than the average person, but without proper training, they didn’t always know how best to use those assets.

  “I don’t…” Teal shook her head. “I’m not interested.”

  She stepped away from the table.

  “Then how about money?” Ash asked. She had exactly nothing to give, but the offer wasn’t made with the intent to be accepted. Ash just needed to keep Teal around a few more seconds. She needed to keep her thinking.

  “No.” Teal’s expression said Ash was an idiot for asking. “I don’t need anything from you. Just stay out of my way.”

  “Okay. No problem. I can probably decrypt it on my own.”

  Teal nodded. She looked toward the rec deck’s exit.

  Then she looked back at Ash.

  “You’re good at the data-dance,” she said.

  It wasn’t a question, but Ash raised her shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve had good training.”

  Teal pulled her lower lip between her teeth, looked at the exit again. Reluctantly her gaze returned to Ash. “How many security layers?”

  Gotcha.

  “Six shifting polygons. I’ve tried every known pattern and experimented with a few of my own, but I’m almost certain there’s a trip wire. If I insert the wrong sequence, I think it’ll destroy the data.”

  Teal tapped the fingers of her right hand on her leg almost as if they were subconsciously playing with the rhythm of a sequence. “What’s behind the encryption?”

  “It might be nothing,” Ash said. “Or it might be something that can save the Coalition.”

  “Is it from…” She glanced around again. “The mission you failed?”

  “We didn’t fail the mission.” An edge entered Ash’s voice.

  Teal held up her hands. “I didn’t mean to insult—” She shook her head, cutting off her own apology. “Whatever. Just tell me where the data is from.”

  “Meryk.”

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “It’s not from the prime or any other high-ranked official. It’s from a friend.”

  “And where did this friend get the data?”

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  Teal’s face hardened, and Ash thought she might have pushed too hard. But after a few long seconds, Teal sighed.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  She led Ash from the rec deck, down two levels, and into the relatively deserted engineering core of the ship. The loud clanking and constant murmur of ship systems would make it impossible to hear each other without yelling. They wouldn’t have an auditory warning if someone was approaching, but Ash thought she knew where the crypty was leading her. Ash had glanced at this level of the Kaelais’s schematics before Teal caught her illegal admin access when she’d first come on board, and if she was right, they’d be coming up on a data-isolated chamber in another minute.

  The noise of engineering faded, and Teal stopped in front of a door outlined in blue light. A sign tagged it Isolation Chamber: Command Authorized Personnel Only. Teal typed something into her comm-cuff, then said, “Kaelais: Going dark for a few minutes. Run maze two sequence for me and Fighting Corps Lieutenant Ramie Ashdyn.”

  The door unlocked, and Teal waved her inside.

  The isolation chamber was smaller than Ash’s bunk room and contained a single data terminal. Coalition warships usually only had one chamber, but the Kaelais, a sentient-class ship that consumed an almost unlimited amount of data via her floor tiles, air system, comm-terminals, basically every single system on board, had two. It was the only place data could be analyzed without any possibility of infecting the ship’s operating code.

  Teal sat in one of the chamber’s two chairs. “Give me the data.”

  Ash unlocked her comm-cuff. When Teal reached for it, she held it away and met the other anomaly’s eyes.

  “I’m trusting you with the contents of these files,” she said. “If you violate that trust, I’ll kill you.”

  Teal blinked. Ash didn’t. She hadn’t delivered an oath like that, in a tone that was cold, detached and under no duress since her days on Glory.

  “You can walk away now, or you can decrypt it.” It was the only out Ash would offer.

  Teal tried not to look intrigued, but Ash had already hooked her. Not only did the anomaly want to test her skills against the challenge Ash presented, but she also needed to know what was in the files. Ash recognized the hunger for information in the other woman’s eyes. If Ash hadn’t been an expert at masking her thoughts, that need would have shown on her own face as well.

  The slow nod Teal gave her said the crypty understood what she was getting into. Ash handed her the cuff.

  Teal linked it to the data-desk and entered her own little world.

  Her mannerisms changed. She found Trevast’s files without Ash having to show her where they were located, then she practically melded to the desk, her gaze locked on the code flitting by, her fingers sliding and tapping on the desk’s surface, her lips moving while she silently worked through equations in her head. Ash would have said nothing existed for the crypty outside the code, but after obliterating the outer security shell—something that had taken Ash hours, not minutes to do—Teal frowned.

  “This is somebody’s home data-web.”

  “Yes,” Ash said.

  Teal glanced away from the code, met Ash’s gaze. She must have seen that she wouldn’t get more than that out of her because, after a quick, almost unnoticeable roll of the eyes, she returned her atten
tion to the screen. A few more taps, then Trevast’s face and profile appeared on-screen.

  Pain wrenched through Ash’s stomach. God, she missed him. She missed all of them.

  Teal leaned back. “Brand Trevast, Fighting Corps Major Lieutenant, born Coalition Standard Date: 961, Native Planet: Pries.” She looked at Ash. “He’s one of the soldiers you were accused of murdering.”

  The files didn’t tell the crypty that. She’d recognized his name. She knew more about Ash’s disastrous mission than she should. Likely, when things went to hell at Ephron and Teal had been tasked with infecting Ash’s comm-cuff with a tracking bug, she hadn’t been able to keep herself from prying where she shouldn’t.

  “You’re here and not in restraints,” Teal said. “I assume you’ve been acquitted?”

  Ash didn’t bother answering.

  “Are you looking for the killer?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think we’ll find in these files?” When Ash didn’t answer, Teal swiveled her chair to face her directly. “I need something. It will help me confirm if I’m on the right track or chasing shadows.”

  Ash didn’t like this. She didn’t like trusting someone she barely knew.

  “Look,” Teal said. “If you’re having second thoughts—”

  “Factions,” Ash said through a tight throat. “Anything about telepaths or telepathy.”

  Skepticism arched Teal’s eyebrows. Ash ignored it.

  “You can set my name as a trigger. And War Chancellor Grammet Hagan.”

  Teal waited, but that was all Ash was going to give her for now. Sensing it, Teal finally swiveled back to the screen, murmuring something under her breath.

  Ash watched her fingers tap and slide over the table. There was a particular rhythm to Teal’s data-dance, something almost staccato but smooth at the same time. Patterns and sequences couldn’t just be shoved into keys or used to unlock ciphers anymore. It took finesse not to trigger alarms and trip wires. Most times, trying to break an encryption wasn’t worth it. You destroyed whatever you were trying to unlock or infected your own data.

  Teal made a noise. “I can’t believe you tried to crack this in an unsecured location.”

  “I didn’t realize how sophisticated the encryption was.”

  “You did after you started.”

  True.

  “All right,” Teal said.

  “All right what?”

  Teal pushed back from the table. Ash moved forward and stared down at the scrolling data.

  “I’ve got most of the contents open. It looks like correspondence, both audio and visual.”

  Ash looked away from the information she’d been trying to unlock for three days and stared at the crypty. “Holy shit. You are good.”

  Teal shrugged. “I believe the phrase is ‘the best in the KU.’ That’s what they tell me at least.”

  “I feel a hell of a lot better about missing your tracking code on Ephron.”

  “Well.” Teal scooted her chair closer to the table. “I don’t have the full contact information unlocked. That’s buried deep.”

  Ash nodded. “Any dates on the data?”

  “Locked with the contact info. Let me work on it. Do you want to hear the messages?”

  Did she want to hear Trevast’s voice again? Ash’s heart twisted in her chest. She wanted the information Trevast had hidden, but she hadn’t thought about how it would be delivered. Seeing and hearing him again…

  She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached. She nodded.

  Teal tapped one of the messages, and Trevast’s face appeared in the center of the data-table. It took all the strength Ash had not to double over.

  “Trevast checking in,” his image said. “Nothing new to report. Next contact in one standard month.”

  He looked so fucking real. So alive.

  The table switched to the next message. Trevast again. This time he looked annoyed. “Still nothing new. Next contact will be at the usual time if I’m not on a damn op. Trevast out.”

  The screen changed a third time. Trevast sported a cut under his left eye.

  “Still alive,” he said. “Nothing new to report, but the next time you take action on intel, you damn well better warn me. Next contact in one standard month. Trevast out.”

  Ash remembered that cut. A grenade had gone off a little too close to her team. If the shrapnel had hit a centimeter higher, it would have taken Trevast’s eye out. That op had taken place almost a year ago. Who was Trevast reporting to?

  “I need the contact info.” Ash had to force the words out. She felt sick, and it wasn’t only because she missed Trevast and her old team. She didn’t like what she was hearing. She didn’t like where these recordings were taking her.

  “Still working on it,” Teal said.

  The table advanced to the next message. “I can’t change the rendezvous point.”

  Ash felt like she’d been slowly dipped into an almost-frozen lake. “That’s the whole message?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve almost got a time-line sorted out.”

  Ash’s team had had dozens of rendezvous in the time she’d been with them, but only one stuck out in her mind. Trevast had tried to convince Fleet and I-Com that their rendezvous after fleeing Chalos II was too risky. He’d been unsuccessful.

  “Are you okay?” Teal asked. “You don’t look good.”

  The next message played. “I can’t kill her. She’s family. I need an extraction.” He put his face in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees, head bowed. “Trevast out.”

  “Um, maybe we should turn these over to the minister prime.”

  “No,” Ash said.

  “I think he might have been talking about you.”

  “This goes nowhere, Teal. You gave me your word.”

  “It was more like I accepted your threat than—”

  “Play the previous message.”

  Teal pressed her lips together then said, “Just a second. Let me sort it.”

  Trevast hadn’t been responsible for the ambush. It was impossible.

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly what had happened when Valt boarded their shuttle. Valt had put a bullet in Trevast’s head and… and Ash was almost certain neither man had recognized the other. But she hadn’t been operating at full mental capacity at the time. None of them had been. The flash grenade disoriented them, and Ash had been shocked and confused and…

  She stood, backed away from the table, shaking her head.

  Trevast was like a brother to her—a brother to the whole team. He wouldn’t have betrayed them. He wouldn’t have.

  “You’re not going to snap, are you?”

  Ash cut Teal a scathing look.

  “I have the time-line sequenced,” the crypty said. “Are you sure you want me to play the previous message?”

  Ash nodded.

  Trevast appeared again. “I fucked up. There’s a woman in my unit. She’s an anomaly and a damn good soldier but…” He shook his head. “She’s been unlocked. I don’t know how long, and I don’t know by who. I’ve kept myself idle, but we were on a mission. Everything felt wrong. It felt like a setup, and I had to make sure… I shouldn’t have. I almost got us all killed because I didn’t expect to feel something from her. I know what I’m supposed to do, but…” He closed his eyes, reopened them. “I need an extraction. For me and my family. Trevast out.”

  “That’s, uh, more promising, right?” Teal asked.

  Ash sank back into her chair and stared at the data-table. Trevast had orders to kill her. Orders from whom? And for what? For being “unlocked?” That term had been used by War Chancellor Hagan’s assistant. Unlocked was what Valt had done to her. He’d made her susceptible to telepathy. He’d done more than that, too, pulling and tugging information from her mind when she wasn’t aware of it, and once, subverting the loyalty training and planting the need to kill her fail-safe into her thoughts. Being unlocked made Ash vulnerable. Trevast had recognized that.
He’d recognized what had been done to her, and he hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t treated her differently. Instead, he’d reported her to…

  “I need to know who he’s communicating with.” She sounded cold, like a killer.

  “They really don’t want you to get that info.” Teal turned all her attention back to the code. “It’s wrapped with trip wires. I can dispel them one at a time, but… shit!”

  “What?”

  “I triggered an erase mechanism.” Teal’s hands flew over the data-table, swiping and tapping. She split the screen two times, attempted to segregate the data. “It’s going to take it all out.” The table went black. Teal winced. “It already has.”

  The air in Ash’s lungs went in and out, in and out, each time without giving her body the oxygen it needed. Her hearing dulled, and all she felt was rage and betrayal.

  “You really look like you’re about to snap.” Teal scooted her chair back.

  Ash focused on the crypty, the anomaly, the woman who had helped Ash twice when she could have ignored her completely.

  It’s not her fault, she told herself. It’s not her fault. It’s yours. Get a grip, Ash.

  “I thought you were the best.” There. A weak attempt at a lighthearted statement. Her voice didn’t sound as murderous as before.

  “I got a name,” Teal said. “A name that someone really didn’t want anyone to know about.”

  Something loosened in Ash’s chest. “Well?”

  “Wait.” Teal held up a finger. “My theatrical pause isn’t long enough yet.”

  “You… Maybe I was wrong and your eccentricity is you’re suicidal. You don’t know when to fear for your life.”

  Teal shrugged. “Maybe you’re not as scary as you think you are.”

  “Give me the damn name.”

  “Neilan Tahn,” she said. “Have you ever heard of… I see that you have.”

  It was the last name Ash had expected to hear. She’d been braced for the worst, for Trevast to have somehow, incomprehensibly been working with Valt. She’d been braced for the name of another high-ranked politician, perhaps even the minister prime or a top admiral. She hadn’t been prepared to hear the name Neilan Tahn. Trevast shouldn’t have known someone like him. No one on the bright side of the universe should have heard of him.