Cold Revenge

by Jaleta Clegg

  "Dace isn't very logical and you know it."

  "That's why I have taken other steps to ensure she arrives on Cygnus, along with the leaders of Targon. Jerimon will make certain she arrives."

  "You're using her as bait? Again? Didn't you learn from the last time?"

  "Do I need to remind you that you are my subordinate?" He closed the file, setting it carefully on the stack. "I regret having to do this, but it's the only way I can find to shut Targon down for good. Dace won't be safe anywhere until I do."

  Paltronis nodded. "I'll arrange for a courier. Are you sure you don't want to supervise this operation yourself?"

  Lowell shook his head. "I've got sixteen other crises demanding my attention. I trust you, Paltronis. Don't let me down. Keep Dace and her crew alive."

  Chapter 6

  Clark was in a much better mood when he got back. I think the plate of warm cookies Jasyn had on the table had something to do with that. He and Jerimon both wore long striped robes in hideous colors. They came in only long enough to eat cookies and tell us that we had laborers to unload the cargo and that Jasyn and I needed to stay completely out of the way while they did it. Clark handed the payment chip to me on his way out.

  Jasyn and I sat down and figured out where we were with money. We did our best to ignore the loud thumps that echoed from the cargo bays. If we were careful, we’d have enough to get us to Onipas with or without a cargo, although with was always a better choice.

  I outlined my plans to Jasyn. Being unable to actually buy and sell was going to be the hard part. My plan depended on finding a merchant willing to sign us on as freight haulers. He also had to be willing to consider the idea of opening trade with Onipas.

  "It will work," I said to Jasyn.

  "If we find someone willing to front it, and if we can get our hands on the goods, and if your information isn’t completely outdated," she said. "But live plants? How are we supposed to keep them that way?"

  "We use the spare cabin and any other space we can. We can put the seeds and machinery in the hold."

  "You and I can’t do anything about it," Jasyn said, gathering our record sheets and putting them away. "We’ll have to get Clark and Jerimon to do it for us."

  "You have any better ideas?"

  "How can I? I’m stuck here as much as you are."

  She pulled out her paints and started slapping spots on fish.

  I played with Ghost, dangling a string for her, until she left to hide somewhere. I played with the controls, recalibrating bits that didn’t need recalibrated. I would have fixed the stabilizer except that would have required me to go outside the ship. I suspected it was just a loose wire. I paced until Jasyn told me to go away.

  I went into my cabin and sprawled on my bunk. I opened the secret cubby next to my bed, the one with pictures taped to the inside of the door. Six photos, the sum total of my life so far.

  The cubby itself held several notes most of them from Tayvis, my father’s gold wedding band that was too large for my fingers, and my technically legal blaster. I shut the cubby. Reading the notes would only depress me. And much as I might be tempted, target practice with a blaster in my cabin would be a very bad idea, not to mention a lethal one. I'd earned sharpshooter pips at the Academy, but I hadn't practiced for a while. Shooting at people who were trying to kill me didn't count.

  I rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

  I could inventory the small hold again. Except I’d done it less than three days ago. I could clean something, except Jerimon had done a very good job. I could borrow Jasyn’s nail stuff and do something with my fingernails. I held them up and studied the jagged, chewed edges. That was a hopeless waste of time.

  I rolled over and punched my pillow. A corner of something under my mattress caught my eye. I pulled it out. It was a trashy romance novel. Clark had carried them around when we first hired him. He’d given it up once we convinced him we knew he was using them as a code books for the messages he passed to Lowell.

  I opened the book and read the first sentence. And decided it would be better to die of boredom.

  By the time Clark and Jerimon came back in, several hours later, I was most of the way through the book.

  "I’ve got us a cargo to Onipas," Clark said when I emerged from my cabin. "We can start loading tomorrow."

  "I guess we don’t need to work on your idea," Jasyn said to me.

  "What idea?" Clark asked.

  "You don’t need it, so why should I tell you?" I was being childish and petty, and I knew it.

  Jasyn ignored me. "Dace has a list of plants and seeds that Brugundhi exports. They’re all legal on Onipas. If we can find someone to front as the buyer, we can do it."

  "Give me the list," Clark said, his hand out. "I think I can find us someone."

  I fished it off the table and handed it to him.

  He looked it over. "Are you sure we can transport live plants?"

  "It’s only about five days to Onipas. We can keep them in here. They should be fine."

  "Good idea, Dace." He put the list in a pocket under his garish robe. "You should see the bazaar here," he said to Jasyn. "We can pick up some spec goods while we check on the plants."

  "I’d like to, Clark, but won’t they arrest me if I walk off the ship?" Jasyn sounded as sarcastic as I felt.

  "You still have that robe?" Clark asked.

  Jasyn fetched the bedsheet thing and pulled it on. It shrouded her head to foot, leaving only a small opening for her to look through. Jerimon rolled his eyes.

  "Shall we go?" Clark asked Jasyn.

  "Maybe Dace should go," Jasyn offered.

  I shook my head. "Not only would I feel stupid, I’d probably trip over it. Or cause some other problem." I wasn’t bored enough to wrap myself up in a sheet to parade around in the hot afternoon.

  "Then we’ll see you later," Jasyn said. She and Clark left.

  I watched the hatch close and wondered if I was being too touchy.

  "Finally alone with you. Again." Jerimon leaned on the galley counter eating Jasyn’s latest cookies.

  "In your dreams, Jerimon."

  "Every night, Dace."

  "If you try to kiss me, I’m going to give you a set of black eyes."

  "I had something else in mind." He had the nerve to smile. "How about a game of cards? Since I know you don’t like Crystals."

  "What are the stakes?"

  He pulled out a deck from a drawer. "Loser has to answer any question the winner asks."

  "What if I don’t want to ask you anything?"

  "Then loser does the dishes tonight."

  "Play for points, then." I fetched a sheet of paper and a stylus to keep score.

  He took a seat at the table and dealt out the cards. I picked up my hand and sorted the cards. It was a horrible hand. I lost that round. I counted up the points and was about to write them down when Jerimon reached across the table and stopped me.

  "I’d rather ask you a question."

  I made the mistake of looking at him. His eyes were too blue, too easy to get lost in. "I don’t want to answer anything."

  "Why do you keep running away from me?"

  "Because you scare me." I shuffled the cards.

  He shifted his hand to my arm. "I scare you? How?"

  "Just drop it." I tried to shake his hand off.

  "What does Tayvis have that I don’t? Answer me that."

  "For one thing, he doesn’t follow me around annoying me."

  "He’s Patrol, to his core. He won’t ever leave it. Even for you."

  "You’d be surprised what he’ll do. And I don’t want to talk about him. Especially not with you." I started to deal out the cards.

  "You really love him?"

  "That’s none of your business." I slapped cards onto the table.

  "Can you give me a chance? I’ve changed. A lot more than I ever thought I would."

  "You’re still annoying." I picked up my cards.

  "And you’re sti
ll evading my questions."

  "Are you playing or not?" I snapped a card on the table, face up.

  He pulled a card out of his hand and dropped it on mine without even looking at it.

  "You sure you want to play that?"

  "I’d rather you give me a straight answer."

  I slapped another card down. He matched it, again without even looking. I gave up and dropped my hand on the table. My cards scattered.

  "Straight answer," I said. "About you?"

  He waited, still holding his hand of cards. He was serious, no grin or smirk on his face. And he was even better looking. Maybe he had grown up since I’d seen him last. His eyes were more shadowed than before. He’d lost his sense that nothing could really hurt him or those he cared about. Or maybe he’d just gotten smarter while he was scrubbing toilets.

  "Jerimon. . ."

  "You’re being evasive."

  "Maybe because I don’t know anything for certain. Not about you. Not about Tayvis. Maybe because I don’t want to make decisions like this."

  "So I still have a slight chance?" He gave me a smile that could have melted glaciers.

  "You are impossible." I flipped the cards at him.

  He shuffled the deck. "Now to play for points."

  "I don’t believe you."

  He picked up his hand and sorted it. "Eight. Beat that." He laid his card down.

  I slapped on a ten.

  He grinned and played two cards side by side. "Double comet."

  He had me flustered. I couldn’t concentrate. I missed five combinations that would have won the hand. I ended up losing by fourteen points.

  "You cheated." I gathered the cards and examined the backs. "Are these marked?"

  "Would I admit it if they were?" He grinned. My heart skipped a beat. "They aren’t, for your information."

  Every time he looked at me, I had to look away. How could I possibly be feeling this way? How could I think I might be in love with two men at the same time? I flipped the cards together and dealt another hand.

  I lost miserably. And again. By the time Jasyn and Clark came back I was down over five hundred points. Jerimon grinned like a lunatic. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was reading my thoughts. Maybe they were that obvious on my face. Jasyn gave me a very strange look as she took off the sheet.

  Clark was oblivious. He grinned as he spread their purchases over the top of our card game.

  "I got the plants arranged. Look at this," he announced, showing me an intricately beaded collar with matching bracelets and several other sets of the same kind of jewelry, each one unique in pattern. All of them were very complicated and very well made.

  "I’ve got an idea," Clark said. "We’ve still got all that jewelry in the small hold, right?" He barely waited for my nod. "You remember that fluttery necklace you got on Shamustel? The one you gave Jasyn? We work our way there, collecting jewelry. Then we buy up as many of those necklaces as we can afford. We head inwards through Cygnus Sector. I have a friend whose cousin owns a shop in a tourist villa on Typoll, not too much farther in than Kiju. He’s always looking for unique things."

  "And the trade through Cygnus Sector was pretty good," Jasyn put in.

  They both looked at me, waiting for my decision. The last time we’d tried Cygnus Sector, I’d been kidnapped, mistaken for a wealthy businessman’s daughter.

  "We’ll try it." I would have to face my nightmares sooner or later.

  "One of these days," Jerimon said to me, "you’re going to have to tell me what you’ve been up to." He turned to Clark. "If you’re going for jewelry, we could always go pick up a few skystones."

  "You know where to get skystones?" Clark asked, surprised.

  "It isn’t worth the risk, Jerimon," I said. "Last time we barely escaped with our lives."

  "But this time—"

  "There isn’t going to be a ‘this time’ so just forget it."

  "Sounds like a fascinating story is behind that," Clark said.

  "The Sessimoniss control the skystone trade," Jerimon said. "Dace was their high priestess."

  "Pull the other leg, Jerimon," Clark said. He looked at the three of us for a minute. "Tell me it isn’t true, Jasyn."

  "It is," she said. "Before we hired you. Before we bought this ship. Where do you think we got the money to finance it?"

  "Lady Rina?"

  "It was for less than two weeks," I said, "if you count the travel time."

  "No wonder Lowell hired me to keep an eye on you," Clark said.

  Jerimon jumped and looked guilty.

  I glared at him. "Early release? How much is Lowell paying you?"

  "It isn’t what you think, Dace," he protested. "I’m not working for Lowell or the Patrol. Cross my heart and promise."

  "I don’t believe you, Jerimon. And I’m not going to no matter what you say."

  "Has anyone ever told you you’re paranoid?" Jasyn said to me.

  "If it keeps me alive and free," I said.

  "Can we please discuss trade?" Clark asked.

  Chapter 7

  I didn’t trust Jerimon, doubly so now. His sentence had been seven years. He was out after barely one. That didn’t make sense, unless he’d worked a deal to get out earlier. I’d bet my whole ship that he was being paid by someone, most likely Lowell.

  It didn’t seem to matter to Jasyn or Clark. I finally decided it didn’t really matter to me. As long as Jerimon kept his distance from me, I could ignore him. It was when he got too close that I had problems. I was very attracted to him, and I didn’t want to be.

  We went to bed after Clark drew up a list of possible destinations. We would swing out to Onipas and on to Hegate. Then we turned inwards to Shamustel and possibly Kimmel and Ytirus. From there it was a short jump to Cygnus, and finally Typoll.

  Ghost was asleep on my bunk when I finally turned in. She glared when I shifted her so I could lie down.

  Morning came, as it normally does on a planet. Clark headed out to load the cargo he’d signed for. I borrowed Jerimon long enough to repair the stabilizer. I sent him out to calibrate it while I ran the checks inside. Jasyn made a cake then started painting again. Her fish looked more realistic the longer she worked.

  Ghost and I spent a while chasing strings until the gray cat had enough. She jumped up on the top bunk in the end cabin and washed herself.

  Clark came in midmorning and announced that Jasyn and I needed to hide for a while. The plants he’d found were being delivered and unless we wanted to wear the bedsheet robe, we had to be out of sight. I made a face but went into my cabin without a fuss. Jasyn came with me.

  She rounded on me as soon as the door slid shut. "What’s going on between you and Jerimon?"

  "Nothing. He’s still convinced he’s in love with me."

  "And you’re encouraging him."

  "No, I’m trying to keep him as far away as possible." I wasn’t succeeding very well.

  "What about Tayvis?"

  "What about him?"

  "Dace, don’t lead Jerimon on. Don’t tease him." She was fully into protective older sister mode, the role he’d kept her in for years.

  "He’s the one doing the chasing. Oh, forget it." She wasn’t going to listen.

  "He thinks he has a chance of convincing you to forget Tayvis. Why? What were you up to while we were gone yesterday?"

  "We played cards. I lost."

  "That isn’t like you. Not cards." She sat on my bunk, moving Ghost aside. The cat stretched and jumped down, pretending it was her idea to leave anyway. "You want to tell me what’s really going on in your head?"

  "I would if I knew."

  She waited. We heard Clark faintly through the door, telling someone to be more careful.

  "I could actually like your brother, as a friend, if he weren’t so—" I hunted for the word I wanted to describe him. "Pushy."

  "Do you want me to talk to him?"

  "Will it do any good?"

  "Probably not."

&
nbsp; "Then don’t bother. I’ll deal with him." I ran my hand through my hair. "It would be easier if I didn’t find him so attractive."

  "Just keep thinking about Tayvis."

  "That’s almost worse." Whenever I thought about him, I was reminded of the big aching lonely hole where my heart was. Life had been a lot easier when I was alone and determined to stay that way. It had also been a lot emptier.

  She pulled me down next to her on the bunk. "I’d like to say it gets easier, but it doesn’t." She cocked her head to one side. "Did I ever tell you about San?"

  "Who?"

  "Give me your foot." She held up her cosmetics bag. "What color do you want your nails?"

  "I don’t want them any color."

  "You have other pressing plans right now?"

  I gave in. She handed me a file for my fingernails, instructing me to try to remove the grease while she did my toenails.

  And then she told me the story of San. He was her first true love. He’d been a lot older, a pilot for a courier who looked very good in his uniform. Jasyn thought she was completely in love with him. It hurt when she found out about his seven other girlfriends, and that had only been the ones on Rithos. She said she could laugh about it now, but I heard the hurt still in her voice.

  I ended up with peach fingernails and bright red toenails. It wasn’t until we finally finished that we realized things had been very quiet for a long time.

  "Do you think they’re done?" I was hungry. It was past lunch time.

  "Clark would have told us." She frowned at the closed door. "You think something’s wrong?"

  "Isn’t it usually?" I padded across the floor and opened the door.

  The lounge was completely transformed. Plants covered every flat surface, including the floor, except for one narrow aisle to walk along. The regular ship lights had been augmented with banks of special fixtures.

  "Wow," Jasyn said behind me.

  The greenery included a wide variety of plants, from large bushy shrubs to flats of starts. Some of them were in bloom, splashes of bright colors gleamed unexpectedly from the green. The air smelled good, like a forest after it rains when everything is growing and bursting with life. Ghost sauntered out of my cabin and disappeared into the artificial jungle.