Whatever information my father now knew about Sully and myself only pushed me even farther out, if that was indeed possible.
And if Thad was in Tage’s camp, then it was very possible Lars knew it all.
I had seen my father as Thad’s salvation. I never suspected that I’d be sacrificed to the cause.
A hand gently caressed my shoulder. A warmth spiraled through me. Sully standing next to me, feeling my pain, wanting me to know I was loved. I reached up and threaded my fingers through his.
“If Tage and Burke didn’t know that Sullivan was a Ragkiril before,” Philip continued, “they’ll know now. I think that’s a given. I think it’s also a given that this will alter how they’ll deal with you, both of you.
“I’ll repeat what I said three months ago: Chaz is safer with me, even though I’m no innocent in this mess. But I’m a Guthrie. Tage will have to tread carefully around that fact. What you are, Sullivan, will not make them fear you. It will make them hunt you.” He leaned back in his chair. “The Loviti has legitimate business on the A-B that will put us within a shipday’s range of Dock Five. We’re scheduled for a meetpoint at Raft Thirty in about six shipdays. Meet me there, let Chaz transfer to my ship. At least until the Admirals’ Council can do something about the information you gave me about Burke’s jukor labs.”
Philip held up one hand. “Don’t say no, yet. Think about it. Raft Thirty. Until then, for God’s sake, be careful. I am. Tage has a lot of power and Burke has a reputation for playing hard and dirty. You know how to reach me if you need me.”
The screen blanked. I half-turned in my chair to glance at Sully and caught a flash of something that looked like anguish on his face. Then it was gone. A light warmth still trickled through my senses, but he’d pulled back.
A sigh of exasperation blew through his lips. “This is not good news.”
“I never thought Thad would do something like that.”
“I should have.” His voice was bitter, thick with blame.
“Sully—”
He waved away my comment before I could make it. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t omniscient.
He stepped away from the desk.
“Sully.”
Hush, Chasidah. Let me think. He paced to the outer bulkhead wall and stared out the viewport, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders stiff. I didn’t need any kind of mental connection to guess at what was whirling through his mind: the rejection by his crew, his contacts, possibly even Drogue if his Ragkiril talents were revealed. No, not if. When.
“If we have to,” I said softly, “Verno, Ren, and I can run the Karn.”
He turned, then leaned back against the wall. “The problem is larger than that. People on the rim—people who work outside the Empire’s laws, as I have—don’t trust easily. It’s taken me years to develop contacts like Pops, Junior, and Newlin. Like Nathaniel Milo.” He dropped his gaze, staring at the carpet for a long moment. Captain Nathaniel Milo’s Diligent Keeper was supposed to be my ticket off Moabar, but Milo was killed by Ministry of Corrections officers, tipped off the ship was going to be used in a prison break. Not mine—Sheldon Blaine’s. The MOC would never have taken such aggressive action over mere Captain Chasidah Bergren.
The false lead had come from Burke’s people, of that we were fairly sure. But even though it was false, Milo had died because of us. That had affected Sully deeply. And, judging from the tight line of his mouth, it still did.
“If my damned crew doesn’t mutiny on me,” he said, raising his gaze back to mine, “then the dockhands on the rafts or Narfial will sell me out because they’ll believe I manipulated them.”
I thought of the money he’d won playing cards with Junior on Dock Five. Stolorths were banned from Imperial casinos for that reason.
“Does Drogue know you’re—?”
“I doubt he’d offer sanctuary, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I was and he wasn’t reading my thoughts. He shut himself off from me again, his usual reaction when he was hurt or angry.
“Drogue doesn’t know,” he continued, “and while professionally he’d accept what I am, personally it would destroy our friendship. Not just because of what I am but because I never told him.”
I knew that feeling. When I’d found out Sully was a Ragkiril, all I’d wanted was to put as much distance between him and myself as possible. And I wasn’t a follower of a religion that believed Kyi-Ragkirils were spawns of hell.
He straightened. “We’re going to have to push for Narfial now. If Tage releases that information about me, I don’t know if I’ll even be able to make dock there, let alone get this Del to talk.” Del was the name of our contact on Narfial. That was all we knew about him: a name. “We have to get there before Tage makes any kind of move.”
“Specs-plus-twenty?” Specs-plus-ten—the way Sully could push a ship to outperform even its design by 10 percent—was damned near Sully’s middle name. But I didn’t know if even the Karn could handle plus-twenty.
His mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “If I have to. But there are some gates out here at the C-D. Old smugglers’ routes. That might be better.”
I wasn’t sure. I’d heard the rumors: quick and deadly. The jumpgates traded safety for speed.
“All the more reason I’ll want you in the pilot’s chair and not Gregor when we use them,” Sully said when I voiced my objection. A brief flare of warmth, a sensation of confidence floated through me.
I appreciated Sully’s support, but it didn’t negate Gregor as a potential problem. “He’ll try to alert Nalby when we change course. And he’ll be expecting a response or new orders from them.” Which he wouldn’t get because we’d blocked his transmits. “Unless we wait until he’s asleep. He’ll be off shift in an hour.” Then he’d probably take a meal, spend some time in the gym. Or playing cards with Aubry in Dorsie’s galley. “Where will we be in four, five hours?”
Sully was already heading back to his desk. “Too far from the gate I want to use,” he said after a few moments of leaning over his deskcomp and tapping at it. Then he ran one hand through his short-cropped dark hair. “Okay,” he said, his tone suddenly grim. “I need him out of the picture.”
Something chilled in me at his words. I was Fleet, military. It wasn’t something I liked, but when it was necessary I’d taken lives in the line of duty. But knowing how Sully would do it—a zragkor, ripping Gregor’s mind apart—made my breath freeze in my lungs. Yes, Gregor had sold us out to the Farosians. But to cold-bloodedly murder him…Part of me still believed in a fair trial, even if I’d not been granted one.
“I’m not a murderer, Chasidah.” Sully’s voice was flat. “I’m just going to give him a bad case of stomach cramps. Or at least, make him think that’s what he has.”
Shame flooded me for jumping to conclusions. And for not realizing that he was linked to my thoughts. “Sully, I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” He turned quickly from me, emotions simmering around him, tainting the link between us with anger and pain. He slapped at the doorway palm-pad with more force than necessary and vanished into the corridor.
“Five minutes to hard edge, Captain Chasidah,” Verno said, working helm and sharing navigation with me.
“Five minutes,” I echoed, watching ship’s data on the pilot’s armrest console. Sully was at communications, muddying our signal in case the Farosians were interested, and monitoring long-and short-range scanners. Marsh worked engineering. Aubry and Ren were off duty. Gregor, last I heard, was passed out cold in his bunk after puking his guts out for almost an hour.
Dorsie had given him tea with a small dose of honeylace to make him feel better. At Sully’s suggestion, of course. We’d be a bit more than a shipday in jump. Gregor might be waking up just as we exited. If we exited.
I didn’t like the look of this gate or the jumpspace it configured at all. It looked slippery—a term I’d heard helms officers and navigators use since I was small
, denoting the fact that the gate beacon’s signals were diffuse and inconsistent. They “slipped” off the narrow, safe path ships needed to traverse the neverwhen. I’d programmed in two additional gate fixes—both Imperial—as emergency relocators. But there was no guarantee when we were in jumpspace that I’d still be able to receive their signals. That was another problem with being slippery. Communications’ signals were skewed.
“Hypers online,” Marsh said.
That, at least, looked good. Between Marsh and Aubry, the Karn’s sublight and jumpspace engines were as pristine as Philip Guthrie’s dress uniform.
But this gate…I watched signal strength and purity spike, flatten, and spike again. Shit. I retracted vanes and scanner dishes, aware of the low beeping sound from Sully’s station as communications went offline. I didn’t like this at all. It gave me sweaty palms, but I couldn’t afford to take my fingers off the console to wipe them down my pants leg.
And Sully…no, I didn’t need to think about Sully now. We hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything personal since he’d left the cabin an hour and a half ago to find Gregor. When he returned, he seemed to have shed his hurt feelings, but all we had time for was a crash course in slippery jumpgates. Crash course. God, why did I choose that word? One thing I did not need right now was a systems crash.
And one thing I did not have was an old entry record for the Karn for this gate. Sully had used a few of the older gates before, but never this one.
“Two minutes to hard edge.”
“Thanks, Verno.” The Karn was performing flawlessly, adjusting inertia and mass as it leeched on to the energies of the neverwhen. Then a little shimmy, something slightly out of phase. Shit!
Chaz?
Sully’s familiar warmth filled me.
I’ve got her, I sent back. It’s just not going to be pretty.
You’re the best, angel-mine. I’m here if you need me.
Think you can stabilize a gate in under ninety seconds? I tried to send a wisecracking smile along with my words but I was too busy to concentrate on that. Then, among the spikes and valleys of the signal, I thought I saw something I could use. Something the Karn could use.
And people said there was no value in pub-crawling with the old-timers.
Ships didn’t always have the sophisticated systems they do now. Starfaring was vastly more risky in the decades before I was born. “There’s always one part of a gate signal that screams the loudest,” I remembered a silver-haired freighter pilot telling us, her pilot’s braid longer than mine was now. Her name was Kimber An, and she was something of a legend around the pubs on Marker 3, for both her stories and her drinking skills. “Don’t matter it’s whipping around like a polecat’s ass end. Grab it. It’ll pull you through.”
The Karn wanted a nice consistent signal. I keyed in some quick reconfigurations, taking that choice away from her. And locked her onto the strongest one.
We lurched through the gate. That’s probably the kindest way of putting it. Shuddering, shimmying, ship’s stats inching uncomfortably toward the red zone, we skittered through. No alarms wailed, though. Nothing sheared, broke, or hissed out coolant. It was not the most elegant of gate entries, but we made it.
One saving grace: the gate’s inconsistent signal wash would eradicate any ion trail we left behind. If the Farosians were looking for us, they’d not know where we went.
Then five minutes later: “Communications temporarily offline,” Sully announced.
“How temporarily?” Marsh asked. He’d been through older gates before.
“I’ll have to wait until gate-exit to collect my Baris Cup winnings,” Sully replied.
Or to have any idea of what Tage and Burke were doing. There’d be no updates from Philip or Drogue, no clue as to what Thad may have told Tage.
“Optimist,” Marsh shot back, grinning.
There was that. For the next shipday, the crew would have no idea that the man they were traveling with and had sworn allegiance to was a human Kyi-Ragkiril. It bought Sully a little more time, but in truth only delayed the inevitable.
Sully stopped by my chair on his way off the bridge, brushing the top of my head with a kiss. He’d shut off our mental link when I’d been concentrating on getting us through the gate and hadn’t reinstated it, so I could only read his thoughts as I would any other person’s. He was no longer upset by my rush to judgment earlier, but there was still an element of hurt. His mental silence told me that much.
He was also worried about how and when Thad’s revelations would be released. I didn’t need a mental link with him to know that. And it was something I knew I’d have to force him to face before we left jumpspace. Even if it meant angering him again.
But I had work to do. This was my duty shift, and the slippery space around me didn’t make it an easy one. The Karn wasn’t used to such inconsistent conditions. Sometimes being too high-tech could come back and bite you in the ass.
I voiced my concerns about her performance with older gates after Sully left the bridge.
“Used ’em two, three times in the past couple of years,” Marsh said. “We never liked using the smugglers’ routes unless we had no choice. But like Sully said, we’re not going to get a second chance at this information if they get to this guy before we do.”
That was our stated reason for the change in plans: a threat against Del, our informant. The meeting had been moved up. Which was partly true. Only Sully was the one doing the moving.
At two hours in, I logged off for a break. Verno, who logged off shortly after Sully left, came back on. Leaving the Karn in Marsh’s and Verno’s capable hands, I headed for the corridor seeking not Sully but Ren.
No one knew Sully better than Ren did. Sully had at one time been Ren’s tutor. Lately I’d begun to wonder if the student wasn’t wiser than the teacher.
Ship’s locator system showed Sully logged into the gym and Ren in the galley. He’d been slowly rebuilding his friendship with Dorsie. It had almost collapsed due to his part in the deception Sully had pulled months ago. If Ren and Dorsie were playing cards or just chatting, I’d get a cup of tea and go back to my cabin and try him again on my next break.
I found Ren in the storeroom off the galley’s main room, talking to Dorsie. Their voices were light, amiable. I almost turned around and left, but Dorsie saw me and waved me in.
“We just finished up inventory,” she said. “Can I get you something, Captain?”
She sashayed past Ren. Dorsie was a short, plump, dark-haired woman with sparkling eyes, an infectious laugh, and a perpetual mischievous swing to her hips. There was a strong resemblance to her nephew, Marsh, in the tilt of her eyes and the wideness of her mouth, but her skin tone was lighter than Marsh’s nut brown. And Marsh with his crooked nose and scarred left eyebrow could at times look foreboding. Dorsie was just pretty.
Not that Ren could actually see that. He read a person’s rainbows: thermal energy fields all sentients emitted. I imagined Dorsie’s rainbows danced. I know Ren liked her a lot.
“Just taking a break. I thought if Ren wasn’t busy, I’d borrow his copy of the Eternity Six concert. But I can pester him for it later.”
A light warmth trickled through me, ending with a question mark. The tall, elegant Stolorth leaning against the storage cage hadn’t moved, nor had his slightly bemused expression changed. His six-fingered hands were clasped before him. But his question and concern drifted over me like mist carried on a summer breeze.
“Now is an excellent time,” he said. “I fear Dorsie was about to have me start peeling vegetables.”
“You do want srorfralak pie, don’t you?” Dorsie planted her hands on her hips, but she was grinning.
“When you bake it, it is a true nectar of the gods,” Ren replied.
“Damned straight it is.”
“I can get the music later—”
“The vegetables are still soaking,” Dorsie said, jerking her chin toward the main galley. “Won’t be ready fo
r peeling for another half hour yet.”
Ren pushed away from the storage cage then stopped in front of Dorsie and executed a flowing bow. “Then I shall return to do your bidding shortly.”
“Just don’t run off and play cards with that scoundrel Sully,” she warned in mock sternness.
Ren arched one eyebrow. “My dear friend Dorsie, you know that when it comes to gambling or srorfralak pie, your pie wins every time.”
“Twenty to one?” Dorsie quipped. “Off with you. Be back in a half hour. If the pie’s not right, then Verno can blame you, not me.”
Dorsie’s pies were nothing less than perfect. Although the Takan vegetable delicacy wasn’t my favorite, both Verno and Ren were enraptured by it.
“My quarters?” Ren asked when we were in the corridor and out of Dorsie’s hearing. He knew very well I didn’t want his copy of the concert. I had my own.
“Please.”
We took the narrow ladderway up one deck in silence.
“You heard that Thad has probably told Tage everything?” I asked when Ren’s cabin door closed behind me.
With a sigh, Ren nodded, then sank down on the arm of his sofa. “I fear there are some very unpleasant times ahead for Sully.”
“Has he discussed with you what he plans to do?”
“Chasidah, these are things—”
“That I should be asking him?” God, how many times had Ren and I gone back and forth, only to end up at this same point? “I try, Ren. And he is opening up to me a lot more. But there are still things he holds back. Things he won’t discuss. I can feel this tension, this fear in him. Then I can’t get through. But you’re like him. He doesn’t have to explain to you what it means to be a Ragkiril. What it means to be feared or scorned. He feels he has to with me. I know that’s a big part of the problem.”
Ren’s silver-eyed gaze studied me for a long moment. “I’ll try to get him to talk to you,” he said finally.
Shades of Dark Page 6
