Shades of Dark

by Linnea Sinclair

  He drew in a deep breath. “If the problem is me, then I’m not coming back to this ship. Not right away,” he added when I sat up straighter, startled by his words. “Maybe not for…a while. I’ve left instructions in our cabin, Chaz. What to do, whom to trust, all my financial data. It’s there. It’s all yours.” He paused. “The crew trusts you, respects you.”

  The finality in his voice scared me, and I realized he hadn’t gone to play cards with Ren at all. He’d been planning his funeral.

  “I’m not leaving you on Narfial,” I said firmly.

  “You may not have a choice.” His tone matched mine.

  “Sully—”

  “I can handle myself. I can’t handle myself and watch after you.”

  “I didn’t rise to the rank of captain because I look good in uniform,” I shot back. “I’m capable of watching out for myself.”

  A smile twisted his lips. “You look damned good in uniform. Even better out of it.”

  “Damn you, Sullivan!”

  “You’re forty years late on that.”

  “Children.” Ren drummed five of his six fingers on the table. “Behave.”

  Sully leaned across the chair between us again, grabbing for me. I made a fist. He brushed a wet, sloppy kiss across my knuckles. “We can wrestle over this later,” he said, his eyes dark.

  “I don’t like this defeatist attitude that keeps cropping up,” I told him, pulling my hand out of his grasp. “Or the way you try to trivialize it.”

  “I don’t like it either.” His expression sobered. “But things are coming fast and hard at me right now. I’d be an idiot not to face that. I’ll also lose my mind—more than I already have—if I can’t somehow make light of it.”

  This time I was the one letting out a sigh of exasperation. “I know. I understand.” I did. “It’s just that—”

  “We’re not Fleet? There’s a comfort in protocols. We lack that here.”

  “Sully’s not used to having anyone worry about him,” Ren put in.

  “There’s that too,” Sully admitted. He arched one eyebrow as he glanced at Ren. “When did you get so wise?”

  He was at it again. Sidestepping what I wanted to discuss, glossing it over with a wry remark. No, Gabriel Sullivan was not remotely Fleet, and that was part of the problem. I may be his captain, his lover. His best interfering bitch, as he’d often named me. But he took others’ counsel only when it suited him.

  What had he admitted to me when he’d pulled me off Moabar? That his best advisers had voted against the action. He’d come after me anyway.

  A shrill pinging interrupted Ren’s rejoinder. Sully spun back to the deskscreen. “Beacon,” he announced, then launched the commands to grab the news banks, updated nav advisories, and anything else residing in the beacon’s systems at that moment.

  I waited, forcing myself to breathe. What information would Darius Tage release? Everything Thad told him, or would he hold some back, waiting to see if Sully responded? Had Tage even believed Thad? Oh, by the way, my sister’s run off with a human mind-fucker wasn’t something most people would accept without proof.

  But Tage could get the proof. The Guthries had it. And they moved in the same circles, professionally and personally.

  I hoped Tage hadn’t believed Thad. People in lockup, especially under threat of treason, could say a lot of things to get released. I hoped Tage would take a very long time obtaining that proof…long enough for us to meet with Del on Narfial, long enough for us to pick up the trail of the lab ship, long enough for us to destroy it. To reveal Tage’s part. To give control back to the Admirals’ Council. To stop the stranglehold on the rim worlds.

  “Data’s in.” Sully pursed his mouth. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  He brought up news headlines first, linking the list to my deskscreen. They were sorted alphabetically, with small abstracts as the only clue to content. He reset the parameters to a chronological listing, oldest first, as I watched, and I was aware, for the first time, of Ren seeing everything through Sully’s eyes. I’d known they’d done this before but had never been party to it until now.

  Does it disconcert you, Chasidah? That was Ren, a soft whisper in my mind. His connection to me was through Sully.

  Not at all. It was simply a new sensation. I tried to send rainbow-flavored warmth and received some in return.

  The headlines sorted. Sully scrolled right past the sports scores but stopped briefly at a headline about riots at a depot in the Walker Colonies. Food and medical supply shortages. Three dead, seven injured. He tagged it for later perusal.

  Two more similar abstracts were tagged, the last one boldly proclaiming “Emperor Prewitt Has Lost Control” with a subheading of “Admirals’ Council and Imperial Legislature Set Special Sessions.” And I remembered what Philip had told his then first officer, Jodey Bralford, right after the incident in Marker: “It’s started.”

  It had. Tage and his Legalists—of which Burke was one—were vying for control against the Admirals’ Council. Tage wanted to remove the Council’s autonomy, have them wholly under the emperor’s—and his—command. But then there would be no checks and balances. Only the emperor and, in Prew’s current distracted state, that meant only Tage and his chosen few making decisions.

  Then we were at the end of the list. Sully’s twinge of surprise matched my own. Nothing about Thad. Nothing about renegade mercenary Gabriel Sullivan being, in fact, a mutant monster.

  “I don’t know if that’s bad or good news, or I missed something,” Sully murmured.

  “Name search,” I said. “Yours and Thad’s. Hell, throw in Tage’s. He might not be revealing identities yet.” Especially as the Legislature was set for special session. The media coverage there would guarantee a wide audience.

  A few minutes later Sully, looking a lot more relaxed, leaned back in his chair. There was nothing in the news banks to date mentioning Thad or Sully.

  “So he’s waiting,” I said.

  “Or perhaps your brother hasn’t told him what we feared he would,” Ren said. “Admiral Guthrie only said that your father would make sure Commander Bergren was cooperating. We made the inference that meant he would tell what he knew about Sully. We may be wrong.”

  I prayed Ren was right.

  I managed to catch a few hours’ sleep. I think Sully slept as well, but I couldn’t be sure. We’d not hit another data beacon until we were on the outer perimeter of Narfial Traffic Control. All incoming communications were locked down due to an “internal system calibration reset,” as Sully told the crew on intraship, promising things would be back to normal by the time we made dock.

  “What in hell is a calibration reset?” I’d asked him when he closed the link.

  He’d shrugged elegantly. “Damned if I know. Which means they don’t either. It buys us a couple hours.”

  But when I woke he was gone, his side of the bed cool enough that I judged he’d been out of it for a while.

  I pulled on a pair of clean black pants and tried to “think” his location. Ky’sara or not, I’d yet to devise a workable methodology of mentally finding him. Sensing nothing, I tossed a long-sleeved, V-necked gray shirt on the unmade bed, ducked into the lavatory to wash my face and brush my hair, and when I came out found our quarters as empty as I’d left them.

  Except for an angel of heart-stars playing card tucked under a corner of the light on my bedside table. One of Sully’s unique love notes. Had he been in while I washed up? No. I’d not closed the door. I would have seen or heard him. I must have missed it in my just-waking grogginess.

  I picked up the card. Warmth suddenly traveled up my arm, sheathing me. It was as if he were here in the room. I spun, waiting for him to pop up from behind the couch, grinning like the handsome devil he was.

  Nothing.

  I looked at the card. It didn’t seem in any way unusual yet it carried “Essence of Sully”—or maybe “Essence of Gabriel”?—as clearly as the heady, distinctive scent of
an expensive perfume.

  He’d never done that before, imbued an inanimate object with a sensory presence. At least, not that I knew of. I thought of the bright, sparkling, much stronger Kyi energies flowing over him hours ago. Was this part of that energy?

  I tucked the card in my pants pocket and finished dressing, thinking of a cup of tea and a baked bright-apple from Dorsie’s galley. Or maybe a slice of cold srorfralak pie, if Verno and Ren hadn’t finished it off. The Takan vegetables, pungent when hot, were pleasantly sweet when cold.

  I pulled the coverlet up over the bed linens, fluffed the pillows, and stepped into the main salon. A roiling wave of emotion hit me. Then pain. I staggered against the couch, my breath catching, my head spinning with sounds, images, smells.

  Anger. Hatred. Death.

  Sully. Sully!

  No answer.

  I grabbed my laser pistol and holster from the wall peg by the door, smacked the palm pad, and bolted into the corridor.

  I pounded down the stairway to the lower deck, toward the small shuttle-and-cargo bay, wrenching the holster’s belt around my hips as I went. I followed the blaze of emotions unerringly, as if it were a fix for a jumpgate beacon and I was the best damned nav system in the universe. I knew where Sully was, though it wasn’t conscious knowledge.

  It was instinct, and something beyond instinct. Beyond rational thought and explanation.

  I slapped the palm pad on the right of the bay’s wide double doors then stepped sideways, dropping my hand to the pistol before I moved forward again. My right shoulder slammed against the doors when they didn’t open. Locked. Fuck! Holster pistol. Hit palm pad again. Hit icon for voice commands. “Bergen, Chasidah. Emergency override.”

  “Retinal scan required,” the Karn answered softly, in that unknown female voice that still irked the shit out of me.

  I tilted my head back and stared at the recessed scanner. “Open the goddamed doors,” I spat out between clenched lips.

  I lunged to the right as the doors opened. Never stand in an open doorway in the line of fire. This time when I pushed forward, I kept going, no locked door stopping me.

  The bay’s overheads were dimmed, the main flood-light over the shuttle off. The shuttle itself was a dark void limned by workstation lights set into the bulkhead. Grunts, thuds, and curses filled my ears. The sound of flesh hitting flesh, the hard thump of something hitting a bulkhead. Then a crash. It sounded like a toolbox hitting the floor, breaking open, wrenches and bolt cutters scattering, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Heart pounding, I ran for the shuttle. The noises were coming from the other side. I held my laser, set on stun, tightly against me. With one flick of a finger it would be set to kill, but I didn’t know what was going on. Stun made it easier to ask questions later.

  I felt Sully before I saw him—felt pain, felt anger. Our verbal link was closed. I couldn’t hear his thoughts. I could just feel him. And going on feel, I crouched down and skirted around the shuttle’s wide stern.

  A blur of movement met my gaze through the slanted glare of the workstation lights. Three figures. Sully. Gregor. Aubry. Sully had Gregor by the throat, pinning him against the shuttle. Aubry was swinging a long wrench, aiming for Sully’s head.

  “Drop it!” I took a firing stance, arms locked. “I’ll fry your fucking brains, Aubry. Drop it! Now!”

  Aubry’s arms jerked, his movement faltering. He half-turned, half-tripped backward, but he didn’t let go of the wrench. I fired. He was only about ten feet from me. The charge hit him in the shoulder because he was still moving, teeth bared, eyes narrowed.

  Those same eyes blanked and he dropped like a crate of unsecured cargo when gravity kicks on.

  Gregor’s eyes were wide. Sully still had him pinned against the shuttle with one hand. I sprinted forward and only then saw the blood dripping down the side of Sully’s face and matting his hair.

  “Chaz,” he said, his voice noticeably strained. “How nice to see you.”

  “Sully? You okay?”

  “I’ve been better.” He wiped some blood out of his eyes then pointed to his captive. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a little walk. Look what I found.”

  Gregor made a gurgling noise.

  I glanced down at Aubry. Still out. Should be for at least another ten minutes. I stepped over him, keeping my gun trained on Gregor. “What do you need me to do?” I asked Sully.

  “I should probably ask you to fry his fucking brains, but I won’t. Can you reach Verno? We might need help getting these two to the brig.”

  In spite of the fact that he should be dead, Sully refused to let Ren and me take him to sick bay and instead chose to collapse on the couch in our quarters, booted feet splayed on the low table, head angled back, eyes closed. His breathing was slow and labored, his skin clammy. The medistat in my hand beeped and trilled as readings raced uselessly across its screen in a nonsensical pattern.

  The medistat had no settings for a Kyi-Ragkiril in healing mode.

  I shut it off and sank down onto the couch next to him.

  He’d been beaten, bludgeoned by a wrench, and shot. The last had been a grazing wound, charring a small area of skin on his left side about the size of my palm. It would have put me in sick bay for a full shipday or two, with med-broches pumping in painkillers and anti-infection agents. His wound was almost healed.

  The concussion and ruptured spleen were taking a little longer.

  He opened one bruised eye and peered at Ren, who was sitting nervously on the edge of the cushioned chair next to the couch, hands clasped tightly together. “Last time we go on a drinking binge, eh?” Sully rasped.

  “It was foolish,” Ren said. No rushing waters in his voice. It was muted, parched. “I should have known better. Discomfort or not, it placed you at great risk.”

  The discomfort was the fact that Sully’s increasing abilities kept a restless energy surging through his body, an energy he’d not yet learned to control. Because he couldn’t, he’d taken to numbing it with honeylace. Lots of honeylace. More than I’d realized.

  This time, Ren had joined him. An hour later Ren was numb and falling asleep while Sully was wide awake and, in his own words, unable to stop the tiny explosions ricocheting around in his body. He’d almost returned to our quarters to wake me—lovemaking was a kind of explosion he enjoyed—but he knew how little sleep I’d had in the past few days. So he did what Sully usually did when he was nervous. He paced. And he paced right into Gregor about to abscond with not only the Karn’s only shuttle, but a large amount of information on Sully and this ship as well.

  He had no idea Aubry was in the bay too, until the short man hit him on the side of the head with a wrench.

  That’s when Gregor shot Sully. And Sully found out that he’d ingested just enough honeylace that most of his Kyi-Ragkiril defensive talents were essentially offline. He couldn’t manipulate energy fields, he couldn’t levitate, he couldn’t create ghostly apparitions to threaten his attackers, and he couldn’t sway his attackers with his mind. He was still stronger and faster than a normal human but he bled and burned like one too.

  He’d even tried to link to Ren and me and failed.

  “When you showed up,” he said, wincing as he turned his face toward me, “I thought I was either hallucinating from the pain or I’d finally managed to shift some of the Kyi energy to make it appear help had arrived. Although honestly I think I would have manifested Verno, not you, angel. No offense.” His mouth quirked slightly.

  “How did you know it was really me?”

  The twist of his lips turned into a grin. “No one threatens to fry someone’s fucking brains quite like you do.”

  “I should fry yours,” I murmured.

  “It occurred to me you might feel that way.” His voice rasped again and he coughed. “Is that why you were wandering around the lower deck, armed?”

  “I wasn’t wandering. I felt you either get hit or shot. I just followed the pain.”

  This time he frowned. “Yo
u shouldn’t have been able to do that.” He shifted slightly, glancing at Ren for confirmation, and I felt the mental questioning nudge flow between them.

  “The ky’saran link may run deeper than you realize,” Ren said after a moment.

  “You said it’s also a life link,” I reminded him. “If your life was threatened, I’d know.”

  “Knowing I’m injured is not the same as knowing where I am.”

  Ren shrugged. “There are only so many places you could be on this ship.”

  “No.” I looked from Ren back to Sully. “I knew exactly where you were. And I knew you were in trouble, and that I needed to be armed.”

  “You’re not supposed to—” Sully huffed out a short sigh, but if it was frustration or pain, or both, I didn’t know. “Everything I’ve read about nullifying a ky’saran link shows honeylace, or some agent like that, to be an effective barrier.”

  “Likely its effects were wearing off,” Ren said.

  Sully didn’t comment. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the cushion again.

  And then I realized what he’d said—everything I’ve read about nullifying a ky’saran link—and something tightened in my chest. A few hours ago, I’d thought he was planning his funeral. Now it sounded more like a divorce. But he couldn’t divorce me. We weren’t even married.

  Looking to get rid of me, Sullivan?

  I let the question hang in my mind. I had no idea if he was reading me or not.

  Suddenly something heated against my thigh. My hand slid down, my fingers finding the outline of the playing card in my pocket. The one he’d left on my beside table.

  I love you beyond all measure, Chasidah. His voice in my mind was a husky whisper. The tightness in my chest began to abate. But I am concerned when I no longer know who or what I’m asking you to love in return.

  I brushed my hand down the side of his face. His skin was still chilled. “Try to sleep for at least an hour or two,” I told him. “Ren and I are going to take a look at what Gregor filched from our databanks.” And how Gregor was able to do it. “We’ll bring you up to date when you wake.”