“I needed to know who was behind it. Well, I wanted to know. The idiot in the bar was useless even before I snapped his neck. The programming on that hauler was highly detailed. There was no way to shut it down short of blowing it up. At least no way we could tell from the outside. Ghassil was my weapons expert. He thought he could find a way to disarm it. The rest you know.” Marli halted before the med lab doors, almost hesitant to go in.
“Maybe it’s not him?” Vas asked with a gentleness that even surprised her.
Marli flashed a sad grin, and then pushed open the lab doors. “I’d like to think that, but I can’t see how he could have gotten off of it. The ship picked up speed the day after he got onboard and I couldn’t catch up.”
Deven had already called Terel, so she had the decon room up and running. She was in a full safe suit on the inside, the blackened husk clearly on display.
Marli walked up to the window, and pressed one hand wide against the pane. She held it for a few seconds then turned back to them. “It’s him.”
Vas moved forward to get a look at the man who’d died trying to save her ship. Most of him was a blackened husk. Terel would be able to tell more after the autopsy, but his cause of death was destructive whatever way he died.
Terel was slowly peeling his uniform off, when a flash of fabric caught Vas’s eye. She tapped the glass to get Terel’s attention, and then finally found the room comm. “Hold up a second. What’s that patch?”
The man’s arm was mostly burned through, but his upper shoulder was relatively untouched. An elongated diamond symbol filled the fabric on most of his upper arm.
“Deven, look at his arm.” Vas pulled him forward, as Marli turned to look as well. The frown marking her lovely face indicated that the uniform wasn’t hers.
“That looks like the one on the vid.” Deven shook his head. “But that man was taller.”
“What man?” Marli turned back. “What is that? Ghassil left my ship wearing one of my uniforms. That’s not it.”
“Terel, can you bring in a scanner? Get as close to that patch as you can.”
She frowned at Vas. “It would be just as easy to take it off. I’m not going to autopsy his clothing.” With a small knife, Terel carefully removed the patch. “Let it go through a complete sonic cleansing. I still don’t know what he died of or what that weird air inside the ore ship was.”
“How long?” Vas could see something was going on between Deven and Marli. The brunette might have been telling the truth that she wasn’t a telepath, but she was communicating with Vas’s second-in-command somehow.
“Now.” A small ding came from the left of the windowpane, and a sealed packet popped out with the patch, newly purified, inside. Deven grabbed it and put it in one of his inner pockets.
“Wow, didn’t that take a few hours on the Victorious Dead?” Vas hated that this ship could do so much more, but the fact was, the flouncy thing was loaded.
Terel’s sigh said she didn’t like speaking ill of the Victorious Dead either. “Yes, it did. However, these systems are state of the art. Now do you three need anything else?”
Vas took the hint and started herding the other two toward the lift. “No. Just make sure to prepare the body for burial. He’ll be going back with his captain.”
Marli didn’t say anything, but she caught Vas’s eye and nodded her thanks.
Chapter Seventeen
Vas let Gosta stay in command until the next shift change. She also let Deven go say good-bye to his friend. Marli hadn’t been able to find the answers to any of her questions, so she decided to take her dead crewman home.
A light rap on her ready room door instead of the usual buzz pulled Vas out of her thoughts. She wasn’t one for introspection or deep study. One of the reasons that even though she liked science, she wasn’t very good at it. She preferred to go in, take charge, and blow up whoever or whatever needed to be blown up.
“Come in.”
She closed her computer screen when Deven entered. Along with pondering the pile of crap her life was becoming she had been looking for another merc job. Deven had suggested they wait until they knew more of what was going on.
Vas wanted a job to keep her mind off things.
“Interesting friend you have there.” Vas nodded toward the seat in front of her. As pissed as she still was at him for his actions of the night before, she couldn’t stay mad. Not with everything else in her life going to hell. He was the closest thing she had to a true confidant, even closer in some ways than Terel. She’d pocket away that anger at him until life became normal again.
Deven took the seat and leaned back into it with a sigh and closed his eyes. For the first time in the years she’d known him, he actually appeared tired.
“That’s one way to put it.” He kept his eyes closed.
“Want to tell me where you met her? Or why she knows about more dead race shit than even you do?”
Deven rubbed his forehead and temples with the heels of his hands. “I was afraid you might wonder about that.” After a pause he opened his eyes and leaned forward.
“I have to tell you something. Something that you may or may not believe and something that could get both of us killed instantly if it got out.” He studied her face, almost as if he was looking for answers. Or something else. Finally he made up his mind.
“Marliress is an Asarlaí.”
Vas burst out laughing before she noticed his face had gone still. “You’re kidding. Come on, Deven. Don’t mess with me right now. I have no idea what in the hell you are, because you won’t tell me. Nevertheless, you’ll tell me that your sweet little brunette friend is a member of an ancient super race? An ancient, dead, super race, I might add?” She reached into her desk drawer and grabbed a flask of Hydriang fire ale. Holding up her hand to stop him from speaking, she took a deep swig. The burn down her throat felt numbingly good. “Okay, explain.”
“This is serious, Vas. Marli is immortal. She’s been around for over ten thousand years.”
She studied his face for a few minutes, then sighed and took another long burning drag of her flask. Damn, half of it was gone already. She set it down carefully.
“I have had a month taken from me, my ship stolen, been poisoned, and people are dropping out of the sky in ships I sure as hell have never seen. I have mysterious fused bodies appearing in my hold. And Starchaser parts that will be a slow death for any of us if we’re caught with them.” She rose and stood in front of him, then grabbed his face with both hands, peering deep into those fathomless green eyes. “Do not add to my problems.”
“Vas—”
She shook his head. “No. Don’t do it. I seriously have no idea what is really going on with you and your friend. I’m thinking I don’t want to know.” She moved his head up and down in forced agreement with her, then let go and patted his cheek before making her way back to her chair. There was one happy point: the odd physical pull toward Deven was gone now. Her new sport of extreme drinking probably had something to do with it.
“I don’t want to know.” She drained the flask. Very odd, it used to hold so much more than that. “I think you should go do whatever it is you should be doing. Let Gosta keep us on course for wherever it is we have to drop Mac’s shit at.” She bent down to rummage through her desk for anything else flammable. Thank goodness she’d stocked her ready room when she first moved in. It was good to have priorities.
“You’re still here.” She popped her head back up from her rummaging and glared at Deven. Somehow in her searching she’d ended up on the floor. She narrowed her eyes. “I told you to stay away from me. Before was different, you had to be here. Now you don’t.”
“You’re getting drunk.” Deven scowled. “And you’re on the floor.”
“Yes, I am on the floor. And no, I am already drunk. No ‘getting’ involved.” She leaned against the wall behind her desk. “Except for you getting out of here. Now.”
****
Deven waited to see
if she would change her mind. When all she did was continue pulling on her new flask, he gave up and let himself out. Vas drank for entertainment, never out of some emotional need. At least she never had until now. He really hoped what happened the night before hadn’t compounded this new drinking binge. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he had been pulled in as much as her.
Shaking off his thoughts, he nodded toward the command chair. “Gosta, make sure no one bothers the captain when the shift changes. She’s still in there, but it won’t be pretty if someone disturbs her.”
“Aye, Deven. I’ll make sure the next watch understands.” Gosta unfolded himself out of the chair and caught Deven in two strides. “I thought you might want to know that your friend’s ship tagged us before she went to hyperspace. I took the liberty of ordering a team to go disengage the bug, but haven’t sent them out yet.”
What are you up to, Marli? That she was following them for altruistic reasons either now, or a few days ago when she put her crewman on that death ship didn’t even cross his mind. Marli was pure Asarlaí, regardless of how many decades she’d gone without seeing any of her kind. Asarlaí saw altruistic behavior as weak. Still, having her know where they were might come in handy.
“Wait on that.” Deven motioned Gosta closer. There were only two other crewmembers on deck right now, but a small crew spread gossip all the faster. “Keep an eye on it, and an eye out for her ship. I want to see what she’s up to. Just don’t let any of the others know, especially the captain.”
Gosta pulled back, and shook his head violently. “I can’t—”
“She’s under a lot of pressure right now. Trust me.” He glanced back to Vas’s ready room. “It’s for the best.”
Gosta’s face gave the most hints of his mixed heritage when stressed. Right now he looked like one of the long thin bugs his distant ancestors evolved from. He cast a furtive look at Vas’s ready room, and for a moment Deven feared he might have asked too much.
Taking a deep breath, Gosta turned back to face him. “Aye, Deven. Things have been weighing on her. She protects us. It’s right we protect her sometimes.” With a nod he strode back to the command chair and settled back in.
Deven allowed himself a sigh. Maybe breathing room and a few secrets were all he could do for Vas at this point, but he had to do something. Satisfied that Vas would stay undisturbed in her room—she sure as hell wasn’t coming out for a while on her own—he went to his ready room. He’d borrowed a high-end data scanner from Gosta, but hadn’t had a chance to look at the film they stole from the space station’s security.
Actually he’d forgotten about it.
That was a disturbing thought. He didn’t forget things. Ever. That was a problem for someone as long lived as himself; over four hundred plus years he had more than enough things he’d like to forget. However, nothing ever got lost, drifted away, forgotten.
Until now.
Pulling out the chip containing the stolen data from his comm, he opened the scanner and dropped it in. The images were clear and crisp, a welcome sight after the muddy mess he’d viewed in the station. Whatever was wrong with the machines back on the station at least it wasn’t on the recording end.
He watched as Vas came around the corner, noticing that she wasn’t paying attention at all when the tall man ran into her.
Vas was always on watch.
Deven replayed the scene again. It hadn’t been clear in the station, but her look was one of content obliviousness. She had plenty of time to move before the man hit her, but she hadn’t been paying attention.
He followed Vas’s gaze—she was looking right at the faint outline of a tall, slender glowing form. While he’d seen the outline before, he hadn’t been able to tell what it was. He also didn’t see that Vas was looking right at the shimmering form. That she had been as surprised as he to see it when they were at the station was almost as disturbing as the image.
Swearing under his breath, Deven adjusted the clarity. The image was impossible to focus on, almost as if it hadn’t really been there. With even more creative swear words, Deven tried a few more filters. He stopped swearing in shock when the image finally cleared. It was a hologram. It would have been visible to anyone in the area, but on film it was ghostly.
It was an Asarlaí.
And it wasn’t Marli.
Chapter Eighteen
Deven seriously contemplated joining Vas in her ready room and getting brain-killing drunk. He knew what Asarlaís looked like even before Marli’s little peepshow at her home. His people were possibly the only ones left in the galaxy who had accurate images of the true Asarlaís.
As far as he knew, and as far as Marli stated, she was the last Asarlaí left.
Fussing with the image didn’t help any. It was clearly an impossibly tall and skinny man, with long silver hair, and faintly glowing red eyes.
He couldn’t decide which was worse, the fact that there could be another one of them alive, or that Vas was staring at the image like a long-lost lover. If that man who slammed into her hadn’t done so at that moment, he had a nasty feeling she might have tried to approach the hologram.
There was nothing more he could tell about the hologram, at least not now. If he trusted Marli, he’d contact her and ask her.
Since that wasn’t an option, or at least not one he was ready to deal with yet, he turned his focus on the young man with navigational issues. Human or one of the human offshoots. Probably about Mac’s age but shorter. Stocky build, thatch of black hair flying behind him as he ran. He was looking back and forth between something out of range behind him, and a small object in his hand. Unfortunately, neither were clear on the vid.
The flight suit was unique though. Dark blue and skin tight, the badges on the arms were like nothing he’d seen before. The main one was the elongated diamond shape they’d pulled off Marli’s crispy crewman. He pulled out the patch from the dead crewman, and blew up the image on the scanner as far as it could go.
He didn’t need the computer system to tell him the two were a perfect match.
The edges weren’t solid, but marked to look like it had been carved out of glass instead of fabric. The one in his hand, although purified by the ship’s systems, was smoky from whatever had charred the crewman. However, he could still see the image on the stiff fabric.
Focusing in, he managed to capture a clean shot from the man on the vid. The language on the badge wasn’t one he was familiar with, but running a computer search would translate it.
The language wasn’t Asarlaí. Deven let out a breath in relief at that.
The language on the badge belonged to an obscure outer rim world. Mostly kept to themselves. Separatists that wanted to pretend they weren’t part of the Commonwealth, but kept using their services nonetheless.
The home planet was called Rilliania. Population hovering around four million on a planet large enough to handle far more. Deven frowned as more information came up on the screen. Their population had faced a huge boom in the last hundred years. Usually that indicated a major change in tech, but if the Rillianians had such a surge they weren’t telling anyone.
He wasn’t surprised when a scan of the crew database revealed no one from Rilliania. He’d never met anyone from there, and the reports listed them as extremely planet bound. Hard to meet a people if they won’t let anyone on their world nor come off it themselves. He scanned again to see what races or cultures had contact with the Rillianians.
He rocked back in his seat, surprised and hopeful as the screen flashed the only outside race the Rillianians allowed on their world. Wavians. Out of all of the peaceful, calm, helpful races available in the Commonwealth, this neurotically isolated world only made contact with one of the most vicious species in the Commonwealth.
Flarik had been in hibernation since they’d left the Tarantus IV station almost two weeks ago. While he was certain this wasn’t as long of a sleep as the moody lawyer had been hoping for, it should be enough to keep teeth in c
heck when he woke her up. Had they actually fought on Lantaria, she would have been woken long before this anyway.
He loaded the information he had on the badge into a panel and left his room.
He stopped short for an instant when he saw the next shift was already in place. Had he really been in there that long? Gosta should have had a few more hours. He nodded at Nariel sitting in the command chair. “She still in there?” He asked with a nod toward Vas’s shut ready room door.
Nariel bowed her head slowly. The mind doc was a Silante and every movement was languorous and graceful. “Aye, or at leassst according to Gosssta ssshe isss.” Her grin revealed tiny perfect fangs. “I haven’t sseen her come out.”
“Excellent.” Deven made his way across deck to the lift. “I recommend you not let anyone in to disturb her. No calls either.” He tapped the comm clipped to his hip. “If you need me call my private comm.” He turned as the lift doors opened. “Oh and I’d advise everyone to stay clear of her if she does come out.”
Nariel gave a low chuckle. She wasn’t afraid of Vas, one of a few crewmembers who wasn’t. However, she did find her captain’s antics amusing.
“I’ll look forward to it then.” With a wink, she turned back to watching the screen in front of her.
The late shift was sparsely manned, so there was no other crew out and about. Low-level floor lights guided him down the crew quarters into the furthest corner. Flarik must be very happy with the Warrior Wench; she’d not been able to get as far away from the rest of the crew as she’d wanted when she’d joined them on the Victorious Dead five years ago. However, this ship had far more crew room than their missing one. Deven walked past empty quarters for a good minute before he hit her room. Flarik said that the noise from the regular crew was distracting for her hibernation. Deven knew there was more to it than that. Wavians rarely flew with non-Wavian crewmates for a reason.
The smells of the other races made them think of prey.
Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench Page 17
