Beside him, Ari started to shake. Seaghdh shoved aside his questions and swore. He’d run afoul of the ship that had captured and imprisoned her. She’d have to face her demons because he’d led them to her. Twelve Gods.
“No,” she whispered, clenching her fists.
“They’re hailing,” Turrel yelled.
She gulped in an audible breath and survival mode seemed to take her over. “Get off the bridge!” she ordered.
“We . . .” Turrel protested.
“If they know you’re on this ship, they’ll blow us out of the sky. And if they want you alive—” She stopped and swore, tossing Seaghdh an unsettled look.
Seaghdh forced his expression to neutral. Another in a long line of tests, Captain Idylle. Prove to me that the Chekydran don’t control you.
“Damn it. I won’t give anyone up to those bastards. I don’t care what you’ve done,” she said as if tasting something sour.
Triumph spread through him. Despite everything she’d been through and everything that had been taken from her, she still had a heart. The fact obviously bothered her, but she let herself be guided by it all the same. First, she’d refused to let the plague kill them. Now, she’d allied herself with him and with the men who’d hijacked her father’s ship. She’d justified his decision to disobey the order to neutralize her, but more than that, Seaghdh realized, Alexandria Rose Idylle was salvageable, and it would be a crime to not try.
“Go!” Seaghdh snarled at his crew. He shoved Turrel and Sindrivik to the door and slammed it after them.
“If they see you or hear you, we’re all dead!” she hissed at him.
He dashed across the tiny cockpit and hunkered down with his back against the view screen in the one position the bridge camera lens couldn’t cover.
Ari gaped at him, questions and assessments running rapid-fire behind her eyes.
Seaghdh choked on the realization that he’d blown his cover.
CHAPTER 4
THE console beeped. Ari jerked her attention back to her controls. Second hail. Force a Chekydran cruiser to call a third time and it typically used a missile to get your attention. Hands shaking, Ari drew a deep breath and keyed open the com, hating that Cullin Seaghdh sat there watching her every move, her every fear. Even though she knew who hailed, even though she thought she’d prepared, she flinched when the Chekydran who’d tortured her for three months came on the screen. Thank the fates her father and his crew weren’t here.
“Dear Captain Idylle,” the creature droned, his translator rendering his words in a mechanical voice. “Do you have still your rank, I wonder. Hmmm. Why are you here, in this place, where I hunt spies, I wonder.”
“Science expedition X9-57J3,” Ari replied, trying not to let the buzz of his voice get on her nerves. She wanted to crawl out of her skin. “All notifications and communiqués regarding this ship’s activities are on file.”
“Hmm. With answer like this, you make no answer.” He leaned forward. The tentacle ridges on his hunched shoulders shifted. “Like old times.” He uttered a series of sounds in his own language, something his translator didn’t attempt to define.
She knew what they meant. “My plaything.” An abyss of despair opened within her. In one turn of phrase, he’d assured her she was nothing more than a toy for his amusement and that he wasn’t yet done with her. Damn it, Ari, stick to the business of survival.
It took a moment to find her voice. “We missed our scheduled lift by eight hours due to repairs on a faulty atmospheric.”
“Bridge empty. Not standard, I wonder.”
“You know damned well I can fly this thing solo,” she replied. “We established that early on, didn’t we? Course it’s normal. Everyone else is running experiments.”
“Poor youngest,” the Chekydran crooned. “Too stupid. Fly alone.”
“Baxt’k you, Hicci.”
“Hmmm. Much suggested. Never try, I wonder. How lonely, desolate is my poor ship without you.”
“Is that what this is about?” she demanded, her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst through her ribs. She could barely breathe. “If you want me off this ship, say so.”
The Chekydran captain eyed her. “You come? I say? Hmm.”
“Swear on your swarm to let the Sen Ekir and its crew go, and I’ll come across myself.”
Seaghdh shifted, the movement barely audible. It took every effort of will not to glance at him.
“I say. You come. I hurt.” He sucked in a breath that churred.
She fought back nausea and the shrill of terror growing in her head. Cold sweat trickled down the side of her face. “Swear.”
“No shuttle.”
“I’d walk out the airlock.”
Silence.
“Extra-Vehicular Suit?”
Ari twisted her lips in a grim smile. “No. No space suit. I’d rather breathe vacuum than give you the satisfaction. Ever. Again.”
“I blow you out of space.”
“No, you won’t,” she retorted. “If you meant to do that, you would have already. You want something, Hicci. What is it?”
“Data.”
She heard the pause before he answered. He hadn’t killed her when he’d accused her of spying. She’d never understood why not. She’d been free for three months and she understood it even less now. He hesitated to bring weapons to bear on the Sen Ekir. Why? Because she was aboard? There could only be one reason for that. He needed her alive. It meant the Chekydran had done something to her that they believed would pay dividends at her expense. It made her blood run cold.
“You have free access to all of the scientific data gathered by this—”
He cut her off with a garbled hiss of sound. “Ship! Twelve men! You see!”
Ah. There. Seaghdh and his crew. Twelve? And only four survivors. Interesting. “No.”
“You agree. I know lies.”
She started to shake. Bastard. “Then you know I’m not lying. I have not seen any ship but this one.”
“Transmit array data!”
“Complying,” she said, sending the sensor array readings that Seaghdh and his men had circumvented, disabled, or altered.
Offscreen, another creature gabbled at the captain she’d called “Hicci.” Human vocal apparatus couldn’t approach the Chekydran language at all. “Hicci” was the best she’d been able to do with his name. That she could get even that much had always annoyed him.
“Hmm. Game you play, I wonder.”
Wonder all you want, you sadistic freak. Wonder right up to the day I kill you. “Course change for Occaltus’s star upcoming,” Ari said aloud.
“Standard. Hmm. Afraid of bugs. Hmm.” Hicci’s tentacles shifted again. He smoothed them with one foreleg. “Destination.”
“Not plotted yet, and Dad’s not talking to me after I scrambled his command codes,” she said. “TFC space, I assume. He’s going to want his samples and his data in the university lab’s containment system.”
“Bugs.” Hicci chortled.
Ari frowned. What so amused him about decontamination and containment procedures?
“Go.”
“Course change initiated,” she replied. “Can’t say it’s been nice, Hicci.” Every nerve and muscle fiber screamed to cut the connection. She didn’t. She’d learned the hard way. Let him get the last word.
“We play.” He made the same set of sounds again and the screen went black. The cruiser turned and flashed out. The energy wash from their engines hit the Sen Ekir. The science ship rolled hard.
Ari stabbed a finger at the button to cut the com connection. Shaking so hard she could barely focus her eyes, she hit the wrong one. An alarm rasped across the bridge. She gulped for air. Her chest felt like it had been clamped in a vise. A hand appeared on her panel. The alarm died.
“Turrel!” Seaghdh shouted, rounding the panel and reaching for her. “Get the medi!”
“No,” she gasped. The restraints across her torso released. She sank to
the floor and squeezed her eyes shut. No one could see her like this. She didn’t want to see herself like this. Still affected by what that bastard had done.
She flinched away from the touch on her arm, until she realized it was warm. Human and warm. Seaghdh lifted her and backed into the command chair. He drew her onto his lap, tucked her head beneath his chin, and wrapped his arms tight around her. The chill of terror loosened its grip.
“Come on back, Ari,” he breathed into her ear. His voice coaxed her to respond. It promised safety. And damn it all, so did his arms. “I need your help. You’re breathing too fast. Slow it down. That’s it. Good.”
She forced in a deep breath and held it. When she couldn’t stop shaking, Ari cursed. It sounded weak. She loathed herself for indulging in a breakdown. She loathed him for witnessing it. She pushed herself upright.
“Feeling better?” Seaghdh inquired, brushing hair from her face.
The caress left a tingling trail on her skin and brought her forcefully back into her own body. She met his gaze and stilled, captured.
He didn’t flinch when he looked her in the eye. She saw concern there, yes, but it was pure, with no trace of judgment or pity. She stared into the molten gold of his eyes and saw acceptance, wonder, and the veiled shimmer of attraction. It touched off a surge of longing she couldn’t afford. She struggled out of his grasp. How could he be attracted to her when she couldn’t stand what she’d become?
Seaghdh let go, his gaze watchful.
She stumbled, caught herself, and stood at parade rest, her hands clasped behind her back.
“My apologies, Captain,” she said, damning the quaver in her voice and the shame heating her face. “I request that you belay the order for the medical officer. I would like to return to my post.”
Seaghdh rubbed a hand down his chin as he studied her. “Return to your post,” he finally said, “after I have a medical scan on you. No one needs to know what happened here. I’ll tell them . . .”
The bridge door opened. Raj, Turrel, and the other two crewmen bolted onto the bridge. Turrel went instantly to the panel to watch the cruiser departing.
“Ari?” Raj asked. “What’s going on?”
“Captain Idylle took a tumble when that damned Chekydran hit us with his wash,” Seaghdh said.
Raj cast a probing glance at her. She sat down at piloting and scanned her screens.
“We’re on course, Captain Idylle,” Seaghdh said. “An hour out from the radiation bath. Let the doctor do his job. Then you can do yours. Until then, you’re relieved. Sindrivik?”
The tall young man with red blond hair put a hand on the back of her chair. Ari nodded and stood. Every muscle in her body hurt and her head would feel much better if it would explode and get it over with.
“The ship is yours. Until the radiation bath is complete, any attempt to alter course will result in engine shutdown,” she said.
Turrel swore. Seaghdh frowned, but his eyes danced.
“Captain?” Raj said. “If you will come with me?”
“Damn it. I’m fine.”
“Now, now, Captain,” Seaghdh countered, laughter in his tone. “That’s his line.”
Raj gestured Ari into his tiny medical bay and blinked at the empty hallway behind her. “No guard?”
“The Chekydran cruiser is still out there,” she said. “They’re a little more worried about it. So should we be.”
“Good point. You know the drill,” Raj replied and nodded at the exam table. “Hop up.”
“I’d rather not.”
Raj narrowed his eyes. “I would have happily let it go, until you said that. You know I’m a stubborn bastard when I think you’re hiding something from me, Ari.”
She got on his stupid table.
“You fell. Is that the story?”
“I fell.”
“Want to explain the strap bruises, then, Captain?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Raj left her side. A click. “Dr. Idylle. Secure medical channel. I am not initiating quarantine. Repeat. I am not initiating quarantine.”
Ari closed her eyes. She should have thought of this, of the secure com channel from medical that did not route through the bridge communications panel.
“Acknowledged, Dr. Faraheed. What is the nature of the emergency?” her father asked.
“I have Ari in medical. We are secure.”
“What the hell is going on up there?” her dad demanded.
She opened her eyes, sat up, and faced the screen. Her father sat before his room screen, his hands clenched on the desk, his knuckles white and the muscles in his jaw rigid. Furious. She caught the pucker between his silver eyebrows. Correction. Furious and worried.
“We were intercepted by a Chekydran cruiser,” she told him.
He blinked. “Those pirates are running from the—?” He broke off, looking discomfited.
“Apparently. Our sensor logs were empty, fortunately.” She shrugged. “Seaghdh and his men crash-landed on Ioccal’s dark side. They must have gotten a lock on the Sen Ekir during descent. Haven’t had time to get anything more useful.”
“Do you want to explain to me what you’re doing?” her father asked.
“Right now, I’m obeying orders and getting checked out after . . .”
“You’re siding with those damned pirates!” he accused.
She stared at him, openmouthed. “I am not siding with anyone!”
“Doesn’t that strike you as a problem? Your duty is to this mission and to this ship! Another twenty-four hours and those men would be dying. We would have had this ship back in our control. We could have spaced the corpses and radiation bathed in Tagreth’s sun.”
Raj whistled. “Your cortisol levels are through the roof, Ari. You have got to be feeling like your head is going to explode.”
She shot the doctor a dirty look. “My father is advocating murder and you sound surprised about my levels of stress hormone?”
“Grow up, Alexandria. Billions of lives depend on the data we’ve collected. We haven’t had time—” Her father hesitated, and Ari could see him weighing the wisdom of something.
She shook off Raj’s hold and slid to her feet. “What?”
Her father sighed and looked at her. The lines around his pale blue eyes deepened. “We sequenced a unique set of markers in Ioccal IX. The plague was seeded.”
“Chekydran,” Ari concluded, beating him to the punch. She crossed her arms. “When are you going to stop treating me like a brain-addled invalid? Yes, I was captured by them. Yes, I was held for three interminable months. Yes, I was tortured. Your silence about it isn’t going to make it go away. I am not going to melt at the mention of them.” No. She’d melted at being forced to face her tormentor and had been sent to medical because of it.
She caught a glimpse of her father’s reddening face. He looked like a man struggling for something, anything, to say. A hint of anguish slipped into his expression. Ari froze. What the hell was going on?
“Stop it and drink,” Raj said, handing her a cup. “You’ve been through something none of us can understand, Ari. We’re trying to be considerate.”
They couldn’t understand what she’d been through. No one could. Not even she. Whose problem was that?
She swallowed the medication. Instantly, the throbbing in her head eased. She sighed. “Thanks, Raj. My head was going to blow. Am I fit to return to duty?”
“Nothing wrong a month’s leave on Betalla wouldn’t cure,” Raj replied.
“Damn it, Alexandria. Tagreth Federated Command and your commanders at Armada are watching every move you make,” her father said. “Don’t screw this up, too.”
Was it footsteps she heard? Or some sixth sense that alerted her? Ari leaped to cut the connection, leaving her to wonder what her father thought she’d already screwed up. The bay door opened. Turrel stood looking between her and Raj. She handed the cup back to the doctor.
“Thanks again.”
“Time the
bath very carefully, Ari,” Raj answered, as if the radiation exposure had been the topic of conversation all along. “Go for longer, not shorter. We picked up indications of a new strain.”
“Chekydran nanotech has never mutated on its own before,” she protested. “It would need reengineering.”
“I know.”
“Could it compromise our immunity?”
Raj’s grim expression spoke volumes. “Finding out is right at the top of our agenda.”
Turrel pointed at her. “Bridge. I’ll be snugging the doc up in his cabin, but don’t try anything. I’ll be at your back.”
She wasted no time. She had a radiation bath to handle. From what Raj had said, too much rode on getting the ship sterile. It had also occurred to her that Seaghdh might have insisted on her jaunt to medical so he could alter the ship’s codes and lock her out. It would take time, but it’s what she’d have done in his place.
“. . . Just a change of venue, gentlemen,” Seaghdh was saying as the door opened. “Objectives . . . Captain Idylle.”
He glanced at the screen on the command console. The expectant look on his face died when it became apparent Raj hadn’t sent a medical report to the command chair. Maybe she wasn’t the only military op on board.
“I’ve been judged fit for duty,” she said. “Raj’s assessment of my health ended in a prescription for a month on Betalla.”
Seaghdh’s eyebrows climbed and he grinned. “Betalla? Boy’s got good taste.”
“Betalla, where pleasure is an art,” Sindrivik said, his voice wistful. His gray eyes dancing with mirth. Or nerves? “From the conversation in the cargo bay, it sounds like you could learn a few things . . .”
“Mr. Sindrivik!” Ari cut him off, pleased by the iron ring of command in her tone. At least she hadn’t lost that. Apparently, during her incarceration and recovery, junior crewmen still hadn’t learned to trade successful jests with their officers. “We are currently on a collision course with a star. I invite you to contemplate whether you prefer being burned to a crisp or crushed by gravity. Both are possibilities unless I unlock the engine. You are relieved.”
The young man stared at her, his expression remote and chilly.
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