“My assessment,” he said, “is incomplete. Captain Idylle suffered considerable mental and emotional damage while a captive of the Chekydran, but her sanity and morality seem intact.”
“I require more assurance than ‘seem,’ Seaghdh.”
He shrugged. “I have yet to discern whether she is under Chekydran control, either via brainwashing, implants, or some other device. My initial impression is that she is not, though why she was released if she wasn’t under their control, I can’t say. The Chekydran do nothing that does not benefit them directly.”
“Your initial impression is tempered by that fact,” his cousin guessed.
“Yes.”
“What do I do with her, Cullin?”
“I need time, Eilod,” he said, fighting the urge to lean forward, to give away just how important this was to him. “I need her with me in close quarters where I have access to her fears, her memories.”
A troubled light fired in Her Majesty’s eyes. “For whose benefit?”
He hesitated. “I don’t deny I will help her if I can. If she will let me. The safety of the Empire, however, comes first. If she is a threat, I will neutralize her.”
Grim-faced, the woman behind the desk held his eye for several seconds, then inclined her head. “What are you not telling me?”
Damn it. Growing up as Eilod’s foster brother made her far too familiar with what did and didn’t show on his face. “I’m missing something.”
She looked startled. “Missing? You?”
“You’ve seen her file.”
“Very thorough,” his cousin said, her tone cautious.
“One might say clinical,” he mused.
“Cullin . . .”
Seaghdh leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and peered hard at the queen. “Files are a starting place, a basis, if you will, for interaction with a subject. In this case, I believe Captain Idylle’s file uses detail to hide the fact that her file is omitting something vital.”
Eilod frowned. “What?”
“I don’t know, yet. It’s damned frustrating.”
“You have a distinct talent for identifying information patterns, or you wouldn’t be my Riorchjan.”
“Review her brother’s and sister’s files. Compare them to hers.”
His cousin shot him a sharp glance. “Tell me.”
“Brother, Hieronomus, firstborn. Sister, Isolde, second-born. Hieronomus’s file is typical firstborn data. Details of the pregnancy, journal entries, DNA scans, lock of hair, first steps, very detailed until the birth of the second child. Hieronomus’s third through eighth years are sketchy. Isolde’s file doesn’t begin, save for date, time, place of birth, and her weight, until she’s five years old. I gather Miss Isolde Idylle was a handful.”
Eilod frowned. “Yet Captain Idylle’s file is exactingly detailed, virtually from the moment of conception.”
“Yes. And the tone is markedly different,” he said.
Nodding, she murmured, “Detached.”
“Captain Idylle’s file reads like a report,” Seaghdh said.
“She is significantly younger than her siblings, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Her brother was at university when she was born.”
“A midlife accident, then?”
“When everything else in the file is so deliberate?” Seaghdh mused. He shifted, listening to the faint breath of instinct. “We may have to bring in the Sen Ekir.”
“That is a complication I would like to avoid, Cullin. Why?”
“I need Sindrivik to steal another file for me.”
His cousin raised an eyebrow at him. “Her mother’s?”
Seaghdh nodded. “I’d like to know what would cause a mother’s love to change so radically between children.”
“Didn’t she die shortly after Captain Idylle’s birth?”
“Two years.”
“Could it have been illness?”
“I don’t know, Eilod. Until I do know, there’s too much I can’t know about Captain Idylle. I don’t think we want her out of my sight.”
Her Majesty rose. “Report to medical. I’d like to relieve you of duty, but you’ve forced me to trust your instincts over the years. Your mission remains unchanged. Find out what that woman is.”
“By your will.” Seaghdh stood and flinched as newly healing flesh pulled in his side.
“I will alert Dr. Annantra to prepare for your arrival and your injury,” she said.
“Eilod.”
“Don’t argue with your sovereign.”
“Or what? You’ll tell Aunt Kys?”
Her Majesty stuck her tongue out at him and lowered the sonic shield with the click of a button. “Or I’ll relieve you of duty and assign V’kyrri to keep a close personal eye on Captain Idylle.” She smiled sweetly and unlocked the door from the panel embedded in her desk.
Seaghdh ignored the spike of alarm that drove through his gut. Pasting a thoughtful expression to his face, he shrugged. “That might not be a bad idea.”
“Get out of my sight, you intolerable faker,” his cousin ordered, laughing.
ARI had always said the irony of a medical scan is that it bores you to death. Claugh medi-tech was similar enough to hers that she could follow the procedures even if she couldn’t follow the language. The doctor, a solid, older woman with salt-and-pepper hair, greeted her in her own language and ushered her into a tiny private exam room with pale green walls. She’d scowled when Turrel followed. He crossed his arms and slouched against the wall.
Ari expected questions. She didn’t get any. The doctor directed Ari to the scan bed and after a flurry of instructions to a teenaged male nurse, initiated the scan.
“My son,” she confided when she saw Ari watching the boy.
Ari nodded.
A com buzzed nearby. The doctor answered.
Ari listened and was rewarded this time, catching Seaghdh’s title, Auhrnok, and her name. As she became accustomed to hearing the language, she seemed to get better at distinguishing the words. It wasn’t just a jumble of sounds all run together. But she still didn’t understand it. She’d need to change that, without fanfare, if she could. People who believe you don’t speak their language are far more willing to speak freely in your company. She felt like she needed every advantage she could garner.
“Stay still if you can,” the doctor instructed. “Not long.”
Long enough to wonder if she’d been nothing more than a conquest, no more than a game to Cullin Seaghdh. Ari closed her eyes trying to sift Seaghdh’s lies from the bits of truth he’d fed her.
“Captain Idylle. Captain Idylle, can you hear me?”
She flinched in surprise at hearing someone else’s voice resounding in her head. Her eyes opened.
“Easy,” the doctor said.
Ari blinked. Not the same voice and it hadn’t come from inside her skull. It dawned on her, then. The damned transponder embedded in the skin behind her left ear.
“Captain Idylle, come in.”
She tapped her tongue against the activation switch and recognized the voice. Admiral Jecaldo Angelou. His office had issued the decree requiring that transponders be implanted in all senior personnel. He’d done it right after she’d been taken by the Chekydran. He’d said, when she’d asked following her release, that he never again wanted to sit by while one of his officers rotted in a Chekydran prison. Then he’d ordered the device implanted in her head. She hadn’t mentioned that she’d kill herself before willingly becoming a Chekydran prisoner again.
“Ari?” he asked. “Tap twice for yes, once for no.”
She hit the switch twice.
“Are you alone?”
One tap.
“Understood. Are you all right?”
Suspicion fired through her and she damned Cullin Seaghdh for making her doubt the man who had spent the better part of his career nurturing hers. She tapped twice. Still. Why would he ask that question now? For that matter, why contact her this way? Had In
tCom already advised him that the Sen Ekir had taken off without her?
She rolled from the scanner bed, eliciting a yelp of protest from the doctor. Turrel straightened. Ari grabbed her handheld, switched it to record, shoved it against her left ear, and collapsed back on the bed.
“Ari, if you’re secure?”
Define “secure.” Two taps.
“Captain, I know these are difficult times,” he said. “You’ve been relieved of duty and sent in pursuit of something I know you don’t want. Alex, believe me, this isn’t my doing. You’re a damned fine officer and I want you back out there on the bridge of a ship.”
A part of her knew Seaghdh was there a moment before he walked in the door. Her heart rate picked up speed. He looked at her quizzically, then traded a confused glance with Turrel who shrugged.
“Ari?” Seaghdh reached for her, concern in his face.
Before Ari could put a finger to her lips, the doctor grabbed Seaghdh’s arm and shook her head, her expression grim. She pointed at instrument readouts. Seaghdh’s confused gaze flicked from Ari to the panel. His eyes widened.
“To that end, Captain,” her CO went on. “I’m putting you on unofficial assignment.”
Interesting. When he hadn’t confirmed her status? Or her location? Was it possible he didn’t know about the attack on Kebgra? She tapped twice.
Seaghdh shoved the doctor, her son, and Turrel out the door. He closed and locked it before turning back to watch with apprehension in his face.
“Boundary beacons indicate a Claugh nib Dovvyth Stalker has crossed into TFC space near Kebgra. I have a ship on intercept. Captain, this is vital. You must not allow yourself to fall into Claugh hands. I should have warned you before we sent you on this expedition with your father,” he said, then sighed. “My fault, I suppose. Armada Command wanted to assign you to a desk where they could keep an eye on you. I argued against it, and in doing so, sent you out there into danger. Alex, we’ve had word that agents from the Claugh are after you.”
Two taps.
“What I am about to tell you is highly classified, Captain.”
Two more taps.
“After you disappeared, the Council initiated a mission of discovery based on rumors coming across the Zone. We don’t have anything concrete, Captain, but we do have enough evidence to begin to make out a sinister pattern. The Claugh nib Dovvyth is working with the Chekydran. Over the years, they’ve taken hundreds of TFC personnel captive. We believed our people dead. We were wrong.”
Ari sucked in a sharp breath.
“They’ve created an army of mutated soldiers. I have reason to believe, Captain, that the Claugh intend to do the same to you.”
CHAPTER 15
“YOU be very careful out there, Captain,” Ari’s CO ordered before signing off.
Sage advice. Several days too late.
She lowered the handheld, tabbed it off, and stared at the ceiling.
Seaghdh shifted.
She glanced at him and tried to imagine him wanting to turn her into something like Tommy. She couldn’t. He’d been genuinely horrified both by the efficient carnage on Kebgra and by the soldiers themselves. Further, he’d helped her destroy them. If she was slated to become one at Cullin Seaghdh’s hand, why sacrifice six undoubtedly very expensive prototypes? He’d already had her firmly within his grasp.
“Clear?” he asked.
“No, Auhrnok,” Ari said.
He flinched.
“But my CO signed off and I made damned sure the transponder is off. I take it the transmission showed up on instruments?”
Seaghdh unlocked the door. “Only because we were running a medical diagnostic. You and I both know that transmission should have tripped unauthorized com alarms. It didn’t. How the hell did TFC manage that?”
“They didn’t, as far as I know,” she replied. “This is Armada tech and applied only within the ranks.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at her. All business. “When?”
“The command went out after I was captured,” she replied. “Mine went in shortly after my release.”
“Kept secret?”
Ari nodded. “Supposed to be only Armada Command that knows, but . . .”
“You suspected something and told your father.” Grim satisfaction showed in his tight smile.
She opened her mouth to protest, then feeling resentful, closed it. He’d lied to her and used her. Why the hell was she answering him? How could one notoriously devious and manipulative man elicit information from her when three months of torture hadn’t? Of course she had suspected something when Armada Command put the transponder in her head. She’d just been freed from a Chekydran prison. Distrust had kept her alive and maybe, just maybe, sane. She’d not only told her father about the transponder, she’d given him the code. Look where that had gotten her.
“Quick thinking, Ari,” he said, his tone far too warm for her comfort, “recording what you could. Are you okay? I should bring Dr. Annantra back.”
She nodded and wondered why he’d jettisoned everyone in the first place. Dr. Annantra had known she was receiving. What had Seaghdh feared? That she’d be teleported out? She doubted the Balykkal could get a lock through the Stalker’s shields, even with her transponder code programmed into the computers. Unless the crew of the Balykkal had orders to retrieve her at any cost. She knew perfectly well that translated to dead and ’porting through shields, dead she’d be.
Seaghdh opened the door. “My apologies, Doctor. We are secure.” Secure? Was that what this was about? He suspected that Armada Command had built a destruct function into the transponder? Ari choked back a curse. It made sense. If Admiral Angelou decided she’d been irrevocably compromised, he could just blow her fool head off from the comfort of his padded leather chair. Maybe it was time for an extraction.
“Very good,” the woman said, returning to Ari’s side and tweaking instruments. “You took no tissue damage from that transmission, Captain. Mmm. I see a spike in stress hormone levels. I’d like to keep an eye on that. Have they run abnormally high since your release?”
“Some days are worse than others,” Ari said.
The doctor peered hard at her and finally nodded. “I imagine.”
Dr. Annantra turned to Seaghdh. “Auhrnok, Her Majesty advised me that you took injury planetside. Will you permit me?”
“I’m fine, thanks to Captain Idylle,” he replied.
Ari risked pulling away from the scan bed. “Done with me?”
“Yes, Captain,” the doctor replied. “I will require several minutes more to analyze and review the data. Would you care to shower?” She opened a door to a tiny closet. “Take your time. I will have clean clothes waiting.”
Ari shrugged out of her filthy jacket and unstrapped her empty holster. Upon Turrel’s advice, she’d left the Autolyte on the shuttle. Seaghdh still had her pistol. The only thing that made her feel better was that he, too, went unarmed aboard ship.
“Captain Seaghdh took a dose of poison on Kebgra,” Ari said. “And had two shots of antivenin to counter it.”
The doctor’s genial expression died. “On the scan bed, if you will, Auhrnok. The nature of the toxin?”
Seaghdh grimaced at Ari and sauntered to take her place.
“You might as well take off your shirt and jacket, Auhrnok Riorchjan,” she said, stressing the title. “I am going to tell her about the hole in your side.”
“Damn it, Ari, is this your notion of revenge?”
“You have no idea,” she countered before looking at the doctor. “Deaccolo tree venom, species unique to Kebgra. It’s a paralytic neuro-toxin. Plant based but with an enzyme set that can induce time-delayed reactions.”
She turned on her handheld, called up the Kebgra data, and handed it to the doctor.
The woman scanned the information and scowled.“How long ago?”
“Two, three hours?” Ari glanced at Seaghdh for confirmation.
He sat, bare-chested, wa
tching the back and forth, a smirk on his handsome face. He nodded.
She flushed, remembering her lips pressed against the warm, taut skin of that torso, and the reaction that had blazed through him. Could he possibly be that good an actor?
“A neural scan, then,” the doctor said.
Ari jerked her attention back to the doctor. “Permanent muscular damage is possible with this venom in advanced stages of poisoning, but I think we got to Captain Seaghdh long before that became a risk. He did have a brief episode of hypoxia before the antivenin took hold.”
“Yes, I see,” she said, studying readouts for a moment. “Minimal cellular destruction. Good.”
The woman zeroed in on the regeneration unit Ari had applied to Seaghdh’s side. The lights had died on the control panel. Doctor Annantra eased the dead instrument from Seaghdh’s skin. “Puncture wound. Very clean.”
“Thorn,” Seaghdh said.
“Some thorn.” Annantra glanced at Ari. “You removed it?”
“Yes,” Ari said, pulling her shirt off over her head.
“You did good work, Captain. Thank you.”
Ari tried to smile at the doctor but ducked into the shower, still confused over what she felt toward Seaghdh. The attraction was intact, damn it all, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that he’d lied to her. Was still lying to her, for all she knew. And then there was the admiral’s accusation and the question of whether Ari should trust Dr. Annantra enough to ask her to remove the transponder from her head. Was there anyone she could trust?
Angelou had said “unofficial” assignment, yet other than staying away from the Claugh, he hadn’t laid out a mission or parameters. Reviewing the one-sided conversation, she paused. He hadn’t given her any detail regarding the evidence he said had been gathered regarding a Claugh/Chekydran alliance. Had he done that on purpose? Trying to give her something to believe but nothing to follow up on?
Surely, he hadn’t learned to so underestimate her in six short months. Granted, he did not seem to know she wasn’t aboard the Sen Ekir with her father. An interesting development, since it meant IntCom wasn’t confiding in her commanding officer and that he did not want anyone to know about this “assignment.” Why not?
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