She put her hand on his arm. “No. That won’t work,” she whispered. The Trin shield was functioning erratically, but taking it out would be very difficult. His gaze slid to hers. “Not without taking more casualties.”
His look asked her if that mattered. “Your pirate’s working with a Trin.”
He wasn’t hers. “I’ll take care of it,” she told Martin. “I’ve done it before.”
He waited another tense moment before he put his hand down, and gave her a brief nod. Roxy realized she’d been holding her breath, and let it out on a bitter sigh. Oh, yes, she’d done it before. She refused to let herself remember, and made herself look at the Trin. Pyr was not afraid of him. Now, that was a curious thing, not that this was the time for any sort of analysis. With a Trin you had to act, and quickly.
“She’s an empathic healer,” Kith said. “That makes her more valuable than a ship. Than two ships.”
“Empathic healer,” one of the watching crewmen got up the courage to interrupt. “What’s that?”
“Look at her,” a woman said, pointing at Roxanne. “I’ve seen ancient sculptures and temple paintings that look like her. People like her can perform miracles.”
“Healing miracles?” the first man asked. “Can she cure the plague?”
The Trin laughed in Pyr’s face, sharp teeth showing. He pointed at the ship’s captain. “He’s holding out on you, just like he always does. He controls the Rust. You work for Rust. But it won’t last forever. What will you do when the Rust runs out?” He turned to face the crowd as people gathered closer around him and Pyr. Roxanne and Martin hung back and waited, and listened. Pyr crossed his arms and carefully surveyed the crowd. His trio of officers stood at his back.
“We’ll die,” the woman said.
“He won’t let us die,” Kristi spoke up for Pyr. “You know that.”
Roxy took her cue, and moved toward Pyr and the Trin. “No one has to die.” The Trin watched her with ultimate greed. She paid no attention to the pirate captain beside him, though she felt him carefully watching her with all her senses. “I can commit miracles,” she said, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “Cure with a touch. I am koltiri of Koltir. I’m sure many of you have heard of koltiri.”
“Look what she did for the captain,” Kristi said. “She can cure all of us.”
“Yes,” Roxanne agreed. She turned her back on the Trin, though she hated doing it. “I am a healer,” she told the avidly watching pirates. “A doctor. Vowed to save lives. Pyr cannot stop me from doing what I do.”
She flinched when the bony hand touched her shoulder and swung her back around. The Trin was pasty-faced but for the red knobs on his forehead, pock-marked and scrawny, but wiry and strong with it. He was shorter than her, and she could see his resentment that he had to look up to her. Trin preferred people on their knees. “Pyr is too weak to control you,” he told her. “He’d know that if he really knew anything about your kind. What you do can and will be controlled.”
She forced a smile, and made her tone gentle when she spoke. “You want me to heal you first, I take it.” She shrugged, but without trying to throw off the bony hand that clasped her shoulder. She knew Pyr wanted to break that hand, but he stood back, waiting to see what she was doing. She wished Pyr wasn’t so aware of her less-than-docile nature.
Pyr was very, very annoyed with Roxanne, more so than he was with Kith, but he didn’t show it yet. Her public show of defiance was not unexpected, and he’d deal with it in private. Right now, it was more to his advantage to let this go on a few moments longer. If she was going to heal Kith, Kith would have to lower his shield.
“If you want me to heal you, you have to lower your shield,” Roxy told the Trin. Trins were mostly mindblind, and the shield helped deflect telepathy as well. But she didn’t have to be a telepath to look deeply and earnestly into the bastard’s eyes and openly show the gentle, compassionate side of her nature. And empathy, well, it wasn’t something that could be shielded against when someone with her kind of power knew how to project it. She was harmless, he could feel that. Weak. All she wanted was to help. Needed to help. Him.
Trins were attracted to weakness, and so very good at taking advantage of it. This one finally reacted to her obvious frailty with a snarling smile, and switched off the shield that separated him from the rest of the universe.
With that protection gone, the rest was quite easy. She was fast, and well trained in more than the healing arts. Anyone who served on board the Tigris learned a great many different ways to kill. A swift-fisted blow to the Trin’s heart came first, a stiff-fingered jab to the throat next. Then, while he gurgled and gasped and tried to fall forward, Roxy grabbed the bastard’s head, pulled it back, and twisted hard. The loud crack as his neck snapped was the most satisfying sound she’d heard in a long time.
Her mental shields snapped up hard as she let the body fall to the deck, and allowed herself only the shortest moment to look at the dead thing at her feet. First do no harm, was her bleak thought, but she turned a fierce smile on the gaping roomful of pirates and gestured them forward. “All right,” she announced with brittle brightness. “Who’s next?”
Pyr didn’t know if his roar of outrage filled the room, or if it only filled the space inside their heads. It was no telepathic gesture when he grabbed the woman, shook her hard, and demanded, “What the demons did you do?”
She looked calm, though inside she was nothing of the sort. Her huge dark eyes were full of horror, and a terrifying sense of righteous triumph. He dealt with what he saw before him: a dead body, and a healer who had—”Murder. You murdered him.” That he had been only an instant away from killing Kith himself made no difference at the moment. That he wanted Kith dead made no difference. “A healer shouldn’t be able to commit murder.”
“An act of war isn’t murder,” she answered evenly.
“War?”
“We have no cease fire with the Trin. No treaty. The war has abated. It isn’t over until they’re all dead.”
Pyr held Roxanne in a firm grip as he turned his head to look at her companion. The look the boy gave him was cold, and counted Pyr as an enemy. Around him was a room of very frightened pirates, people who did not frighten easily. They had seen a saint, and salvation, and she’d shown them that she was more dangerous than any of them. She’d killed Kith, for demons sake! Many were heading for the door. Some had drawn weapons. Most were staring at Pyr. He concentrated on Roxanne. His men could handle any necessary crowd control.
“What are you?” he demanded, and wasn’t sure which one he expected to answer.
“Citizens of the United Systems.” It was Martin who responded. “What are you?”
Pilsane stepped over Kith’s body to face Martin. “What does the Systems have to do with the Pirate League?”
“What are you doing serving with a Trin?” Roxanne asked Pyr, and it was a very personal question.
For an instant he felt that he had failed her somehow. Then he came to his senses and shook her again. “What are you talking about?”
She didn’t answer, but merely looked at him with concentrated contempt and hatred. Then he realized that explanations didn’t matter. Controlling her mattered. Kith had certainly been right about that one thing. She was a telempath whose strengths and weaknesses he had yet to understand. She could cure or kill on a whim. Kith had paid with his life by trusting her for one brief moment. Uncontrolled, she put his people and his mission in danger, and that could not be allowed. At least he had a means readily to hand that let him control her. Damn.
“Mik,” Pyr said to his engineer and torturer. “I need the room. Get it ready.”
Chapter Eighteen
She had cold-bloodedly taken a life. Roxy was almost too involved in controlling her reaction to what she’d done to pay attention to where Pyr was taking her. The biggest of his three officers hurried ahead of them, and eventually disappeared from view. Pyr dragged her down a corridor and into a lift an
d then down another hall, one where the thrum of the ship’s engines filled her ears and the lighting was brighter than on the other decks. The brightness made her blink, but her concentration stayed fixed within herself. Even the mental roar of Pyr’s fury and resolve was background to her.
She felt good, goddess damn it. That was the worst part. She hated that she felt so good. The fierce joy she took from conquering disease was an acceptable outlet for her aggressive nature. The hunt and slaughter of a sentient being should not bring the same rush of delight as killing the things that caused death to sentient beings. As hungry as she still was, she’d barely been able to stop herself from absorbing the Trin’s life energy as he died. That was the difference on a basic level that had nothing to do with ethics and morality—sentient energy was nourishing, while healing drained energy even as it satisfied the koltiri’s predator instinct.
Maybe she was a throwback to the ancient koltiri, but at least she wasn’t so bad that she gave in to the urge to be an energy ghoul. She’d taken nothing from the bastard but his life. She wanted desperately to be able to regret taking life, but all she felt was guilt that she’d had to break her vow as a physician to fulfill her vow to the United Systems one more time.
She fought to keep from giggling as she remembered the gaping crowd in the common. They’d been afraid of her, all those hard-eyed, wicked pirates, and she’d eaten it up in the moment before Pyr grabbed her and got her focused again. She was almost thankful to him, except that he was the captain of a ship that had had a Trin on board. She couldn’t remember if she’d laughed in their faces or not, just that she’d wanted to. Bad Roxy. She hadn’t wanted to laugh at Pyr, not when his hands were on her and his anger burned through all her barriers. She’d wanted explanations, reassurances, wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
There was no room for that. Special Order One was very specific. Special Order One required that Pyr’s life be ended as well.
Special Order One?
After he picked up her thought, Pyr stopped in his tracks and pushed her, face-first and hard, against the corridor wall. He held her pinned there, hands immobilized, his weight pressed firmly against her back. He had one arm around her, the tip of a knife touching her throat. His thoughts probed at hers; she made him work for it.
“Special Order One?” His lips were very close to her ear, his breath hot across her cheek.
From her current position, Roxy wished she hadn’t had to demonstrate her unarmed combat skills in front of him. She couldn’t blame him for not taking any chances. The knife point was pressed into her flesh, encouraging her to speak. “No one outside the United Systems MilService is supposed to know about SO1.”
“I see. So you’re going to tell me about Secret Special Order One.” There was something almost erotically suggestive in his tone, and the way his big, hard-muscled body pressed against hers. This jarred with the biting pain as he shifted the knife point deeper. The dichotomy was meant to confuse and rattle her, and it did a pretty good job.
Blood welled from around the small wound, reinforcing the threat, while Pyr’s body heat surrounded her and sent signals as primitive as fear through her. Roxy cut through this crap and decided to tell him the official policy, because he might as well know why she was under obligation to kill him. “It was decided in Council, and by a Full Systems’ Star Chamber Vote, that there is only one viable solution to Trin aggression and the Trin program of galactic conquest: complete extermination of the Trin genetic subset. And the execution of all known Trin allies,” she added, just so he would know. “I am an officer of the United System Military Service. I took the oath to carry out Special Order One.”
Pyr’s body came pressing down even harder against her. His gasp was loud in her ear. His shock was communicated to her, body to body. His repulsion was enough to twist her soul, but she made an effort not to show it. She had taken the oath, never mind her personal opinions when she’d taken it. Experience had taught her that it was the only way.
“Revolting, yes,” she said, though she hadn’t meant to speak. “Genocide is.”
He pushed away from the wall, not wanting to touch her. She turned, aware of the knife he held in one hand. Now there was a stunner in the other. The look on his face was more hurtful than any weapon could be, though she knew she had nothing to be guilty of. She had no reason to explain to someone who had worked with the Trin. He would never be anyone’s slave or puppet.
“The People are right. You—demons—in the United Systems are barbarians.”
The look he gave her chilled her to the bone. Roxy crossed her arms. “Not every world voted for it.” Controversy still raged in secret and in rumor over the decision. Many of the frontline combatants who’d carried out their oaths were considered war criminals by other members of the Service. Controversy and opposition aside, the secret of Special Order One had remained closely guarded inside MilService. It was agreed that if the media ever got hold of the truth, it might well lead to a civil war.
Until now, that is. Eamon had always feared she was a weak link, that her oath as a doctor would work against her oath to kill Trin. It was one of his reasons for not wanting her to leave the Tigris. Maybe his most important one, she decided, as Pyr certainly wasn’t having any trouble getting her to talk about it. The biggest problem with Pyr was that she couldn’t seem to not give him anything he wanted. She was definitely going to have to work on that.
“Did you vote for it?” He looked her over with an ugly sneer. “Are all koltiri like you?”
She’d work on defying him later. Right now she needed to tell him the truth. “As a matter of fact, the koltiri of Koltir did approve the Special Order. Pruning of seedling races is sometimes necessary for the strength of the whole. Of course, no koltiri ever expected they’d have to do the pruning themselves. Koltiri’s are trained to be gentle.”
“You’re not.”
“I was. Until I fought a war against the Trin. Terra, on the other hand, voted against Special Order One,” she added, needing to explain both halves of her ancestry. “And my Terran half doesn’t particularly like the notion of a Final Solution for anybody.”
“Terrans!” His sneer grew even uglier, and he spat on the deck. “We’ve heard all about how the Terrans exterminated the Makacheyn.”
“And have you heard what the Makacheyn did to Terra?”
“They were a great warrior race.”
“So great that they made a habit of invading worlds that were just developing space technology and stripping them of every resource. Many times. Terra was only the last world they invaded. We beat them. We beat them fair and square and the price of our not going to war with the oh-so-snotty, non-interfering United Systems was what they stood back and let us do to the Makacheyn, who they were tired of using as their military enforcers anyway.”
“You destroyed the Makacheyn.”
“We most certainly did not. We simply fought them back to the stone age, liberated all their other slave worlds, took over the military arm of the United Systems, and left the Makacheyn to rot on their own homeworld. They still exist—they’re hunting with stone axes and rubbing sticks together to make fire, but they’re still breathing!”
“But the Trin have to all die?”
“Damn right!”
Pyr did not know how he and Roxanne had come to stand toe to toe, shouting at each other in the center of the corridor. He was aware of the absurdity of it all. They were standing only a few feet away from the interrogation room. His reason for bringing Roxanne here had not been to argue with her. He still couldn’t stop himself from shouting one more question. “What the demons did Kith have to do with the Trin?”
“He was a Trin!” she shouted back.
“He was with the Pirate League!”
“Yes? So? He was still a Trin.”
“He was? How do you know?”
“He looked and smelled like one. You know, white skin.” She ran a thumb across her forehead. “Ugly red bumps
. Pointy teeth. No nose to speak of. Nasty attitude. Really bad hair.”
“So that’s what a Trin looks like.”
“Fortunately, there’s never been more than a few hundred thousand of that model, though they’ve interfered in untold billions of lives. Very few are unfortunate enough to see one up close. You usually have to hack away layers and layers of puppet races and schemes to get to the corruption at the center, go through thousands of bodies to get to the one Trin they died protecting. Most people who died in the Trin war never saw a Trin,” she added with an awful sadness. “On either side.”
“Then why are you sure Kith didn’t just look like this hated enemy of yours?”
She gave him a caustic look. “I didn’t mistake that he felt like one, thought like one. Every subset has their own mental signature, you know.”
He nodded. “That much I do know.”
———
So Kith was a Trin. Interesting. Irrelevant, but interesting. It was true that he had very little information on the Trin, other than knowing that they were known for the high level of their technology. He’d followed the war from a distance as he patrolled the border between his people and the rest of the galaxy. He knew the war was hard-fought and vicious on both sides, but neither the Trin nor the United Systems meant anything to him. As long as the battles didn’t come near his home, he didn’t care about their killing each other. The only genocide he cared about was any that threatened the People. She’d still killed Kith without Pyr’s permission, and his will superseded any Special Orders aboard the Raptor. And it showed him what she was capable of.
“I’d heard the Trin had taken shelter with the League. Quite a comedown. No wonder he was always in such a foul mood.”
“He actually seemed rather nice, for a Trin.”
He almost laughed. Damn the woman, why did she make him laugh? And angry, and curious. She made him question assumptions he wanted to be true. He had enough on his plate without adding the distraction of someone he found interesting.
Gates of Hell Page 20
