We’d take the bridge as soon as she was moving.
I stopped at the hatchway to Deck Two, threw back my hood, listened. My heart pounded. I could feel Sully’s breath on my hair.
“Okay,” I breathed. I stepped out, laser pistol in both hands, and swept the corridor quickly left and right. “This way.”
The autodoor to sick bay, sensing my presence, opened. Sick bay was one large room, containing three small automated regen beds. Behind a movable panel was a hydrotherapy tub. All was quiet, empty.
A long half wall shielded a workstation. “There.” In four steps I was behind it. Sully and Ren followed.
I sat and stared for a moment at the microscreen. It was active. I touched a databox, brought up ship’s status. Sully leaned over my shoulder, his hand lightly on my arm. Ren stood close behind him.
We spoke in whispers. “Docking clamps should unlatch … now.”
The ship jerked slightly, shimmied. Thrusters fired. More shimmies. Then a lurch as we dropped away.
Whoever was at the helm had pie plates for hands.
I waited a few more seconds just to be sure. “We’ve got ten minutes, boys. Let’s do it in less.”
I peeled off my robe, then started for the door. Sully and Ren followed, now all in black, like me. Ren held the rifle with an obvious familiarity and ease. It was not, I figured, a skill he’d learned at the monastery.
Back to the hatch at the stairs, up again. We faced only two possible scenarios. Two crew or officers on the bridge. Or crew and officer split, one on the bridge and one in engineering, on Deck Three. Given what was going on at Tamlara’s I figured the chance of finding three sober crew was rare. Therefore, we’d take the bridge first. If anyone was in engineering, we’d deal with him or her later.
I eased the hatch door to Deck One open, listened again. This time, I could hear voices on the bridge. One lower-pitched, male. One higher, female. I wished for the hundredth time I knew more about Kingswell’s crew.
I nodded to Sully. My job was to take the captain’s sling. Sully’s was to secure engineering. Ren had to prevent anyone from accessing communications or interfering with us.
It was that simple.
It was far from easy.
I nodded once more. “Now.”
We moved quickly, weapons raised, our backs skimming the bulkhead. Like hard shadows we flowed past the single door to the captain’s quarters, then the ready room, past a narrow maintenance panel and, across from that, the airlock to the emergency escape pod. Listening, watching. Ren reading thermals and rainbows.
The hatch to the bridge was open—sloppy, sloppy. Voices filtered out. A man’s drawl: “Yeah, well, what do you expect. Out here. Bunch of assholes with no brains.” His voice was slurred, drunk.
We stopped just short of the hatch. Ren hunkered down almost in the middle of the corridor, his face tilted up, sightless eyes reading thermals and rainbows fifteen, eighteen feet away. He moved back in a fluid movement. “Male in the center. Female on the right.”
Someone in the captain’s sling. Someone at engineering.
“Go,” I whispered.
Sully and I moved first. Ren was immediately behind. I focused on the man in my chair. Brown hair slicked back, right arm outstretched, fingers grasping a lightpen, wiggling it. A nervous habit.
I recognized it just as I thrust the barrel of the Stinger against the base of his skull. A sick feeling rose in my throat.
Captain Lew Kingswell.
I knew him. He knew me.
I was going to have to kill him.
10
“Down, Captain! Now! On your knees! On the floor!” I shouted the orders, knowing Kingswell might recognize my voice. Praying he didn’t. Prayed that the man stumbling out of the chair, falling forward, wouldn’t turn around and see me. His identification would be absolute. Anyone else’s would be conjecture.
I kept my laser pistol in his back as he hunched over, watched his hands, making sure he couldn’t yank my feet out from under me.
“Facedown! Hands behind your back!”
He flattened himself with a grunt. Ren moved beside me, grabbing Kingswell’s hands, locking them in a sonicuff.
“What do you want?” Kingswell bellowed, his face against the decking.
I ignored him and glanced at Sully. A young woman with short, curly blond hair lay cuffed and trembling at his feet. Her face was half hidden by his boots. He caught my glance, jerked his head toward the floor. Mouthed Kingswell’s name.
I nodded.
He mouthed another word: shit.
There were still a few brains left in the government. And they might eventually figure out what Chaz Bergren knew.
He motioned to the woman, moved his feet slightly. I could see her a lot better than she could see me. She had a short nose, her blond hair the color of honeylace. I shook my head. Didn’t know her. I’d caught a glimpse of her ID on her uniform when we barged in. Lieutenant.
And that was all we had time for. We were expected to redock in five minutes.
Sully holstered the Carver, stepped quickly away from the woman, touched Ren’s arm. They lifted Kingswell away from me.
My job was to fly the ship. I left Kingswell and the lieutenant to Sully and Ren and took the sling, angling thrusters, pulling us away from the station.
I could hear Kingswell struggling behind me as he was carried to the rear of the bridge. His anguished demands echoed. “Who are you, damn it! You can’t do this!”
“Meritorious, this is Moabar Departure. You’re heading off course. Repeat, you’re heading off course. Acknowledge.”
I hit the red alert. Sirens wailed through the bridge. Sully grabbed a headset at the comm panel, keyed it open, well knowing how the game was to be played. “Having slight problems here. Will advise.”
He keyed if off. I killed the sirens.
Kingswell’s boot hammered the bulkhead in front of him. “You Chalford’s people? This some kind of game, assholes?”
Don’t damage my ship, you bastard.
Then there was a muffled cry of anguish, as if someone tried to shout through material. I looked back quickly, saw Sully, grinning, tucking a roll of gauze back into a med-kit.
I pointed to engineering. He tossed the kit into the nearest chair and stepped over the woman on the floor. He slid into the seat, made a few adjustments to the board before him.
“Move her,” he said to Ren.
Ren was more gentle with her than they had been with Kingswell. But I caught the look of pure fear on her face when she saw the webbed hands on her arms. She was Fleet—had worked the same training vids I had. I knew what she was thinking. Ragkiril. A creature who could rip apart her mind.
Ren placed her along the base of the opposite wall, on the other side of the hatchway from Kingswell. She lay on her side, her head angled crookedly. Soft sobbing filtered past the beeping chatter of the screens and scanners.
Moabar Departure tried to contact us again. Did we have an emergency? Did we require assistance? So far, no one was in pursuit. That’s just the way I wanted it.
I hit the red alert again. Sully keyed the comm mike on the engineering console. “Got a fuel leak. Advise traffic to stay clear. Repeat. Hazardous fuel leak.”
Red alert fell silent. I knew that would keep them away from us for a while.
At least until we hit the lanes at full bore. Then they might just suspect something else was going on.
But by then it wouldn’t matter. As long as I stayed at max speeds, they wouldn’t catch me. And once I got to the jumpgate, they’d never find me.
A series of three tones sounded on my right. Moabar’s outer beacon. I sent back an acknowledgement from the list on my screen. Nice of Kingswell to have the ship fully functioning, all systems open and online. I’d change his passwords later.
The beacon chimed back. We were clear. My fingers played over the keypads as if it’d been only six hours, not six months, since I’d sat in this chair.
The Meritorious shot away from Moabar at top speed, her sublights blazing like the brightest fires in Hell.
“Captain. May I get something from below?” Ren’s voice was soft as he stood next to my chair, rifle slung over his shoulder.
I took a quick glance at the boards. Everything was secure. No threat from Moabar yet. I nodded.
I heard his footsteps recede, then, minutes later, return. I glanced over my shoulder. He had his robe over his arm. He lifted the young woman’s head. She tried to jerk from his touch. He tucked the robe underneath, eased her head against it. She stopped struggling and lay there motionless, except for the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders.
Ren went back to his seat, but his hands didn’t touch the comm controls, though I knew he could see their outlines. But no way for him to identify their different functions, and this wasn’t the time for me to train him.
Twenty minutes out and we had no pursuit. Nothing to do but wait an hour to reach the jumpgate Sully wanted to take. He had a ship positioned on the border of Aldan and Baris. The Diligent would have taken us there directly. Now we were forced to take the long way around, through no-man’s-land. Running the rim in a stolen ship. While jukors were born and Takas died, somewhere in the Marker shipyards.
Sully stood, no better at this waiting game than I was, I thought. He leaned his hands on the armrest of my chair and stared at me for a long hard moment. He still needed a shave, but the shadows were gone from his eyes.
The questions weren’t. I didn’t know quite what had happened between that passionate but unexpected kiss in the temple hallway and his none-to-subtle message when I inspected the Carver laser pistol, but something had. He might have been slightly furred when he’d kissed me, but he’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d clasped my hand.
Mine, he’d said. Trust me seemed to be just a breath behind that. And hours before that, something about taking risks.
Hell, why couldn’t we have met again in a nice little spaceport pub, like the last time? It all would’ve been so much simpler. This wasn’t. This was a tangle of fears and desires and anger and faith. Lives hung precariously on our actions, including my own. Yet there was an intensity in his gaze that told me that, in spite of all the turmoil swirling around us, this unanswered question mattered as much. Or more.
Could I risk that again? He was a man I’d known for years, yet didn’t know. Our interactions had often been colored with flirtatious innuendoes. But they’d just as often hinted at something deeper. It was something I’d always felt, even when he was my constant adversary. And I was his beautiful, interfering bitch.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
Kingswell kicked the bulkhead again, but at least he’d stopped grunting.
“Yeah,” I said. And took a risk. I brushed my fingers across his mouth. Watched surprise flash across his features, watched obsidian turn molten.
His hand curled around mine, his lips warm against the pulse on my wrist. Then another few inches and his lips were against my mouth, hesitantly, not like last night’s demanding kiss. But tasting, testing. Exploring.
I explored back. Heat fluttered on velvet wings around my heart.
Thump-thump-THUD-thump. Not my heart, but Kingswell’s boots.
“Damn him,” he said, but he was grinning a Sully grin, full of confidence, like the true handsome bastard he was. “You’re distracting enough.”
“So are you.” Heat rose to my face. I touched his mouth again. A surprising warmth tumbled through my fingers, down my arm. God, how the man affected me! But I couldn’t afford further distractions.
“And we’ve still got work to do.” I pulled my hand away, keyed in a slight course change toward the jumpgate. Risked one more heated glance.
“We make a good team,” he said softly.
I returned my focus to the data on my screens. We had one last item to attend to before we hit the gate. Kingswell and the lieutenant had to be placed in the escape pod. They’d be rescued within twenty-four hours. The pods were rigged to last a week.
Of course, twenty-four hours in a small pod with Kingswell might feel like a week.
Sully straightened a bit, surveying the bridge in a proprietary fashion, but kept his voice soft. “Nice ship. Always liked it.”
I cuffed him lightly on the arm. “Gee, thanks.”
“I always liked her captain more.” He caught my hand, folded it in his own.
I was about to comment that hijacking freighters in my sector was a strange way of showing that when Ren came over and leaned on the other armrest. I felt as if two tall trees flanked me.
“The robe was a kind gesture,” I told him.
“She’s very afraid. She believes we mean to kill her.”
“You have my permission to tell her we won’t. Will that help?” I realized Ren was on a small bridge with two people whose fearful emotions probably churned out of control. And two more who had adrenaline and hormones pumping. It was probably like having four nonstop red-alert sirens blaring. Thump-thud-thump still resounded behind me.
“I will convey that. Thank you.”
I swiveled halfway around to watch him as he knelt behind the young woman, careful not to touch her. His head angled down as he spoke to her, his words inaudible.
A few hesitant nods of the curly-haired head. Then Ren sat, silently.
An abrupt movement behind Sully caught my attention. Kingswell. No longer wedged against the bulkhead. Somehow in his squirming and kicking, he’d turned. He was flat on his back and glaring at me. He grunted two sharp syllables through the gauze stuffed in his mouth. But I heard them as clearly as if he’d said them on intraship.
“Berg. Gren.”
The identification was absolute.
Sully clenched his fist. “Now we’ve got problems.”
Twenty-two minutes to the jumpgate’s outer beacon. We had to get Kingswell and the lieutenant strapped in the pod and jettison them before we went through. But Kingswell had recognized me, would tell Fleet that Chasidah Bergren was no longer on Moabar but had possession of an Imperial P40. And that she had help in the form of two males, one human, one Stolorth.
If Kingswell had recognized Sully he didn’t say—or rather, grunt confirmation—when Ren and Sully hoisted him into the open corridor just behind the bridge. I didn’t think he would. Sully had always been my territory. Kingswell, a few years behind me in the academy, had never worked patrol. He’d flown a desk on Starport 6 in Baris, the Meritorious’s home port. Sucking up to the brass and pushing around thin-shouldered ensigns had taken up most of his time. Patrol duties would’ve interfered with that. And just might get his impeccable uniform dirty.
Besides, Kingswell was too busy staring at Ren to pay much attention to Sully when they laid him on the floor of the corridor, in front of the escape-pod hatch. Every training vid Fleet had on Stolorth Ragkirils was no doubt replaying through his mind.
My own was snagged, looping like a fractured computer program on a decision I didn’t want to make. I couldn’t let Kingswell tell what he’d seen. But I couldn’t kill him without destroying a part of myself.
I stood at the apex of the bridge, arms folded across my chest. Kingswell glared at me from the corridor, but he was still cuffed and gagged. Ren propped the young woman into a sitting position across from Kingswell, then came back to where Sully and I stood. We talked softly, but not to hide my identity anymore.
“The news will hit Marker before we will.” Sully’s hand on my arm was meant to be reassuring. “You know that. You know we have no choice.”
“Fifteen people, fifteen innocent people, have already died because of me. Sixteen if you count the Taka. I don’t want one more.”
“You had to kill the Taka in defense. This isn’t anything different—”
“Damn it, it is! The Taka attacked me. Kingswell’s here by happenstance. And what about the lieutenant? She
doesn’t know me, but she’ll know he does. Do we put two dead bodies in the pod?” I swung away from Sully, abruptly dislodging his hand, and stared out the forward viewports at a starfield that I’d always found comforting before. Now it looked cold, threatening.
I felt the heat of his body as he moved up behind me. “A trank overdose would be painless.” He ran his hands down my arms, threaded the fingers of his right hand through mine and squeezed lightly.
I shook my head. “I’m not a wanton murderer. Neither are you. I don’t want us to be like them. Like the ones at Marker.”
There was a moment of silence where all I felt was Sully, breathing against my hair. My own heart pounding, angry, confused.
“There is an option,” Ren said softly.
I turned. Sully did the same. The gentleness on Sully’s face hardened, brows slanting. He drew in a sharp breath and pulled his hand out of mine. “No.”
Something that felt like fear prickled at my skin where his hand had held my own.
Ren’s face tilted slightly. “Are you not asking Chasidah to make a worse sacrifice? To be something she’s not?”
“It’s not remotely the same.” Sully’s answer was clipped, harsh.
“No. Her risk is greater. The option you’re giving her violates what she truly is. The option I’m suggesting does not.”
“What?” I glanced rapidly from Ren to Sully. “What option?”
“It’s not an option.”
“It is.”
“Damn you, not now!” A viciousness filled Sully’s voice. It was directed at Ren.
“What not now?” Something felt very wrong. I touched Sully’s arm but he didn’t look at me, wouldn’t take his gaze from Ren’s clouded one.
“She will eventually know.” Ren’s soft, calm voice was the complete opposite of Sully’s.
“Shut the fuck up.” Sully jerked away from me. He tried to push past Ren. But the Stolorth gripped Sully’s forearm, hard. The skin on Ren’s knuckles whitened. The muscles of Sully’s arm bulged under the black fabric as he twisted back around, brought his fist up, clenched. Cold, angry fear hardened obsidian eyes into two chips of black ice.
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