“Mmm.” Another long sigh brushed my mouth. “You’re off duty.”
“I’m the captain.”
His eyes opened slowly. His thumb rubbed across my mouth where his lips had just been. “And I suppose the captain wants her tea hot this time.”
I nipped his thumb, then rolled quickly, avoiding his grasp. “Quick shower. And yes, hot tea. Not coffee. I’ll never get back to sleep.”
A raised eyebrow and a Sully grin challenged my last statement. There were always his bedtime stories.
When I came out of the shower, tea was waiting, hot. Sully was gone. But a playing card fluttered out of my pants pocket when I picked my clothes off the floor.
Angel of heart-stars.
Thirty minutes to exitgate. “Captain’s heading for the bridge.”
“Hell’s ass. There goes our card game.”
We flowed through the gate like honeylace from a crystalline cup. Sweet, sweet little ship, my P40. I thought about that, thought about how good it felt to be at a stellar helm again. And pushed aside those sullen whispers in my mind, those questions about Gabriel Ross Sullivan I didn’t want to face. Those fears …
15
We hit the C–D border at Calth early on the fourth day after jump. Ahead of schedule, praise the stars! Sublights were back to specs—better than specs, because I didn’t have Fleet safety regs to worry about anymore. That Sully knew ways to coax more power out of the drives came as no surprise to me. I’d figured out long ago that rules existed to a great extent so that Sully could break them.
And that’s when he was just Sully. Not pirate, lover, ghost, friend, poet, and mercenary, sitting at my engineering station, weapons silent but active. All ship’s sensors on serious watch for Imperial bogies.
Ren had integrated data we’d gleaned, illegally, from the Imperial transit beacon in Dafir. We looked for anything to do with Marker. He’d sorted it by voice parameters, talking softly into his headset.
I reviewed the updated meetpoint coordinates we’d picked up on a blind transmit from the Karn last shift. A private yacht turned ghost ship. Sully’s home base. It was about twice the size of the Meritorious but rigged to run with a minimum crew complement of six. Rigged with other things too. He’d laid them out for me in detail. These were things he wanted me to know. Weapons systems, tracking, sensor-jamming arrays. Sublights, hypers, all with overrides. A comm pack that would make an Imperial techie faint with joy. And a custom, highly illegal ion-trail diffuser. Waves on a beach dissolving the footprints in the sand.
Ren slipped his headset down around his neck and swiveled toward me. “There was an unusual series of shipments inbound to Marker a few weeks ago. You might want to—”
An alarm wailed shrilly, my adrenaline spiking along with it. Red lights flared over my long-distance scanner. I switched screens on my arm pad automatically and saw the configuration of an Imperial cruiser. An hour behind us, but her appearance might not be coincidental.
The Meritorious’s old files confirmed her ID: the Andru Kendrick. Captain Gemma Junot.
I tapped off the alarm. Sully studied the main screen, which showed the same data as my arm pad. I read off the ship’s and captain’s names for Ren.
“Know her?” Sully meant Junot, not her ship. He knew what a Maven-Class cruiser signified as well as I did.
“By reputation.” Junot was a gruff woman in her late forties. But well liked, fair. Though that was from a fellow officer’s point of view. I wasn’t one of those anymore. Now I was the enemy. “If she has someone sharp on scan who’s spotted us, she’ll be looking for reasons why a P40 configuration isn’t broadcasting an Imperial ID. She has to know a couple mining corporations use P40s for transport. But she also knows a P40’s missing from Moabar—and hasn’t been confirmed dead yet.”
We had to keep enough distance between us so that the answer to Captain Junot’s questions would confirm our cover as a mining transport. If she, or any bogey, came within visual range, the Meritorious’s name and Imperial insignia were clearly visible on her hull.
We cruised at max sublight, per spec, not per Sully. I didn’t want to attract attention by pushing the ship to a speed a P40 normally couldn’t provide, a speed that a mining transport had no need of. I could tell Sully to push her now, ten over spec, put some more distance between us and Junot. But I needed the Kendrick to go away, not get suspicious and kick her own engines hot in pursuit.
“Hold speed for now?” Sully echoed my thoughts.
I nodded. “Unless she’s got friends coming in from the opposite axis, we should be able to talk our way out of this.”
A second alarm wailed.
She had friends.
“Shit.” I had no choice. Subtlety was out. I raked down my straps. Sully and Ren did the same. “Change course, ninety degrees. Options, Sullivan. Get me options.”
“Changing course. Working on it.”
An asteroid field would be nice, somewhere to play duck and hide. Mining rafts even nicer. We’d have a legitimate purpose then. Mining transport working the rafts. But this was Calth, not the A–B border, where such things were possible.
“Bogey two an hour ten ahead. Kendrick an hour behind, but closing,” Ren said, headset back on.
“ID on bogey two?”
“Not yet,” Ren replied.
That was one piece of good news. If I couldn’t recognize them, they couldn’t recognize me. Yet.
“Kendrick changing course.” Sully worked the console with a calmness that belied our situation. “Following.”
“Damn it, I hate when everyone wants to dance with me at the same time.”
“You’re just a popular girl, Chaz. Ready to lose them yet?”
“Not until I have somewhere to hide.”
“Got to let go of that rule book sometime. All life’s a risk.”
“I’m at quota for risks this week, thank you. Just keep us moving.”
“Bogey two coming in sensor range,” Ren said. “Confirm ID. Imperial destroyer Morgan Loviti.”
I froze, for less than a half a second. I was still a Fleet officer. I was still in red-alert conditions. My mind still focused on data, my fingers moved over the arm pad. But I froze as if ice had been sprayed through my insides.
Philip.
“Captain is Philip Guthrie.” Ren announced what I already knew.
“Chaz.” Sully’s dark gaze moved to me, searching, probing. Ren’s too, probably. My rainbow had just turned glacial, cracked, and shattered.
“Know him too,” I said. I couldn’t find an offhand smile to tag my words. I fell back into Fleet-issue-captain mode. “Hold course and speed.”
A duro-hard rattled in my personal cold storage, knocked hard against my mental walls. Or maybe that was my heart. Shit. I didn’t know. Couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. I had two Imperial bogies on my tail and not a hidey-hole in sight.
And one of the bogies knew me, very, very well.
“Kick us up ten.” I was running now, running from more than just bogies.
“Plus ten,” Sully replied evenly. “Loviti changing course to intercept. Kendrick still coming on. Forty-five minutes behind, closing fast.”
I tapped at my screen, searching desperately for answers. Running would only bring more ships, more intercepts. They’d box us in, if they didn’t start firing first. I had to lose them.
Or I had to negotiate.
“We can take plus twenty.” Sully’s voice was calm, but I felt an underlying question, a gentle nudge of concern, as if he were asking, What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling?
Lots. A whole duro-hard full. Maybe two. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to; there just wasn’t time for explanations. “Hold course and speed. No, belay that order, Sullivan. Change course to intercept the Morgan Loviti. Hold speed at plus ten.”
“Bringing weapons on—”
“Stand down, Mister Sullivan. I need weapons cold, shields on minimum.”
“Chaz—”
“Do it!” God
, Sully, don’t argue with me. Not now. I’m at quota on risks and still hip-deep in confusion.
“Changing course. Twenty minutes to intercept.” His flat response told me he was complying with my orders. But clearly, he didn’t like it at all.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to throw words together that would either save us or damn us. The only thing I knew for sure was that if it came down to the latter, my choice was clear. My life in exchange for Sully’s and Ren’s. Philip would do that.
He wouldn’t even hesitate.
“Fifteen minutes to intercept.”
I turned away from Sully’s voice. “Ren.”
He looked over his shoulder, nodded. His clouded gaze probed me.
“I’ll need you off the bridge before intercept. Fleet knows a memory-wipe was done on two officers. They see a Stolorth and nothing I say is going to make a difference.”
“I understand, Chasidah.”
“Wait in my cabin. Use my deskscreen to follow what happens on the bridge. They will not”—I said firmly, with a glance to Sully on my right. His hard obsidian eyes met my gaze—“they will not take this ship. I will not permit that.”
I turned back to Ren. “If I’m removed to the Loviti—”
“That’s unacceptable!” Sully’s voice, angry, rode over mine.
My own rose, correspondingly. “If I am removed to the Loviti, understand it’s because this is my choice. I’m placing you in command if that happens, Ren Ackravaro.”
Behind me, I heard the sharp snap of a safety harness unlatching.
“My orders, if that happens, are this: depart, with all possible speed. No shots are to be fired.”
“Chasidah!” Sully grasped my forearm, tried to pull me around.
I yanked back, away from the surge of heat that flared through me at his touch. “Ren. As a friend, you must do this.”
Ren’s face was impassive. His chest rose and fell rapidly. The emotions on the bridge had to almost suffocate him. And Sully as well, who had my arm in a hard grip, who had to be feeling everything roiling through me. Which is why I had to put Ren in charge. I couldn’t trust that Sully would react logically, unemotionally. Not with what I was about to do.
“Do you understand, Ren?”
“The other ship. They will listen to the Loviti if we’re permitted to leave?”
“Junot will do what Guthrie says, yes. He’s got seniority.”
Sully wrenched me around to face him. Heat rose, crested. Ice cold came in hard after that. Sharp, biting. Scraping me raw on the inside. He was hurting, afraid. But so was I.
“Take your hands off me, Mister Sullivan, and sit down!” I had to get away from his touch, from the emotions he poured through me. I needed to be thinking clearly to face Philip.
He released my arms but didn’t move.
“This ship is under my command as well,” he said finally, his voice harsh.
“But I’m her captain. We agreed on that from the beginning. I also know how Fleet thinks, reacts. You don’t. So listen to your own wisdom for once. You can’t outrun them. You’re deep in Fleet territory. You’ve got two starports in this quadrant of Calth. The only way you’ll make it to jumpgate is if they let you.”
I took a deep breath. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Get their permission. If it means I have to stay behind, so be it. It’s a risk I have to take.” A wry smile finally found its way to my lips. “I’m guess I’m not at quota after all.”
“We’re being hailed on all channels, Chasidah.”
I turned to Ren. “We’ll hold position.” I tabbed the sublights down to one-quarter power. “Off the bridge, Ren. I’ll open comm from here.”
Ren stood, laid his hand briefly on my shoulder, then left. A sad, troubled warmth remained.
I turned back to Sully. “I’m going on visual. It’s imperative Guthrie believes I’m in total command of this ship. It’s imperative you act in all ways as if I am. Stay in the background, let him see you as little as possible. You’ve not changed that much in two years. You get recognized and it’s over. Now, sit.”
A wrenching, gnawing anguish suddenly shot through my mind, my thoughts. Cold and hot at the same time, it was cutting, stark. Probing. It grasped at memories. My breathing stuttered, caught. My hand clenched the arm pad. I stared at obsidian eyes, at a man standing three feet in front of me, not even touching me. And I couldn’t breathe.
Then just as quickly it was gone. This was not the warm sensation that had caressed my body. This was not an empath’s gentle touch. This was deeper, in my mind, tearing open my thoughts with blatant ownership. I felt violated, naked. And too stunned to face the horror of what he’d just done.
“I will not lose you, Chasidah.” His voice was as quiet as the vast emptiness of space, and as dark. He sat.
I clenched my fist to steady my shaking hand, then hit the keypad. The center viewscreen opaqued, locked on the hailing signal from the Loviti. It segued through instantly, because this was, after all, Imperial ship to Imperial ship.
An image flickered. I knew it even before it focused. The Loviti’s bridge. A much larger, grander bridge than my little P40’s. And in the middle, a man in Imperial grays, captain’s stars over his breast pocket. He wasn’t sitting in the captain’s chair. Philip Guthrie liked to stand, reinforce his imposing presence, his slate-gray hair, his piercing blue eyes. His impeccable posture, well-muscled body.
Forty-eight years old and in command of a Galaxy-Class destroyer. He was a figure and a face that turned heads regularly in bars on liberty. Classic, undeniably masculine. Confident.
I tamped down the shock rolling through me at Sully’s intrusion into my mind. Threw it in that duro-hard and somehow dragged out my Fleet-issue confidence. My Fleet-issue resolve. I lounged sideways in my chair as Philip’s image solidified, crossed my legs, propped my chin in my hand. I knew Philip would see my image at the same time I saw his. But I, at least, had the element of surprise.
Blue eyes widened and chiseled lips parted, but only slightly. “My God. Chaz.”
I arched an eyebrow, mimicking Sully at his best. “Hello, Philip, darling. Miss me?”
16
A strong, sharp stab of pained confusion cut a second time into my mind. Again, without physical contact with the man sitting off to my right. I shoved it aside, just as I’d shoved aside the questions that had surfaced with Sullivan’s last intrusion, the one that had me gasping, clutching the arm pad.
I’d lost my right to ask questions. But I hadn’t lost my focus. I knew what I had to do.
I kept smiling, a slow, lazy smile as I waited for Philip to find words. It was almost a pleasure to see him at a loss like this. It’d been a long time.
I could see his crew diligently working the consoles behind him. We weren’t in visual range. He knew this was a P40. But not which one. He would have, eventually, if we’d run and they’d blockaded us. Then we’d be looking at a few more destroyers, a good half dozen cruisers and patrol ships. There’d be no bargaining then. But it was only Philip, Junot, and Chaz Bergren right now, out here. And Gabriel Ross Sullivan on my bridge, and a blind Stolorth in my cabin.
Philip gestured sharply toward his comm officer. “Transfer this to my office.”
The screen blanked. When it came back on, Philip was still standing. But the background was different. A wide viewport, a high-backed chair. And no one else to overhear what might be said.
“Chaz.” Philip repeated my name as if he needed verification of my identity. “There’s a report of your—a ship being taken by force. At Moabar.” He frowned, looking stern. The venerable Fleet captain, quantifying the facts.
“I’m aware the Meritorious was taken. But not by me.”
“No. The Farosians. With a Stolorth Ragkiril. We know that. How you would get involved with them—how you would get involved with that—I cannot understand.”
“That” meant a Stolorth. A Fleet-issue sentiment of disgust.
“Kingswell and Lieuten
ant Paxton were near death when Fleet recovered them,” he continued. “Their minds viciously raped, all but destroyed.”
Liar! The word speared my mind, blazing with anger. It was as clear as if he’d shouted it in my ear.
I pushed it off; let horror, loathing flicker across my face. The emotions were only partially feigned. “Are you blaming me for this?”
“Are you going to tell me this isn’t the Meritorious?”
“I am. It’s not.”
Another moment of shocked silence. Good. I liked when Philip didn’t have a ready answer.
“She’s a Ninacska Mining Cooperative transport ship, the Far Rider. You’ve been scanning me for five minutes. You know my ID.”
“Yes, but—”
“Be logical. Let’s assume this was the Meritorious. Let’s assume I’d taken her from Moabar with your Farosian terrorists and some Stolorth mind-fucker. Do you really think I’d be sitting here with minimum shields and weapons cold? Would I have changed course to meet you?” I shook my head sadly. “By all that’s holy, Philip. I thought you knew me better than that.”
“You’re supposed to be incarcerated on Moabar. Am I supposed to believe you didn’t steal this ship?”
I leaned to my left, recrossed my legs, propped my chin in my other hand, shrugged. “You never asked me if I stole this ship. I just said she’s not the one you’re looking for.”
“Then this ship is stolen.”
“Not exactly. Let’s say I negotiated a trade.”
I could tell Philip was having a difficult time putting my facts—my deliberately widely divergent facts—together. He was Fleet, like me. He liked his databoxes all stacked neatly in a row.
I plucked out the first box, opened it for him. “NMC services Dafir and the rim, including Moabar.”
“I’m aware of that,” Philip snapped.
I opened the next one. It contained a small bomb. “I service the boys at NMC. In exchange, I get work-release duty. It’s almost freedom.”
This time it was Philip’s face that showed disgust. “By all that’s holy, I never thought I’d see the day where Chaz Bergren would whore—”
“You have no idea what Moabar is like!” I shot to my feet, fists clenched. “Damn you, Philip. How dare you judge me?”
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