Truthbreaker

by Kelly Lucille

  Then he got back to his deep space sensor readings without answering the question. Tyber did not ask it again. Why would he when they both knew he had no answer to give.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Trig woke from her long sleep she knew she had slept through at least one sleep cycle and probably another, but the headache was gone, and she could not remember having slept so well in her life. Stars, I love this bed.

  When she ended up wherever she ended up, she would have to try and recreate it. It was the first time she acknowledged to herself that she was not going to be returning to the High Ambassador’s employ, and the thought was both terrifying and liberating. She had no idea where she was going to end up.

  Truthfully, she had no idea what the next few cycles would even bring, but she was done with being the revered truthsayer most people were quite happy to keep at a distance. Nobody wanted to be friends with someone who would know every white lie you unthinkingly spouted, and in the Alliance world that was even truer. It seemed every person she met was putting on an act, doing as expected and representing themselves in the best possible light, as opposed to just being themselves. There were a few exceptions. Tryne, for one, and the stars know his daughters never bothered to try and fit in like the rest of them. The marines, and a few other exceptions, but most of the people she had met presented a mask to the world that itched like lies across her skin. Sadly, because of her own circumstances, she had become as adapt at hiding as everyone else she had met.

  No one she had yet met on the Jezebel seemed to be hiding who they were. Their secrets, yes, she could feel them swirling all around on this ship just past the boundaries she erected to keep them out, but that was not the same thing as pretending to be something you were not. Neither Tyber Relian, his first mate, or even the Doctor pretended to be anyone but who they were. In the strange situation she found herself waking up in, she realized that none of the Jezebel crew, from the kind doctor, to the scarily attractive Captain and first mate had treated her with the distance and reverence she had come to expect from everyone but the High Ambassador himself, the Captain of his guard, and to a lesser extent a few of the space marines that guarded them. Though even in those instances there was a necessary distance simply because of the nature of the working relationships themselves.

  But from the friendly and curious Doc to Lore and Tyber’s distracting presence, distance had become a memory.

  She was still contemplating that, and her many differing reactions to it when the com link at the door beeped at her to signal someone was at the door, requesting entrance.

  She was not sure who to expect when she opened the hatch but given her circumstance she did not bother to check who it was first. She just opened the door. Everyone on this ship would be a stranger or near enough that looking seemed superfluous. As she expected, the person in the corridor was someone she did not know.

  "Hey, I'm Sera, Mechanic for the Jezebel. Doc thought you might be up and would appreciate seeing someone other than a male when you were taken the way you were."

  Trig smiled at the woman. Yet one more person she had met that did not seem put off by her abilities. And she did not need to really look with her powers to know that this pretty young mechanic was as open and friendly as she appeared.

  "You missed a spot," Trig said. Her finger going to her own nose to illustrate.

  Sera wrinkled her nose and did her best to wipe where Trig indicated. The engine grease did not move, but the look of the woman made Trig smile. After a few years on in the Alliance Ambassador corps, seeing someone who was clearly not all that confined by expectations and the opinion of others was easy to spot.

  "Yeah, it happens." She looked Trig over in her body hugging nanite. "You need to borrow some clothes? Doc mentioned the Captain did not bring any of your things along when he grabbed you."

  Trig looked over the other woman, who was slender as a reed and tall. She nearly snorted at the idea they would wear the same size. Petite she might be, but Trig could tell just by looking her hips were not going to be fit into this woman’s trousers. "I don't think that's going to work, do you?"

  "Trust me, of everyone on this ship, I'm the most likely to have something you can wear."

  Trig smiled at the truth of those words. "I am wearing Faustian armor, so it self-cleans. But it would be nice to do without the truthsayer robes when I am not on duty." She looked over the other woman carefully, opening her senses. There had been very few people she had met in her life that had no ulterior motives, no secret reason for whatever friendly overture they instigated. Sera was an exception to that. Trig let her real smile out and pushed out her hand. "It is a kind thought and I would appreciate it."

  Sera shrugged. "It's no big deal. I’ll find you something. In the meantime if you are hungry the crew usually has meals together at least once a day, or more if Doc feels like cooking, which unless there is a medical emergency he usually is." She kept talking without stopping and Trig had to wonder if she always talked so much, or if it was just the novelty of a female guest.

  Trig stepped through the door and let it close behind her. "I could eat."

  "Good," Sera said as she kept talking even as she led the way down the corridor. "I don't suppose this ship seems like much to someone used to living on an Alliance cruiser. Truthsayers probably get the best of everything, but really you should have seen it when I first came aboard. It was just the Captain and Lore at that time, well and Doc, they needed a mechanic, and I was in a bit of a bind when they found me. Same story with Mac, and Doc before us.”

  "And Lore, how did he and the Captain meet?"

  Sera snorted. "Now that is a story I would pay to hear, but I don't think anyone but the two of them knows it."

  "You never asked?"

  She turned and gave Trig an incredulous look. "You met them; do they seem to you to be sharing kind of guys?" She turned back and started walking again. "I'm not entirely sure that Lore knows how to say anything personal, and the Captain doesn’t talk about his past, ever."

  Since Lore had spoken rather effusively to her the night before she would have argued if she could not hear that Sera believed she spoke the truth.

  "What about you?" she asked looking back again. "How did you end up on Warrung’s radar?"

  "That is the question isn't it?"

  Sera stopped and turned back at the end of the corridor. "Well, don't worry too much about it. Everyone on this ship made his kill or acquire list in one way or another."

  "You made his list?"

  "Yep, the whole crew did," she said as she turned into the last hall before the galley. "We helped out a friend and Warrung took issue. That and Mac and Warrung have a past."

  "A past?"

  Sera shrugged before taking her seat at the table next to the galley kitchen where Doc was presently waving at her. "As in Warrung tried to make Mac a slave, and Mac blew his head off."

  "If only that were all it took," A big man, presumably Mac said, coming into the galley and kissing Sera before taking his seat beside her. Over seven feet tall, and every inch muscle. Mac dwarfed the smaller mechanic by a good foot and a half and a whole lot of bulk muscle.

  It took Trig less than a moment to suss out the newest crew member of the Jezebel. "Space Marine?"

  "Used to be," Mac said gruffly. "Now I'm just salvage crew."

  She doubted that very much. "I thought once a marine, always a marine?"

  He shrugged his big shoulders and pulled a plate off the stack before them to Sera's place at the table, then did the same for himself. "That only works when you are honorably discharged and retired with your pension and your delusions intact."

  Trig had worked with the High Ambassador long enough to learn more than one secret the Alliance would not want her to know about. Lucky for her Tryne was one of the few people in a place of power that believed in what the Alliance stood for. She had met many who use it to build their own power base and only played lip service to the ideal.

&
nbsp; She had a feeling Mac had seen more of the latter, rather than the former in his work as an Alliance soldier. She did not need to ask him to explain what he meant and when she did not he looked at her with surprise.

  This time it was her turn to shrug. "I was a truthsayer in the employ of the High Ambassador. He may genuinely believe in what he is doing and want to help, but just because he spends little time in the capital does not mean that he never goes. I have met enough of the politicians on the council to know that at least half of them are megalomaniacs waiting to happen. It's only the few like High Ambassador Tryne that keep them at all honest."

  "Good to know," Captain Relian said as he came into the galley. "I would have thought all of them were corrupt myself."

  That voice, Trig dropped the spoon she had just picked up from the cup of them at the middle of the table. It clanged loudly against her empty plate. It should be against the law for anyone to have a voice like that.

  She very precisely lifted the spoon off the plate and placed it carefully beside it before she raised her eyes and looked at the Captain. "Lucky for the universe, organizations, like people, are rarely so easy to label either for the good or the bad."

  His head tilted, his eyes on her and she caught a flash of something that was there and gone before she could label it. She would have pursued the thought but something in the way he looked at her demanded all her attention, and she felt her gift flare around her, she sucked in a breath but didn’t pull it back. Very rarely did her gift flare on its own from the tight confines she kept it bundled down in. Usually a flare would signal that there was danger close, someone with bad intentions towards her, or on occasion, others with her. This time the truth that came to her was...different.

  Like a touch across hot skin she felt the flare of need. All-consuming need, and every nerve in her body flared with surprise heat. She sucked in a breath, lost in the depths of warm chocolate eyes that hid so much. She had no idea how long she was lost in Tyber Relian's eyes, before the table was thumped and sound suddenly returned to the nearly silent room and she looked away to find Sera, Mac and now Doc Henry all watching her and Tyber in silence. As if they were doing something more than staring silently into each other’s eyes. Trig blinked, licked her dry lips, and cleared her obstructed throat. She didn’t look toward the Captain at the head of the table, still and silent with his false front of charisma and sexy charm that hid so much. Enough that she could drown in it if she were not careful. And the heat...

  She could still feel his eyes on her like a heated laser beam, as they moved over all that could be seen of her above the metal of the dining table. She knew better than to meet that gaze again. Whatever flirtatious charisma she found in those eyes it was all a false front. A charming mask. The real Tyber Relian was in the secrets bombarding her. Truths so hidden and jumbled she ate them without truly understanding what she was taking in.

  Later, she knew they would come to her, her brain’s way of coping, one at a time in memories that were not her own and knowledge she did not earn. Some people called truthsayer’s lie eaters, or secret-eaters, for them it was merely a negative way of looking at what they could do, sense lies. For her, what she was, it was nothing but truth. She ate lies, devoured secrets and the more she ate the more she craved the power that built up from them. And his were not the only ones in the room.

  There were so many secrets floating around the room she had to fight her need to eat them all. It was not as bad as some of the council chambers she had been forced to endure, but usually she didn’t allow her power to unfurl as she had today, and even with the limited number of people that populated the Jezebel there were enough little white lies and embarrassing moments and thoughts people would rather keep private that it was heady. More than that though, were the truly deadly secrets being kept, some were known by the crew, such as the fact that Mac was part Bruha and Sera his Bruha mate, and some like Doc Henry's hidden past and the real reason he was running when the captain found him and offered him a place on his ship, that was not known by anyone but the Doc himself.

  She did not need to know all the small lies people told themselves to appear better than they were. None of that she needed or wanted to know. And worse, if she ate all the secrets and lies coming at her she had no doubt that Tyber Relian would see it with his all-seeing eyes and figure out that she was different.

  So she very carefully kept her head down, knowing her eyes would give her away first, and fought against taking in anything more than she already had. Her power wanted to fight her. Wanted to keep eating secrets and lies, to know everything. Knowledge was nearly as addicting as power, for her almost more so because of her lack of personal connections. Knowing everyone in the room down to their deepest depths made her feel connected in a way her normal life could not provide, and connection was what she craved, even as she feared it.

  Finally like a fist closing she managed to tamp her power back to a reasonable level. What she had gleaned from Tyber and the bit she had sucked down from his crew would come at her in bits and pieces for a while, but she was used to that and could handle it without giving herself away. Some secrets were harder than others to react to, but she had been managing since she was a child, she could manage here.

  She breathed in deep and blew out a breath of calm. She looked up ready to say something distracting in her usual serene voice and instead froze finding Tyber's eyes on her, like most of the room he was looking at her curiously. The Doc even looked worried, as if he were going to pull her in for a checkup any second.

  But the look in Tyber's eyes was for a moment, not charming and masked. Instead the hunger it hid, that had caused her body to riot, was clear in his eyes. So much heat she expected him to jump across the table between them and claim her there and then. She sucked in a loud breath and closed her eyes at the surge of answering heat already inside her. When she opened them again everyone in the table was looking between them curiously, and Tyber’s eyes were back to normal. Heated but irreverent, and she had to wonder if she had imagined what she’d seen. She might even have convinced herself of that if she could not still feel that heat coursing through her blood. Between that and the power surging through her from using her power it was a wonder her blood wasn't boiling.

  She looked away when the blasted man had the audacity to wink at her, confusing her still further with his convincing cover. She might even have bought what he was selling, he was that good at it. If she was not what she was.

  Her eyes tracked everyone else at the table. Doc, Mac, and Sera were all there. "Is Lore not eating?"

  Mac who had started serving himself from the big tureen of stew that the Doc had placed on the table stopped and looked at her, gauging her as if her question meant more than she thought it should.

  "He's got watch," that deep sexy voice said, making her shudder just a little in reaction, but she kept her eyes off the Captain. His voice was bad enough. "He'll eat when he is relieved."

  Seeing how much Mac had already ladled into his bowl she could not help but look incredulous. "Will there be any left?"

  Sera snorted out a laugh, and even Doc smiled despite his eyes still watching her worriedly.

  "He'll be fed,” that voice assured, the humor only deepening the thrill of it. She had no choice but to look at the Captain at the head of the table again. The need to see what he looked like when humor danced there was too much temptation. "You don't have to worry about Lore, or yourself. I make it my personal mission to be sure all the appetites of my crew members are fulfilled."

  That Freaking Voice.

  For the second time she could not escape those eyes and her energy wanted to come back out and play. Find out exactly what truth hid behind that voice and tone that added so much nuance to his simple words. She fisted it back with a vengeance. She had to swallow hard before she could answer in her usual serene way. "I am not your crew."

  The sexy bastard just smiled like the pirate he resembled.

  Mac spoke a
llowing her to finally glance away even if his words made no sense. "So. Fucked."

  Sera elbowed the big marine and rolled her eyes, giving Trig a friendly smile. "What was it like working on an Alliance frigate?"

  Trig grateful for once for the question that turned every eye her way smiled back. There was no artifice in Sera, and even the growly marine was honest in his reactions. Gruff and rude, but honest about it. And Doc had cooked the meal that sat before them, not ordered it done through a replicator. It was all...surreal, was the best she could come up with. That and in a strange way welcome, even with the chocolate eyes of the captain on her. So she opened up rather than closing down. A first for her.

  "Glamorous," she said, and watched Sera's eyes light up, "and cold." She pulled the ladle from the stew pot passed to her and filled her plate. Then she smiled at Sera. "This is better."

  Sera snorted and looked around at the simple food before them. "This is?" she asked, clearly in doubt. "Didn't you have all kinds of exotic foods and romantic adventures?"

  Trig almost snorted her first bite of the meaty stew and gave the girl incredulous eyes. But she thought about it before she spoke. "Some adventures, that is true. But I don't know how romantic it was. Though I will admit the Alliance frigate seemed to be bursting with all kinds of illicit affairs no one wanted me to know about. But I am a truthsayer. And people are usually not comfortable when I’m around, so unless it was for work, I tended to keep to myself. But we saw many worlds, and I believe many of the Alliance crew formed multiple romantic entanglements, if that is what you mean."

  "But not you?" Sera asked, looking doubtful.

  "Not my style I’m afraid," she said with a small smile to tell the girl she was not bothered by it. A small lie, but one only she would see. "I prefer my solitude, and I found a great deal of that in space."

  "Well," Sera said. "That's disappointing. I was hoping for some sexy stories."