Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two

by Loren Rhoads

  She ought to apologize to Kavanaugh, but she wasn’t sure how to look him up. What would she say, anyway? Sorry you were in my way?

  Poor Kavanaugh. He deserved better friends.

  The dream circled around and around in her thoughts. Raena shook her head, trying to shake the dream images away. Her mind just wouldn’t clear.

  Disgusted with herself, she went to dress. She might as well get some use out of the day. Maybe she could get Vezali’s help making some modifications to her gym to make working out more of a challenge.

  The lights flickered on in welcome as Raena stepped into her gym. She stood in the doorway, wondering whether she knew the room well enough that she could work out in the dark.

  She stepped back into the passageway and opened the panel by the door, hitting the switch to kill the lights.

  That didn’t make the room completely dark, she realized. Light still filtered through the windowpane on the door. She caught herself wondering how to turn out the passage lights. Right. She could blackout the whole ship and creep around in the dark. Her crewmates would be sure to understand that.

  Were the disruptions to her sleep making her irrational? Not, she supposed, as long as she recognized the craziness before she acted on it.

  What was she trying to do, anyway? Hurt herself? What did she have to prove? She was never, ever going to be anywhere that was completely dark again, if she could help it.

  She flipped the gym’s lights back on. Maybe she could heat the room up, find a way to make it humid. She wanted to exhaust her muscles with running and vaults. Movement. The illusion of flight. She wanted to tire herself out to the point of sleeping without dreams.

  Coni waited until she was sure Raena was occupied before she switched off all her monitors and pinged Haoun to wake up for his shift. Then she backed up her notes and went to catch some sleep.

  The sound of their door opening roused Mykah, who smiled sleepily at her. He inched over in their bunk, making room, as she hung up her jacket and stepped out of her skirt. Coni slipped under the coverlet and snuggled close to Mykah, breathing him in. The salty metallic smell of his body had turned her stomach when she met him on Kai, but she’d gotten used to it. Usually she found it erotic, but her brain was too tired to act on her impulses now.

  Mykah stroked his fingers through the fur under her chin. “How’d you spend your evening?”

  “Raena has me setting up a new identity for her,” Coni said sleepily.

  “Really?”

  “Well, it’s only sort of new. She wants to keep her name and masquerade as her own daughter. But she wants a birth certificate and school transcripts and some record of herself as a real person in the galaxy.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Mykah said. “She can’t really leave the ship on any sort of civilized world. If she gets picked up for anything, there are going to be questions about who she is and where she’s been. If they run a DNA trace on her and find out who she was, they’re going to connect her to Thallian—and she’s going to stand trial for his crimes unless she can prove her imprisonment. And we didn’t find any evidence of that. Did we?”

  “No,” Coni said. “We have her word that she was imprisoned all those years, along with the knowledge she had of the grave robbing and the recording she hacked of the avalanche that killed Thallian’s men. But we don’t have any evidence that she was actually imprisoned in that tomb.”

  “Except that she’s physically twenty,” Mykah pointed out. “She hasn’t aged since the War, so some kind of Templar tech was involved.”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out,” Coni said. “She says the Templar stone kept everything inside it from rotting or falling apart. Does that mean it’s like a super-refrigerator, cold inside? Or does that mean that it warps time somehow?”

  “Whoa,” Mykah said. “Are you serious? You think the Templar stone warps time?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no research on it, but that’s not unusual. There’s so little research on most Templar tech. Let’s say that it does warp time somehow. That would explain her apparent age. Maybe if we all slept inside Templar caves, we could become immortal.”

  “That would be a story to unveil,” Mykah said, yawning.

  “Except that who would want to be immortal?” Coni argued. “I don’t know what other use the time warping might be …”

  She realized that Mykah had fallen back to sleep already. She curled up against him, her face buried in his shoulder, breathing his salty metallic smell. This was home to her now.

  CHAPTER 4

  Hours later, Raena was still working out. At her request, Vezali had routed the heat exchangers to vent into the gym, just for the day. Raena had kicked over a tub of water, leaving a slick on the floor to evaporate into the air, making the room sufficiently steamy. She was trying to replicate jungle conditions.

  Sweat plastered her short black hair to her head in clumps. She’d stripped off her shirt, leaving a breast band on for modesty’s sake. In general, the others left her alone while she was working out, but she was glad when Coni tapped on the door. She could use some distraction from worrying about her dreams.

  “Wow,” Coni gasped as she stepped into the room.

  “I can come out,” Raena said. “There’s no reason you should come in and be uncomfortable.”

  “No, it feels wonderful,” the blue-furred girl said. “Like home.” She stretched, rolling her shoulders around, soaking in the heat. “What possessed you to warm it up in here like this?”

  “I was bored of exercising at ship temperature,” Raena said simply. “Do we keep it too cold for you normally?”

  “I’m used to it,” Coni answered. “It’s why I always wear a jacket.” She slipped the boxy black coat off now and hung it on the peg beside Raena’s top.

  When she turned back, Raena realized she’d never seen Coni without her jackets before. The top half of the girl’s body looked genderless under its luxuriant blue fur. She looked upward into Coni’s face, but as always, couldn’t read her expression.

  Coni said, “I think I have a good start on your identity. You’ve got a birth certificate now and transcripts through lower school. Did you want to continue on to trade school?”

  “Would that make the most sense?” Raena asked. “Maybe I studied human computer systems or something? Don’t make it too technical or complicated, though. I don’t want anyone to challenge me on something I should know, since my knowledge is mostly out of date. Is there a way to have me be self-taught or home-schooled or something? Or a student of martial arts?”

  Coni nodded. “What do you want to have done after school?”

  “Bodyguard work? Something unconnected to legal security.”

  “Got it.” Coni made a note on her handheld. Without looking up, she asked, “Do you want to take credit as the person who executed the Thallians? You could say you were avenging your mother or something.”

  “No,” Raena said decisively. “Let the assassin remain anonymous. I don’t want my new identity connected to the Thallians in any way. I want a new life, free and clear.”

  “All right, then. I can finish this up this in another day or two. I’ll send it back to your cabin.”

  “That will be perfect, Coni. Thank you so much for your help.”

  “It’s been fun.” Her voice fell back into the toneless pitch that Raena couldn’t interpret.

  Raena tried to think if she’d ever heard Coni speak her own language, or speaking anything other than Imperial or Galactic Standard. Maybe she should do a little research on Coni’s species, about the way they communicated amongst themselves. Probably, if she put a little work into it, she would understand the relationship developing between her and Coni much better.

  Raena crossed the gym to sip from her water bottle. She heard Coni’s deep, shocked intake of breath and spun back to see what was the matter. Coni’s eyes were round and wide above her muzzle.

  “Sorry,” Raena said immediately. “I forge
t what my back looks like.”

  “If you keep your scars,” Coni said cautiously, “we will have to write them into your biography, too.”

  “You’re right. Thank you for understanding that. I do want to keep them. They’re a talisman to protect me from ever belonging to anyone again.”

  “Are they from when you were a slave?”

  “No,” Raena said. Then she added, “Those are love marks from Thallian.”

  “May I?” Coni drew closer, one taloned hand upraised. Raena turned away and let the girl examine her.

  “What did he hit you with?” Coni asked.

  “They’re burns. He poured accelerant on me and set it afire.”

  “It must have hurt like hell. He didn’t send you to the infirmary afterward?”

  “He didn’t think the crew knew what went on in his cabin. Jonan thought that as long as I refused to scream, no one could hear a thing. No one would jump to conclusions. That alone should have made me realize how delusional he was.”

  “How did you stand it?”

  This was a longer conversation than she’d ever had with the blue girl before, and much, much more personal. Something had shifted between them. Raena was glad for the change, even if she didn’t completely understand the thaw.

  “I stood it because he owned me,” she said. “Legally, of course, I had enlisted in the Empire’s diplomatic corps, but in reality I served as Thallian’s aide only at his pleasure. If I’d refused him anything, given him any provocation, he would have had me thrown into the cells on the Arbiter, where he could have tortured me to death for any reason or no reason at all. None of the crew would have cared to stand up for me. As long as Jonan thought I liked what he did to me, liked it as much as he liked doing it, he kept me around. I was the mirror that reflected his perversion and made it beautiful.”

  The pads on Coni’s fingers were rough, but her touch was extremely gentle as she explored the ridges and troughs of scar tissue.

  Raena asked, “You understand now why I killed him?”

  “Yes.” Coni took her hands away and Raena turned to meet her gaze. “Yes,” she said again. “I think the galaxy would understand, too, but I respect your privacy in this.”

  “Thank you.” Raena went to the door and retrieved her shirt, sliding it back over her head. Having someone touch her scar tissue made her feel chilled, despite the sweltering heat in the room. Those memories, apparently, were still too close to the surface.

  She didn’t tell Coni not to say anything to Mykah. It would be interesting to see if the blue girl would want to get her boyfriend outraged over something that happened to another woman or if she really did respect Raena’s privacy enough not to share her discovery.

  After Coni left her, Raena realized her fever to exercise had passed. She rerouted the heat exchangers and started mopping up the floor with a towel.

  Mykah came into the gym while Raena was crawling around on all fours. His hair was an explosion of ringlets today and he was letting his beard go dark at the roots. “Wanna spar?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, I’m done,” Raena said.

  He looked disappointed.

  “Go ahead and use the equipment,” she added quickly, “if you just want a workout.”

  “Thanks.” He moved into the room listlessly, trying to decide where to start.

  Raena paused in the doorway. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Mykah turned from the equipment as if glad of the interruption. “Anything,” he promised.

  “Do you remember your dreams?”

  That was clearly not the direction he expected her to go. “Yeah,” he said, “doesn’t everyone?”

  “I don’t know. I never asked anyone before.” She leaned against the doorframe, trying to steel herself to ask what she really wanted to know. “Mykah,” she said slowly, “do you ever dream about your past? Like reliving your memories?”

  He frowned, thinking about it, before he shook his head. “Not really. I mean, things from my past turn up, like the day we disrupted the jet pack race. I remember what it was like to fly. But I end up flying out over green fields or above forests or the ocean, stuff we never did on Kai. The memory is kind of a jumping-off point for the rest of the dream.”

  “Thanks,” Raena said, letting the door open.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked, before she could get away.

  “I’ve been having a lot of bad dreams lately,” she said. “I wish they were as wonderful as flying over the ocean. Maybe, now that you’ve put the image in my head, I’ll dream of that next.”

  Coni waited until Raena had gone into her cabin to shower, before she slipped back into the gym to talk to Mykah.

  He also had stripped off his shirt to exercise. She came over to lick the sweat beading on his chest.

  He laughed at her. “Did you come in just to get a taste of me?

  “That, too,” she said, savoring the lingering salty flavor on her tongue. “But … no. I wanted some reassurance.”

  He released the bar he had been hanging from and dropped back to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “I came in here earlier, when Raena was working out. I saw … I saw her back. I saw what that monster did to her.”

  Mykah rubbed a towel over his skin before he came to hug her.

  “I know,” he said, looking up into Coni’s lavender eyes. “I’ve caught glimpses of them. We knew she’d been shot several times in his service …”

  Coni interrupted him. “It’s her back. She said they were love marks. She said he’d set her on fire.”

  Mykah squeezed Coni tighter. “You know he was crazy,” he reminded.

  “How could humans do that to each other?” she demanded. “I know he was evil. I know all the things he was charged with. But to hurt someone you love …” She shuddered, smoothing the pads of her hands down Mykah’s muscled back as if to wipe the memory away.

  “She said the crew she served with knew,” Coni reported. “They knew and no one helped her. She said she had to take his abuse because otherwise Thallian would have tortured her to death.”

  Mykah reached up to take Coni’s face in his hands. “I know,” he said softly. “She’s withstood terrible things. But she’s avenged herself. He can’t hurt anyone any more.”

  “It’s not that,” Coni argued, but maybe it was. “How does she get up every day, get dressed, face other people … How do you recover? How do you act normal? How do you … ?” She ran out of words, unable to articulate how deeply she was touched by all that Raena had endured.

  “She’s able to do it, because she was shut in that tomb for twenty years,” Mykah reminded, “where she was safe from him. She couldn’t die, so she had to heal.”

  Coni bent down to rub the top of her head under his chin.

  “You’re welcome.” He scratched her gently behind the ear. “You know you can always come to me with your questions. I don’t know all that Raena’s survived—I don’t think she’s let anyone know it all—but I understand pretty well how she did it.”

  There were times when Raena missed her bubble bath. When Kavanaugh had delivered her to Gavin’s moon base up above the Templar tombworld, the two men had adapted a rocket casing so she could have her first bath in decades. Even though the water had cooled faster than she would have preferred, it was still heavenly. Raena wondered if Vezali could rig some kind of bathtub out of the weapons the Thallians left behind.

  In the meantime, she stepped into the shower in her cabin. She set the water to be practically scalding, but didn’t allow herself to luxuriate in it for long. No telling how many times that water had been cycled already.

  Her thoughts had finally quieted. After she toweled herself off, she couldn’t think of anything she particularly wanted to do. So she crawled back into her bunk and let her eyes slide closed, hoping for the peaceful sleep that had eluded her earlier.

  If not that, then some nice pastoral dreams about flying.

  In her tomb, Raena e
xperimented with turning the electric torch off for short periods of time. She knew the torch’s batteries were not going to last forever. As far as she knew, her imprisonment was intended to be for life, so she was likely to outlive the light. Whenever she considered what life would be like once the light was gone, she wanted to weep—but her tears had apparently used themselves up. Her inability to cry didn’t make the emotion any less intense.

  She was trying to memorize the boundaries of the tomb. She started by walking to the cavern’s entrance, where she put her hand on the slab and switched off the torch. Then she paced forward slowly, counting her steps.

  She wondered if going crazy was a choice. Could she choose madness? If she went crazy, would the darkness fill with ghosts? Would they attack her, gang up, avenge themselves on her? Would it be better to have company, any company, than to have the fear of the dark so clear in her mind?

  She halted abruptly. She realized she had forgotten her count. She turned around carefully, one hand always on the wall, and walked back toward the tomb’s slab to begin again.

  The fear began to spiral: how far had she gone? It seemed like she was walking back farther than she’d already come. Was she lost? Was it possible to get lost? Was the cave rearranging itself around her in the darkness?

  Panting, unable to catch her breath, she snapped the torch on. The entrance of the tomb was a mere arm’s length ahead of her.

  Raena sank to the floor with her back against the wall. She took a deep breath, held it as long as she could, then blew it out slowly. Then she switched the torch off again.

  Sometime later, a huge boom shook the cave. Raena scrambled to her feet, her body on fire with adrenaline. Was it an earthquake? She wanted to race around in the dark, find somewhere to hide, but the cave was big and open and bare to the walls except for the catafalque where she slept. There was nothing inside the mountain that would protect her. Her hands clenched and unclenched, desperate for anything to hang on to. All she had was the torch.