Games of Command

by Linnea Sinclair

  Even her damned fidget wouldn’t let him get close.

  All he’d need to find out now was that there was something wrong with the shuttle’s engines. Then Fynn wouldn’t need to file a Section 46 on him. He’d do it himself.

  “Jace…” Eden said his name softly, but not without an underlying tone of warning.

  It wasn’t that she was angry, though the gods knew she would be if it were anyone other than Jace Serafino whose fingers now oh-so-innocently traced a trail along the side of her breast, sending small shivers of excitement—and distraction—up her spine.

  “Jace!” She said his name a bit more emphatically this time. Maybe she should be angry with him. They’d been attacked, they were lost, and even though life support was now back on and functioning, they could well die in this damned shuttle. But those were also the very reasons—coupled with the fact that she’d never experienced another telepath before—that Eden couldn’t muster her anger. She wasn’t ready to die, but if she had to, she very sincerely wanted to do so with a smile on her face.

  With a snort of self-awareness, she realized she likened the mercenary captain to a condemned man’s sumptuous last meal.

  She turned her face away from the scanner and tried to look at him. But his chin rested on her shoulder—which was how his arm had snaked around her waist and, eventually, his fingers had explored upward. All she could see in this almost nose-to-nose position was an out-of-focus Serafino. But even in such a position she could see he was smiling his usual devilish smile.

  “Hmm?” he questioned.

  “You’re distracting me.” Even a last meal had a proper time and place.

  “Mmm.” This time the deep voice dropped an octave to respond in a low growl.

  “How am I supposed to analyze a habitable world with—oh!” Eden gave a little ticklish squirm. “You’re making this…difficult.”

  “The Tin Soldier’s not here.”

  After spending almost three hours working on life support, Kel-Paten and Sass had headed belowdecks to the shuttle’s engine compartment. Their return, Eden knew, would be preceded first by a series of loud noises as that hatchway groaned back into place and then by the sound of their footsteps through the main cabin.

  “You’re incorrigible,” Eden told him.

  “I’ve never denied it.” He suddenly swiveled her chair around and dragged her to her feet, his mouth on hers, demanding yet at the same time teasing.

  “You get,” he told her when they both gasped for air, “too serious, sweetling. Yes, we have to find someplace to put this bucket down to finish repairs. But there’s something else,” he said, as she moved her arms up to encircle his neck. “You’re worrying, and I know why you’re worrying.” His voice became softer now, his smile more faint. “I’ve been apart from people I love too. For a long time now. It doesn’t help keeping that worry in the front of your mind all the time.”

  She leaned against his chest, grateful for his warmth and his words. She was worrying. About her cousins back on Glitterkiln, who were unwavering in their support of her when her ex-husband had decided he wanted a “wife with a smaller dress size.” About Cal, back on the Vax, who never voiced the prejudice some did about working with an empath. And about others on the Regalia, who were almost like family. They would believe she was dead, and their useless grief pained her.

  “How do you deal with it?” she asked quietly into the soft fabric of his shirt.

  “One minute, one day at a time.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve been doing better since I met you. I don’t feel as lost anymore.”

  She looked up into deep blue eyes. She understood the feeling. “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “No, I—” The back of the shuttle resounded with a thunk and a clank. “The troops return,” he announced, and let her regain her seat.

  There was a smudge of something grayish on Tasha’s right cheek. She looked distinctly annoyed as she stepped into the cockpit and took her seat in the pilot’s chair. Kel-Paten followed moments later, looking equally rumpled and annoyed.

  Eden looked from the admiral to Tasha. “Bad news?”

  Bad news, Jace confirmed to her telepathically, but she didn’t know whose mind he’d plucked that information from.

  Tasha wiped her sleeve over her face, smearing the gray streak. “We’ve got a break in the main fuel line.”

  “Okay, not good news,” Eden said, tamping down her initial alarm. “But workable, if…”

  But it was more than a line break. It was a major line break, Kel-Paten explained, which had resulted in a contamination of the fuel supply. Their estimate of being able to survive in the shuttle for two to three weeks was now drastically shortened. They had maybe three to four days before the Galaxus would cease being a shuttle and become a coffin.

  “How much usable fuel do we have left?” Eden asked.

  “About thirty hours.” Kel-Paten’s voice showed no emotion, but Eden sensed Tasha’s frustration loud and clear.

  The admiral’s words chilled her. She swallowed hard before giving her own report.

  “I’ve reviewed the habitability factors of the three worlds you indicated. HV-Two appears to be the best choice, as it has a large landmass inside its temperate zone, good biodiversity, and orbits an F-Nine star. HV-Three also orbits an F-class star and has good biodiversity, but it has a smaller temperate zone that’s adversely affected by the planet’s axial tilt. Either world meets all parameters for supporting human life. However,” and Eden sucked in a deep breath, “the closer of the two is more than four days from our present location. At top speed. Which we don’t have. So with thirty hours of fuel, the only world in range is HV-One.”

  She caught a slight knitting of Kel-Paten’s brows. Clearly, HV-1 wasn’t his favorite either. “Its biggest positive is that, like HV-Two, it has a large landmass inside its temperate zone. Plus it orbits a G-class star. But it’s on the outer edge of that star’s habitable zone and has a slower rotation rate, which would leave us with very uncomfortable temperatures during its long nighttime. I’m also picking up some compounds that don’t make sense in relation to planetary density.” Kel-Paten was nodding, and she guessed his analysis was the same. Guessed because any of her empathic probings in the past few hours seemed to be meeting a mental brick wall, ever since Jace had—quite wrongly, in her opinion—intruded on the admiral’s thoughts.

  “But that could be due,” she continued, “not only to our relative distance but whatever damage our sensors took coming out of the jump. I’m running tests on that.” Tests that Jace’s teasing had interrupted.

  Tasha leaned over and lifted the chubby fidget into her lap. “HV-One it is, then. Tell us about our new home.”

  Eden brought the data up on her screen, simultaneously transferring it to the other workstations. HV-1—“Haven-1” as she nicknamed it—had three significant landmasses: one large one in a decent temperate zone and two smaller ones that were polar and less habitable. She ran through the other pertinent data: water regions, mountain regions, the small desert area in the southermost tip. And two moons orbiting the planet, which contributed to frequent coastal flooding.

  “Life forms?” Tasha asked.

  “Unknown at this point, Captain. We’re too far for the damaged sensors to provide that data. In another twelve hours, I should have more information. I’m not, however,” Eden continued, “picking up any evidence of technology.”

  Eden felt Jace’s concentration shift. She could feel him reaching out across the blackness of space. Yet she couldn’t see what he saw. He’d temporarily shut her out, putting all his energies into finding out what he could about Haven-1, picking up on the life threads that all physical things emitted, sensing its oceans, its mountains, its small and hot desert region. And…something else.

  But they were too far for Jace to be able to define exactly what that something else was.

  Jace pulled back, gave his head a light shake, much as Tasha had minutes earlier.

>   What is it? Eden asked.

  Not sure. It might be just a gravitational flux. Those moons.

  Show me.

  Difficult to do that right now, he said gently through the curtain that had tumbled down between them. Gauzy, opalescent, but a curtain all the same.

  Why not? Is it the implant?

  There was a pressure. She could feel a headache starting, but she didn’t know if it was his or hers or both.

  Let me work with it when we get closer. I can’t scan and maintain a connection to you at the same time.

  Tasha swiveled abruptly in her chair, jerking Eden out of her connection with Jace. “Talk to me, ’Fino.”

  He glanced up, amusement replacing the frown on his face. “Do you have telepathic abilities I don’t know about?”

  “Hardly. But I’ve known her,” Tasha said with a nod to Eden, “long enough. That little dip of her mouth, that twitch of her foot—that’s not good. And she was looking at you.”

  “Jace sensed something in or on Haven-One,” Eden explained quietly, unsure of what was happening and not willing to push Jace. Yet. “It could be the moons creating a gravitational flux.”

  “Or?” Tasha prompted.

  “Or it could be a form of energy there,” Jace explained. “And, yes, it could be a residual from a flux. But it feels slightly different. And not,” he glanced at Eden, “overly happy.”

  “You can’t be serious—” Kel-Paten’s words halted as Tasha raised her hand.

  “It doesn’t like that we’re here?” Tasha asked.

  Jace shook his head. “We’re too far away for me to get anything consistent.”

  Eden clearly saw the admiral’s disbelief as he turned back to the data on his console. Tasha’s face showed thoughtful interest. Unlike Kel-Paten, she wasn’t going to discount anything, especially not in an unknown, uncharted quadrant.

  Jace, please show me the problem. Maybe—

  No.

  The word sounded harsh in her mind this time, and she started, surprised.

  No, sweetling, he repeated, more gently. It’s probably nothing.

  And if it isn’t? she asked, realizing that other than hearing his voice, she was getting nothing from him now. That puzzled her.

  We’ll handle whatever it is when the time comes, Jace told her.

  His we reassured her. Though that time, Eden knew, would come more rapidly than she’d originally thought. Thirty hours of fuel was all they had left. Half that time to get this shuttle stable and functional enough to make a dirtside landing.

  The unknown energy pulsation seemed the least of their problems.

  Exhaustion was taking its toll, and when Kel-Paten saw Tasha waver in her seat, he ordered her and Fynn—whose stability was equally tenuous—off duty for at least three hours.

  “Main cabin. Now.”

  “Kel-Paten—”

  “Sebastian.” He paused and, in the midst of all their troubles, found the ritual comforting. “Before you fall over. Main cabin. Doctor, you too.”

  That left him alone with Serafino, but the bastard had been quiet since his ridiculous proclamation about some evil alien energy source inhabiting HV-1. Yes, there were a couple of contradictory readings, including the one relative to density. He knew that before Fynn mentioned them. And there was a gravitational flux pattern he didn’t like and couldn’t explain. Yet.

  But Serafino was ever the showman, and his current show, Kel-Paten surmised, was that of Mystical Nasyry. No doubt very shortly the chanting and burning of incense would commence. Something to scare away the evil energy source haunting the planet.

  Something to make him appear the hero to Tasha and Fynn, his current audience.

  “Looking to murder me without witnesses?” Serafino asked as the cockpit door closed behind Fynn’s retreating figure. The smirk in his voice was unmistakable. He tapped at the dark band barely visible under the edge of his rolled-up shirtsleeve: the bone-regen device. “I’m still wounded. Easy prey, you know.”

  Kel-Paten turned away and bit back an equally snide reply. He would not let the bastard bait him again. He was encouraged by the fact that his fleeting—pleasurable—thought of venting Serafino’s lifeless body out the shuttle’s garbage chute did not elicit a rejoinder. Keeping his mental filters at maximum was cumbersome but worthwhile. “I think Dr. Fynn would be pleased by an improved functionality of our sensors.” He spiked back in and shunted the sensor-recalibration data to the nav station. It would keep Serafino busy and keep him away from his audience.

  “Is that an admission you need me alive?”

  “It should take you about an hour and a half to get them back to full range. Unfortunately, our current location doesn’t provide us with any workable correlatives.” Because there were no predamage sensor scan reports to use as comparisons on wherever they were. It was an annoying problem but, considering all else, a minor one, in Kel-Paten’s opinion. “We’re going to have to assume a margin of error.”

  “Ah! Not only do you admit to needing me, but you trust me too.” He paused. “Does that mean I’m forgiven for Fendantun?”

  Kel-Paten couldn’t help himself. He shot a warning glance at Serafino in time to see the bastard theatrically clutching one hand over his heart. “Get to work.”

  Serafino only snorted in reply and turned back to his screens.

  Kel-Paten did the same. The fuel leak and subsequent contamination wouldn’t be a crucial issue—if they were headed for a space station or miners’ raft. But they weren’t. That altered a serious problem into a potentially fatal one. HV-1 was a planet, and that meant an entry—hot—through that planet’s atmosphere. And it also meant a landing with a craft that had, at best, rudimentary heavy-air capabilities.

  Those capabilities would have to be augmented. He checked the Galaxus’s service logs. The ship—only a few months old—had never made a dirtside landing. So here, again, he had no comparative data. Nothing but untested specs to tell him what the shuttle might do as it hurtled through the atmosphere.

  He shook his head. Twenty-two hours, eighteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds until they’d reach a workable orbit of HV-1. A month ago, if someone had promised him twenty-two hours with Tasha Sebastian in the small confines of a shuttle, he’d have been delighted at the prospect. Now he felt only desperation.

  While part of his mind redacted the information on the shuttle’s shortcomings, the other found the main-cabin video links. The ten high-backed seats in the main cabin reclined fully into cotlike beds, but Tasha’s seat back was angled only halfway down, as if in defiance of his order to rest. He watched her sleep, her arms loosely folded at her waist, her head turned to one side. She looked more vulnerable than he’d ever remembered seeing her.

  The desire to pull her into his arms was almost overwhelming. He wanted nothing more than to press his body against hers and kiss her until neither of them could think straight.

  But that wouldn’t work. If nothing else, his own mind ceased to think straight whenever he got within a few feet of her. Plus he believed that her reaction would be to think him straight to hell.

  “Fantasizing again, are we?”

  Serafino’s words shattered Tasha’s image in his mind. He spun toward the Nasyry. “Stay out of—”

  “That prosti didn’t want you.” Serafino’s voice was soft but had an oily, menacing tone. “Found out what you were. You couldn’t pay her enough to touch you.”

  Kel-Paten was out of his chair in one swift move. He lunged for Serafino, who was standing, arms folded across his chest, laughing. He shoved him hard against the workstation’s upper panel, pinning his arms at his sides. Kel-Paten could feel the man’s muscles bunch and tense under his fingers. Narrowed eyes met narrowed eyes only inches from each other. But one set of narrowed eyes had a distinct and dangerous luminescence.

  A muted noise sounded behind him. He ignored it until she spoke.

  “What is going on?” Tasha’s question was a definite command for information.
She stood rigidly in the cockpit’s open hatchway.

  Kel-Paten couldn’t answer her. And he’d kill Serafino if the bastard said one word right now.

  It was Eden—following Tasha toward the nav station—who spoke up. Her words were measured, clipped. “Gentlemen. Now is not the time. We have work to do.”

  Kel-Paten spun on his heels and marched through the cockpit hatchway, his only audible response a fist slamming against the hatchway’s frame.

  GALAXUS, AFT CABIN

  Kel-Paten leaned over the small galley sink aft of the main cabin and splashed cold water onto his face, surprised to find that his hands trembled.

  He could’ve killed Serafino.

  He wanted to kill Serafino.

  But for Tasha and Eden Fynn, he would have.

  How Serafino had circumvented PsyServ’s best filters and found that deep memory of the prosti, he didn’t know. But Serafino had dredged it up from the darkest corners of Kel-Paten’s mind as if he knew just where to look. Shore leave on Mining Raft 309. He was a lieutenant and alone, as usual. The rest of the Pride of Kel’s crew was off to find what amusements they could in that godsforsaken locale that held a scattering of dirty pubs, two eating establishments that promised a healthy dose of intestinal parasites with the food, and one nighthouse, its crude flashing sign advertising both male and female prostis.

  He would never have considered going inside had it not been for a conversation he’d overheard at the dingy bar where he’d sat, bored and restless. There was no casino license on the raft, but there were games. Or, to be more specific, a game. One illegal poker room in the nighthouse.

  What he—in his twenty-three-year-old innocence—didn’t realize was that the nighthouse, in order to ensure its profits, routinely spiked the gamblers’ drinks with any cheap and handy pharmaceutical concoction.

  When he started winning, the bar manager started slipping drinks laced with Heartsong into his black-gloved hands.

  He should have run an antidote program the minute he was aware of his body’s reaction to the drug. But then a sloe-eyed, skimpily clad prosti draped herself in a chair next to him, and the sensation was so pleasurable, he overrode his safeguards, forgot about the stack of chips at his place on the table, and followed the woman down a back corridor and into a musty room that smelled of cheap perfume.