allies and enemies 02 - rogues

by Amy J. Murphy

  He pushed me out and did something else. He took something away.

  It had surprised him.

  He backed up, wiping the last of the blood from his lip. “You never meant to be here. You did it to save them.”

  Then he shook his head. “What am I talking about?”

  Korbyn backed out of the room. The heavy door shut, followed by the frantic sounds of the keylock.

  What just happened?

  11

  Asher staggered into the hallway. It was thankfully empty.

  He steadied himself against the wall. The pistoning of his heart continued. An incredible fear electrified his spine. It was disproportionate, the wrong size. He’d been caught off guard, but nothing that merited feeling this terrified.

  What the Sceelah just happened?

  His eyes watered. He spat bright pink onto the deck. At some point, he’d bitten his tongue when whatever-that-was had happened.

  The girl had some type of ability, a power. She had planned to use it on him, but his reaction was obviously something that had surprised her as well.

  A flood of images too quick to catalog rushed his brain with no order or narrative. All of them had alien emotions attached.

  He frowned into the darkened corridor: They all belonged to her. They were somehow…hers.

  Fear enveloped him and caused his eyes to water. This was her fear. Or the remnant of it. It was easing off, like the return of circulation to a hand or a foot that had fallen asleep.

  The corridor was the same rusted-out walls and masses of patched conduits. Familiar, but now they took on a sinister cast. Each shadow was full of hidden threat.

  That was her impression of the ship.

  The sound of the girl’s sobbing had tapered off. The door was just a door. The same dinged door with chipped paint. It was also the dreaded entrance to some unnamable terror. His memory, with her fear superimposed.

  “Huh.” He shook his head.

  Asher Korbyn had had some strangeness happen to him in his thirty-four years of existence, but this was a new one.

  The question was: what to do with it?

  He could go back and try to question her. That would be futile. She had seemed just as surprised. She had obviously intended a different result when she touched him. Beyond that, it had looked like she was in real pain.

  He straightened and faced the direction of the aux bay where the stryker was stowed. There was a drive to go there, almost flee in that direction. Again, not his desire—hers.

  Certainly if he could sense that, perhaps there were other memories from her. Useful ones.

  A slow smirk moved over his mouth.

  12

  The overhead lights didn’t work so well in this section of the aux bay, Asher noted. Only half were on. Another of the thousand things wrong with the Nyxa’s Mercy. No one lingered here. Perhaps they’d given up on unlocking the stryker’s mysteries and left the brain works to Spivey. Maybe they’d just wandered off to the central hab areas to get drunk or pick fights with each other, bored with the lack of ships to plunder. When Zenti got bored, they turned nasty, did stupid things. Right now, Asher did not care. It meant he was alone to think and investigate.

  He did a slow circle of the strange vessel. It had definitely taken a beating recently, but not from weapons fire or even atmo burn. An erratic pattern like shallow torch burns etched its plating. The vessel was the wrong color as well. The ancient models of strykers owned by Ironvale Guild were often-repaired with black skins, coated with a special filament binding to thwart enemy locators. Pilot designations and company assignments usually decorated the sides. This one had none of that. It was bare silver-colored metal. There were no markings, save one under its sloped wing.

  He stooped to study the red badge: a wedge intersected by two smaller ones; beside this a cryptic series of characters in Ancient Eugenes. He prodded at the alien memories that belonged to the girl. It stirred a sense of menacing or foreboding, nothing more concrete than that.

  Straightening, Asher decided to drop it, confident the memory would expose itself when he was distracted with an unrelated matter. That was often the way of it, he found for himself.

  He caressed the slope of the stryker’s body. It was wider in back, where it rose to meet the canopy, a design departure. Making room for what? Something bigger and better? It certainly was not armaments. The vessel had no weapons. There were expertly applied patches over the sections of the wings where the rail guns had once nestled. This beast was built with the engines in mind.

  This elicited a barrage of new emotions, all foreign, all belonging to the girl: a prideful accomplishment, flush with excitement, the feeling of possibilities unfolding.

  Asher rested his forearms against the open mouth of the cockpit and scanned the darkened interior. Nothing glowed from the pilot interface or the yoked control column. The stink of charred plastic still lingered. His pulse quickened. Pride? Enjoyment? Whatever the emotion, it belonged to the girl. A strange eagerness urged him to climb in and settle into the pilot’s seat. So he did.

  The interior was familiar, almost comforting. He tested his grasp on the alien memories and ran his fingers along the darkened screen of the navsys. Pre-flight. Fuel reads. Internals. All to the right. It was a certainty.

  The middle console was where the heads up projected. There would be a main interface with a security input required before opening any of the systems, even minor ones. Triple coded with voice pattern verification as well. He could sense that now. Experimentally, he prodded at the pressure-sensitive panel. Haptic interface. It remained dark.

  There was a code buried in the girl’s memories. It was no good, no matter how hard he pushed. The memory of the security sequence was there, but the details remained hazy and frustratingly out of focus. There would be no accessing the vessel’s computer without her. Spivey was right about that. A dead man’s switch would slag the entire system if they attempted much more with the compsys—if it had not already.

  The string of numbers and letters was encased in layers of emotion/memory.

  Frantic pawing through ignition start-up, muttering a prayer beneath her breath, heart thudding against her ribs, hands shaking against the column. Trying to focus, pushing back the fear, the horror. Because any minute. Any second they would come to stop her. Come to take her back.

  They?

  He opened his eyes. The fists that gripped the yoke were white-knuckled. He released it with an uneasy chuckle. Asher felt a sudden chill.

  She’d stolen it. Regardless of the sense of prideful ownership that colored the girl’s memories, the vessel was not hers to take.

  Asher climbed out of the cockpit and continued his inspection, guided by a nagging compulsion. Her pride swelled in his chest.

  She really believed she had accomplished something special with this stryker. What? There were flashes of schematics, indecipherable to him. A great deal of modeling. Each new discovery fueled by the last.

  Then it struck him. Fates, I’m thick.

  She was not just a pilot, but an engineer. That explained her physical appearance. Probably some member of a think tank. All brains, never meant to be so far out in the Reaches.

  She had made this machine. It was far more special than any other vessel before it.

  Drawn now, as if by an invisible string, Asher knelt beside the propulsion compartment. He glanced around the hangar. Still empty. Whatever he was about to discover, he needed to be on his own. It was vital.

  The hatch was still open. Under the light of his torch, he could see the nodes and filaments that Spivey or one of the others had already vivisected with inexpert hands. It was obvious where some of the tech on Spivey’s workbench had originated. Asher felt a flare of annoyance—his own and possibly the girl’s. They had better put it back the way they found it. What they’d taken wasn’t essential, but it was meant for data culmination for test flights.

  A flicker of green, then red, light reflecting against metal
caught his attention. Moving the torch’s beam to the floor, Asher stared into the darkened interior, not daring to blink. There. It happened again. The dimmer light made it easier to see.

  He wriggled his fingers under the tight space of the fuel line trap, expecting to meet the formed seal of the casing, but was surprised to encounter an empty space. He doubted any of his crew had noticed the tiny light. The exterior was molded in place, a very convincing decoy. Zenti tended to lack imagination, more often than not. It had made promoting himself to their jin-ji an effortless maneuver.

  His fingers brushed against a pressure latch. Asher hesitated in pushing it. It was possible the girl or whoever owned this bird had rigged another booby trap. Something told him that this was meant for concealment alone.

  The molded casing was a thin sheet. He lifted it away to set it on the deck. The source of the flashing light was no larger than his closed fist: a sphere of dull flat metal suspended in a hollow cube of delicate metal rods. The cube’s exterior had connections to the propulsion lines and the manifold coupler. The only ones, it seemed. The red/green pinlight emitted from the frame holding the sphere in place.

  What the flashing communicated, he had no idea. The pattern of its flashing changed as he handled it. The stryker was entirely powered down, so that meant it was a device in and of itself. Asher prodded gently at the sphere. A powerful static shock zinged up his forearm. Something tugged his fingers to the sphere’s skin. It felt unpleasant and wrong. As if the thing could pull him in. He jerked his hand away, an effort like tugging apart strong magnets. Unconsciously he wiped his hand on the leg of his trousers.

  The disorganized jumble of emotion/memory from the girl seemed to coalesce around this object. It was essential, more important than the stryker itself.

  He grinned. This was unique and, in his experience, unique was always valuable. The girl—this device in particular—was a way back, a means to put things to rights. Things were turning around for him. Ironvale Guild would have to forgive him now, once he brought them this.

  The girl needed convincing of her role. That was the hard thing.

  Careful to grab the device by the edges of the cube, he dropped it into the inner pocket of his duster. It was a seeping cold mass against his chest. A corner of his mind questioned the wisdom of keeping this thing so close to his body, but nothing in the girl’s memories suggested it was harmful by touch alone.

  A scuff of boots came, carried by the echo of the vast bay. Quiet movements of two men, perhaps a third. They moved with affected stealth but the carrying echo of the open space betrayed their sounds.

  Asher sank into the shadow cast by the stryker’s wing. From this vantage, he could take in the underside of the vessel’s nose and the better-lit decking near the entrance to the aux bay. Legs and booted feet stepped into view, belonging to three of his crewies. Hard to tell their identities by just their footwear.

  Their voices were hushed with conspiracy. This was a meeting with black intent. Zenti were never so subdued or quiet. Tension crept up from the base of his spine. Perhaps the day’s events with the girl and the stryker were the tipping point, the impetus for this action.

  “Why would he lie?”

  The voice was deep, gruff. Perhaps Ren or Jalos. “The female’s his boon. Said that stryker’s worth more than her.”

  “From what port, brother?” A derisive snort. “Gonna fetch up Poisoncry or Splitdawn? Ironvale would just as soon shoot us on sight than offer trade.”

  “Korbyn has never broken clan-coda,” another argued. An angry scoff answered this.

  “Coda is for a clan brother. Korbyn is not Zenti. He’s taken our vows, but he’s not born to this. He’ll not bide by our law,” the third chimed in. A voice he did recognize. Asher’s hands balled into fists. Spivey. That bastard.

  “Lucien Ix will recall the ban off’n the Mercy once we turn over Korbyn. No more need to fear making port again. We keep that little piece of Eugenes meat as our boon, along with her ship.”

  “How’n you think Ix will just bide us safe passage? He cursed us all for siding with Korbyn.”

  “Ix gives his word.”

  “Why no brick now, brothers?” Spivey again. “We owe Korbyn nothing. He’s given us more lean than fat as jin-ji. More misery than profit. His row with Ix leaves us with few ports to welcome us. When they do, we have little ‘spects paid as to our jin-ji is not true Zenti.”

  More grunts of agreement. Tide was turning. Spivey had won the stronger ones over. Anyone waffling would bow to the whim of the stronger voices.

  “Leave Ix and Korbyn to each other. They’re Eugenes, after all. Their feud is not ours. Does our clan code not abide that?”

  “Then we call for a new jin-ji now.”

  “Korbyn’s keen for traps. How’n you expect he’ll not suss one out?”

  “I call him bridge-ward, saying there’s news of import. Then you and the rest wait for him. Nice and clean-like. Ix wants him kept, not killed.”

  Asher waited in the still dark as the men slinked away.

  This changed his time line, moving it forward by hours instead of days.

  13

  Erelah’s brain had gone past aching into a kind of constantly rediscovered pain. She lay on the deck, uncertain of the exact passage of time. Perhaps it had only been hours as she lay listening to the powerful thrum of the engines. They were still on hard burn, a punishment to any engine no matter how well maintained.

  What were they running from? Or was it to something?

  The muted sound of the keylock’s chime made Erelah lift her head.

  He’s going to kill me now…or worse.

  She maneuvered to a seated position, a difficult task with her wrists bound to the leg of the bed behind her. Dragging her face against the shoulder of her shipsuit, she tried to hide the tears.

  Don’t let him see you like this, broken and afraid, crying like a child.

  I am still the ward and heir of Helio Veradin. Do not give in. See this out.

  As the hatchway swung open, she drew herself up.

  Korbyn entered, his moves cautious as if he were afraid of making too much noise. His full attention was not on her. He looked out into the corridor, glancing in both directions. It was as if he were sneaking into his own room.

  Seemingly satisfied, he shut the door and thumbed the lock. He granted her a quick glance. Immediately he cast about the mess of the floor and pawed through the rubble of his room. He shoved items inside the empty duffel in his hand. His moves were urgent. The deliberate swagger was gone.

  “What happened? What did you do to me?” she croaked.

  “Me?” His tone was incredulous. “Sister, you got that backwards. You did something to me.” He watched her for a moment then shoved some wadded-up clothes into a bag. “That was some neat trick, but I think we both know that wasn’t what you thought would happen.”

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  He clomped up to the bed. She cowered, shifting back. No blows came. Instead, he brushed past and tipped up the edge of the mattress with his boot.

  His shoulders sagged. “Where is it?”

  Erelah cringed. There’d been all manner of hidden items under his bunk that she had located during her unfettered rampage of his quarters. She’d strewn most of it across the deck, adding to the mess.

  “Where’s what?” she asked innocently.

  “The money I had stashed there.”

  Chewing her lip, she jerked her chin at the far corner of the room, where many of the discarded objects had landed.

  Grumbling, he retrieved a pouch of chits beneath an overturned chair. He kicked away the debris on the floor and pried up the exposed deck plate. From the space below he pulled an ancient-looking pulse gun. Checking the charge light, he tucked it into the waistband under his jacket.

  Scrubbing a hand over his face, he released a contemplative sigh. Those maroon eyes sized her up with a fresh wariness. He dropped the duffle and crouched down in front
of her.

  “Here’s the thing. We have to go. You’re going to pilot us off the Mercy in that stryker of yours.”

  She bit at the words. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the door, listening for something. Then turned back to her. “Any minute now, Spivey’s going to call me up to the bridge. It’s a trap. They’re planning a mutiny and those generally don’t go well for the jin-ji. I know this because that’s how I got to be jin-ji.”

  “Why would I care?” She was astonished to hear her own voice. It was the sort of thing Tyron would have said, a bark of affected nonchalance in the face of an inevitably ugly end.

  “You care because we both know the first thing Spivey’s going to do with you.” He paused, letting his meaning sink in. “Then he’ll let the rest take a turn. That’s what I’ve been keeping from you.”

  Her stomach folded. “Wh-where do you want to go?”

  “Got a destination in mind. Depends on how well you can pilot that bird and if it can do what I think it can.”

  Erelah regarded him, studying his face; the insolence was missing. Desperation clung to his edges. Was it real? Could it be she’d already become so reliant on the Sight that she doubted her own natural ability to judge others? It was impossible that he had cracked the Jocosta’s compsys and gleaned enough from examining it to realize its ability.

  “This is a trick.” She kept her voice neutral.

  He blew out another plosive sigh and spoke very slowly, his patience under obvious strain. “You want to see your kin again, right? You have a brother. A captain or some sort, went renegade. He mentioned a place out here. Hadelia. I know people. Can help you find him.”

  “Hadelia. How…” She swallowed. Korbyn could have known about Jonvenlish’s fugitive status by consulting a wanted beacon, if there were such things out here. Only Jon had mentioned Hadelia to her, and just once, when she was recovering under the priest’s care on Tasemar.

  “It got downloaded,” he tapped his skull. “Somehow. From when you did…whatever that was. It’s a jumble. But I know you meant to die for him…so they could escape. Am I right?”