allies and enemies 02 - rogues

by Amy J. Murphy

  After a time, there was the scratch of shifting fabric.

  “Korbyn…wake up. Please.” A voice filled with breathless panic. The girl.

  He wanted to care, but found he lacked the power to do so. Things drifted from gray to black.

  The blackness split open. He was aware of a silent muttering, a threadbare whisper woven into a familiar pattern of words. It evoked memories of restless bored mornings from his childhood of being forced to sit still and feign attention. A prayer. The constant rasp of it against his thudding skull was what finally goaded him to surface, if just to tell the annoyingly pious speaker to shut up.

  He opened his eyes. Well, his left eye. The right was swollen, the view from it a halo-ridden haze. Inches from his face were boots, ones he recognized. The girl’s. Tilley. But that wasn’t her name. It was something she stole, just like she stole thoughts.

  Her face was a pale mask above her knees. Eyes squeezed shut, lips moving in that now-unmistakable litany. A prayer to Nyxa for her mercy on the dead.

  “I’m not dead. No use praying on it,” he croaked.

  She gasped, instantly kneeling down over him. “Oh, thank Miri. I thought I was alone.”

  Her voice was a fearful whisper, hard for him to hear with one ear pressed to the deck and the other filled with the complaint of the engines. He shifted, rolling onto his side, and found his hands bound at his back. They’d thought to bind his ankles too.

  Splendid.

  It was the hold of a runner, the interior stripped of grav benches or even gear harnesses for re-entry, what Ix’s men called the “pit” where they stuffed slaves.

  “How long?” His jaw was a throbbing raw knot.

  “What?”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “An hour…a little longer.” She swallowed. Her distrust seemed pushed aside; her shoulders sagged with relief. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Day ain’t over yet.” He sat up, the move made awkward by the shackles. His head swam and then settled.

  Her shaking hands brushed a clump of hair from her face. Mech-locks bound her wrists, impossible to pick without taking an inch of flesh with it. He wagered his were the same.

  “These men. How many are there?”

  The sound of raised voices came from beyond the shut hatch that led to the pilot’s den. She peered over her shoulder in that direction like a startled animal. The light through the small window carved a renewed fear on her face. Fresh tears wet her eyes.

  “No. Focus. Look at me.” He nudged her knee. “How many?”

  She nodded, the motion jerky. “Seven that I could see. There’s a big one they called Ott. I think he’s in charge. They’re bringing us to someone named Lucien.”

  He cursed under his breath. Ott would have volunteered for this one. The sod had it in for him.

  “You know him? Lucien?” she asked.

  “Let’s say he’s going to be happy to see me in a rather murdery way.” Asher twisted around to rest against the bulkhead beside her. The effort renewed an ache in his ribs and reminded his headache to be a bitch. It was not helping, because he needed to think.

  A seven-man team called for more than one runner. The a-grav was on, which meant they were still using the subs. Ott wasn’t stupid enough to risk using a flexer just to get back to Ix faster, especially if he’d used more than one ship. That meant maybe another four hours before they reached the Jennali Noble, Ix’s requisitioned vessel.

  “Who is he?”

  “One of the biggest warlords in the Reaches, sworn enemy of my Guild. And a monumental pain in my ass.”

  “Oh Miri.” The panicky sound crept back into her voice. “What do we do?”

  “I have a plan…I think.”

  Her eyebrows drew up. “You think?”

  “Did you talk to any of them? You say anything?” He angled around to face her.

  Tilley shook her head, chewing her lip. “Because Tyron wouldn’t have.”

  He frowned. She hung no explanation onto this comment and went back to staring in the direction of the pilot’s den, frozen like a cornered marsh hare.

  Tyron. The same name she had used when she took out the Zenti in the corridor. He could use that calculating coolness again, but it was not forthcoming, additional evidence that she lacked control over this ability.

  “Tilley?” He leaned against her. “Hey. It’s important you don’t talk to them, any of them. They hear your fancy accent and they’ll know what they have, the way I did. You got it?”

  She nodded, swallowing.

  “What about you? Can you do that…thing? Like you did to me? The next time one of them comes back here, maybe?” An idea was forming under the blanket of ache in his brain.

  “Sight-jack?” She shook her head. “It’s not working right. I feel weaker, sort of sick. It felt like I was coming apart.”

  “Coming apart?” More evidence that she lacked an instruction manual. “I don’t—”

  “All awake now, brother? Thought Ix would have to behead a man in a coma. No sport in that.” Asher recognized the meaty voice: Ott. The light from the pilot’s den outlined his monstrous silhouette.

  The girl folded further into the bulkhead.

  “Always great to see you,” Asher replied.

  Ott moved with a speed mismatched to his lumbering shape. Asher braced himself in time for the kick to his ribs. He fell to his side with a labored gasp.

  “That’s for Dida,” Ott spat.

  “It was ages ago,” Asher grunted, straining to right himself.

  “Still matters, Korbyn.” Snorting like a blood-mad bull, he seized the back of Korbyn’s jacket and shoved him to the deck face down.

  Tilley uttered a strangled screech.

  “Gonna learn you a little lesson about personal property. Thinking I’ll take what’s yours and make you watch,” Ott growled.

  He was talking about the girl.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” Asher rolled his face against the deck, tasting blood. From this angle he could see the girl wedged against the bulkhead, narrow chest heaving. Her stare danced between them.

  “Why not?” There was an evil amusement.

  “Ix gets first still, don’t he?”

  “What he don’t know…” Ott pressed hard against his skull, punctuating.

  Asher grunted. “But I’ll know. And the girl. It’ll be pretty much apparent that she’s been had.”

  Tilley’s stare landed on Asher now. Her eyes widened further.

  “Got yourself a velo hack there, Ott. Prime.” He sensed Ott’s hesitation and pushed on. “Snagged her off’n Delphix, right from under those Poisoncry witches.”

  He prayed that Ott lacked the ability to calculate that the tech stronghold was too far from the Mercy’s location to have made sense. Any Poisoncry tech was a commodity you didn’t want damaged.

  “Delphix? Don’t look like no engine hack.” Regardless, doubt crept into Ott’s voice.

  “How would you know?”

  The pressure against his head lessened. The giant shifted off his back. A deck plate groaned near his ear and Ott’s boot stepped into his line of sight.

  “She’s inked. Look for yourself. Back of her neck.”

  Ott lifted her from her cower and dashed her to the floor on her stomach, her face inches from his. Her eyes met Asher’s. Silently he willed her to stay quiet as Ott pulled at the neck of her baggy shipsuit.

  “Eh.” Ott snorted, disappointed. Then, with an odd gentleness, dumped the girl back to her spot near the wall.

  An angry cheated silence radiated from the giant as he stepped back out of view. Asher had time to brace himself before more kicks were delivered to his spine and ribs.

  “Engine hack,” Ott muttered. His heavy footfalls announced his return to the pilot’s den. The hatch shut. Dimness returned to the space. He heard the girl move. She pulled at his clothes. He rolled onto his back.

  “Velo hack?” She peered down at him, incredulous. “That
’s my Kindred’s mark. It’s not a property—”

  “Ott can’t read much, especially Eugenes. Not many of those bastards can.” He ran a tongue along the inside of his mouth and spat bright red onto the deck. “Should I call him back, tell him my mistake?”

  She shook her head vigorously, then: “You lie so much.”

  “It’s how you stay alive here…Tilley.” He over-pronounced her name, prodding her own obvious lie out into the crappy light of the runner. “You should learn to be better at it.”

  PART III

  18

  Tristic had chosen this shell out of desperation. With each passing day, she paid the price of that choice. A vessel such as this was never meant to contain her. It was asking a cup to hold an ocean.

  What choice had I?

  The Questic had been crumbling around her and her personal craft was unreachable. Escape was impossible. In the chaos, a bulkhead had given way, crushing her body like an insect. As she lay bleeding, she knew her end would come just as the vessel, so much of her life’s work, died around her.

  The Veradin girl had done this: Erelah. In destroying the carrier, she had also destroyed herself. An unimaginable thing.

  Maynard was a vile animal, but her loyal creature still. He had found her and, while the officers and techs scurried away, he pulled her from the twisted metal and brought her to the escape vessel. From its battered deck, Tristic watched her life’s work eaten by the singularity. The jdrive’s proximity ripped apart the delicate field of the Questic’s velos. Ironically, it was a fault she knew of, but had elected to dismiss.

  Her own twisted body was dying. All the augments, the patient medical pandering, were for nothing—thwarted by a child’s brash act. Desperate for a host, Tristic had no other choice but Maynard.

  She recalled his cheated anguish as she invaded his body. The lies she had spun for him were made grotesque by his unflagging loyalty. At the end, he gave over, a loving sacrifice to her intensity.

  In a sense, she mourned him. He had been her perfect counterpart. She was the hunter and he, the carrion beast that lurked in her wake, consuming the remains.

  How many subjects had they gone through like that in her search for a new perfect Human host? She’d lost count. She vowed his sacrifice was not in vain. It would be his gift to her, as when the savage ancestors of the Eugenes offered up beasts and children to appease their half-imagined gods.

  Tristic was left alone, trembling in this new form. Maynard’s body was a temporary shelter, a delay to her own death. Eugenes physiology lacked the exploitable frailties of a Human host. They were easily used up. That’s why she had needed Erelah—the perfectly imperfect girl.

  A lesser being would have succumbed, surrendered to the inevitability.

  Instead Tristic had chosen the coldsleep of one of the suspension chambers. When she woke, her rescuers were not Regime or Fleet. They were Humans. A ship full of them in their arrogant primate glory.

  Tristic had barely contained the fit of hysterical laughter.

  It was an eternity before their words were reigned into sense by one of their machines as it cranked out translations of inelegant Commonspeak. A boring time after that with halted exchanges. They attempted to interrogate her. She was their prisoner, apparently. How laughable. Their naive nature was almost charming.

  She knew little of this place. There were only two rooms: her cell and the white room, each as bland as the next. The gravity seemed to have the stickiness she’d come to associate with artificial constructs. Definitely a ship or a station.

  Tristic gleaned what she could: she was alone, no other survivors from the Questic had been recovered. Odd.

  Until she deduced why: the singularity, the flex point. Somehow her escape vessel had slipped through this thin space in the wake of the explosion and emptied out into another region entirely—the Reaches. Like moths to a flame, her Human captors were lured by the energy signature of the exit side of the flex point that had taken out the Questic.

  How did you do that?

  What did it mean?

  Are there others like you?

  Tristic offered clues, played with them. All the while burning, burning. Already Maynard’s body curled at the edges like paper exposed to flame. Moving to a new host required exposure, proximity to one of them. The Humans kept their distance, wary. It was an infuriating temptation. She was a starved animal, surrounded by food, but prevented from consuming.

  Tristic regarded the firm white hands with square knuckles she now commanded. Her spine was firm and straight. The lungs filled with powerful draughts of air. She had never entertained taking a male form. They were blunt tools, dismissed. Yet despite its imperfections, there was a delicious sense of precision to being in this form. A shame it would not last.

  It was enough to induce panic.

  But patience. There was time still.

  Now Tristic waited in the white room, seated at the simple metal table. Hands folded on its cold surface. Back rigid, posture perfect. She kept the look on her host’s face purposefully neutral, something the real Maynard never could manage.

  “Mr. Maynard,” the Human announced from the doorway, as if he needed welcome to enter his own prison.

  Did all these creatures behave as meekly?

  Tristic recognized the sound of her assumed name flopping off his inelegant tongue. Their means of translation involved devices nestled against their ears. Such quaint barbarians.

  “Should we pick up where we left off?”

  She regarded the speaker. Captain Miles Wren.

  He was clad in a dark blue shipsuit with a series of color patches on the sleeves. Indicia at the neck and collar marked the rank that he claimed to possess. Incredibly, second in command of their installation, Roughbook, he called it. An odd choice and probably code.

  He seemed too finely boned and pale to be infantry. The hands that clasped the flat object against his chest were almost elegant. His bearing spoke of someone that might have been raised in a synthetic gravity environment. His eyes were a ghastly bright blue and hair dark blond. All impure traits, she noted with a stab of revulsion at the sight of her next vessel.

  Tristic resisted a sigh of boredom and plastered an eager look on her face. The key was to speak slowly and in Common so that their silly devices had time to offer an accurate translation. “By pick up, do you mean resume the prior topic of discussion?”

  Wren grimaced. “Sorry. The translators have difficulty with idioms. But, yes, that’s what I meant.”

  “Very well.”

  He laid his ever-present tablet on the tabletop and efficiently opened a series of screens. On it were grid coordinates with two different languages: Commonspeak and English, Wren’s only language.

  “Your vessel was found here at 00.99.99.939. Is there something significant about the location?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes narrowed. “You’d indicated you were originally aboard a larger vessel that was under distress and used an EEV. The time stamp indicated it’d been close to three weeks, if we estimate things properly.”

  Such tedium. This vessel burns and you waste my time.

  She could easily pop the metal shackles that bound these wrists, squeeze that pallid throat, force her essence into his lanky form.

  Her captors watched everything. There were armed guards outside the door. And to what end? To shuffle from useless husk to husk?

  Tristic shifted in the seat.

  Maybe Wren sensed he was losing her attention; he flipped screens. “The area was subjected to a gravity distortion. An immense one. No longer there, but the echo of it still is. It’s been checked against the radiation native to the region. A few days ago, we got a new ping on this area. There was another energy emission similar in size and concentration to the one we found around the time of your arrival.”

  “I have already told you as much as I could. My duties did not include stellar mapping.” She lilted her voice to suggest an apolog
etic tone. How simple could this man be?

  He did not look up from the device, seeming enthralled with it. “It’s another ship. A small one, with the construct closely matching what you refer to as a stryker model.”

  Wren thumbed past another screen. There was a blurred image like a silver bird of myth. But unmistakable in its shape.

  The stolen heart of her host leapt. The Jocosta.

  The girl. Erelah. My girl. The perfect one. The one who brought my ruin.

  Tristic had found the Human girl, hiding in plain sight as a project leader within the very ranks of Ravstar, an unwitting participant in a charade to pass her off as a Eugenes high-born. Helio Veradin, the girl’s savior and benefactor, had never planned for his ward to come across a half-Sceeloid creature like Tristic, who would sense her true nature. What a precious and delicate surprise the girl had been. The perfect host—with some alterations, of course. In assuming Erelah’s body permanently, Tristic would know welcome among the Eugenes elite. There, aided by the Sight, Tristic would embed herself in their hallowed Council of First and consume them from within.

  Then the girl had escaped.

  Ignorant of the excitement that welled across from him, Wren showed more pictures, crude flat things on the tablet. Then she saw the secondary energy signatures. Wren was clever for a Human, having detected multiple entry points that were all part of the same signature.

  The girl. The ship. It could only belong to the ship. Jocosta. All was not lost. If the Humans found the ship, then maybe…just maybe I may find my perfectly imperfect girl. I will live on. I will be eternal.

  Finally she spoke. Strange, hearing her words in Maynard's voice: “I believe I can help you, Miles Wren.”

  19

  “What am I looking at?” Major Amber Snowden didn’t bother to slow down on the treadmill. She flung sweat from her forehead. Wren’s lip curled with disgust as he held the tablet out for her to read.