Poisoned Pawn

by Jaleta Clegg

  —metal beneath me, metal taste in my mouth, sound of metal in my ears. Vibrations making my bones sing. Deep rhythms singing in my heart, beating in time to the unheard chorus of stars. Pinwheels of light dance and spin about me. I am the universe. I am nothing. I am… I reach for a name and meet only more darkness.

  Light, blinding, harsh. Cold washing over me. I pull inside my shell and sing with the galaxy, voices like bells chime around me. The light intrudes, stabbing my eyes. I raise hands to cover my face. I have hands. What are hands? The question drives me away into the singing again, despite the light, in spite of the cold wetness—

  —vibrations slow, change. Nausea twists me in spirals of dark red agony. I reach for the singing, the golden chimes, the song of the universe. It rises beyond me, forever out of reach. I wake, sobbing, to find myself naked, wrapped in a thin blanket. The floor around me is slick with tears. I am drowning, unable to find the music that calls to me, forever lost—

  Light, again. Blinding yellow-white. I squint, blinking. The voices will not let me retreat this time. The wetness is gone, replaced by cold. Slick metal holds me in a slippery embrace of flatness.

  “Are you sure the dose wasn’t too high?”

  A voice, ugly and harsh, not the chiming brightness of angelic stars and lights. I try to close my eyes, to find refuge in soft, smothering darkness since I can’t find the singing light of the universe. Hands pull me up, rough and cold.

  “I calibrated it correctly,” another voice answers.

  I scream as the voice reverberates in my skull, louder and louder, round and round.

  A sharp prick in my arm and the darkness comes back, cradling me like the mother I barely remember, like the lover I dream about.

  Light again, this time a dim glow of blue. I blink and recognize it as a doorplate. It means a way out, my sluggish brain finally realizes. I try to stand but I’m lying on a floor that is sliding away to the side. I dig in fingernails already torn and broken. Pain explodes in my hands, red bursts of angry light—

  The floor isn’t moving. I close my eyes, exhausted. Sleep this time, not the smothering darkness.

  I wake again, to hear the voices talking.

  “She should have woken up by now. Something’s wrong.”

  “She dies, we space her. Nobody knows. Ever.”

  “And we’re out the money.”

  “You wanted the risk.”

  Hands pulling me, dragging me upright. My muscles protest, flaccid and limp, weak and thin. I blink open eyes crusted over.

  “She’s coming around.”

  A face looms, huge nostrils, dark holes pouring foul air over me with each breath. The face moves back. Cold wetness pours over my chin, dribbles into my slack mouth. I swallow. It’s that or drown. My body tries to breathe at the same time. I cough, tearing muscles with the spasm. The rough hands push me over, face to my knees. I cough again, and try to move away from the punishing hands.

  “See? She’ll be fine. Just get more of that restorative down her. Nobody cares if she’s damaged in the head.”

  Low moaning echoes through the room. Rhythmic and sad, an animal in pain and beyond hope of rescue. I wish for someone to help the creature die, to end its pain, and realize the one moaning is me. I cry inside, knowing something has been lost, something I treasured. It is gone, washed away by the celestial choir of stars.

  Hands, these gentler, raise me up. More of the cool liquid, poured more carefully, slides into my mouth. Swallow by swallow, I regain strength.

  I can focus again. I see a face over me, a woman old and wrinkled. She pats me wordlessly and feeds me more liquid.

  I float in and out of time, each waking more coherent than the last. The woman is there, constantly. She says nothing, waiting patiently for me to wake so she can feed me more of the liquid.

  It tastes bitter, sour as the smell that rises from me and the thin blanket that covers me. I sleep again, finally. Deep sleep, true sleep, and I dream.

  * * *

  “I can’t find her, can you?” A voice I know out of the stifling darkness. I reach for him, try to call him. The darkness fills my mouth, thick and dry. I taste dust.

  “Is she here?” the voice asks. I know his name. He knows mine. I wait for him to speak it, to tell me who I am, so I can remember. “I can’t find her.” He repeats it again.

  I stretch, reaching for him. I have to touch him, to find him in the dark. I need him to say my name, to unlock the vagueness of my mind. I’m trapped in darkness, smothering, dry as death. I cry tears of dust, eyes raw and blind.

  “I can’t find her,” the voice says, moving farther away.

  I want to scream, to shout to him that I’m here! I’m here!

  His voice fades. I’ve lost him.

  * * *

  I woke to find my face wet with tears. I sat, wiping them away. I was naked, covered only by a thin blanket so filthy I couldn’t tell what color it was originally. I sat on the floor of what had to be a storage closet on a ship. The floor vibrated under me, the rumble of a sublight drive.

  My head was clear, surprisingly so. I felt like it should have been filled with stars and cobwebs and a lot of other strange things. I brushed a hand across my head and shuddered at the matted mess I found instead of my normal tangle of hair. I wondered how long I’d been shut in the room. By the smell of it, I’d been there for a while.

  The door opened. I looked up, not sure what to expect. A man stood in the doorway, legs wide and hands on hips as he looked me over. He sniffed and made a face at the smell.

  “Get up,” he said.

  I tried, clutching the blanket to hide as much of me as possible. My legs felt like overstretched rubber. I used the wall, leaning on it until I was more or less upright. The man didn’t offer to help.

  “Trust Ortel to make a mess of things,” he muttered. “Out,” he ordered.

  I couldn’t walk. I knew if I tried to move, even a little, I’d lose what little balance I had and fall on my face. I tried to tell the man but all that came out was a hoarse croak. He grumbled, but saw that I really couldn’t move. Holding his nose as far away as he could, he hauled me out of the closet.

  Judging by the corridor outside my storage locker, the ship was a small one, though not as small as the Phoenix. I blinked and struggled to remember what the Phoenix was. The memory drifted away in a fog. I stumbled at the end of his arm as he dragged me down the corridor. He opened the door to a cabin and pulled me in. The door slid shut and the smell intensified. He yanked the blanket away and stuffed it into the recycler.

  “In there,” he said, jerking his head at the door of a bathroom. “Scrub. Or I’ll come in and help.”

  I lurched across the floor and into the bathroom. He let the door shut, giving me privacy, but only because there was absolutely nothing in the room I might possibly have used to help myself. Escape? I had a big blank in my head. I didn’t know where I was or why.

  I stood inside the shower, a warm misting one that part of me knew was standard on smaller spaceships. I cycled it through three times before I started feeling like myself again. My head cleared, my rubbery legs firmed up. The only problem was that I didn’t know who I was.

  I stepped out when the shower finished blowing warm air. I stood in front of the mirror on the wall and tried to figure out who I might be.

  I saw a face, rather thin, with large frightened eyes. They were halfway between deep chocolate brown and green. My hair was mousy brown, tangled and short and curling at the ends. I used my fingers to try to straighten it. I stopped, hand twisted in damp hair. I’d done this before. Recently. I stared at the face again. My hair used to be very short, cropped close to my head. I was growing it because… Because…

  I ran into a blank wall. Relax, I heard a voice say in my head, don’t force it. Let it come on its own, let your mind heal, let the memories slide away let your mind focus let your mind your mind…

  The words slid together and the wall crumbled. My name was Dace
. Zeresthina Dasmuller on my birth certificate and until I was old enough to change it. I was a pilot. I owned a ship with Jasyn Pai, the Phoenix Rising. What was I doing naked on this ship?

  The door opened. I turned to face whoever was coming in. I’d been kidnapped. The Targon Syndicate must have caught up with me. I swallowed, hard. I was in deep trouble.

  The wrinkled old woman from my dreams stood outside. She handed me a dress and waited, motionless as a statue, while I pulled it on. It was rich fabric, fine and soft to the touch. I was certain I’d never owned anything like it. The color was soft peach. It fell in graceful folds around me. The old woman moved with surprising speed, fastening me into the dress. It was short, to mid-thigh, and skimmed over me closely enough that I couldn’t have hidden anything under it even if I’d had something to hide.

  The woman went to the cabin door and opened it. I crossed the floor, barefoot and feeling almost more naked than before.

  The ship jerked. I stopped and put a hand on the wall to steady myself. Clangs of attaching grapples echoed through the ship. A further series of thuds signaled that the ship was docked. Somewhere.

  The woman took me to a storage room full of crates. She opened a large black trunk, a rich piece of luggage. I looked inside. It was empty.

  “In,” she said.

  “No.” My voice came out a hoarse croak. I backed away.

  “Sorry, gentle one,” the large hairy man said behind me, “you don’t have a choice.”

  He pushed me into the trunk and shut the lid.

  Darkness thick and stifling choked me. I fought back panic. They didn’t want me dead or they would have killed me already. There had to be air, enough air, I kept repeating to myself. I tried to take shallow breaths anyway. The trunk smelled musty and unused.

  I curled up and tried to protect my head as the trunk was lifted. It swung side to side, banging me around inside. A final thud rocked me. The faintest of vibrations traveled through the trunk. I was moving.

  Another series of bumps and thuds rocked the trunk. A voice shouted, muffled by the thick lining. More vibrations. More shifting. The trunk was lifted and set down more gently. The lid banged open. I blinked in the sudden light and took a grateful breath of air.

  “Here she is, as promised.” A new voice, a new person. A pudgy man with rumpled clothing reached for me, his hands soft and white as they hauled me to my bare feet, standing in the trunk like the final act of a magician’s show.

  I faced a very elegant man. Tall, broad through the shoulders, waist slim, he wore a loose white shirt and tight dark pants. His face was young; I couldn’t tell if it was artificial or not. His hair was a striking dark blue, tinted with highlights of pale silver. His eyes were cold, dark and hard. He had a slight dimple in his chin. He nodded at the man holding me.

  He jerked up my skirt, exposing a round brown mole high on my thigh. The elegant man smiled, a slow spreading of his lips into a wicked curve. The fat man let my skirt drop.

  “Miya, my sweet,” he said, looking straight at me. “I do apologize for the zeal of my hirelings. They were told to be completely discreet. You do understand.” He put a look of anxious concern on his face that was as phony as his hair color. “It’s nothing to do with you. Business is business, and I needed a way to influence your father.”

  I stood there, keeping my face as still as stone. He called me Miya. Who was Miya?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sector Chief Querran leaned back in her chair, fingers tucked under her chin. The smuggling ring around Restat had been dismantled with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of arrests. Things should be quiet for a while in the Cygnus sector. She stayed on top of things, supervising many of them personally, and it paid off. Her sector had the highest arrest and conviction ratings and one of the lowest crime rates. Criminals knew it didn’t pay to cross her.

  Her desk com interrupted her contemplation of the ceiling.

  “Yes?” she answered.

  “Sir, there’s a Commander Lowell here to see you,” her secretary, the ever-efficient Marshay, spoke in her crisp accent.

  “Send him in.” Chief Querran straightened her silver uniform. It didn’t pay to have higher ranking officers see you rumpled and too comfortable, even if they were old school friends.

  Lowell came into her office. He wore Enforcer black, with no insignia except a small red triangle on the collar. He had his hands in his pockets and looked as if he were a tourist on vacation. Or an old friend paying a social call. Chief Querran was very wary. Lowell spelled trouble, and the less official he looked the bigger the trouble. She made herself smile.

  “Suella,” he greeted her. His smile looked genuine, his silver eyes lit up warmly.

  “Grant,” she answered with the same level of familiarity. “Sit, please. What brings you to my sector?” She leaned back in her chair, hands draped casually on the arms, her legs crossed, foot swinging.

  “How are the grandchildren?” Lowell took a seat. He turned her photo frame around. “How many are there now?”

  “Seven.”

  “The boys are handsome. And the girls lovely.”

  “Thank you.” She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, ready to move the visit to business.

  She was interrupted by the door banging open. Her secretary tried to restrain the large man who shoved his way into her office.

  “The Sector Chief is busy,” Marshay protested.

  The man pushed her aside, without even seeming to notice her. “I demand to know what this is about.” He slapped papers on Querran’s desk.

  “Hom Daviessbrowun, it’s a pleasure to see you. But you will have to wait until I am finished.” Querran’s eyes said his behavior was unreasonable, even for him.

  “I can’t wait. You have to deal with this. Now.”

  Lowell leaned forward, studying Hom Daviessbrowun’s paper.

  “I’ve called security, sir,” Marshay said.

  If Lowell was interested, maybe she could shift the troublesome man onto him. Querran waved her secretary out, her hands saying to hold security for now. Years of working together had given the two of them a set of secret signals. Marshay nodded and left, closing the door briskly behind her.

  “Please sit, Hom Daviessbrowun, and tell me what the problem is,” Querran said in her most soothing authoritative voice.

  Hom Brun Daviessbrowun paced the room, slapping his hands together. Querran waited patiently while he collected himself. Lowell turned the papers to study them more closely.

  Marshay came in quietly, calmly, carrying a tray of assorted drinks and a small silver bowl of ice. The juices were only the finest. Marshay and Querran both knew to treat their unexpected guest with utmost courtesy. Hom Daviessbrowun was the wealthiest man in Cygnus sector, head of a huge conglomeration of businesses that employed almost half of the population. Even at his most unpleasant, Querran knew better than to offend him.

  “Would you care for a drink, Hom?” Querran offered.

  “Tirtha juice, please,” he said.

  Marshay poured the thick yellow juice and added the appropriate number of ice cubes. Querran waited while he sipped, watching him calm. He set the glass on her desk and dropped into a chair next to Lowell.

  Querran spoke. “Now, please, Hom Daviessbrowun, what is the problem?”

  “This,” he said, stabbing the papers he’d slapped onto her desk. “Someone is claiming they have kidnapped my daughter. They want two million, two million, credits ransom.” His breathing sped up, his face turned brick red.

  Querran picked up the top paper, sliding it out from under Lowell’s fingers. It was indeed a ransom note demanding two million credits for the safe return of Arramiya Talieth Daviessbrowun. One million if the Gentle Hom Daviessbrowun didn’t mind her missing a few pieces. Querran winced.

  “When did you receive this note?”

  “Twelve days ago.” He took another sip of the thick juice.

  “Hom, it is imperative that you give us as much
time as possible. You should have come to me immediately.”

  “My daughter is safe, on my ranch out at Upsilon Ky. As soon as that came,” he flipped a finger at the next page in the pile, “I went and checked on her. She’s busy riding her fool horses and has been for the last month and a half.”

  Querran sifted out the piece he’d flipped. It was a photo. Huge, frightened brown eyes stared at her. “It certainly looks like your daughter,” Querran observed.

  “I have no idea where they got it.” He slammed his glass onto her desk, ice cubes rattling.

  Querran flipped the photo over. “We’ll send this to the lab and have them authenticate it.”

  “And what are you going to do about the rest of it?” Hom Daviessbrowun demanded.

  “Pardon, Hom?” she asked politely.

  “They are harassing my people. Slowing my ships, sabotaging my factories, disrupting my business. I demand you do something to stop it!”

  “Who? We’ve had reports of all of this, and I assure you, we have thoroughly investigated every instance. The guilty parties have been arrested.” She put the photo aside.

  “May I?” Lowell asked, speaking for the first time. She nodded and he leaned forward to pick up the photo.

  “This harassment must stop,” Daviessbrowun said. “I wasted two weeks checking on my daughter. I cannot afford to lose time chasing crank demands for money. It should be a crime to fake kidnapping and ransom demands.”

  “It is a crime, Hom. We will investigate.”

  “These aren’t faked,” Lowell said. “They do believe they have your daughter.”

  The Gentle Hom and Chief Querran both looked at him.

  “Do you have a recent photo of your daughter?” Lowell asked, his silver eyes opaque.

  “There, in the pile,” Hom Daviessbrowun said.

  Querran pulled it out and handed it to Lowell, wondering exactly what he was driving at. Lowell held both photos up, side by side.

  “The resemblance is remarkable,” he said.