by Lilly Cain
John nodded and pocketed the Gathani device. He winced.
Sarina sucked in a breath as she realized he was still bleeding. “How badly are you hurt?” She holstered her laser and dash’tet and walked to him. Carefully she ran her hands over his shipsuit, checking for further slashes.
“Bad enough, but he really only got the shoulder. It’s a clean cut. No tendon damage, I don’t think.” He pointed his chin toward the motionless Gathan. “Is he going to make it?”
She glanced down at the wounded man. “Does he have to?”
“Bandage him and tie him up. I have a few questions I’d like to ask him.” John’s deep tone hummed with anger and power. Not exactly the voice of a lawyer.
“I bet you do.”
* * *
John slumped into the control chair. His shoulder hurt like a bastard, and helping to drag the fucking blue guy through the corridor hadn’t helped. The alien was impossibly heavy, made from something far denser than human tissue. He watched as Sarina shoved the Gathan into the spare seat. She tapped the seal on a wall compartment, sliding out a drawer full of equipment. John grinned. Alien toys.
She slapped a set of force-bindings against the Gathan’s legs and arms. The bindings emitted a low hum and glowed orange as they constricted against the alien’s skin. John shook his head. The Gathani technology that transformed him from a blue giant to a normal-looking human was amazing. The other two attackers had been human—members of Terran Purity and probably completely unaware that they worked beside an alien from outer space, the same sort of creature they claimed to be protecting the Earth from.
“He’s secure. Now it’s your turn.” Sarina pulled a small case from the same drawer and walked over to him. Her fingers trembled as she pulled open his shipsuit to look at the damage done to his shoulder.
“It’s not that bad, Sarina.”
Tiny tremors flickered along the L’inar on her neck. He concentrated on the lines as they tensed into thin ridges and flattened again. He loved the swirl of reddish brown color, like a henna tattoo, a decorative art he might never tire looking at. He sucked air as she examined the slash in his skin and a flare of pain followed her touch.
“You should have stayed out of the fight. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Is that what’s really bothering you?”
She ran a cleanser pad over his skin and he winced. She froze. She was upset, beyond the stress that would be normal for the aftermath of a near-death situation, especially for an experienced warrior like her. He thought of her recent injury. There was no medlab here and she was forced to treat his wounds because he couldn’t reach them, making due with the same kind of basics he could have found on any human outpost.
“How badly were you injured, Sarina?” He filled his thoughts with gentle reassurance. If he was right, seeing his injury brought back thoughts of her own.
“Laser burns to one arm. My arm was nearly cut off…my L’inar were severed.”
“Did it take long to heal?”
She was moving again, disinfecting the slice and applying a pressure pad. “My L’inar were burned away from my central column. They will never heal.”
A wave of sorrow passed through her m’ittar. John fought not to react too quickly through the mental link. Something about the way she spoke of her injury, the impression he received through her emotions, told him she was talking for the first time about how her injury had really affected her. It amazed him that she would reveal something so personal to him. It touched him in a way nothing ever had.
“Without L’inar, I am…incomplete. I am not whole.”
A strange ache formed in John’s chest as he listened to the words that whispered hesitantly in his mind and the emotions that flavored them, bitter and salty, like angry tears. “I don’t understand.”
“Without L’inar, there is no completion. Inarrii must experience complete sexual release regularly or they lose their mind. It is only a matter of time before I do the same.”
John stared at her in disbelief. Her green eyes reflected utter sincerity. She believed that she was going to go crazy, that she was a lost cause. “Forgive me, but I believe we’ve just proven that theory wrong.”
“Perhaps.”
John winced as Sarina pulled the bandage tighter on his shoulder, keeping the pressure on to make sure it would stop bleeding. She was far from convinced, but their experience together left no doubt in his mind. He could still feel the way she shuddered in ecstasy. She’d flown with him, and he could think of a hundred different ways to make it happen again. The urge to protect her, to heal her and make her believe in herself grew from a small glow within him to a bright point of focused desire.
But first his duty required him to focus on his primary mission. He glanced over to their hostage, now tied to the spare seat in the control room. The blue-skinned alien sagged against his bindings. Dragging the Gathan up here had hurt more than the original slice to his shoulder. But the control room offered options for interrogating the pirate. John would have the answers he needed, one way or another.
“I think he’ll be out for a bit. You hit him pretty hard.” Sarina spoke aloud before turning away.
“All that karate practice finally paying off.” John shrugged the sleeve of his shipsuit over the bandages on his shoulder. The thick material was even stiffer than usual, now that it had been coated in blood.
She turned back to him. He could almost taste her annoyance in the air between them, a flavor he could do without if he wanted to maintain his cover. A small voice inside him reminded him that he didn’t actually want to maintain it. He wanted to get it over with and tell her. At least then they could work with the same level of intel. Right now she was protecting him without knowing the real reasons behind the attacks, and in truth he couldn’t see the purpose behind it. If he had clearance, he’d give her full access in a heartbeat.
“Do you really want to keep going with that story?”
“Sarina,” John reached for her. “I’m sorry.”
* * *
A low moan caught Sarina’s attention. She broke her eye contact with John and glanced over at their captive. With a sudden jerk, the Gathan prisoner snapped alert. He emitted a low snarl and then pressed his thin lips tightly together as he eyed his captors. Sarina glanced from him to John and caught the relief within his m’ittar before he snapped the connection shut. Her mind groped for his, but for a man with no training in mental arts he had an amazing grasp on shields. Whatever he might have been going to tell her was shut tightly within his mental shields once again. A hollow space remained where their connection had held.
John stood. He stalked toward the prisoner, his muscular body sliding into motion with a dangerous focus. The Gathan’s eyes tracked his movements, but he couldn’t follow him as John stepped behind the alien’s position, and Sarina noted the darker blue glands on his neck swell in tension.
John was not a lawyer. The truth of the statement couldn’t be more evident as she watched him circle the Gathan again. He was a predator, stalking his prey. He leaned in closer to the pirate from behind. “Why did you attack us?” His voice was deceptively casual.
Sarina leaned against the wall and watched. She might learn as much about John as she would about the Gathan—more, perhaps. She already knew the Gathan’s motivation.
“Fuck off, zschtck.”
John leaned in from the other side. “Why did you target us?”
The Gathan clamped his mouth shut.
“An interesting point in Gathan physiology is their sensitivity to pain,” Sarina commented.
John’s eyes met hers. For the first time their gray depths reminded her of the Inar icelands.
A microknife seemed to materialize in John’s hand. He pressed the back of the small blade against the skin of the Gathan’s neck, probably
unaware that he was a mere finger width away from the first of the alien’s secretious glands. Even nicking one of those organs could cause more agony than a broken bone.
The Gathan held perfectly still. Dark lines of color ran along his neck and cheeks.
“That is an interesting bit of trivia.” He flicked the knife up and sliced a shallow cut along the Gathan’s nose.
A shrill noise pierced the air, and the Gathan jerked back until his head hit the edge of the chair. The pirate shuddered as John held the knife perilously close to his face, waiting until a single drop of blue blood dripped from the thin blade.
“They mostly act as spies since they joined the Raveners, not warriors.”
“Another interesting bit of trivia. Perhaps our friend here has some other facts he would like to add to our little chat.”
When his comment was met with silence, John struck again, a quick slash on the prisoner’s check, missing the secretious gland by no more than the width of the blade. The Gathan howled in pain. The L’inar along Sarina’s shoulders stiffened and flatted wildly in reaction. She’d killed hundreds of opponents, and she’d been forced to question others when the Examiners were not available to do the job. But observing torture was never a welcomed experience.
John didn’t seem to react. He had done this before, she knew from the way he handled the blade. What was he—a human from a warrior class the Inarrii were not yet aware of? Or a member of the human militia? The question haunted her. He’d lied to her about who he was. Understandable, if he’d done it out of duty. But the real question was—what else had he lied to her about?
“Your skin slices like butter, Gathan. Like butter softened to the point of melting. I could peel your hide from you with this little knife, pull it from you like a glove from my hand.” John still sounded casual, so soft, but the chill in his eyes had saturated the air.
Sarina repressed a shiver that threatened to run along her spine. His m’ittar remained closed off—she prayed to the gods that he wasn’t enjoying himself.
“Zschtck pig, you are a primary target,” the Ravener nearly shrieked as John held the blade directly against the dark blue center of his cheek gland.
“Why me?” John toyed with the knife where the alien could see it.
“You are in a key spot. But we know who you are.”
Sarina didn’t change her stance, didn’t move a muscle. Who was John Bennings?
Chapter Nine
Sarina was watching him. John ground his teeth in frustration. He had no choice. The Gathan was about to break his cover, but he had to discover what they knew and how they knew it. He dragged the back of the knife over both of the prisoner’s cheeks. The flesh was different there under the skin and from the alien’s reactions he suspected he was threatening a vital part of his captive’s body.
“Who am I?”
“Starforce. An undercover agent. And in the perfect place to die. We kill you and the Treaty stops.” The words rushed from the alien.
“How do you know this?” John demanded, pressing the back of the knife harder into the blue skin until it creased under the pressure.
“The Terran group has an insider—I don’t know who it is. But the spy knew you.”
John stole a glance at Sarina. She hadn’t changed her position, leaning casually against the wall as if none of this was news or none of it was important. But the truth was that it would change everything. Someone knew who he was and had turned the information over to a group of terrorists. Who and why would have to wait, but not for long.
“What do you mean, it would stop the Treaty?” Sarina straightened and took a step toward them. “John’s alias is a midlevel negotiator. If he died, nothing would have stopped.”
The Gathan didn’t reply, so John dug the tip of his knife into the edge of the darker area on his cheek, gouging a mark until the alien began to scream. Then he pulled back and waited. The shrill noises eventually faded into whimpers. A finger of nausea wormed through John’s belly, but anger kept him going. This being had probably killed the human he was posing as, at the very least, and was trying to set the entire Earth up to be raped of its resources.
“He and four others will be at the signing of the Earth Accord between the major forces of the human planet. It has to be complete before the Treaty with the Confederacy can be signed. If those negotiators die, the Accord will never be. No Accord, no Treaty.”
Something didn’t seem right. John stared at Sarina and she looked back at him. She’d taken the truth of his position in stride, never blinking or revealing that she hadn’t been aware of his true identity. For the first time he tried to speak to her, mind to mind without being in physical contact. It felt odd, like he’d entered the room naked and with a target painted on his chest. “He’s lying.”
“So were you. But his lies are going to cost lives.” Sarina walked over to the main control panel and placed her palm on the glowing ID pad. Immediately he felt the hum of amplification through their m’ittar link and shut his side down. She was pissed and about to do something that would probably hurt him as well as their prisoner if he didn’t put his barriers back up.
His timing must have been perfect, or maybe she did care at least a little about shielding him from what she was doing, because as soon as he raised his mental shields the Gathan convulsed in his chair. John pulled away from him as the pirate thrashed against his bonds and howled.
“What is your mission?”
A rank odor seeped into the room, coming from the creature in distress. The Gathan screamed. Even through his shields, John heard Sarina’s mental voice pounding against their captive’s mind.
“What is your mission?” Sarina demanded again.
The Gathan screamed for another long moment.
“What is your mission?”
Finally, he broke, the Gathan’s surrender palpable despite the psychic context. John thanked God and fought back the urge to wipe sweat from his forehead. One more second and he would have pushed Sarina away from the controls. He glanced at her. It was a good thing she was behind the Gathan and the alien couldn’t see her. Her usual golden skin had paled and she looked close to being sick. From her appearance, one more second and she would have given up the interrogation.
“We had to find the targets and replace them with Gathan spies…sabotage the Accord, but only long enough for the rest of our fleet to arrive.” The alien gasped for breath, his blue skin now riddled with patches of dark blue and gray. “Then, at the final Treaty signing we would break cover and assassinate every one of the human leaders and the Inarrii.”
“You were going to pretend to be one of us with this?” John pulled the glowing neckpiece from his pocket.
“Yes. You were the perfect target—take you out and we knew there would be no one to stop the final attack from the inside.” The pirate seemed to recover his breath. “Now kill me, zschtck filth. Kill me and go on to your human hell. You’re too late to stop us.”
The pirate began to hiss, the sound evil and poignant to John’s ears. An alien show of contempt or mirth—he wanted to smash the Gathan until he couldn’t make the noise any longer. Sarina beat him to it, coming over from the control panel from behind the Gathan and knocking him hard in the head with the pommel of her dash’tet. The Ravener slumped unconscious against the force-bindings holding him in his chair.
* * *
Sarina swallowed convulsively again and again. Her body wished to heave up her last meal in reaction to what she’d just done. She’d been trained to interrogate and, if required, to use her m’ittar as a weapon. But she’d never actually done it until now. It seemed as though the vileness of the act coated her skin and mind.
“Let’s get him somewhere where we don’t have to watch him every minute.” John didn’t look at her as he spoke. Was he as repulsed as she was by her actions,
or was he feeling guilty for lying to her, for keeping a mask over who he really was? If that was the case, he didn’t need to worry. Inarrii made poor liars and spies but that didn’t mean it wasn’t ever done, or that she couldn’t understand that he was doing his duty. That was a warrior’s life. How she felt about it personally was more difficult.
“The storage closet in the corner should have enough room for him.” Sarina walked to the corner of the control room and ran her finger over the seal on an almost invisible line. A door slid open. Glancing inside, she noted the closet had been stripped of nearly everything, probably during the partial closure of the tiny base. “This will do.”
John hadn’t moved; he was staring at the Gathan prisoner. Sarina strode back to the captive and released the force-binding across his chest. She grabbed him as he fell forward and then hauled his unconscious body over to the closet. The force-bindings remained active on his legs and arms, so she checked the cuffs to be certain they remained tight against the pirate’s blue skin. The bindings were independently powered, so as long as the cuffs remained on the captive, he would be held in whatever position she posed him. She left him sitting on the closet floor and secured the door to her personal DNA code. He’d be out for a while and by then they would hopefully have been rescued and he could go to the Examiners.
Sarina glanced over at John. For all intents, they were alone again.
“Sarina, I’m sorry—”
“No time for that. We need to warn the other targets,” she interrupted, speaking the words aloud. M’ittar didn’t feel comfortable, not after what she’d been forced to do to their prisoner.
“If we send out any communication, there’s a chance it’ll be picked up.” He hesitated. “I…sent a message out via what should have been a secure channel earlier. It is possible, though, that they knew the codes and found us that way.” He paced the room. “If he was telling the truth about there being an inside operative for Terran Purity inside Starforce’s Special Agency, then they could be watching for more communications. At very least, they’d know we survived the attack and maybe they’d come looking for us again.”