Shades of Dark

by Linnea Sinclair

  Your faith in my mind-reading skills thrills me, my angel, but the fact is I can’t tell at this distance. Seriously, he added, as I bristled at his teasing response. They should not have any reason to know you’re on my ship. If they do, then we have a crew problem again. And I’m going to have to do some poking around, and that will cause us even more problems. But let’s deal with that after we deal with them.

  Sully’s “crew problem” would require using a telepathic probe on his crew with Ren as decoy. Last time he had to do that, we almost had a mutiny on our hands. But it was a mutiny because Gregor and Marsh believed Ren was a Ragkiril. Having to use Ren in that manner and then feeling the vicious backlash directed—wrongly—at Ren had troubled Sully deeply. I didn’t want to see Ren go through that again. I didn’t want to see Sully go through that again.

  I hoped the Farosians just happened to be on a similar course to the Darvo Tureka.

  “You want a little more distance between us and them, Sully?” Gregor asked.

  This was Sully’s normal method—keep pulling away, grabbing up speed, working magic with his sublights that still amazed me, and then punching it, hell-bent for a gate.

  Sully glanced over his shoulder. “Keep us at the eighteen-minute range until we can pick up the gate’s outer beacon. I don’t want them pushing in to close the gap, thinking we have something worth chasing, when all we might have here is an aborted jump transit. Let’s play nice, stupid freighter minding its own business. The reason they’re out there may have nothing to do with us.”

  An aborted transit that landed you just inside another ship’s short-range grid usually was cause for immediate comm contact and an apology. Even a request for aid, because aborted transits played hell with ship’s systems. But Sheldon Blaine’s terrorists never requested anything. They took.

  Though I’d have preferred Gregor’s suggestion for a bit more room—just because I disliked the man didn’t mean I invalidated his expertise—that eighteen-minute separation was enough to keep them from easily taking data from us. At the same time it gave us a workable distance from which to gather data on them.

  “Incoming comm transmit,” Ren announced suddenly. “Audio only.”

  Sully leaned back in his chair then swiveled toward Ren. “Let’s hear what Emperor Sheldon’s Justice Wardens have to say.”

  Ren spoke softly into his headset, giving the command to open the transmission link. There was the usual short double-chime, then: “Mr. Sullivan. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  So much for our nicely counterfeited registry docs. The voice emitting through the speakers was female, with a noticeable drawl common to most of the worlds and stations in Dafir’s Quadrant 3. She had a thicker accent than Guardian Drogue but I’d not heard enough of her voice to place her age. My mind ran through the Empire’s list of known female terrorist leaders, but Sully’s response pinpointed her identity for me.

  “Nayla Dalby. Should I be thanking you for the flowers sent to my funeral? Regrettably, I was unable to attend.”

  “Flowers?” She barked out a harsh laugh. “If I sent anything, it’d be a plasma torpedo.”

  “Such a high-priced offering. I’m flattered.” Sully swiveled back toward me and winked.

  Clearly, he wasn’t worried. I was. Commander Nayla Dalby was a ruthless assassin the Empire had yet to apprehend. She was two years my senior. I knew her age because, like me, she’d been part of Fleet. She went AWOL and joined the Farosians about five years ago, taking with her a considerable amount of top-secret data. Data that was never to have left HQ on Aldan Prime. I had no idea what that data was—my clearance wasn’t high enough. Philip’s was, but I never asked him. I just had a standing order to kill her if she came within my ship’s sights.

  “Don’t be flattered,” Dalby said. “If I had my way, you’d be eating that torpedo now. But we’ve decided you might be useful.”

  “To Blaine? Sorry. Can’t support Sheldon’s bid for the throne. His politics and his proclivity for torture annoy me.”

  “More than you’re annoyed by Darius Tage and your dear cousin Hayden?”

  Sully’s eyes narrowed slightly then he shrugged, his expression blanking. “What’s your point, Dalby?”

  “Don’t you know? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “Limited thinking. Reality has shown that the enemy of my enemy is one more enemy I have to account for.”

  “But this enemy doesn’t care that you pulled an Imperial officer off of Moabar. Or that you firebombed one of Burke’s little experiments on Marker.”

  Sully sat up straighter. A sudden emptiness told me he’d cut his mental link with me. I swiveled toward him, but I don’t know what worried me more: his mental silence or that Dalby knew about the jukor labs. That meant the Farosians had someone in Tage’s office, Burke’s organization, or—and I shuddered at the thought—on Philip’s ship, the Morgan Loviti.

  The Farosians infiltrating Fleet had been a longstanding concern. Blaine’s supporters worked with limited resources. What ships they did have were like the Infiltrator, small and fast, but nothing that could seriously threaten a starport or station. But if they were to ever get a heavy battle cruiser, like the Krista Nowicki, or a destroyer, like the Loviti, the situation would get that much more dire. They could go from being hit-and-run terrorists to a workable force to be contended with.

  That was one of the reasons Fleet wanted Dalby dead. She knew too much about those kinds of resources.

  “In fact,” Dalby was saying, “we’re damned pleased.”

  “Your point?” Sully repeated, his tone controlled. The energy I could feel vibrating from him—even without the link—was not. I glanced at my console. The Farosian ship still had weapons ports showing cold.

  “We can help you take down Tage. Stop Burke’s jukor labs.”

  “And why would you help me?”

  “Because you can persuade the Imperial Fleet to side with us.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it quickly before my voice betrayed my presence. The Farosians would never settle for allying with Fleet. They wanted Fleet’s power, Fleet’s ships.

  Sully laughed harshly. “Fleet hates me, Dalby. Maybe as much as they hate you.”

  “But they don’t hate Chasidah Bergren. Or should I say Chasidah Bergren Guthrie? Wife of esteemed Admiral Philip Guthrie. I have my sources, Sullivan. Her arrest created serious schisms in the ranks. Oh, yeah, it was hushed up. But you weren’t the only one who made plans to spring her from lockup on Baris Starport.”

  Sully was very still. I shot a glance at Ren. He leaned forward, shoulders stiff, silvery eyes narrowed as he listened intently.

  “And you weren’t the only one trying to get her off Moabar,” Dalby was saying. “You just got there first.”

  Thad had told me he’d been trying to get me transferred off Moabar. Then Philip admitted the same thing. Is that what Dalby referred to, or were there others? Sparks, my engineer, had opted for early retirement shortly before my court-martial. I remembered the pained, angry transmit he’d sent me, damning Fleet’s actions. It wouldn’t have been beyond him to rally some of my crew. But enough to create the schisms Dalby mentioned? It didn’t seem possible. I was a good officer, but I didn’t have the kind of adulation that was part and parcel of the Guthrie name.

  “Far-fetched,” Sully said, leaning back in his chair, steepling his fingertips together. “Even if I could convince Captain Bergren to plead Blaine’s cause to her former comrades—and I doubt she would—there’s no guarantee that would persuade the entire fleet to mutiny against Prew.”

  “If the Admirals’ Council ordered it, it might.”

  “She’s not married to Philip Guthrie anymore.”

  “Oh, but he’d listen.”

  If Dalby thought bringing up Philip’s name would sway Sully to her side, she was very wrong.

  “No,” he said firmly. “It you want to stop the jukor labs because it’s the decent thing to do, becaus
e your own people on Tos Faros will suffer if you don’t, or because Tage is likely to let a few loose on Moabar to tear Blaine to shreds, then fine. But I’m not going to help you put Sheldon Blaine on the throne. Trading one lunatic despot for another is not an improvement.”

  “Even if the trade involved Thaddeus Bergren?”

  This time I went very still and cold. Stop Tage and Burke, destroy the jukors, save Thad. It was all such an incredibly attractive package, there had to be a catch—a big fat ugly one. But even if there wasn’t, putting Sheldon Blaine on the throne and his Justice Wardens in charge of the Empire was not something I could live with.

  Sully was looking at me, brow creasing. I waved away his concern. It was time to make my presence known.

  “You overplayed your hand, Commander Dalby,” I told her. “I have no reason to believe you’d deliver on your promises. I do have every reason to believe, though, that you’d use my brother as your hostage. I’m not going to have my family or the Empire held prisoner.”

  “Captain Bergren.” Dalby’s voice held a slight note of surprise, but whether it was because I was on this ship or simply at the bridge at this time I didn’t know. “We will have this conversation again, soon. And your answer will be very different. Trust me on that.”

  Two chimes sounded.

  “She cut the link,” Ren announced.

  “The Infiltrator is changing course, Sully-sir. They’re moving away from us,” Verno added.

  Sully stared at the main screen, eyes narrowed.

  “Sure would like to know how they picked up our trail,” Gregor said finally, breaking the silence. He angled back in his seat, glancing toward Sully.

  Sully nodded slowly but said nothing. Ren turned back to the communications console. Data flickering over my screen told me Marsh was shutting down the sublight emergency overrides.

  “Might be something we should look into,” Gregor continued.

  The tension on the bridge was palpable, most of it coming from Sully. If Gregor hadn’t been so intent on pinning the Infiltrator’s appearance on me—which I was sure was the reason behind his comments—he’d have noticed that. And shut his mouth.

  Gregor drummed his fingers on the armrest. “Sensor logs might show something. I could look into that, boss.”

  “Sure.” Sully shoved himself to his feet. “I need to get back to that Narfial data. Chaz?”

  Our mental link was still quiet. I had no idea what Sully wanted or where we were going other than I was very sure it had nothing to do with Narfial. I secured my station and followed him off the bridge.

  He hit the palm pad for the ready room and, as we passed under the room’s brighter lights, he seemed oddly drained. His coloring was pale, the lines at the edges of his eyes more pronounced. He slid into a chair at the round table and rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes as I sat.

  I wondered if Dalby’s appearance bothered him for more than the usual reasons. Then he spoke.

  “He didn’t question the remark about your brother.”

  It took me a moment to follow his train of thought. Then I realized what I’d missed and what worried Sully. Gregor, my perpetual nemesis—who grabbed every chance to resurrect my connection with the Imperial Fleet—had left Dalby’s comment about Thad unquestioned. “How come some Farosian terrorist knows your brother?” should have been the first thing Gregor asked.

  “Maybe he wasn’t listening when Dalby said that?” I offered.

  “He knows something.” Sully leaned back in his chair, one hand clenched into a fist on the tabletop. For a moment, a barely perceptible pale haze flickered briefly in the air around him, then it was gone. The Kyi—the energy fields a Ragkiril like Sully manipulated. But he rarely did that in a room easily accessed by crew who didn’t know what he was. I was surprised to see even the flicker of it I did now.

  “I probed as best I could without…well, he knows something,” Sully repeated. “He’s lying. And he’s scared.”

  He probed as best he could without touching Gregor and without using the Kyi. That explained his silence, his concentration.

  “What could you get?” I remembered his reading the security guards at Marker three months ago. He’d been able to discern their moods and whether they viewed us as a threat. But he couldn’t read specific thoughts without a direct link, physical touch, or drawing on the Kyi. None of which he’d done on the bridge of the Karn or I would have seen it.

  “He wasn’t surprised by Dalby’s appearance—or, should I say, the Infiltrator’s appearance. He didn’t seem to know Dalby, but she didn’t bother him. That was the first thing I picked up, even before she mentioned Thad.”

  “Then he knew the Farosians were following us. He probably supplied them with our ID.”

  “Those thoughts weren’t in his mind, so I don’t know. He was concentrating on making sure this ship stayed in range.”

  It briefly occurred to me that Sully had gathered a lot more information from Gregor’s mind than I would have thought he could. But maybe Ren—who also had been silent—was helping. And maybe the small confines of the bridge made it easier.

  Still, how Sully had obtained Gregor’s thoughts concerned me less than the content of those thoughts. “Why would Gregor support Sheldon Blaine?”

  “It might not be so much supporting Blaine as hating Prew and Fleet. And the Admirals’ Council.”

  Fleet had long been the means by which the emperor enforced his authority over the worlds and sectors from Aldan through the rim world bordering Dafir, and past that even to the No-Name Sector and Moabar. The Admirals’ Council ran Fleet, and interfaced with Prew and the other governmental ministries. Prew and the Council were actually autonomous but most people saw them as different halves of the same entity. Fleet did the bidding of the emperor; therefore, Fleet was the emperor. Gregor evidently subscribed to the “enemy of my enemy” philosophy.

  “And Gregor hates me,” I added.

  “I had a few chats with him and thought that was under control.” Sully glanced past me at the door to the bridge as if he could see through the metal plating to the man seated in the pilot’s chair. “Evidently not.”

  “That’s how Dalby knew I was on this ship.”

  “I felt no sense of recognition from him when Dalby spoke, but there was a very pronounced lack of surprise.”

  “If you bring him in here for an interview with Ren, you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”

  Sully’s gaze was still on the door panel, and our link was still silent. I wondered if he was trying to probe Gregor, possibly through his connection to Ren.

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to involve Ren this time. And I’m not,” he continued, when I started to ask just what he intended to do, “going to confront Gregor right now. He’s responsible, somehow, for that Infiltrator showing up. I want to make sure we’re well out of its range before I take any kind of action. And I’m going to have to have the bridge lock-out program running. If Gregor causes problems, the last thing I want is for him to be in control of my ship.”

  He turned toward me and clasped my hand. Our mental link opened, flooding me with warmth, but the line of his mouth was grim. “Come, angel-mine. We have work to do.”

  Part of that work was sending a message to Guardian Drogue—a message that had been delayed by the arrival of the Farosian ship. I sat at the desk in our cabin and opened the code files to initiate the bridge lock-out program. The message could have been intercepted by the Farosians. They already knew far too much about Chasidah Bergren.

  “I warned Drogue about the Farosians,” Sully said from the console on his side of the desk.

  “You think they’ll try pulling Blaine off Moabar again?”

  “Given that they mentioned getting you off-planet, yes.”

  “They must have learned about that from Gregor. That’s why they wanted you to work with them.”

  Sully glanced at me from over the top of his deskscreen, the screen’s glow hars
h against the planes of his face. His lean jawline still echoed his father: Winthrop Burke Sullivan, an incredibly wealthy and powerful man when he was alive. But Sully’s dark coloring, his thick hair, and his sensuous mouth were pure Rossetti, his mother’s family. She’d been an elegant beauty. I’d never seen Sully in anything other than a shipsuit or spacer’s leathers, but I could imagine him in a cream-colored watersilk dinner jacket and dark pants, or a tuxedo, looking every inch as elegant. And sexy as hell.

  His frown swung upward into a lopsided grin. “I’ll buy one if you’ll take it off me.”

  My face heated. “You shouldn’t be peeking!” I chastised, but my mouth curved as I said it. Embarrassed by fantasizing over my own lover. Another form of stress relief.

  “I wasn’t peeking. You were sending. Very directly.” He arched one dark eyebrow.

  I sighed, bring my emotions back under control. “Let’s get back to the problems at hand. Gregor. My brother. What Drogue can or cannot do.”

  Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

  It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

  “As bad as it is to know Gregor is working against us,” Sully said quietly, “it does provide answers to a number of issues I’ve not been able to figure out to this point. The good part is that he is in our control and outnumbered. That’s why, instead of giving in to this overwhelming desire I have to flatten him against a bulkhead until he can no longer breathe, I’m going to watch him, read him—at least for the next few shifts. Let him think he’s safe because I’ll learn what I need to know.”

  It was a dangerous game, but Sully had never shied away from them before. “I thought that Farosian ship knew this was the Karn,” I said, restlessly tapping my fingers on the desktop. “But now I bet Dalby was told to look for the Darvo Tureka.” Sully’s bogus ship IDs were damned-near impenetrable. It made more sense that Gregor had given the Farosians the name we’d be traveling under.