Shades of Dark

by Linnea Sinclair

  His voice halted. He froze in place, bent over the engineering console. Sully stood in the bridge’s hatchlock, hand slightly raised, palm out. Bright energy roiled in the air, flowing from his sleeves, gathering around his boots.

  Philip caught my eye. “Coat’s a containment field,” he murmured in slight surprise.

  I nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  “Interesting.”

  Sully walked forward, drawing the energy back into him. The balding man in blue coveralls hadn’t moved. “Sit,” he told the man, as Del had. The man complied but his stare was vacant, glassy.

  Sully glanced over his shoulder. “Lock down the bridge. I’m going to find out if he knows anything useful.”

  The bridge hadn’t been altered from the standard P-75 configuration. Whatever funds Hayden Burke had sunk into this ship had probably gone into the gen-lab. I let Philip take the captain’s chair—he could lock down a P-75 as well as I could. I pulled an archiver from the cylinder on my belt, slipped into the seat at the main console, and brought up ship’s nav records. I wanted to know where she’d been, what gates she used. I plugged the archiver in then moved quickly for communications and repeated the procedure, grabbing all transmits on file. Maybe there were love letters from Tage. We’d have data to work with when we got back to the Karn, if Del claimed this ship as I felt sure he would.

  “Ship’s ours,” Philip announced. He swung the captain’s chair around, pushing himself out of it. I pocketed the archiver from communications and pointed to the one at nav but Philip’s gaze was in the opposite direction, toward Sully standing before the crewman. Almost imperceptible flashes of lightning raced over his face.

  Philip darted a glance at me, brows drawn slightly. Worried.

  “Zral, likely, not zragkor,” I said quietly, coming up to Philip’s chair.

  Philip just shook his head, signaling that wasn’t his concern. I couldn’t tell what was.

  The glow around Sully dimmed, the pale lightning faded. The crewman rested his head on his arms, eyes closed.

  Philip stood. “You’ve gotten a lot stronger, Sullivan. Or is this Regarth’s doing?” There was an odd timbre to his voice.

  “We have other things to worry about,” Sully said, glancing from Philip to me. “The ship’s not just here to get supplies. This is a meetpoint for them.”

  “With?” I prodded.

  Sully shoved himself away from the unconscious man’s chair. “Hayden Burke.”

  I felt tension and excitement roll through our link.

  Philip straightened. “Here?”

  “When?” I asked at the same time, my own adrenaline now spiking.

  “From what he knows, about two hours. Seems Hayden’s done this before.”

  “But this time we’ll be here,” I said softly.

  Sully’s dark eyes glittered as he nodded, then the hint of a smile faded from his lips, his face turning serious. “He knows what I am. I highly doubt he’ll travel unguarded. He might have a Ragkiril working for him. But even if he has a Kyi, we can handle that.”

  “Be careful. He’s less use to us dead,” Philip said. “That could even add to our sins in the public’s eye.”

  “Burke’s very much less use to us dead,” Sully agreed and I saw some of the tension relax from Philip’s shoulders. Sully’s strength not only surprised him, but seemed to worry him. I understood that, because Del worried me. But not Sully. I knew my ky’sal.

  “You still want to take out the lab now?” Philip asked.

  Sully nodded curtly. “We need the rest of the crew neutralized. Del’s on his way. I feel fairly sure we have an hour or so to work with. I don’t want to be in the middle of something when Burke arrives.”

  I was already reconfiguring the scanners, synchronizing my hand-held with them. “We’ll have forty-five minutes’ warning on the approach of any ship.”

  “Let’s get this done.” Philip stood.

  Stinger out, I followed Philip and Sully as they headed in silence to the stairwell. Del was waiting at the open doorway to the lower deck, the silvery haze drifting beneath the edges of his coat.

  “The crew will be expecting rescue,” Sully said, pointing to the sealed blast door as we exited the stairwell. “They’re going to find a second set of doors instead.” He ran his hand down one wall, then motioned to me and Philip to move behind him. The Kyi’s energies blossomed off Sully’s skin though there were no slashes of lightning. The haze flowed outward and took the shape of an interior wall. And another set of doors. I could see through them, but barely.

  Del was grinning broadly. “Perfect.”

  Sully stepped back, ignoring Del’s comment, and inspected his handiwork. He nodded to Philip. “Release the doors.”

  Philip tapped at the control panel. The real blast doors groaned apart slowly, voices escaping from within.

  “About time! We thought—”

  Two men surged forward then stopped.

  “What the hell?” the taller one said.

  And that was all. They were frozen, the energies of the Kyi flowing from Del and Sully through the apparition locking them in their places, shutting off their minds. They put their backs to the wall on Del’s command, then sat.

  There were two more techs to deal with, and time wasn’t on our side. Hayden couldn’t arrive without our knowing, but he could arrive early. Del and Sully moved ahead.

  I stood for a moment staring at the vacant faces, even though I knew we had no time to waste. One man was darker skinned like Marsh. The other was pale and muddy haired like Gregor. I wasn’t seeing them as individuals but as victims. I suddenly realized why Tage was so very afraid of Stolorths, of Ragkirils.

  This had been far too easy. No bloodshed, yes. But I couldn’t be sure equal damage hadn’t been done, especially by Del. Sully was all too aware of how easily his power could be abused, after what happened with Gregor. But Del was a Kyi motivated not only by pleasure but by pain.

  “Chaz,” Philip said, touching my arm. “As you said earlier, it’s better than shooting them.”

  I nodded at the truth in that, pushed away my discomfort, and trotted down the corridor. On a P-75 it would dead-end at sickbay. Here it went to the lab. The silence was strange, almost ominous. We were taking over a ship and not a shot had been fired.

  I checked my hand-held. “Still clear,” I told Philip. “But Burke’s ship will probably contact this one. If they don’t get an answer to the hail, they might abort.”

  “Sullivan should be able to cover that,” Philip said. “Or we can create a system-failure signal. Given the usual interference in this sector, that’s not unusual.”

  We stepped through the wide lab doors. Immediately I noticed that a long wall of thick glass was on my right, sealing the jukors off from the rest of the lab. Air recyclers pumped noisily. The grotesque bodies of the jukor infants, fanged mouths agape, were sprawled on the floor. The scaly hides hadn’t yet hardened; they were oozing something, and in spite of the fact that the glass prevented their odor from reaching me, my stomach revolted. I looked away, my gaze traveling over the form of a man seated at a desk, head resting on his arms, eyes closed. Sully’s or Del’s handiwork? I didn’t know. I didn’t see Del.

  Sully stood in front of another glass-fronted section at the other side of the lab. He turned, our gazes meeting. His mouth was pinched, he closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. I’m sorry, angel. There’s nothing I could do. They’re basically no longer alive.

  I holstered my pistol as I slipped past the unconscious lab tech. The Takan women, four of them, were lying in clear stasis chambers. Breeding cells. Their bodies kept alive only to the extent that they could house a jukor fetus. It was a horrible, sickening sight. They were someone’s daughter, someone’s friend.

  Philip pointed to the lab tech at the desk. “Any more information on why Burke’s coming here?”

  “Del’s with the other tech now.” Sully raised his chin slightly as if he was listening to a
distant conversation. Then he shook his head. “Burke meets on an irregular schedule with this ship’s captain. Everything’s organized through her. Sometimes it’s payday. Sometimes it’s hardware. They’ve meet here before.” He hesitated, then: “Del’s going to go back on the depot, see what he can learn from the captain and bridge staff that accompanied her. I want to finish securing this ship and getting everything we can in the archivers.”

  “I left one at navigation,” I said, remembering. “We’ll need someone on the bridge to answer Burke’s hail. Let me try to pick up the captain’s identity and hail codes from ship’s logs. Shouldn’t be too hard for me to impersonate her.”

  “Go,” Philip said. “Sullivan and I will finish here.”

  “Let me know if you can’t find that data.” Sully’s voice stopped me in the doorway. “I can wake the engineer sufficiently and control his contact with Burke’s ship, if it comes to that.”

  I nodded then took off down the corridor, trying not to glance at the vacant faces of the med-techs as I strode past the fire doors.

  The archiver was where I left it. I pocketed it then swung into the captain’s chair and brought up her logs. The engineer was still slumped at his station. I forced my eyes not to stray to him, forced my mind not to consider the state of his mind. These people were our enemies. It was preferable to being shot. Losing memories wasn’t the same as losing a life.

  The lab ship’s captain was Brigitta Halemon. I didn’t know her record, her training, or previous postings. Those didn’t matter. But I needed to hear her voice, her cadence, how she handled meetpoints with her boss. And I didn’t have a whole lot of time to study her. However, knowing standard procedure and the fact that the existence of this ship was highly secret, I suspected there wouldn’t be a lot of friendly chatter. But there might well be code words. The wrong one in the wrong sequence would alert Burke’s captain that something was amiss.

  I brought up her last twenty transmissions, immediately ruling out those going to depot and station traffic control. That left three, all to different transmit codes. I hoped one was Burke’s ship. The meetpoint was likely set recently, unless this was a routine stop at a prescribed interval of time. I couldn’t rule that out either.

  I brought up the logs on the three unknowns. Two were traffic advisories from independent freighters. A fairly routine practice in between beacons. The third was a private transmit to a ship’s chandler on Ferrin’s. Useless.

  I grabbed twenty more but knew I was running out of time.

  Sully?

  No answer. I hit intraship. “Sully, I’m going to need the captain’s all-clear codes. I’m not coming up with any recent transmits between her and Burke’s ship.”

  Sorry, came the answer and not through intraship. I wondered if he was back on the depot. There was an odd note to his voice. I’ll tell Del. Either he or I will get back to you.

  We don’t have a lot of time, I told him. You know as well as I do, the wrong word or the wrong person, and they won’t make dock.

  Agreed. We’re working on it.

  I hoped it was Sully not Del who got the information for me, but I knew we also didn’t have the time for me to be picky.

  I went back to the transmit from the ship chandler’s on Ferrin’s and listened to Halemon’s voice while I scanned the next set of transmits for anything from Burke. She spoke in short sentences with not much inflection. A standard bored officer doing her duty. Her accent was Baris Starport–bred, full of jumpjockey-speak but grammatically correct, meaning she’d had some advanced schooling. Not a problem to imitate that and, with a little added background interference that would be expected here, the differences in our voices might not matter.

  I found two earlier transmits going to a repair bay on Ferrin’s—evidently Ferrin’s was a place Burke felt safe. They taught me nothing new about Captain Halemon but solidified what I did know about her. Still, talking to a ship’s mechanic wasn’t the same as conferring with someone she considered to be her employer. I guessed the jumpjockey talk would get pushed to the background for conversing with someone of Hayden’s status.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind me. They sounded like Philip’s hard gait but I turned anyway to be sure. Sully wasn’t with him.

  He answered my raised eyebrow with a nod. “Sullivan went back to the depot.”

  “I need Halemon’s all-clear codes.”

  “Is that the captain’s name?”

  “Know her?”

  Philip took the seat at the helm in front of me, but not without a quick glance at the sleeping man at engineering.

  “I’m learning to ignore him,” I said with a grim smile.

  Philip grunted an all-purpose answer. “What’s Halemon’s first name?”

  “Brigitta. Know her?” I repeated. Hopeful. Working blindly and under the pressure of a time deadline were not my favorite activities.

  He shook his head.

  “That’s okay. I think I have her basically down. If you could add some noise to the comm-link, we’ll be okay, if Sully gets her all-clears. If not,” I pointed to the engineer. “He’s our best option.”

  “How long has Sullivan been fully phased?”

  Philip’s question confused me until I saw him run two fingers across his face. Lightning.

  “That I’ve been aware of? Ten days, two weeks. But he’s been struggling with something for longer than that. Ren would know more.”

  Philip folded his hands together and leaned his elbows on his knees. “I wondered if it was Regarth’s influence.”

  He’d asked Sully that earlier. Sully hadn’t answered. Evidently it was important enough that Philip needed to ask again. “What’s the problem?”

  “Two fully phased Kyis are the problem. I hope Sullivan knows what he’s doing.”

  The tight tone of his voice concerned me. “Philip, I don’t have access to your family’s data. Break this down for me.”

  “You know Ragkir have different levels of power, with Kyi being the highest? Among Kyis there are levels. Phases. It depends on their ability to use and integrate energy. When one’s fully integrated, fully phased, the physical body actually shows energy transmissions. They can look like lightning bolts or starburst or just expanding glow fields.”

  “Both Sully and Del have those.”

  “That’s my worry, Chaz. It goes back to clan dynamics. Succinctly, two captains on one ship. Or two admirals. Who’s in command? Who has final say? We talked about this on the ship, when we were in jumpspace. It’s more of a consideration now because of the high level of power. I understand Sullivan feels confident he can control Regarth. I just don’t want to see him do something stupid.”

  “Like?”

  Chasidah?

  I held up one hand, halting Philip’s reply. “It’s Sully,” I said out loud. You have those codes for me?

  I do, angel-mine. Ready?

  Ready.

  Words flowed into me, but more than words. Almost a feeling of Brigitta Halemon herself. Her confidence. Her insecurity. Her annoyance. It startled me. It frightened me.

  A nudge of warmth from Sully. It was the quickest and easiest way to transfer this to you. Don’t worry about it.

  I understood, but…Sully, is she still alive?

  Nothing to fear. Just let me know when Burke’s ship’s in range. I’ll come up to the bridge if you need my help.

  With playing Captain Halemon? For him to transfer that part of her essence to me, he had to have taken that into himself.

  Just temporarily, he confirmed. Think of it as a file to be deleted.

  Or a personality to be erased. Like a zral.

  It’s not that bad, angel.

  Just…different.

  Let me know when Burke’s ship—

  My hand-held blared out three sharp tones.

  Now, I told him as Philip spun in his seat, bringing scanner data to the console screen.

  On our way.

  “Forty-five out,” Philip said
, confirming what I knew from the hand-held. I swung the armrest console screen up into position.

  “We confronting Burke on the depot or on this ship?”

  “Sullivan and I figured the depot, once we confirm he’s definitely docking.”

  That made sense. We had less room to work and were more vulnerable in the lab ship. “I’m good with that. You have ship ident yet?” I asked Philip.

  “Ident, no, but she’s a luxury-class yacht. An Explorer Edition Five, looks like.”

  That would fit Burke’s profile. I heard bootsteps, felt Sully’s presence before I saw him. “Explorer Five?” I called out over my shoulder, working with the data on my screen along with Philip. There was always a chance this might not be Burke.

  “Hayden likes to travel comfortably,” Sully said, coming up behind me. He touched my shoulder and leaned forward, studying my screens. “I think it’s highly likely it’s him.”

  “Then why does this ship read him as a blind-ident?” Philip questioned as Del brought the nav station active. “This should be peer to peer.”

  “Because he’s not confirmed we’re us yet,” I guessed. I ran through Halemon’s all-clears in my mind. “Did you get protocol from Halemon? Who hails who first?”

  Something spiraled between Sully and Del. I felt it but couldn’t get the content.

  “We do,” Sully said after a moment. Then: Chasidah, Del worked Halemon. I transferred the codes to you because you’re not comfortable with him. But you need what he knows, directly. Will you agree to a link with him, just for now?

  Would I agree? Yes. Would I like it? That was moot at the moment. Just for now.

  I felt a silence then a rushing heat, a presence that I recognized from our previous encounters.

  Thank you, Captain.

  Tell me about Brigitta Halemon.

  I can do more than that, Del said. You and I will be her.

  That thought definitely did not make me comfortable but I knew there was no other choice.

  When do we send our hail?

  Brigitta Halemon’s knowledge was suddenly mine. Not just her insecurities, her annoyances, but the sum of what she was. I saw/felt her childhood on a starport, her clumsy teenage years, her brief affair with a freighter drive tech when she was nineteen. Her own apprenticeship on a freighter, working from third shift to senior nav, and under Burke’s orders, as captain. She was forty-one and Burke’s money intrigued her. She had no interest in politics but held the usual xenophobia found in inner-system residents. Takas made great deck slaves. Stolorths were not to be trusted. Not even the ones who worked for Burke.