“It certainly seemed to be the trigger,” he hedged.
“It isn’t stasis specifically. I don’t like dark, enclosed places,” she admitted, ignoring the sour bite of fear on her tongue.
Damen and V’kyrri traded a doubting look.
“You blasted me with a bolt of pure little kid, middle-of-the-night, terror,” V’kyrri said.
Had she?
Concern stood out in the tightness of Damen’s lips.
“One thing at a time,” he said. “We’re minutes from teleport range. Let’s get V’k aboard his ship and en route to protecting the Dagger.”
Jay nodded, relieved as much by the change of subject as by the logic of the suggested course of action.
“Agreed,” she said, forcing herself to shift out of a reactive, feeling state and into cool, rational thought.
The best way to conquer an unfounded fear was to face it. With her pulse hammering in her temples, she forced herself to ask, “I assume the Kawl Fergus has a stasis chamber?”
“It won’t be necessary,” he said. “We’ll route straight to the Dagger . . .”
“Negative, Major,” Commander Parqe replied. “Admiral Seaghdh asked me to relay the following: ‘Silver City objective critical.’ He said you’d understand.”
“Message received and understood,” Damen said. He glanced at Jayleia, disquiet in the depths of his eyes. “I’ll push our pace. Silver City medical will treat you.”
“It doesn’t sterilize the ship,” she said. Had her mindless reaction been so disturbing?
Rubbing her aching forehead, she sighed. He didn’t have to be logical. She did.
“While stasis cannot cure me, it would slow the infection,” she said. “You could teleport to the Rhapsody after V’kyrri, and blow the airlock remotely while I’m under sedation in stasis.”
Damen grinned without a hint of humor in his face. “Leave the TFC spymaster’s daughter alone aboard my ship?”
She gaped at him. “What do you expect me to do while I’m in a medically induced coma, locked inside a thrice-damned, airtight coffin?”
Amusement glittered in his gray eyes. “Did you know one of the Autken’s primary senses is scent? I don’t need V’k to be my lie detector. I won’t leave you alone aboard my boat.”
Three Hells. Could he really smell a lie? What about omission? She blew out a shallow breath. That both explained and complicated everything. It also reinforced her determination to escape Major Sindrivik’s custody. Once she’d found her father, or could prove his innocence or lack thereof, she could offer her dad the option of using the Claugh nib Dovvyth in an end-game maneuver. Assuming that’s where his plans were and not locked in stasis of another kind.
“Is there reason to resort to drastic measures for something curable?” Damen asked.
“The pneumonia outbreak last year,” Jayleia said.
Damen frowned. “When the plague the Chekydran had seeded in Captain Idylle went hot.”
“You didn’t even get a sore throat,” she said. “V’kyrri nearly died.”
“How happy I am to remember so little of that stay in the Dagger’s medi-bay,” V’kyrri interjected before fixing her with a keen eye. “You’re afraid of finding a race susceptible to this disease?”
“Every race has adapted to handle different illnesses. The danger is combining a low-risk illness with a population that has no natural defense to it. You’d be horrified, assuming you survived, by how swiftly a benign disease with low morbidity can change its stripes and become a killer. How many species live and work on the Queen’s Rhapsody? Or on Silver City for that matter?” she asked.
“If you’re treated, and the ship sterilized upon docking, what’s our exposure?” Damen asked, frustration darkening his expression.
“With this disease, minimal,” Jay replied, “but greater than zero.”
He blew out an audible breath, shot a glance at V’kyrri, and said, “Given the admiral’s message, my decision stands.”
V’kyrri nodded.
“Stand by to teleport,” Damen ordered.
“Medical personnel standing by,” Commander Parqe said over the open com line. “Biofilters confirmed online.”
“Initiating teleporter diagnostic,” Damen replied. “System online. Biofilter compatibility confirmed.”
“Acknowledged.”
“System is warmed and ready, Captain,” Damen said to his friend. “Let’s get you to your ship.”
V’kyrri strode out of the cockpit, down the companionway, and into the bay with the door where Jayleia had entered.
She turned her chair to watch.
V’kyrri glanced at Damen’s back, then grinned at her and mouthed, “Good luck.”
That he seemed to feel she needed it troubled her. She bit back the urge to plead with him to stay. She didn’t know how long she could withstand the full-on assault of Damen’s persuasion.
Considering the determination she’d seen in Damen to complete his missions, he wouldn’t find out until too late that breaking her wouldn’t help him locate her father.
“On your mark, Commander,” Damen said.
“On my mark, aye,” Commander Parqe said. “Three, two, one, mark.”
“Mark, aye,” Damen replied. “Teleport in progress.”
She felt the Kawl Fergus slow and could only guess at the immense power required to blink a person from one point in space/time to another. One moment V’kyrri stood in the entry bay, the next he vanished as if winked out of existence. The engines surged.
Good. V’kyrri was safe.
“Teleport complete,” Damen said behind her. “Confirm you have Captain V’kyrri aboard.”
“Confirmed,” V’kyrri replied over the com. “Nice job. Jay? Your turn.”
She levered herself to her feet, ignoring the pounding in her head and the trickle of sweat tracking a chilly path down her spine. Great. Fever. Another symptom. She stumbled to the point where she’d watched V’kyrri disappear then turned to face the cockpit door.
Damen’s gaze tracked her, his features set in tense lines.
“Ready,” he said, misgiving in his face and in his voice.
“Three, two, one, mark.”
“Mark, aye. Teleporting.”
Alarms erupted.
The noise touched off a wave of dizziness. Jay folded her knees and sat where she’d been standing.
The alarms went silent.
“Jayleia’s down,” Damen said.
“Standing by,” V’kyrri replied.
The fever heightened her senses. She caught a whiff of rain and green, growing things before Damen crouched beside her and drew her against his side. Rather than exacerbating the pain in her head, the odor seemed to mitigate the symptoms.
His scent?
“I don’t want to put you in stasis,” Damen said in a voice pitched only for her ears and rough in a way she’d never heard before.
“I have reason not to open the ship to vacuum, but if it’s the only way to keep you safe, I will.”
A moment of clarity burst through her. Of course. It wasn’t concern for her nameless fear. He was running more than one mission at a time.
CHAPTER 9
EVEN with a fever addling her brain, Jayleia realized that if she was merely a distraction from Damen’s true mission in this part of space, her options for escape broke wide open. Once she was well.
Damen was a spy with a job to do. Possibly several. At least one of which precluded using vacuum to sterilize the ship. That meant cargo that could be damaged or killed without atmosphere and heat.
By confiding that detail to her, he’d offered her a good-faith gesture. She’d return the favor.
“Another option,” Jay breathed. “I’ll sleep. Eighteen to forty-eight hours. You won’t be able to wake me.”
He shook his head, the portion of his face she could see clouded by wariness. His voice sounded tight, terse. “Explain.”
She closed her eyes. Conditioning against disc
losing more information than necessary argued with her desire to ease the troubled lines from Damen’s face. If only momentarily.
And that wasn’t rational.
“It’s a racial ability,” she whispered before she’d reached the conscious decision to do it anyway. “I’ll go into a healing trance. Think of it as a voluntary coma, save that it isn’t, strictly speaking, a coma. Body functions slow, allowing for reallocation of resources to immune system activity. While I’m under, my immune system will mount a massive assault on the infection. Unlike stasis, which would freeze me and the illness in time, when I wake from the healing trance, I’ll be cured.”
It felt as if every muscle in his body tightened.
“I know a little bit about your mother’s people,” he said, his tone considering. “Your file makes it clear you didn’t complete your training with the Swovjiti Temple.”
That part of her personnel file was public, perhaps because the circumstances behind her expulsion from the program had been humiliating. Jayleia opened her eyes and shrugged.
He sucked in an audible breath that sounded as if she’d given him the missing piece of a vital puzzle. “Claugh data on the Swovjiti healing trance are so sparse that we assumed the technique was the pinnacle of Temple training. If it isn’t, what is?”
“I won’t answer that. Help me to the medi-bay?”
“No,” he said, tucking an arm around her waist, pulling her to her feet, and then down the companionway. “Come on. The cabin. The diagnostic bed is suited for torture, not for sleeping.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she murmured as the cabin door opened and he ushered her into the tiny room.
He swept the covers from the bed and eased her to sitting.
The throb behind her eyes subsided when she sank onto the edge to kick off her shoes.
“Teleport,” she said.
Damen studied her, his expression set in patently noncommittal lines.
“I can’t sleep until you do,” she ground from between clenched teeth, her breath coming in short rasps. “Your health is my job. Open the room com so I can hear, then lock me in. If you teleport out and then right back, I won’t have time to hijack or sabotage your thrice-damned ship.”
“All right,” Damen said. His tone, pitched to placate, didn’t quite mask his amusement. “You win.”
“You lie badly.”
He chuckled.
She smiled, knowing he’d realized she wasn’t a threat in her present condition. Too bad it was true. She heard Damen move, then the musical cadence of a piece of equipment activating.
What did it mean that the Claugh valued the beauty of music even in the most utilitarian applications? Not even TFC luxury liners were equipped with gear that switched on with anything more than a click.
“Com is live,” Damen said. “Stand by to teleport, V’k. This will be a rapid shot. Out and back, confirming infection status only.”
“Understood. Resetting teleporter to the Kawl Fergus cockpit. Synch your biofilter over to match, please,” V’kyrri’s voice replied over the open link. “Standing by.”
Damen strode out of the room.
“Biofilter synch confirmed. On your mark, Captain.” Damen’s words echoed, coming both through the open cabin door and via the open com link.
“On my mark, aye,” V’kyrri said. “Three, two, one, mark.”
“Teleporting.”
Ship’s speed lagged. Jayleia collapsed back into the bed in relief. No alarms. Damen was safe. The engines ramped, then slowed and revved again.
“Gods,” Damen grumbled. “Give me a systems failure any day over disease. Best speed, Queen’s Rhapsody. My regards to Her Majesty. Kawl Fergus out.”
He strode into the room and into her limited line of sight. His chest expanded as he drew a deep breath. Tension mounted in the set of his shoulders.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“You’ll heal now?”
“Yes. You’re safe.”
That brought a surprised and pleased smile to his face.
“You’ll be more comfortable without this.” He unclipped her equipment belt, draping it over his arm. “I’ll pull data on your father and load it on your handheld while you sleep. Translation, too.”
Jay settled deeper onto the mattress. It responded to her weight and heat, conforming to her body. Even before she began the trance triggers she’d been taught from childhood, her eyes closed.
Damen pulled the blankets over her. With the bed and covers saturated with his scent, she couldn’t keep her imagination from enclosing her in Damen’s arms. Had he intended that? The uncomfortable pounding of her heart eased. She thought she smiled as she sighed and snuggled into the bed.
He smoothed hair away from her face. Warm lips lingered on her forehead.
“Get better,” he murmured. “I need you.”
JAYLEIA woke to the distinctive snick of a neural cuff closing around her left wrist. She tried to frown and realized she felt like someone had neural-locked her entire body. What was going on? Where was she?
Mental processes sputtered, stalled, then kicked and restarted. Ah. She was coming out of a healing trance. Memory provided a rapid-fire replay of events. Chemmoxin. Infected kuorls. Her rescue/kidnapping courtesy of the Claugh nib Dovvyth. Damen. Safe. Her father. Missing.
Anxiety sat on her chest. Her dad. What more had come apart while she’d slept off her infection?
Her respiration rate increased and by virtue of memory, she knew where she was, aboard the Kawl Fergus, in Damen’s cabin. In his bed.
While she was conscious, it would take her several minutes of concentrated effort to regain control of her body. She resented the cuffs, even though she hadn’t heard them activated.
She groaned.
“Jay?”
Damen. Sounding uncertain. Off balance.
“Can you hear me?”
Of course she could. She simply couldn’t answer.
“Damn it,” he grumbled. “I hope this means you’re waking.” He closed the other cuff around her right wrist, but he didn’t secure it.
Why not?
“I’m taking you to the station medical facility,” he said, “so the cleaning team can get aboard.”
Jay realized she didn’t feel or hear the engines. Apparently, they’d made Silver City. What had Damen said? They’d been twenty hours out when the Rhapsody had intercepted them?
Twenty hours of healing trance. Good. The infection had barely established a foothold in her system, then. She’d be up and causing trouble in short order.
“Station authorities require that you be secured for transport,” he said. “If you’re cured, and you’d better be, it’s a needless precaution. You’ve been so amenable since I picked you up, and I can’t work out why. I kidnapped you with the intent of using you to flush your father from hiding.”
He paused, whispered a curse in a language she didn’t recognize, and shifted.
“In your place,” he went on, “I’d have cooperated long enough to get to Silver City, knowing it represented the perfect opportunity for escape.”
How fortunate. She didn’t have enough physical control yet to laugh at his oh-so-accurate calculation. Or, more troubling, to indulge her growing inclination to warn him that he’d made a mistake in not cuffing her properly.
His compassion and her attraction were going to get both of them into trouble.
Damen lifted Jayleia from the bed and eased her onto the stretcher he’d found in the Kawl Fergus’s medi-bay. Long strands of shiny black hair spilled over the edge. He tucked it up beside her and found he had to resist stroking the silky tresses.
He studied the exotic cream and chocolate cast of her complexion and searched for any further sign that she might be waking. She had warned him he wouldn’t be able to rouse her. It hadn’t troubled him the first few times he’d looked in on her. The fourth time, and every time thereafter, it had.
To distract himself, he’d pulled up the log
files of her most recent conversations with her parents, hoping to catch a hint of what had happened to her dad.
Since he’d helped Pietre break an IntCom lockdown of the Sen Ekir last year, he’d had a back door into the ship’s systems. That they hadn’t detected him, much less shut him out, made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t decide if the scientists were simply too trusting, or if he was somehow betraying the friendships he’d developed with them.
It didn’t matter. Admiral Seaghdh recognized the strategic importance of the unassuming science ship. He’d ordered the surveillance.
Damen had loaded and run Jay’s last message from her father. He detected a pinched look at the corners of Zain Durante’s hazel eyes.
“I want you off that ship,” Jayleia’s father had said. “You promised you’d come back. You’re a fine scientist. Any research facility would be glad to have you. Come home.”
In the video, she’d stared at him before shaking her head. “I’m flattered, Dad. What home were you referring to? Yours? Mom’s? I’ve carved out a life of my own and you want me to give it up?”
“Your mother had you most of your childhood and I didn’t interfere,” her father had replied.
Jayleia’s bitter-sounding laugh made Damen resolve to pull up her file again.
“I’d like a turn at knowing the person you’ve become, Jayleia,” her father had noted. “Take some time. Think about it. Your mother won’t like that I’ve asked you to return to Tagreth, but you’re an adult now. I know you’ll make the right decision. The Sen Ekir was pulled from the Ioccal project and repurposed as an outbreak first response vessel. What kind of future are you building out there?”
“My own,” she’d said.
He’d shaken his head as if disappointed. “I love you. I want you to be happy. You can’t be happy if you don’t lay the framework for it. Come home. I’ll help you examine your options, maybe open a few doors that would otherwise be closed to you,” he’d said before signing off.
A message from her mother had followed. Margol Durante, a slender woman with delicate features and skin a shade darker than her daughter’s sat rigid before her camera, rage etched in the lines around her mouth.
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