From so far away? Jayleia snorted. More likely, she was his control and afraid she wouldn’t get her cut if the kid serviced a customer without her knowing.
“The delay is killing him,” Jayleia ground out.
“You Myallki bitch, he’s my baby!” the woman shrieked.
“Fine. Here.” Jayleia placed the boy in her arms. “Good luck. I hope . . .”
“You did this. You fix it! Come on!” Her wild curls bobbed as she pelted down the walkway.
Dropping her chin to her chest, Jayleia unclenched her fists one finger at a time and struggled for a breath not constricted by the desire to murder the curly-haired woman. Stop it. The child was in grave danger because of her. She shook her head and sprinted in their wake.
The woman pulled up short, shot out a hand to stop her, and tossed an assessing glance her way. “Can you hop a lift?”
“Yes.”
Air pressure built in the tunnel and she could hear the whine of anti-grav turbos activating below them.
“Right here. On three. One. Two. Jump!”
Her brain balked at jumping into empty space. Jayleia ignored it and forced her body into motion. They hit the roof of the lift compartment. The young woman dropped to her knees in an effort to keep a grip on the boy. Jay grabbed her arm, stabilizing her.
“Vala,” the woman said, leaning in close as if afraid someone else might hear. “My name’s Vala. This is Bellin.”
“Jayleia. Or Jay.”
“What ship did you come in on, Jay?” Vala asked.
“Claugh ship. The Kawl Fergus.”
“I know it. This lift will take us up, and then loop. Your ship is four hops from this next one.” She fell silent as the lift slowed and stopped.
It surprised her to find she couldn’t hear anyone within the lift. Jay felt the compartment shift as people came and went, but she heard nothing.
“Shielded?” she whispered.
Vala nodded, but she didn’t speak again until the unit lurched into motion. “Secrets equal profit. The station shields the lifts. Gets them a monopoly on what’s said inside. The guild don’t like competitors.”
CHAPTER 11
“WHO’S after you, Jay?” Vala asked.
Jayleia smiled at the woman’s casual tone. This was Silver City. Someone was always after you when you stepped aboard the labyrinthine hulk. “The guy who owns the ship.”
The woman tried and failed to hide the spark of interest in her eyes. “Will he call security?”
“I doubt it. I made it personal. He’ll settle this on his own.”
That was true, Jayleia realized. She’d scored a momentary hit to Damen’s ego. He’d hunt her, but he’d do it alone and if he found her, he’d give no quarter.
“This is us.”
Jay jumped from the top of the compartment when it paused. Vala handed Bellin to her and swung off the lift. The woman hesitated, then shook her head when Jayleia tried to offer him back to her.
“Gotta open the dock door,” she said. As the compartment sped away, Vala trotted back the way they’d come.
Jay followed, slowed by Bellin’s weight and the fact that she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for twenty hours while she slept off a flesh-rotting disease. By the time she reached the correct dock door, Vala had it open and waved her through, grinning.
Jayleia pulled up short. The ship sat, ramp down, hatch open. Inviting.
She’d expected—something, if only the clean team. Yet there the Kawl Fergus sat. Empty, wide open. It added up to one very attractive lure.
Like Damen Sindrivik.
Bellin groaned and she shook off hesitancy. Save the child’s life first. Worry second.
They pounded up the ramp.
Vala shut the door after them.
Jay went straight to the tiny medi-bay and settled her charge on the exam table. His weight triggered instrument readouts she couldn’t understand. Dodging out to the cockpit, she held her breath, hoping Damen had left her handheld in plain sight and had kept his word about loading translation. If he hadn’t, her decision to treat the child aboard the Kawl Fergus rather than running him to the Silver City hospital could cost him his life.
Her breath went out in a rush. The handheld sat tucked into a holder on the piloting panel, still connected to the ship’s systems. Her belt sat in a heap in the nav chair. She grabbed it, secured it around her waist, then picked up the handheld and initiated a rapid check.
“Twelve Gods, Damen, I love you,” Jay muttered as Claughwyth systems messages morphed into Tagrethian. He’d kept his promise.
Time to keep hers.
Linking into the medical systems as she strode from the cockpit into the medi-bay, a more aware part of her brain informed her that a clean team had been aboard the Kawl Fergus. Spots of her blood no longer stained the deck plating.
She frowned and grabbed a dehydration packet. Mighty fast sterilization.
Shaking off doubt, Jayleia hurriedly drank, then returned to Bellin’s side, checked his vitals via the diagnostic bed readouts, and fought back fear. His condition was deteriorating.
Vala, her expression pinched with worry, watched. She petted one of Bellin’s puffy hands as if not conscious of what she did.
Jay spent a moment sampling out blood and placing it into the reader. Once the analyzer beeped “done,” the medi-computer concurred with her. Histamine levels dangerously high, organ damage mounting, and blood oxygen levels declining. The screen before her lit up with a list of recommended treatments based on Bellin’s body mass and condition.
She dove for the cabinets and drawers lining the medi-bay walls. Translation on her handheld didn’t mean she could read the Claughwyth script indentifying which medical supplies lived in which storage spots. She had to look at the individual packets of medicine.
Medical supplies the galaxy over came with pictorial representations of their uses. She’d never pointed out to anyone that the pictures presupposed that every species in the galaxy could see, much less used vision as their primary sensory input.
It didn’t matter. For her purposes, the pictures worked, allowing her to identify vials of medication regardless of the color-coded Claugh text in which the names of the drugs were rendered.
Jay went step-by-step through the prioritized list, putting an oxygen generator on the child first. A series of injected meds went in next, slower than she would have liked as she double- and triple-checked the dosages she’d prepped against the computer’s recommendations for the child’s body weight. Finally, she spread antivenom ointment on the sting site and placed a regeneration unit on it.
By the time she’d finished, Bellin’s color had improved and the swelling in his extremities had visibly lessened. Breathing a sigh of relief, she looked for Vala.
The woman stood in the doorway, the gun Jayleia had taken from Damen in her hand, her own still in its holster.
Jay froze and pressed her lips tight to keep from swearing at her stupidity.
“He looks better,” Vala observed.
Jayleia studied the woman. Granted, Vala had both guns. Jay had reason to read hostility in her stance, but she didn’t comprehend the edge of agitation in Vala’s voice.
Jayleia nodded. “He is better.”
“You going to let us go?”
“You do have the guns,” Jay said. “What’s it going to be? You turn me in, now that he’s okay?”
Vala’s lip curled and anger flashed through her eyes. “I could.”
“Yes.”
The woman’s gaze turned inward. Mistake. Jay purposefully let the opportunity to take both weapons from the woman pass because she swore to almost all the Gods that she saw jealousy in Vala’s hazel eyes.
Of what?
The woman focused on Jay again, a resolute set to her lips. “I won’t.” Vala stuffed the gun into her coat, strode to where the handheld rested on the counter, and spent a moment inputting a data string. “Use that on the hatch once we leave. It’s a lockout stat
ion security has never been able to breach.”
Not meeting Jayleia’s gaze, she slipped past and took Bellin in her arms.
He opened his eyes and rasped, “Vala?”
“Hey, kid. Take it easy. You had a busy day.”
The boy wrapped his arms around the woman’s neck, snuggled close, and shut his eyes.
“He doesn’t need this anymore,” Jay said, removing the oxygen generator. “He’ll be sleepy and weak for a few days. Take this.”
She put a container of liquid medication in Vala’s vest pocket. “It’s an antihistamine. If he’s stung again, he’ll need it. The directions for using it are on the chip attached to the vial.”
“Thanks,” Vala said. “If you come back . . .”
“A child injured in the tunnels?” she asked, feigning surprise. “Are you telling me you don’t secure your maintenance ways?”
“Never trust someone else to lie for you,” she said. “I owe you the kid’s life. You come back; look us up. We’ll watch for you.”
Considering the dislike sharpening every sweet word falling from Vala’s tongue? It’d be a chilly holiday in the hottest level of Hell before she trusted anything the woman said or did. “Thanks. Hold on a second. With a sick child, you’re going to need some things.”
Jay raided the emergency stores and draped a pack of food and basic first-aid supplies over Vala’s shoulders. “That’ll hold you for a few days.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Jayleia grinned. “Giving’s easy when it’s not your stuff.”
“Get out of here before the guy catches you,” Vala ordered as she angled down the companionway.
Jay hit the hatch release.
Bearing the sleepy boy, the woman trotted down the ramp.
Jay closed and locked the door, using her code from the Sen Ekir to complete the task.
Never trust someone to lie for you. Never trust someone else’s lockout. Especially when that someone looked like she’d rather shoot you than help you.
Jay shook her head. Now all she had to do was break into the command console of a ship locked down by the Claugh nib Dovvyth’s foremost computer expert.
Rolling her eyes at the flutter of desire the thought of Damen fired off, she grabbed food and water, then ran for the cockpit, flung herself into Damen’s chair, and hesitated, staring at her handheld screen.
She was out of her depth.
Omorle Lin had refused to teach her computer espionage. He hadn’t wanted her trapped by the lure of needing to prove her skills superior to everyone else’s.
Still. He had shown her a few tricks. Little things, he’d said, that might come in handy. She hoped so.
She requested a check of life-support systems, the one thing any ship would do whether she had unlock codes or not. The console complied, running through a set of preconfigured diagnostics.
Racing into the companionway, Jayleia yanked back engine covers, looking for the auxiliary engineering console. It was tucked against the bulkhead near the centerline of the ship. So was the evidence that Damen’s clean team hadn’t sterilized the ship. Splotches of blood marred the undersides of the deck plates.
Swearing, she connected to the auxiliary console and waited for the translation protocol to make sense of the Claughwyth command trees.
TFC built emergency override codes into all of their ships, codes designed to grant limited access to the computers in the event of an atmospheric emergency. Presumably, so did most other militaries, including the Claugh. She smiled as familiar code rolled across her handheld screen.
They did.
She tunneled into the heart of the ship’s system using a trick no one knew she knew. Except for the man who’d taught it to her while she’d been little more than a gawky teenager.
Once the emergency override system kicked in and offered her the structure trees for life support and rudimentary engine function, the tunnel provided access, not to command codes—those were too protected—but to the actual physical control core of the ship. From there, Jay could reprogram the entire ship if need be, save that she lacked the ability to do so. She did know enough to find, pull, and read the authorization codes into the handheld. With those, she could bring ship’s systems online and start the engines.
Then she had a choice. Initiate a hard-core hack to extract the actual command code that would unlock steering and let her hijack Damen’s ship for a change, or input a code Ari Idylle had given her that would lock the ship on an automatic course to Ari aboard the Dagger.
She closed out of the emergency override system and changed the default lock so no one could do to her what she’d done. A twinge of conscience gnawed at her as she rose and returned to the cockpit. At least each time the Claugh had hijacked Sen Ekir personnel they hadn’t marooned anyone.
She ignored the prod of guilt. Plenty of commercial passenger liners hit the station. Damen wouldn’t be stuck for long.
With the codes she’d brought over to the handheld, ships’ systems came up without hesitation. Jayleia started the checklist and began an automated panel routine to brute force the command code file. It was sloppy and inefficient, but it was all she had.
Something chirped. She started and swore. Thrice damned access violations. Hands shaking and heart pounding loud in her ears, she watched her program running through panel control combinations. She didn’t have all the time in the world. Someone would eventually come knocking.
A hand appeared from over her shoulder. Jayleia bit back a shriek of fright. It emerged as a squeak.
“Going somewhere?” Damen asked at her ear, sending a shiver of awareness down her spine. With swift, graceful commands entered on the panel, he secured the Kawl Fergus’s computers, locking her out.
CHAPTER 12
TRANSFIXED by the heat that rushed through him as his chest brushed her back, Damen swallowed a curse. Damn it. He had to find a way to keep his body from lighting up like a glow-in-the-dark fral-fly in mating season whenever she was near. He needed his anger. He couldn’t keep his aching head clear without it.
He choked off the second question he wanted to ask. Whether her kiss in the elevator had started as a bid for freedom had no bearing on their situation. And neither of them had the time for his notion of revenge. Or fun, depending on her answer. His lower body tightened at the thought. Hell of a way to ease a headache.
Ignoring discomfort, he brought up a sonic shield. He’d allowed the Silver City cleaning crew aboard. Of course they’d planted listening devices. He had no intention of giving the guild anything to use against them.
Jayleia glanced at him as the subtle hum came online, her expression troubled.
“We have a problem,” she said.
“Several,” he agreed, staring down at her.
His intent to exact retribution registered in the surge of apprehension in her face and in the flicker of her gaze fleeing his.
Good.
He studied the panel she’d been working. A bitter laugh escaped him, cutting off her indrawn breath.
“All systems but steering online,” he said. “For someone whose file suggests she’s had no programming training, that’s damned impressive. Would it have been as easy had I not loaded translation on your handheld?”
Her smile looked brittle and didn’t reach her eyes. “Had it been easy, you wouldn’t be aboard.”
“Where were you going?”
“To look for my father.”
“You do know where he is,” he noted, modulating his tone to sound as if he had all the time in the world to stalk her.
“No, I’m going to look, not to find,” she countered.
He hadn’t withdrawn his hand from the panel, pinning her in close contact. He felt a single tremor move through her body.
“Where?” he snapped.
She balled her hands into fists. “You understand I can’t answer that.”
The whip in his tone had been a mistake. Someone had taught her to stonewall interrogat
ion. Who? Why? The urge to wrap her in his arms sideswiped him. He straightened. “You understand I can’t accept that answer.”
“You aren’t asking me to give up my father,” she said. Only the rasp in her voice offered evidence of agitation. “You’re after the director of IntCom. Without specific orders from him, I will not compromise the security of my people.”
Damen stared at her. “Not even to save him?”
She tossed him a pained glance that sent his heart thudding against his ribs.
It took his breath.
“Not even to save you,” she rasped. “Or me.”
Stunned, he sank into the chair beside hers. He tried to keep his words light, but they emerged thick and choked sounding. “You’d save me?”
Her gaze touched his face and the lines of pain around her mouth deepened for a moment. Then the conflict died in her eyes and her expression warmed. “If you ever find yourself in the middle of a nest of infected kuorls, don’t hesitate to call.”
His chuckle sounded strained.
She turned away, but not before he detected the edge of vulnerability in her eyes.
“Do you know what an insult it is among my kind that you work so hard to contain what you feel while in my company?” he asked.
She started, then peered at him as if waiting for what he’d said to sink in and make sense.
He suppressed a smile as he watched her mentally scramble for safe footing.
He leaned in, until he saw uneasiness spike in the white-knuckled grip of her hands on the arms of her chair. He could indulge in toying with her a little. It was the least he deserved after taking a neural disruptor to the head.
Pressing back in her chair, she shook her head.
“Why is it an insult?” she burst out, every bit of her attention on his face, her gaze keen, penetrating, seeing too much.
He faltered.
She edged forward, studying him. “You said it was an insult that I control what I feel in your company.”
“It is.” On impulse, he put a hand on hers, felt her shiver, and scented the cascade of hormones that dumped into her system, altering her body’s fragrance. His pulse turned thready and erratic.
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