Damen gasped.
Everything but Raj and Dr. Idylle, busy setting up the mobile stasis field, froze.
CHAPTER 35
JAYLEIA’S pulse thundered in her ears as she stared at the wounded matriarch.
A sweet scent filled her head. Jayleia blinked. Her stomach rumbled. She looked at what the queen had given her and frowned, unable to identify the white substance. A sheen moved over the surface of the glob in her hand. The smell emanated from it.
As Jay glanced at the Chekydran queen, then around the group of stock-still Chekydran, awareness burst through her.
Royal jelly, the substance only the queen of a hive could produce that turned a developing larva from worker into a queen.
She’d offered Jayleia the rule of this portion of the Chekydran race. After the complete hash she’d made of trying to protect the hive?
Jay shook her head. Pride had led her to believe she could pick up the mantle of a warrior without consequence. As a result, Vala was dead. The Temple had been attacked and her family shattered. Damen had been injured again, and Jay had cost a species the life of its matriarch.
No. She couldn’t lead these beleaguered creatures. They couldn’t even understand one another. They needed a queen who shared their biology and their way of life.
Of course they did. And maybe, if she’d checked her ego before coming to this planet, Jay would have seen that she wasn’t being offered the rulership of the race, only the opportunity to declare the new ruler because the old one lacked the strength to do so.
She stalked five or six paces away to the nest chamber she’d shown Dr. Idylle. Jay held out the royal jelly to the nearest attendant and pointed at the infant Chekydran.
“Her,” she said.
The attendant’s momentary hesitation made Jayleia wonder if she’d committed another grave error in information processing.
Then the creature leaped forward, scooped the precious jelly from her grasp, and began feeding it into the chosen nest chamber. Two more attendants rushed to assist. They rubbed their back legs together, scraping their wings in the process. A weird, churring song rose over the plain and Jay realized they were spinning webs. They were enlarging the new queen’s chamber.
The old queen’s shallow, broken hum of approval caressed her. Jayleia turned to aid Raj and Dr. Idylle.
The shimmering, midnight blue drone intercepted her. He trilled a note that sounded familiar. Bending, so that his face was even with hers, he studied her a moment, or so it seemed to her, as if seeking permission for something. Then he swept delicate, silky-fine antennae over her dirty face.
A flutter of unfamiliar emotion tickled through her body. Hers? Or his? Jay frowned, trying to attach a name to it. Acceptance? Welcome? It felt more complex than that.
A bare thread of sound reached her, charged her with a task.
She nodded. “I’ll do all I can.”
The sound of her own voice jolted her. Twelve Gods. She was making promises to aliens who’d sliced her open in order to steal genetic material.
“They’re cocooning the queen,” Damen rasped.
She turned.
Nursery attendants, soldiers, a few workers, and even the drone, began spinning web. A symphony arose from the music of legs rubbing wings.
Longing tugged at Jayleia. Once upon a time, the entire world had resonated with the sound of spinning, humming, and with the song of flight. Now the Chekydran were too few to sustain more than a few trembling strains at a time.
Raj and Dr. Idylle retrieved the stasis equipment, doing their best to give the Chekydran a wide berth.
Jayleia picked up her handheld from beside the two nursery attendants who were still enlarging the new queen’s nest.
The device sported a crusting of crystals along the top and back of the unit. Two of the stones were milky, the rest were shades of indigo.
Weary and stiff with blood and gore, she tottered to Damen’s side and fell to her knees.
Sweat still beaded Damen’s face, but his color looked better. His gaze, dark with pain, met hers.
“What are we?” she whispered.
He frowned. “I don’t . . .”
“We hate the Chekydran, with good reason. They’re killing us. Our friends, our families,” she said. “We’ve spent the past year working on any means to destroy them as a species. Yet you and I just threw ourselves into harm’s way on their behalf.”
His eye closed. “I don’t know.”
“They modified us.”
“Yes.”
“Did they control us? Make us . . .”
“No.” He opened his eye; a glitter of iron will turned his expression to polished Isarrite. “I don’t know what made me take a shot for a Chekydran, but I know what it feels like to be under their control. This wasn’t it.”
Jayleia released a shuddering breath. He was right. She’d had possession of her body. It hadn’t been the buzz of Chekydran minds in her head. Her indignation and rage had propelled her into battle. What did you call someone fighting for the enemy because it was the right thing to do?
“I can tell you what I see,” he said, “a beautiful, dedicated scientist with a compassionate nature and the soul of a warrior. You don’t need to dissect me. You took my heart already.”
Jayleia’s chest tightened. Longing ripped through her, sending stinging prickles into her eyes.
“Don’t you dare die,” she choked, wiping dirt from his temple. “Or I swear I will dissect you for real. Stay with me. Promise.”
“I promise.” His smile looked wan as his fingers twined through hers. “You love me.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Damned predator. She couldn’t hide anything from him. And no longer wanted to. “Yes.”
“I know.”
The familiar shriek of fighters in atmosphere drew her gaze to the sky. Three biomech fighters streaked overhead, climbing. Leaving.
Jay scowled and tensed. If the soldiers had been sent to assassinate the queen, what had those three been doing elsewhere? She traded a glance with Damen.
His frown deepened.
“Were the twelve we faced a distraction? Or the main attack force?” she asked.
“One thing’s for certain,” Damen replied. “They know we’re here.”
Jayleia wiped sweat from her own forehead. “We can expect a visit from the mercenaries Eudal has hired, then.”
“And the UMOPG,” he said.
She smiled, not in the least amused. “After getting three of their ships handed to them in the form of constituent particles, you think they’d come here?”
“They were trying to reduce us to constituent particles,” he protested.
“I didn’t say they didn’t deserve it,” she countered, brushing the hair from Damen’s face.
He closed his eye.
“With any luck, they don’t have any more ships with crystal fully integrated,” she said.
Raj came in behind her and activated his com badge. “Pietre, Major Sindrivik and I need a teleport to the medi-bay. Jayleia and Dr. Idylle will follow.”
“Acknowledged,” Pietre said.
The two men vanished.
“Jayleia,” Dr. Idylle began.
“Linnaeus?” Pietre queried via the open channel. “Ready to initiate teleport.”
“We’re in place,” he said. “Awaiting teleport.”
Teleport distortion grabbed Jayleia, flashing a moment of nausea through her. Then she found herself staring at the same cargo-bay wall she and Damen had faced what seemed like an eternity ago.
“I’ll get cleaned up,” she said, turning and striding for the companionway.
“What happened out there?” Dr. Idylle demanded. “You changed. Someone else looked at me from out of your eyes.”
She stopped short outside of medical, schooled her expression to reveal nothing, and met her boss’s gaze.
His brows lowered. He looked away.
The hurt in her chest expanded.
&n
bsp; Raj’s expression clouded when he glanced at her.
“I discovered that it doesn’t matter whether the children being murdered are of my own species. I changed because in the second I realized what the soldiers were doing, I became a killing machine no different than they are,” she said, pressing her tone flat.
“How?” Pietre asked from the cockpit doorway.
“She’s a Swovjiti warrior,” Damen said from the diagnostic bed. The ripple of pride in his voice once again proved a balm for the pain clawing her.
“She’s not,” Raj replied, his tone apologetic as he met her gaze. “You were disavowed by the Temple and sentenced to death for betraying the people to the attackers.”
The accusation slammed through her, amping her pulse. “I didn’t!”
Her cousin shrugged, sorrow lining his features. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Too many people are dead. The cost was too high. The Temple has been disbanded and the training halted.”
Clenching her fists against the sense of betrayal slicing her defenses to ribbons, Jayleia brushed past Dr. Idylle and stomped down the ramp.
She couldn’t stay aboard the Sen Ekir. Not when her boss feared what she’d become and her cousin condemned her in the Temple’s voice.
Breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps, she took shelter aboard the Kawl Fergus. She went straight to Damen’s cabin, shut herself into the cleansing unit, and paid assiduous attention to scrubbing away dead super-soldier.
When the unit cycled off, she put on her uniform. If the Temple had been disbanded, no one remained to tell her she’d once again lost the right to wear it.
The com panel chimed a tri-tone.
She went to the cockpit and sat in the chair she’d come to think of as hers.
Jayleia activated the channel. V’kyrri? “Kawl Fergus.”
A moment of interstellar static.
“Unknown female on this channel,” a young woman’s musical voice said. “Please identify.”
“Jayleia Durante!” a different female’s voice, one Jayleia knew well, shouted. “Where the Three Hells have you been? And what have you done to my officer?”
Not V’kyrri.
Jayleia grinned. “Don’t yell at me, Alexandria Rose Idylle. It’s been a stellar few days. What possessed you to send Damen to kidnap me?”
“I did have some concern for your life,” her friend countered. “I’m heartened to know you’re on a first-name basis with my officer.”
Jay propped her elbows on the panel in front of her and buried her face in her hands.
“Gods, Ari.”
“Jay,” Ari said, the good-natured, we’re-playing-an-old-game tone noticeably absent. “What’s going on? We expected you aboard the Dagger days ago. So did my father. He’s been clinging to my ship like a starved bloodworm until you began broadcasting that signal.”
“Yes. He mentioned that he’d decided to adopt me.” Until I scared him half to death being what I am.
“It’s not all bad,” Ari said. “You inherit a couple of stuck-up prigs for siblings, but I’m not bad, as sisters go.”
“Yes, but you get my mother’s entire family,” Jayleia countered. “You’ll never have another secret.”
“Oh, Hells.”
“Speaking of secrets,” a male voice Jay recognized as Admiral Cullin Seaghdh cut in, “where is your father?”
His voice rolled around the tiny cockpit, echoing within the confines of her head.
“I don’t know,” Jayleia replied without consciously choosing to answer the question.
She straightened, frowning. He was Okkarian, a race rumored to possess a voice talent that allowed them to compel other humanoids to do their bidding.
And she’d just had a firsthand demonstration. She didn’t know whether to be outraged or captivated.
“That’s enough,” Ari commanded.
“No!” Jayleia countered, deciding on captivated since Ari seemed to have outrage covered. “That’s amazing. Is the ability innate or can it be learned? If it’s physiologically based, do you know what that means?”
Jay heard the grin in Ari’s voice when she replied, “Anyone who hears and reacts has a physiological basis for responding to compulsion, which indicates an adaptation on the part of the Okkarian race to take advantage of primal brain constructs present throughout a number of species.”
“Exactly! Would you be willing to try it again, Admiral? With a different question?”
“Where is Major Sindrivik?” Seaghdh demanded, his voice powered down.
Irked by the suspicion in his tone, Jayleia shot, “I’m a scientist, Admiral. I don’t have the time or the inclination to seduce your friend into an allegiance change the way you did mine. I found it more expedient to tie your agent to the bed.”
Ari choked on a laugh.
Jayleia cringed and buried her face in her hands, torn between mortification and laughter.
“Congratulations, Admiral,” Ari said. She sounded incongruously placid. “You’ve managed to piss off the most even-tempered person I know. Stellar people skills, Seaghdh. Really.”
The tension ran out of Jayleia’s taut muscles. She should have known Ari wouldn’t blindly pick a side. Not his. Not Jay’s.
Where did that leave them?
She heard and recognized Damen’s footfalls on the deck plating a moment before he settled a hand on her shoulder.
Tied to the bed, indeed. Jayleia’s pulse jumped, but she shot him a frown over her shoulder. He’d been injured. Why was he up? “Shouldn’t . . .”
“I’m here, Admiral,” Damen said. The laughter in his tone crushed Jayleia’s fervent hope that he hadn’t heard her sarcastic response to his boss.
Electricity radiated from his touch, catalyzing a potent, debilitating flood of chemicals into her blood.
“Mission objectives, Major?” Admiral Seaghdh rumbled.
Damen slanted an unreadable glance at her, then faced the com panel. He pushed buttons. Verifying a secure line, Jay assumed.
“Two out of three, sir,” he said. “Though we have recent data suggesting that Zain Durante has taken refuge with the Citizen’s Rights Uprising.”
Jayleia pressed her lips tight. The Murbaasch Tu had a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness, something she’d seen firsthand when Seaghdh had hijacked the Sen Ekir and its entire crew a year ago merely to get at Ari. She imagined she knew what Damen’s mission objectives read. The Silver City data store, the crystal, and her father.
Where did that leave the daughter of TFC’s missing director of Intelligence Command?
CHAPTER 36
“WITHOUT the information Director Durante attempted to share with us, we are at an impasse,” a melodic, cultured voice observed.
Jayleia opened her eyes. Eilod Saoyrse, the queen of the Claugh nib Dovvyth Empire, would be listening in.
Jay knew she had to represent a political time bomb and, after Silver City and Swovjiti, not just because of her father. Unless being a TFC traitor meant her father was no longer classified as an enemy of the Claugh Empire. How many enemies of their enemies did Jay have to be in order to be counted a friend?
“Are we at the point of no return?” Eilod asked, her tone making Jay’s blood run cold. “Have our options dwindled to the point of eliminating the Tagreth Federated Council?”
Shock and dismay rippled through Jay.
“Absolutely not!” She was on her feet, her hands flat on her panel. She clenched her teeth to keep from speaking before she could think, but they had her backed into a corner, whether they realized it or not.
“You can’t invade TFC without compromising over a decade spent unraveling and isolating the network of traitors at the heart of TFC’s government,” she said.
Damen turned to stare at her. He closed his eye, but that didn’t hide the hurt in the white line around his lips or the anger in the set of his jaw.
“Yes, I sent the message to CRU that should have triggered a series of quiet arrests, but I am not a spy
,” Jay snapped. She needed to make Damen understand she hadn’t willfully misled him. “Entirely. If you attack TFC, you’ll sacrifice millions of innocent lives on both sides to take out a few hundred corrupt and power-mad individuals. IntCom, in the form of my father, and a few, trusted agents, has known about the network inside TFC’s government since the pandemic on Shlovkura.”
“You knew?” Damen demanded.
“No one knew for certain, Major,” Jay replied. “My father and his people suspected, in part, I think, because of the work done unraveling the epidemic on Ioccal. The crew of the Sen Ekir spoke freely about the investigations we conducted. Our science, by its very nature, could not ethically be held in confidence.”
“And ideas that aren’t aired and given room to breathe and grow are usually bad ones,” Ari concluded for her in a muted, rebuilding-my-data-matrix tone of voice.
“The Shlovkura disaster unfolded in too predictable, too encompassing a fashion,” Jayleia said. “Pandemics leave refugees, survivors. Yet on Shlovkura, there were neither. Precious few Shlovkurs survived off planet unless they were also outside TFC controlled space.”
“It wasn’t until long after Shlovkura had been locked and tagged as a plague world that Dad came to believe the people had been the victims of genocide at the hands of traitors within the ranks of the TFC government itself.”
“Who ordered it?” Seaghdh demanded, every fiber of his voice vibrating with tension.
“President Durgot,” Jayleia said.
“How do you know any of this?” Damen demanded, his expression and his tone cuttingly neutral.
Jayleia shrugged. Should she be pleased or cautioned by the fact that he’d left off the implied “if you aren’t a spy”?
“When I was seventeen, my parents made me my father’s data backup. At that point, I became an ancillary member of IntCom, under my father’s command.”
“Jayleia! What the Three Hells are you saying?” Raj grated from behind her.
Jay glanced over her shoulder. “Raj. Dr. Idylle. We have the Dagger on the line. I’m confiding TFC state secrets to the enemy. Come on in.”
“You’re implying your parents implanted something that’s gone undetected all this time? For the love of the Gods, it’s not possible,” her cousin said.
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