Enemy Within
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
RAGE AND DESIRE . . .
The bastard had sliced clean through her jacket and the buttons of her shirt. One millimeter more and she’d be bleeding . . .
“Lesson one,” Cullin said. “Watch the man wielding the blade . . .”
He smiled in pure masculine satisfaction.
Ari whispered a curse.
His gaze dropped to her mouth and the fire flared in his eyes. He grabbed her by the hair and fastened his mouth on hers. She tasted exotic spice and the faint trace of salt. Fire shot through every fiber to her core, urging her to melt into him. Before she could rouse the least bit of bracing rage, he released her. She wiped a sleeve across her mouth as much to erase her mortifying lack of alacrity—she should have shoved her blade through his chest—as to obliterate the feel of his lips on hers.
“Lesson two,” he said. “Never offer what you cannot afford to lose.”
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2010 by Marcella Burnard.
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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / November 2010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burnard, Marcella.
Enemy within / Marcella Burnard.—Berkley sensation trade pbk. ed. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44491-7
I. Title.
PS3602.U759E64 2010
813’.6—dc22 2010022419
http://us.penguingroup.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks:
To my beloved husband, Keith, whose patience, faith, and support know no bounds.
To my family for rooting for me, for talking up my book at every turn, and for not disowning me over that faraway look I’d get in my eye whenever a story started playing in my head.
To my longtime friend and cohort, Dr. Kurt “Spuds” Vogel, Lt Col, USAF (ret) for keeping me rooted, if not in the probable, then at least in the outer reaches of the vaguely possible.
To Dawn Calvert, Darcy Carson, Carol Dunford, DeeAnna Galbraith, Melinda Rucker Haynes, and Lisa Wanttaja, a great group of writers, mentors and, best of all, friends.
To my editor, Leis Pederson, and to my agent, Emmanuelle Alspaugh, for helping me tell a better story.
To the members of Feline-L whose wide-ranging backgrounds and interests allowed me to ask the most obscure questions and receive cogent answers.
Last but certainly not least, my sincere thanks to Eratosthenes, Autolycus, Cuillean, and Hatshepsut, my feline snoopervisors, lap warmers, keyboard walkers, and reminders that no matter how large looms the deadline, there’s always time to play.
CHAPTER 1
SUN glinting off the barrel of a gun stopped Captain Ari Idylle dead in her tracks. She cursed under her breath. A perimeter guard? Three Hells. No one on her father’s science expedition knew how to stand guard like that. She eased off the trail, shifting her thought processes from research scientist to military operative.
Three short, insistent beeps startled her, kicking her heart into high gear before she realized it was the guard’s ident badge transmitting.
“Captain,” the guard muttered. “Incoming.”
“Affirmative. Scanning.”
She didn’t recognize the voices of the men tracking and possibly trying to capture her. That meant someone else controlled her father’s ship.
Sucking in an alarmed breath, Ari shucked her backpack and jacket. Draping the coat around the pack of carefully stowed viral specimens, she backed up as the shimmer of a teleport beam locked onto the ship’s badge pinned to her jacket. The bag and coat vanished. She took to her heels, recalling every ounce of training she’d ever had, and slipped into the cool forest.
What had happened? She’d left her father and his four crew members cataloguing botanical oddities two days ago. Fear squeezed the breath from her. Did her father and the rest of the crew still live?
She halted and listened. Nothing. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t being tracked. Only that she couldn’t hear anyone tracking her. She swore again and angled back to the ship, sliding between massive, thorny tree trunks. Whoever these people were, they knew she’d have to get close enough to assess the situation.
Breathing hard, she scaled a rocky, fern-studded rise and lay belly down in the brown and red fronds. The sun sat midway down the sky. She had four or five hours of light left. Ari fished for her binocs, parted the ferns, and peered into the clearing where the Sen Ekir sat, hatch open, equipment and specimens still sitting in the shadow of the ship’s belly. Except for the absence of scientists, the scene looked so normal she could almost believe she’d imagined a stranger’s voice answering to “Captain.”
Another glint of sunlight on metal and she suddenly saw the man stationed in the bushes opposite the hatch. A sniper. Spawn of a Myallki bitch. Who the hell were these guys, and what did they want with a science ship? She put the binoculars down, careful to avoid any telltale flash of light on glass. She drew her little snub-nosed pistol and desperately wished for a
n assault rifle and scope. Her tiny, short-range gun was useless against snipers, but Armada Command had taken her guns when they’d taken her command and sent her on a forced sabbatical.
She let the ferns slide upright in front of her and blew out a shaky breath. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She keyed the transponder embedded in the skin behind her left ear.
“Sen Ekir. Sen Ekir, come in.”
“Well, well, well,” a masculine voice drawled. “If it isn’t our wayward scientist. Your father’s worried about you.”
“Identify,” she demanded, ignoring the sudden hope speeding her pulse. Just because he’d mentioned her father didn’t mean he was alive.
“Why don’t you come on down and find out?”
“Ident.”
“What do you want?” he countered, his melodic voice dropping into a coaxing, seductive tone that sent a shiver through her.
Ari swallowed hard. She’d just placed his musical accent. He was Okkarian. Had he proven that the mythical voice talents of his race were fact? She shook off the thought and wiped a hand over her face.
“I want a Wrate Leaf burger, a nice char on the outside, the inside still white and tender. With real guacamole, not that crap they make in the chem lab on Rackora. And an ice-cold pint of the darkest Porter this side of the Three Hells,” she said.
Silence.
“I’ll settle for my father on the squawk.”
The man laughed softly. “Alexandria Rose Idylle. I’d been told you don’t have a sense of humor.”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” she noted.
“I like it that way,” he said in a whisper thick with innuendo. “Stand by.”
Blotting sweat from her forehead, she sighed. She still didn’t know anything she could use.
“Alex?”
Her breath caught. “Dad. Status.”
Her father’s laugh sounded forced. “Screwed six ways to Sunday. The ship’s been commandeered. The four of them caught us unaware. No one takes science ships. We . . .”
“Casualties?” Ari smiled. Trust Dad to tell her how many bogeys she had to face.
“None.”
“Repairs?”
“Complete. Except that someone’s scrambled my command codes. What in the Three Hells were you thinking, locking me out of my own ship, Alex?”
She didn’t answer. They both knew what she’d been thinking, that she couldn’t trust anyone farther than she could throw the Sen Ekir.
“SOP, Dad,” she growled. “Could we put a cap on the trade secrets, please?”
The captain’s voice cut off anything her father might have said. “You know what I want you to know, now. So how about we talk trade?”
And he knew far more than she wanted him to know. She whispered a curse. She shouldn’t have bothered. Thanks to the damned transponder, he heard.
“You want the code fixes,” Ari surmised.
“No,” he said, relish in his tone. “You. In trade for your father’s life, all their lives.”
Dismay drove ice through her. She shivered. He wanted her? Why? She shoved speculation aside. First things first.
“Secure the crew and my father off ship,” she countered. “I’ll give you the decode.”
“You. Or they die.”
She rested her forehead on her arms. Damn it. She should have known that half a dozen different enemy governments and criminal organizations would come looking for her. She’d been captured and imprisoned by the Chekydran. Humanoids in Chekydran captivity didn’t live long, but she’d survived. Her own government kept asking how. Why shouldn’t everyone else? Who was the pirate who’d taken her father’s ship working for? Shaking her head, she swore again. Her friends and family were in danger because of her. The captain had her by the short hairs and he knew it.
“I’ll take your answer, now. And your weapon. Not necessarily in that order.”
Ari heard the click of a safety being cycled off a gun. Then she realized. She hadn’t heard him via her transponder. She’d heard him with her ears. Damn it all, he’d used the distraction of her father to get the drop on her. And she’d let him. She rolled over in a flash, bringing her gun to bear, and stared up the barrel of a slim-line Autolyte 49-G modified assault rifle. Illegal. Highly illegal.
Golden eyes glared down the barrel at her. Unruly chestnut hair fell across his forehead. He was tall, his body lithe with a hint of long, lean muscle beneath bloodstained, ripped, and singed freighter-brown fatigues. She noted visible bruising on one prominent cheekbone and the shadow of a beard on the carved plains of cheek and jaw. The arrogance, intellect, and skillfully masked pain in his face tripped her internal alarms.
The man wasn’t simply dangerous. He was a weapon. A lethal, tempered work of art.
“Give me the gun,” he commanded, edging forward and kicking her booted foot out of his way.
Her grip sagged, and Ari belatedly registered the thread of power he’d tucked into his order. Fear gripped her as she fought the compulsion to obey and failed.
He took the pistol from her limp hand. “Get up.”
No ring of control in that instruction. She rose, watching for any lapse of attention, any mistake she could turn to her advantage. He didn’t make any.
“Hands on top of your head,” he commanded. “Lace your fingers. Turn around. You wouldn’t be hiding anything from me, now would you?”
He sounded hopeful. She braced herself, but his pat down was swift, efficient, and thoroughly professional.
“Turrel. Secure. Inform Daddy his little girl’s coming home.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“A Wrate Leaf burger?” the captain said, amusement in his tone. “If you’re a scientist, I’m the Ykktyryk king.”
Too few teeth and definitely not reptilian. Ari bit her tongue to keep from saying it aloud.
“You can put your hands down. Turn around,” he ordered. “Slowly.”
When she glanced at him, he gestured her down the hill with a jerk of the rifle. She trudged past him. He grabbed a handful of her shirt and rested the barrel of the rifle against her back. Steering her by the scruff of the neck and the pressure of the gun, he ushered her toward the ship. They passed his perimeter guard.
She frowned and looked long at the guard’s blue-black face. Chilly violet eyes watched her pass. A Shlovkur. Official word had it that a race-specific plague had exterminated the entire population. Interesting. Almost as interesting as the fresh blood on the man’s face and the fact that when he fell in behind them, he glanced uneasily over his shoulder. They feared someone, or something, other than her.
She felt marginally brighter.
If they were on the run, how had they gotten to the tiny world her father and his crew had been investigating for the past five years? A ship would have set off the sensor array alarms, unless they’d set down outside of range. Possible, but a damned long walk. And from what she’d seen of the Shlovkur’s injuries, if they’d had a ship, they’d either been cast away or they’d crashed. Either scenario could explain why they’d commandeered a vessel with no weapons.
Despite the muzzle bruising her right kidney, Ari stopped walking at the ship’s hatch and turned her head. “Take me in via cargo, straight to decontamination,” she said. “I’ve been mining specimens for the past two days.”
“Your beam system didn’t issue a decon alert,” he countered, but he didn’t shove her up the ramp.
Ah. The first useful tidbit of information about her mystery captor. No science background and no experience with science ship protocols. She shrugged. “I’m fine with gambling the lives of your remaining, injured crew if you are. A quarantine lockdown would strand your people in the cockpit. Medical is accessible from there, but I’m betting you don’t have anyone trained in anything but combat first aid.”
He swore and wrenched her off the ramp. She stumbled. He let her get her footing. She marched into the cargo bay still filled with half-finished experiments and crates of samples waiting
to be sealed. Near the doors to the rest of the ship, her father and his crew sat, hands and feet bound, under armed guard. She glanced at them but didn’t stop. Delaying decontamination could be fatal.
“Ari!” Jayleia, her father’s xenobio tech cried, stark relief in her voice.
Ari met the young woman’s gaze.
Jay flushed. “I’m sorry.”
The young guard with red blond hair looked from one to the other, apparently feeling some deeper message passing between the two of them.
“It’s okay,” Ari said. Jayleia’s people trained their women to be warriors, but Jay had chosen to reject the path laid out by her mother’s family. She’d chosen a life of science. Ari gathered that her friend felt responsible for the hijackers’ incursion.
Ari offered Jayleia a smile as she keyed open the decontamination unit and stepped inside. Maybe between the two of them, they could take back the ship after they’d cleaned up any stray pathogens.
“You’re next in decontamination,” she said to the captain.
He arched an eyebrow but lowered the rifle and nodded. Good. She wouldn’t have to argue the point. He’d touched her. If she’d picked up a bug, so had he. As the decon door shut and the pulses of energy and antimicrobial-treated water saturated her, she sighed. The pirates had been tramping all over the ship, and their captain had proven he didn’t understand decontamination protocols. Those men had made the ship a plague carrier. Without some drastic measures, they’d be shot out of the sky of any inhabited world or station they tried to approach.
The system cycled down. She stripped. At least she had access to sterile clothes just outside the door. A chime and the system cycled back on, the medicated water stinging in the cuts and scrapes she’d acquired. When the spray shut off, she wrung the water out of her hair and waited for the water recycle to suck the moisture from her body. She shoved every last scrap of clothing into the laundry bin and slapped open the door.
“Go,” she said to the captain as she accessed the lockers.