Seaghdh raised an eyebrow.
“He’s the most intact of the six,” she said.
“You’re going to dissect him?” Turrel boggled.
She sighed. “He can still help us. When your ship returns, we can transport him onboard. I can’t leave him to the scavengers until that time. With a fully equipped research lab, we might be able to tell how he was modified. We’ll then know something about methodology and purpose.”
“I think the purpose is damned clear!”
“Why go to so much trouble for an army?” Ari pressed. “Think of the R and D time alone. The failures. It would be faster and cheaper to conscript, train, and equip a few hundred thousand soldiers or mercenaries.”
“You think they have different intent for this technology,” Seaghdh surmised.
“It might be useful to have a population of biddable slaves modified and enhanced for their tasks.” She shrugged. “Sheer speculation. Without research, we’ll never have anything more.”
Seaghdh blew his breath out in a low whistle.
“Will your ship take the risk?”
“What risk?” Seaghdh demanded, his gaze sharp.
“I can’t guarantee that death deactivates everything. There may be components in the body still broadcasting.”
“We could be tracked,” he said.
She nodded.
“I don’t know,” Seaghdh finally answered. “I can promise I will ask.”
“Think our CO’s pretty hot for everything she can get on these guys,” Turrel said.
Seaghdh’s look turned forbidding. “Let’s get this done.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“One last transport,” she announced. “Go ahead and get him in position.”
They buried Tommy without much ceremony. What could she say? Any praise she might have for his dedication and heroism had played out before witnesses. Tommy’s Pyrrhic victory over the Chekydran would be legend before she left this world.
Turrel gathered up the teleport unit. Seaghdh picked up the shovels and they trudged back the way they’d come.
Maybe she should have been consumed by self-pity, or some sense of loss, but as far as she was concerned, she’d lost Lieutenant Heisen six months ago, the day they’d been captured. If he’d endured three more months of Chekydran captivity than she had, at least in the end she’d helped him gain freedom. After three months in an alien prison, Ari was very clear that death did indeed represent liberation. It might have been less than compassionate, but her brain kept turning away from her dead lieutenant. Instead, it shoved snippets of conversation and flashes of impossible things into her awareness.
One of the impossible things walked beside her carrying a heavy teleport unit as if it were a toy. Turrel finally caught her watching him.
“What?” he demanded.
“Trying to work out your run speed, because that was a mighty quick trip from S-Two.”
He nodded.
“So quick, V’kyrri should still be several minutes out,” she said.
Turrel grinned without humor. “Now you know why someone would exterminate every last member of my race.”
Ari straightened. “What? No! It was a plague . . . Wasn’t it?”
He turned away without answering.
Shlovkora, Turrel’s home world, had been administered by TFC, had, in fact, been a member of the governing council. She remembered the media-casts covering the unfolding disaster on Shlovkora—the illness, the swarm of doctors and researchers sent to help, the quarantine that went into place when most of them died, the staggering numbers of dead. She’d always wondered why TFC hadn’t sent her father. He headed their very best research team. Now, Turrel’s accusation of genocide, combined with her dad’s exclusion from the research teams, made her wonder.
She tossed an uneasy glance at Seaghdh.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“The outbreak happened while we were on our third mission to Ioccal. We were too far away. Dad was so frustrated. He wanted so badly to help.” She shook her head. “Do you know, even after it was over, no one would give him access to the samples or the data? Said there had been some kind of containment accident and all the samples and data were useless.”
Turrel growled but said nothing.
“I’ve mounted run-of-the-mill offensives before,” she groused. “I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare and expense of genocide. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Since the Shlovkur opened their world to the rest of the galaxy a couple of generations ago,” Seaghdh said, “there have been outcrosses with a few startling results.”
Staring at him, she found herself shaking her head. “Meaning my government feared the natural development of some kind of super warrior race?” Only fear forced a government to overcome inertia and coordinate the kind of attack Turrel and Seaghdh wanted her to believe had been committed.
“Who the hell cares why they did it?” Turrel demanded, hefting the teleport unit to one shoulder.
“Trying to figure out how deep this goes, Turrel,” she replied.
The big man grunted. Seaghdh looked vaguely like a man who had just dodged an energy bolt. Mentally, Ari checked off impossible thing number one and moved on to impossible thing number two on her list, Seaghdh’s engineer, V’kyrri. While she’d been running for her life, she hadn’t taken the time to analyze the bits of orders and explanations that had come across the com channel. She did now. V’kyrri had said he couldn’t get a grip on the soldiers. He’d said that while he’d been kilometers away. A chill walked down her spine.
“Do you want to explain V’kyrri?” she asked. “Or did you want me to guess?”
Turrel laughed.
The relieved expression on Seaghdh’s face evaporated. He shook his head. “He deserves the chance to explain it himself,” he said. He activated his com. “V’kyrri?”
“Captain?” The engineer sounded breathless but cheerful.
“You blew your cover trying to get a grip on the soldiers, V’k.”
“I warned you it wouldn’t take long,” V’kyrri replied. Good humor drained from his tone. He sounded almost resigned. “She’s a smart gal.”
“A smart gal.” Ari sighed. The brightest thing she could think to say was, “Telepath, huh?”
“Aye, Captain,” V’kyrri answered. She hardly recognized his voice, made tinny by the com and so serious.
“Would I know if you’d been rummaging around in my head?” she asked, looking straight at Seaghdh. Why else would you bring a telepath on a find and retrieve mission unless you intended to use him to read your retrieval subject?
Damn Seaghdh’s hide, he didn’t look the least discomfited by the question.
“I don’t know,” V’kyrri said. “Any training in your background?”
She blinked. “For what? Telepathy? No. TFC member races don’t produce telepaths even as mutations. Interesting. Do you suppose that means the mutation on the genome renders the gamete nonviable?”
“No amount of telepathy on my part could possibly answer that question,” V’kyrri said, his tone droll.
Heat flushed her face. “Sorry.”
“I can give you a demo if you want,” he offered. “In the meantime, I can swear that I haven’t read you.”
“Beyond knowing where I was in relation to Augie and the other survivors,” she corrected.
“That’s not reading, per se.” V’kyrri sounded embarrassed and she spent a moment wondering what color his copper skin turned when the blood rushed to his face. “I can’t turn that off, it’s another sense, an awareness.”
She nodded and wondered if she’d lost her mind. She believed him. “Okay. Thanks.”
“My pleasure, Captain.” The cheer, and a note of pleased surprise, returned to his voice.
“Do I need to come find you?” Turrel grumbled.
“Find yourself, slowpoke,” V’kyrri said. “I’m in the caverns. And Captain Idylle? Thanks.”
“What for?”
What kind of person would she be to suddenly dislike someone because of some aspect of his genetic profile? It would be like hating Seaghdh for his golden eyes. “I’m saving all that up for the Chekydran,” she managed.
The men laughed.
She couldn’t.
CHAPTER 12
SEAGHDH moved stiffly, walking like a man trying not to let on that he hurt. When he started opening and closing his left fist as if he’d lost feeling in the hand, fear flashed through Ari and she hurried to where Augie waited.
“Ari!” Augie waved them toward a rocky outcrop. “I apologize—”
“I’m sorry, Augie,” she interrupted. “Welcome will have to wait.”
“Good,” he replied with a wry smile. “I was apologizing for having nothing to conduct the ceremony with.”
“Please tell me you have Deaccolo tree antivenin.”
“Not much more than that,” he answered, eyeing the three of them.
“I need a medi-kit, the antivenin, and a place to treat this one.” She jerked a thumb at Seaghdh, who awarded her a sour look. “Oh. Cullin Seaghdh, Kirthin Turrel, Augustus Ortechyn.”
Seaghdh and Turrel nodded.
“Welcome, brothers,” Augie said. “Alexandria is family among us. So will you be. Come. If you will permit me, Kirthin Turrel, I will take you to your friend. Our resources are limited, yet, but I can offer you food, drink, and a basic first-aid kit. When your man is well, Alexandria, we need to talk.”
She nodded. “Agreed.”
Turrel followed Augie into the labyrinth of caves.
Ari hesitated.
Seaghdh glanced at her, discomfort in the lines around his mouth. “Claustrophobic since your release?”
Ari squared her shoulders and looked away. He needed treatment. She didn’t have time to indulge her legion of fears. “Let’s go,” she said.
When she caught up with Augie, he glanced back and a much older, much graver man than the boyish redhead she remembered met her gaze. “Treat your Chosen. Here. This room has been prepared for you.”
The first-aid kit already sat on the pallet that served as a bed. She raised her eyebrows.
“Your Chosen took injury when you remembered too much,” Augie said. “I anticipated the need.”
Guilt closed its teeth on her rib cage. She broke other people’s bones during flashbacks. Seaghdh had to be a skilled hand-to-hand fighter as well as resistant to protein-based poisons if he was just now symptomatic. How lucky was she that he hadn’t broken one or two of her bones? It meant something that Seaghdh handled her far more carefully, more thoughtfully, than duty dictated.
Whatever it meant, she couldn’t face it. Not yet. Augie left, pulling a thick hide curtain over the doorway as he exited. She turned to Seaghdh. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to look him in the eye and not flinch at what she’d started to believe she saw there.
Uncertainty made her terse. “Lose it.” She nodded at Seaghdh’s jacket and shirt.
“No need.”
“I’ve seen everything there is to see, Seaghdh, and enjoyed it,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re wasting my time with macho cravuul dung.”
“Did you?” he drawled, grinning, the desire flaring higher in his gaze. He drew a breath and flinched.
She crossed her arms, daring him to deny that he hurt.
He took off the jacket and shirt.
“Spawn of a . . .” She broke off and sighed at the sight of the ugly bruises on his torso. She laid a light finger against a lurid purple spot on his left flank. “Damn it, Seaghdh, I could have broken that rib. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Wasn’t your fault. Entirely,” he replied, his voice pleasantly rough. “Unplanned arboreal introduction.”
“Did this tree have thorns?” she asked.
“Definitely.”
She’d hit him, thinking he was a Chekydran. Ari remembered his subsequent yelp of pain and swallowed a curse. Just her luck. She’d sucker punched him right into a venomous tree. She touched the skin below the bruise again, intrigued by the thrill that warmed her from the inside out.
An ache woke in the pit of her abdomen. She yanked her hand away. “Any numbness or tingling other than your left hand?”
He turned to her, a sly smile on his face. “Numbness? Left hand and arm. Tingling? Yes. It has nothing to do with that tree.” He ran a fingertip across her cheek.
Her body tightened with need, and she knew exactly what he meant. She looked into his face, intending to call him to task by explaining the paralytic toxin exuded by the tree.
His gaze focused on her mouth, eyes glittering.
Sudden want flooded her body and every last rational thought drained from her head. Too close. Too unprotected. Too uncontrolled. She stepped back, her breath shallow and her heart thundering.
“Don’t,” he coaxed. “Don’t pull away. I want to know the taste and feel of you, but I can wait.”
She shuddered and wondered, despite the fear wracking her at being so vulnerable, whether she could wait. Clearing her tight throat, she gestured at the first-aid kit, desperate for distraction.
“Your arm and hand,” she fumbled. “The thorns are poisoned. Let me . . .”
“Poisoned?” he echoed, frowning. “You aren’t just trying to throw me off point, are you? Of all the unbelievable luck.”
She knelt to draw a dose of antivenin and to examine the tools available in Augie’s primitive first-aid kit. “I can’t do much for the cuts and bruises, but I’d better dig that thorn out of your side before the paralytic reaches something vital. Make yourself comfortable.”
The idiot grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows. “In your bed? I’ll always be comfortable there, my Chosen.”
A pang of—was it regret?—went through her. Why couldn’t he have picked any other endearment than “Chosen”? The title could rightfully have been hers if she’d only made a different choice.
He knelt on the bed across from her. His hand closed over her wrist. “Ari, I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She looked at him. Ari couldn’t identify what she saw in his face. She only knew her pulse quickened and when his fingers slid from her arm and he lay down on his side, they were both smiling.
She injected the antivenin swiftly before going to work on his side.
“Damn it, Seaghdh,” she said, examining the purple weal. “You might have told me about this before you dragged Tommy to the graveyard. The thorn burrowed deep.”
“Then it’s good the spot is mostly numb, isn’t it?” he rumbled.
Mostly. Great. She swabbed his skin with antiseptic and cut into the straining, puckered flesh. Where was Raj when she needed him? She snorted. Of course. He was on the ship she’d programmed to abandon her on this world. And to this man.
She worked fast, searching for the broken tail of the thorn. Seaghdh’s “mostly numb” would wear off when the antivenin kicked in. “Gotcha, you bastard,” she murmured as she eased the thick splinter from Seaghdh’s flesh.
His respiration sped up and turned shallow. The toxin had reached his diaphragm.
“Damn. Easy, Seaghdh. Nice, deep, even breaths. It’ll get better in a minute.”
She gave him another dose of antivenin and carefully cleaned the toxin from the gaping wound in his side. She knew the exact moment the antivenin conquered the poison.
Seaghdh groaned. Once his breathing normalized, she taped a tissue regeneration unit above the site and set it to seal and repair. At least with the unit working, his pain should diminish. He’d shut his eyes somewhere in the process, but she knew from the occasional tremor wracking him that he was awake.
“Can you roll to your back?” she asked. “Let me check the rest of your injuries.”
He obeyed, turning gingerly. His right hand came to rest on her thi
gh.
Swearing at the rush of blood to her lower belly, she raised an eyebrow but wasted the gesture. He still had his eyes closed. The smile on his face, however, gave her to believe he thought he was getting away with something. Maybe two could play that game.
Admiring the lines of muscle delineating his chest and torso, she had to remind herself to assess his injuries. When she laid her hand beside a spongy-looking bruise on his stomach, the muscle twitched. She glanced at him. Eyes shut.
“That looks suspiciously like the right size for my elbow.”
“It did get my attention,” he mumbled in reply, sounding relaxed and half asleep.
Damn it. Why did he have to carbonate her blood? Just the sound of his voice dumped an intoxicating blend of hormones and adrenaline into her system. She felt things she had no business feeling. It was eroding her defenses.
She forced herself to switch on her handheld and look for internal bleeding. Shifting, she leaned closer. Seaghdh’s hand moved to her hip. Fierce yearning sizzled down her spine.
No internal injuries, just one hell of a bruise. He’d risked death to find her and serious injury so that she wouldn’t be alone in the midst of memory.
She squeezed her eyes shut and realized how badly she wanted to gamble on trusting Cullin Seaghdh. Opening her eyes, she smoothed a palm over the bruise. He shivered at her touch.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This could have been bad.”
“I knew what I . . .”
Gently, she pressed her lips against the black-and-blue mark.
Seaghdh’s hand curled into a trembling fist, and his breath hissed in between his teeth. It didn’t sound at all like pain.
She drew back as her handheld beeped and reported an increase in heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. In both of them. She turned it off and tucked it away.
Seaghdh’s fist uncurled. He opened his eyes. “Unusual medical technique. I approve.”
She rested both hands against his collarbones. No pain response. She ran her palms from shoulder to waist, pressing lightly, testing for soreness and cracked ribs. She found none. The texture of the fine, brown hair on his chest intrigued her. She allowed herself a moment to enjoy the sensation.
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