Ari choked on a sob. Nothing she could do would save them. But maybe she could afford them both a cleaner death than the one Hicci offered Seaghdh. He wouldn’t kill her. Hicci would keep her, torture her, until he finally realized something had happened to Angelou. And then, without an alliance to keep him in check, if ever it had, she might finally die by his—tentacle.
Assuming IntCom had been paying attention and she’d really exposed Angelou’s data. Please, Twelve Gods, let IntCom be awake at the switch. Something had to go right. She’d done everything she could to neutralize a traitor within the ranks. If IntCom let this slip through the cracks, Seaghdh’s death and hers would be for nothing.
She closed her eyes, her ears, and her heart to the beating Seaghdh tried to fend off. At the first cry of pain ripped from his throat, Ari bit her tongue to keep from shrieking in unison. Pushing past hurt and weariness, she focused on Hicci, the feel of him in the room, his presence in her awareness. She wanted a link so deep he couldn’t possibly escape when she triggered her transponder to blow. She had to get in.
She would get in if she edged past that outer shell and turned the corner into his core . . . alien thought patterns erupted around her. Images, emotions, belief structures, and arcs of logic for which she had no analogue clawed at her defenseless mind. Too late, Ari realized that not only did humanoids lack the physical structures to imitate Chekydran speech, they lacked the experiential framework to remotely comprehend what went on inside the heads of a species that had evolved light-years from the cradles of humanoid life.
All sense of her physical self vanished as if a vital cord had been cut. Perception of up, down, depth, breadth, and width morphed into something that bent her sanity. She felt a scream rising in her head and struggled to wrest free. She fought, ripping and tearing the foreign thoughts from her as she fled.
Her awareness slammed back into her body with a shock that drove agony through her like an energy blade. Her physical form lacked the lung capacity to do anything more than whine. Gasping shallow puffs of air into abused lungs, she forced her eyes open.
Seaghdh had given up standing. And defending himself.
Fear and anguish ripped Ari’s gut. A hollow cry broke from her throat.
He twisted away from Hicci, dodging a blow to meet her gaze.
The grim, hopeless light in his bloody, swollen face brought a rush of heat to her eyes. As she stared, helpless, Ari felt tears on her lashes finally spill over. Baxt’k. It took the murder of the man she loved to teach her to cry again.
“I’m sorry,” he wheezed.
She heard a pop.
Seaghdh groaned and his expression blanked.
Hicci had broken something.
Ari felt an answering burst inside of her. She’d had enough. That bastard would die if she had to rip him apart with her one good hand. She couldn’t get into the monster’s mind, but she could get into Seaghdh’s.
She shut her eyes tight and concentrated, beating back panic. Nothing happened. Cursing under her breath, she shifted focus. Seaghdh’s entire conscious mind fixated on the blows Hicci inflicted. Ari couldn’t break through that. Praying her gamble would pay off, she retreated down into the watery center of herself, to the place no one else knew existed. Save for Cullin Seaghdh, who had become a permanent part of her.
He was still there.
“Listen, hwe vaugh,” she whispered to his presence inside her. She felt the jolt of recognition go through him. “I have a plan.”
Rather than explain, Ari took a deep mental breath and ignoring fear, opened her psyche and merged with him. She knew his astonishment as if it was her own. He tried to form a thought, to communicate something vitally important to him, but her panic screamed that they didn’t have time for anything but action. He agreed.
Fatigue slowed her assent out of the well. Opening her eyes, she stared at Hicci and visualized prying him open, but not so much that she got lost in his thoughts again. Her perverse imagination gave her an energy blade and turned the effort into a duel. This she could both wrap her mind around and win.
Hicci slammed a tentacle into Seaghdh. Then, as Seaghdh slid across the floor to hit the far wall, Hicci lowered himself to all eight legs and looked at Ari.
“Guard, you cravuul’s ass,” she thought at him and mentally lunged, running her figment of her imagination directly through one row of eyes, straight into his alien brain.
He chortled.
“Now,” she thought at Seaghdh.
For a long moment, nothing happened and Ari thought he’d been too badly injured to speak. Then she heard breath drawn slowly, whistling as if pulled through clenched teeth.
“You are paralyzed,” Seaghdh commanded, his voice and power ringing through the room.
Ari picked up the compulsion and shoved it down the line she had opened to Hicci’s brain. The monster squeaked and fell silent. The aural net of the ship hesitated, and then resumed, searching, questioning.
“Ari,” Seaghdh said. He dragged himself across the floor with his hands.
Her vision went fuzzy and she may have lapsed into unconsciousness. She had to open her eyes when awareness returned. Seaghdh lay before her, his face inches away.
“Not much time,” he breathed.
Ari caught in a breath and choked back despair.
“Can you get a mental lock on your transponder?” he asked.
Despite her injuries, she could still nod.
He echoed the motion. “Good. I won’t abandon you to that sick baxt’k. I hope . . .” He fell silent and his lips trembled. “I hope my parents died together.”
She closed her eyes as tears began slipping silently down her face again.
Hicci groaned. The aural net redoubled its efforts to prod him into answering. She heard him shift. He was throwing off Seaghdh’s compulsion.
They’d run out of time. She didn’t have to look for the transponder. It had felt like a sinister, immovable marble imbedded in the flesh behind her left ear. Sorting through to find the destruct command took seconds. No one in TFC thought to shield devices from telepathic intrusion.
Ari opened her eyes and fought for control of her voice. “G-got it,” she mumbled. The words were garbled, but she’d said them.
Seaghdh cast a hateful glance at Hicci, before nodding and returning his overly bright gaze to her. “Finish this.”
CHAPTER 29
IF they had to die, Ari wanted the last thing she saw to be Seaghdh looking at her exactly the way he was right now. Holding his gaze, she mentally turned to the transponder. She didn’t need a code. A simple nudge in the right place . . .
A hum, loud enough to wring a cry of agonized protest from her, vibrated through the ship. It wasn’t the hum that had tried so desperately to get Hicci to answer.
Confused, Ari frowned and saw the expression reflected on Seaghdh’s face.
The hum sounded like . . . she glanced at Hicci.
He swayed, tapping his forelegs and rubbing tentacles over his eye ridges and under his body.
Elation tipped into her blood. Someone had placed a sonic disrupter. Sindrivik had recorded and adapted the sexual hum Hicci had uttered over her. Twelve Gods bless his circuit-minded little heart. She felt a grim smile on her face and glanced at Seaghdh. Did he realize what was happening? Hicci and his entire ship would die because Sindrivik had thought to turn sex into a weapon. Sindrivik had heard Seaghdh’s capture and sent a second strike team.
“A second strike team?” Seaghdh whispered, drawing Ari’s attention back to him, his question reminding her that he had unprecedented access to her thoughts. “There was no second strike team.”
Ari shut down speculation and ushered Seaghdh out of her head. She couldn’t let him know from her memory what had happened in this room. She hadn’t been able to protect herself, but she could protect him. She’d pulled away and eased the mental door shut when he snapped his gaze back to her face. He’d felt her withdrawal.
“Stay with me, A
ri. Hang on. That’s an order,” he commanded, effort in his tone as he pushed himself up on his hands and got one leg under him. He grimaced, but hobbled close to Hicci.
Seaghdh, a dire set to his features, mouthed invectives in what looked like two different languages. He swung hard at Hicci’s front leg. He connected in precisely the spot Hicci had been tapping with one excited tentacle.
Ari didn’t understand Chekydran biology, but that Seaghdh had landed a brutal shot to a highly sensitive bit of anatomy was apparent.
Hicci’s throat pouch stretched tight in a scream she couldn’t hear. It knocked Hicci out of whatever sonically induced trance he’d been in.
He struck with a lightning fast, vicious slap that sent Seaghdh spinning.
She drew a slow, deliberate breath, pushing aside fatigue and pain. Mentally, she picked up her imaginary energy blade and closed her eyes. She might not be able to attack the monster physically, but she could try to put the hurt on him mentally. Whether the attempt drove her mad didn’t matter. Ari could help the man she loved.
Seaghdh was here. She loved him. Three Hells, she could do anything.
Marshalling her remaining strength, she lashed Hicci repeatedly in her mind’s eye, driving him against the wall farthest from her body. Ari jammed her thoughts into his head, shoving deep.
His rage and fear ripped at her. She felt the hum from inside his head and body. It coerced a sexual response from him and from Ari. Sickened, she snarled into Hicci’s brain.
“It would serve you right to be experimented on for the rest of your life,” she snapped, “but I don’t wish that on anyone or anything. Not even you. Don’t feel bad. I still hate you enough to kill you.”
With the mental strength born of six months of delayed vengeance, she hurled him across the room. Hard.
The floor at her feet shuddered from impact. Something broke inside his head and darkness began spreading.
Anticipation thrilled through Ari’s physical body. She retreated slowly, watching and savoring the insidious, creeping stain. It blotted out pieces of him one hideous bit at a time. Torment spiraled through his dimming awareness. Vindication heated her blood like a potent aphrodisiac.
Ari opened her eyes and felt the ripples of pleasure running through her abused body.
Hicci lay in a heap at her feet, his throat pouch gashed and torn. The carapace along his back had fractured. Yellow-green blood oozed from his wounds. One tentacle flailed on the floor like a dying fish.
“Don’t die so soon,” she murmured inside Hicci’s head. “You owe me months’ worth of misery, you baxt’kal bastard.”
“Ari,” Seaghdh gasped, uncertainty—or was that fear—in his voice. “Twelve Gods.” He stumbled toward her. Gunfire outside the door stopped him.
The door burst open. Literally. The explosion knocked Seaghdh to the floor. Pieces of chitin peppered her.
The hum vibrating the entire ship and every fiber of Ari’s body never paused. It fed the delight streaming through her as she waited for the final light that was Hicci to wink out of existence. A noxious keen shrilled in her head, a last burbling plea for mercy, something that had never once been granted her. Ari wished she had the physical resources to laugh in his dying face.
Claugh soldiers in gray battle fatigues rushed through the door, training their weapons instantly on Hicci, whose form shuddered once and then stilled. His presence faded from her mind with one last hateful wheeze.
She gasped at the shudder of pleasure that rocked her body and began weeping like a lost child.
Ari tried to blink back the tears, terror chilling her. The mixed emotions confounded her. Realization broke over her and she choked on panic. She’d relished destroying her tormentor and not just mentally. Physically. To the point of physical climax. Nausea pressed against the back of her throat. By all the Gods. She’d let Hicci win.
She’d become the monster she’d so resisted. Choking back revulsion, she looked away from the shock in Seaghdh’s face.
Turrel strode into the room, Raj on his heels. Raj? Ari’s tired brain struggled with his presence until something clicked into place. The Sen Ekir was the second strike team. If she survived this, she’d kill her father.
“Captain!” Turrel shouted.
Ari barely heard him above the hum stimulating an unwilling response from her body.
Seaghdh waved Turrel off and pointed at her.
The big man turned. His eyes widened and he blanched.
Raj rushed to her side and dropped to both knees.
She squeezed her eyes shut, aware that it would hurt like nothing she’d ever felt when he touched her. He didn’t. Gingerly, he lifted a shred of her uniform and clipped a Claugh insignia to it.
“Emergency medical teleport,” she heard him bellow. “Prep stasis!”
“No!” Ari croaked. No one heard. The chill of teleport displacement pierced her wounds like needles of ice. She’d never been clear on the physics of teleportation. She’d heard you couldn’t scream during teleport. She could. She just couldn’t hear it. Hopefully, no one else could, either.
Ari materialized in a tiny, green-walled room and knew two things. First, she was sobbing over and over again, “No stasis. No stasis.” Second, her father was in the room.
“By all the Gods,” he breathed.
“Pain management onboard, now!” a female voice ordered.
Ari’s brain sorted through files slowly and finally presented her with recognition. Dr. Annantra.
Face pale and eyes red-rimmed, the doctor strode into Ari’s line of sight. Worry creased the woman’s forehead and Ari thought she’d added a few lines around her mouth since last they’d spoken.
“Dr. Idylle, do you know how to establish a nutrient line?” Dr. Annantra asked.
“Yes.”
“Be my guest.”
“No stasis,” Ari pleaded. She wouldn’t survive the nightmares. They’d be new ones filled with speculation about how much of her humanity had been ripped from her when she’d been modified. And about how much of a monster she’d willingly become by exulting in another creature’s pain and death.
“Alexandria,” her father said, his tone gentle. “No, no. Stay still. You are gravely injured. It’s a medically induced coma. You know that. You need this to heal. You will wake up. One of us will be here beside you every second you’re asleep. I promise.”
Anxiety gnawed on her insides. Without thinking, her exhausted, confused brain reached for Seaghdh. His answering presence in her mind felt like a warm hand wrapped around hers. Relief flooded her. He was on his way back. He was safe.
Something happened and pain fell away. She’d become so accustomed to it that its absence frightened her. Ari’s eyes flew open even as her body relaxed and she dropped into darkness.
HER heart pounding hard, fear and the ghost of remembered pain pulled Ari up. She propelled herself up out of the floating, drifting sensation enfolding her.
“She’s waking, again,” a concerned female voice said.
Even in sleep, Ari had the impression she should know it.
“I shouldn’t have sedated her until she’d seen everyone safe,” the woman continued. “I’m bringing her up. Alert Her Majesty. Private channel. Tight beam. Scrambled.”
Despite the grip of powerful sedatives, military conditioning held and Ari’s brain shifted to full tactical alert. They were notifying the queen. Not Seaghdh. Not her father.
“Understood, Doctor,” a young man answered.
Someone, presumably the doctor, moved beside her. “Captain Idylle, can you hear me?”
Dr. Annantra. Good. Ari tried to pry her cottony, thick tongue from the roof of her mouth. Warm spray moistened her lips and suddenly she could.
“Yes,” Ari breathed.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Dagger.”
“Good. You’re safe,” Dr. Annantra said. “You’ve made remarkable progress healing but you will be my guest for several days yet. Are you i
n pain?”
“No.” Unless you counted not being able to control your body as pain. Just to see if she could, Ari tried to open her eyes. It took several moments for her eyelids to obey the command. It took longer to realize she couldn’t see because the room was dim.
“What—” she began but couldn’t seem to complete the question.
“What happened?” Dr. Annantra guessed.
The sound of a door opening and a flash of light bleeding into the room cut off her answer.
“Secure the bay,” another woman’s voice said, her tone hushed.
Eilod.
“Your Majesty,” Dr. Annantra said.
“Doctor,” Eilod replied.
The door shut and a very subtle vibration ran through the bed. Sonic shielding. No Seaghdh. Good sign? Or bad?
“Would you excuse us?” Eilod asked.
Bad.
“By your will, Your Majesty,” Dr. Annantra answered and left the room.
“Half-light,” Ari muttered in Claughwyth. The lights responded grudgingly, the glow coming up as if she might change her mind.
“Good,” Eilod said. The relief in her voice confused Ari.
Via a monumental effort of will, Ari forced her fingers to search out and press the bed controls to raise her head. Ari studied Eilod. The skin of the queen’s face looked too tight. Dark circles marred her eyes and lines of stress and unhappiness ringed her mouth.
Sympathy wrung through Ari. What the Three Hells had come apart while she’d slept? For all Ari knew, Eilod had come to tell her the Claugh, TFC, and Chekydran were busy fighting a three-way war.
“Empire safe?” Ari asked.
The tense set of the queen’s shoulders broke and she slumped.
“After everything that’s happened,” she replied shaking her head, “that’s the first question you think to ask me?”
Ari blinked.
Eilod sighed and slouched against the wall, a smile touching her features. “I don’t want to like you, Captain,” she said, “but you aren’t leaving me much choice.”
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