Ari’s grin felt weak. “Sorry.”
“Given that we both knew I’d contemplated having you assassinated, you’ll forgive me if I doubt it.”
Past tense. How nice.
“I’ll brief you,” Eilod said, the formal note vanishing from her voice. “We don’t have much time. It won’t surprise you that not even I can keep secrets from my spymaster and there are things the Councils are not prepared to apprise him of just yet.”
The queen shifted. “The strike team failed.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Eilod’s shrug said she’d accepted the loss of crew and subjects, but that she obviously still felt it. “The sonic disruptor wasn’t planted correctly. Our ship couldn’t hold station well enough to allow precision placement.”
“Didn’t matter,” Ari said. “They knew. Angelou was working with the Chekydran. They knew about my transponder and had anticipated us.”
Eilod nodded as if Ari had confirmed what she’d already suspected. “We were reeling when your father’s second in command insisted we try again.”
“Pietre?”
“He and Sindrivik bicker like an old married couple, but they are a formidable pair. They used the Sen Ekir.”
Of course. The Sen Ekir had been designed for precision station keeping. Granted, it had originally been for aerial surveys of research sites. It had never occurred to Ari that her father’s science ship might one day save her life.
“Colonel Turrel took in a recovery team,” she said. “He reported the Chekydran commander dead. You and Seaghdh?”
No. Some foreign and unwelcome part of her that had delighted in Hicci’s pain. Ari swallowed hard and croaked, “Yes.”
“Very thorough work,” she replied. “All mission objects were achieved, but we hadn’t gotten our people out when the second Chekydran cruiser brought weapons to bear on the ship we’d conquered.”
Ari grimaced. She should have known the aural net connected ships as well as individuals. Damn.
“The Dagger engaged, but with barely one quarter of the ship’s crew complement manning stations, we were ineffective.” She shook her head in remembered frustration. “Then your friends arrived to save the day.”
“My friends?”
“The Balykkal.”
That surprised a smile from Ari. “Xiao.”
“You’ve been in regen for several days,” Eilod warned. “I gather some drastic changes have taken place within the government structure of Tagreth Federated.”
The glance Ari shot the queen felt sharp, even to her. Before she could demand detail, Eilod’s gaze turned inward and she frowned.
“Acknowledged,” she said.
That’s when Ari noticed the tiny headset she wore. Eilod’s focus shifted back and she straightened and changed the subject.
“Information regarding your unique status has been brought to our attention, Captain,” she said.
Twelve Gods, she was back to queen-speak. “Unique status?” Ari scowled.
“The Empire of the Claugh nib Dovvyth wishes to extend a formal offer of sanctuary. As we are a collection of varied races and misfits, we are best qualified to offer both the protection of the Empire and . . .”
And what? Asylum in the form of another prison? Given what Ari was, what she’d done, wasn’t that the safest place for her? For everyone else, she meant. Plague carrier, mental assassin, experiment. She was a genetically engineered species of her mother’s making, but it was Hicci who’d forced Ari to destroy her last claim to humanity.
Eilod broke off and turned her head slightly to the side where she wore the headset. Listening. “Send him in.”
Ari’s heart jumped in anticipation, then crashed when the door opened.
V’kyrri, good humor notably absent from his expression, stared at her as he edged in the door. Everything Ari had picked from Angelou’s mind about the double agent played in her head.
“You’re still alive.” Surprise pulled the words from her before she could stuff them back down her throat. Dread pounded through Ari. Damn it all. She liked him. She’d trusted him.
He paled. “I’d prefer that not sound like a problem.”
Ari closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, grateful to find she could. “Twelve Gods, V’k.”
“You dreamed,” he said in a rush. “Damned horrific nightmares. I had to ask them to move you to a shielded bay. Point is I think I starred in a few of those dreams.”
Opening her eyes, Ari stared at him. He’d read her while she’d been in a medically induced coma and stuck in regen? Given what she knew, why was she still alive? Shielded bay. Meaning that if she tried mentally to reach Seaghdh for help, he wouldn’t hear. Ari glanced at Eilod, who watched the byplay with an assessing gaze.
She’d stationed her bodyguards outside the door. If Ari told her that V’kyrri had supplied Angelou with inside information, what would keep V’k from harming the queen? Unless Ari could reach and stop him while they were both inside a shielded bay.
“You know my CO was colluding with the Chekydran?” she asked.
V’kyrri’s expression lightened the tiniest bit. “He’s been captured. His court-martial is scheduled for next month, but there’s some argument coming out of TFC about his fitness to stand trial. Go on, please.”
“He was captured because I got inside his head and made him send his entire data store to Intelligence Command.”
Looking staggered, V’kyrri shot a glance at Eilod. “Inside his head? While . . . ?”
“While I laid on the floor of a Chekydran interrogation chamber bleeding? Yes. I learned a great deal while in his head, V’kyrri. Do I have to say it? Or . . .”
Eilod and V’kyrri traded so discomfited a look, Ari shut her mouth and forced herself to reparse her information. She had to factor in the roar building outside her door. Seaghdh. Eilod’s Auhrnok Riorchjan. Shielded room or no, Ari felt him. Her pulse thumped and her breath came faster.
The door snapped open and Cullin Seaghdh, thinner, a new scar lining one cheek, barreled into the room. “Twelve Gods!” he swore, his voice trembling as he stared at her, raw anguish and need stark in his gaze.
“You Carozziel slime-bats,” Ari growled, glaring between Seaghdh, Eilod, and V’kyrri as pieces suddenly shifted in her head and fell into a new pattern.
Seaghdh drew up short, desperation and fear growing in his golden eyes.
“You let me think V’kyrri was a traitor!” she shouted.
CHAPTER 30
V’KYRRI burst out laughing.
Eilod shook her head.
Swearing, Ari glared at Seaghdh’s cocky grin. It made complete tactical sense. When an enemy looks for inside information, plant someone to provide it in controlled quality and quantity. Seaghdh’s execution had been so flawless, not even Angelou had suspected he’d harbored a double agent.
Lesson one for the newly aware telepath. Just because you’re inside someone else’s head doesn’t mean he or she or it has any better a lock on the truth than you.
V’kyrri regained his composure, crossed the little bay, and patted her hand. “Very nice work, Captain,” he said, his humor firmly in place. “We’ll get you some training once you’re back on your feet. First thing, we’ll teach you how to shut it all off when you don’t want to read or be read.”
Ari studied him, seeing the traces of long recovery in his shadowed eyes and nodded. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, V’k. Alive or dead. Glad I was wrong.”
“Me, too,” he said. “It was a near thing. For both of us.” He turned to go but paused at the door. “Your Majesty.”
“Dismissed, Mr. V’kyrri,” Eilod said. “Thank you for your service.”
Service? What service? Confirming that she’d influenced and nearly destroyed a man two sectors away? Baxt’k.
Seaghdh closed in beside her and covered her hand with his.
Warmth eased through her tense body. She glanced at him. All traces of emotion had vanished. He�
�d shuttered his expression with a studiously neutral mask that told Ari nothing. There was so much she still needed to know.
“Ari.” The caress he made of her name sent a tremor through her before he pressed even his tone under iron control. “IntCom has hounded us every hour of every day since the destruction of the two Chekydran cruisers.”
She felt a grim smile on her face. “Did you let them debrief you?”
“I let them try.”
Laughing hurt and made her cough, which hurt worse. She wrapped her arms around her aching ribs and gasped for breath.
“Get the doctor,” Ari heard Eilod instruct.
Ari tried to wave her off.
She ignored it.
Dr. Annantra strode into the room, shoved Seaghdh to one side, and pressed a series of buttons.
Pain vanished, but so did most of Ari’s motor control. She collapsed back against the bed and huffed.
“I could put you back in regeneration,” Dr. Annantra threatened, studying readings and the tubes running to Ari’s left arm. “Your father would love the opportunity to put in another nutrient tube. He’s out of practice.”
“Stop. You’re scaring me,” Ari grumbled, suppressing the question of just how Dr. Annantra knew so much about her father’s technique.
Seaghdh’s expression remained impassive but his eyes danced.
“Can she talk to IntCom?” Eilod demanded.
“Yes,” Ari said over the top of Dr. Annantra’s considering expression. It had occurred to Ari that the past several minutes had been a test to see whether or not she represented unacceptable risk. The Claugh needed to know whether she could be trusted. She had no way of knowing how she’d scored. Ari didn’t trust herself. How could they?
She needed data. Just so happened, that was IntCom’s specialty. Could she trust her own government to give her anything useful?
“One more thing, Captain,” Eilod said, “before I patch Director Durante of Intelligence Command through. Captain Xiao of the Balykkal has asked for status regarding your investigation into the attack on Kebgra.”
Swearing, Ari nodded. Yet another test of what she’d accomplished or of what she was willing to admit? “Target ID’d and neutralized.”
Eilod scowled. “Angelou gave the order to murder those colonists.”
“I was his target, but yes.”
“I’m sorry there’s anything left of him to court-martial,” she growled. “I will inform Captain Xiao. IntCom on your screen in three.”
“May I see my father for a moment first?” Ari hesitated. “Alone?”
Seaghdh’s head came up and she glanced at him. His gaze searched her face, but still he gave her nothing to see, no hint of what he thought, what he wanted, and every tendril she sent out to sense his emotions bounced right back to her. Was that the room? Or the medications?
“Of course, Captain,” Eilod said. “Auhrnok? Will you join me?”
The queen stood in the open doorway, waiting pointedly for Seaghdh.
“Ari . . .”
“Cullin,” his cousin cut him off.
He blinked, pressed his lips tight, and stalked from the room. Eilod, her expression unsettled, followed him as Ari’s father strode to her side and took her hand.
Dr. Annantra smiled. “I’ll leave you. Exercise some judgment, Captain, please? You are not cleared for duty. Of any kind.”
“She will,” her father said.
Ari rolled her eyes.
“Oh. Captain.” The woman paused in the doorway. She held up a bit of round metal.
Ari couldn’t identify it. Frowning in confusion, she shook her head and glanced at the woman’s face for a clue. The sparkle in the doctor’s brown eyes and her self-satisfied grin set off a burst of awareness.
“The transponder?” Ari breathed.
“The very thing,” Annantra replied, beaming, and quit the room.
After everything, Seaghdh had authorized the removal of the last fail-safe he might have? Or did he simply not realize what she’d become?
“Alexandria,” her father said.
“Sindrivik and Pietre figured out how to extract that thing safely?” she asked.
He nodded, looking pleased. “I have great expectations of that partnership.”
“Extend my gratitude,” she said. “I owe them my life. Twice over, it seems.”
“What am I? Junk DNA?”
“There’s no such . . .” Ari broke off in the midst of the rote answer to gape at her father. Teasing. He sounded teasing.
Preening, he rocked up on the balls of his feet and back down. The last time she’d seen him do that, Hieronomus had been valedictorian of his university. Ari had been five. Another flash of awareness whispered “Dr. Annantra.” Ari blinked and shut it out.
“I formulated a cure for you,” he said, then waved off the declaration. “Inoculation, really. The Chekydran had built a molecular capsule around an array of ancient pneumonia viruses. The capsules held them in check and embedded in the spinal column. They even gave each of them a countdown clock. When time elapsed, the capsules disintegrated and you infected everyone nearby.”
Ari sighed. “Then you realized about the same time I did that this plague wasn’t a death sentence.”
Her father sobered. “Only for the few we lost and for you. Or so I thought.”
“How’d you beat it?”
“Vaccinating against pneumonia was easy, once we realized,” he said. “We vaccinated you, then I built a specialized enzyme that attacks and destroys the molecular bonds of the nanotech delivery mechanism.”
She crinkled her forehead and glanced down at her body. “I’m your sole test case? I should start dissolving any moment.”
“The nanotech was Chekydran, Alex,” Dad countered. “I targeted my serum. We’ve taken a few spinal fluid and cord samples to be certain you’re clean.”
Clean. Free of the Chekydran from the inside out. She wondered if her dad’s concoction would destroy Chekydran memory enhancements. Free of the Armada from the inside since Eilod and Seaghdh had removed the transponder. All she had left was a meaningless rank. Ari smiled and, still seeing Seaghdh’s painfully neutral expression, said, “Dad. Can I ask you something?”
SEAGHDH paced the hallway outside medical, cursing as Eilod and her bodyguards watched. He’d swallowed every instinct in him that had screamed for him to sweep Ari into his arms and never let her go.
“Son, what is your problem?”
Seaghdh spun.
Linnaeus Idylle stood in the hallway, peering at him, his head tilted and his hands clasped behind his back.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have spent plenty of time misunderstanding my daughter, Captain Seaghdh,” the man said, “but this I do know. If you have feelings for her, you had better say so.”
“Or I’ll be your vaccination test case?” Seaghdh prompted. He shook his head. “She’s had too many people imposing their will on hers. She deserves the chance to find out what she wants.”
Dr. Idylle smiled. “You believe Alexandria doesn’t know her own mind, Captain? After everything she’s been through?”
Seaghdh sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. Anxiety made his heart tremble in his chest. He was losing her. He could feel it. Ari was slipping through his fingers.
Dr. Idylle put a hand on his shoulder. “She asked me to destroy her PhD samples.”
“What?” Hope slammed breath into Seaghdh’s chest.
“I’d say she knows what she wants. Do you?”
His eyes watering, Seaghdh spun to stare at the closed medi-bay door and groaned. He hadn’t told her. He loved her and he’d left her, even after seeing the heart-wrenching uncertainty in her eyes, to face whatever offer IntCom would make.
“Hang your pride, Captain. If she matters to you, make a counter-offer,” Dr. Idylle suggested before he walked away.
Seaghdh glanced at his cousin. “I can’t do this alone.”
Worry vanished from her express
ion. She nodded.
COMMANDER Durante, the director of Intelligence Command himself, signed off after enjoining Ari to think carefully about his offer. She sighed and leaned back. She’d be careful all right. The package IntCom had put together for her reeked of desperation. They’d made sure she wouldn’t refuse. That put her back up.
“You look like you’re chewing on Nurrellan lemon berry,” Turrel said. “Must have been a hell of a deal.”
Ari glanced at him, lounging against the wall, just inside the door. As he talked, V’kyrri, Sindrivik, Eilod, and finally Seaghdh, filed into the room.
“What is this?” she demanded. “Tag-team interrogation?”
Sindrivik chuckled. Eilod’s eyes danced with suppressed amusement. Seaghdh smirked and V’kyrri flushed an interesting shade of mahogany.
But Turrel grinned.
Ari gaped, both at the sudden transformation in the colonel and from wondering if it was a sign of impending doom.
“You’ve seen through everything the Murbaasch Tu has tried to put over on you,” Turrel said. “Straight answer is we’re here to handle you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why, Kirthin Turrel. I didn’t know you cared.”
Eilod snickered.
Seaghdh rubbed a hand down his face.
“Don’t want to start that with me, Captain,” Turrel advised, a smile firmly in place. “I’m into plural partnerships. The more participants, the merrier.”
Ari flushed and held up her hands in surrender. “Call the doctor. I need something to scrub that image from my brain. They offered me command of a Kessola and its ops team.”
Seaghdh and Turrel swore in unison.
“Do they think I’m stupid?” Eilod demanded. “Or that you are?”
“I’m aware it might force you to arrest me for spying after all,” Ari replied. “We can be certain they didn’t intend for me to tell you.”
“Could we negate spying charges, get you aboard a Kessola, and let me have a look at it from inside your head?” V’kyrri pleaded.
Ari smiled.
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