Holding onto the driving resentment, he gave Kira and Lianna sensors to measure the air for any toxic substances or life signs. Not that he expected to find anything living onboard. Unless Callan’s zombie theory came true.
He stepped over and pounded a fist against the hatch release, ignoring the final spike of icy warning slithering down his spine.
“Lianna, you’re with Callan. Kira, I’ll take you to find the medbay. You see anything out of the ordinary, comm me and come straight back to the skimmer.”
The others nodded, not seeming overly worried as they fitted the masks on their faces. But something had happened to this ship’s crew, probably something bad. People didn’t just abandon perfectly good ships in the middle of nowhere.
The hatchway opened, letting in a puff of air that would no doubt be stale. They stepped cautiously forward into the deep darkness.
Callan fitted a flashlight to the top of his huge-ass gun, shoulders set, tensed for action. Rian fell into step behind him, hands on the grip of his guns, but not drawn. Wouldn’t make a difference if they came face-to-face with any kind of danger—he could draw faster than his enemy could blink.
Inside was pitch black, and Lianna flicked on a bigger, heavier flashlight. Unsurprisingly, the first thing the beam of light swept over were corpses lined up in the middle of the otherwise empty cargo hold. The sight of those bodies sent a deeper, harder surge of ice through him, and he signaled for them to stop. Lianna stepped sideways and accessed some kind of panel. A moment later, light flooded the ship.
“This ship didn’t die; it was powered down.” She pressed the panel closed again. “And this isn’t just any run-of-the-mill galactic transport, this ship has full circadian lighting and an integrated solar simulator for UV daytime.”
“So whoever these dead bastards are, they had money. If I’m not mistaken, this is a Kingswell class, b-line. Not top of the range, but anyone who can afford any line in this class is sitting damn pretty in life.” Callan hadn’t lowered his gun, only switched off the flashlight on top. “UAFA personal security division.”
Rian strode closer to the bodies, all six lined up neatly as though ready for transport somewhere else. A pounding started in the base of his skull in time with the rapid beat of his heart. Dark sensations scrabbled at the barrier in his head. But he didn’t need the remnants of memory to know what his mind was trying to tell him. He could feel it in the tips of his fingers and the ache of his limbs, like sensory recall in his very muscles.
“They’re bodyguards?” Kira stepped by him, the doctor in her obviously overcoming her hesitation. She walked along their feet, and he could all but see her cataloguing the few wounds and the injuries that had caused death. They’d been executed fast and clean. And they’d been dead a long time, maybe six or seven years. Bodies didn’t decompose the same way in space, especially when a ship was dead or powered down. They were kind of half decomposed, half mummified, and definitely gross looking.
“Yeah, they’re glorified bodyguards,” Callan confirmed. “The type employed by politicians and anyone else rich enough to pay UAFA’s exorbitant fees. Evidently these guys weren’t very good at their job. I’m betting we’ll find the mark dead somewhere else onboard.”
“Great. Just what I want to see. More dead bodies,” Lianna muttered.
The others all moved forward to a wide set of stairs, but Rian had trouble getting his heavy feet to cooperate. In his mind’s eye, he could see the layout of this shuttle like he’d meticulously memorized every bolt and plate. This ship wasn’t even half as big as the Imojenna. With only two levels and limited accommodation cabins, it was the type of ship for shorter, infrequent trips, despite the obvious luxury.
His crew was already halfway up the stairs when he finally forced himself to follow after them. His mind was blank as he reached the top, which opened into a bridge and conference-type area. Like the cargo hold, there were bodies lined up in neat rows. Ten dead up here. Two were in uniform—the captain and navigator who’d been flying the ship. The rest were dressed in civ clothes.
He stopped two steps in, not able to take himself any farther, breath cutting too shallow in and out of his lungs. Random pictures flashed through his mind, nothing he could understand or put in context, just ruthless violence and the dark gratification of taking life with precise strikes of his weapon.
Kira continued over to the first row of bodies, pulled a compact modified medical scanner out of her pocket, and crouched down next to the first civilian. She slowly passed the scanner over the hand, presumably hoping to get a bio-ID. After a second, the unit beeped, and she held it up. The scanner would still be connected to the Imojenna’s onboard systems and linked into the IPC’s database—a neat little permanent hack Tannin had organized for them.
The doctor frowned down at the screen when the unit chimed. “That can’t be right.”
“What does it say?” Lianna asked from where she’d remained near the stairs, a few steps from him.
“It says this man is the vice-chancellor of Freemont, Gustaf Pavin. I don’t remember hearing he’d been killed. In fact, I’m pretty sure I saw him on a newsreel at a summit on Yarina not that long ago.”
“Check the rest.” His voice was flat and frigid, instantly sobering the already tense air in the room as the others cast him wary looks. But he didn’t need the scanner to tell him who lay here and how they’d died. He already knew, the knowledge an innate sense more than an actual memory.
Without a word, she checked the rest of the bodies in civilian clothes one by one and then stood.
“According to the bio-IDs, we’re looking at the entire top echelon of the Freemont government. Which is impossible unless—”
“This was a Reidar hit, and now a bunch of meat puppets are in control of the entire planet of Freemont.” Callan knelt down near one of the bodies. “But there’s something familiar about the pattern of wounds. I’ve seen this before. I know I have. The death strikes aren’t sloppy, they’re precise. The killer would have been calm and in control the entire—”
Callan shot to his feet, disbelieving gaze cutting to him.
“This looks like…” His voice came out slightly hoarse.
“My handiwork.” Rian set his palms on his weapons with measured movements, the familiar grips anchoring him in reality as the slashing memories struggled against his fraying hold. “And you’d be right. I killed these people.”
“What in the holy mother of all hell?” Callan stepped back from the bodies, his own grip tightening on his nucleon rifle.
Without saying another word, Rian turned on his heel and stalked down the steps, the heavy tread of his boots the only sound echoing throughout the entire ship.
Chapter Eight
They weren’t dreams. They were something else. Too vast and too real to be Varean’s imaginings. Yet nothing was familiar. Places and objects he didn’t recognize and had no reference for. It would have been easy to get lost in the infinity of it—snatches and figments that were as fascinating as they were daunting. Being in this place fed the mutation within him, making him want to escape the yellow-and-gray shadowed reality as much as he wanted to see more.
An entity always hovered like a celestial being, a brilliant blue light. He’d first thought it was a sun or a rare ultra-blue star. But the more lucid this dream state had become, he’d come to realize it was something else. What, he had no idea. Although he’d spent time tracking it, it forever remained frustratingly out of reach.
Only two things kept him from completely sinking into the oblivion. Her voice, though he couldn’t hear Kira now, the memory of her constantly teased the edges of his awareness. And some small part of him warned that if he wanted to again experience the ripple of her voice like sunshine on cold skin, he couldn’t become lost.
His abilities may have saved him physically, but she’d saved him in the ways that mattered most—when she’d told him I am not letting you die he’d wanted it to be true for her and no other reason, which was c
ompletely stupid. He barely knew her—they lived totally different lives—and had been thrown together by a twisted kink in the fabric of circumstance. They didn’t mean anything to each other and never would. However, that logic didn’t stop his craving to hear her voice.
The conflicts of her—woman and doctor, caring, yet with inner fortitude like the most stalwart military commander—sparked something inside him. Maybe it was simply that she’d been his anchor in a sea of confusion and pain since he’d first been hit with that damned stunner. Maybe it was her petite figure at odds with the size of her personality and tenacity. Whatever the reason, she was starting to seem more and more like his own personal guardian angel, wanting to protect and save him no matter what anyone else thought.
Time passed differently here, and he couldn’t have said how long he’d been under, but a buzzing like a damned insect in the back of his mind finally got loud enough to pull him out to the real world.
Varean forced his eyes open but couldn’t focus on whatever the hell was right in his face. He went to reach up, intending to push it away, but his arms were locked in place. Turning his head to the side, he saw a crack of light, his brain registering that he seemed to be in some kind of pod. A warm kind of humming sensation poured over his entire body like water, accompanied by a low whir. He inched his hand to the side, trying to get a grip on the seam, but couldn’t find purchase or a gap large enough to stuff his fingers into.
A moment later, the whole thing lifted, flooding him with blindingly bright light. He threw his arm up to shade his eyes but froze when he felt the business end of a gun pressing into his neck under his chin.
“No sudden movements, soldier.”
Tension rippled through his muscles as he slowly lowered his arm to focus on the man standing next to the bed with another one of those stunners. Tannin, if his memory served. The guy was like a tech analyst or something. While he couldn’t imagine a tech-head would be any match for him, the guy currently had all the advantage with the way that gun was giving him a hickey. The frecking things were becoming the bane of his existence.
Tannin dropped a pair of cuffs on his chest. “Put ’em on.”
He picked up the restraints—metium-reinforced—and clicked them onto his wrists. If they made the guy feel better, sure, he could have his illusion of control and safety. No need to tell the tech-head that escaping cuffs and killing without use of hands were basic commando training.
Once he’d finished, Tannin stepped back but didn’t lower the gun. “You weren’t supposed to wake up for at least another twenty-four hours.”
The statement didn’t make sense, until his brain helpfully bombarded him with his last few seconds of consciousness. That security moron had skewered him dead center of his chest. He glanced down to see his skin healed and pinked through the ragged edges of his torn, bloody shirt. Damn it, Sherron was going to be like a terrier on a rat over how the hell he managed to survive that.
Despite it being a decade since he’d buried his inherent abilities, apparently they were working no problem. He felt like he’d come off a restless night’s sleep, not that he’d almost taken a one-way trip to the hereafter. A thwarted kind of frustration lit up within him as the helplessness of the past days returned like taking a sucker punch to the solar plexus. After this, hiding the truth of who he was would be nearly impossible. Damn Sherron butting into his life as if he had any frecking right to it.
Behind Tannin, the doors to the medbay opened to reveal the doc steering a hover-pallet stacked with crates.
“Oh, you’re awake.” If her tone hadn’t given away her shock, the surprise on her face would have. She positioned the pallet out of the way and came over, her gaze sweeping him before she looked up at the screen above his bed. When her eyes returned to his face, maybe he was imagining it, but he could have sworn there was a hint of relief in her features. Why that should matter so much, he didn’t have a clue. Or maybe he did, and didn’t want to admit he was starting to care what she thought.
“How are you feeling?”
“Considering I should be dead, pretty damned alive.” She went to pass a handheld scanner over him, but he reached up with his cuffed hands and caught her wrist. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
For a moment her sage green eyes studied him, then a stubborn gleam entered her gaze. “Sorry, but when you’re in my medbay, you do things my way.”
“Hands off, soldier boy.” Tannin had moved closer with that damned stunner again.
Varean made a big show of letting her go and holding out his hands in surrender. The doc finished her scan, her expression satisfied and somewhat mystified by whatever readings she got.
“Has Ella been here?” The doc glanced over her shoulder at Tannin, who shook his head in response.
She turned back to him, picking up the ragged edges of his shirt and running light, cool fingers over his skin. A ripple of tingles spread across his chest from her touch, and he locked down his muscles against the shudder chasing up the sensation.
“Then how is this possible? It doesn’t make sense.” The words were a mumble, seeming more for herself than the benefit of the room.
No, it wouldn’t make sense. Not to anyone else. For him, it was no big surprise and right now, more of an inconvenience than anything else.
She pulled away and took half a step back, making herself look busy as she picked up her commpad from a nearby trolley. But she had an underlying uneasiness to her stance that hadn’t been there before.
“You’re entirely healed from a wound that should have killed you.”
He shrugged one shoulder, aiming for a nonchalance he wasn’t feeling. “So? You put me in the life-support pod.”
She shook her head, not meeting his gaze. No doubt the doc had a theory, but he couldn’t ask her without arousing more suspicion.
“It should have stabilized you so your body could heal naturally in time, not perform a minor miracle. But we’ve seen this before. I just have to check with Ella.”
That was the second time she’d mentioned that name, a note of near reverence in her tone when she said it. Someone else with some kind of healing abilities? “Who is Ella?”
“None of your damned business,” Tannin snapped. The tech-head glanced at the doc, who appeared kind of annoyed. “So, he’s awake. You know what Rian’s standing orders are.”
She gave a short sigh, cutting a sympathetic glance in his direction as she set down the commpad. “Okay, let’s do it before Rian comes in here and decides to take care of the matter as violently as possible.”
He sent her a hard look. “I told you I’m not answering any questions—”
“We’ll talk about that later. Right now, I have to get you back down to the brig. Believe me, Rian is not in a mood to be messed with.”
Shadows darkened her eyes, gaze haunted as though she’d experienced something horrible since the last time he’d seen her. An inexplicable flash of white-hot fury burst through him, and he straightened on the bed to catch her arm.
“Did he hurt you?”
The doc froze, her gaze clashing with his, confusion and a touch of awe crossing her lovely features. “No, Rian didn’t touch me.”
“I mean it, Doc. You tell me if he even laid one finger on you—”
Tannin’s derisive laugh cut him off. “You got taken down by Callan, tough guy. He’s a cuddly teddy compared to Rian. You wouldn’t stand a chance against the captain. In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s no one in the universe who could take on Rian and live to talk about it.”
The admiration and respect behind Tannin’s words were more than obvious.
“What is he, some kind of demigod?” he muttered.
“Might as well be. Short of it is, he’s one guy you don’t want to piss off. The best thing you can do for yourself is cooperate, unless you want to get vented.”
“That’s enough, Tannin.” Kira’s voice was quiet, but no less hard, as she shot the guy a glare.
Tannin’s threats didn’t bother him, but that cagey gleam in her gaze did. He’d cooperate, but only for her sake, only so it saved her from whatever Rian’s bad temper might entail.
“Back to the brig it is then.” He swung his legs off the edge of the gurney and shuffled his ass forward. The doc set a hand against his shoulder when he put his feet on the cool metal floor, as though she thought he might be unsteady. She needn’t have worried; he felt fine, not even the slightest twinge of light-headedness.
“I’m sorry about this. I can’t imagine the brig is the most comfortable place to be when recuperating from injuries like yours.” She kept her voice low, the words just for the two of them as she shifted beside him, her hand firm and secure on his shoulder as he stood. She reached over to a nearby trolley and grabbed a bundle, never shifting her grip from him. He probably should have told her she didn’t need to be so solicitous, but damn if he didn’t like having her hands on him a little too much.
“Makes no mind to me. I’ve had it worse.”
She sent him a dubious glance as they started toward the doors of the medbay, Tannin bringing up the rear.
No one attempted any other conversation. Varean studied the layout and components of the ship, cataloguing every bit of information he could use later when he escaped. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was an old Nirali classer with a damn lot of modified upgrades. The ship had been a staple of the Assimilation Wars, legendary for flying supplies in under fire. After the war had ended, they’d been decommissioned and either scrapped or entirely refitted to become unarmed Feint Class long-haul shuttles. He hadn’t guessed any of them might still be puttering around the galaxy in their original incarnation.
The rest of the crew seemed to be scarce as they went down two flights of stairs and through the cargo hold. Obviously they’d made a stop while he’d been out of it—crates that hadn’t been there before were stacked along the bulkheads and strapped down to the floor.
When they reached the brig, he didn’t hesitate as he walked through the hatchway, leaving Tannin to clang the bars shut behind him. It was much warmer in the brig now than it had been when they’d first put him here.
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