“The only thing I need right now is you.” Theo’s voice was soft, his eyes smoky.
She sighed, set the shields fully around the bedroom, and turned back to him. A few hours’ bliss. She lost herself and her troubles in him nightly now. Lost it all in his gentle yet expert touch, his fingers kneading, stroking. Mouths and tongues searching, touching. A few hours. And then another day of hard reality. And another day closer to hell.
The screech of an intruder alarm jolted Jorie out of a blissfully deep sleep. Theo’s arms were tangled with hers at her waist, and there was some accidental bumping and shoving as she grasped for her Hazer and he—she assumed—for whatever weapon he kept tucked under his pillow.
Only as her skin rapidly chilled did she realize she was naked. She snatched her sweatshirt and shorts from the floor. Then, heart pounding and still naked, she knelt in front of her tech to check shield integrity. Theo had already pulled on a pair of sweatpants and stood at the doorway, flashlight in one hand, weapon in the other.
No breach. But someone or something had tried to. She yanked the sweatshirt over her head as she gave him the news.
“If that’s one of my neighbors,” he said when she looked at him, “we’re going to have some explaining to do.”
She rose quickly and stepped into her shorts. “At four-thirty in the morning?”
“Good point. They’ll have some explaining to do too. What’s out there?”
With half her tech in disarray? “A live entity. Not a zombie. That’s all I know.”
“One?”
“One.”
“Armed?”
“We have to assume, yes.” She knotted her shorts. “Ready?”
“On a count of three. You drop the door shield. I’ll open the door, go out first. You follow, cover me.”
“On three. One, two—” She keyed in the change from the scanner, now dangling from her hip belt. Theo yanked open the door, then, weapon out, moved quickly and quietly into the corridor. Jorie followed, Hazer primed and ready.
They swept into the main room, the glow from his flashlight moving left and right, then stopping at something—someone—sprawled awkwardly on the floor near Theo’s couch.
She started to reach for her scanner but stopped. She didn’t need it. Her heart skittered. She recognized him. “Kip!”
“Kip?” Theo asked.
“Kip. Commander Rordan.” She knelt next to the still form, angling her rifle away as she felt for a pulse in his neck. Hope and fear clashed. “Alive, but I think my shield knocked him unconscious.”
“Kip Rordan?” Theo’s voice held a note of amazement.
She fully understood. How and why and from where Rordan had returned, she had no idea. She checked her scanner, keying in for the Sakanah’s resonance. Hoping, praying—nothing showed on her screen.
But Kip was here. And he was alive. Why? The surge of bliss she’d felt at finding him waned. Distrust raised its ugly head. The last thing left on her doorstep—so to speak—was the Tresh feeder cup. Now Kip. It was possible the two events weren’t remotely connected. It was equally possible they were.
“Help me with him,” she said to Theo.
“Jorie, wait.” Theo hunkered down next to her. “Are you sure he’s Rordan? Are you sure he’s not working with the Tresh? Or the Tresh didn’t send him?”
“I’m not sure of anything other than, yes, he’s Kip Rordan. My scanner confirms his identity through his bioresonance and his palm print.”
Rordan let out a low moan.
“We need to get him back behind the shields in the bedroom,” she told Theo. “Help me lift him.”
Theo was clearly not happy with her command, but whether it was because he’d disliked Rordan from the beginning or because he didn’t trust which side Rordan was on now, Jorie didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to try for answers in an unshielded part of the residence. She might not know if she trusted Kip Rordan, but she knew for sure she didn’t trust the Tresh.
Together they dragged Rordan back to Theo’s bedroom and closed the door. Theo turned on a bedside lamp. She brought up the shields and checked her scanner one more time. “Nothing else; no one else is out there.”
Rordan’s eyelids fluttered open when she turned. “Jorie.” His voice was raspy.
Theo was sitting on the edge of the bed and had his G-1 out, set for stun, Jorie noticed. Rordan was less than a maxmeter away, on the floor in front of the closet doors.
She pushed aside the fact she’d known him for years and grabbed for her professional personality. It was safer until she knew what in hell’s fire was going on.
“Commander Rordan, what happened?” she asked, then, realizing she spoke in English, repeated herself in Alarsh. “What are you doing here?”
She studied him as she waited for him to answer. He was in the green-and-black Guardian uniform—much as when she’d last seen him, several days ago. His dark hair was still pulled back but he was unshaven, his skin reddened and rough-looking. His uniform, she realized, looked rather worn as well.
Definitely not the usual impeccable Kip Rordan.
He was frowning, switching a glance from her to Theo and back to her again.
“Commander Rordan. Report.”
Rordan levered himself up on his elbows. Theo stood quickly, pistol out. “Don’t move.”
“Tell that danker-brained nil to put the pistol away,” Rordan snarled in Alarsh.
Well, that was definitely the Rordan Jorie knew and remembered. “Not until you answer my question,” she replied. “The Tresh almost killed Tamlynne Herryck. You disappeared. Now you’re back. I’m waiting to hear how and why.”
“Not just the Tresh, Jorie. Devastators. There’s a full contingent of Devastators here,” Rordan said.
“Go on.” She curled her fingers around the Hazer but didn’t raise it. “What happened after Theo and I left in his land vehicle?”
The narrowing of Rordan’s eyes told her he didn’t miss the movement. “Herryck and I were receiving data from the ship. I told her to go back to the Sakanah. She insisted on staying a few sweeps longer. Some project.” He shrugged slightly, as much as his near-prone position would allow. “I went to the galley to get a glass of water when I heard the alarms go off. By the time I got to the main room, the Tresh were everywhere. I fired on two but did little damage. They have some kind of shielding—”
“I know about that,” Jorie said.
“So I backed up into the galley and transmitted a distress call to the ship, alerting them to the situation. I initiated an emergency PMaT for Herryck and myself, the ship acknowledged, then something went wrong.”
“What’s he saying?” Theo asked, when Rordan paused.
Theo couldn’t understand Alarsh. And making Rordan use Vekran would slow them down and open too many chances for misinterpretation. “In a moment,” she told Theo in English. “Continue,” she said to Rordan.
“I felt the PMaT lock on, but I didn’t end up on the ship. I ended up…” He shook his head. “I’m not sure where, exactly. But it’s taken me about four planetary days to walk back here.”
Walk? Jorie’s gaze raked over Rordan again. Hell’s fire. It did look as if he’d been walking for four days.
“I haven’t been able to contact the ship on my scanner,” he continued. “I haven’t been able to get a reading on you until about two sweeps ago. I saw the resonance of Guardian shields. But I couldn’t make voice contact with you through the scanner. I thought it might have been damaged in the aborted PMaT.”
“The ship’s gone,” Jorie said.
“Gone?” Rordan looked genuinely startled.
Jorie nodded. “Relay ’droids, seeker ’droids, all gone. Plus this planet’s full of dead zones.” Any one of those reasons would hamper scanner-to-scanner voice contact. But if Rordan was behind the destruction of the ship, he’d know that.
“Flashed out?”
“I don’t know.”
“And Herryck?”
“Alive, but they put an implant in her. I had to use a local med-tech to remove it. There’s still residual damage.”
“Ass-faced motherless whores!” Rordan sagged back, his eyes closing briefly.
Jorie agreed with his description of the Tresh.
He sat up again, this time completely but slowly, due to Theo’s pistol following his movement. “Tell the dirt-sucker to—”
“Rordan.” Jorie didn’t keep the anger out of her voice.
He pulled his knees up and turned his beautiful unshaven face toward her.
“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” Jorie said. “Then I’m going to brief Sergeant Petrakos on what you’ve told me. Understand we have no proof that what you’ve said is true—”
“Herryck can—”
“Herryck remembers nothing. So what would you do in my place, Commander? Gen-pro regs, now,” she prodded, but her tone was anything but light. “Teammate returns from unauthorized absence after last being seen with enemy agents.” She fixed him with a narrow-eyed gaze.
He nodded. “Teammate is to be treated with all courtesy but assumed to be working with the enemy until facts show otherwise.”
“Then we understand each other.”
“Completely.”
“Then understand this as well: the people of this planet are not now or ever again to be referred to as nils, dirt-suckers, or any other creative disparaging epithet. They have ranks, they have names. You will refer to them with those ranks and names. Or you will find my courtesy toward you to be seriously lacking.”
Jorie strode into the bathroom to retrieve a glass of water, wondering how much of Rordan’s story was true. Wondering how she was going to prove it was—or wasn’t. Any error in judgment here could be fatal.
“Oh, I could definitely tell you if he’s lying. That’s part of what I do as a Homicide detective,” Theo said, half listening to the thrumming of the shower behind him. It was now almost six o’clock in the morning. He and Jorie had agreed letting Rordan get cleaned up didn’t pose any immediate threat. If he tried to escape through the bathroom window, he’d get zapped again.
“But I’d need to speak Alarsh, and I don’t,” Theo continued. “So all I can do if you ask him about that Tresh feeder cup is watch his body language. But I suspect he’s had training just like I have. It’s not a foolproof method.”
Jorie, with a pillow propped up behind her, was leaning back against her side—as Theo already thought of that half of his bed—of the wrought-iron headboard. He sat at her feet, the small G-1 pistol still in his hand, still set for stun.
As was Jorie’s rifle. He noticed that too.
“All Guardians get interrogation training,” Jorie confirmed. “We’ll wait on that, then.”
“Does he have an implant?” Theo asked, wondering what else might affect Rordan’s responses if and when he decided to confront him, for Jorie’s sake.
“None my scanner could find—and, yes, I checked, right after I took his palm print. But as Rordan noted, much of our tech is keyed to relay or booster through either our ship or the ’droids we put in your atmosphere for that purpose. With both of those gone, our range and capabilities are reduced.”
It would be like having a cell phone with no cell-phone towers. That had happened to him on vacation in the Virgin Islands. He understood her frustration.
“So you’re saying he could have an implant and you wouldn’t pick it up.”
“I can’t rule that out.”
“How did he walk right into the house shields if he has a scanner?”
“That’s easier. The scanner verifies that the shields exist but not their perimeters. I use my oc-set for that.” She flipped the band up from around her neck and pushed the eyepiece down.
He’d noticed her doing that, never knew why. “Rordan doesn’t have an oc-set?”
“He owns one, all trackers do.” She pushed the band back down around her neck. “I haven’t seen him wear one since this mission started, no. But he’s also stayed in standard ship uniform, not tracker gear.”
He’d noticed that too. He also knew cops on patrol wore a lot more gear than detectives did. Evidently there were similarities with the Guardians.
“Have you ever heard of a beam-up go wrong and send someone elsewhere on the planet, like he said happened to him?”
She pursed her lips and blew out a small sigh. “Rare, but yes. If Ronna—our PMaT chief—knew the ship was under attack and knew Rordan and Tamlynne were in danger, she could have simply tried for an emergency relocate. If we have several field teams operating on a world, an emergency transport could take an agent from his location back to field base, rather than up to the ship. But there’s no other base here that Ronna could have locked on to. To blindly send him somewhere—it’s horribly risky.”
“Because you don’t know what’s in the spot you’re sending him to,” Theo guessed, hearing Montgomery Scott’s accented voice from various Star Trek episodes giving the warning about materializing inside solid rock.
She nodded.
“So—assuming that’s what happened—why didn’t this Ronna send Tammy?” Theo asked.
“She may have tried—assuming that’s what happened. But if Prow already had a security field around Tamlynne, Ronna wouldn’t have been able to get a lock on her bioresonance.”
The sound of water ceased, the shower door slammed.
“What’s your gut-level feeling?” he asked her, his voice low.
She sighed again. “He still hates you. If he was a Tresh operative trying to ingratiate his way in, that’s not the way to do it. He’d try to befriend you, find out what we were planning.”
“Or he’s been a Tresh operative and part of this zombie-breeding program all along and this is just a continuation of his usual, delightful personality.”
“That would be hugely coincidental. We had no plans to come to your world. But, yes, it’s something I will consider. The sad thing is, if none of this is true, we’re hampering ourselves. Rordan’s experience with reprogramming darts far exceeds mine. He’s also an excellent tracker. I could use his help with this, desperately.”
Theo knew that. He also knew he had to look past his personal dislike of the man and try—for Jorie’s sake, for all their sakes—to figure out if Rordan was telling the truth.
He also knew one more thing: his private time with Jorie was over. Until they knew whose side Rordan was on, one of them would have to be awake and keeping an eye on the man at all times.
The bathroom door opened and Rordan padded out in a pair of Theo’s gray sweatpants and a plain gray T-shirt. His long hair was unbound, hanging wet past his shoulders. He was scrubbing the towel over his face but stopped. Theo saw his eyes shift from Jorie with her rifle to himself with the G-1, sitting rather closely on the bed. Sooner or later—probably sooner—the man was going to figure it out, Theo knew. The only room in the house that was shielded was his bedroom. And there was only one bed in the room.
Rordan said something in Alarsh.
“Vekran,” Jorie told him. “Become used to it. It’s the language of the world where you live.”
“As I learn for four days,” Rordan said gruffly. He wiped the towel over his face one more time, then draped it over one shoulder. “So. I am not yet worthy of trust?”
“There’s a lot at risk here,” Jorie said.
“A long time you know me, Jorie Mikkalah.”
“Yes.”
Rordan said something in Alarsh that sounded unpleasant, then turned away. Jorie’s gaze didn’t waver. Theo could almost sense her anger and disappointment with one more problem she didn’t need right now. He had to remind himself this was her teammate. He had to let her handle Rordan her way.
“You need food,” Jorie said to Rordan, then looked at Theo. “Coffee?”
Theo nodded. “Drop the shield and I’ll start a pot.”
“We’ll all go to the kitchen.” Jorie tapped her scanner. “We all need food. And we need t
o talk.”
“I do not work with Tresh,” Rordan said as Jorie stood, adjusting her rifle.
Theo watched the man’s eyes, watched his expressions, tried to read him as a detective should. Rordan was reacting as most innocent people would when accused. But Theo was also very aware Rordan was not “most people.” He had military training. He was a Guardian. And he was from another galaxy.
But if there was a way to break him down and get at the truth, Theo would find it. He knew they were almost out of time to deal with the zombies. They couldn’t afford any more mistakes now.
24
After a full day—and night—of trying to work around Kip Rordan and watch him at the same time, Jorie knew she had no choice. As much as it made her nervous to do so, she had to trust him. She pulled herself off Theo’s bedroom floor, away from her blinking and humming and uncooperative tech, slipped her feet into the sandals Theo had bought for her, and headed back for the kitchen, where Theo and Rordan were finishing off midmeal—lunch, Theo called it. Probably giving each other a good case of indigestion.
Their mutual dislike was obvious. Worse after Rordan watched her get the into Theo’s bed last night.
She’d “turned grounder.” A derisive term for an agent or tracker—or any spacer, really—who’d chosen to be planet-bound. Dirt-locked. Forgotten what they were and adopted the ways and culture of a nil-tech world. Or worse, taken a grounder lover.
She hadn’t forgotten she was a spacer. She never could—not even clad in the shorts and sweatshirt so indigenous to this locale. But she had taken a grounder lover. And now she was about to turn their only weapon against the zombies and the Tresh over to a man who might be a Tresh agent.
Life just became more blissful from one moment to the next.
She pulled out a chair across from Theo and sat. “I’ve come up against another technical problem,” she said to Theo without any preliminaries. “One I can’t solve alone.”
He’d been leaning back in his chair, sipping that orange fizzy drink he so loved from a metal can. He let the front legs of the chair hit the floor with a thump. That was the only noise in the room. Neither he nor Rordan had bothered exchanging any mealtime pleasantries that she could hear.
The Down Home Zombie Blues Page 33