by Eve Langlais
Jameson turned his gaze to Crank and barked, “How the fuck did those hired killers end up on my ship?”
It took but a nudge from Crank’s wireless transmitter to get the computer screen to switch views. Images of the hull of the vessel appeared. “We found their craft affixed to the underside. It’s equipped with a very high-tech cloaking device. Kept us from spotting it.”
“And what about once they boarded? How is it not a single one of our detection systems noticed a pair of cloaked assassins wandering around? They’re pretty fucking distinctive.” Jameson didn’t hide his anger. As captain, he took an infiltration personally.
“While the others were digging into their bodies looking for answers, I’ve got a team sifting their clothes.” Crank had his best looking for any more toys like the circlets.
“What of our guest?”
“The stowaway did not sustain injury.” He kept his words formal. Professional. Crank resisted the urge to check on her again. She was fine when he looked only moments ago. It didn’t ease the knot in his stomach.
“Was she the target?”
“Probably.” Why else wear something on their heads that emitted a dampening field that rendered even Crank’s nanobots blind.
“Has she said who might be sending assassins after her?” Jameson asked.
“She hasn’t said a fucking thing.” Not even thank you.
“What the hell possessed you to be wandering around with her like that?” Jameson paced.
“Didn’t realize it was a problem. It shouldn’t have been.”
No one expected an attack.
“Who is she really, and what kind of reward is being offered that they’re willing to risk boarding the Moth?” Jameson mused aloud.
It was Einstein, their resident techy person, who answered. “There are no posted rewards currently on the Obsidian Exchange.”
Jameson shook his head. “You wouldn’t find Driadalys assassins on the exchange. They only work for their kind.”
“I’ll question Ghwenn.” Ask her why someone would want to kill her.
Tell me who and I’ll kill them first.
“Find out what she knows. Someone had the balls to invade my ship. I want names. Locations.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if we’d dumped the woman. It’s not too late to do so still.” Not too late for him. He’d not forgotten his vows to Sky.
Yet.
All eyes turned to Crank.
For some reason he shifted, as if uncomfortable. “Why are you all staring at me? It makes the most sense.”
“If you think getting rid of the elf is smartest, then why didn’t you let the assassins have her?”
Because he’d seen red. Because danger appeared, and it was the incident with Sky all over again.
He couldn’t let her die. But he could damned well get rid of her. “If we leave her ass on the next inhabited moon, we won’t have to worry about more hired mercenaries.”
“Only if they get the message in time. Were you planning to advertise the fact she was available for kidnapping?” Natalya’s sarcasm matched her expression. The petite woman in charge of communication had slightly tanned skin and an exotic appearance, the bright mauve of her wide eyes offset by the gleaming blue buzz of her hair. She was also tough as the rivets on the hull.
“We are not ditching her somewhere she’ll be trapped. It was our fault for being too complacent with our security. With the upcoming nuptial trip for our client, it’s best we found out now. Wouldn’t want the bride to be stolen.”
Einstein snorted from her spot. “Steal her how? She’s rather hard to hide if carting her around the halls.” The Farras were a rather large mammalian creature said to resemble the extinct hippopotamus of Earth. Just as vicious when ill-tempered, too. Most people avoided irritating them, because it helped to stay alive.
Jameson didn’t laugh. “The client believes a rival is going to try and stop the marriage from happening.”
“A Farra can’t exactly crawl around the maintenance tunnels on the ship. We’d notice them.”
“A smart intruder will claim they’re with the wedding party. Provide adequate identification and we’ll never know the truth until too late.” Einstein provided a plausible scenario. The darkest version of course.
“We will ensure that the entire wedding party is identified upon boarding,” Damon claimed.
“They won’t allow us to tag them or examine them too closely,” the captain noted. “We will have to be subtle.”
At least they were thinking. Crank tapped his wrist and took a peek at the screen that holographed onto his skin.
Ghwenn sat the same as before. Knees together, hands atop her thighs. Sitting straight, looking at a point left of the camera.
Hadn’t moved at all.
As his finger moved to turn the screen off, there was motion. Ghwenn turned her head and stared right at him.
At least that was how it seemed. Yet she couldn’t know where the camera hid. It was but a pinprick in size. Wicked nanotechnology. Expensive as shit. But the fact that he could run it without wires…
“…don’t you think?”
The silence drew Crank’s attention, and he switched off the camera to find everyone staring at him.
He’d missed something. Probably wouldn’t have cared if he’d heard. So he put on his usual glare and grumped a, “Don’t look at me. Whatever it is you want, I ain’t doing it.”
“You are to question our guest and report what she says.”
“Rather not.” He’d rather stay far, far away from her. The captain had no idea what he asked.
“Didn’t ask if you wanted to.” Jameson played captain in that moment, his gaze flinty and brooking no excuse. “You will speak to her and get some answers.”
Speak? His tongue definitely wanted to get involved. It just might not be forming words.
Striding through the ship, his expression enough to scatter all in his way, Crank found himself twisting the ring on his finger. It had felt loose earlier. Now, he could barely turn it. It tightened like a noose.
A reminder.
You’re married.
Technically a widower.
Who never stopped loving his wife.
Never would.
But Sky was gone and not coming back.
However, Crank was still here. He knew she wouldn’t want him mourning her forever. Yet how to stop the conflict in his heart?
The ensigns outside his door started to salute.
His finger shot out. “Go,” he snapped.
“But—”
“Was I not clear the first time?” Deceptively calm words.
“The captain said—”
Crank grabbed one by the shirt and slammed him on the door. “Dismissed.” He dropped him.
The ensigns scattered.
He paused a moment in front of the door and said, “Open up.” The voice recognition unlocked the portal to his room.
A step over the threshold and he noticed Ghwenn had moved from her place on the bed.
Something hit him hard, and then she tried to run past him.
Seriously? He arm-barred her passage. She bounced off his arm and he let her hit the floor. Then glared at her. “And where do you think you’re going, pixie?”
Chapter 12
Ghwenn didn’t immediately reply, still catching her breath and huffing her irritation through the hair that flopped over her face. Her own fault really. She knew it wouldn’t work the moment she tried.
The man was made of steel. Literally, given his cyborg parts.
He certainly seemed to prove it when the blow to his body did nothing and his arm shot out to block her before she could slip out the door.
As she sat on her haunches, pride and posterior bruised, she watched as freedom slid shut in front of her face.
“I asked where you were going.” His voice emerged low and controlled.
“Somewhere safe.”
He didn’t make any effort to
stifle his sarcasm. “Alone. Unguarded. In the open.”
“Because it’s so much better to be locked in a room, with nothing to defend myself and nowhere to hide.” She raised a valid point and, judging by his tense posture, pricked his pride.
“There is no danger.”
“Says you. For all I know you’re an assassin in disguise.”
At that, he raised a brow. “If I were, you’d already be dead. Which reminds me, don’t hit me again.”
“Why not? I doubt you felt it.” To prove a point, she kicked him. Might as well slam her toes against a rock.
He didn’t even flinch. “I said no hitting.”
Because it amused, she raised her foot and nudged him. On purpose.
He dropped to his haunches, bringing his gaze level with hers. “My patience is not endless.”
“Do the tiny robots controlling you not have a program for regulating it?”
“Does your mouth not possess an off switch?”
The riposte brought a smile. You’d almost think he’d been raised amongst the Driadalys courts. “Tell your ears to filter out my voice if it bothers you. I have no problem at all pretending you’re not there.” Saying that, she drew her legs into a crossed position and opened her hands and held them palms together, eyes closed.
She took in a few deep breaths.
Felt him staring.
Let him. As far as she was concerned, he wasn’t there. Just her and an empty room, his heated gaze on her.
Or so she assumed.
What if he didn’t stare at all? He could have even left. The man moved with the grace of a dancer.
Was she sitting here eyes closed for nothing? The more she wondered, the more the conviction grew. He’d left, and she was sitting like a statue. Looking like an idiot.
Her eyes flew open. She was startled by a pair boring into hers. Without thought, her hand flashed out.
Connected with a crack.
Ghwenn’s mouth rounded in horror. “I thought you left.”
“What did I say about hitting?”
“That you enjoyed it and I should do it more often?” she offered sweetly.
“I said no fucking thing.”
“Are you sure? Because you’re doing everything you can, it seems, to ensure I have no choice.” Now that she’d found an argument, she threw it at him passionately. She scrambled to her feet that she might glare down at him.
“You’re fucking nuts,” he grumbled.
“Is that meant to be a cyborg compliment? On the lines of you’ll be the bolt to my nut?” She peered down at her nether regions then his before meeting his gaze again.
A shocked and smoldering gaze.
“How did you manage to turn that into something sexual?”
Her lip curled. “You’re a male. How did you not?”
“You know, for a minute, sometimes, I think you’re a lady. Then you open your mouth and I realize you’re no better than dock town trash.”
“Funny, I think the same of you, except without the lady part. You’re just a dock rat, through and through.”
Rather than get nasty, he laughed. A rusty sound that boomed out, and while startling, it was contagious, too. She found herself smiling with him.
“You are something else, pixie.”
“If you don’t like it, then let me go.”
“Go where?” He swept an arm. “Middle of some uninhabited galaxy. Not a single atmosphere you can breathe.”
“But we should be arriving in a new star system within the next sleep cycle. There’s a way station and even a vacation moon that you can deposit me on.”
“Say I do, what will you do there? They are small, out-of-the-way locations. Not much traffic or opportunity.” The voice of reason emerged from him and poked holes in her plan.
But that didn’t mean she abandoned it. “I’ll find something.”
“You mean you’ll play your mind games on inhabitants until they are doing your bidding. Gonna make them your slaves.” His lip curled.
“Yes. What else would I do?” she asked in all seriousness.
“How about not use your power against folk because it’s wrong?”
“How is it wrong? And how dare you, of all people, try and guilt me because I have a gift. Know right now, it won’t work.” She shook her head. “I have a skill. A rare one. And I am not apologizing for using it when it comes to protecting myself. Do you apologize every time you hit someone and break their bones?”
He snorted. ‘‘Course not.”
“Yet you have a strength that is more than human. Abilities that are not natural. How come you are allowed to use your gifts and I am not?”
“Because you force people to do things against their will.”
“And you don’t do the same with threats and strength?” She curved her lips. “Because I recall someone forcing me into clothes, tying me to their wrist, and dragging me out to a tavern.”
“That was different,” he mumbled.
“Different how? You used your physical advantage over me to force me to do your bidding.”
“I had orders—”
“I am not condemning you for it,” she interrupted. “You used your gift of strength. As you should. My gift is mental. When I use it, it’s like doing the same thing.”
He gaped at her. “No, it’s not.”
How couldn’t he see they were one and the same? “So you’re going to claim you’re not controlling me right now?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Really?” She gestured this time. “Am I allowed to leave this room?”
“No. But it’s for your own safety,” he hastened to add.
“According to you. Yet, despite that supposed safety, you dragged me forth. Forced me into clothes of your choosing. Tied me. Paraded me like the basest of chattel.”
“It wasn’t like that. I wanted you nearby to keep an eye on you, and the rope was so you wouldn’t escape.”
“I can’t escape you anyhow. You’re immune to my mind tricks as you call them. I am your prisoner. You can do whatever you will with me.”
He could do so many decadent things.
Ghwenn leaned in closer to him. Close enough to see the tic he couldn’t stop. Such an odd mannerism for the cyborg to have.
A good thing he had it, too. With the wall blanketing out his emotions, she couldn’t read him. Couldn’t get the slightest hint of what he felt.
That very tautness, though, told her everything she needed.
She leaned closer. “Want to tie me up again?” Then you can touch me anywhere you like. She pushed the thought at him, and it hit the wall of his mind. Did he even get a hint of what she sent?
“One of these days, your insistence on using your power will get you killed.”
“I am not going to hide what I am.” She refused to hide in fear or shame anymore. Other races had what they called psychics. People versed in mind work. Perhaps she’d go live among them.
“If you don’t hide, then you’ll always be a target.”
“Once upon a time, your kind was targeted, too.” Humanity went on a purge trying to exterminate cyborgs once they realized they couldn’t entirely control the alien nanobots they experimented with.
“Targeting led to killing,” he pointed out.
“No one’s trying to kill you now.”
“It took centuries to reach that point.”
Centuries that decimated a race. The nanobots that could make a cyborg live forever were few now. Ghwenn’s history lessons of alien cultures had taught that, while the humans eventually came around and brokered a treaty with the cyborgs, the nanobots’ ancient enemy—an enemy with no face or name because none were ever captured alive—could not be reasoned with. It was said that, despite the destruction of the Mothership of all ships, some of the enemy still scoured the universe, looking to kill the few nanobots that were left.
“I won’t live under a rock.”
“Then you won’t live long,” was his d
ire prediction.
“Care to wager? Although, I might warn, I hate losing and am not afraid to cheat.”
His lips flattened. “You are the most irritating female.”
“While you are a repressed liar.”
Puzzlement creased his brow. “I don’t lie.”
“You have from the moment we met. You’re not married.” She watched his reaction as she announced it.
Judging by the tic, she’d struck a nerve.
“I am married.”
“Where’s your tattoo?” Because, while the ring was a symbol, the humans, following galactic custom, also got marked. A barbarian ritual branding themselves. But then again, who was to say that the Driadalys way was any better?
“I lost the tattoo in battle. But that changes nothing. I’m married.” He glowered.
“You’re a widower,” she corrected. She’d gleaned that much from the minds in the tavern. The whispers she’d caught told how Abrams was rarely seen outside the engine room since the death of his wife.
He mourned her passing. It had a noble honor that intrigued.
In her world, a death meant a new beginning. A new alliance. There was no real period of grieving.
Whereas Abrams chose to remain alone.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t desire. She’d seen it now too often while he was in her presence to think him chaste. He lusted after Ghwenn, so why did he keep rejecting her? His culture allowed for casual coitus.
She reached up to cup his face, and he flinched.
But she wouldn’t let him turn away. She held his face and stared at him.
“You actually loved your wife.” Something almost unheard of in her world. It did exist, but rarely.
How did it feel? Her fluttery stomach wanted to know.
“I still do love her.” He removed her hands and stifled the spreading heat in her.
Jealousy, hot and vicious, took its place. “She was beautiful.”
“Gorgeous. Smart. Funny.” He named off the martyr’s attributes.
“What am I?” What did he think of her?
Rather than reply, he shot her a look. “Fishing for compliments now, are you, pixie?”