Dax lifted a brow. “I think you’re forgetting something.”
He reached out to touch the gold collar that banded her neck. She recoiled; he wasn’t sure if it was from the reminder of her status, or the fact that he’d inadvertently brushed her skin with the backs of his fingers.
“No,” he said, “I think this will likely get you caught long before any of us.”
“I’ll take my chances. Just give me the controller.”
“I think not.”
“Damn you to Hades,” she ground out.
After the last six years, Hades would be an improvement, Dax thought. But he merely shrugged.
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “I don’t want you left here to advertise my presence. You’ll be coming with us.”
“But they’ll think I helped you—”
“You should have thought of that before you opened your mouth back there.” He started forward, leaving Roxton to chivy along their reluctant company. Then he stopped, turning back to look at her pityingly. “Did you really think you could bargain with the Coalition and win? That they would free you once you’d given us away?”
The Arellian’s head came up sharply, and Dax knew he’d struck a nerve.
“If you believed that, then you belonged in that cell. Anyone who trusts the Coalition is a fool.”
The woman’s proud posture failed her; she slumped as if in exhaustion. She shifted her stance to take the weight off her weaker leg, a favoring she had denied herself until now, forcing herself to keep up with them despite the stiffness of the wounded leg. Defeat, Dax thought, sat no better on her than the collar of subjugation. He felt a pang of regret that he had done that to her. He took no pleasure in seeing spirit crushed. If she’d been in Coalition hands for any length of time, surely she had already suffered enough.
Without another word he bent and tore a wide strip of cloth from the bottom of his cloak. He straightened and handed it to her.
“Wrap it around your neck,” he said quietly. “It will cover the collar.”
She hesitated, looking at him suspiciously, then took it. She wound it around her throat until the attention-drawing golden band was hidden. It made little difference that he could see; she looked every inch the slave, now.
“What shall we call you?” he asked, avoiding asking who she was; it was an ill-advised question in his world.
“I . . . Califa. Just Califa.”
Her voice sounded as defeated as she looked. Perhaps that burst of spirit had been momentary, induced by the chance for escape. Or perhaps it had been a flash of what she had been before being captured and caged like an animal. Whatever the case, the sound of her now brought the pang he’d felt earlier back even stronger.
“Named after a Triotian legend?” He made his voice light with an effort as he said the rarely spoken words.
She lifted her gaze to his face then. The pale blue eyes, so icy before, had gone flat, hollow. “My mother,” she said slowly, “was an even bigger fool than I.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so said nothing. And when they began to walk again, she followed without a word. Like, he thought, a well-trained slave. The thought made his stomach churn. He wondered how many of the prisoners in those cells had a collar in their future. He hoped the Carelian found the door codes soon.
“WELCOME BACK, SIR!”
Dax stepped out of the small craft, checked that the shuttle bay door had closed and locked behind them, then nodded to Larcos, the tall, lanky man who served as the Evening Star’s engineer in flight, parts scavenger when aground, and as the most ingenious inventor Dax had ever seen all the time.
“Brought the little rapscallion back, did you?” Larcos asked, grinning at Rina.
“Against my better judgment, yes,” Dax returned dryly. He felt the Evening Star begin to move, following the orders he’d given from the shuttle before they’d docked: get them out of this sector, and fast.
“Eos,” Rina said, a distinct note of disgruntlement in her voice. “It was just a little game of chaser. How was I supposed to know the mark was a Coalition Officer?”
Dax whirled on the girl. “Just a little game? You could have gotten all of us killed. Risking your own life is one thing, but did you really want Roxton to die for you?”
The girl paled. Dax knew it was a harsh blow; Roxton was one of the few men Rina trusted. She’d seen past his gruff exterior and gone straight for his heart, and the old man had treated her like a daughter since the day Dax had brought her aboard three years ago, a shaking, frightened child who’d witnessed horrors no child should ever see.
“I didn’t mean—”
Dax cut her off. “You never do. If you want to rig a game, that’s your business. But getting caught, for God’s sake, at something you’ve been doing for years!”
“I was distracted,” Rina protested. “That officer was talking about how he was going to be the one to capture you, take your head, and present it to General Corling on a pikestaff—”
Rina broke off as Dax went utterly still. He thought he heard a smothered sound from, oddly, the Arellian, but he didn’t look at her.
The name of the man who had destroyed Trios was never mentioned aboard the Evening Star, by anyone, let alone by Rina, who had more reason than most to abhor the man who had wiped out her world and her people. It had been an unspoken rule for so long that most of the crew had forgotten that it had begun long before Dax had brought the young Triotian aboard, and attributed the ban to her presence.
“I’m sorry,” Rina whispered. “It just slipped out, I—”
“Never mind.” His voice was low, flat, and much harsher than when he’d been lecturing his young navigator. He looked at Califa. “Take our . . . guest. Clean her up, and find her something”—his nose curled expressively—“else to wear.”
None of the spirit he’d hoped for—he wasn’t sure why—flashed in the Arellian. But Rina was quick to yelp, “But I’m needed on the bridge—”
“I think I can manage this time without your help.”
Rina glared at him. “Is this my punishment? Playing maid to a slave?”
Dax’s eyes narrowed. “If you hadn’t earned it before, you just did.”
The girl flushed. “I didn’t mean that,” she said, sounding chagrined. “Not that way. It’s just—”
“What it is,” Dax said, his tone severe, “is time for you to learn how to think before you speak. As you should have in that cell.”
Looking chastened, Rina nodded quietly. Cheeks flaming now, she led the unprotesting Califa away.
When they’d gone, Dax let out a long breath; he felt exhausted. He felt someone’s gaze, and looked up to find Roxton grinning at him.
“Easy to humble them when they think the universe of you, like she does,” the old man said.
“She doesn’t,” Dax corrected. “She just knows she was wrong. Tell me, old man,” he added ruefully, “why in Hades do people have children?”
The grizzled first mate’s smile faded. He tugged at his beard. When he spoke at last, there was no trace of humor in his voice.
“Hoping for one like you, I suppose.”
On the last word, the first mate turned on his heel and strode out of the shuttle bay. Dax gaped after him. Roxton was as stingy with praise as Ansul, his old tutor had been. He forced his mind away from those memories; Ansul, like all others from his past, was dead, long dead.
That must be it, he thought. The old man must have really feared him dead in those moments before he’d come down the cliff, to shake that kind of compliment out of him. And how like Roxton to fire this salvo, and then retreat before Dax could react. Before he could tell the old man he was crazy, that no parent anywhere would want a son like him. And that Rina, of all people, couldn’t possibly think the universe of him.
Because Rina, alone of those aboard the Evening Star, knew the ugly truth about him.
“Sir? Will you be going to the bridge now?”
Yanked out of his grim reverie by the words, Dax looked up to see Larcos standing in the doorway of the shuttle bay. Where, Dax realized suddenly, he’d been standing for some time, waiting.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Let me get out of this thing.”
He shrugged off the heavy, enveloping cloak, tossed it over his shoulder, and then strode past Larcos into the companionway.
The Evening Star was a brigantine class ship, built as a light cargo carrier by the Clarion Starworks. She had been built for maximum capacity and speed; Dax had made some renovations to up the capacity, then handed her over to Larcos, who had turned her into the fastest thing in five sectors. Able to run, thanks to some computer adjustments Dax had made, with a crew of twenty rather than the usually requisite fifty, she was the perfect ship for his purposes.
Not bad, Dax thought as he came onto the bridge, for a ship won on a role of the dice.
He stopped for a moment to replace the flashbow in its case. It was left unsecured; everyone aboard knew it would do no good to take it; only Dax could fire it. He tossed the cloak over the back of the command chair, and asked for a position report from the navigational computer. The report came back instantly, but no faster than Rina could do it. And without her usual flair.
“Looks like a clean getaway, sir,” Larcos said. “Easy, with us parked on the dark side, away from the checkpoints.”
“We nearly didn’t make it,” Dax said with a grin at the engineer. “Shuttle came in on vapor, after all that low level flying to get out of range of their sensors.”
Larcos frowned, his brows lowering on his long, thin forehead. “Did it malfunction? You should have had exactly enough fuel.”
Dax’s grin widened. He’d known that engineer’s brain would immediately take over. “Relax, Larc. You figured perfectly. Don’t forget, we had some unexpected extra weight. There may be only a hundred and twenty pounds or so of her, but it made a difference.”
The engineer’s brow cleared. “Of course. I should have made allowances.”
“It was already fueled to the maximum,” Dax assured Larcos, beginning to wish he hadn’t tried to tease him; the man had absolutely no sense of humor about his precious equipment. Which, Dax reminded himself, has saved your ass more times than you can count.
“I could have rigged something, temporarily, to—”
“Cease and desist,” Dax ordered with a laugh. “We made it. Let’s just concentrate on making sure nobody’s on our tail, all right?”
“They’re probably still trying to figure out that hole in the wall,” Roxton put in with a grin. “I’ll never forget the look of them two, flapping down that cliff like a pair of crazed rockfowl. ‘Course you weren’t exactly grace itself after you ran out of—”
“Dax!”
Rina’s shout came across the ship’s comlink with no lessening of its fervor. Dax spun back to the command chair and hit the button.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s gone crazy!”
“What?”
“We were just walking along and all of a sudden she went demented on me.”
Dax saw Roxton tense, and waved the older man back. “Did she hurt you?”
“Yes—no, not really.” Rina sounded confused. “She just stopped and refused to move. When I tried to grab her she did . . . something. It didn’t really hurt, but—”
“Where are you?”
“On the gangway from the sub-one deck.”
“On my way. Stay there.” He raised his voice. “Califa, you hurt her and I’ll sell you to the lowest bidder.”
He snapped off the comlink. It was a bluff, but the Arellian didn’t know he’d sell himself before another human being, such was his distaste for the whole system of enslavement. He just hoped the threat would hold her long enough for him to get there.
He grabbed his hand communicator, motioned to Roxton to follow him, and headed off the bridge at a run. Once clear of the bridge, he activated the small device.
“Nelcar! Meet me on the sub-one deck gangway. Bring something—we may have to sedate an Arellian.”
“Yes, sir.”
The snappy reply was a holdover from the young man’s days serving as medical officer aboard a Clarion transport, about the same time the Evening Star had been built on the industrious planet. But Nelcar and his ship had fallen to the Coalition just as his home world had, and the bloody process had cost Nelcar an eye, making him worse than useless to his conquerors. They had given him the choice of immediate execution or slave labor, and sent him off to die a slow death in a labor camp.
It was there Dax had found him and, despite the campmaster’s incredulity, had paid enough for the man to look the other way as he led the gaunt, half-blind young man out of Hades. He’d never regretted it.
Except when Nelcar’s deference brought back memories Dax would rather keep buried. And buried deep.
When they reached the gangway, Dax slowed to a walk. The woman he knew only as Califa was leaning against the bulkhead, nonthreateningly, submissively slavelike, yet radiating a stubborn determination that reminded him of the fire he’d seen in her in the prison. For a reason he didn’t understand, since it was clear it meant nothing but trouble for him, he was glad to see it again.
Rina stood to one side, watching the Arellian warily. “It’s not my fault, Dax, really, we were just walking—”
“She speaks the truth,” Califa agreed. “She did nothing but try to follow your orders.”
Dax eyed her, one dark brow raised. “But?”
“I can go no further.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
She crossed her arms across her chest, saying nothing. Dax noticed a faint sheen of sweat on her brow and upper lip, as if she were under great strain. Yet she would not speak. He smothered an exasperated sigh; females, he thought.
“You began willingly enough,” he pointed out.
“I can go no further,” she repeated.
Dax’s temper, always on a tight rein, snapped. “I should just dump you right back where I found you!”
“You cannot do that without risk to yourself.”
“It might be worth it to get you out of my way.”
“I can go no further.”
Dax swore. Nelcar joined them then, a boyish-looking young man on whom the eye patch he wore jarred. “Will you be needing this, sir?” he asked, gesturing with the medicator he’d prepared to Dax’s order.
“So it seems,” Dax said with a grimace. “Looks like we’ll have to carry her—”
“No!”
For the first time, Dax saw real fear in Califa’s eyes. Even when she had seemed beaten, defeated, there had been no fear. To see it now struck a deep, hidden chord in him. A woman afraid stirred up hideous thoughts, images that haunted his dreams far too often.
He forced his voice to steadiness. “Give me another choice.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Believe me, woman, I’ve been downwind, and you need a good soaking.”
She lowered her eyes. Had he embarrassed her? It didn’t seem possible, not the woman who had virtually forced him into helping her make her escape. Or had that woman been born only of desperation? Was this, the compliant slave, all that was really left?
“I know,” she said, so low only he was close enough to hear it, “but I—”
“—can go no further. So you’ve said. Why?” he asked again, this time in the voice of the commander, a voice he used rarely but to great effect.
Califa looked around a bit wildly, then turned her gaze back to him. “I . . . I’ll tell you. But only you.”
Roxton protested immediately. “Don’t do it, Cap’n. We don’t know who she is, or why she was in that stinking place. Could be she’s a murderer, or worse.”
“Puts her right on the level of the Coalition’s best, then, doesn’t it?” Dax remarked. “I think I’ll be safe enough.”
“Dax, no,” Rina put in. “She did something, pushed right here”—she gestured at her neck—“and I couldn’t move.”
Dax’s brows shot up once more. “The Daxelian clamp hold? This becomes even more interesting.” He looked at the others. “Go.” When they protested, he added, “I’ll yell if I need help.”
“By then it may be too late,” Roxton grumbled.
“Then you’ll own the ship at last, won’t you, my friend?”
When they realized he was serious, they reluctantly left. Dax turned back to Califa. She was back in nearly the same position she’d been in when he’d arrived, but he got the impression that this time she was leaning against the wall for its support, not as a statement of her unconcern.
She closed her eyes, and Dax could have sworn she suppressed a shudder. Was he so frightening, then? Or was it merely helplessness that made her shake? He had a feeling it was an emotion foreign to her. Had they all felt so helpless—his mother, his sister, all the women he’d known—when the end had come?
He recoiled from that line of thought as a muckrat dodges the kick aimed at its head. Don’t think of those women—think of this one, he ordered himself. You can do nothing for them, so deal with this one; she is the problem now. How long had she been a slave? What had she been before? Who was the woman he’d seen only glimpses of—tough, reckless, and brave to the point of foolhardiness?
“Well?” he said, folding his arms across his chest in an action that mimicked her own.
“I . . . can’t go any further.” She held up a hand at the look he gave her at the repetition yet again of that phrase. “Because of this,” she said, gesturing at her throat, at the strip of his cloak that wound around it.
Dax’s brows furrowed in puzzlement. In response she tugged the cloth free to reveal the collar.
“The yellow light is glowing,” he said, certain it hadn’t been that way before.
The Skypirate Page 3