Sully’s went back empty.
Oh, great. I hoped he didn’t share Newlin’s predilection. I needed him sober and functioning tomorrow. It would be difficult enough taking the Meritorious with a blind Stolorth. A blind drunk would make it damned near impossible.
More singing, more chanting, more incense, more honeylace. Three more times we refilled the goblets. Three more times Sully finished not only his but, when we turned back to the table, mine.
“Sullivan!” I hissed when he put down my empty goblet.
“Relax.” Obsidian eyes, half-hooded, glinted.
Oh, great.
But he moved easily, without faltering. Maybe the stuff wasn’t as strong as the honeylace the Takas used. Logically, it shouldn’t be. Drogue and Clement wouldn’t be able to conduct a ceremony totally furred.
Ren and the other acolytes brought the incense lanterns to the platform, positioning them in the center. Gray smoke spiraled upward. One of the acolytes drew a larger flask from a side alcove, while Ren retrieved a basket of small goblets. The Takas and humans filed out of the benches, lined up, hands open expectantly.
Clement filled goblets, Drogue bestowed them along with blessings of the stars, of the hour, for wisdom, for peace …
I suddenly realized I stood alone by the small table. Sully was missing. Then I spotted him at the end of the line, Ren beside him. They took their goblets, drank. I noticed Sully held a third.
The temple emptied out. Sully strode up the short steps, his robe rippling over his body, outlining his wide shoulders, narrow hips. His gaze, shadowed by his hood, was directly on me; his mouth curved slightly in a smile, as if he wanted to grin but knew this wasn’t the time or the place for it.
“Chazzy-girl. Peace, wisdom, and, most of all, love.” He offered me the goblet. “You did fine.”
I took the goblet, but only to put it on the table behind me. “I didn’t sneeze or trip over my robe. I consider that a rousing success.”
His gaze went over my shoulder to the table. “Sacrilege to waste that.”
“I can live with that sin.”
“You’re much too beautiful to be consigned to Hell.” He took the goblet back, drained it. “That makes twice now I’ve saved you from perdition.”
He put the empty goblet on the table, hooked his arm through mine as he moved back. “We’re not needed here any longer.”
Ren, who’d been talking to Drogue, turned as we passed him. Sully put his free hand on Ren’s arm, held his sightless gaze. “All of life’s a risk, isn’t it?” His voice was wistful.
Drogue bowed slightly. “Our prayers and the guidance from the stars go with you. All of you.”
It dawned on me that Sully and Ren were probably as nervous as I was about the Meritorious. About getting off station alive. About evading any pursuit the MOC or the Imperial Fleet might send after us.
That was easy to forget around Sully because he seemed to show only two emotions: confidence, or anger and confidence. Yet he had to know the odds weren’t overwhelmingly in our favor. He’d been in the business, as he called it, a long time.
I let him lead me through the temple’s back doors, past Abbot Eng and his demon, and forgave him his slight indulgence in honeylace.
His fingers slipped through mine as we stepped through the second doorway. The wall clock in the common room glowed 2115. But we didn’t stop there.
We came to the end of the hallway. He turned me away from Ren’s doorway, touched the palm pad for his own, across the way. He held my hand tightly, and for the first time I saw something hesitant in his obsidian gaze, something in the way his lashes lowered quickly, then flicked up. Something in the way he started to speak, his mouth parting, then quickly closing.
Oh, God. The Meritorious wasn’t coming in. It was the only thing I could think of that would make him appear so dismayed, so unsure. He knew what it meant to me. The infallible Sullivan hated failure.
“All of life’s a risk,” he said softly. “I’m about to take a big one.”
He pulled me against him, his arms locking around me. His mouth covered mine, taking in my gasp of surprise. He answered with a kiss I remembered well, a kiss of intense passion, his tongue stroking, probing. His hands splayed on my back, pushing me against the hard planes of his body.
Heat seared, flared through my senses as if I were absorbing it from his touch. For a moment I was lost, breathless, dizzy, as if I’d downed a bottle of honeylace …
Honeylace.
Fool.
I twisted my face away. His lips brushed my neck. “Sullivan. Stop it.” My voice rasped into the folds of his robe.
He stopped, though his arms still held me tightly. I could feel him breathing hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly against my face. I could smell the clean, soapy scent coming off the heat of his skin. I could taste the tingling sweetness of the honeylace from his mouth.
I could ignore the warning sirens screaming in my mind, tell my self-respect to hit a jumpgate, and could very, very easily rip his robe off. With my teeth.
I wanted to. Praise the stars I wanted to. I wanted him. But I couldn’t. I pulled my face out of his chest. And tried not to see the desperate hunger in the depths of his obsidian eyes. A hunger that matched my own. But, I suspected, for different reasons.
“Not this way, Sully,” I told him.
“Why?” His voice was as raspy as mine.
I curled my hands into small fists, drew a deep breath. “Because you’re seriously furred. And I’m”—I let the breath out—“confused.”
Strong fingers stroked my spine. “Maybe I like my women confused.”
His women. There probably was a lengthy list.
I pushed away from him, a wry smile on my lips. “Maybe I just don’t want to be another one of your confused women.”
“Chaz?” He reached for my hand, but I’d already stepped toward Ren’s door.
I hit the palm pad. “Get some sleep, Sullivan. The real show starts tomorrow. Common room, 0600.”
I was still sitting on the edge of my cot, turning my dagger over and over in my hands, when Ren came in an hour later. He tilted his face up in a gesture I recognized as his sensing for a presence. The door closed behind him.
“Hello, Ren.”
He shook his head. “Sully,” he said softly, in a voice that rippled of breezes over a long-forgotten pond, “is very angry with himself.”
I didn’t doubt that. He wasn’t used to failure. Or, I suspected, to a woman turning down a chance—my second chance—to snag a coveted place on the list of his women. Probably very few had.
But all I had left was my self-respect. The Imperial military court had stripped me of everything else. And I’d be damned, just because they’d fucked me over, if that gave everyone else the right to do the same.
I let the dagger wrap around my wrist as I stood. “I’m going to take a shower.” I didn’t want to hear him make excuses for Sully. I didn’t want to hear anything about Sully at all.
He only nodded, began to undo the sash around his robe. “I’ll have tea for you when you come out.”
The kindness, and acceptance, behind Ren’s simple offer made a lump form in my throat. I wondered how I’d ever thought he was innocent. He had a wisdom deeper than those oceans he so treasured, and so missed.
I’d have to find him one. Hell, I was Chasidah Bergren, Court-Martialed Captain. The Best Interfering Bitch in the Universe. If I could hijack a P40 and sabotage the Marker shipyards, I should be able to commandeer an ocean.
And maybe even drown Gabriel Ross Sullivan in it when I got the chance.
8
In the morning I pulled on my fatigue pants and black jacket. Later, I’d add the robe. It would feel bulky but I wouldn’t have to walk far. Just to the lift, then down three levels to Six-Green.
Ren was in the bath when I slipped from his quarters. I headed for the common room, intending to return his gesture of the night before and bring back tea. I knew it was
possible I’d run into Sully. Better to get it over with, face the ghost in his own lair. We had too much to accomplish to let inebriation and hormones become an issue right now. Because that’s all it could be. I’d thought about it all night. Twice he’d kissed me, twice he’d been drunk. Sober, the flamboyant, charming Sullivan wouldn’t even notice someone like me.
Which was probably one reason why I found him so damnably attractive.
He was seated at the table, a steaming mug cupped between his hands. He raised his face when I walked in. He looked like a man who’d done some serious drinking. His dark eyes were shadowed. He’d not shaved. His short, thick hair was tousled.
“Chaz.”
“Sullivan.” I headed for the commissary panel, tabbed in two orders of tea. Leaned against the wall while the unit hummed softly.
Sully had turned in his seat, and watched me. He had on a black jacket, spacer-plain like mine, dark pants. His jacket was open to reveal a black, high-necked shirt underneath.
I damned the fact that he could look so good while looking so bad. “You pick up a confirm on Kingswell’s ETA?” Business, let’s stick to business. It was 0545. Fleet regs would have required the Meritorious to relay her position and speed to ops forty-five minutes ago.
If they were going to be early—or late—we needed to know.
“On schedule.” He propped one arm on the back of his chair.
I took the first mug of tea as it appeared, hit the tab to okay the second. “Kingswell will be early. He doesn’t like the big wide darkness.” There was a lot of nothing between Moabar and the closest station in Dafir.
I grabbed the second tea, walked past his chair.
“Chaz.”
I closed my eyes briefly, then half-turned. The pungent aroma wafting up from the mugs set my stomach to growling. The trepidation in his voice when he said my name shot a small pain through my heart. I knew what was coming. The apology, the disclaimer. Sober, I wasn’t his type. Even though I expected it, it would still hurt to hear it. I opted for the quick and painless route. “I’ve got to get this to Ren while it’s still hot.”
His gaze zigzagged for a moment, as if he were reading lines of data in the air between us. “About last night. I’m sorry.”
I shrugged, careful not to spill the tea. Careful to keep my expression impassive. “You were furred. It makes people do stupid things.”
He stared at me, didn’t say anything.
I was giving him a legitimate out, damn it! Why didn’t he take it? Make it easy, less embarrassing for both of us. The hot mugs began to burn my fingers. I drew a deep breath. “It’s not important.” I held up one mug. “Let me get this to Ren, okay? Then I need an absolute confirm on berth allocation so we can start skewing their dock interfaces.” I backed up toward the door. “And we need to know if a Taka’s assigned to ramp security.”
I was almost into the hallway before he nodded. “Ren will handle that.”
“Fine,” I called out over my shoulder. I juggled both mugs in one hand, hit the palm pad with the other.
Ren was by his bed, straightening the long sleeves of his black thermal shirt. He smiled in recognition when I walked in.
“Got us tea,” I said.
“I can smell it. Many thanks.”
I set his mug down on the small bed table behind him. He wasn’t wearing the light-colored wide-legged pants of an Englarian monk but dark fatigues, similar to my own. I’d never seen him in civilian garb before. His muscular form was even more striking in the tight-fitting shirt and straight pants. Another admittedly handsome male specimen. But he didn’t affect me the way Sully did.
“How’d you know it was me?”
A slight frown. “I know your voice.”
“No. When I walked in. You smiled before I even spoke.” Imperial Fleet ships all had ID scanners over cabin doorways. But even if the temple’s quarters had them, Ren couldn’t see them.
“I know your resonance.”
“You mean, you scan, or read, someone who walks in?”
“No. Reading you empathically is different than seeing your resonance.”
“Explain.”
“An empath sees or senses individuals by the vibrational colors their bodies resonate. Each one is unique. All I need to do is see your pattern, attach your name to it in my mind, and it, to me, is you.”
“A walking rainbow?”
He sighed. “It’s been many years since I’ve seen a rainbow, but yes. Something like that.”
For a moment, the story of Abbott Eng’s soul-stealers flashed into my mind, accompanied by a trickle of unease in my gut. But no, that was wrong. Ren wasn’t sending light or colors to me. He was reading my light, my energy field. It wasn’t at all the same thing. “Can I change my colors? Disguise them, so you wouldn’t know me?”
“Your pattern is your pattern. But it does vary slightly depending on many things, like illness. Or moods.”
“Sadness?” I remembered his questions from the other morning. “Fear?”
“Yes. But your pattern does not tell me your thoughts. Or the reasons for your moods. So it is not intrusive. It still retains the holiness and purity of your mind.” He reached for his tea, unerringly.
“Thermals. You sense or see heat. That’s how you know where the tea is.”
He smiled. “Very good.”
“Then you’re not completely blind. You don’t move around in total blackness. You can see …”
“Indistinct images or forms outlined in colors.” He took another sip.
“Living things and inanimate objects?” Not all objects emitted heat, though most everything contained some form of energy.
“Yes.”
I began to understand. And saw how I’d misinterpreted that for telepathy. He could “see” someone walk in and would nod in greeting just as a sighted person would. “So you can tell how tall I am, for example, compared to—” I waved my hand in the air, not wanting to name the first name that came to my mind.
He did. “Sully. Compared to Sully, I know you are smaller.”
“He was in the common room, when I got the tea.”
“Was he?”
It was a question that wasn’t a question, and that told me Ren knew Sully was there. I wondered if different colors tumbled through my rainbow when I thought about him.
A dangerous man. Dangerous to even think about. I had other problems. “He said you might be able to find out if a striper or a Taka was set for ramp duty for Six-Green Three.”
“Probably a Taka. With Peyhar’s this week, they all reschedule to early duties in order to be able to attend the services at night.”
I finished my tea, tossed the empty mug in the recyc. “I don’t want anyone hurt, if we can help it. Any chance we could get a Taka to look the other way for a while?”
He felt on the bed for his jacket, found it on the second try. I guess jackets didn’t have strong rainbows. “Possible. If not, we could set off some kind of diversion.”
“Good. Let’s run this by Sully. Then I need to get to work on those docking interface programs.”
Sully was coming down the hallway toward us and motioned toward his door. “Clement and Drogue will be in the common room after services this morning. Let’s talk in here.”
Ren touched the glowing palm pad, guided, I understood now, by the unit’s energy. I followed him through, Sully behind me.
“Lights,” Sully said. The room—about half the size of Ren’s quarters—brightened. Sully’s short-barreled Norlack Sniper was on his bed. So were two small laser pistols in shoulder holsters. I took one out, tested its weight in my hand. It fit comfortably in my palm. Fleet-issue Stinger. Modified for slash, like the Norlack. Nice work.
Sully took the laser pistol from my hand and thumbed off the power panel. “Still has a short-range safety setting. I thought you’d prefer to work that way, on station.”
I could feel the heat of his body where he leaned against my arm. His face was tilted toward
mine, his breath ruffling my hair. I couldn’t look at him. Every time I did I felt things I didn’t want to feel. I tried to keep all of them out of my voice when I answered.
“Yeah, I do. I think we all do.” Short-range safety reduced the risk of bystander injuries. Fatalities. Our purpose was to get off station, not massacre people.
I picked up the other laser pistol. It was slightly larger than the Stinger. It took me a moment to place it. With Sully so close to me, my brain and my body didn’t seem to want to think about weapons right now.
“A Carver-12,” I said, when my brain finally kicked in. “Damn.” Very accurate. Very expensive. The elite of high-energy hand weapons. Prew’s personal bodyguards all carried them.
Sully’s hand slid over mine, locking it against the small curved grip. A burst of sweet fire surged unexpectedly through me, made my heart skip a beat, made me catch my breath. Made me realize that Ren had to be seeing fireworks right about now and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Except to damn Sullivan, the handsome bastard.
And to damn Chasidah, the fool denying her fears.
“Mine,” he said softly.
Somehow, I knew he meant more than just the laser pistol.
I raised my face, met his obsidian gaze. Chose my words carefully. “An expensive play toy. It’s different, so people want it. Then they get bored, look for something newer, better. I don’t work that way.”
A slow nod of a face badly in need of a shave. “I don’t either.”
I slipped my hand from under his, picked up the Stinger again. “There’s much to be said for dependability. Reliability. Consistency.” I held it up, as if in inspection. It was plain and functional compared to the sleek Carver. “It’s not fancy. No frills. But it will never, ever let me down.”
He brushed the back of my hand with his fingers. “Neither will I,” he said softly, but without hesitation. “If you believe nothing else, Chasidah, believe that.”
I damned myself for wanting to believe him, for needing to believe him. For even wondering if maybe those kisses in Port Chalo, and the one last night, meant more than just inebriation and hormones.
But this wasn’t the time to think of such things. I grabbed the shoulder holster, then turned and caught a wide grin on Ren’s face. And wondered what colors I could send through my body that would tell him, Oh, shut up.
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