I was the one who’d chosen up. And he’d complied, somehow hurtling us to safety up through the core’s deep shadows, where Berri’s people would never think to look for us. If they’d seen us jump, if they’d looked anywhere, it would have been down.
Who would have thought to look up? Soul-stealers were mythical. Imaginary.
I struggled to my feet and tried to focus. I grabbed my Fleet-issue personality out of cold storage, slammed it on. Human, Ragkiril, or demon—whatever Sully was was less important at the moment than our survival. Jukors were born and Takas were dying. My fears seemed petty in comparison. “Where are we?” My voice shook but sounded definitely stronger.
Sully rose with me. “Level 13. You felt it would be safer with the shops, people.”
“Did I? What the fuck do I know.” I pushed away from the wall, remembering to holster my Stinger, and stumbled toward the closest exit I could find.
I kept my distance from the man walking alongside me as we threaded our way through stationers coming and going, eating, drinking, and laughing on Level 13’s Red-Sector promenade.
What the hell did they know?
We passed a news kiosk, the ’caster’s bland face following us. There were still no answers concerning the mysterious disks left at the scene of a recent rape and murder.
Something flitted through the edge of my mind. Ren’s voice, through Sully’s link with both of us. A series of thought-pictures skittered by: Berri peppering Verno with questions about Sully, then giving Verno a disk of hymns after a service. Verno innocently loading them into the entertainment system on the Karn while Sully and Ren headed to Moabar. Verno, explaining to Ren. Ren, sending to Sully. Sully’s analysis, back to Ren. The worm program had to have been on those disks and coded to activate once Sully was back on board.
But whether Berri’s actions were to ensure Hayden’s acquisition of the Sullivan fortune or because she—and Hayden—knew Sully was tracking the jukor labs, Verno didn’t know. And Sully could only second-guess. But it seemed likely that both were possible: whatever Hayden wanted to do with the jukors could only be helped by the additional funding the Sullivan fortune could provide.
“Where are they?”
“Two levels up in Yellow.” He scanned the crowd as we walked. I could feel an edginess, a wariness in him. Just as I knew he felt mine. I had no doubt I was wearing fear and anger like a heavy coat around me.
“We meeting with them?” We’d have to backtrack to the main lift bank and then hope it was operative.
“I need to get to a secure terminal first.” He tapped at his jacket pocket. “This goes to Drogue. He knows what to do with it.”
Berri knew we’d try to return to the Boru Karn. Which meant we couldn’t leave Marker that way. Which meant the data had to be sent now. Before Berri found us again.
“Up,” I said, even though the last time I’d said that, my entire life shattered. “We need to go up. Level 2. Do you want to get Ren and Verno first?”
“They’re safe where they are. It helps if they’re watching the corridors.”
Main lifts were functional again. I knew they would be. The lifts were easy to shut down. Equally as easy to start up, if no one’s shooting at you.
I glanced at an M-2 clock as we waited. An hour past the end of the business day. That meant less people to see us, ask questions. That was good.
We squeezed into a lift already crowded with a maintenance tech and a large cleaning unit on a pallet. I hit the button for Level 2 and stepped back into the only available space in the corner. Sully’s hands closed on my arms, hesitantly.
Chasidah. Heat and ice flowed through me, alternating. I shivered, crossed my arms over my chest and tried to dislodge his touch. Tried to keep my mental duro-hards from bursting open, flinging questions, fears, anger. All were more than I could face at the moment.
Level numbers pinged by: 8, 6, 5. The maintenance tech nodded disinterestedly at us as he exited, guiding his pallet into the corridor. No one else got on. The doors slid closed. I stepped out of Sully’s grasp.
But not out of his emotional range. Pain. Pleading. Hope. He sent those to me. Shame followed. Chasi—
“Stop it.” Speaking out loud kept my focus outside my feelings and what he was making me feel. “I can’t deal with that, with you, right now.”
Level 3, 2. The doors opened to an empty corridor. Admin offices had been closed for over an hour. I headed straight for the checkpoint, manned by a security ’droid. It scanned entry badges. I had none, only the emergency access code created over twenty years ago for use by the Admirals’ High Council on Marker. My mother had been part of the tech team and had violated every rule and regulation in making me memorize it. In case anyone ever tries to harm you, she’d said. In case I’m not around to protect you. Go uplevel, get to the people you know will.
I put the code in again and held my breath. The force field hazed, dropped. Praise Amaris. Praise the stars.
And pray like hell Berri or Lazlo didn’t have the same code I did.
33
We moved quickly down a long hallway, then turned left. I passed three doors before I came to the one with a nameplate that read COMMANDER T. BERGREN. I touched the palm pad with another code I knew by heart, stepped in, locking the door as Sully followed. An unexpected sense of relief washed over me. For the first time since we’d left the Karn, I felt safe.
The outer office was dimly lit. There was a long desk to the left and three chairs on the right. Everything was tidied for the night: neat, orderly, deskscreen dark. No sharp-eyed assistant to ask questions. No fellow officers dropping by for a chat who just might recognize Thad’s little sister Chaz and ask more questions. Our timing was almost too good.
Straight ahead were the wide double doors to Thad’s inner office. My code opened those as well.
Sully said nothing, sent nothing that I was aware of. I knew he had to be telling Ren where we were. He had to be formulating plans.
The illuminated display cabinet on Thad’s back wall cast a wide shaft of light across the carpet. The cabinet was crowded with Fleet plaques, award statues, mementos. I headed past it, past the elegant dark blue couch and plush chairs to my right, past the round conference table and hologrid on my left.
I slid into Thad’s high-backed chair and half-swiveled it around. I tabbed up the deskscreen. The light over the desk automatically came on.
Sully handed the datatabs to me.
“Everything goes?” My voice was calm, flat. Captain Bergren in command.
He nodded, saying nothing, sending nothing. Like another time I remembered. Stay out of my goddamned mind, I’d said. He had. He was.
I slotted in the thin tabs and tried to ignore the small tendrils of pain and fear weaving around my heart. Instead, I concentrated on appending the data to a transit file. Then I realized I had no idea of the exact receipt address. “What’s Drogue’s—”
A series of numbers flashed through my mind, staying there as if it were my memory. Not his. So the link wasn’t broken. Just silent, until I needed something.
I keyed in the address. “You want to add a message?” It would take at least five minutes for the three tabs to encode and append.
He nodded. I vacated the chair and headed for a low cabinet by the conference table, knowing it usually held spare power clips that would work in my Stinger. At least, it always had in the past. I might feel safer in my brother’s office, but I knew it was at best temporary. We still had to get off station, out of Marker. Alive.
I tabbed on the conference-table lights, put a fresh clip in my laser pistol, then shoved another in my jacket pocket. Fleet didn’t use Carvers but they did have a similar, high-power laser pistol. Thad had one clip that might work.
It will.
I turned from where I knelt in front of the cabinet. Was he reading resonances or my thoughts at random? I wasn’t sure I wanted the latter.
It’s safer if we keep contact.
Obviously tr
ue when we’d infiltrated the jukor lab, when we were running from Berri and Lazlo. When answers, decisions, information had to be quickly shared. But at the moment we sat in my brother’s office behind two sets of locked doors. I wanted to listen to my own thoughts, to feel my own reactions. Without Sully’s comments, and his pain, wearing at me.
Without him gathering information on me. While I’d never been permitted to gather any about him. Though now I knew why.
I handed him the spare clip. Anger slipped out before I could stop it. “You’re not just a Ragkiril, are you? You should have warned me.”
“I hoped, given enough time, it wouldn’t matter.” His voice was soft.
“Lies are lies, whether they’re said now or ten years from now.”
The computer beeped softly in the silence, segueing data into transmittable code.
“I never lied,” he said finally.
That was true, only because he’d never permitted questions. I turned away, hugged my arms over my chest and went to stare at Thad’s trophies. I tamped down my anger. But the pain, and the fear, refused to go away.
Why were all the handsome ones always such lying bastards?
The click and tap behind me told me Sully worked on his message. Not through a vidlink—too easily intercepted. What Drogue would receive would topple lives. Powerful lives.
Then maybe no more jukors would breed. And no more Takas would die.
And maybe Chaz Bergren would find herself at a stellar helm somewhere, on a freighter that worked the rim, whose owner asked few questions and cared less about documentation. There’d be the peace of jumpspace again. And the ever-present game of hide and seek with rim pirates. Like Sullivan. Pirate. Poet. Smuggler. Mercenary. Monk. Ragkiril. And … ?
I broke the silence with a question. If he didn’t want to answer, fine. But no one was going to stop me from asking them anymore. “Does Drogue know what you are?”
Sully took his fingers from the keypads. “To him, I’m just a mercenary with a conscience. In a way, my occupation was his idea.”
“Drogue?”
“It was the Englarians who showed me how little the Empire did for those who weren’t in their favor. Takas. Stolorths. A variety of colonies on the rim, where people routinely died of diseases cured a hundred years ago. It felt wrong for me to wear the robe, knowing what I am. But it wasn’t wrong to continue to help the forgotten, the outcasts. Clinics and orphanages need funds to survive.”
Ren had said the reasons behind Sully’s piracy would surprise me. In spite of my anger at Sully’s deception, he was right.
“Your family’s money couldn’t have accomplished the same goals legally?”
“I had no reason to think my father would be charitable.”
The deskscreen flashed. Data encoded and ready to transmit.
“Will you go back to doing that, when this is finished?”
“When this is finished, Hayden won’t be in control of the Sullivan moneys. I may not be the preferred heir, but I am the legal one.”
I leaned against the cabinet as the ramifications sunk in. This was more than Takas and jukors. This was a wealth of almost unimaginable proportions. Gabriel Ross Sullivan would shortly become a very sought-after, very influential man.
Unless those seeking his influence learned he was a Ragkiril with the powers of a mythical demon. That was more than sufficient reason to hide behind lies. To have a Stolorth friend to take the blame, or credit, for what he did. Or maybe it wasn’t just friendship. Maybe Ren saw the numbers too.
He tapped the deskscreen, sent the data. “You have good reason to be angry with me, but you’ve no right to dishonor Ren.”
I straightened abruptly at his retort to my unspoken comments. “Damn you! Stop—”
Sully lunged to his feet, his hand grasping under his jacket for his laser pistol. Fear clamped my heart. For a few tense seconds I thought I’d finally pushed him too far. Then the wide double doors on my right slid sideways. I swiveled, grabbed my Stinger.
“What in hell do you—” Commander Thaddeus Bergren took a half step into his office and stared at the man standing behind his desk. “Sullivan? You’re dead.”
I lowered my laser pistol. “Hello, Thad.”
He jerked his head toward me, his pale blue eyes widening. “Chaz!”
“Sit down.” I motioned toward the conference table and four chairs. And shot a glance at Sully, who still had his Carver trained on my brother.
He lowered it. He’s genuinely glad to see you.
I hoped so. We needed him. I reholstered my laser pistol as I took the chair next to Thad’s. My brother was out of uniform, dressed casually, evidently not returning to his office on business. I recognized the light blue sweater he wore. I’d given it to him for his birthday two years before. “Listen to me. A firm called Crossley Burke is running a gen-lab here on M-2. They’re breeding jukors. We’re not sure why—”
“I know.”
A sick feeling grabbed my stomach. Thad knew. Was there nothing left of my life that wasn’t twisted, full of lies? I looked at my perpetually virtuous older brother with disgust. “How could you get involved with that?”
He knotted his fingers together and stared at me for a moment. I was surprised by how much he resembled our father. Same angular face, pale blue eyes, sandy-red hair, now with glints of silver. But Lars’s face had never showed the kind of turmoil on Thad’s now.
“I got involved with that,” he said quietly, “to keep you alive.”
It took me a few heartbeats to process what he said. “Explain.”
“I found out Burke was doing something with jukors. I began pulling manifests, incomings, thinking it was just some rich man’s whim to increase his personal security force. Stupidly, I confronted him. He warned me that if I acted on it, you’d be the one to suffer. I didn’t believe him. It sounded too implausible. Why would he take such a risk, just because he wanted some guard beasts for his estates?”
Thad shook his head, as if remembering something unpleasant. “Next I know, you’re up on murder charges. Dereliction of duty. I never connected Burke with what happened until I got into a lift and Burke was there, with a bodyguard. A bearded guy with a laser pistol. He stopped the lift, told me you’d get the death sentence. But if I kept quiet, he’d see to it you were sent to Moabar. I knew it was Hell there, but at least you’d be alive. Maybe, in time, I could find a way to get you pardoned.”
I didn’t remember breathing. I didn’t remember not breathing. I stared at him. “But you could’ve gone to the Admirals’ Council. Hell, you could’ve gone to Darius Tage, had him talk to Prew!” If there was a name synonymous in the Empire with unflinching honor and ethics, it was First Barrister Darius Tage.
“Burke owns people high up in the Empire. I don’t know who they are. This project of his isn’t about guard beasts. It’s much bigger, political. I have no proof, but my guess is he’s looking to fund some kind of interquadrant war. I knew if I talked to the wrong person, Burke would come after you. Kill you.”
I barely recognized my strong, always-in-control, authoritative brother. Hayden Burke had him by the one thing I never suspected mattered to Thad. Me.
My brother actually loved me. Pieces of my shattered life started to flow back together. “We need to get out of Marker. We took out the gen-lab on Level 28 an hour ago. We lost Burke’s people in the core, but—”
“The fire alarm? That was you?”
“We used low-impact charges to destroy the lab.”
“Not all of it.” Sully sat on the desk. He picked up the databs. “That proof you didn’t have is in here. It’s on its way to people in Dafir, and on Moabar Station, who can use it. They can’t be bought out or threatened. It may take time, but they will be believed.”
Sully slipped the datatabs back into his jacket. “We need a ship, Commander. The information is safe. We’re not.”
“I can get a maintenance tug to get you back to the terminal.”
; I shook my head. “Burke’s people know about the ship that brought us here. They’ll be watching for it, and us.”
“You have any freighters heading out-system?” Sully asked.
“Not that I have immediate access to. Fleet ships are always going in and out, but I don’t know who I can trust.” Thad’s mouth tightened into an angry line. Angry at the situation but probably angry at himself as well. I don’t know was never one of his favorite expressions.
“Except …” Thad threw me a hesitant glance. “The Morgan Loviti came in a few hours ago.”
The name shot through me with a jolt. “Philip’s here?”
“I’m meeting him for a drink in …” He pulled up his sleeve, uncovering his watch. “I’m late. I stopped to pick up a new ship design I wanted to show him. Didn’t know I’d find you.” His gaze flicked to Sully, then back to me.
Sully holstered his Carver. “What makes you think he’d help us?”
“The Guthries have considerable power, are well-respected. Philip Guthrie is one of the most ethical people I know. His family publicly denounced the jukor project twenty years ago. I have no reason to believe he’s changed either his mind or his morals.”
“You’re willing to risk Chasidah’s life on that?”
“You probably don’t know she was married to him. He still cares for her, very much.”
I touched Thad’s arm. “We ran into Philip about a month ago, in Calth. He could’ve impounded the ship, sent me back to Moabar.” I looked past him, at Sully. “He let us go.”
“I’ll meet him in the bar, talk to him.”
“You can’t guarantee what his intentions will be when he learns Chasidah’s here. What we’ve done.”
“Of course not, but—”
“I can. Bring him here.”
Sully’s unexpected offer surprised me.
My brother’s eyes narrowed. “A man like Philip Guthrie doesn’t respond well to questions at gunpoint, if that’s your plan.”
“If he’s lying, if he’s working for Burke, or if he has any intentions of returning Chasidah to Moabar, I’ll know when I see him.”
Thad frowned. “How—”
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