by White, Gwynn
She didn’t have three weeks. From what little Finn had told her, one thing was clear. She had to be there in a week.
Only one, real option presented itself. Hale Reeve. He said he was headed to the Qo System, so at least she wouldn’t have to ask for a special favor.
There were two other long haulers headed to the Qo System. She’d had a fight with one captain where she’d broken his collar bone, and she refused to ride with the other due to the sketchiness of the crew. They were downright sleazy.
She sent Hale a message from Ghost Star, and then walked along the cargo strip toward his ship, ignoring the hustle and bustle and the view of Kalamatra from the outer ring.
The Allorian was the first reason she’d come to respect Hale as much as she did. He kept her in good order but left all the scars to be seen. A lot of captains slapped paint over any damage to make them look shiny and new. Not Hale. He let the Allorian show her grit, daring others to survive worse.
Hale Reeve stood just inside the rear cargo door with a frown. “I thought I’d seen the last of you for at least a week.”
“Something came up, and I need a ride to Set’ar.” Set’ar was the push station on the outer ring of the Qo System. The last port along the jump lane.
He pursed his lips, the scar on his upper lip puckering. He shoved his thumbs in his belt loops and stared at her. “Not ex-military stuff, is it?”
Instead of his usually jovial tone, Hale sounded downright pissed. What the hell could have happened in the few hours since he’d last seen her? “What’s going on?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but turned and led the way through his ship.
They walked under the metal grate walkways suspended overhead, and into a dark hallway she’d never been in before which ended abruptly at a door.
Hale pushed it open and stepped down into utilitarian quarters. Stark walls refracted the greenish yellow light around the room. Dark enough to sleep, bright enough to read by. Hale’s quarters were simple at best.
The door whooshed closed behind her. The bed hadn’t been stowed away and was in a state of disarray as if someone had just climbed out of it. The sink and the lavatory were both out as well. She preferred to keep things tidy.
What had her on edge was that he’d never brought her to his quarters before. Where he slept. Was he looking to negotiate a different kind of agreement between them?
“What’s going on, Hale?”
He glanced at her, pushed a button to stow the bed and another to replace it with a desk. It unfolded from the wall and hadn’t even settled into place when he pulled a vidtablet from the desk’s surface.
She narrowed her eyes at him. This couldn’t be good.
He raised his eyebrows, gave her a sideways nod, and handed it to her.
A picture of her from her time on Terra Qar glowed back up at her. Her dark hair was swept up and curled, her eyeliner thick and dark to highlight the paler flecks of brown in her green eyes. A white, heavily beaded scarf draped lightly over her head. It was her, the last time she had been on Terra Qar.
And the words in bold, “Reward: 100,000 Tarn for Kadira Saqqaf’s safe return, payable by Madame Ajian Memta,” glowed red below.
Well, it seemed like her arrival to Terra Qar would be exactly like what she’d been dreading, despite Finn’s claim to have smoothed the way. She’d left two years ago so why would Madame Memta put out a reward bounty for Kadira now? She’d assumed it after the original Kadira Saqqaf’s death. The details surrounding it had never been released and remained hidden thanks to Syndicate influence. She’d been able to slip in as the girl without notice as no one in the city knew the original enigmatic Kadira, she’d been a homebody at best. A recluse was probably more accurate.
Madame Memta knew—or had to know—that Keva wasn’t who she claimed. That much had become painfully clear during their interactions last time. So, what was this?
A trap.
Damn. It didn’t matter, though. It couldn’t. She needed to get to the city of Q’ian’Set on Terra Qar and being Kadira Saqqaf was the only way she could do that. She knew her mission demanded it. She just needed the time to decode the rest of the message and find out what she was getting herself into. Fighting with Hale was not helping things.
“Do you want to tell me what the hell you’re getting me mixed up in?” Hale folded his arms over his chest. “Or do I just turn you in and get me a hefty reward?”
Hale Reeve had come to mean many things, but as much as she might like him personally, a trusted confidant wasn’t one of them. He tended to be irrational, spontaneous and hadn’t proven to be someone she could count on in a crunch.
But he wasn’t stupid either. As a spacer, Keva doubted he’d ever actually met an Elite. The two classes of people might as well exist in different universes for all general society cared. He wouldn’t know how an Elite was supposed to look or act beyond rumors and holoshows.
There were, however, certain things he would know. Like that they lived an easier life, one available for purchase—for the right price. Their DNA would be modified while inside the womb to prohibit certain personality traits and congenital disabilities. They were considered more attractive, lived longer, and healed faster. That same DNA guaranteed they didn’t contract many diseases thanks to an ultra-aggressive immune system.
Those were all things she possessed as well, but due to the military, not social status. Still, she looked like an Elite with her pretty, perfect face. She had the same longevity as a standard Elite and had an even better ability to heal. But an Elite couldn’t be in the military. The contradiction already indicted her, so what could she tell Hale?
“So,” he said as the silence continued, “are you going to tell me why I shouldn’t turn you in?”
What was the best way to handle Hale? The question didn’t even bear asking. She needed to deal with him as straight as her cover would allow. “The woman who sent this wants me dead.”
“Dead? Warrant says alive.”
“Trust me.” Keva sighed, not having to fake her emotions. “That was for appearances only.”
Hale crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “There’re a lot of people who want you dead, Keves.”
Irritating man. It was true, though. Through the three years she’d been out of the military, the list had only gotten longer. “Yes, but with spacers, I can defend myself.”
“And you can’t with her, why?”
Because the world of the Elite played by a different set of rules. “They—we…it’s hard to explain.”
“You mean, hard to explain to someone as low birth as me.” His eyes pinched with wounded pride.
He didn’t need to take it so personally. This was her life they were discussing. “No. It’s difficult to explain regardless of your birth. Not everything is diamonds and pearls for the Elite.”
“Start with why you’d want to leave that koosh life to live like a small-time, barely above board hauler.” He craned his head forward. “With military experience.”
That would be a little harder. The first, she could answer. All she had to do was give him the answers of her cover. “Ajian Memta issued a contract of marriage to settle my family’s debt.”
He scratched his cheek as he thought about that. “They still do that?”
“In the Elite, yes.”
“That’s archaic. Was he fat? Ugly? I thought all those Elite bastards were supposed to be dashingly handsome. Was he old?”
“Abusive, homicidal. A history of killing his wives.” She propped her hip against the sink that had a scum ring so thick it looked like it might be alive. “He’d already killed eight of his other wives. The arrangement was a death sentence.”
“You think he’d have killed you?” He lowered his head and raised an eyebrow. “You.”
“No.” And that had been the problem. If she’d stayed, she would have killed him, and then everyone would have known she was different because no Elite woman would be tra
ined to slice someone up the way she had been. She may have looked like an Elite, aged like an Elite, healed like an Elite, but her ability to execute someone with precision and without passion plus the secondary set of genetic marketers labeling her as military would make her subterfuge obvious. They would know she was an engineered human from the military and, with a little digging, would discover she had been spaced for disobedience.
Hale stared at her through the silence. Finally, he shook his head. “That’s all you’re going to tell me.”
It was all she could tell him without risking both their lives. “Yes.”
He drummed his fingers against his arm. “So, we’re pretending I believe you’re Elite.”
“For now,” she whispered, hoping he would understand, knowing he wouldn’t. “Yes.”
“Fine.”
She breathed a little easier even though she knew he wasn’t okay with that.
“How could that woman just marry you off?”
That was one of the downsides to this identity. “She owns controlling interest in my father’s debt. Without some way to pay her, or agreeing to sell my real estate, she has the right to demand payment in the only currency left, engagement negotiations.”
He studied her for a long moment, then frowned. “So, basically, she owns you.”
“No one owns me,” she growled despite the attempt to remember Elite mannerisms. “But that’s one way to look at it.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She ground her teeth, pressing her fingertips deep into her folded arms to restrain her growing frustration and the feeling of being trapped.
She’d been thrown out into space with nothing more to protect her from death than a tiny space suit serving as her prison cell. She’d only been out there for a few hours. Maybe. Time didn’t flow the same when you were stuck out in space.
But it had been long enough.
This situation? It felt… like that.
“Why are you going back?”
It had better be for a damned good reason. “When I left, I traded my best friend’s life for mine.” Spacers had a code of honor, and one of the things you never did was to leave a companion behind.
He bit his lips and tipped his head, studying her.
“She took my place in the marriage contract and was murdered.”
“Explains a lot.” He gestured to the rest of the room. “You’re going back for justice.”
That was a good excuse and one that didn’t reveal her real mission. She shrugged her shoulders.
“So, Madame Memta married your friend off to that murdering scumbag? To what? Get back at you?”
“Probably,” she muttered. “I don’t know. She had a contract to fill that would bring in a lot of Tarn. She hated me, so this way she got the Tarn and hurt me in the same stroke. It’s a good deal if you look at it without emotion.”
He jutted his chin to the side, taking a moment before speaking. “It worked. Didn’t it?”
She paused. That life had been a lie. But the lessons she’d learned hadn’t been. “Yeah. It did.”
“So, if your friend’s dead what are you planning to do now?”
She straightened, trying to shake off that trapped feeling. “His brother is about to marry his eighth wife. I’m just going down there to make sure she doesn’t end up dead.”
Hale narrowed his eyes. “How are you going to do that? Follow her around for the rest of her life? Kill him?”
She met his gaze and flattened her expression. “No.”
He waited for her to elaborate.
She didn’t have anything else to tell him. No more good lies. No more partial truths.
He puffed his cheeks and expelled a breath, running a hand through his short-cropped curly hair, and pushed off the wall. “Okay. Fine. You can tuck in close when we push through the ship lanes.”
“Thanks.” A feather of relief threaded through her.
“And I’ll take the usual fare in Tarn for the trip out.” He moved toward her.
She stayed her ground as she stood between him and the door. “Again, thanks.”
He stopped in front of her.
He waited for her to look up at him and held her gaze with his startling amber eyes.
How had she never realized what color his eyes were before? Likely because she’d looked this close. The off-color lighting too. Maybe.
“Here’s the deal, Princess.”
She wasn’t a princess and found herself irritated by the term. But she choked down her desire to punch him in the throat. It was going to take a little time to get back into character as an Elite.
He smirked as if seeing it irked her. “You’re going to get yourself into trouble—”
That… was likely.
“—and I’m going to be there to bail you out of trouble—”
Not a fantastic proposition.
“—and when I do…” His breathing evened. His face grew serious as something shifted in his eyes. It was as if this was the first time she’d seen the real Hale Reeve.
She couldn’t put a name to what had changed. It stirred a visceral reaction from her; fear and anticipation at the same time.
He lowered his head and murmured, “You will owe me.”
“Let’s put a price to it now,” she said just as quietly. She turned her head, her lips close to his. “So there’s no confusion later.”
He smirked, his breath fresh like peppermint as it drifted across her lips. “You really don’t like owing anyone, do you?”
“Nope. So, how about you name your price now?”
His gaze danced across hers. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Her fear subsided as the low tone of his voice stirred up wanton feelings from the pit of her stomach. Oh, she knew what he wanted all right. She closed the gap between them, placing one finger on his chest. “If you want sex, say it out loud like you’ve got a pair, but understand something. If I want it, I take it.”
His lips teased hers.
She took a step back, her lip curled in disgust. “I don’t barter it for trade.” She turned for the door. “If you’re there when I need you, great. But before we get to Set’ar Station, you let me know what your price is. In Tarn.”
“Or what, Princess?”
Keva opened the door and looked over her shoulder. “Or I’ll find someone with a price I’m willing to pay.”
4
In the week it took them to get to Set’ar Station, Keva finished decoding the short message and made her plans to regain entry to Terra Qar. The process was easy enough, she inserted the data disc into the transmitter in her arm and let the chip embedded in her brain run the decryption code using her DNA. The final message transmitted to her just like one of the messages from ILO.
She was being sent to The Qo System. The Elite’s paradise. No one—and Keva did mean no one—was allowed past Set’ar Jump Station who wasn’t Elite. The servants who originally traveled with the first Elite weren’t allowed reentry into the system if they chose to leave. Leaving wasn’t the issue. No one regulated that.
But entry? If you didn’t pass the scans, or if you attempted to forgo them, you were shot down, or your ship was disabled while entering atmo. Neither were pleasant sights.
The data Finn had provided contained very little in terms of mission parameters. She was to get in using her old identity, find out everything she could about a bioweapon called Batch D-65, and get out. The only thing the Syndicate seemed to know for sure was that it presented an extinction level danger to the spacers and terrans. A fucking apocalypse in the hands of the Elite. Great.
The Syndicate didn’t know where it was being manufactured, where or when testing would occur, or how close it was to completion, which made her mission nearly impossible except they did know one person who might provide them with information.
Wilmur Zervek.
The brother of Sexton Zervek, her fiancé from two years ago who killed her friend, Odelle Pappas.
Could the
research she’d been sent to uncover previously be tied to Batch D-65? It felt almost like her involvement was fated. Wilmur was Sexton’s younger brother, and everything circled back around again, reminding her of her failed mission.
She had the beginnings of a plan to get to Wilmur, and it involved Ajian Memta. There was no way around the woman. As soon as Keva checked in at Set’ar Station, Madame Memta’s warrant would trigger an alert of Kadira’s arrival, and she would likely have her escorted to confinement.
All Keva needed to do was to talk Madame Memta into realizing that helping Keva get to Wilmur provided benefits to them both. But to do that, Keva needed data on what approach would work best. She spent the week aboard Ghost Star, tucked to The Allorian, their shared hatch closed. She combed through information from Terra Qar, which didn't amount to much. As “a member” of the Elite society, Keva knew a few back channels to get more news, but even those channels proved more than a little dry.
Something big was going on. The Zerveks weren’t usually interested in ceremony, especially wedding ceremonies, as all four of the brothers tended to murder their wives anyway. Everyone knew it. No one did anything about it.
However, a big celebration had been planned for Wilmur’s eighth wedding. Elite nobles from all over the Qo System were flying in for it.
What was the big deal? He hadn’t had this big of a show for his other seven.
And, as if fate hadn’t dealt Keva enough, his bride-to-be was her friend’s younger sister, Dothylian Solvei. Keva didn’t know one thing about her, but she felt guilty for being responsible for Odelle’s murder. She wanted to spare the woman, but Dothylian wasn’t Odelle. The mission had to come first this time.
Keva dressed in the Elite garb she kept stored in Ghost Star’s cargo hold and stared at her reflection. She swept her long, dark hair up in a series of braids and twists on top of her head. She’d inserted gem encrusted pins, adding weight to her head she didn’t appreciate. The gems were real, taken from her assumed identity’s home.