Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench (16 page)

He shrugged and raised his hands. “Not until I opened the comm and ordered her to back off when I was in that Fury.” He turned to his friend. “They fly very well by the way.”

Vas swore. “They came from her too?”

“I’m glad.” Marli beamed a smile that bounced around the room. “I figured if anyone could get them running you could. Although I do admit I didn’t think they were going to be used against me.”

“If you had told me you were now in possession of a command cruiser I would have been more prepared. That happened recently I assume? Or did you just have it waiting for you?”

Vas watched the banter then raised her voice. “Okay, back on track, folks. Original question, how did you know where we were and what that ore hauler had planned?”

“I was tracking you.” If she was embarrassed at all about her actions, Marli certainly didn’t show it; her warm brown eyes were sincere. “Those blood trackers are easy to follow if one knows how.” She raised a hand as both Deven and Vas spoke at once. “Your blocking is working. Whoever the person is who got them into your bloodstream, they can’t sense you. I can because I coded to them when Deven brought them to me.”

Vas seriously thought about getting that blaster after all. As if her life wasn’t messed up enough at this point she had this woman to deal with?

Luckily, even Deven didn’t look happy about that. Maybe he didn’t completely trust this exotic woman.

“Marli, you didn’t tell me—”

“I know I didn’t, darling.” She cut him off with a pat on his cheek, as if he were no more than a child. “But sometimes I have my own reasons.” A delicate frown crept across her face. “However, I really need to see if the body you have brought back is my man. He was a good person.” For a brief moment Vas thought she saw sorrow and an age far older than this woman could possibly be. It vanished in an instant.

“I still need answers.” Vas folded her arms and leaned forward. “Whoever you are, you’re following us, or me, for some reason. According to you, someone else was as well, and they were the ones behind the attack.”

“Yes. Can we see the body now?” Marli rose so gracefully Vas could have sworn she floated to her feet.

Deven rose as well. “I hate to say this, Vas, but you might as well talk and walk. She’s even more stubborn than you.” He rolled his eyes and slid open the door. “Trust me, I know how stubborn both of you are, let’s just go see the body. Marli can fill us in as we walk.”

Vas thought about arguing, but she wanted to know who the dead man was as well. Instead she left the room, and then dropped back to Gosta. “Can you stay up here on the deck? I don’t think her crew would try anything with her on board, but I don’t completely trust her. She’s not telling us anything.”

Gosta nodded, and then ambled over to the command chair. “I’ll call you if anything interesting happens.”

Vas smiled then caught up to the other two. “Now, about why you were following us?”

“She is tenacious, isn’t she? Reminds me of a younger you.” Marli’s comment was for Deven, but her smile was for Vas. “Or a very much younger me.” She studied Vas for a few moments while they waited for the lift.

“Very well, if you are like me you’ll want it blunt. You deserve that much. Someone poisoned you with the drell, yet another someone wanted to track you through your blood. Both are extremely rare and unusual things by themselves, together they are unheard of. I wanted to see who was trying to make you a pawn and who was trying to remove you from the game.” She tossed back her long hair and leaned against the wall of the lift as it lumbered down to the med level.

“About a week ago, not too long after Deven left, I heard rumor of a stolen ore ship. Actually one of the pirates living on the same rock I was visiting got stone drunk and was bragging about his latest job. Stupid idiot fell into my lap telling me he’d programmed an ore ship to go after some silly brothel barge and had been paid obscenely for the job.” She gave a light shrug of her slender shoulders. “I broke his neck after he told me all he could.”

Vas was the only one surprised by the comment. Marli looked like a pampered aristocrat, but those delicate hands and heart were obviously much harder.

“After I found out the trajectory, I called up the
Scurrilous Monk
, my ship’s name by the way, do you like it?” The switch from cold, matter-of-fact killer to proud ship momma was swift.

“It’s unique, I’ll say that. Do I even want to know how you got that name passed through?” Deven laughed as he led them off the lift.

“Probably not, but I do love the name. Reminds me of old friends.” The vicious grin that followed made Vas almost want to ask for the story behind it.

She did find herself laughing along with Marli. She couldn’t help it. The woman was even more outrageous than she was. “Okay, I like the name. But if you could get your man on the ore hauler, why didn’t you just shut it down?” Actually she knew the answer, probably the same reason she didn’t blow it out of the sky when she first found out about it.

“I needed to know who was behind it. Well, I wanted to know. The idiot in the bar was useless even before I snapped his neck. The programming on that hauler was highly detailed. There was no way to shut it down short of blowing it up. At least no way we could tell from the outside. Ghassil was my weapons expert. He thought he could find a way to disarm it. The rest you know.” Marli halted before the med lab doors, almost hesitant to go in.

“Maybe it’s not him?” Vas asked with a gentleness that even surprised her.

Marli flashed a sad grin, and then pushed open the lab doors. “I’d like to think that, but I can’t see how he could have gotten off of it. The ship picked up speed the day after he got onboard and I couldn’t catch up.”

Deven had already called Terel, so she had the decon room up and running. She was in a full safe suit on the inside, the blackened husk clearly on display.

Marli walked up to the window, and pressed one hand wide against the pane. She held it for a few seconds then turned back to them. “It’s him.”

Vas moved forward to get a look at the man who’d died trying to save her ship. Most of him was a blackened husk. Terel would be able to tell more after the autopsy, but his cause of death was destructive whatever way he died.

Terel was slowly peeling his uniform off, when a flash of fabric caught Vas’s eye. She tapped the glass to get Terel’s attention, and then finally found the room comm. “Hold up a second. What’s that patch?”

The man’s arm was mostly burned through, but his upper shoulder was relatively untouched. An elongated diamond symbol filled the fabric on most of his upper arm.

“Deven, look at his arm.” Vas pulled him forward, as Marli turned to look as well. The frown marking her lovely face indicated that the uniform wasn’t hers.

“That looks like the one on the vid.” Deven shook his head. “But that man was taller.”

“What man?” Marli turned back. “What is that? Ghassil left my ship wearing one of my uniforms. That’s not it.”

“Terel, can you bring in a scanner? Get as close to that patch as you can.”

She frowned at Vas. “It would be just as easy to take it off. I’m not going to autopsy his clothing.” With a small knife, Terel carefully removed the patch. “Let it go through a complete sonic cleansing. I still don’t know what he died of or what that weird air inside the ore ship was.”

“How long?” Vas could see something was going on between Deven and Marli. The brunette might have been telling the truth that she wasn’t a telepath, but she was communicating with Vas’s second-in-command somehow.

“Now.” A small ding came from the left of the windowpane, and a sealed packet popped out with the patch, newly purified, inside. Deven grabbed it and put it in one of his inner pockets.

“Wow, didn’t that take a few hours on the
Victorious Dead
?” Vas hated that this ship could do so much more, but the fact was, the flouncy thing was loaded.

Terel’s sigh said she didn’t like speaking ill of the
Victorious Dead
either. “Yes, it did. However, these systems are state of the art. Now do you three need anything else?”

Vas took the hint and started herding the other two toward the lift. “No. Just make sure to prepare the body for burial. He’ll be going back with his captain.”

Marli didn’t say anything, but she caught Vas’s eye and nodded her thanks.

Chapter Seventeen

Vas let Gosta stay in command until the next shift change. She also let Deven go say good-bye to his friend. Marli hadn’t been able to find the answers to any of her questions, so she decided to take her dead crewman home.

A light rap on her ready room door instead of the usual buzz pulled Vas out of her thoughts. She wasn’t one for introspection or deep study. One of the reasons that even though she liked science, she wasn’t very good at it. She preferred to go in, take charge, and blow up whoever or whatever needed to be blown up.

“Come in.”

She closed her computer screen when Deven entered. Along with pondering the pile of crap her life was becoming she had been looking for another merc job. Deven had suggested they wait until they knew more of what was going on.

Vas wanted a job to keep her mind off things.

“Interesting friend you have there.” Vas nodded toward the seat in front of her. As pissed as she still was at him for his actions of the night before, she couldn’t stay mad. Not with everything else in her life going to hell. He was the closest thing she had to a true confidant, even closer in some ways than Terel. She’d pocket away that anger at him until life became normal again.

Deven took the seat and leaned back into it with a sigh and closed his eyes. For the first time in the years she’d known him, he actually appeared tired.

“That’s one way to put it.” He kept his eyes closed.

“Want to tell me where you met her? Or why she knows about more dead race shit than even you do?”

Deven rubbed his forehead and temples with the heels of his hands. “I was afraid you might wonder about that.” After a pause he opened his eyes and leaned forward.

“I have to tell you something. Something that you may or may not believe and something that could get both of us killed instantly if it got out.” He studied her face, almost as if he was looking for answers. Or something else. Finally he made up his mind.

“Marliress is an Asarlaí.”

Vas burst out laughing before she noticed his face had gone still. “You’re kidding. Come on, Deven. Don’t mess with me right now. I have no idea what in the hell you are, because you won’t tell me. Nevertheless, you’ll tell me that your sweet little brunette friend is a member of an ancient super race? An ancient,
dead
, super race, I might add?” She reached into her desk drawer and grabbed a flask of Hydriang fire ale. Holding up her hand to stop him from speaking, she took a deep swig. The burn down her throat felt numbingly good. “Okay, explain.”

“This is serious, Vas. Marli is immortal. She’s been around for over ten thousand years.”

She studied his face for a few minutes, then sighed and took another long burning drag of her flask. Damn, half of it was gone already. She set it down carefully.

“I have had a month taken from me, my ship stolen, been poisoned, and people are dropping out of the sky in ships I sure as hell have never seen. I have mysterious fused bodies appearing in my hold. And Starchaser parts that will be a slow death for any of us if we’re caught with them.” She rose and stood in front of him, then grabbed his face with both hands, peering deep into those fathomless green eyes. “Do not add to my problems.”

“Vas—”

She shook his head. “No. Don’t do it. I seriously have no idea what is really going on with you and your friend. I’m thinking I don’t want to know.” She moved his head up and down in forced agreement with her, then let go and patted his cheek before making her way back to her chair. There was one happy point: the odd physical pull toward Deven was gone now. Her new sport of extreme drinking probably had something to do with it.

“I don’t want to know.” She drained the flask. Very odd, it used to hold so much more than that. “I think you should go do whatever it is you should be doing. Let Gosta keep us on course for wherever it is we have to drop Mac’s shit at.” She bent down to rummage through her desk for anything else flammable. Thank goodness she’d stocked her ready room when she first moved in. It was good to have priorities.

“You’re still here.” She popped her head back up from her rummaging and glared at Deven. Somehow in her searching she’d ended up on the floor. She narrowed her eyes. “I told you to stay away from me. Before was different, you had to be here. Now you don’t.”

“You’re getting drunk.” Deven scowled. “And you’re on the floor.”

“Yes, I am on the floor. And no, I am already drunk. No ‘getting’ involved.” She leaned against the wall behind her desk. “Except for you getting out of here. Now.”

****

Deven waited to see if she would change her mind. When all she did was continue pulling on her new flask, he gave up and let himself out. Vas drank for entertainment, never out of some emotional need. At least she never had until now. He really hoped what happened the night before hadn’t compounded this new drinking binge. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he had been pulled in as much as her.

Shaking off his thoughts, he nodded toward the command chair. “Gosta, make sure no one bothers the captain when the shift changes. She’s still in there, but it won’t be pretty if someone disturbs her.”

“Aye, Deven. I’ll make sure the next watch understands.” Gosta unfolded himself out of the chair and caught Deven in two strides. “I thought you might want to know that your friend’s ship tagged us before she went to hyperspace. I took the liberty of ordering a team to go disengage the bug, but haven’t sent them out yet.”

What are you up to, Marli?
That she was following them for altruistic reasons either now, or a few days ago when she put her crewman on that death ship didn’t even cross his mind. Marli was pure Asarlaí, regardless of how many decades she’d gone without seeing any of her kind. Asarlaí saw altruistic behavior as weak. Still, having her know where they were might come in handy.

“Wait on that.” Deven motioned Gosta closer. There were only two other crewmembers on deck right now, but a small crew spread gossip all the faster. “Keep an eye on it, and an eye out for her ship. I want to see what she’s up to. Just don’t let any of the others know, especially the captain.”

Gosta pulled back, and shook his head violently. “I can’t—”

“She’s under a lot of pressure right now. Trust me.” He glanced back to Vas’s ready room. “It’s for the best.”

Gosta’s face gave the most hints of his mixed heritage when stressed. Right now he looked like one of the long thin bugs his distant ancestors evolved from. He cast a furtive look at Vas’s ready room, and for a moment Deven feared he might have asked too much.

Taking a deep breath, Gosta turned back to face him. “Aye, Deven. Things have been weighing on her. She protects us. It’s right we protect her sometimes.” With a nod he strode back to the command chair and settled back in.

Deven allowed himself a sigh. Maybe breathing room and a few secrets were all he could do for Vas at this point, but he had to do something. Satisfied that Vas would stay undisturbed in her room—she sure as hell wasn’t coming out for a while on her own—he went to his ready room. He’d borrowed a high-end data scanner from Gosta, but hadn’t had a chance to look at the film they stole from the space station’s security.

Actually he’d forgotten about it.

That was a disturbing thought. He didn’t forget things. Ever. That was a problem for someone as long lived as himself; over four hundred plus years he had more than enough things he’d like to forget. However, nothing ever got lost, drifted away, forgotten.

Until now.

Pulling out the chip containing the stolen data from his comm, he opened the scanner and dropped it in. The images were clear and crisp, a welcome sight after the muddy mess he’d viewed in the station. Whatever was wrong with the machines back on the station at least it wasn’t on the recording end.

He watched as Vas came around the corner, noticing that she wasn’t paying attention at all when the tall man ran into her.

Vas was always on watch.

Deven replayed the scene again. It hadn’t been clear in the station, but her look was one of content obliviousness. She had plenty of time to move before the man hit her, but she hadn’t been paying attention.

He followed Vas’s gaze—she was looking right at the faint outline of a tall, slender glowing form. While he’d seen the outline before, he hadn’t been able to tell what it was. He also didn’t see that Vas was looking right at the shimmering form. That she had been as surprised as he to see it when they were at the station was almost as disturbing as the image.

Swearing under his breath, Deven adjusted the clarity. The image was impossible to focus on, almost as if it hadn’t really been there. With even more creative swear words, Deven tried a few more filters. He stopped swearing in shock when the image finally cleared. It was a hologram. It would have been visible to anyone in the area, but on film it was ghostly.

It was an Asarlaí.

And it wasn’t Marli.