Enemy Games (21 page)
Authors: Marcella Burnard
“You going to help him? Damen, I mean?” Bellin demanded.
Jayleia tried to breathe around the sting in her chest and straightened. “Yes.”
“I wanna help,” Bellin declared.
“Me, too,” Vala said, her voice thick. Isarrite-bound determination underlay her words. “I can get you into the lockup via video and audio feeds.”
“Do it,” Jay ordered, rising.
“I tried to get you killed. You’re going to trust me?” Vala challenged.
“You love him,” Jayleia countered. “I trust that.”
Scrubbing tears from her face with her sleeve, Vala took the copilot’s chair, and glanced at her son.
Jay followed her gaze.
“Gather the family,” Vala instructed. “It’s an emergency.”
Bellin didn’t respond. He paled and sprinted for the door.
Once the door closed behind the boy, Jay waved off Vala’s attempt to lock it.
“Find Damen,” she instructed, code locking the door.
Vala spent a few minutes that felt like a lifetime accessing the feeds.
“You were right,” the woman said. “Couldn’t find him in a cell. They have him . . .”
Video connected on the holo-display in front of them.
“In an interrogation room,” Jayleia finished and flinched.
Damen sat with both wrists cuffed to a chair.
She couldn’t tell if they’d activated the neural lock, or if Damen had gone as still and expressionless as Isarrite out of rage.
They’d searched him. His equipment littered the table behind him.
A woman with short-cropped gray hair and an old, jagged scar marring her jaw stood barring the door, arms crossed over her gray and black uniform.
The freighter’s personnel door cycled.
Jay looked over her shoulder.
“Vala? Bellin said it’s an emergency,” a young, male voice called as the door shut and locked. “What’s going on?”
A scrawny, adolescent male with dark hair and hazel eyes appeared in the cockpit doorway. He glanced at the screen and blanched.
“Baxt’kal Twelve Gods. Is that Damen?”
“Jay, this is Kebbin, Damen’s second-in-command,” Vala said.
Startled, Jayleia cast a surreptitious look between them. She’d assumed Vala was Damen’s right hand on Silver City.
Vala wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Who’s that in the room with Damen?” Jay asked.
“The woman at the door is Calmin,” Vala said, her face turned to the screen, “head of operations.”
Leaning in to stare at the scene, Jay said, “She’s not asking questions or . . .”
The woman straightened as the door opened.
Two men entered.
“Acquival is not on station,” the thick-set man, also in gray and black, with thinning straw colored hair and a square face said into the silent room.
“Janka, chief of security,” Kebbin said. “The skeletal guy in the green medi coat is Altu.”
Jayleia frowned. “He’s not chief medical officer?”
Kebbin shook his head. “The C.M.O. is too old-fashioned for interrogation.”
“He refuses to hurt people,” Vala clarified.
Abruptly sick, Jay shot to her feet. “How do I get in there?”
“You don’t!” Kebbin gritted, grabbing her arm.
She snarled at him.
He yanked his hand back as if burned. “That place is a fortress. Blunder in there, you’ll both die.”
“You’ve run a trace on Master Acquival?” another voice, one that tripped every alarm in Jayleia’s system, said.
Peering at the screen, she sank into her chair.
The man had his back to the camera. He stood out in his navy uniform. Thinning and graying light brown hair suggested she should recognize him.
“The trace came up empty,” Janka said.
Meaning they’d had a locator on Tahem. Had he known?
“I trust your people are combing this station for Jayleia Durante,” the man in blue said.
Jay knew him then. Gerriny Eudal, her father’s former second-in-command. He’d come after her himself? What had her father said or done to have rousted Eudal out from behind the scenes where, her father liked to complain, he pulled all sorts of strings?
“Three squads,” Janka replied.
Head spinning, Jayleia sucked in a ragged-sounding breath.
“Change the access code on that door!” she barked, gesturing over her shoulder in the direction of the freighter’s personnel door.
“On it,” Kebbin said, pouncing on a workstation.
“Until you acquire that particular point of persuasion,” Gerriny said, turning to poke at Damen’s possessions where they sat arrayed on the table, “may I suggest that you locate the woman Vala and her son? My sources indicate they are a weak spot in the major’s armor.”
Janka grinned and activated his com badge.
Vala, Kebbin, and Jayleia swore over the drone of orders being issued.
“Bring Bellin in,” Jayleia said.
Vala bent to her station, sending out a recall code for her son.
“I’ve got to get Damen out of there,” Jayleia said. “I don’t know what Eudal is capable of.”
“The slimy one in blue?” Kebbin clarified. “Who is he?”
“Acting director of the Tagreth Federated Council’s Intelligence Command,” she replied, her tone grim. “The spawn of a Myallki bitch went after my dad. Now he’s after me.”
“Then you can’t go in there!” Vala protested.
“No, I can’t,” Jay said. “You were right. I’d get us both killed. I need an alternative plan. Help me out here.”
Kebbin and Vala awarded her blank stares.
Jayleia choked back a curse, and flogging her brain for a workable plan, turned back to the screen.
Janka spun on Damen and snapped, “You were ordered to take your passenger to medical.”
“So you could sell her to the highest bidder?” Damen growled.
Janka shrugged. “She isn’t one of us. Why would you care what happened to her? You disobeyed a direct order and endangered your people.”
“That does make the accusations of treason ring true,” Eudal noted.
“Tahem Acquival is my master on this station,” Damen retorted. “He summoned me and ordered me to bring Ms. Durante.”
“Why?” Janka demanded.
“He knew her.”
“Of course he did,” Eudal said. “His life partner was her bodyguard for years. I daresay he considers her family.”
“You were arrested exiting Acquival’s office on the vice deck after an aborted attack on this station’s systems,” Janka growled. “My investigators found your biomarkers all over your master’s office. Hers, too.”
The muscles in Damen’s jaw bunched. “I’m his favorite. She’s a new recruit.”
Kebbin uttered a harsh-sounding laugh and leaned his head in her direction. “Welcome to the family.”
Jay gaped at him, her thought processes shorted, tangled, and presented her with recall of the sex toys lining one wall of the room where she’d kept watch while Damen had tried to steal Silver City’s data.
Hot blood rushed to her face. “What? No! I took an oath . . .”
“You’re attempting to protect Jayleia Durante, Major Sindrivik. I commend your sense of duty and loyalty,” Gerriny Eudal said, holding something between thumb and forefinger as he lifted it to the light for inspection. “Given what I’ve found here in your belongings, however, I suggest your devotion to the young lady may be misplaced.”
Jay propped her forehead on her clenched fists and glared at the screen trying to make out what the man held. “Shut up, you Carozziel slime-bat!”
“Blood,” Eudal mused.
Realization hit her like a meteor impacting atmosphere.
The vial of blood she’d given Damen.
“You took first blood?” Janka grated, the look he turned upon Damen approving. “Huh. Didn’t think you had the drive.”
“A sample vial,” Gerriny corrected. “A sterile, dispassionate way for a predator to claim a victim. Or a mate.”
Jay’s breath stopped in her chest.
Mate?
Mate?
“He didn’t take this blood,” the man went on. “She did and undoubtedly offered it up with pretty words. It was a cold, calculated move from a frigid, conniving young woman. Or did you not know that her own people exiled her when she seduced and attempted to murder a rival warrior’s brother?”
Rage exploded through her.
“That is
not
what . . .” she wheezed.
not
what . . .” she wheezed.
“You gave him your baxt’kal blood?” Vala breathed from beside Jayleia.
She glanced between Vala and Kebbin.
The amazed disbelief in their faces shot deep uneasiness through her.
“T-to seal a truce,” she stuttered.
Pity rushed into their faces.
Ice flushed her veins.
“Don’t doubt for a moment that she knew exactly what she was doing to you, my friend,” Gerriny Eudal said.
Staring at the screen, Jayleia saw Damen flinch. Her heart tore. She squeezed her burning eyes shut.
“Altu.” The woman’s voice broke the stillness that had fallen. “Major Sindrivik was ordered to bring the prisoner to medical for verification of her infection status.”
“Yes, Officer Calmin,” the medi replied. “That did not take place.”
“Is the woman a danger to this station?”
“The disease is blood-borne,” Altu said. “The major claims the subject has recovered from the illness and is no longer contagious. Even if that assertion is false, the young lady would have to spill her own blood in order to infect another.”
Jay opened her eyes in time to see Calmin shoot the man an annoyed look. “How many Autken are aboard this station?”
The round-faced, beige-skinned medi blinked.
The head of operations uncrossed her arms, scowling. “Predators every one, perfectly capable of drawing her blood, thereby spreading a messy disease all over Silver City.”
“This blood must be tested, then,” Eudal said, closing his fist around the vial.
“Agreed.” Altu nodded and held out a hand. “I will return to medical . . .”
“Nonsense,” Eudal said. “You have the perfect test case right here.”
He looked at Damen and extended the vial to the medi.
Jayleia scrambled to her feet.
“No!” Damen shouted, straining against the bindings holding him.
Grinning, Altu took the vial.
Behind him, Janka shifted, his face and his posture telling Jay how uncomfortable he was with the situation. She’d use that. Somehow.
The medi set his kit on the table before rummaging through it. He snapped the vial of her blood into a wicked-looking device and faced Damen.
“Fastest results possible?” the medi inquired, his tone avid.
“I suggest that’s wise,” Eudal said, smiling.
Sweat stood out on Damen’s face. From the motion of his chest, Jay detected the change in his respiration from measured to rapid and shallow.
She stared at the contraption in the medi’s grasp. Her blood ran cold. “That’s a needle. A barbaric antique! He can’t . . .”
Altu slammed the needle into Damen’s chest, slightly left of center.
Damen uttered a strangled cry and convulsed.
Vala’s breath hissed in between her teeth and she whimpered.
“Baxt’k,” Kebbin growled.
Jay’s heart beat so hard, it hurt. She had to get him out of there. No matter the cost. She glanced over her shoulder at the pack holding her uniform.
The medi withdrew the needle and returned to his gear.
Jayleia’s throat constricted at the sight of Damen limp in the chair. It took several seconds of watching to realize he was still breathing.
Damen groaned.
Gerriny Eudal laughed, a high-pitched, unhinged giggle that raised the hair at the back of Jayleia’s neck.
“There you are,” Eudal said, rubbing his hands together. “A marriage made in Hell. Her blood is your blood and if it’s not infected, you’ll live your entire life mated to a woman whose only intent has been to use you.”
“Marriage?” Jayleia burst out. “I meant to seal a truce and ended up proposing?”
Vala lifted her tear-streaked face from her hands. “You didn’t know?”
“Twelve Gods,” Kebbin rasped. “You read a file or some dusty research report about Autken traditions, didn’t you?”
“And assumed I understood them,” Jay gulped, shame raking the inside of her skin. What had she done?
Indulging her childish attraction to him and believing that intellect would never lead her astray, she’d endangered Damen as surely as if she’d dropped him into a nest of infected kuorls.
“If it’s her heart you want,” Eudal offered on-screen, “I’ll give it to you.”
Jay sneered at the man’s image. “I may deserve a place in the lowest level of Hell, Eudal, but if I’m going, I’m taking you with me.”
She stalked to the bag she’d dropped against the bulkhead. “I’m going in . . .” She broke off as her brain presented her with a memory from her training.
The Swovjiti had rules.
Good ones like never attack directly that which can be diminished with a thousand tiny cuts. And that gave her an idea.
She spun on Vala and Kebbin. “How many people does Damen claim as his?”
“Including dependents?” Kebbin asked.
“Yes.”
“Just over forty,” Vala answered.
“I can’t do this alone,” Jay said. “Muster everyone you can trust with Damen’s safety. The rest, I need on this boat. We’re leaving the station the moment he’s free.”
Eyeing the doubting expressions on Vala’s and Kebbin’s faces, she said, “If I can’t go in and get him, I have to make them want to let him go.”
“How?” Kebbin demanded.
“Didn’t they say Tahem had left Silver City?”
Kebbin and Vala traded a confused look, but the young man shook his head. “Yes, but . . .”
Jayleia waved off the protest. “I know. It’s supposition, given that they have no proof of his departure, only proof that they can’t find a man who’s become a spymaster in his own right. Am I correct in thinking he’s also the Silver City computer-security expert?”
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