Enemy Within (10 page)

“Thank you, Ari.” He gave her no opportunity to respond. If he gave her time, she’d undoubtedly work out just how carefully he’d guided her into yet another risk. “The Claugh are willing to chance war because war is certain if we don’t have your help.”

She sat, fumbling for her chair, looking stunned. “You’re IntCom.”

“Murbaasch Tu, the Claugh equivalent,” he acknowledged. “Yes.”

“Go on.”

Seaghdh sighed. “Your assessment is correct, Captain. My men and I were sent to find you. The people I represent have uncovered a high-level, very secret alliance between the Armada Admiralty and the Chekydran.”

“An alliance?” She boggled. “The Chekydran don’t even recognize us as life-forms, Seaghdh. Your information can’t possibly—”

“There’s an army,” he interrupted. “An army of Armada personnel modified by the Chekydran.”

Ari paled and memory flashed across her expression before being suppressed. “Modified how?”

“The Claugh hope you can answer that,” he replied.

She shook her head. “This is ridiculous. You want me to believe the Claugh nib Dovvyth gives a damn whether or not I cooperate?”

“Yes,” he said. “Do the people giving the orders care whether I have to kidnap you? No. But ultimately, I think they’ll find they care very much about your cooperation if their suspicions are born out. It isn’t as if they’ll be able to force information from you when three months in a Chekydran prison couldn’t break you.”

If he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he might have missed the tiny, short-lived twist in her lips.

“How do you know they didn’t?” she countered.

“You wouldn’t be alive.”

Memory glinted in her eyes. He moved to the edge of his seat, leaned into her, and stroked her hair before he could blink.

She started and sucked in an audible breath. Her gaze locked into focus on his face.

No, he realized. On his mouth. He held his breath until the need to kiss an unbridled response from her no longer clawed his gut so mercilessly.

“Stay with me,” Seaghdh urged, fighting the impulse to ask her to divulge her memories. She’d already demonstrated that she’d gamble with external trust—matters of the ship, her family, and her own physical safety—but she would not, or could not, confide in him. He hoped, for both their sakes, it wasn’t a permanent condition.

Seaghdh pressed back the thought and drew away from the silk of her hair. This was business. She could easily represent a grave threat to the Empire and he was making a mistake in responding to her in this way. Frowning, he sat back and blew out a short breath. Stop it. Do the job.

“I’m—I need evidence to shore up what you say,” she said, sounding breathless. She turned her gaze away from him and visibly struggled to regain her concentration. “What data supports your theory?”

“This isn’t hypothetical, Ari. You’re thinking like a scientist,” he said, “not a tactician. I’ve seen your record. You have a tactical ability that borders on the arcane. Don’t let loyalty muffle the instinct whispering to you that I’m right.”

She swore, jumped up, and paced the bridge, head down, hands behind her back. “You tell me about this alliance to gain my cooperation.”

“Partly, yes,” Seaghdh answered. “You asked why my people were prepared to risk war for you. You deserve to understand the stakes.”

Her smile looked grim. “If my cooperation is your objective, what prevents you from embellishing your intelligence report?”

“You know I am telling you the truth,” he rumbled.

“I know you believe you are telling me the truth,” she countered. Ari planted her feet and stared at him through hair the color of sunlight on clouds. “You accused me of thinking like a scientist, Seaghdh. Thank you for the reminder. Now that I am thinking like an officer of the Armada you forfeit the right to complain about it.”

A grin flashed across his face before he conquered the expression and obscured his amused appreciation with a hard mask.

She raised an eyebrow at him, clearly enjoying the fact that she’d gotten a reaction from him before he’d shuttered his expression.

“Point to you,” he said. “One all.”

“Your people believe there is a threat to their security,” she said, blushing. “I doubt I can help, but I’m willing to put that aside to ensure the safety of my family and friends.”

“Once they’re safe?” It hadn’t escaped him that she’d lost a command, one she obviously wanted back very badly. Armada Command wouldn’t be able to deny her a ship if she managed to hand them a Claugh nib Dovvyth officer and three of his crew. No doubt about it. They were both engaged in a dangerous game.

“I will have my command back.”

Alarm leaped in him. She didn’t realize someone had stacked the game against her. “What if TFC has issued a hit for you?”

“They had plenty of opportunity to kill me,” she countered, “in the military hospital, before, during, and after my debriefing.”

“Ari, you’re unique in the history of humanoid interaction with the Chekydran,” he said. “You survived.”

“Plenty of people survive Chekydran captivity.”

“Not a single one of whom had ever been accused of spying. You were. You know Chekydran policy. If they say you’re a spy, they kill you. No questions asked.”

She stopped short, processing the implications. “You’re working up to tell me my government didn’t immediately order my death because I was an object of curiosity.”

“Yes.”

Seaghdh propped his chin in one hand to hide an admiring smile. Ari had accepted his pronouncement without flinching, even though it added yet another worry to the collection of fears dragging at her. He hated having to add to her burden, hated that in following orders he had to pick at her barely healed wounds.

She stomped across the deck plating, her too-thin face alight as she sifted through implication and possibility, move and countermove. Had her commanders not bothered to assess her? To find out whether or not she’d been compromised? Or had they simply decided she wasn’t worth the risk? He shook his head. Her commanders were idiots. He didn’t quite have her. Not yet. But he would.

He watched her pacing. She’d come so far. The Chekydran had made no attempt to rectify the damage they’d done to her before they’d released her. She’d been unrecognizable. Bald, both from abuse and from malnutrition, her body had been little more than skin binding broken bones together. Her blond hair, so pale it was almost white, had grown back in curls that would relax as it grew longer. It did nothing to soften her sharp cheekbones, one of which had been shattered by the Chekydran and rebuilt by TFC military medical.

He’d kept count of the numerous surgeries and reconstructions that had pieced Captain Ari Idylle’s physical frame back together and had wondered if anyone had invented a surgery to repair a fractured spirit.

Seaghdh reached out, halting one of her passes with a hand on her arm. “Come with me. I’ll see to it you get a command.”

She stared, the first flicker of real emotion in her eyes. He detected the hollow ache of what she’d lost in the depths of her silver gaze. Hope flared, died down to despair and then anger. She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged.

Seaghdh blinked. He hadn’t just offered an enemy officer a ship. Had he?

Ari managed a weak laugh. “Unless you have rank you’ve failed to disclose, Captain, you’re not in a position to make that kind of promise.”

For a moment, he forgot about masks, about cover stories. Something cold and razor-edged moved through him. He should tell her the truth.

He looked at her. She studied him, eyes narrowed, assessing, as if he were a blade whose balance and sharpness she tested.

Stop it,
instinct whispered,
or she’ll deduce too much too soon
. She’d freeze and he’d never stand a chance at gaining her cooperation, her trust. Ease back, Seaghdh, he instructed himself. Focus on the mission.

He forced himself to relax his features and to release her. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t have the authority to make that offer.”

Feeling her gaze trying to break into his head, he shifted, trying to encourage her to stand down.

“Even if you had the authority, you’d have me fighting my own people. I can’t imagine the Claugh are interested in that sort of moral conundrum in a ship’s captain. Are you in the habit of recruiting from within TFC ranks?”

Shaking his head, he grinned at her light, teasing tone. She’d felt something. Even if she couldn’t identify it, she’d felt his tension and had offered him a way out. Another point to her. “If you want to exact revenge on me for capturing you and yours, tell my CO about this conversation.”

Ari lifted an eyebrow. “Presumably that would mean facing the legendary Auhrnok Riorchjan.”

“Her Imperial Majesty’s inestimable cousin?” he said. “Yes.”

“Dangerous and deadly cousin,” she corrected, lowering herself into the piloting chair. “You know the Armada has its own name for him?”

Seaghdh shifted but did not meet her gaze. “The Queen’s Blade. Judge, jury, and executioner.” He stopped speaking, hearing the bitter edge in his own voice.

She shrugged, eyeing him as if trying to fathom why the name bothered him. “I understand IntCom can’t get an operative within sight of him. With no hard data, rumor is taken as fact. Suppositions are made and stories invented.”

“I’ve heard a few of those stories,” he said. “Most are true.”

“The man owns a planet?”

Seaghdh laughed, unable to exorcise the grim note from the sound. “He says it owns him.”

“You’re his, aren’t you?”

Seaghdh went dead still, startled into meeting her gaze as lethal, glittering awareness moved within him. Perception sharpened and he studied her to see how much she’d already guessed. He felt as much as saw her quiver.

From the apprehension in her face, she knew she’d hit a nerve. Though her expression remained studiously blank, he could see her considering. Hit the nerve again to see if he’d crack? Or offer enough slack to see where he’d go?

“His?” he echoed.

She smiled and relaxed, ratcheting the tension forcibly down.

Still on guard, he mirrored her, letting her lead. Even after everything she’d been through, she was good. She projected such an Isarrite-clad air of harmless curiosity that he wanted to cheer. Why had TFC wasted such obvious talent on the bridge of a Prowler?

“You’re from his planet,” she clarified. “Do you owe him allegiance? Or are you family?”

He had to stifle a laugh. Family. Twelve Gods, if he hadn’t already known everything to be known about Captain Ari Idylle, her so-close-to-the-truth guess would have made him think she was part of Intelligence Command. It would have scared and thrilled the life out of him.

“Damn it, Ari.” He sighed, and running a hand down his face, folded easygoing, good humor around his tone. “Stop doing that. I’m too tired to have you picking secrets out of my head.”

She laughed and he had to cut off the urge to yank her into his arms. Fear drove into her face and cut off the infectious sound. She stared at him, eyes wide, clearly asking herself how they’d become so comfortable with their verbal parry and riposte.

Pain for her burned through him. He hoped he’d helped her remember what fun felt like, a few uncertain moments notwithstanding. Shaking off the feeling, he reminded himself that he had no business hoping anything. She was proving all too skilled at getting under his defenses. If she’d had any training as spy, he’d assume it was calculated. But his files on her were exhaustive and there was no indication that she’d ever been recruited or trained.

She spun back to her station and stared at the readouts.

Seaghdh clenched his fists to keep from reaching out to her in comfort. What was it about her that kept throwing him off target?

“You can’t offer me a command, and I can’t have you abducting my family,” she said. “Stick to plan, Seaghdh. You’ve got me.”

A console beeped. Communications. She rose and crossed in front of him. He stopped her again.

“Give us what we need, Ari, and I’ll get you back to Tagreth, if that’s what you want,” he said.

He felt impatience sweep through her. She slipped out of his grasp and went to communications.

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” she snapped, punching commands. “Audio logging online in ten seconds. We both know the only way I’ll ‘get back’ anywhere is in a body bag.”

“That’s your government,” he shot. “Not mine.”

“It’s every government,” Ari countered, “that’s in the business of protecting its citizens. At least in TFC space, I’m one of those citizens. In Claugh nib Dovvyth space, I’m the enemy. My life won’t be worth a damn.”

Two beeps from the com panel. She turned to glare at him. He met her challenging stare.

“I disagree with your assessment, Captain,” he said. “I have time and the weight of evidence on my side. Now, brief your family.”

“Bad plan.”

“Not at all,” he countered. “We want their minds occupied, yes? You brief them. I remain silent.”

She sucked in an audible breath and nodded. “They won’t be able to evaluate your veracity directly. They will have to filter everything through whether or not they believe I can be lied to.”

He offered her a handheld. Ari reached for it and then met his gaze when he did not release it.

“Do not tell them who we are.”

She cocked her head. “Giving them something to work out for themselves?”

“If you like.”

“They will, you know.”

“Maybe.”

He let go. She glanced at the little screen, scanning the shift schedules, every last one of which he’d made certain she worked with him. A hint of resignation in her eye, she nodded.

“Discourage any notions they may have of heroics and work out a meal schedule if you think it’s safe,” he said.