Enemy Within (11 page)

“Give them access to their experiments,” she suggested. “Dad’s priority is saving the galaxy from covert Chekydran plagues.”

Seaghdh pressed his lips tight, tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair, and shook his head.

“Brief them,” he said. “If we can secure the cargo bay, I’ll consider limited work on the experiments.”

“During active experimental work, the cargo bay is an isolated environment with containment fail-safes,” she assured him. “Worst case, the entire contents of the bay is jettisoned via vacuum.”

Seaghdh uttered a breathless laugh. “Thank the Twelve Gods I wasn’t any good at science.”

“It is a unique calling.” Ari leaned in to punch up commands on his console.

So close, Seaghdh inhaled her scent. Citrus and a trace of the forests where he’d grown up. Awareness flared through him. The heat of her body warmed him, driving blood low into his body. He glanced into her face and saw the flush staining her cheeks.

She jerked upright. “You can monitor the galley from here,” she explained, her words hurried and her voice uncharacteristically rough. “Video and audio. I’ll make supper and stow some for everyone. Best if I brief them over food. SOP on this ship.”

“Thank you,” he said, easing a thread of power into his voice.
Turn to me.
His tone warmed and he saw the cajoling, caressing note shimmer through her.

Her flush deepened. Confused emotion toppled the brittle look of peace that had finally settled on her face. She fled.

Seaghdh swore.

What the hell was wrong with him? He had no business being disappointed because his subject had broken and run when the sexy little games they’d been playing had intensified. Certainly, he’d known what a beautiful woman she’d been before her capture, had thought he’d known something about who she was. But damn it. Nothing had prepared him for the wry humor in her. Or the depth of pain or the sheer force of will shining from her. She’d been pretty before, but now, her once-lush beauty, shattered by the Chekydran and pieced back together by medical technology, promised magnificence tempered by nightmare. It was the sheer magnetic force of intellect and personality that hadn’t crumbled beneath Chekydran brutality that made her so engaging, so stunning.

She took his breath away. He hadn’t been prepared for that or for her response to him. She obviously hadn’t, either. That he impacted her, he could plainly see. It was damned flattering, but the fear her feelings caused her felt like a knife in his gut.

ARI
fled to the galley, propped her hands on the counter, let her head hang, and grappled for control of her body. Three months of brutal captivity. Three months of attempting to recover. How in the Three Hells could she respond to any man, let alone the one who’d made her a prisoner again and who’d endangered the most important people in her life? Was this sudden awaking of her most primal self part of the recovery process? Was it even normal?

She sagged. No way to know. It wasn’t like anyone had the data to define normal parameters for surviving Chekydran victims. They were a rare breed.

And the man sitting in her father’s command chair was watching her every move on the galley transmitters. She straightened, scrubbed her face with her hands, unable to escape what she’d seen in his eyes.

He liked what he saw when he looked at her.

Some deeply hidden feminine core stirred to life within her. She’d seen so many feigned reactions to her appearance that she knew his appraisal had been honest and that it had taken him by surprise. Maybe that’s what had reached her. Extracting a response from someone who did not want to respond made Ari feel richer somehow. Armed, maybe, with a weapon she’d never realized she’d had.

A thrill of erotic promise fired through her. She turned away from the camera, folded her arms around her body, closed her eyes, and allowed herself a moment to enjoy the sensation. It would be all she could afford.

How long had it been? Four years? Five? No. Six. At least. That was the trouble with chasing a command. Everything Ari had done, everyone she’d associated with figured into her command suitability in the eyes of the admirals. Plenty of command candidates chose celibacy to safeguard their careers. The single greatest attrition factor in the leadership program was love. The admirals said it was “the urge to merge” overpowering the drive to captain a piece of hardware.

Maybe it made her cold. Or hard. Or maybe she had always been Pietre’s Ice Princess, but she’d never wanted anything as much as she’d wanted her own sleek, lethal Prowler and crew.

Until Cullin Seaghdh made her think and feel things that could rip away the last hope that she’d ever sit in the command chair on the bridge of a warship ever again. Her only option was to do what the Chekydran had forced her to learn so swiftly and so well: block out every trace of emotion. If she could do that and concentrate on her job, she might still convince Armada Command to put her back in the number one spot on a Prowler roster.

Resolute, Ari made supper. As she dished out the thick, aromatic stew, she had Seaghdh unlock cabin doors. She punched the com buttons for her father’s, Raj’s, and Pietre’s rooms.

“Supper’s ready,” she said.

“Alex?” her father began.

“Come to the galley, Dad. I’ll explain what I can.” She straightened, folded her hands behind her back, and waited the few minutes it took them to traverse the corridors.

The door opened. Linnaeus Idylle and his crew filed into the room. She drew a deep breath. Her dad sat in the chair at the head of the table, pushed his bowl of stew away, and clasped his hands, anger in the set of his shoulders. Pietre stood at his right, arms crossed, contempt in his expression. Raj and Jayleia sat side by side at the table, turning their chairs to face her. Ari nearly smiled. None of them would put their backs to anyone else. And they called her distrustful.

“I cannot give you much more than a tactical briefing,” she said, sitting opposite her father.

“I don’t want a briefing from a colluder.” Pietre dropped his hands to his sides, his fists clenched. “It’s time we took back this ship.”

Raj lifted an eyebrow. “Are we secure?”

“No,” she said, dipping her spoon in her stew.

Her father scowled.

Pietre’s face darkened.

“At no time, while these men are on board, should you consider any conversation secure,” she said, turning to be certain the galley sensor couldn’t see her face. She pinned Raj with a stare and slowly closed one eye.

He took a deep breath and sat back. “I understand.”

Ari hoped he did understand that medical might still be secure, but it was the only place, and she didn’t know how long that would last.

“We are on course for Tagreth Federated Command,” she said.

Her father narrowed his blue eyes, as if trying to adjust his focus. “We’re being shadowed by the Chekydran.”

“Yes.”

“After they’ve veered off?” he asked.

“Silver City.”

Her father scowled. “Nothing more than pirates.”

Ari shrugged, neither confirming nor denying the supposition. “Once we reach Silver City the
Sen Ekir
and its crew will be free to go.”

“Says who?” Pietre demanded.

She met Pietre’s angry brown eyes and took a deliberate bite of stew.

“That pirate out there?” he asked. “A man without a conscience? Or honor? How can you believe anything he says? Are you even thinking?”

Her throat closed on her protest and she struggled to swallow the morsel she’d so unwisely chosen. Dropping her spoon in her bowl, she rose. That did the trick. She could breathe and talk again.

“You’re still alive,” Ari countered. “That pirate out there, the one without any honor, wasted time letting us pack up and stow your experiments and your gear. Not the actions of a man bent on murder.”

“You are so stupid!” Pietre growled, his face red.

“Am I?” she challenged. “So stupid that I tuned the atmospherics when the problem was a fuel line clog? A clog so bad the valve is now shot? I have to risk blowing all of us, including your precious ass, out of the space ways by setting down on Kebgra for a spare. You’ve endangered everyone, again, because you couldn’t be bothered to do your damned job.”

“Stop it!” her father ordered. “Pietre, sit down and be quiet. Alexandria, Kebgra? You said we were on course for Silver City.”

She drew herself upright and huffed out a short breath as Pietre dropped into a chair. Damn it. Barely sixty seconds in their company and she’d reverted to the Armada Captain her father treated like a two-year-old. She had to overcome these old habits, fighting with Pietre and letting her father order her around.

“We’re in the lane for TFC, Dad,” she answered, rising and shoving her bowl of stew into cold storage.

“So as not to alert the Chekydran,” Jayleia said.

“I have noticed that I can’t get our passengers killed without taking us along,” Ari replied. “I am doing what the Chekydran expect. Kebgra and the engine repair are first.”

“We’re riding tolerance on the valve?” her dad inquired.

“Beyond tolerance,” she countered. “That jaunt through the outer solar atmosphere didn’t do it any favors. We’re twenty hours out.”

“What are the odds of a bleed?” her father demanded.

She shrugged. “I can go in on one engine if I have to.”

“Risky,” Raj said when neither her father nor Pietre commented.

“No more so than a bleed,” she said. “Kebgra’s nice, but I’m not interested in permanent residency. Either because we burned off all our fuel or because we exploded on entry.”

“Very well,” her father said, nodding. “Pietre will . . .”

“Not likely be allowed to do the repair,” Ari finished for him. If she had control of someone else’s ship, she sure as hell wouldn’t give the crew any chance to sabotage the drives.

Pietre leaped to his feet. “I’m engineer on this ship, not . . .”

The door opened. Ari glanced up.

“Captain Seaghdh,” she said, ignoring the gun in his hand in favor of wiping down the counters.

Jayleia gasped. Ari’s father and Raj sat back in their chairs. Pietre froze.

“V’kyrri will handle repairs,” Seaghdh said.

Ari raised her eyebrows when Seaghdh’s second followed him through the door. “Turrel. Who has the con?”

“Captain Idylle,” Seaghdh acknowledged with a nod, his tone mild. “We’re in the lane. Turrel has the con on handheld. You’re off duty.”

Without waiting for her reply, he swept the people at the table with a glance that would have made her shiver had it been turned on her. The gun focused on Pietre. “I asked Captain Idylle to brief you as a courtesy,” he grated. “You do not control this ship. I do. Captain Idylle is making the best of a bad situation. I suggest you do the same.”

Her father rose slowly, his hands flat on the table. “None of this is necessary, Mr. Seaghdh. If you and your men require transport, return control of my ship to me. Diverting to Silver City is a minor issue. I will forego charges if you surrender control.”

“That’s touching, Dr. Idylle,” Seaghdh replied, “given you preferred murder a few hours ago. You’ll have to forgive me if I can’t bring myself to trust you any more than I trust the Chekydran.”

Her dad stood rigid. “You’d have done the same thing in my place.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” The dead flat tone of his voice drew Ari’s attention to Seaghdh. His features might have been carved from a solid piece of Dirthanian Isarrite, the hardest substance yet found in the galaxy. The light had gone out of his eyes.

“No man of conscience, or of honor, leaves someone to die a slow, agonizing death,” he said, his voice honed to a keen, lethal edge. “Not when he can prevent it.”

Silence.

Ari nodded. Point definitely to Seaghdh but not against her.

Her father lowered himself to his chair.

Seaghdh waved Pietre to the table. “If we’ve cleared up the question of open revolt, have a seat. No point missing supper.”

Pietre stared at him, then at Ari. Very slowly, he edged to the table and sat down.

“You didn’t poison our friend’s supper, did you, Captain?” Seaghdh inquired as he eased into the chair she’d vacated.

“Not yet,” she replied, sliding bowls in front of him and Turrel.

“Thanks,” Turrel said. “Pass the bread.”

“My appreciation, Captain,” Seaghdh said. “You haven’t eaten. Join us.”

With the tension running so high, she’d never be able to choke anything down, but Ari retrieved her stew and slid into the only empty seat between Turrel and Seaghdh. Without looking at her or asking, Seaghdh dumped a slab of bread into her bowl.

She peered sideways at him. He ate, his gaze going from scientist to scientist.

“He’s right,” Turrel growled. “You got over a lot. No one would know, ’cept you still look like a prisoner. Eat.”