Enemy Within (44 page)

“Alexandria,” her father said.

“Sindrivik and Pietre figured out how to extract that thing safely?” she asked.

He nodded, looking pleased. “I have great expectations of that partnership.”

“Extend my gratitude,” she said. “I owe them my life. Twice over, it seems.”

“What am I? Junk DNA?”

“There’s no such . . .” Ari broke off in the midst of the rote answer to gape at her father. Teasing. He sounded teasing.

Preening, he rocked up on the balls of his feet and back down. The last time she’d seen him do that, Hieronomus had been valedictorian of his university. Ari had been five. Another flash of awareness whispered “Dr. Annantra.” Ari blinked and shut it out.

“I formulated a cure for you,” he said, then waved off the declaration. “Inoculation, really. The Chekydran had built a molecular capsule around an array of ancient pneumonia viruses. The capsules held them in check and embedded in the spinal column. They even gave each of them a countdown clock. When time elapsed, the capsules disintegrated and you infected everyone nearby.”

Ari sighed. “Then you realized about the same time I did that this plague wasn’t a death sentence.”

Her father sobered. “Only for the few we lost and for you. Or so I thought.”

“How’d you beat it?”

“Vaccinating against pneumonia was easy, once we realized,” he said. “We vaccinated you, then I built a specialized enzyme that attacks and destroys the molecular bonds of the nanotech delivery mechanism.”

She crinkled her forehead and glanced down at her body. “I’m your sole test case? I should start dissolving any moment.”

“The nanotech was Chekydran, Alex,” Dad countered. “I targeted my serum. We’ve taken a few spinal fluid and cord samples to be certain you’re clean.”

Clean. Free of the Chekydran from the inside out. She wondered if her dad’s concoction would destroy Chekydran memory enhancements. Free of the Armada from the inside since Eilod and Seaghdh had removed the transponder. All she had left was a meaningless rank. Ari smiled and, still seeing Seaghdh’s painfully neutral expression, said, “Dad. Can I ask you something?”

 

 

SEAGHDH
paced the hallway outside medical, cursing as Eilod and her bodyguards watched. He’d swallowed every instinct in him that had screamed for him to sweep Ari into his arms and never let her go.

“Son, what is your problem?”

Seaghdh spun.

Linnaeus Idylle stood in the hallway, peering at him, his head tilted and his hands clasped behind his back.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have spent plenty of time misunderstanding my daughter, Captain Seaghdh,” the man said, “but this I do know. If you have feelings for her, you had better say so.”

“Or I’ll be your vaccination test case?” Seaghdh prompted. He shook his head. “She’s had too many people imposing their will on hers. She deserves the chance to find out what she wants.”

Dr. Idylle smiled. “You believe Alexandria doesn’t know her own mind, Captain? After everything she’s been through?”

Seaghdh sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. Anxiety made his heart tremble in his chest. He was losing her. He could feel it. Ari was slipping through his fingers.

Dr. Idylle put a hand on his shoulder. “She asked me to destroy her PhD samples.”

“What?” Hope slammed breath into Seaghdh’s chest.

“I’d say she knows what she wants. Do you?”

His eyes watering, Seaghdh spun to stare at the closed medi-bay door and groaned. He hadn’t told her. He loved her and he’d left her, even after seeing the heart-wrenching uncertainty in her eyes, to face whatever offer IntCom would make.

“Hang your pride, Captain. If she matters to you, make a counter-offer,” Dr. Idylle suggested before he walked away.

Seaghdh glanced at his cousin. “I can’t do this alone.”

Worry vanished from her expression. She nodded.

 

 

COMMANDER
Durante, the director of Intelligence Command himself, signed off after enjoining Ari to think carefully about his offer. She sighed and leaned back. She’d be careful all right. The package IntCom had put together for her reeked of desperation. They’d made sure she wouldn’t refuse. That put her back up.

“You look like you’re chewing on Nurrellan lemon berry,” Turrel said. “Must have been a hell of a deal.”

Ari glanced at him, lounging against the wall, just inside the door. As he talked, V’kyrri, Sindrivik, Eilod, and finally Seaghdh, filed into the room.

“What is this?” she demanded. “Tag-team interrogation?”

Sindrivik chuckled. Eilod’s eyes danced with suppressed amusement. Seaghdh smirked and V’kyrri flushed an interesting shade of mahogany.

But Turrel grinned.

Ari gaped, both at the sudden transformation in the colonel and from wondering if it was a sign of impending doom.

“You’ve seen through everything the Murbaasch Tu has tried to put over on you,” Turrel said. “Straight answer is we’re here to handle you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why, Kirthin Turrel. I didn’t know you cared.”

Eilod snickered.

Seaghdh rubbed a hand down his face.

“Don’t want to start that with me, Captain,” Turrel advised, a smile firmly in place. “I’m into plural partnerships. The more participants, the merrier.”

Ari flushed and held up her hands in surrender. “Call the doctor. I need something to scrub that image from my brain. They offered me command of a Kessola and its ops team.”

Seaghdh and Turrel swore in unison.

“Do they think I’m stupid?” Eilod demanded. “Or that you are?”

“I’m aware it might force you to arrest me for spying after all,” Ari replied. “We can be certain they didn’t intend for me to tell you.”

“Could we negate spying charges, get you aboard a Kessola, and let me have a look at it from inside your head?” V’kyrri pleaded.

Ari smiled.

Sindrivik choked on a sharp inhalation, then managed to exclaim between coughing spasms, “They set you up? Because of us? They won’t really give you a Kessola, will they?”

“You’re Murbaasch Tu, Lieutenant, but you think like a man accustomed to telepaths in the ranks,” she said. “What would you do with the first telepath ever in the history of your people? Someone with proven efficacy against targets halfway across a galaxy?”

“I’d bury her in the deepest, most secretive, bomb- and assassin-proof shelter I could find and work her to death,” V’kyrri said. His tone led Ari to believe she’d just heard a part of his race’s early history.

He shifted and she could tell his eyes saw her again. “They do know that you were only able to do what you did because you knew Angelou?”

“Like I know the Auhrnok Riorchjan?” she responded.

“I hope not,” she heard Seaghdh grumble and had to suppress a grin.

“I cannot allow them to use you,” Eilod said. She met Ari’s eye, her expression troubled but resolute. They both knew she wasn’t talking about Ari’s happiness or safety. She couldn’t compromise Claugh security interests by allowing Ari to return to any kind of position at IntCom.

“I didn’t risk my life or anyone else’s to preserve your people and mine just to walk into another prison,” Ari replied. “Not to mention some unresolved accusations against the Council regarding the genocide at Shlovkora.”

“You have a lead?” Turrel demanded, his smile gone.

She nodded. “Partial. I’ll get you a full report before I go.”

“Go?” Seaghdh echoed. “Go where?”

“Far and fast from TFC,” she replied. “Director Durante offered the Kessola as a warning.”

“You got someone inside IntCom?” Turrel marveled, admiration in his voice.

“Jayleia does,” she said. “Director Durante is her father.”

Turrel grunted, subsided against the wall, and crossed his arms. “Here’s where we handle you, Captain,” he said.

“I’m not a captain anymore,” Ari countered. “I resigned my commission.”

They stared at her.

“So no one could order you back home,” Eilod surmised.

“There’s more. When I went after Angelou, I thought we were after one misguided, power-hungry man. I may have miscalculated.”

Eilod’s expression sharpened. “He wasn’t acting alone?”

“The director hinted at indications of a larger network. We may never know, however,” Ari replied, pressing her tone flat. “Angelou’s sanity appears to be in question.”

V’kyrri paled and closed his eyes.

Just as she’d feared. Her doing. Ari nodded, accepting the guilt.

“Unless he recovers from what I did, we’ll never know if we had everything reversed,” she said. “We assumed the Chekydran were using Armada. What if it was Armada using the Chekydran?”

“To build an army?” Turrel mused.

“With soldiers that never question a command,” Seaghdh said.

“Are we looking at an attempted overthrow of the Council?” Eilod asked.

“Possibly.” Ari stared at her pale hands, gripped together atop her green blanket. “Regardless, we’d better ask ourselves what Armada offered the Chekydran that induced them to cooperate within some kind of marginal alliance.”

“Right,” Turrel said, sounding resolute.

She looked at him.

“I’m recruiting you, Captain,” he said. “You keep your rank. You report to me.”

Ari blinked. “The Shlovkur Armed Forces?”

“Yep.”

“Comprised of just you and me.”

“That’s right.”

“Got a ship?”

“Nope.”

“He doesn’t,” Eilod said, voice ringing, “but I do. Captain Alexandria Idylle, upon the authority and trust vested in me by the Peoples Voice Council and the Nobles Council, I hereby extend to you the rank of captain in the Claugh nib Dovvyth Diplomatic Service. Your command is to be the royal flagship, the
Dagger
.”

Elation fired through Ari and she breathed a laugh. “Just before he signed off, Durante said something about how nice it would be to have someone in the Claugh ranks who understands the TFC mind-set.”

It didn’t matter. Too much stood in the way, yet. She’d only be a danger to everyone and everything she’d come to care about. Ari held perfectly still until the longing raking her insides died down. How could she still want so badly to belong?

She stared at Seaghdh. He wouldn’t meet her eye. She hesitated. He hadn’t said he loved her, had he? The words to beg for a reason to stay died in her mouth. If Seaghdh was done with her, Ari refused to pressure him. He had to want her, and not because she’d helped preserve his government or because they’d traded off saving one another’s lives.

Eilod straightened and glared at her cousin. “Cullin Seaghdh, you are a brave man who has never cowered or hesitated in the face of the enemy. If you do not speak in the next several seconds, my estimation of your character will be forever damaged.”

“No!” Ari snapped.

Seaghdh jerked upright to stare at her. His tightly held control fractured and a maelstrom of emotion whirled out from him. Want. Fear. Pain.

“You do nothing you do not want to do,” she gasped at him.

Hurt fell out of the mix. Fear spiked and infected Ari so that her heart thumped uneasily against her ribs.

“Gods, Ari,” Seaghdh burst out in a rush. “I want you to stay.”

Heat raked the backs of her eyeballs.

“Here it comes,” Turrel said. “You honor-bound command types are all alike. Too fond of noble gestures and ready to run off to the outer reaches to spare everyone around you. It isn’t going to fly.”

“Baxt’k, you, Turrel,” Ari growled. “You have no idea what happened . . .”

“You were wired for more than sound with that transponder,” Turrel interrupted. “So, yeah. After careful analysis, we know exactly what went on in that torture chamber.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes, nausea surging at the realization that everyone in the room knew what she’d done.

“The bastard deserved to die,” Turrel said.

“Three Hells!” she muttered, opening her eyes and pinning him with an annoyed glare. “What he deserved wasn’t my call to make, Colonel. I had a job to do. I couldn’t do it while he lived. Am I sorry the thrice-damned Chekydran is dead? Hell no. I’d happily kill him again, if . . .” She heard what she’d said and broke off. “Happily.”

“I translated the hum I used to control the ship,” Sindrivik essayed. “At least, I think I did. If I understood it correctly, it’s a hive—er—courtship vocalization.”

“Sex,” she corrected, watching colorless liquid drip in the tube in her left arm.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Pervasive. It shut down all but life support and passive defense systems on board. It never occurred to me that one Chekydran having a good time would cause the entire ship to participate.”

“One hell of a sex drive,” Turrel muttered, sounding envious.

Ari nearly smiled, but she looked at Seaghdh’s wan face and pressed back feeling of any kind. “So you know I killed the Chekydran from within his own head. Did it show up on your damned sensors that I watched while he died? That I got off on his pain the way he’d spent so many months jacking off with my blood after beating me nearly to death?”

Rage fired in Seaghdh’s gold eyes as he blanched an alarming shade of white.

“Still want me to stay?”

“Baxt’k,” he ground out between clenched teeth. He closed the distance and yanked her to his chest so swiftly, she cried out in surprise.

“Hush,” he commanded, resisting her feeble attempts to disengage his arms. “Yes, I want you to stay.”

Ari subsided, relaxing into his embrace, frightened by how very badly she needed his arms around her.

“I don’t understand,” Sindrivik said. “You know the Chekydran language. Directly, I mean. Yet, you blame yourself for . . .” He broke off and cleared his throat before going on. “. . . Enjoying the death of the thing that tortured you, then tried to kill the Auhrnok?”