Gates of Hell (8 page)

Roxy shrugged at the couple and grinned sheepishly, embarrassed at the reaction koltiri got from most people. She was glad they also had the authoritative figure of an Alpaean aristocrat in black uniform decorated with lots of fancy fruit salad to focus their attention on. Her war hero was gaudy, but he came in handy in awkward social situations. Roxy slid out of bed as Eamon faced the survivors.

“We intercepted a distress signal from your vessel,” he told the survivors. “Who are you?”

The man sat up, and Roxy felt his shock at discovering he was no longer weak and sick. “I’m Kelem,” he said. He gestured toward the woman. “This is Sady. We’re from Thensil 3. We sent the distress signal after we were overtaken and attacked by the other ship. Before they jammed our communications. We’d asked the Triallens for help. Their answer was to try to destroy us.”

“Your system is under quarantine,” Eamon reminded them. “You were risking spreading the plague. Is that why the Triallens fired on you?”

Roxy stood as close to Eamon as she could without looking like she wanted a reassuring hug. She did, but the man was here on business.

“Yes,” Sady answered Eamon’s question. “I don’t blame them. Sag Fever is horrible. Horrible.” She shuddered. “Our world is dying. The government tells us there is no cure.”

“There isn’t,” Roxy said. “You were healed, not cured… but let’s not go into the difference.”

“You’re lying! There is a cure!” The outburst came from Kelem as he sprang out of the bed to tower angrily over them.

Roxy took a step back just so she could look up at him, and she was over six feet tall. “Whoa, there, big fella,” she soothed. Kelem went red with indignation.

Before he could shout again, Sady said, “We have heard of a medication that is available on Laborne. We were on our way to Laborne when we developed engine trouble and tried to set down on a Triallen repair station. The station was fully automated, but they wouldn’t allow us near it. We must get to Laborne and bring the cure back to Thensil.”

Kelem began to sob, the tears rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. “You don’t know what it’s like watching a world… people you love… total strangers… it doesn’t matter. They’re all dying. I don’t want to go back. And I don’t want to live knowing what’s happened to the rest of my world. Would you want to go back to a world of skeletons?” he demanded of Roxy and Eamon.

Dee and Hernandez had come back into the room. Dee stepped forward now. “Laborne’s a free-trader port. A not particularly reputable free-trader port. Sound’s like some charlatan’s trying to sell you a placebo just to make a profit. Some beings will do anything for a credit.”

Sady looked confused and worried. She obviously didn’t want to believe that someone might try to take advantage of plague victims. “We were given a name.”

“Of a friend of a friend of a friend,” Roxy said. She and Dee exchanged cynical looks and almost imperceptible nods.

“A Bucon name?” Eamon asked, picking up on her and Dee’s suspicion.

Sady shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s Bucon. His name is Stev Persey.”

“Sounds Bucon,” Dee and Roxy said together.

“Maybe they do have something,” Roxy suggested. She shot a glance at Hernandez.

“Nothing I’ve heard about,” the doctor responded.

“You
must
take us to Laborne,” Kelem insisted.

Sady leaned out of her bed and touched Kelem on the hand. He turned to look down at her. “Why?” she asked him, voice bitter. “The Triallens destroyed our ship—our cargo. We have no way to buy the medicine now.”

Kelem sat down heavily beside her and her arm came around his shoulder. He was still crying. “This can’t happen.” He looked up pleadingly at Roxy. “You saved us.”

“Are you a Koltiran priestess?” Sady asked.

“Koltiri, yes,” Roxy answered.

Kelem was suddenly on his feet again, knocking Sady back against the pillow. “You can help us!”

Roxy became aware that Eamon was holding her arm with a force that would have been bruising if she wasn’t koltiri. If she wasn’t koltiri—well, she was, and he couldn’t change that fundamental truth any more than she could, no matter how much they’d tried. She stepped away from her husband and turned her back on the Thensilans. “Yeah,” she said. “I could.”

“Please,” the woman said.

The word came like a stab between Roxy’s shoulder blades and she flinched away from it, surprised and suddenly very frightened. Why? Because to heal it, she would have to leave the shelter of the
Tigris
. Was that all? She’d been arguing with the Captain to be allowed to do just that. Because she risked losing her husband? She remembered what it had felt like to heal Sagouran Fever. No, that wasn’t all.

A voice calling for the Captain and Physician to report to the bridge to accept a communications transmission saved her from having to confront this fear. She felt like a complete coward as she eagerly followed Eamon out of sickbay, leaving the distraught couple for Hernandez to deal with.

———

“Do you wish the
Tigris
to continue with the border patrol?” Eamon asked the plump, gray-bearded Terran visage on the flatscreen after the official greetings were done with.

“No,” Admiral Gunderson responded. “It’s been decided to keep a large-enough force on our side of the Rose to let the Borderers know we’re aware of them, but to reassign most of our combat vessels to sector patrols. Police work,” he said apologetically. “I realize that you aren’t used to that sort of assignment.” He somehow managed to look like he was personally addressing everyone on the bridge.

The bridge crew all looked back with properly serious expressions. Roxy was glad the admiral didn’t know any of them personally, or he would have recognized they were hiding amusement and annoyance at his patronizing assumption that they were a bunch of blood-thirsty, trigger-happy Trin killers who disdained anything less than major space battles.

We used to be like that
, Roxy thought,
but we got better. Mostly. We haven’t done anything that could be prosecuted as a war crime in months
, she added cynically. Reputations were hard to outgrow. Outlive. Whatever.

Admiral Gunderson beamed another kindly smile around the bridge. The bridge beamed a collective smile back—a little too toothy, Roxy thought, but not bad. Eamon’s serious face helped tone down the effect. Gunderson then settled his benevolent gaze on her. She didn’t have to be a telepath to know what was coming.

“Physician Merkrates.”

“Sir.” She knew Eamon knew as well as she did. Her husband didn’t show his fury, but the deep burn of it stabbed through her and left a scar. She kept her gaze on the admiral.

“I’ve been asked to relay a request to you from the Council to join the planet-based medical team on Bonadem to assist in the relief effort of Sagouran Fever.”

She expected the invitation, but had thought it was MilService’s turn. This time Roxy and Eamon exchanged a glance. MedService was one thing, her relatives—all koltiri were related—another, but The All Worlds Council was the ruling body of the United Systems, though only eleven beings ever sat, squatted, or floated on it at any one time. Why would The Council send a message to her? Why was an admiral delivering it?

“Sir?” Her normally deep, smoky voice came out as a high-pitched squeak.

“Your service is being requested to implement an evacuation plan. A plan that will save the lives of thousands of children on several worlds affected by the epidemic.”

She had just been given the means to override all of Eamon’s personal and professional objections to her leaving the ship. And she wished she didn’t feel so triumphant about it. Marriages weren’t about winning.

And she wished she hadn’t met Sagouran Fever deep inside the Thensilans’ dying flesh. Then she wouldn’t really know what she was up against. She wouldn’t be frightened to go. She reminded herself that this was a war for her to fight, and that she was good at that. She said, “A plan to save children? I’ll do whatever I can to help, sir.”

I’ve felt what this thing can do
, she thought at her husband who did not like telepathy.
I’m sorry, my love, but I have to go
.

His only answer was silence, of course, along with rage, and offended pride. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t have any expression on his face as he said to Gunderson, “I’m sure Physician Merkrates will serve as competently on Bonadem as she has aboard the
Tigris
.” After a brief exchange of pleasantries, it was agreed that a cutter would be sent out from Bonadem to pick her up. Eamon ordered a course change to rendezvous with the planetary ship. Then, and only then, did he address Roxy. What he said was, “Dismissed, Physician.”

———

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Roxy turned at Dee’s voice. She’d just come up to the lift near her quarters. She waited for Dee to catch up with her. “Cutter bay,” she answered. “I’m out of here.”

“Just like that.” Dee snapped her fingers in Roxy’s face. “Gone. Poof. No big tearful farewell scene after all this time onboard? Not like you, Merkrates.”

“I’ll be back in a month or so. Besides, I’ve done the tearful farewell bit.” The day-long scene with her husband had been both tearful and unpleasant before he finally, grudgingly acquiesced to the necessity of her leaving, since there was nothing he could do about it. “Everybody gathered in the recreation room and said goodbye an hour ago. There was cake. Where were you?”

“Packing.” Dee held up a blue duffel just like the one at Roxy’s feet. “I’m coming along.”

“What?!” Roxy had a vivid recollection of Kelem before she’d healed him. She didn’t want to see Dee in the same condition. “Why would you want to go to Bonadem?
I
don’t want to go to Bonadem.”

“Bucons,” Dee answered succinctly. “If they’re dealing a drug that works on Sag Fever, I want to find it and synthesize it. Chemists are good for that,” she added. “Bonadem has a Bucon trading enclave.”

“I know. I was thinking about that myself.”

Dee patted her on the head. “Clever child. But you’re not a chemist.”

Actually, she was. “True,” she agreed.

“And you’ll be busy.”

“True,” Roxy agreed again.

“And I know more about Bucons than you do.”

“Well… “

Dee’s dark eyes narrowed. “My misspent youth was more misspent than your misspent youth.”

“True, Nikophoris.”

“Fine. It’s agreed.” Dee pressed the call button for the lift. “Let’s go.”

“Uh—the captain? Bonita? Me? Don’t you have to get these peoples’ permission?”

“Dr. Hernandez has enthusiastically agreed to supervise Life Sciences in my absence. Eamon doesn’t really want you to go by yourself, not that he said so in so many words. He did initial the temporary transfer form with a particularly sentimental flourish, I thought.”

“What about me?”

“You don’t want to go alone, either.”

How very true. “It is a good idea. But remember what happened the last time you were off the ship.”

“I got wounded. It wasn’t pretty. Bonadem is a civilized world.” The car arrived, its doors swishing suggestively open. “And you’ll be there to fix me if anything happens. Let’s go.” Dee stepped in and waited.

Roxy hefted her duffel and looked up and down the empty corridor. “Right,” she said and joined her friend. “Let’s go.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Pyr announced. It was the first time he’d spoken since coming onto the bridge. He had been silently watching the view screen and thinking until Linch interrupted his concentration to tell him the ETA to Calrod was two hours.

Pyr stretched his long legs out before him as he lounged in the bridge’s center seat and looked up at the main screen through a fringe of hair. He kept his gaze on the silver-streaked tunnel of the FTL distortion field, waiting while a circle of eyes turned questioningly on him. Linch and Pilsane were in front of him, between the big screen and his chair. Mik was behind him at the engineering post. Simon and Rhod flanked him at the communications and ship’s functions stations. The
Raptor
was running silent, but Simon was monitoring the sensors for other ships’ chatter. There hadn’t been any so far. Taylre was with Mik at engineering. Pyr had been listening to their quiet technical conversation, amused because the pair were having a wonderful time discussing an interface procedure.

“All right,” Linch finally said after even the engineers had tuned their attention to Pyr. “
What
have you changed your mind about?”

“Denvry. We aren’t going to kill Denvry,” he elaborated. “We are going to take the time to be civilized after all.”

Pilsane pounded a fist on his console. “Why?”

“What if he has Axylel?” Linch’s quiet question undercut Pilsane’s annoyed growl.

“Then we’ll kill him,” Pyr answered, enjoying Pilsane’s uncharacteristic show of frustration. He wondered if it was a Rust reaction at last.

“Oh, good.” Linch went back to manning the helm.

This left Pilsane free to jump out of his chair and angrily approach the center seat. Simon, Rhod, and Taylre waited impatiently as well. None of them dared defy the captain for fear of being quickly returned to rot in the chattel hold with the rest of the pirate crew. Each hoped Pilsane would do the shouting for them. Mik waited too, hands hovering over his board. It wasn’t likely he’d join in any verbal discussion, but his interest pressed on Pyr’s shields. And Pilsane’s as well, Pyr supposed. Mik was nothing if not fair.

There was heat in Pilsane’s normally cool gray eyes when he confronted Pyr. “The crew,” he began warningly. “A raid?”

“Did I promise?” He watched the navigator’s fists clench at his sides, then Pilsane’s hands relaxed, one finger at a time, while he fought his expression back to its usual placidity. Pyr knew he shouldn’t be amused at Pilsane’s trying to regain his calm in the face of an unperturbed captain… but the role-reversal happened so rarely. “I suppose you’d like an explanation,” he offered graciously.

“Give me something I can go along with, Captain.” Pilsane’s voice was still tight. He glanced past Pyr to Simon and Rhod and Taylre.