Poisoned Pawn (12 page)

The Patrol officer who answered spoke crisply, asking for identification. Clark gave it, adding Lowell’s name, asking to contact the base commander. There was a pause, and the voice informed him it would be quite some time. Clark asked to have him call the Phoenix at his convenience. The voice assured him the commander would be given the message. Lowell’s name added priority. Clark signed off and leaned back, wondering just how he was going to explain himself, not just to Lowell but to Jasyn.

She woke too soon. Clark sat at the galley table, clicking pieces of the Crystals game, setting up endless variations that he couldn’t possibly win. He heard her stir and put the pieces down.

“I made some soup,” he offered.

“I don’t want any. It really happened, didn’t it?”

She put the lute carefully to one side and went into her cabin. She came out a while later, dressed in a plain shipsuit, her hair loose and damp. Her face was pale, but more composed.

Clark put the game away. He handed her a steaming mug, not letting her turn it down. She set it on the table, looking at it as if she didn’t recognize it. Clark picked at the edge of the table.

“Have they called?” Jasyn asked.

“No one’s called. No news yet.”

She lifted the mug and sipped.

“I’m sorry, Jasyn. I failed. I should have stayed with her.”

“I should never have dragged her off dancing.” She frowned as his words sunk in. “What do you mean you failed?”

“Dace was right. I’m Patrol. Lowell arranged for me to be the only pilot available. I was supposed to watch her, report back on what she did, and keep her safe.” He didn’t dare look at Jasyn. He didn’t want to see the anger or recrimination on her face. He never wanted her to look at him that way.

“You weren’t very good at hiding it,” Jasyn said, none of the expected anger in her voice, only a sadness that underscored every word.

“You aren’t angry with me? Dace would be furious.”

“I don’t have her history with the Patrol.” She put the mug very carefully on the table. “She’s really gone.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“There isn’t much you could have done.”

The com beeped. Clark stood. Jasyn looked up at him, hope and dread warring in her eyes. He went to the cockpit and answered the com. It was the Patrol commander.

“Who the devil are you?” the commander demanded as soon as Clark connected. “Why am I calling some private freighter?”

“This is Major Trevyn Clark,” he identified himself. “I’m on assignment from Commander Grant Lowell.”

There was a long moment of silence. “If you’re working for him, why are you using an open channel? Why aren’t you following procedures?”

“Because the mission is a disaster,” Clark said, sagging in defeat at admitting it out loud. “I need to get a priority message to him.”

“I’m not a message service,” the commander said gruffly.

“No, sir,” Clark said tiredly. “But if I send it through you, it will reach Commander Lowell more quickly.”

“And what should I send him?” The commander sounded a bit mollified.

“Priority code black.” The code for agent missing or dead. “Subject is no longer available.” His voice broke. It hurt to put it so coldly. He wished he had never taken the assignment, never listened when Lowell tempted him away from his routine posting. The money wasn’t worth this, nothing was.

“Is that all?” the commander asked, voice quieter as he understood the unspoken message behind the impersonal words.

“Yes. And thank you, Commander.” Clark disconnected from the call.

“Soup?” Jasyn offered behind him.

He swiveled the chair to look at her. She held a steaming mug. He took it, even though he didn’t want it.

“I’m not a professional agent,” he said.

“I know,” she answered. “There is one other person you should notify.”

“Her family? I thought she didn’t have one.”

“She said I was the sister she’d never had, once,” Jasyn said. And turned suddenly wet eyes away, brushing at them. “She doesn’t have a family.”

“Then who? And why me?”

“Malcolm Tayvis should know,” she said, her voice full of pain. “Lowell’s the only one who knows where he is.”

“I’ll send it,” Clark said. He keyed the message as personal, deliverable to Grant Lowell.

Disjointed fragments. Momentary glimpses.

Senses uncoordinated with each other. Flickers of time stretched and pulled—

—vibration in my head, or maybe outside. The rumble of an engine, out of tune, unbalanced. The taste of salt water on my lips, the taste of tears. The memory of falling through space, tumbling forever between warm streams of light—

A moment of nausea. Darkness. Not night, something deeper, dragging me in and wrapping me in smothering folds of velvet unconsciousness—

—voices rising and falling like the calling of birds, a language I should know but can’t remember—

—metal beneath me, metal taste in my mouth, sound of metal in my ears. Vibrations making my bones sing. Deep rhythms singing in my heart, beating in time to the unheard chorus of stars. Pinwheels of light dance and spin about me. I am the universe. I am nothing. I am… I reach for a name and meet only more darkness.

Light, blinding, harsh. Cold washing over me. I pull inside my shell and sing with the galaxy, voices like bells chime around me. The light intrudes, stabbing my eyes. I raise hands to cover my face. I have hands. What are hands? The question drives me away into the singing again, despite the light, in spite of the cold wetness—

—vibrations slow, change. Nausea twists me in spirals of dark red agony. I reach for the singing, the golden chimes, the song of the universe. It rises beyond me, forever out of reach. I wake, sobbing, to find myself naked, wrapped in a thin blanket. The floor around me is slick with tears. I am drowning, unable to find the music that calls to me, forever lost—

Light, again. Blinding yellow-white. I squint, blinking. The voices will not let me retreat this time. The wetness is gone, replaced by cold. Slick metal holds me in a slippery embrace of flatness.

“Are you sure the dose wasn’t too high?”

A voice, ugly and harsh, not the chiming brightness of angelic stars and lights. I try to close my eyes, to find refuge in soft, smothering darkness since I can’t find the singing light of the universe. Hands pull me up, rough and cold.

“I calibrated it correctly,” another voice answers.

I scream as the voice reverberates in my skull, louder and louder, round and round.

A sharp prick in my arm and the darkness comes back, cradling me like the mother I barely remember, like the lover I dream about.

Light again, this time a dim glow of blue. I blink and recognize it as a doorplate. It means a way out, my sluggish brain finally realizes. I try to stand but I’m lying on a floor that is sliding away to the side. I dig in fingernails already torn and broken. Pain explodes in my hands, red bursts of angry light—

The floor isn’t moving. I close my eyes, exhausted. Sleep this time, not the smothering darkness.

I wake again, to hear the voices talking.

“She should have woken up by now. Something’s wrong.”

“She dies, we space her. Nobody knows. Ever.”

“And we’re out the money.”

“You wanted the risk.”

Hands pulling me, dragging me upright. My muscles protest, flaccid and limp, weak and thin. I blink open eyes crusted over.

“She’s coming around.”

A face looms, huge nostrils, dark holes pouring foul air over me with each breath. The face moves back. Cold wetness pours over my chin, dribbles into my slack mouth. I swallow. It’s that or drown. My body tries to breathe at the same time. I cough, tearing muscles with the spasm. The rough hands push me over, face to my knees. I cough again, and try to move away from the punishing hands.

“See? She’ll be fine. Just get more of that restorative down her. Nobody cares if she’s damaged in the head.”

Low moaning echoes through the room. Rhythmic and sad, an animal in pain and beyond hope of rescue. I wish for someone to help the creature die, to end its pain, and realize the one moaning is me. I cry inside, knowing something has been lost, something I treasured. It is gone, washed away by the celestial choir of stars.

Hands, these gentler, raise me up. More of the cool liquid, poured more carefully, slides into my mouth. Swallow by swallow, I regain strength.

I can focus again. I see a face over me, a woman old and wrinkled. She pats me wordlessly and feeds me more liquid.

I float in and out of time, each waking more coherent than the last. The woman is there, constantly. She says nothing, waiting patiently for me to wake so she can feed me more of the liquid.

It tastes bitter, sour as the smell that rises from me and the thin blanket that covers me. I sleep again, finally. Deep sleep, true sleep, and I dream.

* * *

“I can’t find her, can you?” A voice I know out of the stifling darkness. I reach for him, try to call him. The darkness fills my mouth, thick and dry. I taste dust.

“Is she here?” the voice asks. I know his name. He knows mine. I wait for him to speak it, to tell me who I am, so I can remember. “I can’t find her.” He repeats it again.

I stretch, reaching for him. I have to touch him, to find him in the dark. I need him to say my name, to unlock the vagueness of my mind. I’m trapped in darkness, smothering, dry as death. I cry tears of dust, eyes raw and blind.

“I can’t find her,” the voice says, moving farther away.

I want to scream, to shout to him that I’m here! I’m here!

His voice fades. I’ve lost him.

* * *

I woke to find my face wet with tears. I sat, wiping them away. I was naked, covered only by a thin blanket so filthy I couldn’t tell what color it was originally. I sat on the floor of what had to be a storage closet on a ship. The floor vibrated under me, the rumble of a sublight drive.

My head was clear, surprisingly so. I felt like it should have been filled with stars and cobwebs and a lot of other strange things. I brushed a hand across my head and shuddered at the matted mess I found instead of my normal tangle of hair. I wondered how long I’d been shut in the room. By the smell of it, I’d been there for a while.

The door opened. I looked up, not sure what to expect. A man stood in the doorway, legs wide and hands on hips as he looked me over. He sniffed and made a face at the smell.

“Get up,” he said.

I tried, clutching the blanket to hide as much of me as possible. My legs felt like overstretched rubber. I used the wall, leaning on it until I was more or less upright. The man didn’t offer to help.

“Trust Ortel to make a mess of things,” he muttered. “Out,” he ordered.

I couldn’t walk. I knew if I tried to move, even a little, I’d lose what little balance I had and fall on my face. I tried to tell the man but all that came out was a hoarse croak. He grumbled, but saw that I really couldn’t move. Holding his nose as far away as he could, he hauled me out of the closet.

Judging by the corridor outside my storage locker, the ship was a small one, though not as small as the Phoenix. I blinked and struggled to remember what the Phoenix was. The memory drifted away in a fog. I stumbled at the end of his arm as he dragged me down the corridor. He opened the door to a cabin and pulled me in. The door slid shut and the smell intensified. He yanked the blanket away and stuffed it into the recycler.

“In there,” he said, jerking his head at the door of a bathroom. “Scrub. Or I’ll come in and help.”

I lurched across the floor and into the bathroom. He let the door shut, giving me privacy, but only because there was absolutely nothing in the room I might possibly have used to help myself. Escape? I had a big blank in my head. I didn’t know where I was or why.

I stood inside the shower, a warm misting one that part of me knew was standard on smaller spaceships. I cycled it through three times before I started feeling like myself again. My head cleared, my rubbery legs firmed up. The only problem was that I didn’t know who I was.

I stepped out when the shower finished blowing warm air. I stood in front of the mirror on the wall and tried to figure out who I might be.

I saw a face, rather thin, with large frightened eyes. They were halfway between deep chocolate brown and green. My hair was mousy brown, tangled and short and curling at the ends. I used my fingers to try to straighten it. I stopped, hand twisted in damp hair. I’d done this before. Recently. I stared at the face again. My hair used to be very short, cropped close to my head. I was growing it because… Because…

I ran into a blank wall. Relax, I heard a voice say in my head, don’t force it. Let it come on its own, let your mind heal, let the memories slide away let your mind focus let your mind your mind…

The words slid together and the wall crumbled. My name was Dace. Zeresthina Dasmuller on my birth certificate and until I was old enough to change it. I was a pilot. I owned a ship with Jasyn Pai, the Phoenix Rising. What was I doing naked on this ship?

The door opened. I turned to face whoever was coming in. I’d been kidnapped. The Targon Syndicate must have caught up with me. I swallowed, hard. I was in deep trouble.

The wrinkled old woman from my dreams stood outside. She handed me a dress and waited, motionless as a statue, while I pulled it on. It was rich fabric, fine and soft to the touch. I was certain I’d never owned anything like it. The color was soft peach. It fell in graceful folds around me. The old woman moved with surprising speed, fastening me into the dress. It was short, to mid-thigh, and skimmed over me closely enough that I couldn’t have hidden anything under it even if I’d had something to hide.

The woman went to the cabin door and opened it. I crossed the floor, barefoot and feeling almost more naked than before.

The ship jerked. I stopped and put a hand on the wall to steady myself. Clangs of attaching grapples echoed through the ship. A further series of thuds signaled that the ship was docked. Somewhere.