Supernova (26 page)

“God,
no,” she assured him. “I’m just...” She fumbled for words.
I’m in love with
you, and all I can do is wreck your life
. “Very comfortable,” she finished.
Her earlier sense of safety fell flat. They were still aboard the
Defiant
,
still in the Nym’s sights.

“Me,
too.”

He
settled her back against him, but Lily was wide awake again. “Rian? Don’t you
have to go to work?”

“You’re
trying to get rid of me already? You’re breaking my heart.” But there was a
lightness in his voice. He kissed her, a slow, lazy kiss that was over far too
soon.

“I don’t
want you to get into any more trouble on my account.”

“None of
this is any of your fault, and I’m off-duty until 1200 hours.” He ran his
fingers over her back, eliciting a shiver from her.

“Then
what?”

He
sighed. “I have a vidconference with Fleet, and I have to run a diagnostics on
security patches that were downloaded into the ship’s sensors. Fleet’s
transmitting the program now. Are you worried?”

“Yeah, a
little.”
A lot.

“Don’t
be.” His hand moved to trace her breasts, and his fingers teased her nipple
until she gasped. His mouth covered hers, and he shifted his body until he was
above her, supporting his weight on his elbows. “We’ll be okay,” he murmured
and kissed her neck. Lily felt something in her respond, and she locked her
fingers around his neck and brought his face down to hers, echoing her hopes. “We’ll
be at Kevnar Station in a few days, and this worry will be behind us.”

* * *

Lily had
set the cabin alarm for eleven, but she woke up early. She gently slipped out
of bed and tried in vain not to wake him.

“Going
somewhere?” he asked sleepily.

“Go back
to sleep,” she said softly. “You have another half-hour. I was just going to
get a glass of juice. Do you want some?”

“No,
thank you.” He watched her leave the bedroom, still naked. A small smile played
over his mouth at the sight. He ordered the illumination on, the lights set to
low. She returned to bed with her juice and took a few sips before setting the
glass on the nightstand. She chewed on her lower lip, and he knew she was
concerned about something. “What is it?” he prodded.

“The
usual,” she said. “Exams, moving, evil space aliens.”

He didn’t
want to have this conversation right now, which surprised him. Ordinarily he
was willing to discuss military theory and strategy any time, and he had in the
past, while he was in bed with a long-ago lover. He didn’t want to talk about
the Nym, not when she could make him forget everything except hunkering down in
the covers for as long as they could get away with. But she seemed set on
discussing it.

“Rian,
we both know they were after me,” she said.

“Yes.”
He sat up, the blankets bunching around his waist. “Some of the Fleet
higher-ups think there may be something on this ship that’s broadcasting our
business to unfriendlies, but damned if we can find it. Some kind of energy
trail we’re not aware of.”

“You
said the Nym’s technology outdoes yours.”

“It
does,” he confirmed. “We could still pick up evidence of its use, though.
Everything leaves a trail, even if we don’t know exactly what the device is.”

Lily
nodded, understanding. “Could someone communicate with an unfriendly and erase
the transit logs?”

That
was what had woken her up—she
was worried. Of course. So was he. “No. Well, theoretically, yes. But trying to
make that kind of adjustment would lock down external communications, and the
culprit would be caught. Also, no one on this ship, including me, has that kind
of knowledge or training. We just look out for smugglers and haul science teams
across the galaxy.” He gave a small, mirthless laugh. “You really pick good
pillow talk.”

“You’d
rather I tell you we should kick everyone off the bridge for an hour and play ‘Good
Captain, Bad Captain’?” Some of the sparkle was returning to her eyes.

“I’ve
never heard of that, but yeah, I would.” He crawled back under the blanket. “Come
here. We both need sleep.”

Chapter 15

All was
quiet in the
Defiant
’s airspace this evening, something that ordinarily
would have pleased Rian if he wasn’t pissed off at losing his captaincy and
paranoid about Nym activity. He was handling the former better than he would
have a few months ago and found himself looking forward to the transfer to
Kevnar. He could admit to himself now that there were upsides to essentially
being a secretary to an admiral.  He wouldn’t be a captain, but he wouldn’t
have to deal with the
Defiant
’s crew either. As for the Nym,
paranoid
wouldn’t cut it.
Scared shitless
was a better term, but he’d be damned
if he let anyone know about that.

At least
Fleet had stopped talking about a court martial for the time being. He and
Senior Captain Jena had had a private vidconference earlier in the evening.
She, too, had been threatened with a court martial after firing on the
disappearing Nym ship a couple of weeks earlier. “You’re damned if you do and
damned if you don’t,” she pointed out. “The rules about the Nym change
depending on who’s pissed at you. They can’t control the Nym or predict their
next move, so they control us instead. It’s fucked, Marska.”

He was
finding that was true, but Rian Marska wasn’t Ursuline Jena. She terrified most
of Fleet, including half the admirals. Hell, she would be an admiral herself if
she had stopped referring to them as “a bunch of shit-brained no-nuts” about
twenty years ago. “Don’t worry about it,” she had assured him. “Tell them the
truth about what happened. The only way to deal with the Nym is to blow the
fuckers to pieces on sight. If anything, they should be promoting you for
having the balls to talk to them.”

He
checked on Lily frequently, sometimes just her location, other times to say
hello. It was out of fear, and he couldn’t help it. Despite Fleet’s assurances
that all the scans conducted on the ship proved the initial suspicions
otherwise, the possibility of a traitor aboard was something that weighed on
his mind. He had been accused of being too analytical in the past, too
paranoid, and after more thought, he tended to agree. Not this time. Something
just wasn’t adding up, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was driving him
crazy.

The Nym
knew
.
They had figured out which patrol ships had stopped by Rubidge Station around
the time Lily was found in the cargo hold:
Bishop’s Pride
five days
before the
Defiant
, and the
Shelian
two days after the
Defiant
.
Bishop’s Pride
and the
Defiant
were older ships, the
Shelian
had taken her maiden flight out of the shipyards two years ago. The
Defiant
was equipped with a generously-sized cargo hold and was notorious for its
constant repairs; the
Pride
had a single unused fighter bay and was a
reliable old ship. Someone had put two and two together and possibly mistaken
the
Pride
for the
Defiant
and tried to attack her first. Fleet
had waved away his theory, but that didn’t deter him. He was going to find out
how the Nym knew and how much they knew. This was the first time in his life he
wasn’t doing something for the sake of his career. This was about Lily, pure
and simple.

From his
office, he ran every scan filter authorized by Fleet and an unauthorized one
developed by his brother-in-law, who used it in the shop where he worked.
Nothing unusual had shown up.

He was
missing something.

Maybe
Lily had a tracking device on her.
In her
, he corrected himself. From
his office computer he pulled up the files from her last exam, administered by
Mora Kharn. She had had three Fleet-approved vaccinations that day, guarding
against Coll particles and venereal disease, and an immuno-booster. She had
also had a contraceptive transderm implant. All standard vaccinations; everyone
on board had them.

He
looked more closely at the file. The drugs’ manufacturing stamps were recorded,
per procedure, and nothing looked out of place.

A
mediscan wasn’t out of the question, just to be on the safe side, but Rian had
no intention of asking anyone in the infirmary to do it. He just had to get his
hands on a unit and scan Lily. For the first time, Rian was glad he was forced
into taking field medical courses during school.

Mora
Kharn may be an admiral’s daughter, and her psych profile didn’t fit that of a
traitor, but Rian wasn’t placing his faith and the lives of Lily and his crew
on those criteria. Just because the profiling program hadn’t failed in the past
didn’t mean it was infallible. There was a first for everything.

He
checked the computer in his office to see who was scheduled for duty in the
infirmary, and by a stroke of luck found it was Dr. Bekri and a lone nurse on
the evening shift. Bekri would be too absorbed in the latest installments of
the vid serials to care if the captain strolled in and helped himself to a
mediscan unit, and the nurse was fresh out of school and still had a healthy
fear of authority.

He
slipped out of his office and took the lift to the infirmary. He strode in the
doors, setting off a chime. Bekri stayed in the glassed-walled office, a
datatab in his hand and his eyes glued to his computer screen. He offered the
barest of nods to Rian in greeting and didn’t say a word. Someone would have to
flail around a severed limb to get the man’s attention.

Under
ordinary circumstances, Rian would have upbraided Bekri for his lack of
attention, but this was far from a regular day. He offered a silent prayer to
the gods, thanking them that Ashford wasn’t on duty as he rummaged around the
storage room in the back and helped himself to a mediscan unit. He slid the palm-sized
device in his pocket and left the infirmary without speaking to the doctor. He
passed the nurse on his way out. Gods knew where she had been.

Where
did Fleet find these people, and why were they always assigned to the
Defiant
?
It didn’t matter that in a few days’ time they wouldn’t be his to deal with
anymore. A work ethic was still important.

He
forced himself to wait until he was off duty at 2300 hours before doing an
impromptu check-up in Lily’s cabin. He declined a cup of tea from the
replicator and held out the mediscan.

“What’s
this?” she asked.

“I’m
going to scan you for a tracking device,” he said, flicking the unit on. He
calibrated it to a deep scan setting. “It’s more thorough than the ones you’ve
already had. Take off your clothes.”

“Usually
you kiss me first,” she muttered, but complied. She stripped off her T-shirt,
dropping it on the floor.

In spite
of their predicament, Rian smiled and felt lust roil inside him. “I will later,
I promise. But I have a theory that you were implanted with something that
doesn’t protect against Coll particles and pregnancy.” He still couldn’t stop
his breath from hitching as she pushed her pants down her legs and kicked them
off.

A
stricken look overcame her face. “No,” she whispered. “Mora wouldn’t do anything
like that.”

“How
long have you known Mora?” he asked, holding the mediscan over one of the
vaccine’s entry points in her hip.

“Almost
as long as you have,” she shot back.

Ouch.
“Good point,” he replied
tersely.

The deep
scan took ten minutes to complete, and Rian knew Lily was pissed off about his
suspicions. She glared at him as he held the unit over her back and hips and
asked for every detail of her appointment with the nurse. He could live with
that. Lily alive and mad was better than her dead. No matter how much he loved
her, her well-being was most important to him.

The unit
beeped in his hand and he dropped it. He picked it up with shaking hands and
tried to focus on the report scrolling across the screen.
You love her
echoed through his mind.

“Rian?”
Lily said, exasperated. She pulled her shirt over her head. “What does it say?”

“Nothing,”
he said and flicked off the unit. “That’s the problem.” She pulled on her
pants.

“I told
you so,” she said.

“I know,”
he sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you and Mora are friends. But right now I don’t
trust anyone.”

“Even
me?”

“Except
you,” he corrected. “Come here.” She closed the short distance between them,
and he held on to her for a moment, taking in the scent of her hair, acutely
aware of her breathing. He felt the tension ebb from both of their bodies, and
he dropped a kiss on her forehead.

“Have
you had dinner?” she asked against his shoulder.

“Not
yet.”

“Neither
have I. I’ll make something.” He let her go, and she fussed with the
replicator, producing some soup and tea, and he sat down at the table. “Do the
apartments have kitchens on Kevnar?” she asked.

“They
do.”