Chapter Eight

Rage roared through his blood, threatening to blow the top off his skull. “As you were, Commander. You are compromising a tactical situation. If you cannot grasp that the appearance of trust is a strategic advantage, join the Murbaasch Tu. We’ll teach you. You had better have a damned good reason for threatening me over a woman who saved your life.”

Parqe’s weight shifted forward. Her hands curled to fists.

V’kyrri drew himself upright, hands loose at his sides.

She met him glare for glare for several tense seconds. Then Parqe’s gaze faltered. “My brother was a surgeon until he put on a SEM to get through a particularly delicate, pioneering neuro-surgery.”

Anger settled out of V’kyrri’s system. “He became addicted.”

“He wouldn’t attempt the simplest procedure without enhancement. Then he couldn’t function at home without it. He stopped sleeping. Started dialing up the enhancement, buying newer, more expensive, custom-tuned units. Patients began dying.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The hospital fired him and tried to commit him,” Parqe said, her voice raw. “He killed himself and destroyed our mother.”

V’kyrri rubbed his aching forehead. “You have reason to hate everything about Edie.”

Parqe frowned. “You called her a tactical situation. Are you reading her? Influencing—”

“No.” V’k breathed deep before continuing. “The crash burned me out.”

“What?” Parqe gaped at him. “Then no one knows where we are? That we need—”

“No one knows.” He handed Parqe the ration packet. “I’ve lost everything. The ship. The crew. My ability. There’s nothing left but revenge.”

Parqe flinched.

“Eat. Get everyone settled. No talking. I’ll need the light for a minute.”

“Damage control?” Parqe asked, putting the light bar into his hand and accepting the food in return. She hesitated, then said, “I regret it’s necessary.”

V’kyrri pressed his lips tight. Maybe there was hope for his exec after all.

He followed Edie. He slid into liquid dark and found her leaning against one broad stalagmite, her SEM field deactivated. The glasses dangled from her belt.

Relief blew through him. Maybe she hadn’t been privy to the episode with Parqe.

Eyes closed, she rubbed her temples. Weariness etched lines into the corners of her mouth.

She wouldn’t hear him approach, wouldn’t see him.

He frowned. She’d gated reconciliation. Anyone else, he could talk. Whether or not they listened, they’d hear, and that could be made to be enough.

Not Edie. She had the means to shut out everyone and everything. And without telepathy, he couldn’t even force the issue.

Should it annoy him so much?

“I’m not running off.” She opened her eyes and looked right at him.

“How did you…” He broke off. She wouldn’t register what he’d said without the SEM.

“Air currents,” she said. “And your clothes smell like electrical fire.”

And sweat and death and fear. It did nothing to explain how she could answer questions without her SEM.

Her generous lips twitched, and her expression went smooth the way it did when she was resisting the urge to assuage his concern. He forced himself to relax, to tamp down tension. Let Parqe distrust enough for them both. Every instinct whispered that Edie, while maybe not entirely trustworthy, was salvageable. Even when she patently didn’t want to believe she was.

Twice now, she’d called herself a monster.

Actions counted. His Claugh-killing former-revolutionary hadn’t walked away from saving people she considered enemies. She’d made the hard choice. Kept making it.

It occurred to him to wonder why.

“You understand me without your SEM,” he noted. Her gaze moved to his lips.

His body tightened. They’d been here before. She was watching his mouth as he spoke. Not just that, however. For whatever reason, this time, when her gaze turned to watch him speak, her expression softened, and her brown eyes lit with appreciation.

Reaction shot through his blood. He sucked in a sharp breath. How was this even possible after the trauma of losing ship and crew?

“I don’t need the SEM to understand you,” Edie confirmed. Her voice trembled. She looked away.

V’kyrri squared his shoulders. Attraction was a tool. He either used it to shape her or it would shape him. He put a hand on her arm. The contact rippled through her, spilling awareness of her into his blood. It had nothing to do with telepathy. Motes of fire traced his nerves. Funny that it would take the death of his ship and of his telepathy to discover the many modes of communication he’d automatically assigned to his one known talent.

She stared at him, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” he said, refusing to snatch his hand away as if he’d committed some sin. But he had to steel himself for his body’s reaction when her gaze went to his mouth. “I’m sorry we’re draining your resources.”

She shrugged and averted her gaze again. Her cheeks flushed.

Encouraged when she glanced at him again, he said, “The Claugh will compensate—”

Her toneless bark of laughter cut him off. “You can’t afford my price.”

Frustration twisted fingers in his ribs. “What? What is it you want?”

“My parents,” she snapped. “Barring that? My world’s freedom.”

Pain shot through him. He closed his eyes.

Guilt flushed Edie’s system at the furrows digging into his forehead. Against her better judgement, she’d come to respect the man. When he wasn’t trying to order her around. He’d had nothing to do with her parents’ murders. Had he?

“I’m sorry,” he said, again. He opened his eyes.

“Why?” she grumbled, so afraid he’d say yes that she turned to read the answer in his face before he could speak it. “Were you there?”

“No.”

Grim distaste, conveyed by the way he shaped the word, made her wonder what he’d responded to. What the Claugh had done to her people, or what the resistance—what she—had done to the Claugh?

Edie turned her gaze to the darkness. Clarification wasn’t always a good thing. She wouldn’t accept condemnation, and she couldn’t accept sympathy. Maybe she’d grown. Or gone soft. Fine line. She could save their lives, but she hadn’t grown to the point that she could bear their pity.

“Look.” Edie lifted the hand, palm up. A ball of plant material rested there. It would have been fluffy save for the waxy coating. She closed her fingers and shrugged her sleeve lower to flick fingernails against the spark strip embedded there.

V’kyrri jumped.

She opened her fingers. Dim flame danced in her palm. “Hand out. Flat. Palm up.”

An intrigued twist to his lips, he obeyed She tipped the burning ball onto his skin. He flinched, then paused, his gaze flicking to her face.

“It’s soaked in flammable liquid that burns cool enough to handle. The heat rises, but you’ll be happier if you move it around a bit. Leave it in one spot long enough and it’ll raise a blister.”

He shifted. The little fireball rolled across his palm. “What is it for?”

“Surprise,” she said. “Lighting off stuff. Convincing little kids that not all fire is bad.”

The muscles around his mouth softened. “Really?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Original use was among jugglers delighting young audiences.”

“Is that what you do?”

She sighed and looked away. Ignoring the cold sweat gathering on her skin, urging her to turn the SEM back on, she shifted her shoulders and rolled her neck, trying to break up the ache gathering behind her eyes.

“What’s wrong? Headache?” V’kyrri asked. The light of the fireball faltered and winked out. He shook the singed wad of plant material out of his hand.

“Turn around. Hold still.” His fingers closed on her wrist. Tugged.

He pulled until her back rested against his chest. He hooked the light bar to her belt. His voice vibrating from his chest into her back urged her to surrender to the lure of his touch. His breath puffed past her ear.

She shivered. “What are you…”

He set warm fingertips to her temples, pressed, and began tracing the muscles, working against spasms of pain. He uttered more words she couldn’t read.

The ache in her skull receded and, even though she’d clamped her lips shut, Edie couldn’t suppress a groan.

From the methodical way he worked from one painful pressure point to another, massaging the tenderness away, she gathered he’d been trained in a specific technique. Undoubtedly something the Claugh had developed to return soldiers to fighting form.

Even as she sagged, taking her shields offline for the few moments they lingered in the dark, she tried to tell herself he only needed to restore her to peak operating efficiency. Tactics. Not consideration.

The heat quivering at her core didn’t seem to hear. Or care. How long had it been since—

Gasping, Edie bolted upright. Out of the Claugh captain’s grasp. Spinning to face him, she backed off, a smile pasted to her features. “Amazing stuff. Thanks.”

His hands returned to his sides, his gaze busy on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” she echoed. She planted her feet. Another step backward and she’d tumble down slope.

He looked at her hands. “If that’s a language, Edie, I’m sorry I don’t understand it.”

Shock detonated. Edie froze, her hands stuck in mid-sign. Signing. By the grace of the Twelve Gods. She’d reverted to her native language. In the presence of…because of a Claugh. Her knees tried to fold.

Alarm rocketed into his frown. V’kyrri bolted for her, grabbed her biceps, supporting her.

“Sorry,” she gasped, quaking. “Sorry. Let me…” She grabbed the SEM, fumbled it into place, and tapped her handheld.

The unit powered up. A split second of agony raked overstimulated nerves. Nausea swelled, then settled into an uneasy slosh in her empty stomach. She swallowed hard. Locked her knees. No more weakness. Not in front of, or for, a Claugh. No matter how compelling.

V’kyrri clenched his teeth on the impulse to turn his mental ability to prying Edie open. He’d come so close to breaking through to her soft underbelly. He craved another taste of her pliable in his hands, her body surrendering to his as if starved for contact. He shifted his hold on her and couldn’t tell whether the resulting tremor ran from her to him or the other way around. “I’m…”

“Claugh,” she whispered. “You’re Claugh. Let go.” Edie ripped free of his grasp and vaulted onto the ledge, taking the light bar with her.

V’kyrri shut his eyes. Could he fall asleep standing up? He forced his eyes open. It would take more than a couple of hours of sleep to erase the internal damage he’d suffered. If even that would do. Though his head no longer seemed to be as pieced together by torturous lasers.

Which meant he should take a few seconds to find out whether he’d fried his neural circuits permanently or not. Who to contact?

Not his best friend, Major Damen Sindrivik. V’kyrri had no idea whether Damen still lived, given that he’d been on a mission to rescue the major and gotten shot down en route. It was entirely possible that Damen and Jayleia were gone. Just like his crew and his ship.

He shunted aside the stab accompanying the thought. Later. He’d find a way to entertain and process emotion later.

He’d get a message out now if he could.

That meant Ari, then.

She’d been altered by the Chekydran. They’d made her telepathic. Since she’d joined the Claugh, V’k had been working with her, teaching her to control her power.

If anyone would hear him, it would be Captain Ari Idylle, even after he’d severed their mental connection in the worst way possible during the crash.

He pulled her face from memory. White hair. Silver eyes. Strong jaw. Generous lips she pressed a little too tightly as if perpetually braced for bad news. Since she’d survived being a Chekydran prisoner of war, the caution made complete sense.

He said her name, not really inside his own head. The impression of speaking out across some kind of extra-cranial pathway rolled his friend’s name out into what? Space? Time? A kind of mental warp space?

It bounced right back, echoing around within the confines of his brittle skull. V’kyrri flinched.

Gods, he needed to get a message out. He swallowed an icy lump that refused to thaw on the way down. The damage to his telepathy couldn’t be permanent. He wouldn’t let it be.

The fingers he dug into his aching temples shook.

“Captain,” Parqe whisper-shouted.

Startled, he sucked in a gulp of air and opened his eyes. Useless. No dawn in the underground. You’d think he’d remember that. Maybe he did. It would explain the tremble in his nerves. Swallowing a curse, he edged through the stalagmites by feel.

Edie had one light bar on the ground casting illumination and shadows upward. She knelt beside a stretcher, quaking handheld in one hand, the other outstretched to Chavolgen and Fuller. “Hydration.”

Parqe—eyes huge with dark smears underneath—the burn on her face glaring angry red, slashed temple to chin when she faced Edie from the opposite side of the stretcher. Holding the only Claugh handheld out and scanning, her gaze found him as he slid between the rocks.

“Sir.”

He couldn’t breathe. The entire weight of a dead starship and crew settled on his chest. No. Not here. Not now. He braced and blew out a steadying breath.

“Give me the damn—” Edie snapped.

“Edie.” V’kyrri strode to Edie’s side, took her outstretched hand. “You were right. We can’t win this battle. I should have listened.”

Edie subsided and turned away, but not before a single, red-lit line of moisture slipped beneath the edge of her SEM glasses.

“We can help ease her way. Sedation, Lieutenant,” he said.

Not that it was necessary. Not anymore.

Edie slid from his grasp.

V’kyrri crouched beside the stretcher. His joints creaked. How was it fair to find out he’d retained enough of a base level of telepathy to be a captive audience to the last glimmer of light and life going out of his crewwoman?

Her death registered as a dull knife burrowing into his chest. Folding the stretcher cover over the dead woman’s face flooded heat into his eyes.

His exec bowed her head over the handheld. “Confirmed. Permission to institute reduction?”

“Objections?” V’kyrri glanced around the circle of faces.

He caught Fuller’s red, swollen eyes. At V’kyrri’s side, Edie, her face illuminated by scarlet data traces, stared at the dead woman, her fists clenching and unclenching.

Parqe put the handheld before him again.

Life signs. Not in the cavern, but close. He triggered his mental housecleaning routine to clear away emotion he couldn’t afford. He activated the process that would reduce his dead crewwoman to a container of remains weighing less than a kilo.

The stench of burned flesh intensified.

An incoherent whimper and the too swift rhythm of Edie’s harsh breathing shook him. She rose and backed away. Another line of red-lit moisture slid down one cheek.

His heart bumped. He stood.

Her attention jerked to him. No. To his uniform. Edie’s lip curled.

“Edie,” he murmured. “Don’t. We’re not…”

She bolted.

V’kyrri lunged in pursuit. He caught her on the rocky slope and snagged her arm.

Behind them, the light on the ledge winked out.

Edie’s breath caught on a sob. She growled.

V’kyrri ducked.

Her fist went over his head, ruffling his hair. Instinct? Or the way her muscles had bunched in his grip? He certainly couldn’t see.

Trusting her SEM to pick it up, he whispered, “Edie. Stop.”

She ripped free of his grasp.

“Damn it.” He pounced as she spun away, something he could track by the glow of her SEM. He caught her to his chest, pinning her.

She fought. An elbow jabbed him in the gut.

“Oof. Edie,” he whispered at her ear as if she could hear him. “Edie, stop. Listen. Someone’s out there. Look at your data. You can’t get us killed without getting yourself killed, too. Look at your data. Stop.”

Something reached her. She sagged, trembling, in his grasp.

He couldn’t wait for her recovery. He lifted her, turned, and by the light of her SEM, hauled her into the cover of the ledge.

She twisted free, fled to the far end of the ledge, and based on how the faint gleam of her SEM sank to the floor, she sat. Another line of moisture tracked her cheek, so like blood, his gut clenched.

Her lenses winked out. Clothing rustled beside him.

“What if they have sensors?” Parqe whispered.

He shook his head as much to clear it as to answer his exec’s concern. “Then we fight.”

Tension dug claws into him, swarming up his body.

Whoever approached came on alert with dim light and echoing footsteps but no other noise. As the light weaving through the boulders brightened, V’kyrri and Parqe took position on either side of the ramp.

A pair of miners slipped in and out of view amid the stalactites and stalagmites below. Muted gray uniforms fitted with tactical ballistic armor replaced the usual bright-colored, loose-fitting coveralls the rest of the UMOPG favored.

They passed directly below V’kyrri. Their light lit the mid-reaches of the slope he and his people had climbed. His pulse tripped into double time. Why wouldn’t the soldiers climb the slope and search the ledge? Autken were scent hunters. How could they miss the reek of fear and burned flesh?

His nerves pinged and sang.

Edie crouched beside him in the dark.

“Don’t like this,” the Autken woman whispered from down slope.

V’kyrri had to strain to make sense of the thin slip of sound.

“A ship down. Survivors. Something hunting us in the tunnels, and us short-handed. The Guild Mistress took too many troops.”

“She’s hunting that spy that attacked Silver City,” the man whispered in response. “We’ll find them survivors.”

V’kyrri stiffened. Damen. He edged out from behind the stone teeth, listening.

Edie grabbed his wrist. Her grip pinched.

“Everyone on this rock needs the same thing,” the man whispered.

The woman grunted. “Water.”

“We only got to wait for them.”

“We’re stuck guarding water like cubs,” the female groused.

“Yeah. But we’ll live longer,” the male said.

The woman snickered.

Edie tugged.

Pressing a fist against the ache in his chest, V’kyrri frowned.

The UMOPG soldiers didn’t live longer.