CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

Val slipped in beside Krin on the bench looking composed but strained. Nathan studied the Shifter. He wanted to ask how long it could hold its shape. Was it wearing to stay shifted? But he didn’t dare talk about it out loud. Not while Samuels was in the same tent.

“You all right?” Krin murmured.

“Fine. Tired.” Val attempted a smile, head tilted to one side.

“Your ship?” Nathan asked.

“Almost fixed. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. Glen’s been out there all morning with Mike and Juanita trying to fix it. Juanita’s a whiz with electronics, but even she can’t figure out how so many things could go wrong.”

“Do you think they’d mind if I had a look?” He tried to make the comment casually. “I’ve repaired a ship or two in my time.”

“I imagine they’d be happy for the help. Can you two spare him for a few hours?”

Krin nodded. “Yeah, if it helps get your ship fixed.”

Val smiled and played with the food on the plate in front of it.

“Are you eating?” Krin asked so quietly, Nathan could barely hear him from across the table.

“All the time,” Val said with a genuine grin.

Shifters took their food from the air around them, directly into their cells. Apparently, they could do that while shifted too. The humor in Val’s comment surprised him. He’d learned a little about Shifters from Krin who’d learned from Val. A lot of it he’d heard before from his mom and her cousin back when he wasn’t going to get involved with the Shifters and hadn’t believed half of what Thomas told him anyway. But he’d never stopped to wonder if Shifters had a sense of humor. He almost smiled back at Val.

“The inspectors as much as told us they’d only be staying for another day and a half.” Ti’ann spoke quietly, keeping the conversation as private as possible in the communal canteen. “Might be easier just to stay now.”

He sat next to her on the bench, out of some morbid masochistic streak he was sure. Every time she moved, he had to clench his jaw to keep from grabbing her and doing something he was sure she’d prefer was kept private. When she talked it was worse. Her husky voice shot sparks of heat down his spine. But at least sitting next to her, he didn’t have to look at her. Looking at her now left his control in tatters. Last night he’d come very close to tossing aside his good intentions. This morning had only made matters worse.

He was almost relieved for the excuse of working on the ship so he could be away from her for a few hours. Maybe then he’d be able to look at her without losing it.

He couldn’t believe he was turned on by the fact that she’d yelled at him. He wasn’t into verbal conflict as an aphrodisiac. Never had been. He didn’t get hard when women argued with him. Except, obviously, when it came to Ti’ann Jones. If Krin hadn’t been there, he’d have had Ti’ann on her back in a nanosecond.

The question was why did he get slammed by lust when she stood up to him?

It wasn’t until they’d sat down in the canteen that the answer hit him. That morning, in Krin’s tent, he’d seen the woman he’d known three years ago. All the passion and fire she kept tightly braided and in baggy clothes had exploded out with her temper. The time they’d spent together so far, the moments when he was certain she still wanted him, had been restrained by circumstances. For his part, he was resisting a client. He wasn’t sure why she held back, but she did. Until this morning.

He had no doubt now his memories of those nights with her weren’t exaggerated. The lust and insatiable need had been real.

By the afternoon, BinRal would be here to cover Nathan’s ass. The Binnean was going to have a field day with this. First Alex. Now him. He’d never hear the end of it.

“We may have to stay,” Val said, answering Ti’ann’s question.

It took him a few blinks to pull himself back to the conversation and away from the way Ti’ann’s skin would feel once he disposed of those damned baggy clothes of hers.

“But as we’ve made excuses to leave,” Val finished, “won’t it seem worse if we don’t?”

“Not if the ship can’t be fixed,” Krin said. “Then you have a perfect reason for not leaving.”

Nathan kept quite about his own suspicions. He’d know more after he looked at their ship.

“Where’s James and Clare?” Ti’ann asked.

“James had to make a call but he’s on his way here after. Clare said she needed a shower.”

Ti’ann shifted next to him, her thigh briefly brushed against his, and Nathan felt like his head was going to explode. He stood abruptly, knowing he needed to get away from her. Now.

“I’ll go see what I can do for your ship.”

He dumped his plate and hurried outside without looking back. He took a deep breath once he was beyond the camp. He rounded a tree, stopped, and squeezed his eyes shut for a minute. This had gone way too far. He couldn’t even sit next to her without his cock reacting. He opened his eyes and headed for the landing pad. Maybe he should just leave. He didn’t need this in his life. She had him so screwed up he could barely think straight. And the worst part was she wasn’t doing anything. She wasn’t walking around in tight clothing, she wasn’t flirting. She hadn’t brought up their past, not even alluding to it. She wasn’t going out of her way to get near him. In fact, if anything, she avoided him. He’d been the one hunting her down all over camp, making excuses just to be in her presence.

Was that it? The hunt? She wasn’t interested anymore so he had to have her?

He considered that as he cleared the woods and headed toward Monroe’s ship. When she’d looked up at him last night, there was no doubt she wanted him. He didn’t know why she was ignoring their past or why she tried avoiding him, but one thing he was certain of, the attraction between them went both ways.

So much for his theory that it was just the hunt.

He marched up the side-ramp leading into Monroe’s ship and found Juanita and Mike hunched over a panel in the rear of the vessel. Glen called up from a repair access tube in the hull. “That should do it. Try it now.”

Mike hit a switch, his fingers danced over the flat screen, and he and Juanita sat back. A low hum started ticking over, choked and died. “Fucking hell,” Juanita hissed.

“Not yet, Glen,” Mike called back. He looked up then and noticed Nathan. “Hey, Longfeather. What’re you doing here?”

“Came to see if I could lend a hand. Mind filling me in?”

“Our auxiliary drive is jumping and shorting primary power. We’re trying to bypass the break in power flow so we can reactivate the primary couplings. It’d only be a temp fix but at least we’d be able to get out of here and have the drive overhauled once we get back to Capital. But every time we think we’ve isolated the break and bypassed, the primaries short out again.”

“Can I have a look?”

“I don’t mind. Glen, come on out so Longfeather can take a look. Maybe fresh eyes will help.”

Glen’s blond head popped out of the shoot entrance half a meter from the panel where they were standing. “Be my guest,” he said in disgust. “I’ve never seen anything like this. And I’ve been repairing machines for years.”

“Some ships have their own quirks,” Nathan said.

“Yeah, but those are usually high class, or really old, or fast hotshots. This is just an ordinary on-planet cruiser same as half the planet owns. This thing should not have quirks.”

Nathan shrugged noncommittally as Glen pulled himself up to the main deck. With a hand gesture he offered the task off to Nathan. “All yours, Longfeather. If you can fix this, I’ll shout your genius to the entire camp.”

Nathan chuckled. “No need to go quite that far.”

He dropped easily into the repair shoot and hunched down to crawl into the access tube. The panel covering the area Glen was working on lay on the floor next to a handful of tools. A network of wires, power links, colored alinar tubes and control terminals half removed from the hole in the wall gave Nathan a good idea of the work Glen had been trying to do. He studied the arrays and ran a few numbers into the auxiliary drive control terminal. He frowned. Another series of codes. Ah. As he thought. A very sophisticated piece of work.

He checked over the alinar tubes until he found the one he was looking for, designed and color-coded to blend so well with the others you’d have to really know the workings of the ship to know it was an add-in. Even an ordinary repair crew wouldn’t be likely to spot this.

He hunted through the tools on the floor but couldn’t find what he needed. “You have a Borman’s rig up there?”

“I’ll get it,” Mike called down.

He crawled back into the main shoot and poked his head up over the edge of the floor. Mike came trotting back from the front of the ship with a small oblong gray device used to handle, remove and insert the alinar tubes. “Is one of the tubes shot? We don’t have any spares.”

“Don’t worry.” Nathan took the Borman’s rig and ducked back into the access tube. Removing the add-in without actually frying the whole drive system was tricky work. If someone who knew what they were doing rigged this, and Nathan was certain it had been done by a pro, then one false move could turn the ship into an inactive lump of metal only good for donating parts.

It took him well over an hour, but when he finally got the tube removed safely and the links all realigned, he took a deep breath. “Try it now.”

He backed away from the panel, into the repair shoot, far enough to get out quickly if the whole thing popped. He waited as the low hum of the drive turning over started through the ship. He counted to twenty, the hum increasing in speed and got higher in pitch. He held his breath until it whirred to full life and the sound dropped into the low rumble of a warming drive system.

Shouts and cheers erupted above him. Grinning, he jumped up from the shoot, Borman’s rig in hand. He’d have to dispose of the tube safely but he had the facilities in his own ship.

“What did you do?” Juanita demanded. Her stern face relaxed into a grin.

He held up the rig. “I hate to tell you this, but your ship was sabotaged. And someone very slick did it. If you’d stumbled across this—an add-in alinar tube—and tried to remove it, at the very least you would have blown the ship’s systems out.”

“At the least?”

“Sabotage?”

“What the hell?”

All three spoke at once. “Why would someone do that?” Glen asked, confusion creasing his sun-tanned face.

Juanita and Mike exchanged a look behind him. Nathan kept his expression neutral. “Maybe Gremblewreath thugs?” Mike suggested in a tone that wasn’t very convincing.

“Maybe.” Nathan didn’t think Glen was fooled. In hindsight, he should have waited to tell Mike and Juanita when Glen wasn’t around. But given how much Glen had already seen and done on the ship’s repairs, he wasn’t sure the grad student would’ve been happy without the real explanation.

“This to do with the new dig? You think maybe someone doesn’t want us to uncover a possible Shifter graveyard?”

“Could be,” Juanita answered. “We’ve been trying to keep the theory quiet, but people talk.”

“So why would they want to keep you guys here?”

“Maybe it wasn’t supposed to keep us here, necessarily,” Mike said. “Maybe it was just a warning to the group in general. Or maybe just to inconvenience us. We might want to check all the ships.” Mike tilted his head down to focus on Nathan over the top of his little glasses. His look said, “Go along with this.”

Nathan didn’t react to the look, but he was willing to go with whatever story they invented. He doubted Glen believed it. It wasn’t a great story given the trouble they were going through to keep the graveyard theory a secret from the inspectors. Who else outside the camp would know? But he wasn’t going to be the one to point out the illogic.

“I’ll start checking over the other ships today,” Nathan said. It wouldn’t hurt. He might even check the inspectors’ ship. Quietly, of course.

“That really sucks,” Glen said to no one in particular. “What happens when we find out for sure what’s down there? Someone gonna try to sabotage the whole dig?”

“Doubt it, Glen,” Nathan assured him. “If we can’t be intimidated, this will probably stop.” More likely it would stop when the supposed inspectors left. Holding up the tube, he said, “I need to dispose of this properly. I’ll start the checks on the other ships when I’m finished and I’ve made a tour of the site.”

He studied Glen for a minute, debating. The man’s record was perfectly normal. He had an ambition for science and a clever mind with mechanics, but he’d had to work his way into graduate school because he’d failed too many classes trying to get his primary degree. He was an eager worker and had received great reports from both Ti’ann and Krin during his time in the field. There was nothing in his past that screamed dodgy character. Nathan would check his impressions with BinRal before he did anything—considering how fucked up his mind was at the moment by Ti’ann—but Glen was proving useful with repairs. If he trained him to hunt for these types of traps, together they’d be able to check the ships over in no time. Leaving BinRal free to keep an eye on Samuels.

“Mike, I’ll want to talk with Monroe when he’s free. Could you tell him to find me?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Clare O’Malley picked that moment to come sauntering into the ship. Her dark red hair was wet, falling in thick curls around her face. “You find the problem?” she asked.

“Nathan fixed it,” Mike told her. “We’re gonna run a check on the other ships as well. Just to be safe.”

She stared at Mike a minute, then hit Nathan with the most calculating look he’d ever seen.

“Someone rigged the ship so it wouldn’t take off, didn’t they?”

He stared back without responding. If she was their security, the fact someone got in was on her head and they both knew it.

When he didn’t respond, her shoulders dropped and her mouth turned down in disgust. “Fuck.” She stared at the floor for a minute then looked back up at him. “Can you show me what was done? How to spot it?”

He watched her closely as he considered her request. Unlike Glen, Clare’s record was spotty. She’d worked a number of jobs, including as a stripper in the Docks—a city built on the Dreic Sea off the coast of Capital that housed the underbelly of Naravan society. There was even some ambiguity surrounding her job in the Docks. She’d only worked in the strip club for a few weeks, quit suddenly, and four days later the Mafia family running the Docks shut the club down. The story was splashed all over the vid-screen for weeks. O’Malley had remarkably good timing, getting out so conveniently before the raid, before she could be harassed by any of the anxious reporters swarming the story after it broke, before she had to talk to the Guards about her time in the club. And that wasn’t the only occasion where she’d shown remarkably good timing.

After watching her, he was pretty sure she was working security for Monroe. Her reaction to the sabotage seemed to confirm this hunch. But there was something else to Clare O’Malley. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. He needed to keep a closer eye on her.

“I’ll need an extra hand to check out the other ships. You volunteering?”

She pursed her lips and nodded.

He agreed with the barest movement of his head. He hadn’t agreed to show her anything worthwhile. But it would keep her close, and he’d be able to keep an eye on her. “Meet me at my ship in three hours. I have a few things to do first.”

“Anything you need help with?” Glen asked. “You’re gonna be pretty busy. You need me to do anything?”

So eager to help. Good or bad?

Nathan headed to his ship, puzzling over the situation. He didn’t trust Clare. The act was too good, the past too sketchy, her knack for being in the right place at the right time too coincidental. At the same time, he hadn’t found anything in her past to make him think she was dangerous to this group. No anti-Shifter or government connections. Anywhere. Even in the Docks she’d never affiliated with any one family or individual that would bother with the Shifter issue. Hell, her only connection with the Shifters started with this group and Mike Warez.

But that was the other thing bothering him. Her relationship with Mike. It seemed too contrived. There was no spark between them. According to his checks, the two had only been together for a month. Too soon to have lost the passion. So that was probably a set up. But why? If she was security, why not just be security?

Then there was Glen Thompson. With his squeaky-clean record and ordinary past, Nathan would have been inclined to trust him. Until he’d volunteered so quickly to help. Something about that eagerness had sounded alarm bells. Maybe he was over-reacting. Glen was always on hand to help. Maybe he was just a helpful person. He hadn’t volunteered to assist with anything suspicious or even anything specific. Just whatever Nathan might need him for.

He cursed quietly as he pressed a spot on his comm-link to deactivate the shield around his ship. He’d survived for years on his instincts about people and situations. Now, he was doubting himself. There was no real reason to be suspicious of Glen. Yet he was. But was it his instincts sparking or was he reading the whole situation wrong because he could barely think straight for more than an hour at a time?

He reactivated the shields around his ship once he was inside and headed toward the aft storage hatch and the disposal unit. BinRal couldn’t get here fast enough. He needed a clear head on this soon.

*****

E watched Nathan Longfeather leave the ship. He’d fixed it. He was the only one who could have. The others had been working at it for hours without finding the add-in. Nathan Longfeather had removed it without freezing the entire system. Nathan Longfeather needed to be watched.

E studied the ship. He needed to disable it again. He couldn’t let the Shifter get away. It was in the eating tent now, still surrounded by others, with Ti’ann Jones. He couldn’t allow Ti’ann Jones to see him. But he was patient. He’d catch it alone soon.

He allowed his body to relax, change, flow into something new until he could move more freely. Within the blink of an eye, he was camouflaged and slithering toward the Shifter’s ship. So many forms to take. It made his task so easy. Nathan Longfeather couldn’t do what he did. He wouldn’t be a threat to E.

He’d never even see E coming.