Shades of Dark Read online

  “And Stolorth,” he added.

  My eyes narrowed. “You’ve been to Rawton?”

  “I’ve not had the pleasure, but I do make it my business to know how and where the Empire uses those Ragkirils who will work for them. And yes, Rawton is a name often mentioned.”

  Sully had once told me the Ragkirils he’d read of or studied could fit in this ship, and we’d all still have room. Which had led me to believe that powerful Kyi-Ragkirils—not benign Ragkir empaths like Ren—were a rarity in spite of the claims from those like Sully’s pilot, Gregor, who’d stated there were teams of them.

  I was career Fleet, and knew that it wasn’t above using exaggeration for its own purposes.

  But at Rawton? If there was a Ragkiril interrogation team, then Rawton would make sense for their location. The climate on the main continent of Calth Prime was far more amenable to Stolorth physiology than Moabar’s—my prison world’s—was.

  My fears of my brother dying after a zragkor resurfaced.

  We still have options, angel-mine.

  Sully’s deep voice resonated in my mind and this time very real arms did encircle me. The warmth I felt was from not only within but without. Sully, sensing my pain, soothed it with the balm of his presence in a way no one else could. He made my weariness his own, replacing it with his energy—something he seemed to have an unending supply of lately.

  I leaned against him. “What’s our best move?” A dozen plans had already formed in my head—I’d been Fleet for too long—but I had no right to ask that we sideline our search for the gen-labs just to rescue my brother, especially when we’d finally found someone willing to talk to us. It would be four, possibly six shipdays to get back to Port January from our present location. And we’d miss the meet with our source in Dafir.

  Sully brushed one hand tenderly over my face, then down the braid that reached almost to my waist. “You have every right. But you have to realize they’re fishing and Thad is the bait. They can’t find me, so they’ve done the one thing that will bring you out into the open. I’m guessing Berri Solaria may have imparted information on our relationship to Hayden before she died. Actually, I always assumed she had.”

  Sister Berri Solaria. Devout and persistent. Like Verno, a member of the Englarian church. But she’d shed her robes at Hayden Burke’s command and functioned as Lazlo’s accomplice, if not his or Hayden’s lover. “Demon’s whore,” she’d called me in the shuttle bay on Marker, just before I’d ended her life with my laser pistol.

  She’d almost ended Philip’s and Sully’s.

  Yes, she was undoubtedly aware of my relationship with Sully. She’d been on board the Karn.

  “Let me contact Philip—”

  “They’d expect you to do that, so I suggest not, angel-mine,” he added, softening the hard tone that briefly crept into his words when Philip was mentioned.

  But he was right. Philip was more than my ex-husband. He was Thad’s friend. Tage would be watching Philip closely. “Jodey, then,” I offered. Jodey Bralford was Philip’s former first officer and now captain on the Krista Nowicki. I’d known Jodey for years and considered him a good friend. “He could reach Philip, determine Thad’s location, and, if they’ve not moved him, what the timeline is.”

  And there was no reason for Sully to have the same negative knee-jerk reaction to Jodey as he did to Philip. A reaction I felt had hampered us more than once, but this wasn’t the time to bring that up again.

  “I’m worried about Thad too.” Sully cupped my jaw and another spiral of warmth trailed across my skin. “But all we have right now is this news report. We don’t even know how factual it is. Your brother might not be sent to Rawton at all. Let’s not play into their game…yet.”

  His eyes narrowed for a moment. They were that infinite shade of dark—like fathomless obsidian—that signaled he was accessing his Kyi-Ragkiril side. Then he nodded. “Ren’s awake. We need to bring him up to date.”

  I secured the cabin’s computer and double-locked the data on Thad while Sully pulled on his boots. Then I caught up with him at the cabin’s door.

  “Walker took game one,” I told him, feeling slightly guilty for even bringing up something like that when my brother’s life was at stake. But the malaise that had dragged me out of bed and onto the bridge earlier now felt like a cocoon, wrapping me in a death grip. I needed a respite, even if only for a few seconds.

  Sully’s frown deepened then he shook his head, one edge of his mouth quirking up. “It’s not where you start but where you finish.”

  I hoped—prayed to God and the stars—that was true. Thad sitting in Rawton was the worst possible start. And the path to the finish line didn’t look any more promising.

  Ren’s cabin, like the one I shared with Sully, was on the bridge deck. It was smaller than Sully’s but in the same blues and pale grays, with the same separate salon and dining area that bespoke the Karn’s previous life as a luxury yacht. Ren’s door opened automatically at Sully’s touch to the palm pad. The sweet, fragrant scent of freshly brewed tea met me as I followed him in.

  “Chasidah. I’m so sorry.” Ren’s voice had an odd musical quality that belied his size, which was average for a Stolorth but topped Sully’s human frame by several inches. And Sully was tall for a human.

  I accepted Ren’s outstretched hand and the resulting warmth as six fingers wrapped gently around mine. A few months ago I’d jerked away at his touch, and even his blindness hadn’t been a reassurance of my mind’s safety in his presence.

  But that was a few months ago, and my mind and I had learned many things.

  “I know I’m wearing my worry colors,” I admitted as a tinge of his warmth drifted over my skin and through my mind. Ren’s talents, unlike Sully’s, were strictly empathic. And what I called “colors” was his way of reading a person’s aura: that emotional resonance that Ren used to distinguish not just someone’s moods but also his identity. He’d mentally linked to Sully for so many years that a secondary link to me—as Sully’s ky’sara—was almost unconscious.

  “Fully understandable,” Ren said, the tones in his voice like the gentle pattering of soft rain.

  I released his hand and folded myself down onto the soft couch. Sully was already helping himself to a cup of tea. He’d known Ren for almost twenty years and clattered around the galley nook as if it were his own.

  “Chaz?” Sully held up an empty mug.

  “Not yet, thanks.” I settled back against the cushions and worked on controlling my worry colors. We had a number of important things to decide here and I didn’t need Ren, or Sully, distracted by the fact that I couldn’t unclench that tightness in my chest.

  I knew Sully sensed the dozen options already whirling through my mind. Fleet training dies hard and when confronted with a problem, my initial response was always to start quantifying solutions. In the twelve years since I’d first put on a uniform, I’d faced everything from weapons point-blank in my face to dead jumpdrives in the middle of the big wide darkness. I’d survived them all.

  But this was something else, someone else. My brother was being held hostage for something I’d done. For someone I loved.

  Sully put Ren’s mug on a side table then sat next to me, clutching his own mug with two hands.

  “We need to know what’s factual in that report,” Sully said as Ren, reading the tea’s thermals, wrapped his long fingers around the mug’s handle. “It came in through CCNN.”

  Sully’s mouth pursed as he said Central Calth News Network’s acronym. CCNN had a reputation for exaggeration, following the old “bad news sells” methodology. I knew that the moment I saw the news story. But that still didn’t mean Tage didn’t have Thad in custody, and I said so.

  “Nothing from the other news agencies?” Ren asked.

  I shook my head. “The story came in as I disconnected from the beacon. Judging from the time stamp, it just hit the feeds. I know we need an update, but heading back to the beacon”—and Fleet-sancti
oned, Fleet-patrolled space lanes—” doesn’t seem the best idea right now.” Especially because Thad had been arrested. They’d be looking at all unregistered mercenary vessels that fit one of the many conflicting profiles on Sully’s ship. Why this particular ship was illegally grabbing data wasn’t a question I wanted to answer.

  “Plus, we only have five days to make the meet on Narfial.” That wasn’t the kind of thing you could just reschedule. Pardon me, I know you’re risking your life to get us this information but we’ve had a slight change of plans. Can we do it next month? “That’s why I suggested contacting Philip. Or Jodey.”

  “Sensible suggestion.” Ren nodded.

  “I can contact Drogue,” Sully said, before Ren’s final syllable sounded. “A large portion of prison guards are Taka, and a large number of those are Englarians. Drogue as Guardian—” and he raised one hand, halting my protest that the affable monk was assigned to the Moabar prison system, which was even farther out than the rim worlds. “Drogue can make inquiries, even from Moabar.”

  I looked from Sully to Ren. Sully was not going to bring in Philip or Jodey at this point. But using Drogue was workable, and if I hadn’t been mediumly wretched, I’d have realized that sooner. Yes, he was on Moabar, but his status as Guardian meant his influence wasn’t limited to his current location.

  Then another problem popped into my mind. “Do we know if Rawton’s Englarian temple is Purity or Reformed?” Berri Solaria had been Purity Englarian—a small overlooked fact that had almost gotten us killed. Drogue was Guardian of the Reformed sect. Decidedly less xenophobic in an empire that liked to forget that humans were latecomers in the neighborhood.

  “Verno and I can find that out,” Ren said. “But even if they’re Purity, the Takas will still talk to us.”

  To Verno, I thought. One of their own. And more so if they’re Purity. Human Purity Englarians viewed Takans as sentients to be guided—because they were incapable of guiding themselves. “Benign domination,” I’d once heard Ren call it.

  As for Stolorths, Abbot Eng had made a name for himself centuries ago by beheading those Stolorths he believed were Ragkirils. “Purifying them by separating their filthy minds from their bodies,” was how Berri Solaria had explained it to me.

  And now we chased another kind of fanatic—one who wanted to unleash monsters not only to eradicate Ragkirils but to hold a growing rim-world population in thrall. And all because, we suspected, some political promises made behind closed doors during the Boundary Wars hadn’t been kept.

  “It will take three, four hours for my message to reach Drogue,” Sully said, leaning his elbows on his knees. “That or more for his answer to get back to me, depending on his schedule. For now, we’re going to keep heading for Narfial.” He turned his face toward me, his voice softening. “We have to.”

  “I know.” I did. I gave him a tight smile, telling myself things were not as bleak as they seemed. The wheels of justice—or injustice in this case—turned slowly in the Empire. No one was going to requisition a special ship just to transport Thad to Rawton. He might well sit in Marker lockup for a week or more, waiting for the legal preliminaries to be finished. And if he had a good barrister…

  That thought stopped me. Thad’s situation was different from mine. There was no bad blood between him and our father, Lars, now retired from Fleet. Lars may have turned his back on me when I was sent to Moabar, but he would—had to—be helping Thad, keeping him away from Rawton and the Stolorth interrogators as long as he could.

  A weight, small but noticeable, lifted from my shoulders.

  Sully pushed himself to his feet then headed for Ren’s desk and computer terminal. Ren’s terminal and Sully’s were the only two on the Karn that had full override capabilities and a private transmission beam. That was a security measure Sully installed after our escape from Marker. The ease with which Berri Solaria had been able to manipulate his crew and almost destroy his ship troubled Sully. This fail-safe setup was his answer.

  And my father was mine and Thad’s. I tried to convince myself of that as I followed Ren to his galley nook and helped myself, finally, to a cup of tea. I was hungry and back on duty in a few hours. Breakfast was a good idea.

  “I’m going to head down to the galley and see if Dorsie has any baked bright-apples,” I said.

  Sully glanced up from the terminal. “Ren and I will meet you there in ten, fifteen minutes. I want to make sure—”

  An alarm blared, wailing through Ren’s cabin, echoing in the corridor. Three discordant tones from the ship’s short-range scanners—short-range!—signaling the appearance of an unfriendly. I shoved my half-empty cup of tea onto the nearest table and bolted for the door.

  “Shields at full,” Verno announced as I lunged through the bridge’s hatchway, Sully and Ren on my heels. “Weapons system online.”

  “Acknowledged.” I slid, temporarily, into the pilot’s chair behind Verno. My adrenaline spiked then receded. This was familiar territory. “What’ve we got?”

  “What in hell happened to long range?”

  Sully’s question overlapped mine as I tapped the link live on the chair’s armrest console. Gregor would be here in seconds and, in spite of the situation, wouldn’t miss a chance to take umbrage at my location in his seat. I didn’t want his job, but I needed information. The pilot’s armrest console, with feeds from all stations, was the best place for me to find answers.

  “Farosian Infiltrator,” Verno said, answering my question and Sully’s as well.

  An Infiltrator. A Farosian covert scoutship—Elarwin in design, judging from the elongated bridge and deltoid thruster grid aft, a hint of which I could see outlined on my screen. Sleek, fast, deadly, and with the annoying reputation for jamming scanner signals. Sully’s wasn’t the only ghost ship out there in the big wide darkness. I shunted the data over to the auxiliary console next to Sully at navigation. The alarm ceased abruptly. Then hard footsteps sounded behind me.

  Two men appeared, both in nondescript spacer gray coveralls like Verno wore: one tall, lanky, and pale; the other squat, muscled, and dark-skinned. Gregor and Marsh. I pulled myself from the pilot’s seat, not missing Gregor’s eyes narrowing at my location or the similarly withering glance he shot at Ren at communications. We could deal with that later—if at all. Right now we had an unexpected visitor. Gregor’s continuing problems with me and Ren were the least of our worries.

  “Farosian Infiltrator,” Sully repeated. “Twenty-two minutes out.”

  Gregor dropped into the pilot’s seat. Marsh hustled over to the engineering console.

  “What do they want out here? Besides us, that is,” Marsh grumbled. I understood his question. Tos Faros was in Dafir, but out by the Walker Colonies. We were on the opposite end of the sector, heading for Narfial. Not an impossible location for the often-violent supporters of Sheldon Blaine’s claim to the throne, but not their usual one either. At least that’s what Fleet intelligence had taught me to believe.

  Of course, much of what had transpired in my life in the past few months confirmed that a good portion of Fleet intelligence was wrong.

  Blaine was imprisoned on Moabar when I was, but the chances that the Farosians knew that and further knew I was on Sully’s ship…That thought set me back for a moment. But I could tell them nothing useful. I never saw Blaine.

  That they might have an old grudge against Sully was a more likely possibility—one that Marsh’s grumbling comment told me he knew as well.

  I studied what little the Karn’s data sweeps were bringing us then checked on our status. The only good news was that the Infiltrator’s weapons’ ports read cold. Even so, Marsh was already coordinating with Aubry belowdecks, committing additional power to the sublight engines. Sully worked on tagging the closest jumpgates. The bridge was quiet except for the occasional human or Takan grunt of frustration, because we still had no definitive ship ID on our visitor. No one spoke until we had options and exits all clearly defined. The Karn could defend
herself, but she wasn’t a warship. We needed a way to get out of here quickly, if those ports turned hot and our visitor turned nasty.

  Farosian terrorists had never been lauded for their manners. And Sully had been rude to them on several occasions.

  “Closest gate and second best, if they get aggressive.” Sully sent a flurry of data to my screens and everyone else’s. “For now, let’s play dumb until we know if they intend to talk to us or shoot at us.”

  Running from an Infiltrator in anything smaller than a Maven-class cruiser was a good way to get shot at.

  “They’re holding at eighteen minutes out,” Verno intoned.

  “No comm signals from them,” Ren added, one hand cupped over the comm set ringing his right ear.

  And no ident data that either I or Sully could find. Not even a false one, like ours.

  What do they want? I sent the question to Sully along with a deliberate glance, because I still wasn’t sure how to tell when he was mentally listening to me.

  Depends if their scans picked us up as the Karn or ID’ed us as a supply freighter.

  We had nicely counterfeited registry docs that broadcast us as the Darvo Tureka, under contract to Border One Export. But the Infiltrator had slipped past our long-range scan’s warning sensors. It might have punched holes in our identity as well.

  I’d prefer to think not, but if they have, then it’s likely old business. Since they no longer believe I’m dead.

  Tage made sure the newshounds disseminated that information three months ago.

  But Hayden’s kept me too busy lately to have time to bother with Blaine’s Justice Wardens, Sully continued, and through our mental link I could feel the sneer in his tone at the label the Farosians used for themselves. And yes, they probably know you were on Moabar, but I doubt that’s why they’re here.

  I broadened the parameters on my scanning string, swept the Infiltrator again. Nothing. Damn. Do they know I’m on this ship?