Finders Keepers Read online

  Her cry of terror vibrated against him like a personal warning siren.

  “Yagash! Quiet!” He quickly amended his harsh command into her language. To control her meant control of the ’droid. He’d deal with any other crew later. His fingers expertly splayed across the base of her throat, finding the vulnerable artery. “Make a move and she’s dead.”

  The ’droid appeared stunned, his metallic arms making small, jerky movements. The laser rifle rattled in his grasp.

  “You really don’t have to do this, you know.” Her voice was small, muffled against his bare chest. He inched her arm up further. She yelped in pain.

  “Please, do not hurt her.” The ’droid’s plea almost reached a whine.

  “Drop the rifle.” He pulled himself upright, holding the woman against him in a crushing grip. “Drop it and kick it toward the door.”

  There was a clank of metal as the rifle hit the decking and then the scraping sound of it clattering across the floor.

  “Now, come here.”

  “Sir?”

  “Here, damn it!” He stood, leaning on the edge of the bed. He spun her around so she faced the ’droid. “Her belt and holster. Undo it. Now!”

  “Wait!” The woman squirmed against him, then tried to look up. “You don’t have to—”

  He briefly clasped her jaw in his fingers, wrenched her face back to the ’droid. “Tell him to undo your belt.”

  “Look, you don’t understand!” Her words came out in a pain-filled rush. “Dezi, tell him—”

  “Captain, perhaps now is not the time to argue. My memory banks are not one hundred percent accurate, but it appears he is holding your throat either in the paralyzing G’zhen Dai grip used by thirty-second-century warrior-monks on Dakrahl—”

  “Dezi!”

  “—or the fatal Tah Fral employed by the Order of Despi Guild assassins. Unfortunately, my graphic overlays for both files are rather vague.”

  “But he doesn’t—”

  “The belt,” he repeated harshly. “Undo it!”

  The ’droid stepped gingerly toward him. Metal fingers unthreaded the clasp. The belt clattered to the floor.

  “Kick it toward the door.”

  The ’droid did as he was ordered and looked back expectantly.

  “Now, get on the diag table.”

  “But, sir, I’m not injured and these units don’t work on—”

  “Get on the table! Now!”

  The ’droid climbed stiffly onto the bed.

  “Lie down and pull the cover over you.”

  There was the slight hiss as the cylinder was drawn up on the rails.

  “Good.”

  In a swift movement, he released the woman’s arm, locked the cylinder in place, then yanked her back against his chest. One hand still cupped her throat. The other pinned her arms at her waist. He brought his mouth down to her ear. Her light flowery scent drifted over him again.

  “Try anything, anything, and you are dead.” He could feel her pulse beating frantically under his fingers.

  “You really”—her voice came out in gulping gasps—“don’t have to do this.”

  “Move!” He shoved her toward the hatchway and stopped at the opening. “Now. I am going to release your arms. For a second. To pick up the weapons. But I still have one hand on your throat. Do not try anything stupid.” His fingertips dug more deeply into her skin. “Do you understand?”

  She inhaled painfully, barely able to breathe out an affirmative.

  He reached down, dragging her with him, and snatched up the rifle and her utility belt. He quickly slung the rifle’s strap over his shoulder as he straightened, then, making sure his fingers were still firmly digging into her throat, pulled the pistol from her utility belt. He dropped the belt to the floor and yanked her firmly back against him.

  The series of movements cost him. A searing, stabbing heat shot up his neck. He drew in a sharp breath. He had no time for this. He focused his mind. Tensed his body. And felt the softness of her hair against his chest. The firm swell of her behind against his …

  Bloody hell! He was completely naked.

  His plans of forcing her to the bridge and commandeering her ship suddenly took a sharp turn. He took a half step back from her, self-consciously, and pressed the hard muzzle of the pistol into her back.

  The reality—and analogy—of what had been pressing against her wasn’t lost on him. “Take two steps forward.” Discomfort gritted in his words.

  They faced the wall. The wall and the small utility closet.

  “But—”

  “Now!” He pushed her forward. She stumbled, and he thrust the closet door aside. “Pants!”

  She grabbed them and started to turn, but he forced her another half step forward. He had no desire to see her reaction to his unclothed state. Or his body’s reaction to her. “Move when I tell you to, and only then.”

  She offered the pants from over one shoulder. He ripped them from her grasp. Making sure she was trapped against the half-open closet door, he balanced precariously first on one leg, then the other, as he pulled on his pants.

  She followed his orders in the same manner with his jacket and his boots. He shoved his bare feet into them without bothering to secure the straps.

  Now. Shall we try this again?

  He grabbed her arm, yanking her backward. But she surprised him and used his own force to spin around and face him. Her eyes blazed in anger.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re trying to prove—”

  Fool, he thought. Then: gutsy little fool.

  “Silence!” He swiftly bent her arm around her back. She yelped, stumbled against him. He made sure she felt the muzzle of the pistol in her side.

  “Now. Move!”

  She swore at him in response. But very quietly.

  He dragged her into the corridor and stopped, looking quickly left and right. The corridor was stark, gray, with flat metal bulkheads and decking common to most freighters. Conduit and piping snaked overhead. The light strip along the top of the wall glowed in broken patches where burnouts hadn’t been replaced. A square intercom speaker was duct-taped to the wall a few feet away.

  His mind replicated the image of the emergency diagram in the sick bay. What he saw now supported his theory. The ship was probably an old Circura IV, minimum crew complement of five.

  Well, he knew of two.

  With a rough shove, he propelled her in the direction of the bridge. A diffused glow at the end signaled the open hatchway. He stopped. “How many others?”

  “Other what?”

  “Do not be insolent. I have no tolerance for it.”

  She tried to turn in his grasp to look up at him. He grabbed a handful of pale hair and forced her head back against his chest. “How many others?”

  “Other ’droids? None.”

  “Crew?”

  “Just Dezi. Just the ’droid. That’s it. Just me and the ’droid.”

  “When do they get back?”

  “Who?”

  He tightened his arms across her midsection and heard her gasp. He could crush her ribs easily, with little effort, in spite of his own injuries.

  “Do not be insol—”

  “What do you want to know, damn you? Who are you looking for?”

  “The rest of the crew!”

  “There is no rest of my crew! That’s all there is. Me and Dez. Dez and me. It’s the whole show. Gods damn you, that hurts!”

  He pushed her again, yanking on her hair. “You cannot run a Circura Four with just two people. The ship’s too big for—”

  “She’s not a Four, she’s a Two.”

  He hesitated. A Circura II? By the Gods, the ship had to be an antique! If she even still flew.

  The hatchway to the bridge loomed ahead. He stopped by the opening, listening for any sounds of life, and, hearing none, dragged her up and over the hatch tread.

  What he saw on the bridge and through the large viewports confirmed the worst. It w
as an old Circura II. The bridge was small. Antiquated comp boards were patched into newer systems, none of which seemed to fit quite right. A torn cushion on the captain’s chair was repaired with duct tape. Thin black cables, tied together with red ribbon, snaked over the forward command console. A tiny plush toy resembling a felinar, wide-eyed and whiskered, dangled from another length of the same red ribbon attached to the ceiling conduit.

  And they weren’t in space. They weren’t even berthed in any known station or spaceport. They were dirtside in the mouth of what looked to be a large cavern that, judging from the steam rising in the early-morning air, overlooked a thick, tropical jungle.

  There wasn’t another ship, not another soul around.

  It made absolutely no sense.

  He pulled his hand from her hair and spun her about, grasping her roughly by the elbow. He shoved the pistol against her ribs. “Kazat merash! Gdro deya?”

  “What?”

  It took him a moment to realize he’d barked at her in Zafharish again. He was getting sloppy. Inexplicably. “Where in the Seven Hells are we?”

  “Avanar. At least, I call it Avanar.” Her eyes narrowed. “Where did you think you were?”

  “Av-an-ar?” The name meant nothing to him.

  “Yes.”

  “And where is this Avanar?”

  “Quadrant 84-YC-7 on my charts. Gensiira System. About a trike from Port Rumor. It’s a small H-4 planet, uninhabited. Unless you count the bloodbats and vampire snakes.”

  He remembered now. A sweltering, inhospitable world briefly used by the Conclave to house a defensive sensor array during the war. But before the Empire could formulate plans to destroy it, the planet’s high humidity and corrosive environment disabled the equipment. It had rotted into the swamps under one-hundred-twenty-degree temperatures.

  From the steamy brightness visible through the forward viewports, it looked to be approaching that now.

  He looked back down at the small female before him. The top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulders.

  She tried to angle her body away from the pistol digging against her ribs. He tightened his grip on her arm, pulling her closer. “How much did they pay you to bring me here?”

  She gave him a hard look that clearly questioned his intelligence. “I didn’t bring you here. And nobody paid me anything. You brought yourself here in a ’Sko Tark, which you, without so much as a by-your-leave, dumped on my doorstep. I went down to salvage it, expecting at worst a dead ’Sko, which I could handle. I found you, alive. What did you expect me to do? Leave you there as a feast for the local flora and fauna?”

  He saw the rows of flattened palms, like a large, long footprint in the jungle, through the viewport behind her. “You were not taking me back to Conclave Security on Quivera Station?”

  “That would be damned stupid of me. Considering there’re at least two arrest warrants with my ID on them there.”

  “Warrants? For what?”

  She sighed. “The usual shit. Code violations. Manifest documentation violations. A couple of drunk-and-disorderlies. Things all low-budget short-haulers run into.”

  “And you are here because of a … code-violation warrant?”

  “Of course not,” she replied indignantly. “I’m here because I finally scrounged up a booster that would interface with my comm pack. I needed someplace to do an install.”

  He stared blankly at her. His mind seemed to be moving very slowly all of a sudden. Why would a mercenary working for the Conclave use this unknown hell as a repair station? Quivera had excellent facilities in their docks.

  “You work on your ship here?” He nodded to the jungle behind her.

  She wriggled her shoulders again, clearly uncomfortable. But he had no intention of releasing her until he was sure of his situation. At the moment, nothing made sense.

  “Yeah, here,” she said. “It’s cheap. Free rent. With no poke-noseys breathing down my neck, logging violations. Or handing me slap-wrists on my ‘illegal customizations,’ as they call them. That way I don’t end up getting pissed off and taking a swing at them, so that my ass lands in min-sec for a deuce while they’re charging me dock rental the whole time.”

  He listened to her words, heard the lingo that flowed down seedy freighter docks in the Conclave as freely as cheap beer. A poke-nosey was a government inspector. A slap-wrist was a government fine. Min-sec was the minimum-security jail, usually filled with freighter crew sleeping off their latest binge. And a deuce was two days.

  It finally clicked in his mind. The little spitfire glaring up at him, struggling against his grip, wasn’t a threat, wasn’t even capable of being a threat. She was simply a low-budget freighter captain who got a bit more than she bargained for when she rescued him from the jungle floor.

  Abruptly, he released her elbow and pointed the pistol toward the chair at the nav station. “Sit down.”

  She sat and gingerly arched her neck and back.

  He ran his hand over his face, feeling an unaccustomed twinge of guilt. “It … it seems there has been a misunderstanding,” he said slowly. He wasn’t used to apologizing. But then, he wasn’t used to making mistakes.

  “Misunderstanding? No shit. You could’ve killed me.”

  “I thought … I was under the impression you were a bounty hunter taking me back to Quivera.”

  “The war ended over three years ago, Mister Wizard. Or haven’t you noticed?” She didn’t disguise the irritation in her voice. “The Conclave and your Empire have a peace treaty going. And even if I were capable of taking you back to Quivera, which I’m not, it certainly ain’t worth killing me over. I mean, the food sucks and the government makes sure all the public bars water the booze, but it ain’t worth killing me over.”

  Her flippancy infuriated him, momentarily eclipsing his regret at his actions. “My position is a bit more delicate than your impudent remarks—”

  “Don’t you dare call me impudent!” Her voice shook. “I’ve earned the right to be impudent! I bring you on my ship, try to save your life. And you lock my ’droid in the regen bed and damn near break my ribs. Plus, I’ve got a headache so bad that my hair hurts. So don’t you dare tell me I can’t be impudent!”

  And with that she swung the chair away from him and plopped her boots up on the nav console, as if signaling to anyone and everyone within range that there was no more to say on the subject.

  Anger surged through him. Ignorant little fool! He wanted to grab the back of her chair, spin her about, force her to face him. Thoughts and emotions churned in disarray, not at all helped by the low but constant throb of pain in his body. No one spoke to him like that without suffering the consequences. He was the one who should be rightfully indignant, who should remind her just who she was talking to.

  Except that she didn’t know.

  That stopped him cold. Made him open the fist he’d clenched in his fury and drop it to his side. She didn’t know. Oh, from the uniform she had to assume he was Zafharin. It was an officer’s uniform, there was no denying that. But his name and his rank were not apparent.

  He should tell her. Now. She’d be fearful. Obedient. Controllable. She’d never dare turn her back on him in such an insulting manner.

  In such an interesting manner. Intriguing manner.

  He brought his breathing under control. And felt an unexpected twinge of fascination that surprised him.

  There was something amusing in the absurdity of it all—this jungle world, this derelict ship, this little green-eyed spitfire …

  A corner of his mouth quirked into a small, unaccustomed smile. He flicked the safety back on the pistol, shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He took a moment, rubbed his knuckles over the damned itching on his side, reconsidered his options.

  Perhaps it would be better, just for now, if she didn’t know who he was. If she thought she could trust him. Strictly for security reasons, of course.

  But security reasons did dictate that he determine her identit
y.

  “What’s your name?” He leaned against a sensor panel partition and folded his arms across his chest. When she didn’t reply, he added, “How may I apologize if I do not know your name?”

  She touched a button on the armrest and reclined the back of the chair before swiveling around to face him.

  “I think you owe me more than an apology.” She held out her hand, palm open.

  He hesitated, weighed his instinctual desire to retain the weapons against his need for her cooperation. And his own need to appear cooperative. He pulled the pistol from his waistband and handed it to her. She shoved it through her belt, then grabbed the stock of the rifle as he held it toward her.

  “That’s good, for starters.” She lay the rifle across her lap. “Now, who are you?”

  He shrugged, lightly, moving easily into his new role. “My clan name is Vanur. My given name, it is a long one, in my language. But it can be shortened to Rhis.”

  “R-e-e-c-e? And you are Zafharin.”

  His heritage wasn’t a question and he knew that. He made no attempt to hide his accent. And his uniform spoke for itself. “Rhis with an i. R-h-i-s. That’s how my people spell my name. And obviously I am Zafharin. I’d have no value to your security people if I were otherwise.”

  “Oh, they’d love a live ’Sko,” she commented absently, then: “Elliot. Two 1s, one t. Captain Trilby Elliot.”

  “And your ship?”

  She let her gaze wander around the meager bridge as if in mock inspection. “Umm. You first.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, Rhis. You. What ship were you assigned to, before you decided to take a joyride in a Tark?”

  His mind worked quickly, knowing delay would be interpreted as prevarication. “The Razalka. You know of her?”

  “Hell, everyone in civilized space knows the Zafharin’s prized huntership. Tivahr’s the captain, isn’t he?”

  “As far as I know, he still is. Or was, three weeks ago, when I … when my team and I ran into … problems near Szedcafar.”

  He saw her eyebrows raise and immediately regretted the admission. Szed was a ’Sko world that housed a large military base. It was not a place the Zafharin were known to frequent, uninvited. He thought quickly. “We were part of a war-games exercise. I was the designated target, in a Tark we captured a few years ago.” He kept talking, wanting to sound cooperative. “Somehow we crossed the border, became disoriented. I played decoy so they could get back.”