Enemy Games Page 13

The woman.

  “Prisoners,” the woman gasped, her voice tinged with pain and effort, “escap—”

  Jayleia shoved the unconscious guard off the woman, yanked the com badge from the guard’s uniform and pulled the woman to sitting.

  The guard stared past Jayleia, blanching.

  Damen moved in beside Jay, pistol in hand. He pulled the trigger.

  The woman collapsed.

  The muted whine of the weapon registered after the fact. Jay nodded.

  He’d stunned the guard, not killed.

  Wishing for access to an airlock port, Jay glanced at the com badge in her hand. She settled for a trash chute.

  “Catch me if you can,” she growled at the still-transmitting badge, before lobbing it into the garbage.

  Damen joined her and held out a pistol. “Take it.”

  “No.” She strode down the vacant corridor, aware they had precious little time to clear the area before backup arrived. The lack of gawkers fired her instincts and she began cataloging escape routes and lines of possible attack.

  “Jay, you’ll need it,” Damen persisted. “Take the gun.”

  “I can’t shoot,” she confessed, glancing at him as he kept pace beside her.

  His brow furrowed. “Temple dictate?”

  She flushed. “No. I mean I can’t hit the broad side of the Sen Ekir standing ten paces from it.”

  That earned a surprised grin from him. “Do you know how to use a gun?”

  “Do you imagine I could live and work with Ari for six years and not?” she retorted, flashing him an annoyed look.

  His grin deepened. “Then take it. No one else needs to know you’d empty the cartridge before you hit something important.”

  She accepted the weapon. “I’d be more effective using it as a club.”

  Stifling a laugh, he turned eyes dancing with mirth upon her. “You were damned efficient empty-handed. I thought you’d given up Temple training.”

  “I tried.”

  “What happened?”

  “My family,” she said, shaking off the bitter memory of her expulsion. “They rallied to convince me that staying in top physical condition would augment my performance and endurance for fieldwork. Masterful piece of familial love and manipulation. The galling part is they were right.”

  “Families are the same across cultures, then,” he noted, still grinning. “Mine . . .”

  “Twelve Gods, Damen, no they aren’t.” A chill crawled into her gut. “Your family sold you into slavery.”

  “My mother,” he corrected.

  She blinked at his matter-of-fact tone. “That’s family.”

  “No.”

  “What?” She stopped dead in the middle of the corridor.

  “Tahem is my family. The people I’ve recruited and trained, they’re family,” he said, taking her elbow and tugging her alongside him. “Admiral Seaghdh, since he recruited and trained me.”

  “What do you call blood relations, then?”

  “Kin. Or blood.”

  “And you maintain no bond, no ties of loyalty to your kin? Or they to you?” she marveled.

  “You do?” he asked, the glance he flicked her keen with interest.

  “Definitely. Among my people, your mother would go to prison for selling you, especially into the sex trade. It’s such a gross betrayal . . .”

  He started. “Betrayal? Those who don’t work the trade are pitied and ridiculed.”

  The defensive tone in his voice bumped her out of her gathering sense of injustice. She peered at his unsettled expression. “How old were you?”

  “Eleven.” The lines of trouble around his mouth deepened when all she managed was a squeal of rage in response. “We reach sexual maturity faster than most species. The sex trade is a practical solution to the problem of having adolescents at home with infants.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “Of course. The female of most predatory species can only provide for one or two infants at a time. Your people drive away the adolescents in order to safely breed again. The adolescents band together for mutual protection.”

  From a biological standpoint, it made sense, but the image of eleven-year-old Damen, his world sundered and his heart savaged, made her blood run cold.

  She felt Damen’s searching gaze on her and met his eye. His smile looked pained.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  “For what?”

  He shrugged. “No one’s ever understood before.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I’m taking refuge in science to pretend that the thought of you abandoned as a child doesn’t shred my heart.”

  His grip on her elbow tightened and he looked unsettled, as if he didn’t know how to handle the fact that she hurt on his behalf.

  “Why did you leave your training and your family? Will you tell me? The real reason?”

  Shame scalded the inside of her skin. Jayleia opened her mouth, but could find no words to give him.

  People stepped into the corridor.

  She saw the guns first, yanked out of Damen’s grasp, and reached for her weapon.

  Damen swore.

  CHAPTER 17

  DAMEN ground frustration between clenched teeth. So close. He’d been so close to getting her to confide in him.

  A man with thick, black hair, indigo eyes, and a face as cold and hard as Isarrite blocked the corridor. At his right shoulder, a shapely, grinning woman with flaming red hair stood, feet splayed to brace against the recoil of the tricked-out Autolyte 49-G assault rifle in her hands.

  Mercenaries.

  Damen eased a step ahead of Jayleia to shield the weapon in her grasp from casual view.

  “Ms. Durante,” the man noted. His tone contained no hint of warmth or of compassion.

  Damen growled, his pulse thundering in warning. First salvo.

  “Captain Trente,” Jayleia acknowledged, edging into the open.

  Stifling the urge to shove her behind him, Damen instead followed her gaze when it flicked to the woman.

  “Edie,” she said, her tone so neutral that Damen tensed ready to spring. “Good to see you.”

  “Hey, Jay,” the woman said, her words oddly flattened by an accent he didn’t recognize.

  “I see you have everything under control,” Trente said, peering down the hallway behind them.

  “At the moment,” Jayleia said.

  “Reinforcements en route,” Edie said, her eyes moving as if reading something.

  Damen spotted the sensory enhancement module she wore. Granted, they were mercenaries and as such, not wholly concerned with legalities. If, as evidence suggested, the woman was reading the station security net, Damen could count at least eight laws shattered in the past few seconds, half of them by his hands.

  “Four minutes,” she concluded.

  Trente nodded once, then turned and gestured as if to invite Jayleia to walk with him.

  Damen put himself between them. “Jayleia Durante is under the protection of the Claugh nib Dovvyth Empire. If you intend . . .”

  The man looked at him for a long moment. Damen felt a predatory smile growing on his lips at the challenge in the man’s dark blue eyes.

  Jayleia closed a hand around his wrist.

  Damen swallowed another growl and forced his taut muscles to relax slightly. Message received and understood. Wait and watch. No attack. Not yet. He had to unclench his hands.

  “I exist to plague Her Royal Pain-in-the-Ass and the Empire as a whole,” the man said.

  Damen heard the first hint of emotion in his voice and cataloged the man’s name and description for later research. His animosity and suppressed rage were directed at the queen of the Claugh nib Dovvyth. Damen would be certain he gave Admiral Seaghdh an exhaustive file on the man and the threat he represented.

  “Killing me to get to Jayleia would be a minor inconvenience to Her Majesty,” Damen replied.

  “Three minutes,” Jayleia said, tension in her voice.

  Edie snickered and
slung her rifle over one shoulder. “Two parties. Using the lifts fore and aft with orders to take Jay alive.”

  Damen glanced at Jayleia’s placid expression. Only the hard, watchful glitter of her eyes gave away her willingness to do battle if need be.

  “I owe your parents my life,” Trente finally said to Jayleia, his words a monotone.

  Damen felt her start and studied Captain Trente again. Did he? Given a good computer link, Damen expected he could find out why within three days’ time.

  “Consider this a down payment on the debt.” The man held out a pack. “Your uniform. From your mother, along with a message. She says, ‘Put it on. Live up to my faith in you. Prove him innocent.’”

  “No pressure,” Edie added.

  Jayleia choked back a laugh, released Damen, and took the pack. “Thank you.”

  “Did Mrs. Durante survive questioning?” Damen demanded.

  “My parents have been trying and failing to destroy one another for two decades,” Jayleia answered. “Both of my parents are damned hard to kill.”

  “I see,” Damen said. “Your mother summoned Captain Trente and is matching or beating the price the traitors put on your capture.”

  Edie laughed. “Cute and smart! I like him, Jay. What’ll you give me to take him off your hands?”

  Damen bared his teeth. “You’re confused about who is whose prisoner.”

  The woman tucked her chin to look over her SEM lenses between Damen and Jayleia. “Am I?”

  “Not helping, Edie,” Jay sang from between clenched teeth.

  He stifled a grin.

  “Get out of here,” Trente ordered. “We’ll cover your back.”

  Gambling that the sour expression on Trente’s face shored up Damen’s supposition that the man had double-crossed an employer, Damen asked, “Whose paycheck won’t you be collecting?”

  Jayleia resumed her quick pace down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder with Edie. Trente dropped in behind her at Damen’s side.

  “IntCom,” Trente replied, the first inkling of respect in his gaze.

  “Baxt’k,” Damen grumbled. “IntCom is compromised.”

  Trente’s look sharpened. His smile turned glacial. “Spoken like a Murbaasch Tu agent.”

  “Guilty,” Damen replied. Let the man chew on the fact that he’d been tagged by a Claugh agent.

  Jayleia shot a pained look at the man.

  Trente offered her a message chip. “Gerriny Eudal recorded this for you.”

  “Is this the ‘I’m concerned and there’s a chance he’s innocent’ while Eudal sits in my father’s office and uses his official seal message?” Jay asked, looking at it but not taking it.

  The mercenary’s blue eyes lit with amusement for a moment. “The same.”

  “Seen it. Not his best performance. And I’m willing to bet it’s being traced.”

  “Your father’s second-in-command is a Carozziel slime-bat,” Edie said.

  “Painfully aware,” Jay said in such a way that Damen’s hackles went up.

  Apparently, so did Edie’s. The woman studied Jayleia for a moment. “History between you?”

  “Not that I know. He worked for my dad when I was a kid, but it didn’t last long. Dad fired him by the time I was five. Four years ago, Durgot appointed Eudal to IntCom’s second seat over my father’s protest,” Jayleia said.

  “A plant,” Edie surmised.

  Jayleia shrugged. “Supposition. Dealing with him fires off the same alarms as dealing with the Chekydran when they’d call the Sen Ekir to quiz us about our research each time we stopped on Ioccal.”

  Meaning she counted the man an enemy, even if she couldn’t say why, Damen noted.

  “How much would it take to have you hit him?” Jay tossed, her tone half-joking and a troubled light in her eyes when she glanced back at Trente.

  “I’d arrange his accident and count myself well paid if I got to watch him die,” the mercenary grumbled. “But I gave up a lifetime’s association with Tagreth Federated to repay my debt to your folks. My crew and I will never see that side of the zone again. Sorry.”

  Damen and Jayleia swore in unison.

  “You’ve already been accused of treason for helping me?” Jay demanded.

  “Will be by the time we leave station,” Trente answered as if it mattered not at all.

  “Got a preferred destination, Jay?” Edie asked, her tone neutral.

  Jayleia glanced at Damen, her look of misgiving deepening.

  “Tahem’s office,” he said. “Third Level of Hell.”

  “Third Level . . .” Edie choked back whatever she’d meant to say and landed a flustered look on Jayleia.

  “Yes, he was in the sex trade, and he’s a Claugh agent,” Jayleia said. “He hasn’t hurt me, Edie.”

  “I won’t,” Damen swore.

  The mercenary blinked, then tossed a look tainted by old scars at him.

  He met her gaze. Someone, somewhere, had brutalized Jayleia’s friend.

  “Down here,” Edie directed, looking away. “This hall is from an old radioactive waste hauler. Station instruments can’t get a clear shot through the shielded alloy.”

  “They’ll have a cordon on the exit,” Damen warned.

  “Don’t have to go that far,” Edie replied. “Maintenance tunnels will take you to the core and down to the vice decks.”

  Ragged women and children patrolled the hallway, sizing up the band, either as potential marks or as customers. Perhaps they were cowed by the number of visible guns on the four of them. No one approached with whispered enticements.

  “Wish I could co-opt your talent with explosives, Edie. I’ll undoubtedly wish for your expertise at some point, but mission parameters are still gelling,” Jayleia said, a feral grin on her face.

  Damen’s blood quickened in anticipation of hunting at her side.

  “Here.” Trente spent a second unlocking an access panel.

  Damen frowned. “Hasn’t anyone worked out that the surveillance in the maintenance tunnels is state of the art? Trust is a dangerous game.”

  Jayleia snorted.

  “Desperation is worse,” Trente replied.

  The men stared at one another again, no longer sizing up, preparing for combat. This was realization. They each knew too much about the kinds of pain suffered in this shielded hallway where the most sordid aspects of the sex trade flourished.

  “I appreciate your assistance, Captain Trente,” Damen said.

  “You’re delusional,” Trente retorted. “You took off running and lost us in this filthy dung-hole. Next time I spot either of you, I won’t hesitate to drop you.”

  “You won’t see us.” Damen slipped into the maintenance tunnel.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Trente ordered, looking at Jayleia. “Eudal has people on station. So does your dad. Wish I had better intel for you.”

  Jayleia nodded. “I appreciate it.”

  “I mean what I said to your man. Next go, I’ll redeem myself in the eyes of a corrupt government and collect IntCom’s paycheck.”

  Your man. Damen smiled, slipped his hand into his pocket, and closed his fingers on the vial she’d given him. Little did they know.

  Jayleia sidled through the already closing door, stuck her pistol to her utility belt, and brought out her handheld.

  Damen tugged Jay out of sight of the doorway and saw she’d brought up a schematic of the station from the public data point.

  “What a group baxt’k,” she breathed, examining the diagram.

  Damen nodded. Most space stations had been designed and built to suit a specific purpose. Not Silver City. It had evolved. Messy. Organic. As much a living thing as the diverse guild members and their customers taking refuge within it.

  Nearly a century ago, the nascent Mining Guild had taken over the abandoned deep space outpost, revamped it, and then had begun haphazardly hooking in salvaged ships, aged ore processing derricks, and space debris. As myriad different species flocked to the station,
lured by the promise of freedom and mineral riches, they’d brought craft suited to their varying body configurations. Those had been co-opted and added into the expanding station.

  Damen suspected the UMOPG kept the whole thing running via a dark pact with all Three Hells.

  He shook his head. Jayleia’s diagram would be of limited use. The maintenance tunnels weren’t part of the public . . . he blinked and swore as the station security seal appeared, then disappeared from her handheld screen.

  “Spawn of a Myallki bitch,” he ground out. “That would have taken me twice as long to break.”

  Her face, illuminated by the screen of her unit, showed him the pained glance she flicked his way.

  “A trick Omorle taught me,” she said. “It doesn’t always work, but on a station like this, cobbled together from so many technologies, one or two of them are bound to use default pass-codes.”

  A simple and obvious ploy exploiting humanoid forgetfulness, not a sophisticated hack. Damen subsided.

  He’d backed her into a corner filled with hard memories. Maybe he hadn’t hurt her physically, but by his count, he’d landed more emotional hits than she let on. In the sex trade, he’d have used physical stimulation to lay bare her emotions. As an agent of the Claugh Empire, he should use her emotions to expose her secrets. He couldn’t.

  How silly was it to want her to offer him her secrets and her heart like she’d offered her blood?

  “This way,” he ordered, urging her down the walkway. “This section is self-contained.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Haul your butts,” a sharp, feminine voice urged from the walkway behind them. “Before security decides to vacuum the tunnels.”

  “Vala,” Damen said.

  “Run,” Vala snapped, elbowing her way past.

  Jayleia, mouth set in a hard line, slung her pack strap over her head and shoulder.

  “Vacuum the tunnels?” Jayleia demanded.

  Lights flashed below the walkway.

  “There go the airtights!” Vala yelled.

  Alarm spiked through his blood. With each footfall, Damen felt vibration rumbling through the soles of his boots. Security had ordered the airtight bulkheads closed in preparation for decompressing the tunnel.

  Vala sprinted for an open access hatch.