Enemy Games Read online

  Jay dove, tucking and rolling to her feet on the other side as Damen shoved his broad shoulders through sideways. The door slammed shut behind them.

  They were back in the market ring. It had originally been designed as open space, a park for the people living in the surrounding quarters. That had lasted until the guild had commandeered the structure. Vendor carts, greasy pubs, and at least one fly-by-night drug outlet populated the bottom ring where trees and greenery had once grown.

  Overhead, twelve levels up, a transparent layer of alloy glass provided a view of the mineral-rich asteroid belt that had drawn miners in the first place, and the vivid orange, red, and yellow-striped gas giant that Silver City used as a kind of gravitational anchor.

  “They can’t open those tunnels to space!” Jayleia gritted. “There are people in there!”

  “Station security calls it ‘vermin control,’” Vala replied.

  Jayleia cursed.

  “Security saw us exit the tunnel. They won’t bother,” Damen assured her. “We’re headed to that lift and going six stops. If we get separated, don’t go to the Kawl Fergus. There’s an ore freighter.”

  He grabbed his handheld and shunted a code string and location to her unit. “That’s the lock code. The station techs can’t break it.”

  She nodded, her gaze busy scanning the crowd.

  “No. You are not taking her to the office,” Vala protested, darting around in front of him and stopping him with a hand to his chest. “Not her. Not there. You’re mine!”

  Damen stiffened and snarled.

  Stationers who had been brushing past, growling or cursing at them, suddenly gave the stationary trio a wide berth.

  Jayleia looked between them, her eyes wide.

  He glanced pointedly down at Vala’s hand, then met her angry gaze.

  She snatched her hand back to her side and caught an audible breath as if realizing what she’d said. Lips trembling and eyes filling, Vala bowed her head.

  Damen took Jayleia’s elbow, directed her around Vala, and walked away.

  Behind them, he heard Vala begin to weep.

  Jayleia looked over her shoulder, frowning, and slowed.

  “Don’t,” Damen said. “She challenged. She lost.”

  “She’s jealous, Damen,” Jayleia countered. “She’s in love with you. What gives you the right to break her heart?”

  CHAPTER 18

  “YOU don’t understand,” he snapped.

  “Then explain it,” she said.

  For a moment, she thought he’d refuse. His lips tightened into an angry line. Then he glanced at her.

  She offered him her best in-the-interest-of-science face.

  “Tahem is the station Sex Master,” he said. “He recruits, trains, and runs the workers. He recruited me. I was good, but I was better at computer espionage.”

  “He’s been using the sex trade as a cover to cultivate and train his own spy force?” she surmised.

  Damen turned an approving look upon her. He nodded. “When I surpassed Tahem’s ability, he saw to it that Admiral Seaghdh found me. Don’t worry. The admiral knows.”

  Jay swallowed her frown. “Vala?”

  “Tahem made me responsible for finding, training, and protecting a network of spies on station. Vala is one. If I allow her to challenge my control, I can’t protect her. I made the mistake once. I won’t do it again.”

  The suppressed rage and sorrow in his voice shriveled her courage to ask what had happened. Given the hurt radiating from him, Jay could guess.

  “Is it possible that Vala wanted proof that she’s more than a job to you?”

  He blinked as they entered the crowded lift and stared down at her, dawning awareness in his eyes, as well as speculation.

  Jayleia found she couldn’t meet his gaze. Her question had made it plain that she was familiar with feeling like something to be checked off a list.

  “Nah, I told him Zambol’d kill him faster than flash ice . . .” the woman squeezed in next to Jayleia said. She and her companion laughed.

  “. . . off to join the war effort. Stupid kid,” a man behind Jay grumbled. “Told her sex work on station could be just as exciting . . .”

  “. . . new plague hitting Folran outstation. Big troop depot,” another voice from the back of the lift said.

  Jayleia’s head came up as she tried to zero in on the conversation, her heart constricting.

  “Ain’t a frontline world,” the voice went on saying, “but sure sounds like a Chekydran plague. Course, the media’s keeping it all hushed . . .”

  Damen touched her hand.

  She sucked in a sharp breath. Blood thundered in her ears. An outbreak? On a troop depot? Gods, she had to end this and get back aboard the Sen Ekir.

  Damen pressed his lips tight in warning, took her hand, and led her out of the lift.

  One lone whistle followed. “Don’t know which of you kids is luckier!”

  The lift door closed on laughter.

  Jayleia drew up short, all question of outbreaks shunted aside.

  Thick black carpet, soft beneath her boots, covered the floor. Shimmering, translucent drapes shielded the walkways from what looked like a lounge in the center of the large octagonal room. A trick of the filtered light showed her people in various stages of repose on the couches, tables, and luxurious-looking armchairs.

  On Jayleia’s side of the curtains, doors lined the outer wall of the octagon. Smell registered; the faint, sweet scent of alcohol underpinned by a mingling of musk and blood that made her heart race. Then she heard the cries. Moans. Screams. Male. Female.

  Damen squeezed her hand and urged her into motion. “Recorded and piped in.”

  His whispered assurance startled her. Had she looked that bad? Squaring her shoulders, she followed him a third of the way around the room.

  He palmed open a door and led her through. The door shut behind them, and he loosed her long enough to code lock them in.

  “I hadn’t expected your sympathy for Vala,” he said. “You sound well acquainted with jealousy.”

  She turned away to survey the room. “My best friend is a blond bombshell with energy-blade medals draped around her neck and captain attached to her name. I’ve lived with that for six years. Of course I understand envy.”

  More diaphanous curtains, a couch, easy chairs, a desk, and along the back wall, another door.

  He strode to the door and opened it. Creases lined his forehead, but he didn’t quite frown. Still. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “In here.”

  Curious as to what could so unsettle him, she marched into the other room.

  Computer display screens formed a semicircle in the center of the room, but it was the rack pushed against the wall to her right that grabbed and held her attention. It was equipped with leather ankle and wrist straps that told her instantly where Damen had come by the scars on his ankles.

  The bottom dropped out of her stomach.

  A row of whips, sex toys, and devices she had no wish to contemplate too closely lined the opposite wall.

  She felt the blood drain from her head. What the Three Hells did the Claugh nib Dovvyth want with someone who knew what all this stuff was, much less how to use it? As a former sex worker, he’d know wouldn’t he?

  With a start, she realized Damen stood at her side, watching her shock, her fears, and probably the damned illicit thrill worming its way unwanted through her blood.

  “You’d be surprised what sort of information a competent sex worker can stumble over when a client is in the throes of his or her chosen ecstasy,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

  She wrinkled her nose. “It smells.”

  He breathed in the scent and nodded. “I like it. It’s a history of desire, blood, pain, want, and satisfaction. Need. Everyone has needs. They’re all different.”

  The wistful note in his tone transfixed her and Jayleia stilled, watching the faraway light in his eyes.

  “What do you need?” She hadn’t mea
nt to ask the question aloud, but realized she had when she saw the words slam into him broadside.

  He froze, lips parted on the verge of saying something. Finally, he looked away, his gray eyes bleak.

  “Something I can’t have.” He stalked to the computer setup and began powering up the systems.

  She battled back the urge to wrap her arms around him and warm the chill out of his eyes. She wanted to assure him he could have anything he wanted, but how could she? She couldn’t guarantee it, not for him, not even for herself.

  The man had grown up in the sex trades. She’d grown up pampered. Protected. Shielded by her parents, her bodyguards, and by the priestesses teaching her in the Temple. Jayleia didn’t know how to handle feelings, not her own, much less his. She dealt in facts. Logic. Trying to offer comfort to a man complicated by a past like his would be patronizing at best.

  Knowing she couldn’t trust her voice, she turned her attention to the computers. He’d included two chairs in front of the panels and a virtual-immersion-feed headset just like the one Omorle used the few times he’d taken her on a mission with him.

  She picked it up and shook her head. “I can’t go in with you. I am not a tech. I know a few simple games. Omorle refused to teach me . . .”

  “Keep watch,” Damen interrupted. “It’s what you did for him. Will you do it for me?”

  She blinked. It’s what Omorle had asked of her the three times he’d taken her on his missions. How had Damen known?

  “Are you sure you want me guarding your exit?” she asked. She was in what amounted to a sexual torture chamber, no matter that clients paid dearly, in more ways than one, to be . . . serviced by the man entrusting his life to her. How in the names of the Twelve Gods had she ended up in this situation?

  He turned an eager, enticing smile on her that jolted every nerve. “With you running the code path beside me, I could steal the Gods’ own data bank.”

  Her heart picked up speed and she choked on a laugh. It hit her that she wanted to be the reason his gray eyes lit up so brightly. She needed to ease the lines of tension in his face.

  Before she could think, she smoothed trembling fingers across his forehead.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist, closed his eyes, and sighed.

  Hope and a sense of power swelled in her chest. “Okay.”

  Damen hugged her tight, opened his eyes, and ushered her into a chair.

  Using her handheld, she isolated the virtual-immersion-headset feed and changed the default security code. The last bit of advice Omorle had given her. Never leave an unlocked back door.

  Damen sat down next to Jayleia and felt the quiver running through her muscles where her thigh brushed his.

  She picked up her VI set and put it on, as much, he suspected, to keep him from seeing the memory haunting her as to prep for the run.

  “Easy, Jay,” he urged. “Slow down. We’ve got a little time.”

  “Cravuul-dung. Getting here was too easy,” she countered, her voice tight.

  “That’s why you’re keeping watch,” he assured her. “I’m going to tether you to me. Keep an eye on this feed. It’s station security alerts. If they detect us, you’ll know.”

  “Understood.”

  “Inserting into the code layer,” he said as he slipped into the station’s internal computer systems.

  She shifted.

  He glanced at her, but couldn’t see her eyes. “The VI headset allows you to process this foray into the computers as if you were walking through it. It may be disorienting. If it’s too much . . .”

  “Incoming,” she said.

  Damen slammed his attention back to the code and nodded to mask the exhilaration twining through him. He’d been right to bring her with him.

  A snooper, a snippet of code designed specifically to identify intruders and report back to station security, came their way. It hadn’t detected them yet.

  Jayleia had sensed the danger before the wandering program could alert out.

  His fingers moved on his panel. The spy code withered and died.

  No wonder her bodyguard had drafted her for lookout duty.

  “Did you love Omorle Lin?” Damen asked, then choked back a bitter laugh. They were thigh-deep in the peripheral data systems adjoining Silver City’s heart. What she’d once felt, what she might still feel for her dead friend, had no bearing on their situation. He couldn’t let it. Still. He didn’t comprehend the burn in his chest.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice flat. “I loved him. I still do. Always will, I suppose. His being dead these six years hasn’t seemed to have had much impact on that.”

  “Because he was the first man to treat you like you, not like your father’s daughter? Which is what I’ve done.”

  She sat frozen in silence for a moment, before she tilted her head and sighed.

  “In all fairness,” she said, “I’ve kept so many secrets over the years that I don’t know who or what I am anymore. You can hardly be blamed for falling back to my last known good identity.”

  Damen chuckled. He felt her relax. The soreness around his heart eased and his breath came more easily.

  “Here we go,” he said. “It’s going to take some time to get through this lock.”

  “What is that?” she asked, forestalling him. She directed his attention to a tiny pinprick of unmoving data. The information flowing past it left eddies in the stream.

  He scowled.

  Imminent data-stream failure from a leak in the sending and receiving structures? Or spyware he’d not seen until now? Uneasiness swept him.

  He directed a few queries at it, then blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s not sending or receiving. I don’t know what it is.”

  Jayleia nodded. “I have the oddest feeling we’re being watched.”

  The skin between his shoulder blades tingled as if waiting for the impact of a shot. He shook off the impression.

  “How’s the security feed look?” he asked, directing her attention away from the bit of frozen data.

  “Brawl on market four,” she said.

  He grinned. “Let’s break this code lock.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to find the key?” she asked.

  “You might not know how to run code, but you know what questions to ask. You fight. And you’re a scientist?” he marveled.

  “Did the Claugh assign you to recruiting, too?” she asked, humor in her voice.

  “Are you suggesting you can be turned?”

  “Don’t you have enough TFC personnel on your side of the zone?” she countered, a smile in her voice.

  His heart lifted.

  CHAPTER 19

  JAYLEIA glanced at Damen.

  He played the lockout programs with the same concentration and virtuosity he’d displayed at the controls of the Kawl Fergus. He was easily as good as Lin had been. Maybe better.

  She’d had years of watching TFC’s star computer-espionage expert, yet she found herself admiring Damen’s skill. It looked like Tahem had been a good teacher.

  Jay straightened. “Damen? What are the chances that this lock is Tahem’s handiwork?”

  “Why do you think I asked you to follow me in?” he asked, tensing beside her when the lock code flared in response to his tinkering. “Damn it! The man taught me everything he knew about running code. What the Hells is his key phrase? I can’t get into the heart of Silver City’s data store unless I can break this lock.”

  “The heart?” she echoed, frowning. A niggling buzz at the back of her head caught her attention. “Try Ioccal.”

  Damen went dead still beside her and breathed a laugh. “Based on the notion that this phrase is the key to Tahem’s heart? Nice.”

  It didn’t work.

  Jayleia breathed a curse and checked the security feed. Nothing. And that felt wrong. Surely it wouldn’t take any great brainpower to work out where they were holed up.

  “It’s a good theory,” Damen said. “Try again.”

  “Om
orle Lin.”

  A security breach alert buzzed under her hand. She jumped, shut it off, and said, “Security’s on the way.”

  Another failure. The code lock glow intensified. The glare looked threatening.

  “Jayleia Durante,” Damen typed.

  Her heart lurched to think she’d be the key to breaking Tahem’s heart, but she nodded. It made sense.

  It, too, failed.

  In her VI headset, it looked like the lock exploded. She knew it was nothing more than the defense mechanism alerting out, notifying security of the intruders attempting to break into the system. The visual assault hit before she could shut her eyes.

  Damen felt Jayleia flinch, heard her pained gasp, and slammed a fist down on her panel, cutting her link.

  She cried out. Her hands clutched at the headset, then fell limp as she crumpled in her seat.

  Damen severed his connection by yanking the power supplies to each of the console systems.

  “Jay?”

  He removed the VI set.

  She groaned.

  “On your feet,” he said, dragging her upright. “We’ve got a few minutes, but we have to get moving.”

  That snapped her out of her daze enough that she rasped, “Erase your system.”

  “What?”

  “Power your boxes up and fry them so that no one can trace you.”

  “No time,” he countered. “Get out of here. Go to the ore freighter. It looks dead. It isn’t. Get off station.”

  “I’m not leaving you to face espionage charges,” Jayleia snapped, her eyes clearing as she rubbed her forehead. “And I’m not leaving without that file on my father.”

  “How are you going to get it without the key?” he demanded.

  “Never let what you are frame your data,” she quoted. “Omorle said that. If you can’t download it, I’ll steal the hardware.”

  Steal the data by brute force? He blinked. Had he really come to identify himself so thoroughly as Admiral Seaghdh’s computer expert that he’d blinded himself to all other means of data retrieval?

  Jay twisted out of his grasp, grabbed the power cores, and slammed them into place. “Stow the argument and boot the damned systems. Your culture isn’t the only one with rules, Major.”