Enemy Games Read online

  He glared. Rules? She wanted to throw rules in his face? After lecturing him about Vala?

  Growling, he brought the nearest systems to life.

  “You requested the truce. You’re under my protection,” she said as he worked the waking panels. “Not while it’s convenient. Not until I’m in danger. You made your safety my responsibility up to and including my death. Don’t like it? Don’t ask for a truce from a Swovjiti. Want someone to follow orders blindly? Pick another damned scientist.”

  Ire drained out of him. She’d die to shield him? The burn in his chest intensified until he shifted, trying to break free of the discomfort.

  “Done,” he said, straightening. “Simple data destruct cascade.”

  Damen touched her cheek.

  Her gaze searched his face.

  He didn’t know what she saw, but her expression softened, the tension and anger draining away.

  “Thank you,” he said, forcing the words past the boulder lodged in the spot where his heart should be. “I’m not accustomed to being protected.”

  She smiled wryly. “Our cultures seem specifically designed to offend one another.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your culture,” he murmured. “Just you. I have no practice in accepting care with grace. Help me.”

  Her smile died. She cupped his cheek in her hand, her brown eyes darkening. Uncertainty fired in her eyes, but she battled it down and pressed her lips against his.

  Damen fought back the urge to yank her to him and consume her. In time. Time.

  He pulled away. “We have to go.”

  Nodding, she asked, “Which way?”

  “We split up and give security two targets to chase,” he said. “You’ll go out the back door. I’ll go out the front.”

  She grimaced and her hold on him tightened. “I can’t protect you if we’re separated.”

  Her reluctance to leave him sent a rush of pleasure through him. Savoring the sensation, he replied, “And I can’t protect you unless we do.”

  She eyed him, her face drawn in grim calculation. She nodded.

  “Trade me,” she said. “I’ve seen the lay of the deck out the front door. If I can get out without being shot, I’ll be invisible in short order.”

  “Done. Make for the ore freighter.”

  She ran to the door.

  Damen followed and opened it. In the outer room, he flattened himself against the inside wall and decoded the door lock.

  It opened.

  Nothing happened.

  Jayleia threw him a troubled look. “Be careful,” she muttered, then she strode into the corridor.

  The door shut.

  Was it a shout he’d heard as the door sealed and locked? Heart in his throat, he returned to his office, knowing something had gone wrong. That security hadn’t been positioned in the corridor meant they’d come up with a plan he hadn’t foreseen. He glanced at the secret door Tahem had built into the back room decades ago. He’d said that a spy always had more than one exit.

  Damen suspected he’d had more than the few Damen knew about.

  Pushing aside the rack of whips and other implements, he cursed in a steady monotone. He’d failed to steal the data store. He’d risked Jayleia and turned her loose on a hostile station. He brought out his handheld, tapped it to life, and unlocked his escape hatch.

  Time to begin sorting the mess and see what could be salvaged. He stepped into an empty, dark shuttle bay.

  The hair at the back of his neck stirred.

  The barrel of a gun pressed against his temple. Lights flared.

  Damen squinted, hands raised, and hackles up. He knew the scent of the woman standing before him.

  “Guild Mistress,” he said.

  “Dear, sweet Damen,” a sultry, feminine voice drawled. “Members of your own family came to me with tales of your spying and sabotage aboard this station.”

  Damen knew better than to answer the charge.

  “Sindrivik,” the chief of security said, locking a set of neural cuffs on first one of his wrists, then the other. He activated them.

  Damen’s arms went dead.

  “You’re under arrest for treason.”

  “You’ve betrayed your own kind,” the guild mistress said, “and endangered every man, woman, and child on station. Get him out of my sight.”

  CHAPTER 20

  JAYLEIA examined the dead-looking hulk from the shadows and shifted, not at all comfortable with how simple it had been to give station security forces the slip.

  Either they were laughably understaffed and undertrained, or she and Damen had miscalculated. Badly. Sitting alone in a freezingcold docking bay with few working lights, no running water, and from the smell, no sanitary pump out, an oily tendril of fear slid into her gut.

  Shaking, she crossed to the freighter, went up the stairs to the personnel door, and used the unlock Damen had given her.

  A click and whir and the door cracked open. Jay slipped in, then closed and locked it.

  “Damen?” Vala called, footsteps coming closer. They stopped with a clump on the deck plating. “You! You weren’t . . . Where’s Damen?”

  Jayleia’s breath constricted as her head completed Vala’s sentence. “You weren’t supposed to make it.” She spun on the woman, ice stabbing into her chest. “Damen left the same time I did. Find him.”

  Vala caught in an audible gulp of air. “Which door did he take?”

  “Back.”

  “No!” Vala rasped. “No! It wasn’t supposed to happen like that! You were supposed to use that door! It’s the rules!”

  Jayleia stared at Vala, her heart hammering against her ribs. “What have you done?”

  Vala choked back a sob. “He’ll think . . . oh, Gods.” She sank to the floor, her hands clenching fists full of her curly hair.

  “Where is he?”

  “Nothing you can do.”

  “Where!” Jayleia shouted, turning her back on the woman and sprinting for the cockpit.

  Vala followed.

  Boots clumped down the companionway in their wake.

  “Station lockup. It’s secure,” Vala whispered. “The guild will accuse him of treason. They’ll kill him.”

  “How?” Jay demanded.

  Vala’s tears ran faster. “They space traitors.”

  A surge of horror struck Jay to silence. She dropped into the pilot’s seat.

  “No,” she grated and realized her denial was likely true. Think, Jayleia. “They won’t kill him right away. They’d want every scrap of information they could rip from him first.”

  Bellin skidded to a halt inside the cockpit door and stared at Jay, then at Vala.

  “Vala?” he quavered, looking back and forth between the two women. “What’s wrong?”

  “Damen’s in trouble,” Jayleia answered in Vala’s stead.

  “I know you,” Bellin said as Jay connected her handheld into the ship’s systems, and began trying to find a way into the station’s prison computers.

  “My mission was to find you and lead you to him,” the kid said, “wasn’t supposed to get stung.”

  Jayleia blinked at the turn of phrase “my mission,” then recalled Damen’s statement that he’d been recruiting spies from among the station’s populace. She glanced at the boy. Damen’s gray eyes peered back at her. She smiled. “Does Major Sindrivik have you run missions for him often?”

  “All the time,” Bellin said, pride in his voice. “When I’m old enough, he’s going to recruit me. Here. I’m supposed to give this to you.”

  He held out a metal tube.

  Jayleia took it, recognizing the container that Damen had given to Tahem with the crystal inside. She frowned. “Who gave this to you?”

  “Not supposed to tell,” the boy said. “He said, ‘You’re going to need it. It’s the key.’”

  Jayleia stared at the tube. Damen had given it to Tahem, who had obviously given it to Bellin. Was the crystal the key? Or was Tahem delivering yet another code
d message?

  She tried to open the tube. Locked. Damen had coded the mechanism to Tahem. Who would Tahem code the lock to? Her heart stumbled.

  Of course.

  She input the unlock code Damen had given her for the freighter. The tube opened, spilling the crystal into her hand.

  Damen.

  The key to Tahem’s heart and the key to the Silver City data store.

  “You going to help him? Damen, I mean?” Bellin demanded.

  Jayleia tried to breathe around the sting in her chest and straightened. “Yes.”

  “I wanna help,” Bellin declared.

  “Me, too,” Vala said, her voice thick. Isarrite-bound determination underlay her words. “I can get you into the lockup via video and audio feeds.”

  “Do it,” Jay ordered, rising.

  “I tried to get you killed. You’re going to trust me?” Vala challenged.

  “You love him,” Jayleia countered. “I trust that.”

  Scrubbing tears from her face with her sleeve, Vala took the copilot’s chair, and glanced at her son.

  Jay followed her gaze.

  “Gather the family,” Vala instructed. “It’s an emergency.”

  Bellin didn’t respond. He paled and sprinted for the door.

  Once the door closed behind the boy, Jay waved off Vala’s attempt to lock it.

  “Find Damen,” she instructed, code locking the door.

  Vala spent a few minutes that felt like a lifetime accessing the feeds.

  “You were right,” the woman said. “Couldn’t find him in a cell. They have him . . .”

  Video connected on the holo-display in front of them.

  “In an interrogation room,” Jayleia finished and flinched.

  Damen sat with both wrists cuffed to a chair.

  She couldn’t tell if they’d activated the neural lock, or if Damen had gone as still and expressionless as Isarrite out of rage.

  They’d searched him. His equipment littered the table behind him.

  A woman with short-cropped gray hair and an old, jagged scar marring her jaw stood barring the door, arms crossed over her gray and black uniform.

  The freighter’s personnel door cycled.

  Jay looked over her shoulder.

  “Vala? Bellin said it’s an emergency,” a young, male voice called as the door shut and locked. “What’s going on?”

  A scrawny, adolescent male with dark hair and hazel eyes appeared in the cockpit doorway. He glanced at the screen and blanched.

  “Baxt’kal Twelve Gods. Is that Damen?”

  “Jay, this is Kebbin, Damen’s second-in-command,” Vala said.

  Startled, Jayleia cast a surreptitious look between them. She’d assumed Vala was Damen’s right hand on Silver City.

  Vala wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Who’s that in the room with Damen?” Jay asked.

  “The woman at the door is Calmin,” Vala said, her face turned to the screen, “head of operations.”

  Leaning in to stare at the scene, Jay said, “She’s not asking questions or . . .”

  The woman straightened as the door opened.

  Two men entered.

  “Acquival is not on station,” the thick-set man, also in gray and black, with thinning straw colored hair and a square face said into the silent room.

  “Janka, chief of security,” Kebbin said. “The skeletal guy in the green medi coat is Altu.”

  Jayleia frowned. “He’s not chief medical officer?”

  Kebbin shook his head. “The C.M.O. is too old-fashioned for interrogation.”

  “He refuses to hurt people,” Vala clarified.

  Abruptly sick, Jay shot to her feet. “How do I get in there?”

  “You don’t!” Kebbin gritted, grabbing her arm.

  She snarled at him.

  He yanked his hand back as if burned. “That place is a fortress. Blunder in there, you’ll both die.”

  “You’ve run a trace on Master Acquival?” another voice, one that tripped every alarm in Jayleia’s system, said.

  Peering at the screen, she sank into her chair.

  The man had his back to the camera. He stood out in his navy uniform. Thinning and graying light brown hair suggested she should recognize him.

  “The trace came up empty,” Janka said.

  Meaning they’d had a locator on Tahem. Had he known?

  “I trust your people are combing this station for Jayleia Durante,” the man in blue said.

  Jay knew him then. Gerriny Eudal, her father’s former second-in-command. He’d come after her himself? What had her father said or done to have rousted Eudal out from behind the scenes where, her father liked to complain, he pulled all sorts of strings?

  “Three squads,” Janka replied.

  Head spinning, Jayleia sucked in a ragged-sounding breath.

  “Change the access code on that door!” she barked, gesturing over her shoulder in the direction of the freighter’s personnel door.

  “On it,” Kebbin said, pouncing on a workstation.

  “Until you acquire that particular point of persuasion,” Gerriny said, turning to poke at Damen’s possessions where they sat arrayed on the table, “may I suggest that you locate the woman Vala and her son? My sources indicate they are a weak spot in the major’s armor.”

  Janka grinned and activated his com badge.

  Vala, Kebbin, and Jayleia swore over the drone of orders being issued.

  “Bring Bellin in,” Jayleia said.

  Vala bent to her station, sending out a recall code for her son.

  “I’ve got to get Damen out of there,” Jayleia said. “I don’t know what Eudal is capable of.”

  “The slimy one in blue?” Kebbin clarified. “Who is he?”

  “Acting director of the Tagreth Federated Council’s Intelligence Command,” she replied, her tone grim. “The spawn of a Myallki bitch went after my dad. Now he’s after me.”

  “Then you can’t go in there!” Vala protested.

  “No, I can’t,” Jay said. “You were right. I’d get us both killed. I need an alternative plan. Help me out here.”

  Kebbin and Vala awarded her blank stares.

  Jayleia choked back a curse, and flogging her brain for a workable plan, turned back to the screen.

  Janka spun on Damen and snapped, “You were ordered to take your passenger to medical.”

  “So you could sell her to the highest bidder?” Damen growled.

  Janka shrugged. “She isn’t one of us. Why would you care what happened to her? You disobeyed a direct order and endangered your people.”

  “That does make the accusations of treason ring true,” Eudal noted.

  “Tahem Acquival is my master on this station,” Damen retorted. “He summoned me and ordered me to bring Ms. Durante.”

  “Why?” Janka demanded.

  “He knew her.”

  “Of course he did,” Eudal said. “His life partner was her bodyguard for years. I daresay he considers her family.”

  “You were arrested exiting Acquival’s office on the vice deck after an aborted attack on this station’s systems,” Janka growled. “My investigators found your biomarkers all over your master’s office. Hers, too.”

  The muscles in Damen’s jaw bunched. “I’m his favorite. She’s a new recruit.”

  Kebbin uttered a harsh-sounding laugh and leaned his head in her direction. “Welcome to the family.”

  Jay gaped at him, her thought processes shorted, tangled, and presented her with recall of the sex toys lining one wall of the room where she’d kept watch while Damen had tried to steal Silver City’s data.

  Hot blood rushed to her face. “What? No! I took an oath . . .”

  “You’re attempting to protect Jayleia Durante, Major Sindrivik. I commend your sense of duty and loyalty,” Gerriny Eudal said, holding something between thumb and forefinger as he lifted it to the light for inspection. “Given what I’ve found here in your belongings, however, I suggest y
our devotion to the young lady may be misplaced.”

  Jay propped her forehead on her clenched fists and glared at the screen trying to make out what the man held. “Shut up, you Carozziel slime-bat!”

  “Blood,” Eudal mused.

  Realization hit her like a meteor impacting atmosphere.

  The vial of blood she’d given Damen.

  “You took first blood?” Janka grated, the look he turned upon Damen approving. “Huh. Didn’t think you had the drive.”

  “A sample vial,” Gerriny corrected. “A sterile, dispassionate way for a predator to claim a victim. Or a mate.”

  Jay’s breath stopped in her chest. Mate?

  “He didn’t take this blood,” the man went on. “She did and undoubtedly offered it up with pretty words. It was a cold, calculated move from a frigid, conniving young woman. Or did you not know that her own people exiled her when she seduced and attempted to murder a rival warrior’s brother?”

  Rage exploded through her.

  “That is not what . . .” she wheezed.

  “You gave him your baxt’kal blood?” Vala breathed from beside Jayleia.

  She glanced between Vala and Kebbin.

  The amazed disbelief in their faces shot deep uneasiness through her.

  “T-to seal a truce,” she stuttered.

  Pity rushed into their faces.

  Ice flushed her veins.

  “Don’t doubt for a moment that she knew exactly what she was doing to you, my friend,” Gerriny Eudal said.

  Staring at the screen, Jayleia saw Damen flinch. Her heart tore. She squeezed her burning eyes shut.

  “Altu.” The woman’s voice broke the stillness that had fallen. “Major Sindrivik was ordered to bring the prisoner to medical for verification of her infection status.”

  “Yes, Officer Calmin,” the medi replied. “That did not take place.”

  “Is the woman a danger to this station?”

  “The disease is blood-borne,” Altu said. “The major claims the subject has recovered from the illness and is no longer contagious. Even if that assertion is false, the young lady would have to spill her own blood in order to infect another.”

  Jay opened her eyes in time to see Calmin shoot the man an annoyed look. “How many Autken are aboard this station?”

  The round-faced, beige-skinned medi blinked.