Enemy Games Page 19

  “You do have a choice in this,” she said.

  “But you don’t,” he surmised.

  “No.”

  Damen’s expression hardened to cold Isarrite as he looked between the high priestess and Jayleia. “She would give you her brother? The one who raped you seven years ago?”

  She gaped at him, heart in her throat. “W-what?”

  He took her by the shoulders. “You are a smart, strong, lethal woman. Why would you let someone hurt you?”

  Tiassale laughed, spite turning her voice shrill.

  Damen snarled.

  The woman fell silent.

  “I was young and naïve.” Jayleia choked on humiliation. She had to clear her throat to continue. “I’d been using my training to steal things.”

  “No,” Damen said. “I broke the sealed file your high priestess hid so carefully. Your males take items of value from the women they wish to bed and ransom those items for sex. Recovering what someone else had stolen doesn’t make you a thief.”

  Some of the shame cleared Jay’s system. She blinked up at him.

  He nodded encouragement, his bracing touch warming her courage.

  “Say it,” he urged. “Tell me you were raped.”

  “I wasn’t,” she said. “Call it extortion, maybe. Tiassale’s brother realized what I was doing. I let him convince me that he wanted me, that if I slept with him, everything would be forgotten. I’d give up recovering stolen items. He’d forget he’d ever seen anything incriminating and no one ever need know.”

  “He raped you and then turned you in anyway?” Damen rumbled, baring his teeth.

  “It wasn’t pleasant,” she confessed, “but I upheld my part of the bargain. When I found him bragging that he’d turned me into his whore, I broke his nose and one leg. Mother lost her position in the Temple and her title. I was exiled.”

  Damen’s breath went out in a rush. “I’ll kill him for you.”

  “He fights like a girl,” Jayleia said. His outrage on her behalf felt like a shield, something protecting her. “Not worth your time.”

  “That—” Tiassale began.

  “You have said enough on this subject over the years!” Margol thundered.

  Shock froze Jayleia’s breath. Why hadn’t her mother risen to her defense before now? Her mother would have retained her position, her title—Jayleia’s thoughts skidded to a halt. She eyed her mother, suspicion chilling her. If she’d spoken in Jayleia’s defense six years ago, she’d have remained weighed down by her responsibilities as the Temple’s high priestess.

  “Jayleia isn’t the first warrior with the entrepreneurial spirit to misuse her ability. She won’t be the last. You haven’t exiled the others,” her mother noted.

  Tiassale drew herself up, eyes flashing. “She was banished because . . .”

  “Your brother earned his results, and you’re a bigot?” Jayleia offered.

  “No. She’s afraid. Of you,” Damen countered, his head cocked and his nostrils flaring as if testing the air.

  Jayleia blinked. Afraid? That made no sense. Hate, yes. Afraid? She shook off the chill seeping through her gut. Hate made people nasty. Fear made them vicious.

  She glanced at her mother. “You could have said something like this before I was exiled, Mother.”

  Her mother returned her gaze with a placid expression and unreadable smile. “I had my reasons.”

  “Care to share them?”

  “No.”

  “You used me? Thanks.”

  Her mother chuckled.

  Amusement threaded through Damen’s voice. “I thought Autken mating rituals were strange. I blundered into a trap, didn’t I?”

  Jayleia met his gaze. “Yes.”

  He eyed her up and down, humor crinkling the corners of his heated gray eyes. “Given the bait, who can blame me? I accept.”

  Jayleia’s heart squeezed hard.

  Damen wrapped her hand in his.

  “One final question,” Jayleia’s mother said. “The council of elders has interviewed the evacuees.”

  Jay nodded.

  Her mother raised a silver eyebrow. “Have you destroyed the threat to their lives as is your duty?”

  “That’s my job,” Damen countered.

  Jayleia bared her teeth in a bloodthirsty parody of a grin. “Too late. I’ve already begun the process.”

  Interest and a spark of amusement lit her mother’s dark brown eyes.

  Alarms rent the morning.

  “Report!” Tiassale shouted into her wrist com.

  A shriek of engines cleaving the atmosphere rose above the Planetary Defense alarms. Jayleia recognized the sound. The distant thunderclap of weapons’ fire made it clear.

  Swovjiti was under attack.

  “Biomechs,” Jay bit out, her voice shaking with equal parts rage and fear. “How many ships?”

  “Unknown! Reports are still arriving,” the high priestess replied. “You know these attackers?”

  “The massacre on Kebgra,” Jayleia answered.

  Tiassale shot her a glare filled with accusation and loathing. “You dare bring those abominations upon us?”

  “Get us off planet,” Damen said. “The traitors obviously know Jayleia is here.”

  Jay’s heart leaped to her throat and she spun for the doorway.

  “It is a ruse to flush you from the Temple,” her mother said. “The people working against your father cannot reach you within the walls of the Temple. They know this and must resort to butchery in hopes of driving you into the open.”

  Breathing hard, trembling with the rush of fight-or-flight chemicals, Jay stared at her mother. Who seemed to know more than she’d let on about who might be working against her father.

  “It’s damned effective!” Jayleia said. “The vows you drilled into my head all my life don’t permit me to sit in safety while innocents are threatened or killed.”

  “Jayleia!” Damen snapped. “Reunion when you aren’t a target! Where’d you hide the data?”

  She growled at him.

  He grinned. “Hold that thought.”

  Her knees went weak. Gritting her teeth, she turned and grabbed the pack of data chips.

  “Get us out of here,” Damen commanded. “I won’t have it said that the Claugh nib Dovvyth handed Swovjiti’s high priestess and her council to the traitors.”

  “We’ll need teleport!” Jay hollered.

  “Teleport from here to where?” Tiassale demanded.

  “The Kawl Fergus!” Damen said. “Swovjiti Space Port.”

  “Mother!” Jayleia said. “Teleport home. When we reach the Kawl Fergus, I’ll establish a com link with you . . .”

  “I am watched here, Jayleia, by agents I can’t identify! My lines aren’t secure.” She pulled up short, eyeing the resolute expression Jay could feel on her face. “You’re counting on that, aren’t you? Very well. Tiassale? Will you authorize my teleport?”

  “Planetary Defense is standing by,” the high priestess replied. “Go.”

  “I have the data,” Jayleia said to Damen as teleport distortion warped the sound waves in the room.

  Her mother vanished. The space between Jayleia’s shoulder blades itched as if expecting laser fire to rip through the hall at any moment. She hadn’t heard another flyby. Did the relative quiet mean soldiers were already on the ground murdering people in an effort to find her?

  “Inform all personnel that the soldiers can be destroyed by shots to the face!” Damen instructed the priestess.

  Another buzzer shrilled through the stone hall.

  Jayleia jumped. The Temple had been targeted.

  Tiassale, pale, her lips tight with rage, shouted, “Teleport! Remove these monstrosities from my planet!”

  Damen leaped up the dais and yanked Tiassale down beside Jayleia.

  The priestess yelped.

  He grabbed her wrist and shouted into her com, “The high priestess is in danger! She teleports with us! Three plus equipment to teleport! Now!�
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  An explosion rocked the Temple.

  Teleport distortion grabbed Jayleia as the stone and wood above her head erupted in a shower of sparks and deadly bolts of plasma. Then it vanished along with all sensation.

  She winked back into existence and fell flat on her face, black hair pooling in her line of sight, the bag of data chips a hard lump beneath her ribs.

  A shout and the sound of weapons whipped from holsters brought her rolling to her feet, her ceremonial skirts tangling momentarily around her legs. She flung hair out of her face, bells chiming.

  “Release the priestess!” a man commanded.

  “Hold!” Tiassale countered, her voice shaking. She climbed to her feet with Damen’s assistance. Her braids had come loose. Three drooped over one ear. She seemed not to notice. “The major saved my life.”

  Damen opened his hands, freeing Tiassale.

  The Planetary Defense staff lowered their weapons.

  “Complete teleport,” Tiassale ordered.

  The soldiers scrambled to their stations. “High Priestess? If you will step out of the incident field?”

  Tiassale rounded the control panel. “Clear skies, Major. Jayleia.”

  At least the second wave of teleport distortion didn’t drop her on her face. They materialized in the entry corridor of the Kawl Fergus.

  “Secure the data!” Damen dashed for the cockpit. “This jump is going to be hard, fast, and dirty.”

  “Never had a better offer,” she quipped.

  It sounded like Damen choked on a laugh as he woke the systems.

  “Open a channel to my mother!” she yelled, stifling a grin.

  “Connecting,” he replied, then said, “Madam Durante? You have Bellin in your care?”

  “I do,” Jay heard her mother reply, sounding tinny over the com connection.

  Jayleia pounced on a familiar-looking pack lying against the door. Someone had teleported her belongings.

  “May I speak with him?” Damen asked.

  “Go ahead. You will have to do the talking,” her mother said. “The child has not spoken a word since . . .”

  “I understand,” Damen interrupted. “Bellin, it’s Damen. Major Sindrivik.”

  “Are you coming to get me?” Bellin demanded.

  Jayleia rolled her eyes as the engines grumbled to life beneath her feet. Of course the boy would speak to Damen. They were family.

  She fished through her pack for the metal crystal tube Bellin had given her aboard Silver City, leaped to her feet, and ran for the cockpit.

  “It isn’t safe,” Damen answered. “We’re under attack and I have a mission for you.”

  Jay collapsed into the navigation seat and planted the bag of data chips between her feet.

  “A mission? Sir?”

  “Do you remember the Shollen Family Mission?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Can you do it again, here?” Damen asked.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Good man. I’ll expect your report when I see you next.”

  Smiling, Damen cast Jayleia a glance. He muted the com line when she lifted an eyebrow at him.

  “Bellin has a nose for spies,” he said. “He’ll ID every mole on Swovjiti if your mother will let him.”

  “They’ll make a good team,” she said, smiling.

  At her nod, he opened the channel again.

  Yanking restraints into place, she addressed the open com line. “Mother, we’re lifting.”

  “We have word of attacks in every major Temple city. Casualties are mounting, but the creatures are being driven back under the combined force of Planetary Defense and Swovjiti Temple ranks. Tell no one your destination. Seek refuge someplace that knows how to deal with these monsters. It’s what your father would want,” her mother said, her words hurried.

  Jayleia sat bolt upright. Another coded message? Tahem had said, “Don’t let the past dictate what you could become.” Now her mother?

  Jay shook her head. She couldn’t work out what any of it meant.

  CHAPTER 26

  DAMEN glanced at Jayleia’s nonplussed expression and frowned.

  “What is it?” he murmured.

  She shook her head, the lost light in her eyes driving apprehension through his chest. “I think my mother just tried to tell me where my father is and I have no idea . . .”

  Alarms rang through the cockpit.

  Swearing, he closed the com line and silenced the proximity warning. Lights flashed across the panels.

  Jayleia turned to the weapons station. “They’re on us. We’re in their sights.”

  “I see it,” he replied, scanning the takeoff instructions coming in from Planetary Defense. “Hang on. I’m being instructed to burn off planet.”

  Jay met his glance, her eyes wide.

  The Kawl Fergus’s interstellar drive would fry anyone or anything within one hundred meters of the ship’s exhaust port and leave a trail of radioactive particles in the atmosphere. For that reason alone, it was illegal throughout the known systems except in extreme emergencies.

  “Planetary Defense authorized that?” she marveled.

  “I’ll aim for a few biomech fighters as we fire out.” Damen slammed the atmospherics to full power, eyeing the swarm of fighters speeding for their position.

  The Kawl Fergus lurched into the sky.

  Fighting the g-forces mashing him into his seat, he waited for the brief lull indicating they’d maxed out acceleration with the atmospherics. He activated the shields and hit the emergency start on his interstellar drive.

  The plates beneath his feet shuddered and the drive shrilled awake with bone-rattling force.

  Weapons fire jolted the ship. The view screen flared as the plasma bolts went wide.

  Damen bared his teeth in a feral grin.

  The Kawl Fergus slammed through the sound barrier. Heat built in the cabin as the friction of atmosphere resisting their ascent tested the integrity of the reentry shielding. Excruciating weight crushed the breath from Damen’s chest. He didn’t black out, but for a few long seconds, he wished he could.

  The biomech fighters on their tail kept pace, but couldn’t close the distance. With the fighters at or near the limit of their weapons’ range, Damen had no trouble throwing the Kawl Fergus out of the way of the few shots aimed at them.

  Gradually, the pressure eased, the cockpit cooled, and he could move again. They’d left Swovjiti behind, but not the fighters.

  Damen hissed and wondered how far the little ships could follow. No one knew enough about the hybrid TFC/Chekydran tech to have range information on the vessels. At least they’d stopped firing. Conserving energy?

  Someone had changed the rules of the game by sending the Chekydran-built soldiers after Jayleia. He gathered that she’d been reclassified from information source to deadly threat. Why?

  Had she recognized the shift?

  He glanced at her. She returned his grim look, released her restraints, and pushed herself to standing. “Need my handheld. I can’t read the panels.”

  He watched her stride out of the cockpit into the corridor, her glittering skirts swaying. She was his. All he needed was open sky, no one shooting, and the leisure to show her in detail. His pulse sped.

  She returned wearing an oxygen generator.

  “Jay?”

  “My physiology doesn’t handle the stresses of takeoff as easily as yours,” she said as she sat. “Minor hypoxia. It won’t take long to clear my system.”

  She’d already activated her handheld and linked into the weapons panel.

  “Mother ship on long range,” she said.

  The claxon warbled. Damen swore and shut it off. “Keep your eyes on. Given the size of the attack force on planet, I’d expect more. They may try to box us in.”

  “We can’t outrun them?”

  “Damn it. I need that crystal,” he muttered, scanning for potential hiding places.

  Jayleia shot him a penetrating look and tucked hair behind one ea
r as she scanned the floor. She scooped up a metal tube and presented it to him.

  “Tahem gave it back,” she said. “Coded to you.”

  He took it and spared a glance at his panels. The clump of fighters had managed to close by a few kilometers. One mother ship registered at the edge of long range, along with a few commercial freighters.

  He opened the tube. The milky, opaque crystal slid into his palm. He frowned. “Why?”

  “Tahem gave it to Bellin,” Jay replied, staring at the crystal, her brow furrowed as if in concentration. “He’d said, ‘You’re going to need this.’”

  She frowned. “He had to have given the crystal to Bellin after he had us arrested.”

  “Which makes you think he counted on our escape,” Damen said. “He’d provided intel on the crystals. Admiral Seaghdh had me run a joint mission, me on recon and recovery, Tahem on analysis.”

  We must have been compromised and the games to mislead us in his cabin were his way of mitigating damage.”

  “I don’t see how,” Jayleia grumbled.

  Damen stared at her. “He knew you, knew what you could do.”

  “He also knew I’d been kicked out of the Temple seven years ago,” she protested. “He had no way of knowing I’d stayed in practice. He gambled your life on me.”

  Elation filled his chest, crowding out breath. “You said he loves me.”

  “He does.”

  “Would he have gambled with my life unless he’d looked in your eyes and decided it was a very safe bet?”

  She blinked, looking stunned as a tremulous smile spread on her face.

  Damen grinned.

  “No need to look so smug,” she said, “there’s still the question of how Trente and Edie knew where to find us.”

  “You think Tahem told them?”

  She shook her head. “He would have to have known that they were on our side. He’d have to have known they’d come from my mother . . .”

  “He already knew about your father’s disappearance.”

  “I know. What the Hells is going on?”

  “We’re getting out of here so we can find out without getting shot out of the sky,” Damen replied, jumping to his feet, and tearing for the engine. He tossed engine covers open and dropped into the compartment.

  “Second mother ship!” Jayleia yelled.