Enemy Games Read online

  She threw her back against it.

  Mistake.

  The door frame had bent. Through the scant crack, claws raked her right deltoid. She yelped, bolted away from the door, shoved the table against it, and realized her body weight and strength wouldn’t keep the animals at bay for long.

  “Emergency reactor online!” Pietre hollered. “Sixty seconds to teleport, Jay! Hold on!”

  She shuddered. The kuorls would break through any second. The hole at the corner of the roofline had grown. The sickly sweet miasma of decay choked her.

  Bloodworms, scenting the fresh blood on her arm, hastened up her body to fasten their suckers to the wound.

  She could no longer say whether it was sweat, or tears, or both running so freely down her face.

  “Belay that, Sen Ekir!” a masculine voice ordered via the open channel.

  Jayleia’s heart jumped. Hope burned through her chest, burgeoning, squeezing out room for breath.

  He sounded familiar.

  “Firing on the front of the blind, Jayleia. Stand clear,” he said.

  She heard it then. An atmospheric engine directly overhead. A shuttle? Whose? The colonists didn’t have a shuttle. An order. She’d been ordered to stand clear.

  “Acknowledged!” she rasped, turned her back, and ducked her head.

  She heard the shuttle guns fire. Metal and kuorls shrieked. Heat and the smell of burning, rotted flesh hit her like a fist. Jayleia lost the field ration she’d choked down for breakfast.

  Something clattered behind her.

  She spun.

  The entire front half of the observation blind had been blown away. A rescue harness dangled in the smoldering remains. She dove for it and shoved her feet in the straps. Force fields activated around her chest and hips, holding her to the rescue cables. The invisible harness would keep her in place even if she lost consciousness.

  “Go! Go!” It felt like she’d burst her throat shouting.

  The line lifted her straight into the air.

  The kuorls had been thrown from the building when the wave of weapons’ fire had hit. A solitary snarling animal leaped for her as she passed.

  She backhanded the thing. It fell out of sight. Relief eased the flood of adrenaline from her body. The shaking began.

  “Hang on!” her rescuer ordered. “I’m bringing you up.”

  How she wanted to do as he said, let him haul her aboard and enclose her safely inside the airborne vehicle. The rescue line wobbled and began reeling her in.

  “Negative!” Jayleia yelled, looking up at the belly of the shuttle. “I’m infected!”

  The line jerked to a halt.

  “Make for the Sen Ekir,” she directed.

  “Jayleia,” Dr. Idylle countered, his voice raw and thready. “Get aboard that ship so your cousin can restart my heart. Unless you plan to begin biting people, you aren’t contagious.”

  It surprised her to find that dehydrated, dizzy, and exhausted as she was, she could still smile. “Yes, sir.”

  The rescue harness lurched into motion again. Her right arm burned. She glanced at the wound on her arm, then looked hastily away from the writhing mass of bloodworms attached to her skin, gorging themselves at her expense. Where a worm couldn’t reach her bloody flesh, it bit into one of its own, using its companion as a filter for her blood.

  Save for the sharp stabs of pain radiating from the bloodworm-encrusted cuts on her arm, she might have fallen asleep in the sway of the rescue halter. As it was, she’d become light-headed before the shuttle’s open doorway blocked out the view of the heat-bleached sky. Hands reached out to haul her aboard.

  Jayleia caught a glimpse of a khaki uniform. Her internal alarms fired. What was the Claugh nib Dovvyth military doing inside TFC space? She glanced at the man pulling her to safety.

  Damen Sindrivik was taller than she remembered. He’d filled out, broadened, and let his gold-red hair grow since last she’d seen him nearly a year ago.

  Beside him, hand steadying the cables, Jay recognized V’kyrri’s copper skin, light brown hair, and his easy smile, though the last was noticeably short-lived. Not that she blamed him. Her own good humor had taken a near-fatal hit in that swamp.

  As she neared the craft, she realized that fat, gorged bloodworms were detaching from her arm and dropping into the swamp below.

  They looked wrong.

  She glanced at her arm. Six of the bloodsuckers remained. The pallid creatures should turn first pink, then bright red as they filled with blood. The few still attached were in various stages of feeding. Two were pale, barely pinking up. One, bulging and bloated with blood, looked nearly black.

  The winch arm retracted, drawing her into the ship. V’kyrri leaned out, grabbed both cables, and swung her aboard.

  Damen spun and entered the release codes to free her from the force fields.

  She spilled to the deck, along with a few stiff, black bloodworms that had fallen into the harness rather than into the swamps.

  V’kyrri swore and backed away. “Whoa! What the Three Hells are those things? They’re all over you!”

  CHAPTER 3

  “LEAVE them!” Jayleia croaked, cupping her left hand over the last six live bloodworm specimens clinging to her arm.

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” V’kyrri demanded, his expression tight with distaste.

  “Yes, it does,” she admitted. Her voice sounded like she’d been gargling gravel. “But these specimens are invaluable. Get me to the Sen Ekir.”

  Damen awarded her an unreadable look. His eyes were the same gray as the storm-tossed northern seas of her mother’s world.

  “We’ve got to get you to a sanitizer and then to medical,” he directed, nodding toward the bulkhead where he worked. The shower and medi-bay must be on the other side.

  An instrument chirped in the bow of the ship. V’kyrri swore. Footsteps pounded away from her as she stumbled into the tiny, gray green medi-bay and grabbed sterile containers.

  “Long range,” V’kyrri said via the open com.

  “Acknowledged,” Damen replied, his tone grim.

  Did they know she could hear? Did they care?

  Though her arm ached and her fingers tingled in response to the pain in her deltoid, Jayleia waited until the last few worms drank their fill. If her hypothesis was correct, and they were draining the infection, she’d give them all the time they needed.

  Pain stabbed down her arm. She looked at the bleeding mess that had been the kuorl scratch. The last two worms were withdrawing their jaws and preparing to detach. They were red. Healthy, normal blood, red. She hoped they’d helped remove any infection. That she wasn’t yet symptomatic seemed to indicate that they had, but without Raj around to do the testing, she had to assume the worst.

  She found a packet of analgesic, opened it, and downed the liquid. The sting in her arm retreated.

  Bites covered the deltoid. Blood, thinned by the anticoagulant bloodworms excreted to guarantee their meal, streamed down her arm, dripping to the medi-bay floor. She packed each of the bloodworms into a sterile container and secured them inside the medi-bay’s stasis chamber.

  The unit’s controls weren’t familiar and the instructions were rendered in Claughwyth, a language she neither spoke nor read. She’d have to get help, preferably from someone who wouldn’t leave muddy fingerprints on the equipment.

  Gods. She needed a shower.

  “Jayleia?”

  Damen. She turned.

  Her thought processes and sight fuzzed for a split second as her knees sagged. She cursed. Her voice had dwindled to a hoarse ghost of itself. Dehydration symptoms. She hoped.

  Damen’s arm around her ribs and the heat of his broad chest against her back brought her forcefully into her body once more. A tingle of awareness rippled through her.

  “Are you insane?” she gasped. “One scratch, one tiny abrasion and you’ll be infected, too!”

  “It’s too early in the relationship to let you fall at my feet,” he said
, the rumble of suppressed laughter in his voice.

  She gaped at the far wall. Her brain shorted and rational thought stuttered. They were covered in gore and he was flirting?

  Struggling for a rational response, Jayleia shook off mental paralysis by retreating to comfortable, scientific territory. “We’ll both require decontamination and testing. For the moment, would you activate the stasis chamber? Then I need a rehydration packet, please.”

  “Can you stand?” he asked at her ear.

  She propped one hip against the diagnostic bed as Damen loosened his grip. “I can lean.”

  “What possessed Dr. Idylle to allow you into that swamp to begin with?” he grumbled as he searched through cabinets and drawers.

  Was that an undercurrent of anger in his voice?

  Jayleia’s temper woke in response. “It’s my job. People on the planet are suffering, Major.”

  “That trumps your safety?” he demanded.

  “Every time.”

  He turned back and pinned her with a look that rendered her mute. Thunder threatened in the darkened gray of his eyes.

  “The teleporters weren’t even on standby,” he countered, handing her a silver packet. “It’s a good way to get a field op killed.”

  Field operative? The description made her smile. Certainly the kuorls had taken a dim view of her brand of spying. She accepted the rehydration packet and opened it.

  “Science ships are all about trade-offs,” she said. “Teleporters require power. On the ground, in the middle of an outbreak, we need that power for computers and diagnostic equipment.”

  “We’re both in the business of putting our lives on the line.” He shook his head as if the thought disconcerted him. Rounding the table, he gestured at her arm. “How do we stop the bleeding?”

  She glanced at the wound, and then at the blood on the floor. “Shower. Bloodworms inject anticlotting agents. It has to be washed out of the wound. I’ll . . .”

  “Be still,” Damen ordered, closing in behind her. “Drink.”

  “Let me get the blood up . . .” she started.

  Damen’s hands in her hair stopped her voice. He began untangling the braid she’d put in her hair two days ago when she’d gone into the field. His grazing her skin sent a shiver down her spine.

  She drank the packet of water spiked with rehydration salts to distract herself from the sensation. Fire shot up and down her injured arm when she tried to bring the packet straw up to her lips. Breath hissed in between her clenched teeth.

  Damen’s hands paused.

  “Arm,” she said.

  “How big an emergency is this?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “We were investigating the disease and its causes when the kuorls went wrong. In humanoid patients, the infection manifests with fever, headache, and tissue necrosis, which can progress to disfigurement and in some cases, death if left untreated. We suspected sick kuorls were one of the vectors, but we’d never seen anything like what you pulled me from today. I don’t know if this is a new manifestation of the illness. I have no idea what impact the bloodworms had on drawing the infection out of my system. I’m sorry. I can’t give you a remotely decent answer.”

  “Damn it. Can anyone besides the Sen Ekir treat you?”

  Jayleia spun and shoved the empty hydration packet into his chest. “Why will you not take me to my ship?” she snapped. “Beyond my own treatment, I have a job to do. Chemmoxin has to be quarantined before the disease gets off world.”

  She glanced at her arm. The bleeding had slowed. A little.

  “If it hasn’t already,” she amended. “I’d have said the likelihood of this disease impacting your people was slight, but here I am, potentially infected, and you’re wearing my blood.”

  A hint of a smile touched Damen’s full lips, lighting his entire countenance, then he swore, spun, and stalked out of the medi-bay.

  As she watched the play of muscles outlined by khaki fatigues, her brain flashed on a memory of a long-toothed Azym casing his territory in the tall, plains grass of the Glenthyk wilderness. The predators were built for speed and agility. They rippled with lithe muscle. Their huge, padded paws sheathed brutal claws. Razor-sharp teeth and strong jaws let them take down prey much larger than themselves.

  She pulled in a deep breath, intrigued by the image. A sense of safety tugged at her insides.

  Safety? After a fanciful moment spent envisioning him as a deadly predator? Jayleia peeled herself from the diagnostic table and shook her head. She grabbed a towel from beside the tiny washbasin. Mopping blood from her injured arm, she used the cloth to keep from dripping all over the rest of Damen’s ship as she followed him down the companionway.

  “Through here,” he directed, hitting a door-release control and leading her into a cabin. He opened another door. “Shower . . .”

  The shipboard alarm blared.

  Jay started, her heart knocking hard against her ribs.

  “V’k?” Damen touched his ship’s badge and yelled above the noise.

  The action made her wonder why she hadn’t heard a word from her crewmates since Damen and V’kyrri had pulled her aboard. Too far away? Or was her com signal being jammed?

  The alarm shut off mid-whoop.

  “Short range!” V’kyrri answered. “Erillian Aggressor, no flag, no name. Coming in fast. Shielded. Weapons hot.”

  Her eyes widened. She knew that ship. Her father used that captain and crew for missions. What were they doing here?

  Damen’s attention jerked back to her, his gray gaze searching her face.

  She choked back a curse. Time to remember she was in enemy hands. She had to guard her reactions.

  Instinct whispered that Major Sindrivik would be difficult to mislead, but she had to try. She wasn’t willing to compromise TFC’s secrets. Not to a spy working for a rival government.

  “Why are they after you? Shower!” she commanded, shoving a tendril of fear into her tone as she nodded at the sanitizer. “You’re needed up front. I’ll wait.”

  He strode into the unit and cycled on the system.

  It gave her a moment to combine the bits of conversation she’d overheard with the ship’s accelerating climb through Chemmoxin’s atmosphere. She wasn’t in a shuttle. That was clear. It looked like a two-man recon ship, exactly what a couple of spies on a mission might use. What would bring them here at the precise moment she most needed divine intervention?

  The last time they’d enacted a similar scene with these players, Damen and V’kyrri had been helping their boss hijack the Sen Ekir, bringing the Chekydran after them all. If they’d done it again, she’d have reason to start biting and infecting Claugh officers.

  She heard the spray of water shut down. After 120 seconds of wishing this were the Sen Ekir where he’d have to strip and emerge without a stitch of clothing, she heard the drier cycle off. The door opened.

  Damen, fully dressed, left the tiny chamber by stalking straight up to her and glaring down at her, a knot in his jaw.

  She couldn’t back up or she’d collide with the bed. His bed. Muscles low in her abdomen clenched tight. Confusion rocked her. What had happened to make her react to the man?

  She sidled away, circling toward the shower.

  He leaned in, his gaze holding hers.

  Rational thought evaporated. She stumbled backward into the sanitizer.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” he murmured, his gaze fixed on her mouth.

  The air left her lungs and she struggled to recall that she had no business hoping Damen would make good his implied threat to kiss her. Pressing her lips tight, still trapped by his gaze, she nudged the button to activate the system.

  The door shut in his face.

  She slumped, able to breathe and think again.

  What wasn’t she telling him, indeed. What wasn’t he telling her?

  The spray of water and disinfectants assaulted her. She set speculation aside. Slowly, by forcing her reluctant arm to work
, she stripped out of the sodden lab clothes she’d worn into the field, aborted the dry cycle, and went through the wash again, making certain every single red, swollen worm bite got hit with disinfecting spray. She lost count past thirty bites and wondered if she should be concerned about blood loss.

  The ship jolted and shimmied sideways.

  Cursing, Jayleia spilled to the floor.

  She struggled upright and yanked on her clothes as the water recycling system evaporated the excess moisture. The door clicked open.

  She made it to the cockpit as another jolt rocked the vessel.

  Damen sat strapped in at piloting in the U-shaped cockpit. V’kyrri, at navigation, sat beside him. The weapons panel was on V’kyrri’s right, and what looked like a communications panel on Damen’s left.

  “Are you all right?” Damen asked, tossing a glance at her.

  “I won’t know that until you return me to the Sen Ekir,” she said, “which you have no intention of doing, have you?”

  The muscles in Damen’s jaw bunched.

  V’kyrri leaned across the cockpit, reached under the communications panel next to her, pulled out a seat and unfolded it.

  Laser fire exploded in front of them, rattling the ship. The flare overwhelmed the view screen filters.

  “Strap in!” Damen ordered.

  Data coalesced in a flash. A mercenary her father liked to hire showed up at the exact time and place as two Claugh nib Dovvyth officers who, she had to assume, had intended all along to steal her from her ship. Damen asked whether she could be treated anywhere other than the Sen Ekir. The Erillian Aggressor had fired on them without doing damage when Jayleia knew damned well that ship had the firepower and the skill to vaporize them. They were being shot at. Not shot. Shot at.

  Jayleia gaped at him. “You’re kidnapping me?” Squinting against the glare, she stumbled into the seat. “What is it with you people and the women aboard the Sen Ekir? Hijacking us a year ago and kidnapping my best friend wasn’t enough for you?”

  “I’m not”—he stopped short, white lines showing around his full lips.

  It made no sense. Why would the Claugh nib Dovvyth kidnap a xenobiologist? Especially one whose best friend, Ari Idylle, had already defected to that side of the zone? It wasn’t as if they didn’t have thousands of biologists of their own. Unless it was a political or tactical move. Again, why? What possible advantage could having her in custody . . . she stopped short. It wasn’t about her. She represented no specific value, not even from a scientific standpoint. But her dad . . .