Enemy Games Read online

  “And by extension, my father,” she murmured.

  “My actions, however, created a situation whereby the president of Tagreth Federated could make the accusation in the first place,” he said.

  “You went straight to the Dagger after I kidnapped Jayleia,” Damen surmised, a glimmer of amusement in his voice, “rather than registering a protest with your political body.”

  “It seemed the logical course of action at the time,” Dr. Idylle said.

  “If you were with the Dagger.” Damen frowned at her crewmates. “Who escorted you here? Admiral Seaghdh wouldn’t have allowed you to follow a data signal without armed escort.”

  “My daughter hardly allowed Admiral Seaghdh a word edgewise between demanding complete copies of our data and barking orders for Captain V’kyrri to follow us,” Dr. Idylle grumbled.

  Damen started, a smile growing on the mobile half of his face. “The Queen’s Rhapsody? Will you open a line, Dr. Idylle? I’d like . . .”

  “Captain V’kyrri and his crew brought us in, waited until we gave them the all clear, then they turned around to investigate some odd readings at the edge of this sector,” Dr. Idylle said.

  Jay felt the blood rush from her head. “Hail them! Turn them around!”

  “I’ll go to the Kawl Fergus,” Damen said. “Compatible systems have greater reach.”

  Alarm tightened both Dr. Idylle’s and Raj’s expressions.

  “Teleport?” Dr. Idylle said.

  “Faster to open the airlock,” Jay said.

  Dr. Idylle strode to the com and opened the channel. “Pietre, open main doors, please. Repeat, open main doors.”

  “Acknowledged,” Pietre replied. “Opening main doors. Good to have you back in one relative piece, Jay.”

  “Let’s see how long that’s going to last,” she grumbled.

  “Clear skies at the moment,” Pietre said.

  “Glad to hear it, but why are the skies clear?” she muttered glancing at Damen.

  He shook his head. “Why didn’t the ore scouts follow them in?”

  Jay looked to her boss. “Dr. Idylle? Do we have an extra com badge for Major Sindrivik? Mine is aboard the Kawl Fergus; I’ll pick it up.”

  “Excellent idea,” her boss said, nodding. “Pietre? A com badge for Major Sindrivik, if you please. Meet us at the door.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “I recommend powering up your teleporter,” Damen said as they strode for the door. “Keep it on hot standby.”

  “You said these Chekydran aren’t a threat. What’s out here that we’d have to teleport away from?” Raj demanded.

  Jayleia shook her head. “We were on our way from Swovjiti to the Dagger. Eluding the biomech soldiers and their ships brought us out to this sector.”

  “We were attacked by a trio of UMOPG ships,” Damen said.

  “Com badge,” Pietre said, approaching from the cockpit. He started, his dark eyes widening as he surveyed the scar on Damen’s face. “Twelve Gods, Damen, what happened to you?”

  “The UMOPG happened,” Damen said, affixing the badge to his shirt pocket. “They’ve established a military presence at the edge of this system and altered a trio of ore scouts. V’kyrri’s flying right into their sights.”

  The airlock light flashed and the doors opened.

  Damen sprinted off the ship and angled for the Kawl Fergus.

  “UMOPG?” Pietre sputtered. “They carry rudimentary armaments. They’re miners, not military.”

  “They are now,” Jayleia countered, leading the way out of the Sen Ekir. “The scouts that hit us had been modified for stealth, speed, and firepower. Have a look at the damage they did to Damen’s ship.”

  Pietre’s com badge beeped. He activated it. “Sindrivik?”

  “Tell Jayleia I know how we were lured,” Damen said, his voice shaking. “And I think I have an ID on the sentient life-forms that altered the crystal.”

  “What crystal?” Pietre asked.

  Alarm shrilled in Jayleia’s head. She pounded up the Kawl Fergus’s ramp, into the companionway, then froze in the cockpit entrance, staring. The blown-out console above communications had been replaced by a brilliant yellow crystalline structure.

  Her heart rose to her throat.

  The Chekydran-ki had apparently been repairing the ship, using crystals to fill the voids. Assuming these yellow crystals bore any relation to the rock fused to the Kawl Fergus’s engine feed. From the pulse and flow of light and energy through them, she gathered they did.

  Damen, seated in what remained of his pilot’s chair, met her gaze, and nodded.

  “The original crystal was bait,” he concluded.

  “Okay. We suspected,” she said. “Have you heard from V’kyrri?”

  “Emergency hail active,” he replied. “Awaiting a response.”

  “Three Hells! Your O2 generator melted!” Pietre exclaimed from the outer doorway. “What is this yellow stuff? Sindrivik, what have you been doing?”

  “Is this blood at the outer door?” Raj called. “This is blood. What the . . .”

  The com panel trilled. Jayleia nearly jumped out of her skin.

  Damen opened the channel.

  “. . . se hobhaille no’whyn,” a male voice said.

  “Queen’s Rhapsody! Code Nwylth-Corem-39. Recall. Recall. Recall. This is the Kawl Fergus,” Damen said. “Major Damen Sindrivik . . .”

  “Sindrivik! You were reported missing!” V’kyrri’s voice broke over the line.

  “Turn around!” Damen demanded. “Now!”

  “Glad to have you back, but we’ve got radioactive debris to check out,” V’kyrri countered.

  “It’s the remains of the attack force that all but destroyed the Kawl Fergus,” Damen countered. “If the Chekydran-ki hadn’t shown up to rescue us, Jayleia and I would have been reduced to free-floating particles. Get out of there!”

  “Chekydran?” V’kyrri barked. “Helm! Reverse course! Get us turned! Pour on the speed.”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  “On our way to your location!” V’kyrri said. “Queen’s Rhapsody , out.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “THE ore scouts were destroyed?” Jayleia frowned, instinct whispering that the data mattered. “Why?”

  Damen glanced over his shoulder at her. “What?”

  “Why were those ships destroyed? The Chekydran-ki didn’t have to burn them down in order to rescue us,” Jayleia said. “Why destroy UMOPG ships and not the Kawl Fergus? What did they know about you that suggested you might be an ally? What was it about those UMOPG ships that warranted a destroy-on-sight order?”

  “We did have the crystal,” he said, frowning. “You think that firefight indicates prior history between UMOPG and the Chekydran?”

  “We know that three Chekydran ships attacked and damaged the Dagger,” she said.

  “Yet rather than destroy the Dagger, the Chekydran made a run for it,” Dr. Idylle finished from behind her.

  Jayleia eased into the cockpit to give the older man space in the doorway.

  “Suggesting they had other orders,” Damen surmised.

  “They attacked Silver City along with a contingent of biomech soldiers,” she said.

  Interest sparked in Dr. Idylle’s face. “Did they?”

  “They abandoned a crippled enemy to strike Silver City. That sounds like a grudge,” Jayleia said. “The only data the Chekydran-ki had on the Kawl Fergus when they rescued rather than destroyed us, was that we weren’t UMOPG. The ship configuration is different and three ore scouts were trying to take us apart.”

  “We did have the crystal in contact with the engine feed,” Damen said. “It was broadcasting and our energy output was similar to the ore scouts’.”

  She considered that. “Then the UMOPG has integrated similar crystals into their weapons and shields?”

  Damen nodded. “It would account for the increased energy output. Which means that unless they’ve found a way to circumvent it, their shi
ps broadcast, too. I’ll transfer my files to the Dagger. We’ll find a way to track it.”

  “What if the Chekydran-ki already have? Is that how they saw through the cloaks the scouts were using?” Jay said.

  “Even if they had, we’re still left with more questions than answers,” Damen said. “Why rescue us? We could have proven to be anyone or anything.”

  “Except they recruited you,” she said, and once again she’d merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The realization hurt. Interesting. What did it mean to want to be part of something so badly that she was willing to be modified by the Chekydran?

  “Your theory regarding the Chekydran and UMOPG may have a basis in fact,” Damen said. “We pulled first contact information on the Chekydran last year. I noticed a pattern. When offered a choice between two or more ships, they prefer to attack UMOPG flagged vessels.”

  “Suggesting an acrimonious history between the Mining Guild and the Chekydran that we know nothing about,” Dr. Idylle said.

  “We have Silver City’s data store,” Damen replied. “With time, the loan of Pietre, and a few tools, I’ll find that history. It might give us something to go on.”

  “Pietre!” Dr. Idylle shouted down the companionway. “You’re with Major Sindrivik.”

  Damen launched himself out of his chair. “We’ll get on data recovery.”

  “I’ll do my job,” Jayleia said, an odd swell of contentment settling into her chest at having Damen and her crewmates working in concert while she observed an unknown species. “Dr. Idylle, if you’ll join me in the medical bay, I have bloodworm samples you and Raj might find interesting.”

  She led the way past the open engine compartments, where Pietre already prowled, staring and muttering at the crystalline structures melded to the engine alloys.

  Raj stood in medical, his handheld out and active, confusion in his black eyes.

  “It’s obvious the crystal is meant to repair your systems,” he said, “but to what purpose? I can’t get a response out of diagnostics.”

  “The energy signature is wrong,” she replied, then scowled. How did she know that? Where had it come from? A surge of displacement washed through her. A hum resonated inside her skull, dumping her out of the pilot’s seat of her own body. The buzz in her head stilled and the sensation vanished. She was once again in control of her body and she knew how to alter the handheld’s signal to bridge the interface gap.

  She cleared her throat to unseat the odd feeling of having another intelligence supplying knowledge to her. “Do you have translation loaded, Raj?”

  He nodded and offered her the handheld.

  She used it to open the sample stasis chamber, then handed the unit back before gathering sampling equipment and loading into her equipment belt. She finally positioned herself in the doorway where she could catch glimpses of Damen as he collected tools.

  “Data chips?” he asked her.

  “Cockpit,” she said. “My com badge?”

  “Same,” he said. He retrieved the bag of data chips and brought her badge.

  He evaded her attempt to take the badge from him.

  “Here,” he murmured, stepping closer than necessary and brushing his fingers inside her tunic as he put her badge in place. “Allow me to assist.”

  Nerve endings lit up all over her body.

  Damen grinned and kissed the tip of her nose before spinning away and tossing the bag of chips at Pietre.

  “Install them in that array.” He pointed a wrench at the backup computer system tucked into the cramped space beneath the deck plates and up against the cockpit bulkhead.

  Jayleia cast a glance at Dr. Idylle and Raj. Both men pointedly examined the containers filled with bloodworms, but she mistrusted the crinkles of humor at the corners of her boss’s eyes.

  “They’re from Chemmoxin,” she said, damning the rough edge in her voice.

  “How long ago did this first pair begin cocooning?” Raj asked.

  Jayleia started. Cocooning? “I had no idea bloodworms were a pupae form of anything. What do they change into?”

  She looked between Dr. Idylle and Raj.

  They gaped back.

  “You were in the field,” Dr. Idylle said. “Did you see an insect form we haven’t classified?”

  “All kinds!” Jayleia exclaimed. A flash of memory stopped her. The kuorl scout had emerged from the nest tree. He’d snatched something from the trunk and stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Beetles!” she gasped. “Itchy, prickly, horrible creatures. They were all over the kuorl trees.”

  “These are the bloodworms that gorged on your blood and dropped of their own volition?” Dr. Idylle asked.

  Jay glanced at the labels and nodded. “Infected blood. Yes. In fact, when they dropped, they were black and stiff. I thought they were dead. The specimens in the other containment dish also gorged and dropped, but the infection appeared to have been drained by the time they fed. When they dropped, they exhibited normal blood coloration and mobility.”

  “So it wasn’t the blood meal that triggered metamorphosis in these specimens,” Raj mused.

  “Their near-death experience?” Jayleia grumbled.

  Dr. Idylle sucked in an audible breath.

  She boggled. “I wasn’t serious!”

  “I am,” her boss replied. “Sheer conjecture, but bear with me. Suppose these creatures require a meal of infected blood in order to undergo metamorphosis?”

  “They all had infected blood,” Jayleia protested. “I manifested symptoms.”

  Raj studied the two creatures busy wrapping themselves in silk. “Maybe it’s a matter of virus load.”

  “Is it a virus?” Jayleia asked, sudden interest spiking through her. How had they found time to research the disease while trying to recover her?

  “Not precisely,” Raj hedged. “It shares characteristics in common with most viral structures we know, but there are anomalies. I reverted to ‘virus’ so I could talk about the damned thing.”

  “Okay,” she said, marshaling her thoughts into order. “If the virus triggers metamorphosis, it would mean that the disease unlocks a chemical cascade inside the bloodworms that initiates chrysalis development. The interesting question would be whether or not the virus itself survives the change and is communicable thereafter.”

  “Did the beetles bite?” Dr. Idylle queried, frowning.

  “No. The kuorls ate them.”

  Excitement lit through her. She saw it reflected in the faces of her colleagues. Had they just closed the life-cycle loop on the necrotic illness plaguing Chemmoxin?

  “Ready!” Pietre’s yell sounded hollow coming from beneath the deck plating at the center of the ship. “System off-line?”

  “Yes,” Damen said from his spot in front of the engines.

  “I think I’d better have a look at a blood sample, Jay,” her cousin said. “We’ll make certain that healing trance completely cleared your system.”

  She watched Damen taking apart his handheld as Raj applied the leech to her arm. The device beeped.

  “Dr. Faraheed, help me secure these specimens,” Dr. Idylle said, an avid light in his blue eyes. “We have work to do.”

  Raj nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Her boss paused in the doorway to smile at her. “I need a complete report. Speculation included. If we can isolate the endocrine key or its analogue, we might be able to interrupt the bloodworm life cycle . . .”

  “Endocrine keys,” she interrupted, her brain shoving a vision of the hatching Chekydran before her mental eye. “What else triggers metamorphosis?”

  “Light cycles, right?” Raj said.

  “Yes,” she murmured, glancing toward the Sen Ekir’s open door. “Light, which impacts neurotransmitters.”

  “What are you thinking?” Dr. Idylle asked standing very still as if afraid to disrupt her train of thought.

  “We spoke of interrupting the life cycle of bloodworms,” she said.

  “By switching
off the endocrine key, the bloodworms never cocoon, never mature to a reproductive state, and eventually die,” her boss said. His eyes widened and he sucked in a breath. “The Chekydran!”

  She nodded, hesitating to condemn the species as a whole, but a good scientist examined every option, whether she liked them or not. “They undergo metamorphosis.”

  “If we could isolate the trigger, we could end the war!” Raj said.

  “We’d be committing genocide based on the actions of one segment of the population,” Jayleia countered. “And it wouldn’t end the war. Not right away. We have no data on how long the life stages last in this species. We could kill off this population of Chekydran who seem intent on helping us in the war. Could we reverse the trigger?”

  Her cousin frowned. “In what way?”

  “Forcing metamorphosis?” Dr. Idylle essayed. “Supplementing the chemical that triggers cocooning, thereby forcing the Chekydran into hibernation?”

  “What would that accomplish?” Raj asked, shaking his head. “We’d still have a bunch of aggressive, killer Chekydran on the loose once they emerged.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m still synthesizing data here.”

  “Well,” Dr. Idylle said, rubbing his hands together, “we have a theory to investigate and a possible means of protecting Chemmoxin’s colonists. Excellent work.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you . . .” Jay began.

  “We’re science ship non grata,” Raj said. “How are we going to help anyone?”

  “We submit results to every government and media outlet that remembers our work on Ioccal,” Jay replied. “TFC might refuse the information, but the Claugh and the Citizen’s Rights Uprising will use their resources to make the results public.”

  Raj rolled his eyes, the first hint of a smile on his face. “Sensationalism and claims of conspiracies notwithstanding?”

  “We are victims of a conspiracy,” Jay protested as her cousin and her boss carried the sample dishes out of the medi-bay, headed for the labs in cargo.

  “That’s what concerns me,” Dr. Idylle admitted. “Everyone we contact will risk accusations of treason, too.”

  Jayleia stopped short, dismay spilling through her. It hadn’t occurred to her. Of course the CRU would help them; they lived to expose the kinds of accusations Jayleia could make against the TFC government, but at what cost?