Enemy Games Read online

  “No,” he said. “But he won’t be getting up again.”

  “Come on,” she urged. “The Chekydran-hiin are advancing on the nest plain.”

  He rose, turned, touched her cheek, heard the queen’s consort humming, and nodded. “Time to keep your promise to protect the queen.”

  She looked startled.

  He grinned. “I don’t understand how we’re all locked together, you, me, the queen, and her consort. I only know we are.”

  Her smile looked wistful as they climbed the ramp.

  “Sometimes you don’t get to choose your family?” she asked.

  “It chooses you,” he finished for her, smiling in return. “Even when it doesn’t share the same branch of the species divide.”

  It took Damen and Pietre less time to clear the ship by heaving mercenaries out the airlock than it took Jay and Raj to round up a pair of anti-grav units.

  Dr. Idylle ended their argument over who had failed to stow the units properly the last time by ordering Raj to help Pietre load the sleeping formula into wide dispersion bombs as the com panel chimed.

  While Raj was occupied, Jayleia grabbed a couple of stimulant medications from the medi-bay. He’d protest her taking them, but the drugs were no more a danger to her than the forces gathering for an attack. She trotted to the cockpit to bring the atmospherics online.

  The com beeped.

  She tabbed open the channel. “Sen Ekir.”

  “Sen Ekir!” Captain Ari Idylle’s voice rolled across the cockpit, forced good cheer in her voice. “I have an agitated and delusional Ykktyryk mercenary in my brig who swears he and his crew were attacked by a woman falling from the sky. Care to explain?”

  Jayleia’s smile grew. “I’d love to, Dagger, but I’m late for a war. I gather you teleported him out? Good timing. Thanks. I leave you to our esteemed leader, Dr. Idylle. Sir? Your youngest.”

  “Prepare to lift,” Dr. Idylle said, a twinkle in his blue eyes as he looked between Damen and Jay.

  “Negative, sir,” Damen said. “Jayleia and I aren’t going with you. We have an alternate means of transportation. We’re needed on the ground. Don’t worry. Your bombs won’t hurt anyone but their intended targets.”

  Dr. Idylle blinked as Jayleia joined Damen in the doorway. “I’d hope not. It distresses me to consider what kind of web you’d weave in the process of building yourself a cocoon.”

  “I’d worry more about what we’d turn into,” she muttered as they trotted down the ramp.

  Damen’s chuckle sounded pained.

  The queen and the drone waited beside the Kawl Fergus.

  Jayleia tugged out of Damen’s grasp, rushed to the queen, and gingerly traced the scar on the queen’s throat pouch.

  The queen hummed assurance and hooked her claws under Jayleia’s arms.

  The drone did the same to Damen.

  They flew into the center of a maelstrom of Chekydran-ki soldiers, workers, and nursery attendants fighting Chekydran-hiin.

  The drone set Damen on his feet, beside the new queen’s nest chamber.

  Jayleia touched down a moment later.

  The queen stretched out, lifted her head, and began to sing. The drone fanned his wings. A chur arose, resonating across the battlefield.

  Damen swayed, buffeted by the sleeping song. The queen and her consort were ordering their Chekydran-hiin children into metamorphosis.

  Jayleia closed with him and offered him a wry smile. “I love you.”

  His blood beat loud in his ears, suffusing him with heat.

  “You knew I was planning a bit of revenge, didn’t you?” he teased. “For not telling me everything.”

  Jayleia stiffened, but he sensed the thrill rippling along her nerves. “Revenge? Centered on a pair of neural cuffs?”

  “How did you guess?”

  She scowled like someone trying not to smile. “How much blood do you require to sate your thirst for vengeance?”

  A rush of electricity shot through his veins. “It isn’t blood I crave and I will never have my fill of you.”

  Her heart swelling at the promise in his tone, she prodded, “Still not safe from you?”

  “Never.”

  “Good.”

  She turned and sprinted to intercept a Chekydran-hiin bearing down on the queen and her consort.

  Damen dropped to one knee, shouldered the mercenary rifle he’d brought, and began picking off targets. He wouldn’t shoot to kill, only to disable. If their plan worked, there’d be no need to destroy the Chekydran-hiin.

  Jayleia ran into the midst of battle with the drone and queen sharing her brain. She knew where to strike, and how hard, in order to disable her opponents. That was the goal; disable the Chekydran young until the Sen Ekir could arrive and force them into metamorphosis.

  She had no desire to kill more of the queen’s children than she had to.

  From scout reports, Jayleia gathered some of the young had already succumbed to the queen’s song, Chekydran-hiin who’d never left the planet, who were conditioned to their parents’ voices. It wasn’t enough, but at least a few of the innocent ones were safe.

  The rumble of approaching atmospherics heartened her as she did a handspring from a soldier’s back to plant her boot right between a Chekydran-hiin’s eye rows. The creature collapsed.

  Two more took its place, the pitch of their hum hitching up a notch, their attacks frenzied.

  “Damn,” she muttered.

  “Damen?” she hollered. “Something’s changed! I can’t hold them!”

  “The engines!” he yelled. “They’re interfering with the song.”

  She grimaced. They needed the Sen Ekir. If there was the remotest chance that her crazy plan might work, they had to take it. She’d sworn to protect the queens and she would. But weariness and pain were her additional enemies now.

  Nearby, a bomb detonated in midair.

  She turned to look and frowned. Too far away to assess results.

  With stress-heightened senses, Jayleia heard a Chekydran-hiin rush her from behind.

  Jay threw her body left. Flinging her feet over her head, she flipped a half a meter away, touching down on the balls of her feet and one hand, knees folding to absorb impact.

  The Chekydran missed. It sounded heavy and slow.

  Jay rolled, dodging the creature’s kick. She fetched up against the remnants of the queen’s mound and had to use it to boost herself to her feet.

  Muscles aching, her body weary, and her thinking increasingly muddled, Jayleia caught sight of Damen. Pride swelled in her breast. And love. She loved him. That was enough. Regardless of whether she lived or died.

  She still had promises to keep.

  One, she desperately wanted to keep: to live for him.

  The Chekydran-hiin closed, and swung one tentacle right after the other.

  One caught her chin. Jay saw stars. The other tentacle impacted her chest and swept her over the edge into the queen’s empty cocoon. When she hit bottom, it knocked the breath from her.

  Gasping, she crawled for the opening.

  A tentacle grabbed her around the waist and flung her out of the hole, and into the dirt. A rib cracked and she found herself blinking at the striped cloud layer.

  The chortling, burbling Chekydran-hiin closed for the kill.

  A huge matte black chunk of spaceship hull, bristling with guns and communications arrays blocked out the clouds.

  A dot fell from the ship, coming directly for her.

  She wondered what it was. Rain? The first Chekydran snow?

  A burst of alarm rolled Jay away. The broken ribs shifted. Pain exploded through her torso.

  A boom sounded above her.

  Her adversary slashed with one leg and laid open Jayleia’s arm.

  A concussion wave and a spray of odorless liquid pelted her.

  Hurt fired up her arm. Training gathered Jayleia in its hands. She mouthed the pain suppression chant in a singsong that followed the queen’s melody
.

  A hum filled her head.

  Damen.

  The drone.

  The infant queen, singing from her cradle.

  Bleeding badly from the cut that had rendered her left arm useless, Jayleia smiled and joined in.

  Her pulse steadied, strengthened. Pain receded and energy seeped into her limbs.

  Her tormentor screamed in triumph.

  Instinct brought Jay’s hands up.

  A razor-sharp claw struck, aiming for her face. She caught it.

  It sliced deep into her left hand, ripping a cry of anguish from her abused throat. Blood poured down her arm, but she had the creature’s leg. Embedded in the bone of her left thumb.

  She wrenched the thing free with her right hand and twisted.

  The Chekydran-hiin coughed a ragged protest, fell to its side, and convulsed.

  Jayleia frowned.

  Another convulsion wracked the insectoid body thrashing in the wyrl-web.

  Web.

  That was it.

  The Chekydran was succumbing to metamorphosis.

  She smiled as belated recognition told her she hadn’t recognized it as a ship blocking the clouds from view because it hadn’t been the Sen Ekir dropping the dispersion bomb right on top of her.

  It had been the Dagger.

  Ari had come through.

  As if from far away, panic and horror murmured through the space inside her mind.

  Damen.

  The queens.

  The drone.

  A wounded nursery attendant limped into Jay’s blurring line of sight and shrilled in alarm.

  “Come on,” she wanted to say, but couldn’t. “I’m not that bad off.”

  Damen fell to his knees beside her, his lips lined white with terror. Sighing, Jayleia closed her eyes, hummed, and welcomed the Swovjiti Healing Trance.

  CHAPTER 42

  JAYLEIA came awake, humming, knowing that Damen, the queen, and her consort hadn’t left her nest chamber since the nursery attendants had packed her in healing gel and wyrl-web. She fell silent. Awareness returned, along with memory. War. Blood. Death.

  The light increased. She could guess Damen had sensed her waking and was clearing the web from the top of her shell. She sighed, ridiculously afraid to open her eyes to see the terrible damage that had been done to her body.

  A shard of fright stabbed into her system. Her pulse rate rose and she gasped for a breath.

  Stop, she instructed.

  She’d lived through this before. Besides. What sense did it make from a scientific perspective to allow panic to take over her body chemistry when overwhelming evidence indicated she’d been healed so thoroughly she’d hardly bear scars?

  Her heart rate slowed. Good. She recalled one of the major tenets of her Temple training. What could be survived could be endured.

  She had promises left to keep.

  Opening her eyes, she stirred.

  The web released her.

  “Open it,” she said aloud.

  His exultation reached her as he broke the shell and wrenched pieces out of the way.

  Her blood quickened and she couldn’t keep the grin from her face.

  Damen peered in, wearing a matching smile, and drew a deep breath as if by scenting her he assured himself of her well-being. He grabbed her outstretched hands and pulled her to the surface.

  Her mate gathered her into his arms, sank until they were both seated on the ground, and tucked her head beneath his chin.

  “I heard what you said to your father about choice,” he murmured against her ear.

  A shiver of awareness went through her.

  “You’re my mate. I can’t change that. But I won’t have you coerced,” he said, “or manipulated.”

  Jayleia shook her head, fear spiking through her.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve complained about choice because all my life, I’ve never earned anything. I’m a xenobiologist whose only claim to a coveted spot on the best science ship in the known systems is that I survived a plague. That was an accident of genetics. I didn’t earn my place. My mother was the high priestess of the Temple; they had to train me. You had my blood forced on you. I can’t even earn your love.”

  He pulled away.

  Missing the warmth and security of his arms around her, she forced herself to meet his gaze regardless of what she might see there.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he finally admitted, his voice mute and hurt. “I love your curiosity and your ability to ask questions about the most mundane things.

  “I love your ability to rush headlong into danger to protect the young of any species. You deserve my admiration, my respect, and my love, and not because you gave me your blood.”

  In the nest they rested against, the young occupant trilled.

  The sound resolved in her head. “Parent.”

  Jay sucked in a sharp breath. One of her genetic daughters.

  “Had you intended to declare your daughter queen?” Damen asked, his voice lazy.

  “What?” she breathed. It hit her. She’d been so distraught over the injuries Damen and the old queen had sustained, she hadn’t paid attention. The new queen, the one she’d chosen, was her genetic daughter.

  The young queen hummed in greeting, and acknowledgment, then her hum dwindled as she sank back into sleep.

  “It’ll take a year or more for her to mature in there. Do you feel anything for her?” he asked. “She’s got a piece of you in her makeup.”

  She stirred the confused tangle of emotions running through her. “As for feeling, I don’t know, parental? Is it telling that I think she’s going to be beautiful?”

  “So do I,” he confided, his gray eyes lighting. When he smiled, both sides of his face moved.

  She’d lifted a hand to trace the scar before she’d realized. She paused.

  He wrapped her hand in his and brought her fingers to his lips. “Raj did surgery. He finished just before the mercenaries arrived.”

  “You were under sedation when they took the ship,” she surmised.

  He nodded, suppressed laughter rippling in his voice when he said, “Dr. Idylle, Raj, and Pietre managed to arm themselves with tranquilizer injections. They took out more than half of the mercenaries before Eudal put two and two together.”

  “Where are my inestimable crewmates?”

  “With the Chekydran,” he said. “Doing research. Monitoring the progression of the Chekydran-hiin while they’re cocooned.”

  She shuddered.

  Damen tugged her back into his arms.

  She settled her back against his chest and closed her eyes as he smoothed her hair.

  “There are three UMOPG ships . . .” she began.

  “Two,” he corrected.

  She stiffened. “There were three. I’d intended to hand one to Admiral Seaghdh and one to my father and the Citizen’s Rights Uprising. The third one I’d intended to use in defense of this planet. Damn it. Someone escaped. I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted revenge.”

  “For V’kyrri.”

  “And for you.”

  He sighed. “How can you believe you haven’t earned my love? But damn it, I don’t want love to be conditional or to have to be earned. Am I not allowed to simply love you? I think there comes a time in every life when you have to look inside yourself and become more than you’ve been up to that point.

  “You pull together bits and pieces of information from wildly disparate sources and combine them in ways that boggle my mind.”

  She frowned, listening to the words rumbling through his chest. “I have to pull all the bits and pieces of me together now?”

  “Would it be so bad to claim all of you? To be whole?”

  “You make it sound so easy,” she said, “and you haven’t even let me up to face my family and debriefing.”

  He chuckled. “The queens threw Ari and your father off planet so you could heal.”
<
br />   Jay sucked in a sharp breath and choked on a laugh.

  “They wanted you in the Dagger’s medi-bay,” he said. “As much to have you in a healing system they trusted as to have immediate debriefing access. You’ll be called on to fill in a few holes in the narrative, but between my debriefing and input from the queen’s consort, we managed a chillingly clear picture. Your parents are offering to take you and the entire crew of the Sen Ekir into the CRU network.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she blurted, “I have an opportunity here, to make a difference. To . . .”

  “You committed to help the Chekydran?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “I’m glad I could live down everyone’s worst expectations of me.”

  Damen’s chuckle vibrated through her bones. “Not mine.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “When you have a career and duty? To the family we got out of Silver City? To your Claugh family?”

  “You left two out,” he noted, resting his cheek against her hair. “I’m a part of the Chekydran, now, like you are. I also have a standing invitation to join the crew of the Sen Ekir.”

  “I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to families,” he said, his voice breaking. “Yet none of them will be home to me unless you’re beside me.”

  Loss ripped her breath from her chest. “One year,” she choked, “maybe two. I’ll find you wherever . . .”

  “Her Majesty, by which I mean Eilod, has requested that I establish and command a Claugh outpost on this world.”

  Hope slammed her heart into rhythm again. Her eyes burned.

  “Our primary aim is establishing diplomatic ties between the Chekydran-ki and the Claugh nib Dovvyth, but the scientific mission runs a close second. Offers have been extended to the entire crew of the Sen Ekir, you included, I believe. If you decide to stay, I’ll be right here beside you,” he promised.

  “Threatening to lock me in neural cuffs?” she finished for him, smiling.

  He growled deep in his throat and tightened his arms around her. “That hasn’t stopped you so far. And there are advantages to being properly motivated.”

  Jayleia laughed as heat flooded her body. “Tahem said, ‘Don’t let the past define what you could become.’ I don’t want to become anything that doesn’t include you.”