Assassin's Hunger (23 page)

A shipkiller.

And it was on course for the blind canyon where the
Asphodel
was hidden.

Chapter 17

Jorr was back on babysitting duty and was none too pleased about it, though neither were the twins, for that matter.

“She left without telling us?” Alolis was asking.

The girls sat at a banquette in the mess hall, getting a last meal before the inevitable lockdown in their suite while the
Asphodel
made the risky run off Khamaseen back to the relative safety of the sheerways.

Not that they were safe there either. And this might really be their last meal.

Eril watched them while he prepped the galley for a rough passage.

“Bené only paid her for while we’re planet-bound.” Torash pushed a mug of tea back and forth between her hands. “We’re leaving, so of course she left.”

“But without saying goodbye?” Alolis reiterated.

From his slouching seat at the next table over, Jorr grunted. “Sometimes better not to say unnecessary things.”

The man’s insight surprised Eril, maybe the girls too, since they both turned to look at him.

The use of the phase tuner on Shaxi had prompted a rare message from the underwriters. The encoded burst had been short. Very short.

They’d asked:
When?

They wouldn’t expect an answer. They knew he had to be cautious, and even encoded messages could be intercepted. This was just their way of reminding him.

As if he could forget.

He’d let Shaxi go to her probable death, and he didn’t even have the completion of his own mission to show for it.

“I just thought Shaxi liked us,” Alolis said with a sigh.

Torash shoved the mug aside. “So much for those perception exercises Bené keeps running on us.”

He liked them too: pretty, carefree Lis and moody, sarcastic Tory. Although he couldn’t let that stop him, not when there was too much at stake.

But what was the point of preserving the freedom of the sheerways if he was forced to hijack one woman’s mind and body to kill two others?

Was that a universe worth preserving, regardless of Moirai’s conspiracy?

Disgust as his own hesitation made even the gentle perfume of the tea sicken him, and he slammed the last of the galley cabinets closed.

All three of the others turned to look at him.

He couldn’t stay there another moment. “Put your mug in the sink,” he told Torash. “I’ll get it later.”

Without waiting for an answer, he strode for the doorway.

“I think she didn’t say goodbye to him either,” Alolis murmured.

In the corridor, he paused, the uncertainty swamping him. Shaxi had been on the ship mere days and there was no place he could go that didn’t remind him of her somehow: med bay where they’d kissed, the shower and her quarters where they’d done much more, cargo bay where they’d worked, the galley with its pixberries. Even his own bunk held dreams of her.

How had she—in days—countermanded a lifetime of dedication to his cause? Extremists had destroyed his past and made him the ideal, committed recruit for the underwriters, who were themselves dedicated to keeping the sheerways flowing.

If he let the girls go, he might as well let the extremists win, proving his parents and planet had died for nothing. The
Asphodel
couldn’t run forever and the captain, for all his sly maneuverings, couldn’t fight the resources arrayed against him. Even the underwriters, who had considered merely disappearing the twins, had acknowledged they couldn’t keep them secret, that the only way to truly end the threat was to end the girls. If they lived, they would be taken, eventually, and the fate of the universe would fall into the hands of the anonymous Moirai who cared for nothing but its own coveting.

The sheerways would pay for his wavering, and he didn’t think he would survive that guilt. Assuming the underwriters didn’t take him out if he didn’t answer their query in the only way they seemed to think possible.

Which made them seem every bit as extreme as the forces they allegedly opposed.

All the tasks he’d performed for them over the years bit at his conscience, each tooth sharper than the last. And still he stood unmoving, caught in the empty corridor.

He didn’t even have the conviction of an encoded cyborg, who wanted nothing more than control over her own destiny.

He wondered where she was. She must have made it to Rampakh, but the storm would have circled over the port by now, which was why the
Asphodel
needed to take off, even though Fariz and Kala hadn’t finished their final inspections and warned against the cold departure.

If he didn’t kill the twins now, before they left Khamaseen, he would have to complete the mission while trapped with them on the
Asphodel
. The blame for their demise would fall squarely—and rightly—on him. And then the captain, or more likely, Benedetta, would kill him.

At least it would be over.

He took the phase tuner from his pocket. After it had broken through the last of Shaxi’s encryption and he’d placed his commands, he’d left the link open.

In case he’d needed to change anything, he’d told himself.

But mostly to keep her near him, in just this small, terrible way.

He looked at it one last time, then swept his thumb across the pathway, blanking it. Ending the link.

Setting her free.

Whatever she became out there in the desert storm, she was not his. And never had been.

Stating the truth brought him no sense of release. She might be facing almost certain doom in the shriving, but he was the one who was too far gone.

What she lacked in real flesh and bone, she made up for with heart, while he had squandered his inherited humanity on an ever-expanding, guilt-induced need for revenge. The chill of hatred—for the underwriters and their faceless enemy, but mostly for himself—settled into his skin, deeper than any sandstorm could scour.

He stared blindly at the empty screen, his body drained of purpose and cold as death. As if that link to her had been all that animated him, the only pulse that pushed the blood through his veins.

He dropped the tuner to the deck and lifted his boot.

A red blip zinged across the screen.

His boot came down hard, straddling the device. He stared at the blip, his heartbeat racing.

Was it her? Had she somehow found and re-established the link?

But the encrypted source the tuner had locked on was too close and even more complicated than the Hermitaj coding.

And followed the same algorithms as the ones Shaxi had deciphered after the attack at the hangar in Levare.

Eril whirled to the comm and slapped his hand over the panel. “Captain!”

“Morav, I told you—”

“Incoming ship. Moirai signature. We need to get out of this canyon, now!”

For a moment, the command hung in the air.

Despairing, Eril thought the captain would question who he was to give orders.

The roar of thrusters firing in full launch mode echoed through the corridors, amplified by the rock walls. The ship lurched. All power was being diverted to the engines, Eril knew, with none left for stabilizing.

The mess hall door slid open and Jorr appeared, hazer drawn. “What in the hells?”

“Get the girls to their suite,” Eril snapped. “Stay with them, and lock it down. Don’t open to anyone except the captain or their sister. No one. Do you hear?”

Jorr sputtered. “Since when do you—?”

Torash crowded his elbow, her black brows drawn together. “Are we under attack? Again?”

“Yes.” Eril pulled out the nanotech knife from his belt. At the same time, he yanked Jorr out of the doorway and shoved him down the hall. “Go!”

He faced Torash with the knife.

In the chaos, this was his moment. He could complete his mission.

He flipped the knife in his hand and slapped the grip into her slender palm. “If the
Asphodel
goes down, fight. Fight how Shaxi showed you, dirty and no qualms. Fight with everything you have.”

Torash nodded, the first signs of real fear flickering in her eyes.

Behind her, Alolis touched her shoulder. “We’ll fight.” She looked him in the eyes, her gaze as clear as the crystal that marked her. “You know, don’t you? What we are?”

“I know. Now get out of here.” He watched just long enough to see them rush up behind Jorr and then the trio disappeared into steerage.

He turned the other direction and raced for the bridge.

A vicious clang reverberated through the bulkhead, and the
Asphodel
stumbled again in the air.

That was not underpowered stabilizers. Something had hit them.

The door to the bridge slid open at his touch.

“—Using plasma cutters on the rim to drop rocks on us,” the captain was snarling into the comm. “Like shooting fish in a desert, so get us up, Evessa.”

“Yes, sir, but the ions in the storm—”

“Won’t matter if they bury us. Ascend in a zigzag. They won’t be able to get a quick lock on us through the ion interference, so hopefully we can avoid the bumps they send down.” His big hand splayed across the comm. “Fariz, give me quarter power to forward hazers.” He didn’t even glance up when the door opened.

But Benedetta, who’d been hunched over a screen beside her lover, looked at Eril. Her emerald eyes were dark from tension. “What do you have, auxo?”

“A gift.” He held out the phase tuner. “You’re still running the decryption Shaxi started in Levare?” When Benedetta inclined her head toward her screen, showing the rapidly cycling algorithms, he angled the tuner toward the panel interface. “This should speed things up and let us codejack the Moirai ship.”

Benedetta blocked him. “What is it? I’ve never seen a device like that.”

“You won’t again. It’s contraband.”

“Why would a supply clerk have something like that?”

“To use against you.” He held himself steady against the awkward tilting of the ship as the pilot maneuvered them upward, avoiding the falling rocks. Behind her, he sensed the captain whirling with his hazer pistol out, but he never looked away from her, keeping his gaze locked on the universe’s only keyed and fully empowered l’auralya, letting her look into him, using her empathic judgment to weigh his words.

“Don’t do it,” the captain warned.

Eril knew the command wasn’t meant for him, but Benedetta didn’t listen to it either. She clamped her hand over his bare wrist and stared him down as if she could slice out pieces of his soul and hold them up to the light, to see through him.

If he’d had a soul.

Her fingers glimmered silver with the qva’avaq, and the fine hairs across his body rippled as though a hand had passed over his bare skin.

“Benedetta,” the captain snapped.

“I know what you want,” she said, her voice barely a breath.

Eril tensed, as if steeling himself for the lethal burn of hazer fire would make it hurt less.

But she was holding a flattened palm toward Deynah, fending him off, and she stepped out of the way of the screen where she’d been working.

Eril let out a shuddering breath and clamped the tuner to the comm panel.

Instantly, the algorithms, already scrolling by at illegible speeds, turned into a pale blue blur. He surreptitiously rubbed his wrist.

“The sting fades,” Benedetta said, not looking at him but the screen. “I haven’t quite mastered the technique.”

“Of stealing souls?” No wonder the underwriters were willing to sacrifice the twins; this was too much power of a different kind.

She sidelonged at glance at him, her lips quirked. “I already have the only soul I want.”

The captain grunted, although he hadn’t holstered his weapon. “You always know what to say so I don’t yell at you.”

Her smile widened. “That skill I have mastered. Or should I say mistressed?”

The
Asphodel
clanged and listed again, and they all grasped the nearest steady object.

Benedetta had chosen the captain to brace herself. “We can’t fire at them without bringing rocks down on our own heads.”

The captain scowled at Eril. “You said you were sent to work against us. Are you with Moirai?”

“No,” Eril said, at the same time Benedetta echoed him. She pursed her lips and waved her hand at him to continue. “If you compare the Moirai authorization, I think you’ll find this is the same force you’ve been avoiding since you destroyed the last crystal mine and fled Qv’arratz.”

The captain stiffened, his fingers tightening on the hazer, but Benedetta just shook her head. “Lis messaged me that you knew, but I wasn’t sure she’d read you correctly. She is getting stronger than I thought.”

“Moirai is more convinced of their power than you are,” he told her. “It’ll stop at nothing to have them.”