Atrophy (28 page)

Rian nodded. “Put it up on screen here.”

Lianna tapped her commpad and the list was replaced with Niels’s face.

“Captain Sherron, your continued refusal to hand over my cargo is proving an inconvenience. Furthermore, I’ve had a report that some information was stolen from a research space station I have set up in the Maristian system, studying the effects of a black hole on surrounding space.”

“Is that his cover story? Who’s going to believe that?” Rian muttered.

“I’m sure the IPC will be fascinated to hear about your activities,” the recording of Niels continued. “In the meantime, I’ve made a little home movie you might find interesting. Once you’ve watched it, I’ll be expecting a call from you.” Niels’s smile looked slimy and not quite human, making Tannin feel unsettled, the sensation like insects skittering down his spine.

Niels’s image faded and then another appeared, the footage grainy and bad quality, but it was some sort of public place with lots of people moving around. A dull kind of apprehensive throbbing started in the bottom of Tannin’s stomach.

The picture sharpened and zoomed in on a figure, one that appeared achingly familiar. In the footage, she turned as a man approached her and he got a glimpse of Zahli’s features before she was led out of the shot. Whether by force or willingly, he couldn’t tell. The recording showed Zahli at the Tetsu spaceport the day they’d left her to catch a public transfer to Dalphin.

The picture cut off and the next one came through crystal clear. The background looked to be some sort of lab. Beside him, Rian slouched back against the desk as if he’d been struck. Zahli sat tied to a chair, her T-shirt gone, wires crisscrossing her body, while small rivulets of blood dripped from little cuts and scrapes over every plane of her skin.

His heart slammed to a halt and he took two steps closer to the screen, as if that could somehow stop what he was seeing. She looked to be unconscious, but then a man in a white lab coat walked into the scene and jolted her awake.

Tears ran down her bruised face and a leather strap covered her mouth. She started shaking her head, her cries muffled by the gag. As the man bent over her, Tannin had to look away, though on some level he felt like he was betraying her. Her cries intensified to screams until he couldn’t
not
look anymore and he glanced back up in time to see her go rigid, making a deep gurgling noise before she fell limp and silent.

And somehow he knew. She wasn’t just unconscious. She was dead.

His eyes burned until the picture blurred, as the man in the white coat unhooked the wires and shoved Zahli’s lifeless form onto the floor.

Niels’s smug face appeared again. “I’m going to do you a courtesy, Captain Sherron, and have your sister’s body sent to your home on Dalphin. No more games. You know what I want in return. I expect you’ll want to discuss this latest development—”

With a roar, Rian picked up a chair and flung it at the screen, cutting off the transmission and shattering the crystal display into a million shards.

Tannin’s whole body had gone numb; he couldn’t feel anything. But as he looked over at where Rian stood with a hand across his face, his expression shocked and blank, a red haze of devastating rage descended on him. Because this was Rian’s fault.

With a cry of half fury, half utter anguish, he leaped at Rian, taking him to the floor. He pounded his fists downward over and over, wanting to make him pay, wanting the bastard to hurt like he was hurting. Be broken and battered, like nothing would ever be right again. Rian smashed a fist into the side of his face, but Tannin didn’t feel it. His resentment and rage deadened him to everything.

And then there were hands pulling him up and off, someone yelling his name. Callan shoved him backward and he stumbled, ramming against the bulkhead on the other side of the table.

“What the hell is going on?” Callan demanded, holding a hand out toward him, as if to stop another attack.

His question resurrected the images from the transmission and grief tearing up his insides swamped the rage. He dropped to a crouch, chest heaving from the exertion and the fact he couldn’t quite draw in a full breath. His chest ached until he wanted to reach in and yank out his own heart so he couldn’t feel anything anymore.

Ah, Christ
. Zahli.

She was gone—the woman he loved, the
only
person in this entire godforsaken universe he loved—was gone and no matter how he beat the hell out of Rian, it wouldn’t change what’d already happened, what had been happening while he’d been here, safe on the
Imojenna
and decoding Rian’s goddamn information.

The burning in his eyes intensified until hot moisture tracked down his cheeks. He wiped a hand over his face and stood, because he couldn’t be in the same room as Rian any longer.

“This is your fault. Zahli is dead because of you.” His voice came out rough and uneven, catching over the word
dead
.

Rian hadn’t moved from the floor, he just lay there, blood welling out of a cut above his eyebrow as he stared at the ceiling. He didn’t react and Tannin couldn’t say whether the man had even heard his accusation.

He turned and walked with a stiff gait, past where Lianna stood crying silently by the doorway.

He didn’t bother turning on the lights in his cabin as he entered, but went straight through to the privy, ripping his clothes off with jerky movements. He tabbed the light above the basin on low and turned up the spray in the shower as hard as it would go, then ducked underneath it and sank to the bottom of the stall.

If he was going to lay blame at Rian’s feet, then ultimately he had to take some himself. He should have argued harder against her leaving, should have insisted they take her to Dalphin themselves, or should have gone with her, no matter the risk to himself, instead of staying to help Rian.

Because they’d blithely let her walk off the ship into a public spaceport, she was dead. Not only killed, but they’d
hurt
her first.

His throat closed over and the aching in his chest kept growing, intensifying until his lungs felt like stone. The tears came faster until he couldn’t swallow without a shuddering sob. He dropped his head, desolation and emptiness adding to the weight inside him, making the next sob wrench him even harder. He gritted his teeth and smashed a fist into the bulkhead, popping one of his knuckles out of place. But the pain helped him get a lid on everything else.

Scrubbing his uninjured hand over his face, he tilted his head into the spray of the stinging hot water to wash away the tears.

Though he wanted to kill Rian, the man had been right about one thing.

The Reidar needed to be wiped out of existence. Every last one of them.

R
ian stared at the shards of crystal covering the floor like sparkling snow. His head pounded from Tannin trying to beat the ever-living crap out of him. Not that he didn’t deserve it. But aside from the throbbing, he felt numb, dead to everything, just like he had in the months following his escape from the Reidar.

Rian dragged himself from the floor and staggered to the compartment where he’d stowed a shiny, new,
full
bottle of Violaine. He took it out and sank to the floor with his back against the bulkhead where his large screen viewer used to be. Yet after he dropped to the decking, he didn’t move to open the Violaine, just sat there holding it between his hands.

Memories battered him, warring and mixing with the images he’d witnessed of Zahli until he couldn’t remember what’d happened years ago and what he’d seen on the screen. The lab was identical to the one he’d been locked up in for months on end. The old, icy sensation of being naked, vulnerable, and helpless descended until he was living Zahli’s death, not just watching it.

Tannin was right. This was his fault. He’d been so consumed with his strategies that he hadn’t considered how the Reidar might retaliate. He should have guessed they’d do something like this, especially after they’d tried to take him out on Tetsu. But he’d arrogantly assumed they’d been trying to kill him then because one, there was an execute-on-sight order out on him, and two, if he was dead, it would have been easier to get on the ship and take Ella.

He’d never considered they might target anyone else. His goddamn stubborn pride and stupidity had gotten Zahli killed.

If he wasn’t already dead inside, the growing list of deaths on his conscience might have already destroyed him.

The door to his quarters slid open and shut, but he didn’t bother to see who’d come in. Half of him hoped Tannin had come back to finish the job and kill him. The guy would probably be doing the universe a favor.

After screwing the top off the Violaine with a single twist, Rian tossed the lid into the middle of his crystal snowfield and tipped his head back, sculling the hard liquor until his throat burned, his eyes watered, and his lungs demanded air. He considered death by drowning in Violaine, if he just kept drinking until he passed out

The scent of exotic moon jasmine reached him, and he lowered the bottle and closed his eyes.
Frecking Christ
. Just what he needed.

Like someone had flipped a switch inside him, he became hyperaware of Miriella. Though he still had his eyes closed, he knew where she was in the room, could hear the soft swish of her clothes as she moved, feel the change in the atmosphere as she came over and crouched down next to him.

“Rian?”

He gritted his teeth, hating the way his name in her voice slid down his spine like mercury.

“Rian, Lianna told me what happened. I came to see if you were all right.”

“What sort of goddamn dumb-shite question is that?” He wanted to be angry at her, he
sounded
angry, yet his insides had been anesthetized. Last time he’d felt like this, time, distance, and the driving need to exterminate the Reidar had helped bring part of him back.

Would the numbness be permanent this time? It would be easier to just
not
feel. But a small scrap, somewhere deep within his soul, fought against it because that’s what the Reidar had wanted him to become. A soulless, inhuman, callous droid. One who would fulfill their bidding without the slightest hesitation.

Had this act, the death of the only family he had left, finally given them what they wanted?

Ella dropped from her crouch to sit beside him on the floor, legs crossed the way he’d seen her meditate. “I don’t think it’s a dumb question at all. Someone you love has died. I think you’re allowed to be about as far from all right as you want.”

“Then why ask? Why did you even come in here? I told you I didn’t want to talk to you again.” He stood, needing to get away from her.

“No, you told me not to ever touch you again. You never said anything about talking.”

He gave a desolate laugh then he sucked down a few more mouthfuls of Violaine and turned to look at her. “Your training is still coming in handy. It always comes down to semantics.”

“The liquor won’t help, you know. It’ll just mean tomorrow you’ll be miserable
and
hung over.”

“I don’t remember asking for any sanctimonious bullshite advice,
princess
. And I won’t be hung over for long tomorrow if I get drunk all over again. Beer is a great breakfast supplement.”

She made a
tsking
sound and stood. “Zahli wouldn’t want you to do that, Rian.”

Just like that, fury came rushing from behind the veil of numbness, proving that once again, the Reidar had failed to kill everything within him. His fist closed hard over the bottle neck and he almost flung it across the room. But then he wouldn’t have been able to drink any more. Instead he took another swig, his hand shaking so much he spilled some on the floor. “Don’t you dare tell me what Zahli would have wanted. You didn’t know her.”

Crossing her arms, she walked closer to him, backing him up against the wall and trapping him between the end of his table and the bulkhead.

“I knew her well enough to know she loved you and wouldn’t want you to drink yourself into oblivion.” Ella snatched the bottle out of his hand and the whole thing iced until it froze solid, despite the fact that liquor shouldn’t freeze. She dropped the bottle to the floor with a clunk, and it rolled under the couch.

“Maybe you were the one who didn’t know her well enough. She left because of you, because you forced it on her. She fell in love with Tannin, and you punished her for it. And how do you think she felt the day Callan brought you back to the ship already dead, with a piece of metal sticking out of your chest? Do you really think she wanted to sit around here and watch you destroy yourself and those around you?”

“Stop! I don’t want to hear it.” The shaking that had started in his hands moved up his arms, into his shoulders and torso until his whole body trembled. He crossed his arms, wrapping them across his chest to contain the shudders, as if he was literally about to fall apart.

She crowded closer. “Why not? Because it’s the truth?”

“Because I already know!” He sucked in a desperate breath, pain lacerating him in a way he thought he’d become immune to. “I already know. She’s dead because of me.”

Ella shook her head, reaching out to touch the beads on his wrist. “No, Rian. She’s dead because of the Reidar. If you don’t start believing that, if you keep wearing these deaths as scars on your heart, they’ll incapacitate you until you can’t function any longer. And then you’ll never be able to do what needs to be done.”

It didn’t matter what she said, because Zahli was still dead and every breath he took hurt more. He felt like a ship entering heavy atmosphere with no shields, burning and quaking, collapsing in on itself. He’d reached breaking point, had started fracturing apart. There was a lost little boy inside him, crying out to be held and comforted, wanting the woman in front of him to touch him and make him feel electrified and alive, until the pain became a distant memory.

With a ruthlessness born out of necessity, out of surviving things no person should ever have to live through, he shoved that weak part of himself back into the dark recesses of his consciousness. Once gone, the shaking stopped and his resolve returned, burning brighter than ever.