Finders Keepers (33 page)

After a while Thren began to fidget, shifting from foot to foot. Then, a short walk to the viewport, look out, walk back, look down at the screen.

Trilby continued her soft, hypnotic tune.

“Done? Done?”

She shot it the same look she’d bestowed on Rhis when they first met, clearly questioning his intelligence. Thren seemed to catch that, walked back to the viewport.

Finally, it stalked back to its chair at the other end of the table, brought up another screen. She heard the screen beeping and chirping and didn’t know if Thren was busy with ship work or playing intergalactic poker. But it wasn’t, she knew, aware of what she was doing.

Or what she was about to do.

She moved files quickly now, tagged and hid two in a bogus directory. Then she looked for a routine file link, found it, and rode it to the mother ship’s main banks.

Good, better, best!

It took her a few minutes to find the primaries. She had to keep switching back to the star charts, unpacking into the ’Sko nav banks at the slowest possible rate.

Then she had them, but there was something she needed to do first.

“Thren?”

It looked up. “Elli. Ot?”

“Got a real old chart for you. Want to see it?”

The thin face wobbled anxiously.

“No, sit.” She waved one hand as he started to stand. “If I bring it up here, it’ll slow me down. I’ll send it to you. What’s your terminal ID code?”

It took her a few more questions, and screeching translations, to get from Thren what she wanted. Its personal ship link. She keyed it in, tagged it
worm fodder
.

She sent it a chart showing a multitude of hidden jumpgates in and around Lissade. Big money, that. She knew that would keep it drooling for a while.

If ’Sko drooled.

A hissing sound came from its mouth as it stared at the screen. Probably the ’Sko’s way of denoting pleasure.

Always knew the lot of them were full of hot air.

She went back to her screen, pulled up the primaries. And saw at the top of the file something she never thought she’d see again.

Yav chera.

Her hand trembled as she reached out and touched the words on the screen.

Yav chera.

It wasn’t a hallucination.

She glanced quickly at Thren. It was hissing, its yellowed eyes transfixed on the screen.

Her heart pounded. She moved her hands to the keypad and for a moment her fingers fumbled, her skin slick. She wiped one hand down her pants leg, started again.

Yav cheron, Khyrhis-chevo.

A line appeared immediately after it:
Dasjankira. Trilby-chenka.

Her breath was coming in short, rapid gasps. She didn’t believe in specters. Had Rhis keyed something into his programs on board
Shadow’s Quest
to tease her? As a joke? Was this nothing more than an A-I interactive program, unfolding for amusement?

She keyed in a sentence an A-I might not be programmed to respond to. Something Rhis couldn’t have anticipated.
Carina’s here.

Nothing. So it was a program. Her input wasn’t part of its response loop. Her spirits sagged.

Bloody hell. Where?

She stifled a whimper of joy.

Brig. Dallon, Farra too.

Confirmed. I have Uncle Yavo.

Yavo? Alive?

Grumpy as usual.

She wanted to clap her hands, stand up, and cheer.
Where are you?

Coming through your back door in about five minutes. Shall you finish scrambling their primaries, or shall I?

Gods. She had a sudden understanding of what had been going on, though it was beyond comprehension. Somehow, Rhis was alive. And on board and probably crawling around in the maintenance tunnels, looking for a data-access panel. Found a data-access panel. Found her doing the same thing. Duplicate efforts.

She had to trust he was armed. She wasn’t. Let him concentrate then on that aspect. She could do hers.

I’m in the mood to scramble,
she told him.

Good. I’m in the mood to kill.

He was definitely armed. And very pissed off.

She accessed the primaries, her hands shaking, called up the two hidden files, coded them to Thren’s ID. Then she closed the primary and skipped down to the system’s backups, threw in an answering parameter.

Back to the main primary. She scanned for a sequence of numbers Rhis had taught her to look for. They were further apart than she anticipated. She’d have to create bridges.

Bloody hell.

Five minutes, Rhis said. She had five minutes to disable the ’Sko control of the ship. She couldn’t write all those bridges in that time.

But she didn’t have to.
Sproings.
Shadow called them sproings because that’s the sound he said they’d make when they jumped, replicated, and jumped again.

She could create a bridge, sproing it, and let it go on its way.

Damnation! This was almost fun.

Thren’s nasal voice disturbed her. “Good! This is good!” It pointed to its screen.

No, you motherless son of a Pillorian bitch. This is best.

Her screen flickered briefly. Thren’s head jerked up, its eyes wary, cautious.

“Oops,” she said. “Really big chart. Total overlay of the Conclave. Sorry. Maybe I should delete it—”

“Total? Total? One chart? All Conclave?”

“Yeah, but it’s unpacking too fast. It’s going to drain your system resources for a while unless you shut something down.”

“Tell!”

She glanced at the screen. “Closest resource is mechanical. Can you shut down the ship’s lifts for two minutes?”

A screeching translation. Thren barked into the intraship unit. “Two minutes,” it told Trilby. “No more.”

She smiled. Touched a key. Impenetrable blast doors—“airtights”—groaned into operation. And locked down every deck on the ship.

Except for a code only she and Rhis knew.

Good. Better. Best.

29

Rhis was sliding through a maintenance panel on bridge deck when he heard the airtights grind into action. She’d done it. His air sprite was in the primaries, controlling all functions of the ship.

Every deck would be partitioned, sealed. Lifts inoperative. ’Sko crew would be trapped in their sections.

And he could let the air out, a section at a time or whole decks at once. It was his, and Trilby’s, to control. He grabbed Dezi’s hard shoulder. “Come on.” The wide blue doors of the conference room were just ahead.

A noise behind them, a clacking screech. He turned, both rifles at hip level, firing. The ’Sko’s body jerked, fell. Another appeared through a doorway, just opening as his laser fire burned down the corridor. He shot it in the head.

“Move!” he ordered Dezi, and sprinted toward the conference room.

Dezi’s loping steps followed.

Rhis stopped at the side of the blue doorway, rifles raised against his shoulders. “Code in.”

Dezi inserted a metal finger in the wall panel. The doors slid open and Rhis heard two sounds simultaneously.

One was an annoying, clacking screech.

The other was a woman’s voice that was the sweetest he’d ever heard. “Dezi!”

And he knew, from the sounds, exactly where each was.

He stepped in, rifles spitting white streaks of death.

The tall ’Sko was caught halfway out of its seat. Bolts of energy impacted against its chest, its shoulders, its head. Dark blotches exploded over its red uniform. Its face skewed, its green-tinged braid whipped up and, for a moment, seemed to stand straight over its head.

Then its body arched backward and tumbled, crookedly, over the arm of the chair.

Then, and only then, did Rhis permit himself to look at Trilby. She’d dropped into a defensive crouch behind her chair, a protective posture that would make any
Stegzarda
major proud.

Or Imperial Fleet senior captain.

“I am,” he told her as she rose, “a lot better shot than you’re giving me credit for.”

She ran toward him and threw herself against his chest, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck. He let the rifles fall on their straps, closed his own arms around her. He held her tightly and managed to bark out, “Lock the damned door!” to Dezi.

She was sobbing, laughing, kissing him.

His hands framed her face and for a very long moment he stared at her, drinking in every sparkle in her eyes, every soft curve of her lips, every sooty shadow of her lashes. Every tear glistening down her cheeks.

She trembled under his touch.

He whispered her name. “Trilby-
chenka
. You have my heart.”

Then he kissed her, letting passion explode like a star going nova, searing her, branding her with everything he felt. Everything he was.

Everything he wasn’t.

“Khyrhis. Khyrhis.” She was crying, softly murmuring his name into his mouth.

He clasped her against his chest, his fingers threaded through her moonlit hair, and he held her, held her. Held her.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

She wasn’t the only one trembling.

He let out a long, slow breath. “Trilby-
chenka
. We still have work to do.”

She nodded, backed away from him, wiped her hands down her face. But when she looked back up, she was grinning.

He saw the screen at the far end of the table where she’d crouched, pointed to it. “You’ve got access from there?”

She nodded but was already turning away from him, reaching for Dezi. The ’droid took her outstretched hand, pumped it in a hearty handshake. “It’s very good to see you again, Captain Elliot.”

Rhis slid into the seat in front of the screen just as Trilby grabbed Dezi in a hug. Then she was behind him, still sniffling, one hand on his shoulder.

He tapped at the screen. “You excluded the brig. Good. This hangar bay too. Or Uncle Yavo will be most upset.”

“I didn’t know where the
Quest
was.”

“Not to worry. I’ve got it.” He looked over the top of the screen, at the slumped form at the end of the table. “Who’s your friend?”

“Thren something. Or something Thren.”

Thren? His mind played with the name as he shut down enviro, deck by deck. The ’Sko should be feeling extremely woozy right about—

Thren. “Kalthrencadri?”

“Something like that, yes.”

But he knew the answer before she even said it. Should have known. He saw the prayer ball sitting on the table.

“Dakrahl,” he told her. He glanced up, made sure she saw his nod toward the spiked object. “High priest. Unusual on a Niyil ship.”

But then again, knowing the ’Sko, maybe not. He’d puzzle it out later. He looked back at the screen. Engineering, crew quarters, galley were shut down. Life forms flickering out. They must be going crazy on the bridge. Probably trying to cut through the blast doors with their pistols. Fools. The ’Sko built ships almost as solid as the Zafharin.

He absently scratched at the prickly itching on his side. He’d shut down bridge enviro in a minute. But part of him wanted them to know, to watch their ship die. Deck by deck.

“What’s that toy have to do with it?” She pointed at the ball.

“Prayer ball. Official toy, as you say, of a Dakrahl high priest. Helps them commune with,” he waved one hand through the air, “whoever they commune with.”

He looked back at the screen. He’d have a dead ship, save for the brig, the
Quest
’s bay, and this section of the bridge deck, in about three minutes.

“This one’s been communing with the Niyil-Day—”

“Obviously—”

“Niyil-
Day
,” she repeated. “Niyil-Pry cut the deal with Grantforth.”

He wrenched his attention from the dying ’Sko. The Niyil-Day. Bloody hell. Of course. Much of what he’d risked his life to learn when he and his team had infiltrated Szed had centered around the factionalizing of the Niyil and who’d come out on top. This time.

“At least, that’s what Thren told me,” she continued, then outlined the rest, including the kill order on Jagan Grantforth and any male associated with him. A female named Trilby Elliot was the key.

Rhis suddenly saw the full picture. The Niyil-Day, the most ethnocentric of all the factions, would be the least well-equipped to differentiate one Trilby Elliot from any other human female on board.

Kill the males. Herd the females. One of them, sooner or later, would have to be Captain Trilby Elliot, finder of lost Zafharin officers, keeper of long-lost star routes.

“We’re going to have to start taking the ’Sko a lot more seriously when we get back to the Empire,” he told her. “With the Dakrahl siding now with the Niyil, they’re not a fractured, divided force anymore.”

The Dakrahl would press for recovery of the Drifts. The emperor was not going to be happy.

“We
are
going back, this time?”

The screen showed no viable life forms on the bridge. He reached for her hand, squeezed it, then pulled her to her feet. “We’re going home, Trilby-
chenka
. This time, we’re really going home.”

Rhis watched over Dezi’s shoulder as he spiked into a datapanel on the conference-room wall. Images, icons blinked on, underscored by Ycskrite writings. He pointed to two flashing glyphs. “We’ve got two crew, probably officers, still alive. Locked in their offices. But alive.”

Rhis stroked the screen, read their names off to Trilby, standing next to him. “A commander in navigation. And a division chief. Tactical. I can’t shut down enviro in their section without us losing it in here. But that’s okay. They’re not going anywhere, and they’ll make interesting prisoners once we cross the zone.”

“They can’t get through the maintenance tunnels like you did?”

“Not unless they’re three inches wide. When ’Sko blast doors go into lockdown, all maintenance tunnels seal with barred gates. You could slip your hand through, but not much more.”

She leaned against the wall, reached out tentatively, and touched his chest.

Bloody hell. He should’ve changed his flight suit. But there hadn’t been time. And he had other things, more important things, to deal with. Like finding Trilby. Like keeping them all alive.

“You were shot.” Her voice was soft. “More than once. I saw them. I saw you.”

He clasped his hand around hers, brought it to his lips. “I will explain everything. I promise. But later. We need to get on the bridge, get this ship moving. The
Razalka
’s out there somewhere. And Jankova gets nervous when I’m late.”

He keyed in one more sweep of the bridge and, satisfied no one there could put up any resistance, told Dezi to activate enviro again.

Five minutes later, he and Dezi unlocked the wide bridge doors and stood aside for a moment, letting the stale air and smell of death filter out.

He kept Trilby behind him, ordered her to wait in the corridor until he said otherwise. Surprisingly, uncharacteristically, she obeyed.

He definitely should have changed his flight suit. There were questions in her mind now. He just hoped she liked his answers.

Malika hadn’t.

Red-clad bodies were strewn around the bridge in various poses of collapse. He and Dezi moved them to the semicircular room’s shadowed edges. A ’Sko flag and a Niyil one hung from two long beams. He ripped them down, threw them over the two largest piles of bodies.

It would have to do. Though he didn’t know why he was doing it. Trilby Elliot had seen worse. She’d worked for—no, been abused by Herkoid. She’d fought for her life on the grimy back streets of Port Rumor.

She’d watched Khyrhis Tivahr get shot and die.

And that’s why he did it. She’d seen enough. Too much. He could at least spare her some of this.

When he returned for her in the corridor, she was clutching the prayer ball. “Has it revealed all its secrets to you yet?”

“No. But then, I haven’t asked it.”

He guided her onto the bridge and began the sequence to unlock the primaries.

“I threw a replicating weemly into the comm pack,” she told him as the monitors in front of her flickered to life. “It’s keyed to Thren’s ID, but it may activate on its own.”

“A weemly?” He was delighted.

“It would ride on all outgoing messages, link into the receiving comm pack, and replicate again.”

“And?” he prompted.

“The only thing they’d be able to see on their screens would be a copy of my potato–cheese casserole recipe.”

“Everyone has always enjoyed that casserole when I’ve served it,” Dezi said. “Though I don’t think the ’Sko—”

“Will get a chance to taste it,” Rhis finished for him. “Can you disable it?”

She shot him a look that clearly questioned his intelligence. “Of course.”

He returned to the command console, grinning.

More screens flickered to life.

“Intraship’s on,” he told her. “I think Farra and Dallon need to hear from you. And Carina.”

He caught the bright glisten of tears in her eyes. Then she turned, keyed the closest unit. “Dallon? Farra?”

“Captain?” It was Dallon’s voice, sounding distant. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Ship’s secure. Rhis is . . . Rhis is alive. Here. He’s fine. He says Yavo’s alive too. Listen, I’m dropping the force fields. The brig’s blocked off by blast doors. We cut enviro everywhere else. I can’t let you out onto that deck yet. But go down the corridor, to your left. A friend of mine’s in the cell there. Her name’s Carina. She might be ill or injured. I’m not sure.”

“Farra’s going now.” Dallon’s voice sounded stronger, closer. “Tivahr’s alive?”

Rhis flicked intraship on at his station. “That I am. And be sure I’m still the same arrogant, loathsome bastard I always was.”

A large blip suddenly appeared at the edges of long-range scan. Rhis clicked off intraship, got Trilby’s attention with a wave of his hand.

She looked at the scanner and fear flickered across her face. “What’s that?”

He forgot she couldn’t read Ycskrite. “The
Razalka
. She’ll be alongside in an hour.”

Her expression of fear changed to one of relief. Then she grinned, threw a haughty look at him from over her shoulder. “You just don’t listen, do you, Tivahr? I told you before. I never said you were loathsome.”

He remembered. But then, she hadn’t heard his explanations yet.