Shades of Dark (44 page)

Walker Colonies,
Halemon’s memory told me.

And that’s how she knew Burke. Morlo had gotten her the job. They’d been lovers years before. As for what Halemon felt for him now, I sensed only amusement.

“Ship’s within range of a hail,” Sully said. “And I have a wonderfully horrible link for you to use.”

I nodded, feeling Del’s affirmative as an encouraging nudge. Then the presence of Brigitta Halemon came more strongly into my mind, my body responding as if I had her shorter, stockier frame. I sat as she would, legs crossed at my ankles, and leaned against Tarl on my left.

Not Tarl. Del. But it had to be Tarl. We—

Not Tarl. Del.

I pushed the problem away. Hayden Burke’s ship was within hailing range. I keyed my comm-link active. “Three Seven Eleven at Hub One. Repeat. Three Seven Eleven at Hub One.”

“Three Seven, Lucky Seven confirms,” Zeno answered.

God, he had a sexy voice. One of these days I was going to find out what he looked like. “Lucky Seven, Three Seven in progress. We have a full house. Repeat. Full house.”

“Three Seven, acknowledge full house. Advise your transmission is breaking up.”

Like that’s a surprise out here? “Lucky Seven, view’s great but the weather sucks.”

A laugh sounded over the speakers. “Three Seven, that came through clearly. Truth spoken. Full house it is. Expect dock in thirty.”

I checked Lucky Seven’s position on my screens while Tarl’s hand massaged the back of my neck. One of the perks of command…and a damned hot navigator. I leaned back into his fingers for a moment. We had thirty minutes…

But no, Burke would expect me at his tubeway. Tarl’s seductive, industrious fingers would have to wait. Besides, we’d just—

I bolted upright in my seat, heart pounding, bile rising in my throat. Del’s fingers jerked away from my neck. I twisted abruptly to face him, my Grizni prickling against my wrist. Tarl’s relationship with Halemon had triggered a memory to surface. A recent one. One I knew I was never to have seen.

I stared at Del. My voice was low and harsh. “You goddamned—”

“Three Seven, this is Lucky Seven. Still waiting for dock confirm. Repeat, waiting for dock confirm.”

The man’s voice—Zeno’s voice—sounded annoyed. I hadn’t answered. Brigitta needed to say…I needed to say…My head spun for a second as me and not me fought for control. It wasn’t me, Chaz. It was Brigitta. Del had—

“Three Seven, do you copy?”

Shit. Brigitta. The memory, the intense sensations flooded me. Heat, pleasure, slick and hard. We—

“Three Seven, do you copy?”

“Chaz?” A silver-haired man at helm looked at me, frowning. I didn’t know who he was. Not old enough for his hair to be that color. His face…I knew the face from somewhere. So he was part of my crew?

Chasidah?

Whose voice was
that
in my head?

“Three Seven, this is Lucky Seven—”

Shit! Zeno and Burke. “Lucky Seven, this is Three Seven. Copy and confirm your dock at tubeway nineteen. Repeat, confirm your dock at nineteen. Confirm back to me. Goddamned interference!”

And goddamned something—
someone
—else. I couldn’t remember.

“Three Seven, this is Lucky Seven. Acknowledged. Nineteen it is. And Mr. Lucky says it might be time for a new comm-pack.”

An upgraded communications package would be very nice. Though I’d never known anything to work consistently out here in the Five-Oh-One.

“Acknowledged
that,
Lucky Seven. See you in thirty.”

“Thirty,” Zeno answered back. “Lucky Seven clear.”

I leaned back in the chair and uncrossed my ankles. Tarl’s hand slid away from my neck again.

“We’ll get set up on the dock. You secure the bridge,” Tarl said.

He left quickly with a tall dark-haired man in a long coat. How odd. What would he be doing on my bridge dressed like that?

“Chaz!”

The silver-haired man stood in front of me, his grip hard on my arms.

Chaz? I was Chaz.

“Philip!” His name came out in a hard gasp. I bent over at the waist, feeling as if I’d been sucker-punched.

“Are you all right?”

I looked up at him but words fled. The sensations were too overwhelming. Too incredibly pleasurable. Too recent.

I was sucking air. Strong hands moved up my arms and took my shoulders.

“Chaz, talk to me!”

“Goddamned pervert. Goddamned fucking bastard!” I closed my eyes and leaned my face against Philip’s shirt and familiar hard chest.

Arms tightened around my shoulders. “What did Regarth do? If he…I swear, I’ll kill him. What did he do to you?”

What he did…

I straightened. Philip’s brows furrowed in anger over narrowed blue eyes.

“Not me,” I told him, my voice still raw. “Halemon. He took her, sexually. Raped her.” If something that pleasurable could be rape. But it was. She’d had no choice. “I don’t think he meant for me to find that memory. But I did. That’s why,” and I made an aimless gesture toward the hatchlock behind me, “he left so quickly with Sully. He knows I know.”

“And Sullivan?”

“Del can block him. He’s been able to from the first time he linked to me.” I wiped my hands over my face. “The whole time I had Halemon’s memories, Sully wasn’t there at all. I didn’t even know Del was in my mind. Del was someone named Tarl to me, to Halemon. The navigator on this ship. Halemon’s lover.”

“Two fully phased
Kyis,
” Philip said, shaking his head. “Once Burke is handled, we have to sit Sullivan down and tell him all this. And if he won’t act, we’re going to have to.”

I stared at the data on my armrest console. Burke’s ship was twenty minutes out from dock. We had to get off this ship, get in position on the depot. “Bridge secure?” I asked Philip.

“Secure,” he answered but he was watching me closely. “Can you handle this?”

“Yeah,” I said, shoving myself out of the captain’s chair. I stuffed the pain, the fears into yet another emotional duro-hard and shut the lock. I dragged on my captain’s-in-command personality. I looked up into the face of my ex-husband, my friend. “Yeah,” I repeated. “I can.”

Philip patted my arm. “Good girl. Let’s go.” He headed for the hatchlock.

I hesitated, my hand on Captain Halemon’s armrest, and bile rose once more as images and sensations flooded my mind. Then I opened the last duro-hard and shoved them inside. This lock I soldered shut. I couldn’t afford to ever open it again.

There had been another presence in Brigitta’s mind, tasting her pleasure, toying with her thoughts. Del hadn’t acted alone.

Chasidah?

I checked the progress of Burke’s ship on my hand-held as I trotted next to Philip through the patches of light and darkness. We headed for the far tubeway. Teeth clenched, muscles tense, I thought I had my emotions under control. Evidently not. Fears leaked in tiny tearlike drops from my duro-hards.
Not now, Sullivan.

His presence swept through me again, my mind and body resonating like the vibrations from the sole peal of a bell. A lost and mournful sound. I knew he knew.

You shouldn’t…I can explain. Please.

Burke’s ship is ten minutes out. Just do your job.

Silence.

We passed the staging area, lights dimmed there. I fought the urge to run down the stairs and see if Halemon was still alive. Or had the
zragkor
been complete? First intense pleasure, then you die.

Another twenty feet and we were under the glow of a working overhead light. A few feet after that, murky darkness but another glow ahead. Then another patch of darkness. And on the edge of that, a dark-haired
Kyi
in a long coat, silvery haze swirling at his feet and limning his face. Only as I stepped out from under the last overhead did I see the lightning flashing across his cheekbones and down the back of his hands. His arms were folded loosely across his chest.

An obsidian gaze watched me approach.
I can’t change what I am, Chasidah.

Neither can I,
I told him honestly.

A taller form appeared behind him. Del, also in full phase. “There is a series of connected storerooms here. The doors you see are illusions we created. We can follow Burke and his people unobtrusively then trap them at the staging area. Force them down the stairs. Gabriel and I will do the rest.”

Yes, I was sure they would. And God help any female crewmembers. But that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t like his plan.

“You’ll still have crew on board,” I said. “Not med-techs, but command staff who can break dock and fire on the depot if they’re alerted to our presence.”

“Not if we have Burke,” Del said.

“And if he eludes us or manages to warn the ship before we get him?” Philip was shaking his head. “Too many variables. We need everything in our favor here. That ship, unsecured, is our greatest threat. It can fire on the depot, as Chaz said. It can also take out the lab ship.”

“Agreed. We split up.” Sully stepped toward me. “Chasidah comes with me.”

“No.” I didn’t want to be alone with him. I almost would rather be alone with Del. It wouldn’t matter what I said, if I hurt him. I couldn’t face hurting Sully. And I knew I was going to have to.

“We take the ship,” Sully continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I can control whoever’s left on board. Chasidah knows the hardware. And a woman’s voice at the tubeway comm-link would be what they expect.”

“They’ll expect to see Halemon on dock. They won’t,” I argued.

“You’ll tell them to meet you at the lower staging area. She’s done that before.”

She had. I knew that. So did Sully, and I didn’t want to dwell on how he had that knowledge. I glanced away. There were several other rational arguments I could make at the moment, but there was no time.

“Guthrie,” Del said and then they were fading into the slashes of light and darkness, leaving me alone with a man I realized I no longer knew. The
Kyi,
the hunger for sensation, the need for power, had claimed him.

All I’d ever wanted was a stellar helm. A decent ship. And an understanding soul who could share a cold ale and a warm bed. Now…

He’d watched them leave and turned back to me. “We have to talk.”

Aloud? This was Gabriel, energy surging under his skin, eyes a thousand shades of dark. Mind-speak was his preferred method.

He dropped his gaze then brought it back to mine as I rested my hand on the grip of my Stinger. “Mind-speak is too intimate. We need some space between us, if you’re to understand what I have to say.”

“Burke’s on his way in. Let it wait.” I needed to let it wait. Months would be good. Dealing with it now would make me feel things I didn’t want to face, would force decisions on me I wasn’t sure I could live through.

He drew in a short breath. “I’m not proud of what happened, Chasidah. Of what I did,” he said, his voice low and rasping. “Sensations, pleasure, are not only what motivates a
Kyi.
It’s how we draw our power. It’s what makes us able to do what we do. Like finding out everything Halemon knew. The intimacy of Del’s contact with Halemon triggered a need in him. And we were linked.” He hesitated, mouth thinned.

I stared at him, aware of the slow intake of my next breath, aware of the warning tingling of the Grizni against my skin as I let that breath out. My mind screamed a dozen angry words at him. My heart, a thousand more.

“I didn’t know that was what he intended to do,” he continued. “When I realized…I couldn’t stop him. Not even if I wanted to. And
that
sickens me. Possibly even more than it sickens you, because I didn’t…want to stop him.” He rasped out the last few words as if saying them choked him. He turned away, out of the glow of the overhead and into the darkness.

I turned too, forcing everything from my mind other than what had to be done now. I checked my hand-held, the data of the approach of Burke’s ship almost reassuring in its bland normalcy. Burke would expect a signal from his captain at the tubeway. I/Brigitta knew that. I couldn’t think about what else she knew.

Do your job, I’d told Sully. I told myself the same thing. But I knew we had crossed a point in our relationship from which there was no turning back.

Five minutes later, a light flashed on the comm-panel on the bulkhead. I opened the link and answered in Halemon’s cadence. “Clear to dock, Lucky Seven. Meetpoint at the staging platform.”

The man Halemon knew as Zeno, but who I knew might be a Delkavran
Ragkir,
acknowledged. “Copy your clear. Platform in ten.”

I could see the ship through the narrow viewports. She was long and sleek like the
Karn
but larger. Her bow dipped, thrusters angling her into position.

Chasidah. Back here. Del knows they’re docking.

I pulled my laser pistol from my holster and stepped into the darkness, guided by Sully’s presence in my mind.

The depot shuddered as docking clamps extended and locked on. There was the groan of the tubeway, a few more thunks and clanks. I had my hand-held out and knew Sully was scanning. I picked up ten life-forms. Sully would know more.