Shades of Dark (5 page)

“Maybe he wasn’t listening when Dalby said that?” I offered.

“He knows something.” Sully leaned back in his chair, one hand clenched into a fist on the tabletop. For a moment, a barely perceptible pale haze flickered briefly in the air around him, then it was gone. The
Kyi
—the energy fields a
Ragkiril
like Sully manipulated. But he rarely did that in a room easily accessed by crew who didn’t know what he was. I was surprised to see even the flicker of it I did now.

“I probed as best I could without…well, he knows something,” Sully repeated. “He’s lying. And he’s scared.”

He probed as best he could without touching Gregor and without using the
Kyi
. That explained his silence, his concentration.

“What could you get?” I remembered his reading the security guards at Marker three months ago. He’d been able to discern their moods and whether they viewed us as a threat. But he couldn’t read specific thoughts without a direct link, physical touch, or drawing on the
Kyi
. None of which he’d done on the bridge of the
Karn
or I would have seen it.

“He wasn’t surprised by Dalby’s appearance—or, should I say, the Infiltrator’s appearance. He didn’t seem to know Dalby, but she didn’t bother him. That was the first thing I picked up, even before she mentioned Thad.”

“Then he knew the Farosians were following us. He probably supplied them with our ID.”

“Those thoughts weren’t in his mind, so I don’t know. He was concentrating on making sure this ship stayed in range.”

It briefly occurred to me that Sully had gathered a lot more information from Gregor’s mind than I would have thought he could. But maybe Ren—who also had been silent—was helping. And maybe the small confines of the bridge made it easier.

Still, how Sully had obtained Gregor’s thoughts concerned me less than the content of those thoughts. “Why would Gregor support Sheldon Blaine?”

“It might not be so much supporting Blaine as hating Prew and Fleet. And the Admirals’ Council.”

Fleet had long been the means by which the emperor enforced his authority over the worlds and sectors from Aldan through the rim world bordering Dafir, and past that even to the No-Name Sector and Moabar. The Admirals’ Council ran Fleet, and interfaced with Prew and the other governmental ministries. Prew and the Council were actually autonomous but most people saw them as different halves of the same entity. Fleet did the bidding of the emperor; therefore, Fleet was the emperor. Gregor evidently subscribed to the “enemy of my enemy” philosophy.

“And Gregor hates me,” I added.

“I had a few chats with him and thought that was under control.” Sully glanced past me at the door to the bridge as if he could see through the metal plating to the man seated in the pilot’s chair. “Evidently not.”

“That’s how Dalby knew I was on this ship.”

“I felt no sense of recognition from him when Dalby spoke, but there was a very pronounced lack of surprise.”

“If you bring him in here for an interview with Ren, you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”

Sully’s gaze was still on the door panel, and our link was still silent. I wondered if he was trying to probe Gregor, possibly through his connection to Ren.

He shook his head. “I’m not going to involve Ren this time. And I’m not,” he continued, when I started to ask just what he intended to do, “going to confront Gregor right now. He’s responsible, somehow, for that Infiltrator showing up. I want to make sure we’re well out of its range before I take any kind of action. And I’m going to have to have the bridge lock-out program running. If Gregor causes problems, the last thing I want is for him to be in control of my ship.”

He turned toward me and clasped my hand. Our mental link opened, flooding me with warmth, but the line of his mouth was grim. “Come, angel-mine. We have work to do.”

Part of that work was sending a message to Guardian Drogue—a message that had been delayed by the arrival of the Farosian ship. I sat at the desk in our cabin and opened the code files to initiate the bridge lock-out program. The message could have been intercepted by the Farosians. They already knew far too much about Chasidah Bergren.

“I warned Drogue about the Farosians,” Sully said from the console on his side of the desk.

“You think they’ll try pulling Blaine off Moabar again?”

“Given that they mentioned getting you off-planet, yes.”

“They must have learned about that from Gregor. That’s why they wanted you to work with them.”

Sully glanced at me from over the top of his deskscreen, the screen’s glow harsh against the planes of his face. His lean jawline still echoed his father: Winthrop Burke Sullivan, an incredibly wealthy and powerful man when he was alive. But Sully’s dark coloring, his thick hair, and his sensuous mouth were pure Rossetti, his mother’s family. She’d been an elegant beauty. I’d never seen Sully in anything other than a shipsuit or spacer’s leathers, but I could imagine him in a cream-colored watersilk dinner jacket and dark pants, or a tuxedo, looking every inch as elegant. And sexy as hell.

His frown swung upward into a lopsided grin. “I’ll buy one if you’ll take it off me.”

My face heated. “You shouldn’t be peeking!” I chastised, but my mouth curved as I said it. Embarrassed by fantasizing over my own lover. Another form of stress relief.

“I wasn’t peeking. You were sending. Very directly.” He arched one dark eyebrow.

I sighed, bring my emotions back under control. “Let’s get back to the problems at hand. Gregor. My brother. What Drogue can or cannot do.”

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

“As bad as it is to know Gregor is working against us,” Sully said quietly, “it does provide answers to a number of issues I’ve not been able to figure out to this point. The good part is that he is in our control and outnumbered. That’s why, instead of giving in to this overwhelming desire I have to flatten him against a bulkhead until he can no longer breathe, I’m going to watch him, read him—at least for the next few shifts. Let him think he’s safe because I’ll learn what I need to know.”

It was a dangerous game, but Sully had never shied away from them before. “I thought that Farosian ship knew this was the
Karn,
” I said, restlessly tapping my fingers on the desktop. “But now I bet Dalby was told to look for the
Darvo Tureka
.” Sully’s bogus ship IDs were damned-near impenetrable. It made more sense that Gregor had given the Farosians the name we’d be traveling under.

“I’ll take that bet and raise you ten. Not only was she given the
Tureka
’s name but she’s been supplied with our coordinates at key points.”

Like when I grabbed the data off that beacon. Something must have been sent at that time.

“We need to look at every transmission Gregor’s sent or received since we left Dock Five,” I said, calmer now, feeling my Fleet training kicking back in. Spies and enemy agents were entities Fleet had dealt with for generations. “And anything sent from any terminal when he was on duty.”

“How long will that take you?”

“An hour, maybe two if he used a code I can’t break and I have to ask you for help.”

That Sully grin was back. “Are you sure you can afford my fees?”

I lobbed my lightpen at him.

He ducked. “You’re cranky. You must be hungry.” He swiveled his chair around then stood. “I’ll go hit up Dorsie for a couple of baked bright-apples.” He turned for the door then swung back and, leaning over the narrow desk, cupped my face with one hand. His mouth covered mine, heat and passion spiraling through his touch.

He broke the kiss with obvious reluctance. “I will do whatever it takes. Believe that,” he said, his voice a deep rumble.

I knew he would. But I waited until the door closed behind him before wondering—with not only Tage and Burke to contend with, but now the Farosians too—if it would be enough.

Gregor was a damned fine pilot. He’d been with Sully for at least seven years, though where he’d been before that Fleet either couldn’t or didn’t care to find out. I didn’t know if Gregor was his first or his last name, or a moniker he simply bestowed on himself when he went AWOL. Of that last fact, I was fairly sure—over and above the fact that he bragged about it. He had a way of doing things that were Fleet-issue. I recognized them because I was one too.

So I broke into his personal files the same way I would any Fleet officer’s, knowing where the fail-safes and trip-alarms likely were, knowing how the files would be structured. Gregor had improvised, customized over the years. But academy training was hard to undo.

Sully brought a steaming, spicy bright-apple and mug of tea while I worked, watched over my shoulder for a while, then left again.

It felt good to have a soluble problem to solve. Hayden’s lab was a cipher; our informant on Narfial an equal unknown. Repercussions from Thad’s arrest were still unfolding. But digging out Gregor’s transmits was something I could do.

The uncoded, general transmits were the easiest and, logically, the most innocuous: confirmations of personal supplies ordered for pickup on Ferrin’s or Dock Five or one of the other rim-world depots Sully felt fairly safe in frequenting. Even so, I read all seven he’d sent or received in the past ten days and then backdated a week and read four more, scanning for hidden codes. A purchase order for a zippered jacket might be just that, or it might be something more.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I cross-referenced his few purchases with withdrawals made through the ship’s crew funds. Both Dorsie and Sully had signed off on all items as required. I’d double check by confirming with Dorsie’s logs, but seeing Sully’s approval codes made me feel more certain nothing here was forged.

It took me longer to get into Gregor’s personal transmits. Fleet had several fail-safes that destroyed the content of a transmit if tampering was detected—adaptations of which could be bought from any number of backdoor techies on Dock Five. Smugglers loved to use Fleet’s own programs against them.

Gregor had three different transmit accounts, very uncreatively labeled One, Two, and Three. Or perhaps not so uncreatively. Open the wrong one first and the other two go poof.

A sound at the doorway made me look up.

“You’re frowning,” Sully said, ducking his head slightly as he entered.

I waited until the door closed behind him before answering. “I’m trying to remind myself not to underestimate Gregor.”

Sully crossed the cabin’s soft gray carpeting then perched a hip on the edge of the desk. He studied the databoxes on my screen. “Aidanar’s Triptych.”

I’d recognized it too. “Gregor strikes me as more secretive than clever. But a triptych fail-safe is fairly elementary-level Fleet methodology. Do you know how long he was with Fleet, and where?”

Sully nodded. “Not quite five years as a transport pilot for Imperial Fleet Security Forces, working Ferrin’s and the ass-end of Baris. He doesn’t know I know, of course. He told me he worked for ImpSec on Port Sapphire on Aldan Prime. He did, but only for a month near the end of the war.”

Ferrin’s Starport was about as ass-end as you could get without being on the rim. “So he never actually worked for ImpSec?”

“Never earned the coveted blue beret. His charming personality held him back. Shame, because he had all the makings of a top security officer. He ended up being a glorified taxi driver.”

“You’ve seen his personnel file?”

“I have.”

I didn’t miss the smug tone of his voice. Fleet personnel records—especially ImpSec’s—were supposedly sacrosanct. But this was Gabriel Sullivan. And he’d quoted mine almost verbatim when he’d found me on Moabar. “His name’s really Gregor?”

“Meevel Gregoran. He doesn’t know I know that either.”

“Meevel? As in
Meevel Peevel Goes to School
? I hated those books when I was a kid.” The Meevel Peevel series had been around for years. Soppy, preachy children’s stories. No wonder Gregor was always in such a foul mood. He even looked like an adult version of Meevel Peevel—lanky and sharp-faced.

“I guess his parents were fans.”

“What did he tell you his name was?”

“His ID docs—decent forgeries, by the way—state Gregor Verrill.”

“The books, again.” T. Alston Verrill was the author of the Meevel series.

“If you’re going to lie,” Sully said, “keep it simple, logical, and something you can remember.”

Like Ross Winthrop, an alias used by Gabriel Ross Sullivan, whose father’s name was Winthrop.

“So do you think Meevel’s skilled enough to have safeguarded his files with a triptych?” I asked, leaning back so Sully could view the entire screen again.