Gabriel's Ghost (27 page)

Gray fuzzy soft remained, wisping.

Ren breathed.

Sully breathed.

I breathed and my heart pounded, hard.

Gray fuzzy soft disappeared. The suppleness was back in Ren’s skin. His fingers twitched slightly then relaxed. I could see his pulse, strong and regular, in his throat.

Another breath. Two.

Sully sat slowly back on his heels, his palms braced against his thighs. He was breathing hard, his shoulders stiff as if with pain. His obsidian gaze no longer focused on Ren, but at a distant, infinite point that existed far beyond the bulkhead before him. Then he dropped his gaze, back rounded and seemed to stare at his hands planted against his legs. His eyes closed. His breath rasped, shuddering.

I was afraid to touch him. No. I wanted to touch him, but didn’t know if I should. I was afraid I’d do something wrong. Whatever had happened was because of Sully. If he needed to be alone. If he needed…

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One hand, palm up, was held out toward me.
I grasped it. His fingers closed tightly around mine, squeezing, holding on.
Small warmth now, soft flutters. They curled up my arm, through my body.
“Breathe. Chasidah. Breathe.” A barely audible plea.
I took a deep breath, let it out. Another. He clung to my hand. The warmth traveled back and

forth between us. Into me, out of me. In through me. Out through me. Softer. Softer. He angled his face toward me in the red-tinged darkness. Blood dripped down the side of his

forehead. But there was a strength in him again. His fingers relaxed around mine. Slowly he straightened in his crouch. My gaze darted to Ren, lying peacefully on the floor, eyes closed, chest rising and falling

naturally. “He’ll be okay?” My voice wavered. He nodded. “You?” Another nod. “Sully—” “Gabriel.” He rasped his name out. “Gabriel needs. To hold. Chasidah.” I reached for him. He clasped my hands, drew me against him, surrounding me with his body

as if I needed comforting, not him. He held my hands against his chest, his face against my

forehead, his breathing still deep and labored. A thousand questions raced through my mind. But now was not the time. Something ruffled through the air, like enviro shifting to a second cycle. Then there was a loud groan behind us. A cough. Gregor. Sully pulled away, fumbled for the medi-stat and pushed it into my hand. “Go. Keep him

busy. Need a minute, yet.” I remembered my question to Ren. Who knows? Who knows about Sully, about Gabriel. Not Gregor. Not Marsh. I rose quickly and headed for Gregor, medi-stat open, keyed for human readings. It showed

internal bruising in his chest area. But that was all. “Gregor. Sit still.” I ran the unit across his body one more time. Muddy brown eyes met mine. “Bitch,” he said, softly. Very softly. A venomous sound. “You’ve got some pretty good bruises there. Probably does hurt like a bitch.” I deliberately

misunderstood. I went back for the med-kit I’d left on the floor. Sully lifted Verno upright. The Taka coughed. I handed him the medi-stat when I returned to Gregor’s side. As I primed another stim I

thought for a moment how pleasant a double dose of trank might make my life for awhile. And kept it at just that. An amusing thought. “This’ll help.” Gregor’s hand shot to my wrist, squeezed. “No fucking way. Not from—” A hand came down hard against Gregor’s shoulder, shoving him back against the seat. It

pinned Gregor there, fingers digging into the pilot’s collarbone while he sucked for air, sucked down pain, his eyes wide and frantic. Gregor’s hand fluttered from my wrist, trembling, jerking spasmodically.

“I can, and will, break this.” Sully’s voice was flat, dark. Final. “Your choice.”

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Gregor’s eyes blinked. Once. Twice. Sully plucked the hypospray from my fingers and shoved it against Gregor’s arm. It released its contents with a barely perceptible hiss.

Sully took his hand away as if he’d touched something loathsome.

Gregor’s eyes fluttered open, his mouth slightly slack. He stared at Sully but wouldn’t look at me.

“I hear very well in the dark,” Sully told him.

Gregor closed his eyes again and let his head fall back against the padding.

Verno wobbled upright behind me, his legs still shaky. “Ren?” He peered toward the corner.

I grabbed Verno’s long arm. “Lean on me. I’ll walk you over there.”

I felt like a child next to a giant. If he fell he’d take us both down in a heap, a furry heap, but what support I gave him seemed to be enough. He lowered himself to the floor next to Ren, then took the webbed, six-fingered hand in his large one and patted it.

Ren’s eyelids fluttered, his eyes clouded again. “Brother. Blessings.” His voice was misty rain, pattering on warm stones.

“Brother. Blessings. I feel the need to pray.”

“So do I.”

* * *

The bridge became a flurry of activity. Dorsie, Aubry and Marsh were in better shape. Deeper in the ship, they’d been less exposed than we were on the bridge. Plus, main enviro had stayed on. Only the bridge had gone, momentarily, airless.

It was supposed to happen the other way around. Bridge enviro was supposed to be the most secure, sealing itself under red alert conditions. Bridge enviro had its own generator. Its own filters. It was supposed to be infallible.

Supposed to be.

I stood at helm, watched as each monitor, each screen came back on. They would stay on now. We ran through a final systems check. I touched databoxes, initializing systems, programs, functions. Sublights hummed at idle.

Sully was in the command sling, mirroring my movements, mirroring Verno’s at engineering. Ren was in sickbay, soaking.

Gregor was in his quarters.

“He has some things to think about,” Sully had said.

Sulk over, more likely. Or seethe.

I understood what Sully did, why he did it. Physical force was the only thing Gregor understood. Gregor’s insidious challenges to me challenged Sully. A man like Gabriel Ross Sullivan wouldn’t tolerate that for long.

He’d heard Gregor call me a bitch. What he’d felt emanating from Gregor I could only imagine. We hadn’t had time, or the privacy, to discuss it.

Or to discuss what he’d done to Ren. For Ren.

Ren was dead, had been dead for several minutes when I’d flicked on the medi-stat. I’d been in Fleet too long not to know what the unit told me. Ren was dead.

Ren was alive.

Sully had touched him, breathed for him. Sully had touched him, beat his heart for him. Sully had touched him, healed him.

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Not Sully. Gabriel.

I had a thousand questions to add to the other thousand I already had from three weeks of Gabriel Ross Sullivan in my life. They grew like his losses in his card games with Ren. Double or nothing. I kept getting doubles. I stuffed them all into another one of my mental duro-hard containers and shoved them away, for now. There might be a time I’d want to bring them out, lay them before him. Ask.

But not now. Stars have mercy, I loved him. And questions hurt him. Answers hurt him. I’d felt his anguish, his fear, when one would pop into my mind, unbidden. I’d turn, forgetting the one thing that was very, very hard for Sullivan to face. And that was Gabriel.

I remembered the feel of his voice in my mind,
No. Stay still. Don’t… don’t turn
.

Fear. He’d been behind me, somewhere in gray fuzzy soft. Don’t turn. Don’t look. Don’t look at me.

What would I have seen if I had?

Right now, I looked through the large viewports. They framed something large, something once beautiful in her own efficient, functional way. Something that had kept me alive, saved my life countless times. Something that had bestowed a title, a purpose to the name of Chasidah Bergren. And had continued on bravely, forever holding a piece of me in her memory when the court had stripped that same title and purpose away.

As long as she worked the lanes, as long as she streamed through the neverwhen, so did Captain Chaz Bergren. I always felt that even if I died, my codes, my programs would live on in her.

I never thought she’d be the one to die, first. And in such ugliness.

The shattered hull of the
Meritorious
hung lopsided against the starfield. The Level 2 auto-destruct had gutted most of her starboard side, peeled back her hull plating. Her Imperial insignia was blackened. Her bridge, shattered. All that was left of her name were the first four letters: MERI.

Meri.

Good-bye Meri, my sweet little P40. I’m so sorry. Chasidah is so very, very sorry.

“Weapons on line.” Verno’s voice was gravelly, sounding normal again.

“Targeting. Locked.” Sully shifted in the sling behind me. Then, softly, “Chaz?”

I didn’t turn, just shook my head and raised my hand to push away his offer. I knew what had to be done. Why it had to be done. Nothing for the Empire to trace. Nothing for them to question. I just couldn’t be the one to do it.

Fifteen. Fifteen lives. And now Meri’s.

She was only a ship. My first and only command.

My sweet, sweet little P40.

A short, harsh sigh came from Sully. Then a word. “Fire.”

Lasers streaked out from the
Boru Karn
. The
Meritorious
exploded, disintegrated into a thousand wheeling stars. Then she faded away.

Sixteen.

* * *

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We were about ten hours from the B-C Border. Baris-Calth. But we were twenty-six from an inexplicable systems failure. And a total recovery. Providential, Ren had said. Everything had come back on, flawlessly. As if it had never happened.

Sublights thrummed at max, Sully-style. That meant max plus twenty, to the rest of civilized space.

We’d all slept, exhausted, aching, then reconvened in the ready room with lots of coffee. Ten hours to the B-C Border. Problems behind us. Troubles forgotten.

Gregor sat across from me, cheerful and jubilant. And noticeably apologetic. “Was real furred, wasn’t I? Really got my head parts knocked for a loop on that bridge. Went babbling a few nasty words. Sure you know I didn’t mean them. Sure you, being a Fleetie and all, must have heard them a hundred times over.” He offered a wide grin and slapped the side of his head with his hand, skewing his thinning brown hair. “Still rattling around in there. Can’t you hear it?”

Verno’s laugh rattled a few viewports in the next quadrant. Ren’s gaze brushed over Sully’s, then mine. Marsh was on the bridge, listening on intraship. Dorsie and Aubry were sleeping, off duty.

“Chest healing better?” I was the picture of concern.

“Still some tightness, soreness.” Gregor stretched, winced.

God, get me a theater. Any stage will do.

“Dorsie’s got a cure for that,” Verno said. “Her special tea.”

With honeylace. I already knew about it. She’d brewed a mug for Sully and Ren. I didn’t need it. I had Gabriel’s bedtime stories.

Sully keyed a touchpad. The hologrid rose. Not with Marker manifests, ship movements. But with the system primaries for the
Boru Karn
. He’d captured them in the midst of disintegration, had the forethought to save the file. Study it.

We studied it now. It was a horrific mess and it seemed to hold no answers. No clues. Except one.

Sabotage.

“You brought her in for regular maintenance when I left for Moabar.” Sully jerked his chin toward Gregor. “Who worked on her?”

“Me. Aubry. The tech crew at Dock Five. Our usuals. No one touched her unless me or Aubry was there.”

Sully watched him. If Gregor were lying, he was dead.

“I saw the repair logs.” Sully picked up his lightpen, tabbed down the side of the panel. A second grid flashed up. “Nothing here,” he pointed to the logs, “explains this.” He pointed to the crazed primaries.

There was a long moment of studious silence.

“Does not, that’s true, Sully-sir.”

“How about a worm?” Marsh’s voice came over intraship. He had a smaller version of both grids on his bridge monitors.

“Basically impossible,” Sully said, “on my ship.”

Sully was no pilot. But he was one damn fine engineer, one damn better systems tech.

“Impossible from outside.” Gregor leaned back in his chair. “But how about right here?”

Verno was startled. “Here? Gregor, you are saying one of us did this?” He pointed a long finger to the grid.

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Gregor shrugged. “I’m saying Sully’s right. He’s got this ship rigged tighter than a whore’s… pardon, Captain Bergren. He’s got this ship locked down tight, where our systems are concerned. It’d have to be someone who could get in from inside. Like, I don’t know, the terminal in Sully’s quarters.” His gaze swept over me, quickly, then moved on. “Or on the bridge or maybe in here...”

“That’s traceable,” Sully snapped. “I already checked for it. Nothing showed up.”

“Someone was real good, it might not.” Gregor spun his lightpen on the tabletop but didn’t look at Sully.

But Sully stared at him, hard, for a long, time. “We’ll keep working on it,” he said finally.

He moved his lightpen. The grid changed. “This is the latest we’ve been able to snag on Marker. We’ve got four days left ’til we hit the A-B. I want to move on the shipyards no later then ten days after that.”

“We’ll be ready, Sully-sir. We’ll be ready.”

Chapter Twenty-One

An hour, maybe less, to the A-B.

Sully sat at the dining table, elbows bent, mouth resting on his folded hands. He stared at the mug of hot tea before him as if he could find answers in the curls of rising steam.

At least, that’s what it looked like to me. I let the door slide closed behind me and unhooked the holster from around my waist. I tossed it, and the laser pistol snugged into it, on the couch as I walked by. We were on the
Boru Karn
but I went armed, everywhere, on the ship now. We all did.

Sabotage. It hung heavy in the air in the ready room, on the bridge, in the corridors. Even Dorsie’s fragrant galley seemed a bit less for it.