Gabriel's Ghost (32 page)

“Two brown ales, Trel.” He nodded to the bartender.

Like Ren, Trel’s bluish hair was long, braided. But it was thin, his hairline receded back. His lean features lacked Ren’s elegance, and so appeared harsh.

“Ross Winthrop,” Trel answered. “Didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

“Didn’t expect to see me so soon, or didn’t expect to see me alive?”

Trel glanced at me. Reading me, that much I was sure. I was in Fleet-Captain mode, keeping my emotions flat. If he were a
Ragkir
or a
Ragkiril
I couldn’t tell. Sully, I was sure, could. The fact that Trel called him “Ross Winthrop” told me it was likely he was a basic empath, or at best, a
Ragkir
. Or else he’d know Sully lied about his identity.

The Stolorth shrugged at Sully’s question and glanced at me again.

“My wife, Trel. Talk to her as you’d talk to me.”

Trel raised one eyebrow. “Newly married.”

“Very.”

Trel relaxed a bit, his mouth curving into a half-smile. “She’s still fighting that leash, Winthrop. You may not know that, but you know I can tell.”

Sully’s eyes widened in innocent distress. “Chaz. You told me you wanted to get married.”

Trel had picked up on my inadvertent flinch when Sully had called me his wife. I knew he was kidding, using it as a cover for a reason. But it still made me feel funny inside. “I did. I do. It’s just that—”

“Bad first marriage.” Sully gave Trel a knowing look. “At least, I hope that’s what it is.”

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“I can find out for you.” He held out his webbed hand toward me.
I jerked backward.
Trel seemed pleased. Not like Ren, who didn’t want to hurt, didn’t want to cause discomfort.

Trel seemed to like the fact I was afraid of him. “So why are you surprised to see me, old friend?” Sully moved back to the original

conversation. “Who did I so piss off last time I was here that they threatened to come after me?” “Besides Junior and the twelve thousand he lost to you in cards?” Before I could stop them, the words were out of my mouth. “You won at cards?” I was rewarded with another affronted look. “Don’t know your new husband too well, do you?” Trel set a tall ale in front of me, and one

in front of Sully. “Took Junior for twelve thousand last time he was in. Took Junior and Eduardo

for twenty a few months before that. And those are only the big games that I know about.” “Amazing,” I said. “Thank you, my angel.” His finger traced small circles on my shoulder. “So Junior said he

was going to hunt me down?” “Not that I heard.” “Then who’s asking questions about me?” Trel ran his wide hand over his head. “Running a little low on supplies these days.” Sully pulled out his thin comm pad from the front pocket of his jacket, tapped it on. “Your

man signed for a playbox two hours ago. You might want to check your back room. We’ll wait.

Ale’s cold.” Trel straightened, nodded and left. Playbox. Smuggler’s term for a couple of containers of honeylace. “He knows Newlin?” I

asked quietly but with obvious sarcasm. I’d just participated in an illegal drug sale with my new

husband. “No. But I’m sure they could be good friends.” I leaned toward him as if seeking a kiss. “
Ragkir
?” I breathed the word against his lips. He kissed me, shaking his head in a small negative movement, then pulled back slightly.

“Base level empath. Not to worry. I’ve got you covered.” He tickled my shoulder with his fingers again.

Trel came back, looking satisfied. Then his smile faded. He leaned his elbows on the bar, brought his face close to Sully’s. There were only two other patrons, one passed out cold at a table near the door, and one very close to it at the far end of the bar. I doubted either would hear Trel if he shouted.

“Someone’s been asking about you. Not by name. Description. And not in here. But I’ve

heard.” “Describe him.” “Human. Shorter than you. Light hair, eyes. Beard. Looks like a hundred other jump-jockeys

on Dock except he tries to act quiet, stupid. And he’s not. He’s a fighter. Wears his shirts extra big, to cover the muscles. He can move real fast when he wants to. I watched him, for awhile. He was talking to Ilsa.”

“Who else did he talk to?”
“Junior told him nothing. Don’t know who else.”
“How long ago?”

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Trel thought. “I didn’t notice him until Junior said something, and that was the day after your ship left last time. But when I saw him, that’s when I remembered seeing him with Ilsa. And you were still here because that’s the night you took Junior for the twelve thousand.”

“He was here while I was? While my ship was still in dock?”

Trel nodded. “At Pops you were, right?”

“He stayed, two, three days, after the
Echo
left?”

But Sully and Ren, I knew, left on Milo’s ship. While the man hunting Sully watched the
Boru Karn
. While Pops’s daughter, Ilsa, who wanted to be on Sully’s list of women, had access to the
Boru Karn
, as one of Pops’s employees. Would Marsh or Gregor question her appearance at the docks? Would they stop her if she tried to get onboard, perhaps even offer her a tour of the ship, of their cabins? Or had she been a guest in Sully’s cabin before, and knew her way around?

Did she have the skills to initiate a worm program? Or did she even need to get onboard? She had access to any parts going into the
Karn
. She had access to the ship’s schematics in her father’s databases.

Sully’s firm grip on my arm halted my thoughts. Shit. Trel was an empath. I’d momentarily forgotten that. I tamped down my speculations and sipped my ale. Sully wrapped up the conversation. I accepted Trel’s congratulations like the blushing bride I was supposed to be and walked out, still snugged against him.

“Sorry,” I said softly. “Sorry. Sorry.” I was a Fleet officer. I knew better. But there were no regs against speculating in Fleet. “Once I grabbed what he was saying, I couldn’t stop analyzing it.”

He stepped out of the flow of traffic to wrap his arms around me. “Your mind is like a little whirlwind, do you know that? Everything gets sucked in, sorted, flung around, resorted, categorized.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was… fascinating.” He paused. “You’re not angry with me?”

Why would I—? Because he’d been in my mind. Watching it. Reading my thoughts. Watching me sort them, fling them around. Doing what I’d told him not to. But then I had rescinded that order. “No. You had to do that, because of Trel, is that right?”

“You don’t know how to block your thoughts, your emotions. Trel’s abilities, as long as he’s not touching you, are about on the level of Ren’s. I had to put up a temporary wall.”

I looked up at his infinitely dark eyes. “I didn’t even know.”

“Couldn’t tell?”

“No.”

“Neither could Tessa.”

A worry, one I still held onto. Young Tessa. Her mind in shreds, Philip had said.

Philip had lied. Or else, someone had lied to Philip.

I closed my eyes, releasing the worry from my mental duro-hard, let it go. Then wondered again why I thought Sully had told me nothing about himself. He was, he’d been telling me volumes. I just didn’t know how to listen. “Thank you,” I said softly.

“You’re welcome, angel. Now, let’s get moving. I’ve got to talk to Gregor and Marsh, again. Ask them some rather direct questions about Ilsa. Then we’ve got to talk to Ren. Tell him Lazlo was on Dock, asking questions.”

“Lazlo?”

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“Lazlo. A quiet but not stupid man with a beard. And a muscular build he doesn’t want anyone to notice. My cousin Hayden’s personal bodyguard.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

I met Ren in the corridor as he left the ready-room, his usual peaceful demeanor clearly troubled. He looked rumpled, his braid unraveling as if he’d been running his fingers through his hair. He’d been in there with Sully and Marsh, then Aubry and then Gregor, for almost two hours.

I’d been in the bridge hatchway a half hour earlier when Gregor had barged out of the room and strode angrily down the corridor, his “goddamned filthy mind fucker” litany echoing as he headed for his cabin.

His comment, I knew, had been aimed at Ren. No one knew Sully was the one really doing the probing.

I touched Ren’s arm. “Want me to get you a mug of hot tea?”

“Please. It would be much appreciated.”

I brought it to his cabin. He was in one of the padded chairs next to the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. I put the tea on the low table in front of him and went in search of his comb.

He sipped it as I perched on the arm of his chair, untied his braid and began combing it out. Slowly, his shoulders relaxed, his breathing became less shallow, constricted.

“Since everyone left the room still alive, I gather none of them helped Ilsa, or this Lazlo, set a worm into the
Karn
.”

Ren sighed. “Both Gregor and Aubry knew Ilsa came on board. Neither remembered seeing Lazlo with her. Neither say Ilsa was left alone long enough to do any harm, but she was on the bridge. She did bring some grid boards. And as she’d been on this ship before...”

My hands hesitated only slightly, but he caught it.

“Not that way, Chasidah. She has never been Sully’s lover, though not for lack of effort on her part. But she knows Marsh from when he worked on another ship.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a grin he couldn’t see and tugged on his braid the way Sully often tugged on mine.

“Anyway, as she’s Pops’s daughter, her intentions, her allegiances were never in question.”

“Until now.”

“Until now.”

“Did she program a worm?”

“I don’t know. Sully doesn’t know. The grid board she brought was heavily damaged during the systems failure.”

“Is Sully going to talk to her?” The thought of Sully probing Ilsa’s mind, even with Ren there, didn’t sit well with me. Jealous? Me? Hell, yes. I knew exactly the kind of thoughts she’d be sending him, draped in the most intimate, seductive colors she could muster.

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“Lazlo’s appearance interests him more. Whatever Ilsa did, if anything, was more than likely at Lazlo’s instigation. It’s Lazlo, or really Burke, we must be concerned about. Ilsa was simply a means, a method. It’s also quite possible she’s not even aware she did anything wrong.”

I knew that. Someone, posing as a parts supplier, could have presented her with a new and improved grid. Or optic-feed. Or sensor-link. And she’d put it on the
Karn
. At that point, she was still trying to get into Sully’s bed. Not be a mourner at his funeral.

I finished his braid, retied the thin, leather band at the bottom. “Better?”

He reached back, ran his hand down its smooth length. “Much.”

“And you? I think you’re wearing your worry colors.”

He leaned back against the cushion and looked up at me with his clouded silver eyes. I didn’t think Gregor had been the only one emitting anger, perhaps even hatred, at being probed empathically. Ren had felt it, taken it all, directed at himself. For Sully’s sake.

“Things will be a bit tense for awhile. They all felt safe, thought my blindness protected them. Now, that has changed. They feel their privacy is compromised.” He hesitated. “Gregor is threatening to leave, to stay on Dock Five.”

“Leave?” Gregor knew that Gabriel Ross Sullivan was alive, posing as Ross Winthrop. Gregor knew that Chaz Bergren was no longer on Moabar. And that we were headed for Marker, with the intention of destroying the Imperial Fleet shipyards.

Gregor definitely knew too much.

“Wasn’t there any way you could have accomplished the same results, reading them, without their knowledge?” I hadn’t felt Sully slip into my mind, my thoughts at all in Trel’s bar.

“He’d already done that, the first time he talked to them. But for a deep mind probe, physical contact is sometimes necessary. More so because Sully couldn’t touch them, without giving away what he is. The contact had to come through me, my hand on their arm. For that reason, too, it was still an inaccurate link.”

“No one caught the fact that you were touching Sully, too?” I would have. I saw it in Sully’s cabin back at the Moabar Temple. I just didn’t know I was seeing them link at that time.

“I wasn’t touching Sully. Ours was purely a mind link.”

“You just said a deeper probe needs physical contact. How could Sully read without touching someone?”

Ren hesitated. “Sully is a very high level
Ragkiril
. He can work through another’s link, if necessary. Physical contact clarifies and enhances the link.”

I knew there were
Ragkir
and
Ragkiril
. And thought that was all there was. “There are additional levels of
Ragkiril
?”

“In both
Ragkir
and
Ragkiril
, yes. Sully told me he explained the differences to you.”

“It’s not sinking in, I guess. It’s not something I’m used to comprehending. I do know some
Ragkirils
can heal.”

“For which I am forever grateful.” Ren smiled wistfully. “I have yet so much to learn, so much to experience. I wasn’t ready to leave this existence yet.” He tilted his face. His voice became softer, rain trickling over
maiisar
blossoms, ruffled by the breezes. “I would miss Sully. And I would miss you, Chasidah. You have become very precious to me.”

I kissed him lightly on the forehead. “If Dorsie doesn’t adopt you, I will.”

He smiled, almost shyly, flustered. Very un-Ren. “So, to continue with your lesson, yes, there are different levels. Both with
Ragkir
and
Ragkiril
. You met Trel, I know. His
Ragkir
abilities are weak. He must be physically close to someone, or touching them to read

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empathically. Sully is a high level
Ragkiril
. Physical contact and proximity enhance his abilities, yes. But he can work outside of those parameters.”