Gabriel's Ghost (43 page)

“I know.”

A sick feeling grabbed my stomach. Thad knew. Was there nothing left of my life that wasn’t twisted, full of lies? I looked at my perpetually virtuous older brother with disgust. “How could you get involved with that?”

He knotted his fingers together and stared at me for a moment. I was surprised by how much he resembled our father. Same angular face, pale eyes, sandy-red hair, now with glints of silver. But Lars’s face had never showed the kind of turmoil on Thad’s now.

“I got involved with that,” he said quietly, “to keep you alive.”

It took me a few heartbeats to process what he said. “Explain.”

“I found out Burke was doing something with jukors. I began pulling manifests, incomings, thinking it was just some rich man’s whim to increase his personal security force. Stupidly, I confronted him. He warned me that if I acted on it, you’d be the one to suffer. I didn’t believe him. It sounded too implausible. Why would he take such a risk, just because he wanted some guard-beasts for his estates?”

Thad shook his head, as if remembering something unpleasant. “Next I know, you’re up on murder charges. Dereliction of duty. I never connected Burke with what happened until I got into a lift and Burke was there, with a bodyguard. A bearded guy with a laser pistol. He stopped the

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lift, told me you’d get the death sentence. But if I kept quiet, he’d see to it you were sent to Moabar. I knew it was Hell there. But at least, you’d be alive. Maybe, in time, I could find a way to get you pardoned.”

I don’t remember breathing. I don’t remember not breathing. I stared at him. “But you could’ve gone to the Admirals Council. Hell, you could’ve gone to Darius Tage, have him talk to Prew!” If there was a name synonymous in the Empire with unflinching honor and ethics, it was First Barrister Darius Tage.

“Burke owns people high up in the Empire. I don’t know who they are. This project of his isn’t about guard-beasts. It’s much bigger, political. I have no proof, but my guess is he’s looking to fund some kind of inter-quadrant war. I knew if I talked to the wrong person, Burke would come after you. Kill you.”

I barely recognized my strong, always in control, authoritative brother. Hayden Burke had him by the one thing I never suspected mattered to Thad. Me.

My brother actually loved me. Pieces of my shattered life started to flow back together. “We need to get out of Marker. We took out the gen-lab on Level 28 an hour ago. We lost Burke’s people in the core, but—”

“The fire alarm? That was you?”

“We used low-impact charges to destroy the lab.”

“Not all of it.” Sully sat on the desk. He picked up the datatabs. “That proof you didn’t have might be in here. It’s on its way to people in Dafir, and on Moabar Station, who can use it. They can’t be bought out, or threatened. It may take time, but they will be believed.”

Sully slipped the datatabs back into his jacket. “We need a ship, commander. The information is safe. We’re not.”

“I can get a maintenance tug to get you back to the terminal.”

I shook my head. “Burke’s people know about the ship that brought us here. They’ll be watching for it, and us.”

“You have any freighters heading out-system?” Sully asked.

“Not that I have immediate access to. Fleet ships are always going in and out, but I don’t know who I can trust.” Thad’s mouth tightened into an angry line. Angry at the situation but probably angry at himself as well. ‘I don’t know’ was never one of his favorite expressions.

“Except....” Thad threw me a hesitant glance. “The
Morgan Loviti
came in a few hours ago.”

The name shot through me with a jolt. “Philip’s here?”

“I’m meeting him for a drink in....” He pulled up his sleeve, uncovering his watch. “I’m late. Ten minutes ago. I stopped to pick up a new ship design I wanted to show him. Didn’t know I’d find you.” His gaze flicked to Sully then back to me.

Sully holstered his Carver. “What makes you think he’d help us?”

“The Guthries have considerable power, are well-respected. Philip Guthrie is one of the most ethical people I know. His family publicly denounced the jukor project twenty years ago. I have no reason to believe he’s changed either his mind or his morals.”

“You’re willing to risk Chasidah’s life on that?”

“You probably don’t know she was married to him. He still cares for her, very much.”

I touched Thad’s arm. “We ran into Philip about a month ago, in Calth. He could’ve impounded the ship, sent me back to Moabar.” I looked past him, at Sully. “He let us go.”

“I’ll meet him in the bar, talk to him.”

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“You can’t guarantee what his intentions will be when he learns Chasidah’s here. What we’ve done.”

“Of course not, but—”

“I can. Bring him here.”

Sully’s unexpected offer surprised me.

My brother’s eyes narrowed. “A man like Philip Guthrie doesn’t respond well to questions at gun point, if that’s your plan.”

“If he’s lying, if he’s working for Burke, or if he has any intentions of returning Chasidah to Moabar, I’ll know when I see him.”

Thad frowned. “How—?”

Sully shoved himself off the desktop. “I’m a
Ragkiril
.”

“Ridiculous. You’re not a Stolorth. You’re human.”

Sully looked tired. “
Ragkir
mind talents exist in many species. Even humans.”

“He can read Philip, scan him,” I told Thad when my brother’s startled blue gaze focused on me.

Thad rose slowly. “And if he is working with Burke?”

“Then I can make him forget he ever saw us.”

A clear expression of distaste crossed Thad’s features. But he made no comment. He stopped at the doorway to the outer office. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Sully remained standing, quietly, after the doors closed behind my brother. I felt him link with Ren, saw the flash of thought-pictures. Not Berri or Lazlo, but there were people in the corridors, looking. Ren sensed their searching. But he had no visual link with Verno and couldn’t provide detailed descriptions, other than male humans, discreetly armed.

I leaned my elbows on the table, resting my face in my hands. I was exhausted, emotionally and physically. I wasn’t sure of how I felt about Philip’s involvement, but knew what Thad had said was true. Philip was ethical. To the point, perhaps, of being stodgy. His family had been vehement in their objections to the jukors bred during the war. And they’d never support an insurrection in the Empire, not one funded by Burke and carried out through the use of jukors.

The issue, of course, would be how he’d react to Sully. Pirate. Ghost.
Ragkiril
.

The chair next to me squeaked. Sully folded his hands on the tabletop.

I propped my chin on my fist. “He could refuse to help us on a matter of principle. Nothing to do with Burke.”

“And miss the chance to play hero?”

I ignored his sarcasm and voiced a disturbing thought that had been hovering. One that touched on things Gregor had said. “Could you force him to help us?”

Sully took a deep breath. “If I say no, I’d be lying. If I tell you the truth, then I’ve added to your fears about me.”

“If you can do things like that, why didn’t you know Thad was coming into the office until he was at this door?”

“Strictly a priority error. I was focused on you. And keeping a light link with Ren. It’s like picking a conversation out of a crowded room, but not being able to hear all of them.”

I leaned back, nodded. “But you could force Philip to help us?”

“I could make him believe that’s what he wanted to do. But if we ran into three, four of his officers who dissented, there’d be problems.”

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“I heard Gregor tell Aubry he saw a
Ragkiril
strip the minds of four prisoners during the war.”

“A
Ragkiril
can’t. A
Kyi-Ragkiril
could.”

“Explain.”

Sully hesitated only a moment, out of habit, perhaps. Or perhaps listening to Ren tell him it was time to start answering my questions. “A
Kyi-Ragkiril
is one whose true existence is in a dimension called the
Kyi
, who draws additional energies from that. Those energies can be used, manipulated, shifted. The
Kyi’s
not that different from jumpspace. A neverwhen of sorts. You called it ‘gray fuzzy soft’ when you saw it.”

Surprise jolted me. I’d not only seen it, I’d experienced it. When the
Meritorious
slammed through the cold jump; and when she exploded, and almost took the
Karn
with her. When Sully had healed Ren.

And when Sully made love to me.

“You’re a
Kyi-Ragkiril
.”

“Yes.” No hesitation this time.

“But you said you can’t—”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t. I said if I had to control a number of people, there’d be problems. I’d have to shift to my true form, like I did in the core.”

Shape-shifter. So
Kyi-Ragkirils
were shape-shifters. “When Ren was hurt, on the bridge, you didn’t… shift forms.” Energy had rippled, sparkled. But he’d never shifted form.

There was a long, hard silence. His shoulders were stiff under his black jacket. “I did.”

“I was right next to you.” Touching you, holding you. “I would’ve seen....”

“I changed what you saw. I had to. It was wrong. But there was too much at risk.”

Ren had been dying. The
Karn,
in shambles. The
Meritorious
almost totally destroyed. And Sully had been in my mind, just like in Trel’s bar. But this time, not shielding the emotions I was sending. But altering what I saw, altering his own form. And I hadn’t even known.

Part of me understood he had valid reasons for what he’d done. But another part of me, a part that was far too crowded with unwanted mental duro-hards, recoiled. Shocked. Angered. “You had no right!”

“None at all. I also had no choice.”

“Next time, try honesty. It—”

Sully held his hand up, stopping my words. “Thad’s back. With Guthrie.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Philip’s resonant voice filled the outer office. “How about telling me what’s so damn important you couldn’t—”

He stopped in the open doorway. He was in his gray working-dress uniform, but still impeccable. Dignified. Handsome. I watched emotions flicker through Philip’s blue eyes as I worked on reorienting my own.

“Chaz!” He stepped toward me, hand out, then hesitated. “This is what the security stops are for. I should’ve known.”

He raised his chin, his gaze on Sully who wasn’t safely in the recesses of my ship’s bridge this time. As with Thad, recognition took a few moments. “I gather Hell was full.”

“Still room for you, Guthrie.”

Damn it, don’t start. We need his help
. I was angry, but forced myself to bank my emotion. It was useless right now. I took a deep breath, offered my ex-husband a bland smile. “Why don’t you sit on the couch. We’ll tell you what’s going on.”

Philip moved easily as if meetings like this, as if my showing up unexpectedly again, in the company of a dead smuggler, were part of his everyday schedule. He leaned back against the cushions, propped one leg on his knee. Thad sat at his desk.

“That was the
Meritorious
,” Philip said to me.

“I had reasons not to tell you.”

I could see his mind opening and inspecting those mental Fleet-issue databoxes. He nodded to Sully. “I gather you helped my wife escape?”

“She’s not your wife.”

I shot a warning look to Sully. “They’ve got checkpoints out. They will find us, unless you can get us out of Marker, on the
Loviti
. Will you?”

Philip studied me for a moment before his gaze flashed to Sully. “I only want what’s best for you, Chaz.”

“That could mean a lot of things.” Sully said, rising. His voice was soft, but there was an underlying forcefulness.

Philip met Sully’s obsidian gaze squarely. “What’s your interest here?”

“At the moment, you. Your intentions. Your allegiances.”

“You question me?”

“We have to question.” I put my captain’s command voice behind my words. “We don’t know if we can trust you.”

“Why? What did you do?”

I chose my words carefully. “We destroyed a jukor lab.”

“Impossible.”

“That we destroyed the lab?” Sully asked.

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Philip responded with a dismissive glance. He turned back to me. “Breeding jukors was banned years ago. The labs were destroyed. All embryos, genetics, everything.”

“A jukor attacked us on Moabar,” I told him quietly. “The lab we destroyed a few hours ago had two pair, Philip. Two breeding pair. And a Taka female, serving as surrogate.”

He stared at me, hard. “Who’s doing this?”

“My cousin, Hayden Burke.” Sully’s voice was cold. “And, according to Commander Bergren, a number of very powerful people close to Prew. Are you one of them, Guthrie?”

Philip shot to his feet, anger twisting his face, his clenched fist moving. Sully caught his arm, held it firmly for a moment. Philip jerked his wrist out of Sully’s grip. Anger vibrated across his face, radiated from his body. But he didn’t move.

Sully’s eyes were already infinite, dark. And locked on Philip’s. He held his hand open at chest level, his fingers splayed slightly, but not touching Philip. Dark energy rippled over his shoulders, down his arms. It flowed toward Philip, as if going through him and around him at the same time.

I held my breath.

Thad swore softly.

Then it was over. Philip blinked as if he had suddenly, and unexpectedly, awakened.

Sully turned to me as if nothing unusual had happened. “Son of a bitch hates Hayden as much as I do. We can trust him.”

Philip’s lips thinned, his expression hardening. “Mind-fucker!” His fist caught Sully on the side of the jaw, throwing him back against Thad’s desk. I was already on my feet.

Sully lunged, pinning Philip onto the couch. I grabbed Sully’s shoulders. “Stop it!”