In Enemy Hands (9 page)

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

“Do you know what it is they inject me with? Has Hen ever mentioned it to you?”

“He mentioned it once,” Moon told him. “Benzodiazepine. But that describes a class of drugs rather than the specific one he’s been using on you.” She shook her head helplessly. “And I still don’t know how it’s delivered, which could also be important.” Her voice was soft. “I’m sorry.”

He was gracious even in his frustration, merely nodding. “It’s a start.”

Except it wasn’t. He was being kind and all it did was heighten her feelings of impotence.

“I don’t remember anything about yesterday,” he continued. “I get a headache if I try to think about it too much. Am I at the beginning of the cycle?”

“This is the first day.” She nodded.

“Do you know how many times….” He lapsed into silence, unable to finish the sentence.

She knew what he wanted to ask. She didn’t want to give him an answer, but he had asked her directly. She was the first person he had ever thought to confide in and she thought he deserved her honesty if she couldn’t provide anything else. “Eighteen years.”

“Eighteen.” She saw the muscles in his arms tense, as if he might explode out of his chair and begin rampaging through the lab. Under the circumstances, Moon thought she might have done the same thing. But it was a measure of the man Srin had once been, a person of immense self-discipline, that he didn’t do it. But the spark of anger in his eyes refused to die.

“Did Hen mention anything about,” he hesitated, “anyone else? Family? Friends?”

“No.”

And Moon felt as helpless as he as she saw the stab of pain rip through him.

So Yalona was lost to him, whether dead or displaced far from him, he couldn’t say. Srin tried to capture the feelings he felt for her, the passion that led to his bonding proposal, but it was like reaching through dense fog. He knew that some small part of him had reconciled himself to that loss a while ago. That hurt more than anything else—the thought that the Republic hadn’t even given him the time and decency to properly mourn her passing from his life.

Had she tried to find out where he was, what had happened to him after his fateful trip to the Science Directorate? He searched his cloudy memory, but there was nothing. Maybe they told her he had been in an accident and got killed. Even if she harboured hope of his return, such hope would have been erased more than a decade ago. He knew time had passed, could see it in the worn face that met him in the mirror each day even if he couldn’t precisely reckon the passing, but he hadn’t expected such a length of time.

Eighteen years. Almost two decades.

He would have had at least one child by now, maybe even two. A well-built son, or a daughter, with hope shining in her eyes.

Maybe it was the drugs, but he couldn’t fix the image of a daughter quite right. Yalona’s hair was blond, her skin pale, yet the child he imagined was darker, glowing brown rather than ivory. She had brown hair like his, and matching eyes.

He focused on the woman who sat opposite and almost smiled. Even with a crippled mind, his subconscious was still in high gear. His imaginary daughter didn’t look like Yalona at all, but she bore more than a passing resemblance to his astrophysicist dinner companion. Was he compensating for a previous loss, or opening himself up to a new possibility?

He knew he was crazy to even think like that, but there was something about Moon Thadin that provoked his protective instincts. Considering that he had been systematically medicated for the past two decades into being nothing more than a calculating automaton, he recognised that kick in his gut for the significant response that it was.

She was pretty, her features enhanced by her obvious intelligence. She was compassionate. And, amid the madness—his first ever plea for help, while trapped on a combat-ready spaceship filled to the brim with highly trained soldiers on a hair trigger—Srin was moved. Moved not by a desire to flee or destroy but by a compulsion to take her in his arms and kiss her.

Did he even remember how to? he wondered with a flash of dark humour. Or maybe Moon was just one in a line of mindless dalliances for him over the years. But he didn’t think so. And the hidden panel of scratchings in his cabin, a coded briefing to his newly-reset brain, didn’t indicate that either. He could never be completely sure, of course, but he was more than halfway certain that he hadn’t confided his misgivings, his feeling that
something
was going on, to anybody else. There was something about Moon that he trusted, and that each of his newly minted two-day selves trusted too. And he had to start somewhere.

He surprised himself by getting to his feet and extending a hand to her. His surprise doubled when, after the slightest of hesitations, she took it. Maybe he looked more competent than he felt.

When he held her, it was like holding a woman for the first time, her warmth and softness filling his hands, teasing his nerve endings with promise. She was almost as tall as he, and he liked that. Liked the fact that he didn’t have to bend down too far, or stretch up, to capture her lips. Liked the sense of comfort her body gave him. Was that selfish of him?

He held her as if they were dancing to slow romantic music, his arms enclosing her body, pulling her close up against him. He wanted to relax his hands and let his fingers skim the curve of her spine and the fullness of her backside. With his eyes closed, he could almost imagine himself lying down, holding her exactly like that. Her groin, deliciously feminine, curved against his erection, firing a series of erotic images in his brain. It was too easy picturing her mounted above him, moving against him and against his length of engorged flesh buried in her hot wetness. The muscles of her body were firm and smooth to his touch and it took an immense amount of effort to stop his hands from repeating the actions of his mind, squeezing against her buttocks and forcing her pelvis closer to his.

Moon was difficult to resist, a difficulty made worse when she finally touched him. He felt two arms slide up around his neck and his own embrace tightened as he breathed deeply of her. She wore no perfume beyond the fragrance of soap and shampoo, but Srin could have sworn she also smelt of intellect. It was a heady scent associated with the large clearboards she worked so tirelessly at—a sharp, incisive, spirit-based undertone. It should have added up to a distracting conflict but, instead, seemed to embody everything that he thought about the scientist. Femininity overlaying intelligence, and softness over a deceptive strength. Moon Thadin was all of that and more.

He thrust his tongue gently into her mouth and was surprised by the vehemence of her response. Instead of him taking the lead,
she
did. Srin felt the force of her desire, a wall of pent-up passion breaking over him. Had Yalona been like this, so eager to press flesh against flesh, to duel with his tongue and run trembling fingers through his hair? Damn it, he couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember the woman he once thought of marrying. Instead, his senses were filled with Moon, her hands pulling at him, her breasts pushing against him, the entire length of her body hot and inviting.

He wanted to take her right there and then, in the cavernous room where they spent the majority of their time together. He knew he would enjoy the recollection when he walked into the lab the next morning. One day to savour the recollection of a night of ardour before pharmaceuticals reclaimed his memories once more.

He wanted to breathe her in some more, inhale the scent of her skin, lick at the sensitive juncture of her neck and the apex of her thighs. He wanted to feel her clench and contract around his fingers, around his cock, milking him to orgasm.

He wanted, but he couldn’t. Who was he doing this for? For Moon? Or for himself? He wanted the sexual release he knew he’d find in her body. He felt like he had been trapped in cotton wool for an eternity, and he wanted to feel alive, to hear the quick thump of his heartbeat in his ears, to feel his throat roughen with cries of release. But he knew they were just selfish cravings. He had nothing beyond the lustful cravings of a man. With his enfeebled mind, he didn’t have the ability to protect or even initiate a meaningful relationship with Moon. And how he wanted to. He might not be in love with her but he was deeply attracted to her. The thought struck him that perhaps a previous him
had
fallen in love with her. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. And that thought hardened his resolve.

Reluctantly, he lifted his hands from her body and disengaged the arms that were around his neck. Pulling away, he saw the flush on her face, her swollen lips and her dazed brown eyes, for once free of their characteristic wariness.

“I want to,” he began.

“Then do it.” Her voice was soft but firm. “My quarters are just down the corridor.”

“And then what? I can’t help you escape and you can’t help me. What happens the day after tomorrow when I lose my memory and have to be introduced to you again, just like the very first time?”

He saw hurt flash across her face, was pained by it, but adamant that he was only saying what needed to be said.

“You deserve someone better. Someone you can build a relationship with. Not an overgrown lab animal running the same tired treadmill.”

“And what if I don’t?” she countered. “What if I don’t want someone ‘better’?”

He shook his head and took a step back. “I can’t be what you need, Moon. I wish I could.”

“How do you know what I need?” And he heard the bitterness in her voice. “Maybe all I need is someone to make me forget where I am and
what
I am. Maybe all you think you can provide is all I need.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“Do I?”

“Even
I
remember the Security Force,” he told her. “Not facts, but feelings. And I know that after three years in their clutches, you need someone better than a mental cripple to depend on.”

“Someone who can take care of me, you mean?”

He nodded, a swift jerk of his head. “Yes.”

She bit the edge of her bottom lip, thinking for a handful of seconds. “Someone capable and intelligent, perhaps?” she asked, but didn’t wait for his answer. He felt her gaze, like hot lasers, on his face, watching for a reaction. “Someone with authority. Someone equipped to protect and take care of me. Someone like Drue Jeen?”

He couldn’t believe the skewer of white-hot anger that slashed through his body at the mention of the
Differential
’s captain, made worse by the fact that he was everything Srin was not. Not any longer, in any case. Jeen was taller, younger, more powerful, more handsome. Jeen had his mind intact. Srin tried to control himself at the thought of Jeen putting his hands on Moon’s smooth brown skin, but something must have showed beyond his gritted teeth and clenched fists because a look of satisfaction flickered on her face.

Damn her, but didn’t she realise how fucking
noble
he was trying to be? Didn’t she know how much self-control it was taking just to keep his hands off her?

It seemed a long time since Srin last got angry, but he felt the steady boil building in his veins. There was so little still within his control that he was determined not to lose what crumbs he still retained. Even his characteristic nagging headache faded into the background.

“You’re not going to provoke me, Moon.”

“Then don’t pretend you’re better than me. You’re not.” Her voice was vehement but melodic, and he listened in pleasure even as her words lashed against him. “We’re just two people caught in a relatively luxurious prison through circumstances beyond our control. Surely what we choose to do with whatever time we have together is our own concern?”

“I wish that were true. But you know it isn’t.”

Was it perverse to glean pleasure from their argument? Srin was proud of Moon’s ability to argue with him, even if there was no resolution in sight. She was truly someone he could imagine spending time getting to know. The only problem was, time was something he had nothing of. And she deserved so much better than the tatters he could offer.

“I’m not a child, Srin,” she said, obviously deciding to take another tack.

But he was a step ahead of her. “I know you’re not a child. But you deserve better than a helpless drug addict.”

She made a sound of disgust deep in her throat. Srin would have smiled if the discussion they were having wasn’t so serious. She was angry at the moment
because
she cared for him—though she did not come out directly and say it. He felt a warm glow deep inside, even as he tried to push her away. He wondered if there was any way in the universe he could somehow hold on to that feeling, dig his fingers into it and anchor it in his fickle memory, so he could pull it out in the future and marvel at how another being cared enough to fight with him. They had taken away his life. But surely there was some way he could hold on to just one permanent memory of happiness?

Even as he thought it, he knew he was deluding himself. The fact that he could not retain a memory for longer than two days meant that anything between them was doomed before it even began.

“Aren’t you reaching a bit low?” Her face was still flushed, but this time with rising irritation. “Calling yourself a drug addict?”

“Whether I got to this point voluntarily or not it doesn’t change the facts.”

The smile on her face was nothing more than a humourless twist of her lips. “I see. And you’re willing to throw away any chance for pleasure—even temporary—because you consider yourself an addict?”

“It’s the truth, Moon.”

“As you see it.”

“That’s true. But that’s the only way I know.”

Moon had never before heard the sound that woke her from sleep, but she knew instantly it meant something bad. The shrill alternating cry, emphasised by a regular bass thump, cut through to her bones. She sat up in bed with a gasp, grabbing the sides of her bunk with clenched fingers. There was always some indirect illumination from built-in panels that picked up the hard lines and edges in the cabin, but now they all winked out and she was plunged into complete darkness.

Then the hum of the air filters—a background sound she hadn’t noticed until it was gone—died. Moon drew in a panicked breath. Her heart was beating too fast to be used as any kind of reliable measure, but perhaps two seconds later, strips of low emergency lighting flashed on, glowing amber in lines along the floor and ceiling.

She strained her ears, listening for the air filters, but heard nothing above the klaxon’s strident call.

Then even that terrible sound disappeared into the void as she felt the ship skate beneath her body. It was such an alien sensation. She felt like she was barreling through an icy cylinder, the walls of her cabin shifting and swaying as if they were melting in some alien fire. Just as Moon felt it couldn’t get any worse, the gravity field cut out.

Her body drifted slowly away from her bed. Bile rose in her throat. She shut her eyes. That helped a bit, but the sensation was still unnerving. She felt the sides of the bunk slip away from her fingers and was soon floating free, but her eyes remained firmly shut.

Moon had never been weightless before. Not like this. She remembered one occasion, traveling to a conference on a commercial flight, when the anti-gravity had momentarily failed, but she was strapped in at the time and—except for a passing second of nausea—she was fine. The field had kicked back in almost instantly and the rest of the flight passed without incident.

But here? Moon felt a wall—or was it the ceiling?—gently hit her body, and she shuddered. Was that why almost every panel on the ship was coated in the rubbery compound that had so fascinated her when she first stepped on board? To minimise injury in case of an accident such as the one that plagued them now? She wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. There were too many things going wrong with her experiment. This, on top of Srin’s disclosures. She couldn’t even think straight, not with the bone-chilling sound of the siren rippling through every point in the ship. Moon clapped her hands over her ears, but the wail penetrated flesh. She sobbed, and hot tears squeezed from beneath her eyelids.

How long this went on, she couldn’t say. She bounced against walls, and bumped into several objects, but she didn’t know whether that was because she was moving or the ship was. She didn’t dare open her eyes to find out, convinced that doing so would tip her over the edge and she would then have to somehow try avoiding floating pools of vomit. Even the thought of it made her feel worse. Moon tried squeezing her eyes even harder, pushing her hands against her ears even more firmly, in a futile effort to block the situation from her mind.

A different sensation
. Moon had only an instant to register that the gravity field had been reestablished as she fell to the floor, crashing through the shelves that lined the wall, before bouncing off the long, low cabinet beneath them. Her head hit the side of the bed and she lay there, stunned. The klaxon continued its wail.

She opened her eyes. Lines of light blurred, then sharpened into the strips of amber emergency lighting above her head. She felt a weight pinning down her left hip and shoved at the tilted length of a shelf, moving it in small, rough jerks.

The siren ceased and along with it the thumping. Then came the sound of metallic scraping against the faux-timber of her bed. It built up gradually, as if approaching from the end of a long tunnel. It was several seconds before she realized that she was still pushing against the fallen shelf.

Moon dropped her hands, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, not fighting the wave of exhaustion that flooded her. In complete silence, she heard, rather than felt, a small “bump,” then the low hum of machinery behind the wall. It was one of the ever-present background noises on the
Differential
, but not as forceful as it usually was. The emergency life-support system had just been activated.

She should get up now. She needed to find out whether Srin was okay, and how much of her lab was still intact. Moon struggled against the shelf, at the same time wriggling backwards until her knees were finally clear of the obstruction. She winced as she folded her legs. Pain shot up her back and through her shoulders, but she kept moving. There wasn’t time at the moment to speculate on whether she had broken anything—besides, she would find out soon enough. She had to find Srin.

The air was stuffy but, at the same time, disconcertingly cool. Moon clambered over her bed, making her way to the door. There were aches associated with various parts of her body, but nothing that morphed into sharp pain. Still, the added discomfort was enough to set her limping, and she knew she had sustained at least heavy bruising on her left leg and hip.

Pressing one hand against her thigh, she stopped at the door. It refused to open. That made sense when she thought about it. Only the most critical functions were on emergency power. Moon scanned the wall panel next to the door and saw the barest outline of a rounded rectangle against the faint yellow-orange illumination. She reached down and pressed against the edges until one touch sent the panel springing open. Even in the dim light, Moon saw only two large buttons, one lighter than the other in the scant glimmering. Neither of them was lit.

One button looked almost red, so the other one must have been green. Taking a breath, she hit the darker button. At first she thought nothing would happen, then the seals released with a hiss and the door slid slowly open. Moon limped down the corridor, tentatively stepped into her lab and looked around.

In all honesty, it could have been worse. The strips of lighting illuminated some spaces, leaving deep pools of shadow elsewhere. The general picture was not as devastating as it could have been. While several data banks had toppled over, the squat meta-library unit was still magically upright, if out of place. The heavy-water simulation tank, bolted to the floor and closed off, was still sealed tight.

Two clearboards had been damaged, most likely when a databank unit fell to the floor after gravity was reestablished, but the rest were still anchored to floor and ceiling. Other light furniture was strewn about the room, overturned and messy but still mostly intact. Moon had faced greater destruction when she returned to her lab at the Phyllis Centre after her detention.

She picked her way to the lab’s entrance, knowing to look in advance for the override panel by the door, but it was more difficult to find this time. The ceiling of the lab was much higher than in her cabin, and the emergency lighting did not brighten the area where she was standing. She cursed, briefly considered looking for a small portable light, discarded the thought and felt for the panel instead.

She hadn’t been aware of the total silence in her small pocket of the ship until the door sluggishly opened at her command. Even though every panel was covered with insulation, Moon heard the sounds of rushed movement—thumps and vibrations—resonating through the corridors, along with chopped-off, unintelligible shouts. The chill air reminded her that she was still in her light sleeping clothes, but she ignored the temperature and started walking down the corridor, in the direction of where she roughly knew Srin’s quarters to be.

She had been expecting a corridor filled with smoke, but it was unnaturally clear. She thought she detected a hint of burnt circuitry in the air, but wasn’t sure if that was correct or she was imagining things. Maybe there were cabins that had sustained damage, maybe some might even be on fire through a combination of sparks and flammable material, but the airtight doors throughout the
Differential
kept the danger contained.

The heaviness in her hip and thigh was now coalescing into a throbbing as the shock of the situation wore off, and Moon’s fingers bit even deeper into her flesh in an attempt to alleviate the pain through pressure.

At the first corridor junction, she stepped forward and looked down a curve to her left, where she finally found the source of some of the activity she’d been hearing. Two soldiers had a large access panel open, a tray of cushioned tools between them on the floor. One of the men was taking readings from the interior of the panel, while the other waited impatiently, taking instruments out of their shells then replacing them with a dull snap. He looked up as Moon cleared the corridor.

“You’re a civilian, aren’t you?” he asked brusquely.

Moon merely nodded.

“Go back to your quarters.”

But she wasn’t going to be put off that easily. “What happened here?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. The captain will communicate to you in due time. Please return to your quarters.” He put the polite word in there but there wasn’t anything optional in what he was saying.

“Okay.”

Moon said what was expected of her, slipped back to the junction of the two corridors, then kept going, taking the right fork this time. She knew the military mind well enough by now to know the soldier had already forgotten her. But what were they working on? Cursing silently, she wished she had pulled up even the basic schematics available for the
Differential
when she first came on board, but such an idea hadn’t occurred to her. Now she wondered if it was a problem with the navigation system, or propulsion, or something else she had no clue about, that led to the disconcerting sensation of frictionless sliding she had experienced.

The noise from the right side of the corridor increased as she walked, and she slowed her steps. Unlike the serenity of the other part of the ship, where she had happened upon the two soldiers, the situation here was much more chaotic. The faint smell of burning wires that she had sniffed when she stepped out of her lab was stronger—an acrid stench that tickled her nose and kick-started a feeling of panic deep in her belly. Even more alarmingly, there was another odour insinuating itself into the mix, an aroma of scorched clothing—and roasted flesh.

Moon knew she should be running towards the source of her worry but her feet refused to move. Did she want to confront the truth of what waited at the end of the corridor’s curve? What if she found out who had suffered from the injuries she could smell? What if it was…Srin?

Fear grabbed Moon by the throat, making it difficult for her to swallow. After being punished for her innocence, she wondered if this was going to be yet another time that the universe treated her with such casual and brutal disdain. She hadn’t wanted to depend on another person, but Srin had somehow become indispensable to her wellbeing.

Someone brushed past her, heading towards the chaos, knocking her from her reverie. Moon saw his dark blue form in a daze, blinked and looked down at herself, as though she was only now aware that her clothing was completely inappropriate for the situation. And it was still cold. But she couldn’t turn around and go back to her cabin now. She feared she wouldn’t have the courage to step outside her lab again.

Please, not Srin.

Swallowing, Moon walked forward jerkily. Several doors radiated from a widening of the corridor at the end of the section. A knot of people congregated in the centre, half of them kneeling, the other half watching, waiting to help, or repairing the mass of blackened and smoking wires that lay exposed behind part of the bulkhead. With the emergency lighting still the major source of illumination, the figures melded into one another, difficult to make out. Splashes of faint light hugged edges more clearly and Moon could tell from the jagged contours of the wall that the panel had not been removed by the technicians now milling around it, but had been blown out by the force of a small explosion.

She instantly thought of the cargo bay—of her precious star-maker equipment installed there, of its intricate network of fields, wires and nanoprocessor technologies. But the mental prompt fled in an instant when she thought she recognised a thatch of familiar mid-toned hair among several pairs of legs. Not standing, but near the floor.

Oh no! Please tell me he hasn’t—

The head moved, rose and she breathed a sigh of palpable relief as Srin stood and turned around. He caught her gaze on him. Without hesitation, he roughly elbowed his way through the surrounding men, grabbed her by the shoulders and searched her face intently.

“Are you all right?” he asked urgently.

There was another lump in her throat—she was sure it was as large as the ship itself—and she nodded, trying to smile as she blinked an errant tear away.

He sighed and enfolded her in his arms, crushing her to him. It hurt, and Moon found it hard to draw a breath, but she didn’t care. Srin was alive, even though he bore the strong stench of scorched fire on him.

He released her a heartbeat later. “Do you know what happened?”

“No. I thought you might know.”

Srin shook his head. Despite both of them being in fine shape, there was worry in his eyes and anxiety creased his forehead. “I went for an exercise session. When I came back, Hen and I spoke. Just as I turned to enter my cabin….” There was no need to finish the sentence. The evidence of the corridor explosion was all around them. “We’re in normal space now,” he added.

Normal space
now?
It hadn’t occurred to her before, but implicit in Srin’s statement was the fact that the accident must have occurred in hyperspace. If anyone aboard the ship confirmed that, then the
Differential
had been very lucky to escape disaster in that zone between universes.

He looked beyond her. A second later she heard a voice asking her to move aside. Two men with a mobile med-bed passed her briskly.

“It’s Hen,” Srin said, watching her as she followed the men’s actions.

She flicked him a brief, uncomprehending look then turned back to the medics. The people standing and squatting on the floor cleared as they lifted a body onto the med-bed. It was only when they moved him that she noticed Savic’s body glistening wetly in the faint orange lighting, and the black patches on his clothes and parts of his skin.