Jaydium (14 page)

“Separate them?” Brianna arched her eyebrows expressively. “How do you propose to do that? Invite them individually to a festive dance?”

“We use you as bait.”

Brianna's face turned three shades whiter. Spots of color stood out on her cheeks like dabs of fresh-spilled blood.

“Listen, as far as they know, they left you both stunned and tied up,” Kithri explained. “All we have to do is let them catch a glimpse of you — free and following them. They'll send someone after you — one of the underlings most likely — and I'll stun him. Then we repeat the process.”

“What if something goes wrong and they capture her again?” Lennart said. He shook his head. “If it's got to be anyone, I'll go —”

“They'll send more men after you than they will after her,” Kithri pointed out. “You're bigger and — that's what I'd do in their place. Besides, I'll need you for back up.”

“Back up? I couldn't fire a gun even if you gave one to me.”

“I don't know if I can...” Brianna wet her lips nervously.

“What's to stop them from sending more than one after her?” Lennart said.

“Why should they? If they're not used to gravity, they won't want to do any more running around than they have to. They'll have to leave someone behind to guard Eril. Besides, I don't hear you making any better suggestions.”

“First we have to find them,” Brianna said grudgingly.

“All right, so let's find them.”

o0o

The pirates left a trail of broken crystals that anyone could follow. Kithri grimaced at the imprint of a boot across a fallen, sapphire-tinted cylinder.

“Don't they care what they destroy?” Lennart asked.

“About these artifacts, no,” Brianna said in a tightly controlled voice. “You can't eat or breathe them, so they're of no value in space. All the pirates want now is the jaydium.” She brushed a pile of glittering splinters with her boot. “It wasn't this bad when I first came.”

They heard the pirates before they saw them, masculine voices booming through the ruins. Kithri caught a glimpse of them along a colonnade of opalescent spires, moving through the overlapping multihued shadows. Before the three of them scuttled back under cover, she counted five big men dressed in skin-tight jackets and pants of black and midnight blue. Beneath their barrel-chested torsos, their legs looked unnaturally thin. One bald head gleamed in the sunlight.

Eril stood on the far side of the group, flanked by two guards. His hands were bound behind him. The leather holster that had once carried his force whip hung empty, and his sleeveless jacket was missing. Kithri thought he looked like a sand-leopard in a pen of black bulls.

Kithri pulled Brianna and Lennart back into a alcove of garnet and lapis, praying they had not been seen. Long heartbeats later, there was still no outcry, and she breathed easier. Brianna reached into her pack and drew out the map, silently pointing out their location. Kithri traced out their route with her finger as Lennart looked over her shoulder. Brianna nodded in agreement. One more careful scan of the map, and then Kithri gestured for her to put it away and leave the pack.

Kithri tried not to imagine what Brianna must be feeling as she headed toward the pirates' voices. She hadn't even asked whether Brianna was willing to risk herself to rescue the two men, who were not her people. She didn't owe them any loyalty. Yet Kithri had been furious with Eril when he presumed to make the same sort of decision for her. Now it was too late to say anything to either one of them.

Kithri tightened the pack on her shoulders and waited. Before too much time had passed, she heard male voices shouting and then a high, thin shriek, not of shock or pain but surprise. It was Brianna playing her part, she hoped, and not some unpleasant new development.

Kithri gestured to Lennart and took off at a run, following the planned route. Their pounding feet threw up puffs of sparkling powder. The particles smelled acrid, like jaydium gone bad.

Breathing harder and clenching her stungun, Kithri sprinted down the narrow corridor that connected two main avenues. Brianna raced into view, her arms pumping frantically. A black-clad pirate was almost upon her. They burst into a little circular courtyard, darting past the amethyst obelisk that stood at its heart. The grit on the ground lay thicker here, like drifted sand.

Suddenly Brianna skidded and slipped on the dust. She screamed, landing obliquely on one hip. But she had no time to regain her footing before the pirate backhanded her across the side of her face. Kithri heard the sickening
whap!
as Brianna's body flew into the air.

As Kithri slowed enough for a decent aim, a second pirate lumbered into the courtyard, breathing hoarsely as he rolled along at a heavy-footed lope. Lennart shoved Kithri aside, hurled himself into the air, and tackled the second pirate around his hips. They went down in a flurry of pulverized crystal. Lennart yelled something she couldn't understand.

She staggered from the glancing impact of his body, almost losing her balance. The dust made for unexpectedly slippery footing. In that moment, the first pirate whirled, spotted her and reached for something at his belt. She didn't recognize it, only his intent. She steadied the stungun with both hands and fired.

The pirate arched backwards, suspended in space, and for a moment Kithri feared the stungun's charge was too weak to numb his bulky body. He turned slowly towards her and she took a step backward. Then she saw the whites of his eyeballs, rolled up in his head. He landed with a
thump!
across Brianna's legs.

Lennart and the second pirate still wrestled on the ground, although Lennart was on top and seemed to have the larger man's arms pinned. Kithri took careful aim at the pirate's head and fired again. He went limp instantly.

Face flushed, Lennart nodded and got to his feet. He shoved the first pirate's body off Brianna while Kithri tucked her stungun through her belt and fumbled for the monofilament rope in the pack.

“Untranslatable,”
Brianna moaned as her eyes fluttered open. “Not again...”

“Are you all right?” Lennart asked. “Did he hit you hard?”

Brianna ran her fingertips over her jaw, wincing. “Obviously, he hit me
hard.
” She sat up and nudged the fallen pirate with one foot. “My head feels like he's still sitting on it. I c-c-can't...” Her face turned gray and her eyes didn't seem to track properly. She propped her head in her hands, elbows supported on her bent knees, and for a moment she seemed to be steadier. Then she fell over sideways in a dead faint.

Cursing, Kithri scrambled to Brianna's side.

“Fellows!” barked a masculine voice from behind her. “Both fellows! Stand away from her!”

“Stand away from her, both!” The voice repeated in the same staccato bark. “With respect to the blaster I hold, unless you desire to become imitation of city dust!”

Kithri raised her hands and slowly got to her feet, her back to the voice. From the corner of her vision, she saw Lennart do the same. What a dustbug idiot she'd been, so sure of herself. Now the three of them were in the pirates' clutches, with no one left free to plan a real rescue, and it was her own damned fault.

She wondered fleetingly if she could snatch the stungun from her belt, whirl around, and aim it before the pirate could fire his blaster.

Talk about idiotic ideas!

“Fellows! Turn slowly around.”

Kithri obeyed. It was the bald head, Teeg, a glistening black egg on stilts. In one fist he held a wide-muzzled pistol of dull orange metal. A squirrelly looking pirate in blue knelt over the one she'd stunned. Behind them moved a shadow of a man of their height but thinner and red-haired. He carried Eril's force whip, tucked through his wide leather belt. Kithri saw his eyes and swallowed hard, struggling to keep her face impassive.

“No fellow, this. Female!” The squirrelly one grinned in Kithri's direction. She decided he must be Quick, Teeg's second.

Red-hair slipped forward and proceeded to search both prisoners with ruthless efficiency. When her turn came, Kithri tried not to flinch from the soft, intrusive patting of his hands. He tugged the stungun free from her belt and tossed it to his leader. Quick bent once more over the inert pirate. Kithri heard the click of a metallic instrument, and then groans as the two stunned man regained consciousness.

Without speaking, Quick and Red-hair hauled the other pirates to their feet. Kithri found the silence between them almost as unnerving as Red-hair's lingering touch as he tied her wrists behind her back and pushed her forward. Quick slung Brianna's body across his shoulders and followed.

Eril lay crumpled in the center of a small courtyard ringed by low benches of emerald and aquamarine. Rather than leave additional men to guard him, Teeg had simply eliminated any threat he might pose. Another massive pirate, clad in black like their leader, looked both grim and bored where he sat on the fragments of a fallen column. He held a second orange pistol. Kithri wondered where the other two were...still hunting for jaydium in the city?

Red-hair smiled unpleasantly as he forced Kithri down on a slab of blue fire-opal and secured her wrists to a metal loop recently drilled into the stone. She suppressed her revulsion at his touch, wary of giving him any pleasure in anticipation.

Teeg stood in front of her, his stork-thin legs braced in an aggressive stance. Red-hair grabbed her jaw and wrenched her head around so she was forced to look directly into the sun.

“Jaydium, say where is source.” The pirate leader's face was shadowed and unreadable.

Caught in Red-hair's iron grip, Kithri could hardly breathe, let alone talk. She managed to blurt out, “I don't know — what you're — talking about.”

Teeg back-handed her full force across her cheek and she reeled with the blow. Had it been only her imagination, or had Red-hair thrust her against it, anticipating his captain's attack?

With a sudden shiver, Kithri realized she could not save herself by giving Teeg what he wanted. The physical condition of the prisoners didn't matter. The pirates were going to kill them anyway. Teeg would indulge Red-hair in his pleasure for as long as it served his own aims. The very best she could do was pray they made a crucial mistake while she could still take advantage of it.

There was a movement at the far end of the courtyard. Kithri's doubling sight showed her two bland-faced giants entering the courtyard. They wore unremitting black like their leader. One of them grunted, “Got lost,” but Teeg did not take his eyes off Kithri or give any sign he'd heard them. Silently they took their places in guard position by the other prisoners.

Before Kithri's vision cleared completely, Teeg rumbled again, “Jaydium, where.”

She shook her head,
No
.

Again came another blow, and again the jerk on her head. Pain reverberated through her skull, and her stomach knotted in nausea.

“Jaydium, where.”

Kithri squeezed her eyes shut. On the opposite side of the courtyard Eril had come awake and was watching her. She could not see him, but she could sense the tension of his muscles in the pit of her belly.

She felt him sit up, alert and clear-headed. His face glimmered like a beacon behind her closed lids — expressionless as a carved statue, honey-smooth skin, tiny scar high on one cheek, mouth as a few strands of hair fallen across his forehead. Black eyes shone with fiery intensity.

Now Kithri sensed something more than his eyes on her, as if there were an invisible rope stretching between them. For an instant the pain in her head felt distant, barely noticeable.

Eril, don't you break because of me! Let them do whatever they want, but don't give them anything for it. You hold on just as long as I do!

Slowly, deliberately, with the same timing as before so that it came exactly when she expected it, Teeg and Red-hair coordinated another blow. The force used was identical, only this time the agony that lanced through her head was magnified tenfold. And then, before the pain died down, another blow —
Eril, hold on! Don't leave me now!
— a sharp uppercut that caught her in the solar plexus and sent her reeling into asphyxia for an anguished moment.

And then another. She clung to the image of Eril's impassive face, measuring the shallowness of her courage against his silence, until she could no longer see anything at all.

o0o

Water splashed against her face and up her nostrils. Kithri sputtered awake and struggled to open her eyes. Red-hair released her head with a savage jerk and her weight fell forward on her bound wrists, twisting her shoulders.

“Jaydium. Where.” Again the implacable, inflectionless voice,.

Kithri ran her tongue over her dripping lips, tasting salt mixed with stale water. One lip had split open, though she hadn't felt it at the time. Her voice came as a meaningless syllable. “Uhh...”

“Hit again.”

Somehow she summoned the strength to moan, “You wouldn't — believe me — if I told you.”

Teeg drew closer again, hovering over her. His bulk blotted out the searing sun but Kithri felt no relief in his shade, only intensified menace. He would beat her senseless again, no matter what she told him. Already she felt too concussed to think coherently.

Eril, don't give them anything! Hold on for me, hold on...

The words echoed through her skull like a monastic chant. Kithri closed her eyes again, numbly awaiting the next blow.

o0o

She opened them some time later, aware that she had been drifting in and out of consciousness. Her temples reverberated at every pulse beat and her swollen lids opened with great reluctance. She moved her mouth experimentally. The cut lip stung in protest and her bruised torso ached all over. A needle of pain shot across her lower ribs with each breath. Her shoulder joints burned from being twisted behind her and she guessed she'd been hanging there for some time. She tried to focus on the shadows moving around the pastel-lit courtyard, but her vision doubled rebelliously.