Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two (11 page)

Coni spoke up for him. “Mykah’s hoping you can come up with one.”

Raena sipped from her bottle of cider, closed her eyes to savor. They did have a place for her talents. Without her to slip the journalist past his would-be assassins, there was no transport job. She couldn’t believe how relieved she felt to be needed.

“Of course I’m in,” Raena said. “Sounds like fun.”

Coni followed Raena from the galley toward her gym. “Can I tell you about my progress on your new identity?” she asked.

“Of course. Thank you.”

Coni cocked her head, gazing at Raena full in the face. Humans often didn’t like to make eye contact, fearing it might provoke the other party, as if there was safety in being seen but not to look. Raena, on the other hand, met Coni’s gaze evenly. Her expression remained completely neutral, closed off somehow but not hostile.

“I’ve written the scars on your back and the place where Thallian shot you in the shoulder into your record,” Coni reported. “They’re now souvenirs of your work as a body guard. There are even hospital reports, if anyone digs down that far.”

“Thank you,” Raena said, impressed. Her expression warmed with the enthusiasm in her voice.

Seeing the little woman’s happiness made the next part of the conversation even more difficult, Coni realized. For a moment, she wanted to leave things well enough alone, but she felt deeply that she needed to point the obvious out to Raena. “I started to do the same backgrounding for the scar on your face. I went back to your service records to see how you received it …”

“It predates my Imperial service,” Raena said drily.

“That’s the issue,” Coni agreed. “It’s very visible in your wanted poster. We can obfuscate everything else, but that scar is like a fingerprint. For you to have a scar that exactly matches a twenty-year-old wanted poster …”

“I see.” Raena nodded. “Thank you. It’s going to have to come off.”

Raena’s face had gone blank again. Coni wondered how deeply she was upset. If she were talking to Mykah, she would ask, but Coni was still hesitant to provoke Raena.

“There are plenty of spas on Capital City. I can find you somewhere discreet that will resurface your skin without questions, as long as you pay up front.”

Raena surprised her by asking, “Will you come with me? My last medical procedure was done by Thallian’s family robot. Before that, it was onboard the
Arbiter
. I … I would feel more comfortable if someone came with me to make sure the med techs don’t suddenly ID me in the middle of the procedure and arrest me for war crimes …”

Her voice trailed off and she met Coni’s gaze again. “Please come along to watch my back.”

Coni was touched. The request seemed to cross the line from being shipmates to something more intimate. It wasn’t a line that Coni had been aware that she wanted to cross, until now.

“Of course,” she said. “I’d be glad to.”

Later, thinking about that conversation, Coni wondered about Raena’s attachment to her own appearance. Coni lived closely with a human man who re-sculptured his facial hair every other day, who thought nothing of changing the color or loft of the hair atop his head. Mykah’s appearance was fluid and fun for him to play around with.

Raena’s appearance remained consistent throughout her Imperial records. That might have been mostly to cater to Thallian’s preferences, but even after she gave up her Imperial uniform, she continued to dress in black. On the run, she often wore a cloak to cover her weaponry, but she’d worn a cape while working as a “diplomat” on the
Arbiter
. It wasn’t much of a change.

Even while she was trying to hide from Thallian’s bounty hunters, Raena never altered her face or attempted to disguise her height or weight. She even kept her hair long, loose, and always black.

Coni thought over the outlines of Raena’s life, as she knew it: a refugee traveling with her deranged mother, bought as a slave for an arms manufacturer’s daughter, enlisted by Thallian as his aide and trained to kill. Then she had the year or so on the run before she was captured, tried, and sentenced to the Templar tomb.

In all that time, Raena had nothing to call her own. Nothing except the clothes she wore and whatever she could strap on her back. Nothing, really, except the body that served as the only possession she couldn’t mislay, the only commodity she could trade to keep herself alive.

No wonder she didn’t want to change it. It was all she had ever had.

Coni clenched her eyes shut and ordered herself not to weep. Raena had never asked for pity, only for help.

Haoun stretched out on the heated platform that took up most of his cabin. Warmth crept into his limbs, making him sleepy, but he put the call through anyway.

Jexx answered him immediately. “Daddy!”

His daughter had gotten longer in the face and her scales were losing their rounded childish edges. Haoun ached that he couldn’t be home to watch her grow.

“Hi, Baby,” he said with false cheer. “What are you still doing awake?”

“Homework,” she pouted. “I have to write a poem to perform tomorrow.”

“When did you get the assignment?”

She hung her head.

Haoun laughed at her. “I won’t keep you long, then. I just wanted to tell you …” His voice trailed off. He’d wanted to tell her not to worry, but clearly she wasn’t worried. Was it possible she didn’t know about the recall of the tesseract engines?
She was very mature for her age
, he thought proudly,
but she was still a child
.

“I’m going to Capital City,” he finished.

She tilted her head and looked at him skeptically. “You called to tell me that?”

“I called to ask if you wanted a souvenir. I’ve never been before.”

“Who are you talking to, Jexx? You’re supposed to be finishing your homework.” Serese appeared in the doorway behind the desk. She’d gotten heavier since Haoun left. The muscles bunched around her jaw looked strong enough to bite through metal. She was so beautiful.

“Hello,” Haoun said. He hoped the pang he felt wasn’t audible in his voice. “I was about to let her go back to work.”

“Hello, Haoun,” Serese said coldly. It was uncommon for Na’ash males to hang around their families after the eggs hatched. Serese felt that Haoun’s interest in his spawn was creepy.

“I wanted to let the kids know I’m okay,” he said quickly. “The
Veracity
has an old Earther drive. It’s not affected by the recall.”

“Good, Haoun. I’ll tell the boys in the morning. For now …”

“Get to work, Jexxie,” he said dutifully. “I expect you to be brilliant.”

“Love you, Daddy!” she chirped, as Serese leaned over to disconnect them.

“Love you too, Baby,” he told the empty screen.

CHAPTER 6

A
s Raena left her gym for the day, Coni called to her from the cockpit. “Come up front. I think I have this about finished.”

“That’s great news, Coni.” Raena draped her towel over her shoulders and came to perch in Haoun’s oversized pilot’s chair. “But first: can I ask you some questions? You probably know the official story of my life better than I do.”

Coni nodded. “As far as the old Imperial records were concerned, Raena Zacari was captured, court-martialed, and executed.”

“Imperial procedure was to incinerate the prisoner and send her remains back home at cost to the family. Did that happen?”

Coni poked around online. Raena sat back in Haoun’s chair, arms folded across her chest, content to wait. She thought of herself as fairly adept at human-centric computer systems, but Coni understood the wider galactic systems—Raena still thought of them as alien, which she knew simply betrayed her myopia. Coni could read languages Raena couldn’t even identify and find virtual niches and backwaters that Raena could not. She could be a powerful ally, but Raena couldn’t figure out where Coni’s true allegiance rested, other than with Mykah.

It surprised Raena to discover how much of her interaction with humans had been reliant on her ability to read their emotions. Coni, with her dry way of speaking and her inexpressive muzzle, was impossible for Raena to interpret. It left her feeling continually off balance.

“I don’t see anything right away,” Coni said, “but I’ll keep looking.” Without glancing up from her screen, Coni added, “Did you have a home for them to send things to?”

“Not that the Empire would recognize as such, probably. I doubt Thallian reported to them that, before he inducted me into Imperial service, I had been a runaway slave. The Shaads would still have legally been my owners, but they couldn’t have been defined as my next of kin. It doesn’t matter, I guess. I doubt the Shaads would have wanted to claim my remains, if it cost another credit.”

“Your life is just one unending tale of woe, isn’t it?” Coni asked. If it had been Mykah saying that, Raena would have known he meant to tease her. If it had been Vezali, her new translator was sensitive enough to register shades of sympathy. In this instance, Coni spoke Imperial Standard. She’d learned it at university, while studying human sociology. She said the words clearly, in a deadpan way that Raena could only take as mocking.

Raena smiled, choosing to let the offense slide. “All the woe is over and done,” she said. “With your help, I’m going to be my own free woman soon.”

“Then what?”

“Hopefully, Mykah will find us some work that suits our various talents, for which we will be as well paid as when we claimed the Thallian bounty. Then we can continue to wallow in the luxury to which we’re becoming accustomed.”

Coni chuckled, which did interesting things to her muzzle. The amusement didn’t change the expression in her purple eyes, though.

Raena thought the blue-furred girl might say something about the drunken flirting with Mykah last night, but she didn’t. Raena didn’t bring it up either.

Instead she said, “Thanks for your help, Coni. I couldn’t do this without you.”

“That’s true.”

“What I don’t really understand is why you’re going to so much trouble for me.”

“I like a puzzle,” she said simply. “I’ve never made a person before. It’s both easier and not as easy as I expected.”

“So you’re helping me because it’s fun?”

Coni snorted. “We’re all helping you because it’s fun.”

Then I’m safe as long as I continue to provide entertainment, Raena understood. No pressure there.

“What did you do before?” Coni asked.

“Before what?”

“When you were running from Thallian.”

“I got out of the Empire into the fringes of human contact as quickly as I could. I tried to stick to worlds where a lone human wouldn’t attract attention. I wore Viridian gloves all the time, always paid cash, and kept my hood up. It didn’t really help. The bounty was high enough to intrigue all kinds of people. So I want to try going legitimate for a change.”

“Who’s looking for you now?”

“No one. That’s why we’re not troubling to change my name.”

But Raena wondered about Gavin: Would he just assume she was hiding and not bother to search for her real name?

What did it matter, really? If he sent her a message, she could ignore it. If he sent her a package, he’d have to track down the
Veracity
first and the crew was smart enough not to open anything that came their way unexpectedly. Even if Gavin showed up in person, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t kick his ass from one side of the galaxy to the other. He might think of himself as a big, bad man, but having served under a truly bad man, Raena certainly wasn’t afraid of
Gavin
. Ultimately, he had too much self-doubt to be very dangerous. He didn’t feel like the universe owed him anything, because secretly he felt he wasn’t worthy of anything. Sooner or later, he would decide he wasn’t worthy of Raena—or at least that she wasn’t worthy of him. Probably all he wanted was closure.

“Someone you want to tell me about?” Coni asked, fangs revealed in what might have been a smirk.

“Old boyfriend,” Raena said. “He might try to look me up, but he’s not going to be any trouble.”

“Your previous boyfriend was a lunatic,” Coni pointed out.

“This guy might be, too, but he’s a whole lot less savage.”

“I’m sensing a theme here.”

“Not so much a theme as a common denominator,” Raena said.

She wondered if Coni had been trying to be friendly, offering a girlfriend’s banter. Raena shook her head. She could use a girlfriend. Any sort of friend, really. Once again she reflected that she’d never really made a friend on her own, without Ariel to serve as a bridge or a buffer. Now, beyond trying to figure out human behavior, Raena had to unravel the blue-furred girl’s meanings, too.

Why was it so much easier being friends with Vezali, who was even less humanoid that bipedal Coni? They didn’t even speak the same language, but hanging out with the tentacled girl was very comfortable.

Raena supposed it was because they didn’t have Mykah standing between them.

Luckily, Coni didn’t follow that train of thought. “Let me read through all my notes one last time and I’ll send the final CV back to your cabin.”

“That will be perfect. It will be great to get this all locked in before we show up at Capital City.”