Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two (14 page)

“
C
an I talk to you for a moment?” Raena asked when she found Mykah in the galley.

“Any time,” he said, turning away from the ball of dough he had been shoving into shape.

Raena sat at the table. Her hands found each other in her lap. This was surprisingly hard. She’d been scared before, too many times, but the solution had always been fairly straightforward: meet violence with violence. Pre-empt it, if you could. Thallian’s motto had been strike first—and leave your opposition too shattered to return fire.

None of that served her now. This time she was choosing to surrender control. “I think there’s something wrong,” she said hesitantly.

Mykah poured two cups of coffee: the real stuff, from beans he roasted obsessively until the whole ship smelled burnt. Raena didn’t normally touch it, figuring the caffeine wouldn’t help her insomnia, but after the dreams she’d been having, maybe she should drink it until she got the medicine she needed.

“I’ve been having bad dreams,” Raena said. Prize for understatement.

“Still?” Mykah asked. “You told me that before.”

Had she? Raena frowned, trying to remember. “I’ve been reliving moments in my life. All out of order. It’s like they were turning points. Moments when things might have gone another way for me. But I am who I am, who I’ve always been, and I’ve only ever seen one path in my life. And that path ended with Thallian’s death.”

She reached a shaky hand out and grabbed the metal coffee cup, just to have something solid to hold on to. “Anyway, these dreams I’m having … they always end in violence. People that I like—used to like, at least—keep getting hurt in them. By me. I don’t recognize them until after I kill them and wake up. Either I am younger in the dreams and I haven’t met these people yet, or I haven’t met them yet the way they look in the dreams. And the dreams seem so real. They’re like memories of things that never really happened.”

She sipped the coffee and was grateful for its bitter flavor.

“I’m not surprised,” Mykah said gently. “I don’t know everything about your life, but I know it’s been rough. You haven’t been out of the last prison six months yet. It makes sense that you’ve got some processing to do.”

“I thought processing was supposed to make you feel better,” she said hopelessly.

“Not at first.” He said it with enough confidence that Raena realized she didn’t know much, really, about Mykah’s life before she found him waiting tables. He’d studied the media, pulled his little pranks, and it seemed like a good idea when she plucked him away from all of that to find her a crew for the
Veracity
. He had been ridiculously, uncomfortably grateful. Now that she thought about it, life couldn’t have been easy for him, growing up in the aftermath of the War and the purges, a human loose in a potentially hostile universe, blamed for atrocities perpetrated by madmen.

“How do I get through it?” Raena asked. She didn’t like the tone in her voice, a shade too much like begging.

“What do you want to do? Do you want some professional help?”

“Maybe. After Coni gets all the documentation for my new identity nailed down. For now, though, I just want something safe to help me sleep.”

“That I can find you,” Mykah promised. “Let me make a couple of calls to Capital City.”

“Thanks, Mykah.”

“Always happy to help.”

Kavanaugh was glad to see a message from Ariel Shaad. He laughed at himself when he actually got up to find a comb before returning her call. If he was going to dream about his past, he wondered, why couldn’t he dream about the last flight with Ariel?

“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, Tarik.” She was leaning forward enough that he could see down her white blouse. Her hazel eyes sparkled, but the outfit was Ariel’s regular uniform. The pose didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“Any time, Ms. Shaad. What’s on your mind?”

“It’s work-related, unfortunately.”

Tarik grinned to cover his disappointment. “I need work.”

“I’ve got a couple more kids matched up with new families, but I can’t deliver them myself. I just had the damn racer upgraded with a tesseract drive last year. I’m afraid if the kids don’t get to Kaluum, I’ll lose the parents. I know you could make more money hauling freight, so I will make it worth your while. Tell me what the job will cost me this time.”

He typed in a figure, knowing she would match it.

“Thanks, Tarik.” She made a couple of strokes and he heard the chime that meant the deposit had gone through. “When can we expect you?”

“I’m in your neighborhood.”

“Perfect.”

There was no way to change the subject casually, so he just bulled on ahead. “What’s Raena up to these days?”

“She’s traveling with a gang of kids her apparent age.” Ariel said it drily enough that her real feelings on the subject were hidden. That was out of character; Ariel’s emotions were usually right on the surface. “Why do you ask?”

He didn’t want to admit that he’d been having nightmares about Ariel’s little sister. “I saw some documentary about the Thallians looting the Templar tombs.”

Ariel shuddered. “You think Gavin’s behind that lie?”

He wanted to say that it wasn’t like Gavin Sloane to be that subtle. Instead, he said, “The credits thanked the crew of the
Veracity
.”

“Yeah, that’s the ship Raena’s on. If you talk to her, say hi.”

From which Kavanaugh understood that Ariel and Raena weren’t speaking at the moment. “Wasn’t planning on it. I just thought it was weird, the misdirection from a ship called
Veracity
.”

“The kids might not even know the truth,” Ariel said. “It’s not like Raena ever tells anyone what she’s really doing and why.”

Kavanaugh supposed that was true. He remembered the kiss she’d brushed across his lips as she disappeared into the rain on Barraniche and wondered what it really meant to her. He shuddered.

Ariel misinterpreted it. “Is your head still ringing?”

“Nah. I’m just gonna keep myself out of arm’s reach from her from now on.”

“Good plan.”

“See you soon,” he said.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Kavanaugh broke the connection, puzzling over the hint of flirt in Ariel’s tone. Was that a promise of something more, or was she just being friendly? Damned if he could figure the two sisters out.

Shipping permits were much easier to get these days, when all sorts of antique craft were being brought out of mothballs to haul food around the galaxy. Coni handled the permitting process while Mykah negotiated with the Inkeri authorities about landing.

The process was so mundane that Raena found it comforting.

She was even more interested in the things the crew wanted to order from Capital City. Coni put her to work collecting up a list, which ranged from obscure vintage engine parts for Vezali to some kind of dried worms for Haoun. Mykah, unsurprisingly, had a whole grocery list.

Raena struggled to think of anything she wanted. Clothes, probably. Something to replace the magenta catsuit? But the catalogs she paged through online didn’t sing to her. She decided she could get by with wearing Jain’s clothes for a while longer.

The shopping process vaguely depressed her. For the first time in her life, thanks to her share of the Thallian bounty, Raena could actually afford almost anything she could think of. Did it show a lack of imagination that she couldn’t think of anything other than a new spacesuit that might distract her from her unhappiness?

She supposed it meant she ought to get a hobby.

She was glad when Haoun finally kicked her out of the cockpit so they could dock with the Eske freighter.

After the
Veracity
connected to the Eske ship, Raena showed up at the hatch, ready to drive a loader if needed. The freighter’s crew ignored her. They were meter-high curry-colored rodents with black button eyes. Delicate membranous ears stuck out from their heads like wings. Since they didn’t wear translators amongst themselves, there was much grumbling that she didn’t understand. The way their heads turned toward her afterward made their meanings clear.

She watched them climb over the crates, securing them for transport, and wondered why she felt inclined to start something. The energy building inside her wanted an outlet.

Haoun came to stand over Raena’s shoulder. The lizard towered over her, the tallest member of the
Veracity
’s crew. He didn’t stand up straight often—Raena thought it wasn’t all that comfortable for him—but it was always impressive when he did. If she had to guess, he could stretch to over two and a half meters tall.

She suspected his translator must translate all languages, not just Galactic Standard. She leaned back against him so she could ask quietly, “What did they say?”

“You don’t want to know,” Haoun’s translator said. His real voice rumbled at such a low frequency that it raised her hackles.

“That’s what I thought,” Raena said. “Are they insulting me or all humans?”

“Does it matter?” Haoun asked. The tone of his words through the translator was honestly curious.

“Not really,” she decided. “I could use some exercise.”

He tilted his head down to meet her eyes. “You know there’s a whole ship full of them, right?”

Raena looked back at the little stevedores. They’d gotten to work now, running crates of produce into the
Veracity
’s hold. They were businesslike, as if they only wanted to get the job over.

It might be interesting to see if she could school a whole freighter full of creatures who disrespected humans, but she doubted they’d take the lesson that she intended. Besides, she was supposed to be keeping a low profile.

“Thanks for having my back, Haoun.”

He laughed. “Any time you want me to be the Voice of Reason, Raena, let me know.”

The
Veracity
’s crew didn’t gather for dinner until the hold was sealed and the
Veracity
was again underway. By then, the smell of the bread Mykah had baked had Raena beside herself with hunger. It felt good to be hungry. She was the first person at the table when Mykah rang the chime.

“Mellix is being evicted from his apartment,” Mykah reported once they were all settled. “Capital City has decided it’s likely to be a focus for terrorists, so all his things are going to be hauled off-world and placed in storage.”

“So we’re going to apply to haul away his stuff?” Raena guessed.

“Ah,” Mykah said. “I hadn’t yet figured out what we should haul away from Capital City.”

“No ship is going to want to take his stuff, if there’s a threat of terrorism,” Raena pointed out. “But Capital City will be eager to get rid of it. Make them an offer, set the price high, and demand secrecy on their part.”

Mykah nodded. “I’ll do it tomorrow, before we land.”

“Oh, now we’re movers?” Haoun scoffed. “This job is getting more glamorous by the day.”

After they’d cleared the meal away, the others settled in to watch the news. Raena took her shift in the cockpit. It seemed a good opportunity to watch recordings of Mellix’s exposés over the years.

His primary interest seemed to be in the artifacts left abandoned across the galaxy after the plague wiped the Templars out. In some cases, Templar buildings had been gutted and repurposed, like the casinos on Kai. In other cases, Templar technology had been bent to new uses, like the tesseract drive. Mellix did a whole story on the Dart, the drug that had helped Gavin find her on the Templar tombworld. Apparently, it wasn’t the only Templar chemical that had been subject to misuse.

Raena learned more about the Templars from Mellix’s news stories than she had ever known before. Mostly, his work pointed up the continuing questions surrounding them. It was commonly believed the Templars were a very old people, journeying through the stars before anyone else had developed interstellar travel. No one knew where their homeworld was, although logically they must have had an origin at some point. Everyone knew where their tombworld was, although no one had been allowed to visit when the Templars were still alive to guard it. No one spoke Templar, since it was a language composed of colors, although scholars could read a few of the written texts they’d left behind.

Mellix himself was completely obsessive in his knowledge about them, but his enthusiasm inspired the viewer as well. He’d been working long enough that he must be older than he looked. His fur was a glossy chestnut that lit up nicely in the camera lights. His tufted ears rose in sensitive points above overlarge shiny black eyes. His bristling whiskers seemed permanently atwitch. He reminded her of the Eske stevedores who had taken such a dislike to her, although he was taller, and a much snappier dresser.

Most of his stories came through a tip line. Raena wondered how easy that would be to prank, to offer the journalist some juicy bit of scandal that would draw him into an ambush. She supposed he must have someone like Coni tracing back the tips. They probably weren’t as anonymous as the tipsters believed.

Mellix seemed to have received every accolade possible, to the point that there had been a free museum in his honor on Capital City that displayed all his awards. That is, there had been a museum until his announcement of the tesseract flaw. After that, it had been bombed by terrorists unknown. Three docents and several tourist families had been killed. The death toll might have been much higher, except that the news of the tesseract flaw had affected the flood of tourists on Capital City. Raena found it ironic that Mellix’s announcement had already saved lives.

While everything she learned was fascinating, it didn’t explain Mykah’s connection to the journalist. Why was he so eager to lay his life, his ship, and his crew on the line for Mellix?

Coni was in the galley making a snack when Raena found her. “Hungry?” Coni asked.

“Thirsty,” Raena decided. She opened the cooler for a bottle of cider. “Could I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

Raena wondered if Coni’s tone was a little guarded, but she went ahead anyway. “It’s about Mykah. I get that he has some special affinity for Mellix.”