Atrophy (7 page)

Tannin glanced down at her, his expression unreadable, then he sat back down and took the cloth Kira held out to him. “You want to hook me up to your machines to see if I’m lying or not, go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Rian stepped back and nodded at Kira, who turned to bring the emotion resonator and neuron scanner online.

“You don’t have to do this.” She glanced up from where he was running the damp cloth over his repaired skin, but he wasn’t looking at her as he concentrated on wiping the blood away.

“Yes, he does,” Rian said from where he’d taken up a stance next to Callan.

“It’s all right, Zahli, I don’t mind.” His gaze caught hers and the intensity of his green eyes did something unsettling to her pulse for a second.

“Ready when you are, Captain.” Kira tapped at the crystal display set in the bulkhead above Tannin. He moved back on the bed and crossed his arms, seeming to close himself off.

“How did you get onboard?” Rian demanded.

Tannin sighed quietly, the emotion resonator showing his despondency. “I volunteer in the spaceport clerical office, doing various administrative tasks. When you landed yesterday, your clearance codes were sent to the colonel marshal. He left the office for a time, and I took the opportunity to copy the data onto my commpad.”

Rian braced a foot against the diag-cart. “All right then, tell me why you tried to stowaway on my ship.”

“I would have thought it obvious.”

Rian shrugged. “Humor me. I’m not that intelligent. I need it all laid out.”

Tannin’s expression hardened, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to reply, but then he glanced away from them all to stare across the medbay.

“When I was sixteen, my friend, Broc, was killed. One of my other friends, Quaine Ayden, murdered him. Since Quaine’s father was chancellor of our city on Barasa, they blamed Broc’s death on me and I was sentenced to Erebus.”

The results displayed on the crystal screen remained steady, showing no hint of untruth from Tannin. Relief coursed through her. At least she hadn’t set her mind on helping a murderer or rapist.

She wrapped her fingers around the necklace her parents had given her when she’d turned fifteen, unable to imagine the desolation Tannin must have felt as a teenager, being taken away from everything and everyone he’d known and sent to live in hell.

“So you really don’t belong here, you’re innocent—”

Rian held up a hand before she could say anything else. “Hold on. Are we talking about High President Isah Ayden, Barasa’s world leader?”

Tannin nodded. “He is now, yes. Then, he was only a chancellor, but still had enough money and influence to make sure my case looked watertight and his son was in no way implicated.”

“I hope you’re not looking for revenge, because there’s no way you’re getting near any of them,” Callan commented from where he stood by the medbay doors.

The emotion resonator showed Tannin’s anger rising, though his expression remained neutral. “I’ll admit, I spent nights dreaming about getting retribution and it partly fueled my desire to escape. But more than anything, I want freedom. I’ve wasted enough years on this hellhole.”

The
Imojenna’s
ship-wide comms pinged, signaling an incoming transmission had been received, and Rian straightened. “I need to get that.”

Zahli slid off the edge of the cot as her brother walked to the doors and nodded at Callan. Tannin had told them his situation and the ship’s diag systems had proven he hadn’t lied.

“Rian?”

He looked back at her and then glanced at Tannin. “We’re not going straight to the Rim. We’ve got cargo to pick up on Arleta.”

Why did he have to make things so frecking hard for her? He knew what she wanted to know, but he’d make her ask. If Rian didn’t agree to help him, she didn’t know what she would do. She couldn’t tell Rian—or anyone else on the ship—the truth of what had happened to her. But neither could she leave Tannin to his fate here on Erebus.

“What about Tannin?”

“If anyone asks, I don’t know anything about the scumrat sneaking aboard my ship and skipping out on Arleta. I don’t want to hear about it, and I don’t want to see it.”

Zahli bit her lip on a smile. Despite his interstellar reputation as a ruthless, callous, and very deadly ex-IPC soldier, when it came down to the line, Rian was an honorable man and always did right. So Tannin would be coming with them, at least as far as Arleta. She looked at Tannin, who appeared dazed. Callan sent her one last glare then followed Rian up to the next level.

“Did he mean—?” Tannin’s voice had become slightly hoarse.

“You can come with us.” She turned to Kira, who was packing away bloody towels and the diag-cart. “Do you need to do anything else?”

“No, as long as he avoids any heavy lifting or sudden movements of that arm for the next few days, he should be fine.”

“Come on, we’ll find you some quarters.” Zahli stepped back as Tannin stood, still looking totally confused. And kind of adorable.
Ergh
, where had that thought come from? Yeah, with those eyes, that thick black hair falling across his forehead and the square angles of his jaw, he was more than a little handsome. But he was complicated.
Everything
was complicated. And he wouldn’t be on the ship for more than two rotations. Feeling anything other than gratitude toward him would just be stupid.

Tannin remained silent as they went back down a level. Despite what Rian had said about the risk they faced if they got caught with Tannin onboard, helping him was the right thing to do.

Okay, so maybe there was something there, something about him that drew her to him. But after he departed on Arleta, he’d almost certainly spend the remainder of his days on the run, hiding from the IPC. No one in documented history had escaped from Erebus and lived to talk about it.

Of course, they were a long way from being in the clear. They still had to get off Erebus without anyone finding out Tannin was aboard.

Chapter Five

R
ian pushed his hair back, beads on his wrist clinking. He dropped into the captain’s chair and swiveled toward the crystal display screen to bring up the message the ship’s system had recorded and stored. The sun had barely come up on this hellpit of a world and already his day had turned to shite.

“You should have gone with the ‘throwing his dead body out the hatch’ option.” Callan sat in the co-pilot’s chair, resting his big-ass nucleon gun across his bent knees. “You really think we’re going to get off world with an Erebus inmate onboard?”

He cut Callan a glance that he hoped said
shut the hell up
as he accessed the stored comm. Callan was great at his job. Rian had never met anyone who knew as much about security detail, weapons, and combat as he did, but sometimes Callan forgot the whole chain-of-command thing, his often unwanted opinions bordering on insubordination.

“Come on, Cap’tin. Your reputation might get you out of a lot, but it sure as dick won’t save us if the IPC officers catch us with that rat bastard onboard. I don’t understand why you want to help—”

“I like the fact that no one’s done it before. I like being the exception to the rule. If anyone can break someone out of Erebus, it’s damn well going to be me.”

Callan raised both eyebrows. “You’re a few stars short of a galaxy, you know that?”

“That’s enough, Roarke.”

He refused to explain to Callan why all Zahli needed to do was look at him with those blue eyes, so like their mom’s had been, and he’d give her anything she asked. Zahli had a pure heart, she always chose to see the best in people, hadn’t been exposed to the horror and ugliness this universe could offer—part of his existence revolved around protecting her. His baby sister was the only warm thing he had in his life, especially after the Reidar had all but ripped his soul out during those months of hell he’d spent locked in some lab in the industrial zones on Cassius.

Anyway, he got the feeling something else was going on with her, something other than just her usual good hearted nature in wanting to help people. And he intended to find out what that something else was.

Zahli aside, the scumrat hadn’t been lying about why he’d snuck onboard. Rian had seen that through the ship’s diag systems with his own eyes. And above all, he always did what was right…which wasn’t always necessarily right according to IPC law. If the man hadn’t committed the crime, he didn’t deserve life on Erebus. Rian didn’t view it as actively helping the guy escape, but he also knew he walked a fine line by not apprehending and reporting a stowaway.

Besides, Tannin’s family was connected on Barasa, and there had to be more to his story, possibly a clue that could benefit him. So before the scumrat left his ship, he was going to get some more information on Barasa’s high chancellor.

He tabbed up the message he wanted to see and then sat back in his chair as Arnon Rance’s scruffy, bearded face appeared on screen. “Good hail, Sherron.”

“Arnon Rance?” Callan sat forward, shoving his gun in a holster attached to the side of the chair. “Why the hell are you getting messages from him? Last time we dealt with him, he gave us a shipment of counterfeit memory storage devices, and we had to pay the clients back out of our next haul. This is so you can track him down and shoot him, right?”

“Shut up, Roarke.” He paused the transmission and took it back to the start, since he hadn’t heard the first part of the message while Callan blabbed in the background.

“I have a shipment bound for you. The cargo is very valuable to the Reidar. They paid me a lot of money to acquire it and will pay the freighters who deliver it almost as much, so long as it gets there in one piece.”

“Arnon Rance? Why in the fiery pits of hell is he on our viewport?” Jensen, the ship’s mechanic, stopped by his chair, looking up at the display. “Didn’t you say if you ever laid eyes on him again you’d light a gas grenade up his—?”

“Move it or lose it, Roarke.” Lianna appeared, chasing Callan out of her chair.

Rian paused the recording again with a long sigh. “
Jezus
, people, can’t I get five seconds of quiet?”

There was a chorus of “sorry, Captain” before they all shut up and he resumed the communication. “Like I said last time we talked, I’m grounded in the desert on Arleta. I’ll be here for the next two rotations. If you want this cargo and the chance to get some intel on the Reidar, get your famous ass here before then, Sherron, or I’ll be gone.”

The viewport shimmered and then cleared, showing the Erebus spaceport laid out below them.

“All right, crew, are we clear to launch?” Rian filed away the message and brought up navigational data to get them from Erebus to Arleta. They’d be pushing it to get there by two rotations, but this cargo, whatever it might be, had to be important. Maybe the most important thing he’d come across since he’d left the IPC military and struck out to track down and destroy every Reidar he could find. Important enough to deal with that back-stabbing roach-sucking pissant of a trader, Rance. The guy never left his small quadrant of space, happy to be a big-time trader in a small pond. Rance knew Rian was hunting the Reidar after coming up against them himself, the bastard just didn’t know why.

Rance went out of his way to avoid them, which was probably just one of the many reasons he wanted to hand off this shipment. Still, the hairy slime-ball had obviously realized whatever cargo he’d acquired was valuable enough that Rian would overlook his burning desire to fill the man with plasma and slingshot him into the nearest star.

No one had answered his question about launching, and he looked up to see everyone staring at the hatchway where Zahli stood, the scumrat just behind her. And if he wasn’t mistaken the guy had on one of his shirts.
Frecking Christ
.

Zahli crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. “Are you telling me we’re going to Arleta because of a message from
Arnon Rance
?”

He stood up and slammed a fist down on the crystal screen, his beads clinking loudly. “Yes! Now is everyone clear on that? Rance has something valuable the Reidar want. I’m not going to explain anything else. And I thought I said I don’t want to see that scumrat, which most definitely includes standing on my bridge.”

Zahli sent him a wounded look then murmured to their stowaway and led him back down the stairs. Sen muttered something about checking the hyper-engine’s secondary controls, while Callan shrugged and stomped off the bridge, no doubt going to find something to eat.

Lianna brought the ship online and put in a launch request to Erebus’s spaceport control tower. “And I thought stabbing people first thing in the morning usually put you in a good mood.”

“I want us in void-space and hyper-drive engines at maximum as soon as we’ve cleared orbit. It’s going to be close, but missing this rendezvous with Rance is not an option.” He sat back down and resumed his course plotting.

“Yes, sir, most reverent Captain.”

“Lianna, remind me again why I haven’t dumped you out the hatch while pulling hard gees?”

“Because no one else can backward engineer the latest tech onto this old junker of a ship like I can.”

“Right. When we make the Rim, remind me get you to draft up a ‘help wanted’ ad so I can threaten you with it next time you decide to shoot your mouth off.”

She turned her attention to her comm as officers in the spaceport gave the all-clear for launch, but he caught the edge of a smile tilting her lips. Hell, when had his crew stopped taking his threats seriously?

Rian pushed his hair away from his eyebrows and leaned back, his chair squeaking slightly as it moved under his weight. A small thrill chased under his skin. He and his crew were about to brazenly fly away from Erebus with an inmate onboard. Yeah, it went a little way to improving his mood.

That, and the knowledge he had the opportunity to access some type of cargo significant to the Reidar. Whatever it was, he’d take it from Rance and then he’d use it against the bastards.

Either that or he’d destroy it.

T
annin leaned against the large dining table in the middle of the common room as Zahli pointed out where things were in the modest galley. He should have been paying attention. He didn’t want to have to go looking for someone to show him how to use the condiments dispenser when he wanted a drink, or how to turn on the food replicator when he got hungry.

But the ship had started shimmying beneath his boots and through the galley viewport, he saw the buildings of Erebus’s spaceport tilting and then moving away. His grip tightened where it held the edges of the table, as if that could keep a lid on the apprehension and disbelief coursing through him. How many nights had he dreamed of this exact moment? Now living it, everything seemed underwhelming. There was no feeling of exuberance, no sense of victory, no sentiment of rightness. Just a hollow doubt that it could last.

His neck felt taut and he still had a stinging twinge in his shoulder. Of course, that was far better than the burning ache when Rian had first stabbed him. That little scene went right along with everything he’d ever heard about Sherron.

But the sonuvabitch had agreed to let him stay onboard. Or at least agreed to pretend he didn’t know about it. After spending the past twelve years relying only on himself, and considering he’d been betrayed by people he’d trusted, he’d never thought there might actually be people in the universe willing to help him.

Still, the guy definitely lived up to the apparently not-exaggerated stories. He had to admit, if he hadn’t been on the wrong end of that knife, he would have been impressed by the captain’s skills. Maybe escaping Erebus on the ship of a guy like Rian Sherron wasn’t the best option, but it was the only one he had. And to make it off Erebus, he would have done a deal with pretty much anyone, including the few people in the galaxy more psychopathic than Sherron. So he’d play it smart, try to keep out of the guy’s way, put up with his shite when he did have to deal with the captain, and definitely avoid any kinds of pointy objects when Rian was around.

“Tannin?”

With some difficulty, he turned his attention from where the buildings of Erebus were getting smaller and smaller, to look at Zahli. She’d clipped her thick hair back, but a few stray strands had escaped to frame her expressive features and beautiful dark blue eyes. In the clear light of the galley, he could see a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. They were faint, but visible, and every single one gorgeous. He couldn’t ever remember meeting anyone like her, even before he’d landed on Erebus. There was something sweet about her, some indefinable, wholesome quality that he wanted to lose himself in.

She smiled and closed the short distance between them, her body moving like music, a sensual, primitive rhythm she probably had no idea flowed from her. It sparked an entropic reaction within him, heating him up in places he’d long not thought about. But she wasn’t for him; they existed in entirely different worlds. Any thoughts leading in that direction would only make an already messy situation that much worse.

“When I’m telling you to
never
, even under threat of torture, ever eat the repli-chicken, you might want to be taking notes or something.”

“No repli-chicken. Got it.”

She stepped around him and slid into one of the seats pushed up against the table. “We bought some supplies for the next few days at least, so I guess it doesn’t really matter until we run out of fresh food…” She trailed off. Did she sense he wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat? His whole existence had been tossed up in the air. Food was about the last thing on his mind.

The viewport dimmed as the ship left Erebus’s atmosphere and made orbit. The swirling green of the prison planet looked almost enchanting from up here.

He inhaled a deep breath, feeling his ribs expanding as though they’d been locked tight around his chest for the past twelve years. When he exhaled long and low, a tremor skittered through his body, a furor of apprehension and gratification. He’d actually done it. Left the planet. Left the prison. Left behind everything he’d known for over a decade.

He glanced down at Zahli, seated at the table watching him, her blue gaze perceptive, as though she knew this moment was too much for anything so simple as words. Though he knew nothing about her—except she could handle herself with a knife and had an unhinged ex-war hero for a brother—he felt connected to her, sure as if there was a tether hooked into his chest and crossing the distance to wrap around her.

She’d said that she’d help him in return for what he’d done yesterday, but he didn’t feel like they were even. Far, far from it. Yeah, he’d helped her cover up a crime that might have seen serious ramifications, but by standing up against her brother to keep him aboard she’d given him back his life, reminded him what it was to actually live, not just exist. Even if that life didn’t last out the week, at least he’d found some measure of freedom.

“I don’t know how to thank you for this. You didn’t have to help me, despite what happened yesterday.”

Her expression took on a hint of indignation. “Yeah, I did.”

He closed his hands on the back of the chair in front of him, tension clamping into his shoulders. “No, because the last thing you need is to draw attention to yourself, and I’m pretty sure there’s a hell of a chance that helping me escape will gain you a whole lot of scrutiny if I’m caught. If they find out what you—what we did—”

“They won’t find out. About any of it.” Her adamant tone matched the sharp glint of steel in her eyes, similar to the way she’d looked up at him with the knife in her hand yesterday, prepared to fight.

No doubt about it, the woman had a core of liquid iron—ready to harden when she went into battle. There was something breathtaking about her candid personality, her artless, uninhibited beauty clashing into the tough, resilient strength of her. She was gorgeous in a way he’d never encountered, and he almost didn’t know what to make of her. One thing was certain, she’d possessed him too easily, captivated him like witnessing the beautiful destruction of two stars colliding.