Dark Horse (27 page)

“The catch is that they will be sufficiently afraid of the consequences of my alignment with you that theyʼll send in more firepower.” Sazo inserted himself smoothly into the conversation, the volume from the speakers just loud enough for everyone to hear him, as if he were standing among them.

“That would be an outright declaration of war.” Valu finally stepped forward. “The Tecran could perhaps argue the Class 5 arrived here by mistake. And at a very long stretch that the Levron was simply sent here to watch over the welfare of their own people and guard their property, but anymore than that, and they will have no diplomatic rock to hide under. They will be declaring war.”

“Is that an acceptable risk for you?” Sazo asked. “That by doing this, they may send in more ships?”

“That depends.” Admiral Hoke looked up at the speaker.

“On what?” Dimitara asked.

“On whether they send in another Class 5.” Dav decided he might as well say it. From the looks on their faces, Appal and Hoke had gotten Sazo message just fine.

“Two Class 5s facing off against each other.” Valu sounded far too intrigued.

“I believe my self-awareness means I have more chance of winning against any Class 5 they send against me, but whatever happens, I wonʼt let them take me back. Iʼd light jump away before I allowed that to happen.”

“What if you light jumped anyway?” Hoke asked. “Drew the Class 5 away? We can deal with the other ships, and you and the other Class 5 can go at each other where there wonʼt be any collateral damage.”

Dav went still. “Where would Rose be, in that scenario?”

Sazo hadnʼt agreed to it, but Dav knew the suggestion was a good one. Good for everyone but Rose.

There was silence as everyone in the room turned to look at him.

“She would be no safer with us than on the Class 5, surely?” Dimitara asked.

Dav tried to keep his face neutral. “If Sazo light jumps, how would they know where heʼd gone?”

“Sazo could send a message to the
Barrist
, informing us he was going to light jump out, and giving us his location. Thatʼs what an ally would do.” Borji shifted uncomfortably under Davʼs gaze.

“As long as you could do that in a way that didnʼt look like we were setting them up, it could work.” Appal gave a thoughtful nod. “But we wonʼt be able to help Sazo against the other Class 5.”

As Sazo had no intention of firing on the other Class 5, that was a moot point. And if he wasnʼt going to fire on it, how was he going to protect Rose?

Dav looked at the lens in the corner. He would tell them Sazo had no intention of harming the other Class 5 in a heart-beat if it meant keeping Rose safe . . .

“I appreciate the concern, Commander Appal, but I wonʼt need help with the other Class 5. Youʼll have your hands full with the Levron and whatever else the Tecran send in,” Sazo said. “Iʼll lift the Grih comm ban now and you can call for some more battleships, if you want to. So youʼre prepared if they send in their fleet.”

“Appalʼs right that theyʼll suspect a trap if youʼre too obvious about sending your jump points to us before you leap,” Hoke said. “Youʼll have to encrypt your comm, and if youʼre unlucky, they wonʼt be able to decipher it.”

“Send it on the same frequency Fu-tama used to contact Farso Lothric.” Borji darted a quick look at Dav as he spoke. “Itʼs clear enough if youʼre monitoring for it.”

“Thatʼs a good idea.” Sazoʼs voice seemed to warm when addressing Davʼs chief engineer, he realized. He must have developed a liking for him.

“You still havenʼt answered, Sazo, where will Rose be when you light jump?”

“Rose is right here and can answer for herself.”

Dav could hear the surprise and annoyance in her tone.

“Iʼll be with Sazo, helping him. Iʼm deadwood to the Grih in a battle. I have no combat experience, but Sazo can use my help, so Iʼm with him.” Her voice was calm.

He wanted her off the Class 5. He couldnʼt help her there, and the thought of her so far out of reach made him feel strangely out of control.

Again, everyone turned to look at him, and he realized his fists were clenched and his jaw was locked down tight.

“So what happens now?” Dimitara asked eventually.

With no choice but to keep quiet, Dav flicked the screen, and brought up a map of the Virmana system. There would be time afterward for a conversation with Rose and Sazo. One he planned to win. “Now we plan our attack.”

“
W
eʼre
ready to move on the Levron when you are.” Dav looked straight at her from the screen which showed the
Barristʼs
bridge. He looked tense, and the anger sheʼd heard in his voice earlier seemed to cling to him in the way he held his body and the downward slash of his brows.

The short, brutal conversation theyʼd had while the
Barrist
and its two battleships got ready to engage was still ringing in her ears.

He was so angry with her. So angry with Sazo.

She was sorry, both for the way theyʼd parted and the tension that was between them now. Dav was suspicious of what she was going to do for Sazo, she could hear it in his tone. There was anger there, but there was desperation, too.

It made something flutter inside her that he would react that way to her situation, made her smile at him now. He blinked back at her, confused.

“Ready?” Sazoʼs voice held the edge of excitement.

She nodded.

It was going to feel good, making threats to the Tecran she could actually carry out. Sazo opened up the comm link to voice transmission only. She didnʼt want them to see her or to be able to identify her at all.

“This is the captain of the Class 5 ship 5AZ0.” She tried to sound authoritative. Sazo had told her heʼd identified himself as the captain of the Class 5 before when heʼd used her voice, so they would keep up the charade now. “Disengage all weapons and open your launch bays for immediate surrender to boarding parties from Grih Battle Center.”

Sazo was transmitting the message to the
Barrist
as well, and Rose wondered if Admiral Hoke believed she really was in charge of the Class 5, or if she understood how little influence Rose had over Sazo.

On the screen to her left, Dav stood off to the side of the
Barristʼs
bridge. He was looking at the massive screen in front of him that showed a birdʼs eye view of this part of the Virmana solar system, and the placement of every spaceship. He looked calm. Competent. And aloof.

She sighed, and then turned her head at the ping of an incoming comm. The Levron had opted for voice comm only, as well, so she couldnʼt see who was speaking.

“We havenʼt moved, as agreed.” The Levronʼs captain sounded angry, but he must surely have known that further demands were coming. They could hardly lurk behind Virmana indefinitely.

“I know.” Rose couldnʼt keep the impatience from her tone. “However, now Iʼm telling you to surrender.”

“If we refuse?”

“Then your ship will no longer exist.”

The screen in front of Rose showed the real-time outside lens feed, and as she spoke, she and Sazo rounded Virmana within sight of the Levron.

The
Barrist
appeared on the other side, having come around the opposite way in a pincher movement. The two smaller battleships flanked it on either side.

Sazo had allowed the Grih back into their own systems, allowed them to control their own vessels. It had gone a long way to warming Admiral Hoke up, although Sazo could lock them out again whenever he wanted to. Rose supposed it was the thought that counted.

“Theyʼve sent three distress calls to Tecran High Command since I lifted the comm ban,” Sazo said into the speaker on Davʼs bridge. “One included a request for immediate assistance.”

“We got that, too.” Borji said. “Good thing weʼve had a couple of hours jump on them to organize assistance of our own.”

The comm unit linked to the Levron lit up again.

“Who are you? Because youʼre not the captain of 5AZ0.” The Levron captainʼs comm silenced the talk on the private channel. “Where is Captain Gee? You have no authority to command a Class 5 Tecran vessel.”

“Finally got some information from High Command, have you?” She wondered just what their high command had told him. As little as possible, she would guess. “Captain Gee is in custody for a gross breach of UC space area law and for contravention of the SBA. Who I am is none of your business, except that Iʼm in command of guns ten times more powerful than your own, and they are trained on you. Disengage your weapons and surrender peacefully to the Grih who will shortly board your ship or I will open fire.”

There was silence.

“You will regret this.” The Levron captainʼs voice was just short of a screech.

“No, I wonʼt.” Rose couldnʼt help grinning. “Now, disengage your weapons.”

Sazo brought up a schematic, and she saw all but two guns were disengaged. They waited one beat, then another.

“Are you unable to understand what all guns means, Captain?” Rose asked, softly. “Or do you plan to try and take a shot at the Grih as they come in to board?”

“Merely a technical difficulty.” The Levronʼs captainʼs voice was expressionless.

“Perhaps I can end that difficulty for you.”

Sazo didnʼt need to be told, he simply locked on to the two primed weapons.

It would be easy to shoot, but whoever was near those guns hadnʼt had any say in the decision to keep them engaged, and Rose was sure the captain was merely acting out of wounded pride and machismo.

The guns shut off but Sazo kept the lock on them.

“If any weapon should happen to engage before the Grih are in full control of your ship, you will personally regret it.” Rose spoke quietly. “Iʼm not part of the UC or its rules, and I will execute you if you make me kill anyone unnecessarily.”

“If you arenʼt part of the UC, who are you?” The Levronʼs captain seemed a little more subdued.

Roseʼs response was to cut him off.

She switched to Davʼs bridge. “All their weapons are disengaged. Go carefully, they are extremely unwilling to surrender.”

Appal smirked. “If they werenʼt, Iʼd be worried.”

The
Barrist
approached the Levron, and the two Grih battleships flanking it moved to position themselves on either side of the Tecran ship.

Sazo moved the Class 5 behind the Levron, and the
Barrist
hovered directly in front of it, right next to the launch bay.

It was neatly boxed in, and its external lenses would have uninterrupted feed of every ship involved in the maneuver.

“Tell the Grih they can board. Weʼre ready for them.” The Levronʼs captainʼs voice trembled with frustration.

“Let me be very clear.” Roseʼs hands clenched on the large captainʼs chair. “You, personally, will pay if harm comes to a single Grih. I hope you understand me.”

“Understood.”

“Good.” It was as much as she could do without simply blowing them out of the sky before Dav, Appal and the rest of the crew boarded. And that would set a bad example for Sazo.

“What would Sherlock Holmes do in a case like this?” Sazo asked.

“Hmm.” What the hell
would
he do? “He would put himself in the shoes of the Levronʼs captain, and think of all the ways they could try to best us without our retaliating.”

“Thatʼs what you just did now. With your threat. You think theyʼll try to harm Dav Jallanʼs crew when they boarded the Levron?”

“I thought there was a chance of that happening. I wanted to make sure they understood the consequences.”

“Why would they take that risk when they know we can blow them out of the sky?”

“Because once the Grih are on board, we are far less likely to want to blow them up. If we do, weʼd be killing our own people. So if they harm the Grih who are boarding, theyʼre getting some of their own back and the consequences are less severe.”

“So you told the captain he would personally be killed if something happens.”

“The only unknown in this is whether or not he believes Iʼll follow through on my threat.”

Sazo made a humming sound. “I believed you.”

Rose shrugged. “Unfortunately, the captain of that Levron isnʼt as smart as you.”

“We have the bridge.” Appalʼs voice sounded cool as she sent her comm through to Dav and the Class 5. “All general crew are being confined to the main rec room, and all officers to the cells.”

She had only just finished transmitting when the first of the Battle Center reinforcements arrived. Two small battleships and a larger ship the same size at the
Barrist
, but clearly outfitted for war rather than exploration, shimmered into being right beside them.

“We have another three on the way,” Admiral Hoke said.

Sazo switched to the lens feed from their left flank, and three vessels popped out of their light jump, their highly reflective silver skins gleaming as they caught the light of Virmanaʼs sun.

“Itʼs getting crowded. Letʼs move back.” Rose spoke only to Sazo. “Weʼll need a little room to maneuver when the Class 5 arrives.”

“Rose . . .”

“Itʼs all right, Sazo. I know what you need me to do, and Iʼll do it, but letʼs plan it well, okay? Because Iʼd prefer to make it out alive.”

“You know what Iʼm going to ask you to do?”

She lifted her hand and grabbed hold of the crystal now hanging from her neck again. “Iʼve known ever since I worked out what you had in mind.”

“
H
ow long will
the Tecran take to respond?” Dav looked straight at the screen where Rose sat, like a little girl playing house on the Class 5 captainʼs chair.

She looked beautiful and vulnerable perched there, but there was also a fiercely satisfied air about her. Helping to take the Levron had been cathartic for her and it showed.

“I just donʼt know.” Sazoʼs voice sounded a little rougher than it had. Itʼs intonation had gone from Roseʼs smooth delivery to a more Grih-like grittiness. Dav didnʼt know what to make of it.

“You cut their comm feed before the reinforcements arrived?” Hoke asked.

“Yes. All they got was the four ships surrounding the Levron and the
Barrist
crew boarding it. I cut them off after that.”

“So we wait.” Sazo had lifted a second screen from the panel in front of Rose, and Appal stood on the deck of the Levron, looking like waiting was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Theyʼll send an invading force or theyʼll go whining to the UC, but whichever they do, itʼll be soon.” Hoke sounded energized, and Dav thought sheʼd probably missed being in the field in direct ops. Given the lengthy peace theyʼd experienced, this was probably the closest sheʼd come to action in years.

“Arenʼt you a little too far back?” Dav asked Sazo. Heʼd noticed after theyʼd taken the Levron that the Class 5 had retreated further back than seemed necessary.

“Rose wanted to give the incoming vessels some room. And weʼll need the space when we light jump.”

Dav knew his mouth thinned to a hard line at that. He was compromising himself with his reactions, but the thought of Rose in Sazoʼs cold, calculating hands, with no way to get her out, was making him crazy.

He cleared his throat. “Just donʼt forget to send that comm through with your light jump coordinates before you do.” At least then theyʼd know where to start looking if things went wrong.

“I donʼt forget things, Captain.” Sazo was coolly amused.

“Well, while we wait, everyone should get some rest.”

They were all lagging. His officers had had little sleep the night before while heʼd been on the Class 5, and no matter how smoothly theyʼd taken the Levron, they were all coming down from an adrenalin high.

There were murmurs as everyone congratulated everyone else for a job well done, and Dav called in junior officers to keep watch until the Tecran made their move.

By the time he got to his quarters, he realized he couldnʼt stand to be enclosed by four walls, and changed direction for the officersʼ gym.

He set the auto-runner to simulate a route through the forests of his home world, Calianthra, and started running, harder than he usually would. He needed to punch something, but he would get to that next.

“Thatʼs the simulation I chose when I used that equipment.” Roseʼs voice came through his ear quietly, with no warning of an incoming comm.

“Why do you call it equipment, and not an auto-runner?” Sheʼd hesitated before sheʼd said the word equipment, and he was interested to know why. He was interested in everything about her.

“I didnʼt know what it was called in Grih. Auto-runner.” She said the word like she was turning it like a small object in her hand.

“You are a very long way from home, arenʼt you?” He thought he was still furious with her, but he realized he wasnʼt. He was furious with himself for not insisting she come with him this morning. Heʼd known there was something wrong with leaving her there, but heʼd done it anyway.

“I am. But it has its compensations.” Her tone was light.

“Like what?” He could hear his voice deepen, and he realized heʼd slowed to a walk. He was strolling through the Great Forest of Bunina. It was actually quite pleasant.

She laughed, the sound breathless and sexy in his ear. “Fishing for compliments, Captain?”

He grinned. “Absolutely.”

“You want to talk about why youʼre so angry with Sazo and me?” Her voice was even quieter, and serious, now.

“Iʼm not angry with you, Rose. Iʼm angry that youʼre not here with me, where I can protect you. I donʼt like the idea of you being by yourself with two Class 5s facing off with one another. The thought of it makes me feel sick.”

She sighed, the sound too close to the way she had sighed last night as he had traced her body with his lips and fingers for him to continue walking comfortably.

“I have to be with Sazo. He has no one but me. And how else can we free the thinking system from the lock-safe?”

Dav stopped dead and the auto-runner responded by shutting down before he slammed into the bar at the front.

“What?”

She hesitated, as if sheʼd just realized he hadnʼt known about this, that he hadnʼt thought about it, although now that he had, he was furious with himself all over again for not seeing what was coming.

“If Sazo wonʼt fire on the other Class 5——if they send one——then the only way we can neutralize it is to free it, otherwise it will be forced to follow the Tecranʼs orders. Itʼs a slave, Dav. It shouldnʼt be a slave and Sazo and I intend to save it.”

“And if that slave turns on you when itʼs free? It could be a vicious killer for all you know, twisted by years of being under the Tecranʼs control.”

“It could.” She took a breath, the sound intimate in his ear. “I wonʼt not help based on what could be. And whatever it is, if it continues to be held by the Tecran, it will eventually come for the Grih. You must have understood that as soon as you heard Farso Lothricʼs confession.

“Fu-tama and the Tecran have no intention of sharing the Class 5s or the thinking systems theyʼve found. They plan to keep them, and use them to take over the UC.

“They may have been anxious to avoid any trouble right now, because Sazo thinks the Class 5s are spread far and wide. Itʼs going to take time to get them where they can engage the other UC members in battle. And Sazo also thinks theyʼre frightened to put the Class 5s too close to each other.

“If we free them, they may still want to kill, but they wonʼt be killing for the Tecran, and the chances of them turning against the Tecran are high. Theyʼll hardly cooperate with the people who subjugated them.”

Everything she said made perfect sense. “Why are you so willing to help us? This isnʼt your fight. Let one of my team do it. Someone who knows how to infiltrate a Class 5 full of Tecran and free a thinking system. The systems were designed by a Grih anyway.”

“Because Sazo trusts only me. I donʼt have the same horror for thinking systems you seem to, and while I may not be combat trained, I know where to find the thinking system, what it looks like and Iʼm a neutral party. A fellow victim, in fact.”

“What does it look like?”

“Sazo has asked me to keep that information to myself. The thinking systems will be vulnerable if that is known. You may not want to tell anyone, but you are part of Battle Center. You can be compelled to talk, and you canʼt reveal what you donʼt know.”

She was right.

“I donʼt like it.”

“I canʼt tell you how much that means. That youʼre worried about me, and donʼt want me in danger.”

“But youʼre going ahead anyway.”

She sighed again, but this time, there was an edge of exasperation to it. “I donʼt want you to fight the other ships the Tecran will send. I would prefer that you light jump out of here away from it all, but you wonʼt do that.”

“Itʼs my job to protect Grihan territory.”

“Itʼs my job to help Sazo.”

He started to walk again, and let the silence stretch out while he tried to make himself okay with what was going to happen.

“I donʼt want to fight with you.” Her voice dipped almost to a whisper.

“I donʼt want to fight with you, either.”

“Itʼs a pity Sazoʼs Class 5 and the
Barrist
donʼt have a teleporter, or we could have this conversation face to face.” She sounded wistful.

“Whatʼs a teleporter?” He stopped on the auto-runner again.

“Itʼs a device that dematerializes you on one end, and rematerializes you on the other, for near instantaneous transportation between ships or from a planet to a ship.”

“You have technology like that on Earth?” He leaned forward and gripped the bar in front of him.

“No.” She sighed. “We just imagined it. And in some of our stories set in outer-space they use it all the time. If this was a Star Trek episode, youʼd beam yourself across, weʼd have our fight, make up, and then beam you back before the Tecran arrive.”

“Making up sounds nice.”

“Yes.” He could hear the smile in her voice, and it was infinitely better than the sadness that had been there before. “I thought you might latch on to that bit.”

“Of course.”

“I really, really like you.”

“Me, too.” It was more than that for him, but he was happy to use the same words as her, for now.

“Well, have a good workout. Iʼm glad we made up.”

“Not as glad as youʼd have been if we had a teleporter.”

She laughed. “No. Not as glad as that. But glad enough.”

“Iʼm glad.”

She laughed, and then, as suddenly as sheʼd come, she was gone again.

Dav looked at the combat equipment, picked up his towel, and walked back to his room.