Balance of Terror (18 page)

They settled down and spent the next few hours obediently watching the vids. Finally, when finished, Srin sighed and looked around the small cabin. “I presume this is the prototype ship Tamlan jacked from the Republic.”

Not only had they run through the files, they sometimes replayed segments to make sure they fully understood them.

“After Kiel Souiad disappeared,” Moon added, testing her recall.

“Think she’s dead?”

“The Republic seem to think so.”

“So he jacks a ship then, from the timestamps on the files, does nothing for years and starts up again six months ago?”

Moon lifted her eyebrows. “Doesn’t sound like the action of a sane man, does it?”

“You think he’s psychologically unstable?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He
appears
rational enough. So do the other two.” She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them and looked at him. “The truth is, I just don’t know what to think any more.”

Yes, he could see that. And it was all because of him. By herself, Srin was sure Moon was capable enough to disappear into the galaxy’s background noise without much difficulty.
He
was the one holding her back, with his still uncured body and unhelpful response to the cocktail of drugs she had him on. And with his memory still badly fragmented, he couldn’t even draw on recent past experience to help them out.

“I’ll go along with whatever you decide,”he told her quietly.

She laughed. “As if I know what to do in this situation.”

She moved over to where he sat on one of the lower bunks and gestured for him to move over.

“I’m afraid that I’m too exhausted to think straight.”

She sat down next to him and their thighs touched.

“Ever since our time on the
Differential
, we’ve been on the edge – the edge of danger, of exhaustion, of ideas. We run and hide on Slater’s End, get smuggled to Lunar Fifteen, have to watch our backs with the Fodox Rebels, then land on a hell-hole called Marentim.”

“The Open was rather beautiful, in a rugged, terrifying kind of way,” Srin remarked in an innocent tone, watching for a reaction.

This time, the smile that curved Moon’s lips was natural. She looked so beautiful when she smiled, like a nova going off in a neighbouring system, dazzling and breathtaking. And it was the most natural thing in the world to take her into his arms and kiss those full dusky lips of hers.

She tasted of heaven. How long had it been since he’d held her like this? There had been one wonderful night when they’d reached Marentim, a few stolen moments in one of Gauder’s tanks, and that glorious evening beneath the stars, but those were nothing compared to what Srin wanted to do with Moon. He wanted to spend hours lying beside her, watching her smooth skin flex and pebble as he blew across it. He wanted to plunge into her, feeling her encase him in primal heat and wetness. He wanted to feel her muscles tense and relax with her climax, her voice broken and breathy with passion.

And he still couldn’t do it. Circumstances were like a chastity belt cinched tight around his groin. The next time he made love to Moon, he wanted it to be somewhere where they had both time and privacy. She deserved nothing less.

Reluctantly, he got to his feet. “I suppose we should find out more about our guests,” he said.

“Try to find them before they come for us?”

“Might give us a little time to have a look around.”

Moon nodded with appreciation. “Now that’s some good thinking.”

They were both tired of having their actions dictated by others, Srin could see that. With a grin, he led the way to the door and down the short ladder to the ship’s main thoroughfare.

In truth, he wasn’t feeling very well. Exhaustion dogged his limbs, sparking the temptation to do nothing but just lie on the metal grating of the floor and go to sleep. And he was starting to feel hot. Was it time for his hyperpyrexia medication? Already?

He blinked and widened his eyes a couple of times, trying hard to focus on the environment.

“Now I know what else struck me as odd,” he tried to keep his voice sounding normal, even a little bit casual. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

Faint memories surfaced in his mind – echoes of muted conversations and raucous male laughter, smooth curved walls covered with a rubbery substance, sitting in a cramped transport while he breathed in the sweat and odour of the men beside him. None of that was here in this wide antiseptic corridor of bulkheads and metal.

“You’re right,” Moon’s voice sounded as if it was coming towards him through a pane of thick glass. He forced himself to pay attention. “I would have expected to see more people on a ship this size.”

“A very mysterious man. I’m sure we have as many questions for him as he does for us.”

They were closer to the front of the ship than the stern, so Srin suggested they begin walking back to the cargo bay, figuring they’d be certain to catch someone’s attention by then.

He was right. When they were perhaps ten metres from their destination, the crewmember called Saff appeared. She seemed unsurprised to see them but, in the small experience he had of her, the aloofness on her face was her normal expression.

“Please follow me,” she said. “Our canteen is this way.”

Srin was relieved to leave the hospitality duties to someone else. The edges of his vision were beginning to waver, just as they did when he was about to be catapulted into a drug crash.

Not now!

He
needed
to stay awake, to find out what plans Quinten Tamlan had for him and Moon, but his body wasn’t in a cooperative mood.

Reaching out and down with one hand, he let his fingers skim the walls, trying to give himself much-needed equilibrium. That helped a bit but the wavering got worse, morphing into streaks of light shooting past the periphery of his vision, with Saff’s lean figure the clear, distant target in the middle.

This was worse than what he had suffered while travelling with Gauder. In addition to his deteriorating vision, his neck was getting hot, as if a microwave beam was aimed directly at the back of his skull. Moon’s voice became indistinct. Everything looked and sounded as if he’d just been plunged into an aquarium, but the collar of intense heat remained and he felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

In the small circle of sight left to him, devoid of technicolour flashes, Srin saw a white-skinned hand beckon then move out of the way. All coherent sound disappeared, engulfed by a wave of white noise. In a way that made things easier because it was one thing less he needed to concentrate on. When the alien-looking hand moved away, Srin saw a table and chairs. They looked to be a hundred metres away but he knew they couldn’t be. It was his mind, playing tricks on him.

All he needed to do was move forward. Move forward with a hand outstretched. Slide into the chair. Regroup his senses. Breathe.

He took a step forward, tripped, and plunged headlong into the drug crash he’d been hoping to avoid.

“Get me my satchel. Now!”

Moon was in no mood to be polite. She didn’t care that the people standing around her and Srin’s supine body had the power of life and death over them. Beneath her trembling hand, Srin’s forehead felt like an inferno, and she desperately hoped she wasn’t too late.

“What happened?” That was Tamlan’s voice, behind her.

“He collapsed.” The pale woman’s expressionless tone.

“I want my satchel,” Moon ground out.

“What’s in it?”

Livid, Moon shot to her feet and spun around, looking up into Tamlan’s scarred face.

“Only the medicine that can save his life,” she spat. “Look, I don’t care if you’re a pirate or a mercenary or someone who’s mentally unhinged and has managed to talk a few others into joining your mass delusion. What I need now is
my
satchel full of medication and
your
medical bay.” She looked around with wild eyes. “That is, if you have anything that civilised on this barren hulk.”

She saw a hint of hesitation in his movements, quickly checked, and arrowed in on it. “You can shackle me, you can put me in a force-field, you can damn well stick me in a corner while I give you directions on what to do, but this man,” she pointed to Srin, “will die if I don’t act. Now.”

Both humans locked gazes for long seconds.

“Saff, bring him. You, follow me.”

Moon would have breathed a sigh of relief but worry consumed her. Did they still have the medication? What shape was their medical bay in? What was she going to do if she couldn’t bring down Srin’s fever?

The three of them – Srin cradled almost tenderly, as if he was a child in the woman’s arms – hurried back down the corridor, turning left into a long, narrow bay that, on the surface at least, appeared to be well-equipped.

“We haven’t had much of a chance to inventory this place,” Tamlan said shortly.

Moon frowned at him. Was that embarrassment she detected beneath the gruffness? And why should she care? Bustling forward, she stood impatiently beside one of the elevated bunk beds, watching as Srin was lowered carefully to the firm mattress.

“Where’s my satchel?” she demanded, not willing to give an inch.

Saff moved to one of the cupboards and opened it, taking out a dun-coloured rucksack. Moon watched her movements in disbelief.

“You’ve had it here all this time? So you knew that it was medication and you still—”

“We didn’t know anything,” Tamlan interrupted. “You told us it was medicine so we brought it here to verify the contents.”

“I
told
you what was in there—”

“People say a lot of things they don’t mean,” he cut in, “and I’m not the trusting type. Deal with it.”

Moon glowered then turned away, muttering angrily to herself as she ripped open the front flap and started rummaging through the contents. It wasn’t…they had taken…then her fingers closed on some reassuringly cool tubes and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Moving with more confidence, she laid out her supplies, methodically lining them up along the edge of the bunk.

“What are you arranging? What do you have in those tubes?”

Tamlan again – didn’t the man ever stop asking questions? – but this time Moon didn’t mind so much. The situation was now more under her control.

“Anti-hyperpyrexia medication,” she answered, touching one of the tubes Leen Vazueb had given her a lifetime ago. “My own concoction, a mix of drugs, to deal with his convulsive attacks and,” she licked her lips, “and a cognitive enhancer to help cut through the side-effects of everything.”

“That’s quite a cache of drugs you’re pumping into him.”

She glanced up and caught his speculative gaze, then returned to concentrate on what she was doing.

“The day I don’t have to do any of this will be the happiest day of my life.”

He left her in peace for the next fifteen minutes but Moon felt his presence, like a gigantic pulsating question-mark, in the corner of the medical bay. When she was finally done, and Srin looked to be out of danger – his temperature back down to normal, his skin colour natural and not so flushed – she closed her eyes and sagged against the bunk.

“I think we need to talk.”

“What you really mean,” Moon amended in exhaustion, “is that it’s time for me to answer your questions.”

“You’re smarter than you look.”

Her eyes snapped open but the expression on Tamlan’s face was unreadable. The other crewmember, Saff, was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not leaving the medical bay,” she said, “so don’t expect me to follow you to another meeting room.”

He shrugged. “That doesn’t bother me. I can imprison you here as easily as in any other place aboard this ship.”

She frowned at him. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

“I haven’t formed an opinion yet.”

He walked so there was an empty bunk between them and perched himself on the last mattress in the bay.

“You mentioned hyperpyrexia? That’s heat, isn’t it? Something to do with high body heat?”

“It’s a condition that translates to an extremely high body temperature. If it gets too high, above forty-two degrees, he dies.”

“How did he get it?”

The moment of truth.

Moon didn’t like Tamlan very much but he appeared to be the kind of person who said exactly what was on his mind, which was reassuring. On the other hand, what kind of man travelled in an empty ship for seven years? Was he a freedom-fighter or a lunatic?

Was there any difference?

“It’s a control mechanism,” she finally told him. “The Republic didn’t want their walking super-computer getting any independent thoughts, so they fixed him.”

Her voice became bitter. “Drugs to erase his memory and give him a two-day retention cycle. Drugs to incapacitate and kill him should he manage to escape.”

“Are you his doctor?”

Moon laughed, but it was a sound devoid of humour. “No, I’m his physicist.”

She let Tamlan stew in his own confusion for a while before explaining herself. “I was his most recent client.” Her lips twisted. “Dr. Moon Thadin, stellar physicist, working on a project to rehabilitate dead stars, completely unaware – in her studied ignorance – that her government’s aim was to
destroy
worlds, not rebuild them.”