Enemy Games (15 page)

The worms hesitated, the front halves of their bodies upright and waving back and forth as if trying to catch a whiff of something. More to the point, they weren’t at all interested in Damen standing right next to them. Why not?

“Would you look at that?” she breathed. “I wonder. Is that reaction unique to you? Or do you suppose they can detect the difference between the blood of primate-based species and non-primate-based species? The
Sen Ekir
’s going to need a blood sample, Major, if you’re willing.”

“You’re going to win second blood, too?” he asked, his voice rich with humor. “Do you know what a debt you’re piling up?”

Laughing, she edged her way around to the side opposite Damen. Jay kept her attention on the confused invertebrates. “I don’t need blood this instant. Let’s see if my theory bears out. Do me a favor? Keep your eyes peeled for more of them.”

She dropped into the engine compartment.

“Jayleia. Kill them.”

Damen’s terse warning sounded sharp, worried.

“I’ll be okay if none of them sneak up on me. Besides, I’ve slept the disease off once, already,” she reminded him as the worms subsided to the hull surface and turned in her direction.

“If we don’t know what the traitors are planning, we might not have time for that.”

“I am aware,” she said, not taking her eyes from the bloodworms. Waiting until they’d come within arm’s length, she changed tactics. Instead of trying to scoop them up, she dropped the container on top of them.

“Got them! If you detect any others, feel free to vaporize them,” she said, using the lid to coax the creatures into the sample container, and then sealed it. “These guys are going into stasis. They were black and stiff with infected blood when I came aboard. Look at them.”

She held up the clear container for examination.

“Like nothing ever happened,” Jayleia marveled. “The little bloodsuckers could be the missing piece of the epidemiological puzzle. Good for Chemmoxin. Bad for Silver City.”

Damen rounded the engine, stepped closer than necessary, and wrapped his hand around hers.

Electricity danced along her nerves as he tilted the container, studying the pallid worms.

He shook his head.

“I don’t like knowing we can be hunted by something I could crush beneath my heel,” he said, a hint of distress in his tone.

“It can’t be comfortable for a predator to realize he can become prey,” she answered. A thought made her frown and Jay examined Damen.

Primate-based species had evolved as prey and still had brain structures that triggered the chemicals that helped the body respond in the face of threat. Wouldn’t the brains of a species that had evolved from predators differ? She didn’t care so much what that looked like in the way of physical brain structures, she’d rather know what it felt like. How would Damen’s body experience perceived danger? Could she set up a test to find out?

“Would you consent to brain imaging, too?”

Threatening annoyance melted in his face when his gaze met hers. Humor glinted in his eyes. “Should I be concerned that at some point you’re going to want to dissect me?”

His teasing bumped Jayleia back to the
Kawl Fergus
’s engine compartment and the man holding her hand in his while he smiled down at her.

She grinned. “Biology elucidates behavior.”

“There are better paths to understanding.” His smile deepened, the clear gray of his eyes going inexplicably smoky.

Her smile faltered.

“Truce?” he offered. “We’re a good team. If the sickness has escaped containment, along with everything else we have on our plates, the people of this station will need us.”

She backed away, reclaiming her hand from his warm, unsettling grasp.

“Damn it,” she sighed. “I should have gone into stasis and had you vacuum this ship.”

“And deprive me of leverage? Our goals align, Jayleia. Even if the details don’t. Work with me.”

Did he have any notion what truce meant to her mother’s people? To her? Did she have any choice but to show him?

The memory of the infected kuorls on Chemmoxin ripping one another to shreds filled her vision for a moment. Jayleia shuddered. No. She didn’t have a choice. Not if sick stationers began turning up.

She blew out a shaky breath and nodded. “Truce. And all that entails.”

J
AYLEIA smiled at Damen’s raised eyebrow. She gestured with the container of bloodworms and climbed out of the engine compartment. “Stasis.”

He nodded.

She stowed the specimens. Despite his assurance that Jay wouldn’t understand the rules of Damen’s turf, when she found behavior inexplicable, like she did with the citizens of the UMOPG, she studied. She thought she knew more about his cultural mores than he gave her credit for.

Among his kind, she knew the trading of blood formalized treaties and agreements, though usually it was blood won in a ritualized fight. Since Damen had gone on about her having “won first blood,” did it make sense to return the favor? Could she show him that she understood some part of his culture? Why not? If blood was the coin by which bargains were struck, she’d honor that tradition.

Battling back uncertainty and ridiculous fear, she found the medical leech and snapped a sample vial in place. She leaned against the diagnostic bed. Heart pounding like she’d run a long way, she activated the unit against her forearm. The device hummed for a moment, then beeped. She extracted the sample vial, and put the leech back in its drawer.

Gripping the vial in her fist, she returned to the open engine compartment and crouched at the edge where Damen stood.

A crystal sat in contact with the matter feeders. It pulsed in time with the subtle thrum of the injector.

She frowned. “The reason you didn’t want to open the ship to vacuum, I presume. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. He traded his handheld for a screwdriver and loosened the clamps on the crystal. “I can tell you it’s crystalline. Our geology labs claim to have quantified the makeup and structure.”

“‘Claim’?” she echoed.

He lifted the crystal from its bed. The glow died. The stone paled until it gleamed, milky and opaque, in his palm.

Jayleia raised her eyebrows. “Geology is not my strong suit, but I don’t think crystal is supposed to phase between translucent and opaque. You believe the matrix is altered when it’s in contact with the matter feeders?”

He tucked the broad, double-terminated stone into a metal canister, which he sealed and locked. “It behaves differently depending on the energy source. The matter feeders are the only one that causes the crystal to clear and fluoresce. It also boosts engine efficiency when in contact with the injectors.”

“Energy in restructures the crystal, changed energy emerges,” she said as Damen climbed out of the hole and closed the covers. “Something more than a high-tech light source, then.”

“Come on,” he said, rising and holding out a hand. “We’re going to see someone who will have more information.”

She accepted the assist with her free hand, dismissing the thrill that wanted to shoot through her at the contact.

He touched a series of controls beside the door.

The sonic shield died.

She’d forgotten about the barely audible hum guarding their words until it fell silent.

Damen opened the door and ordered the ramp down. On the threshold, he paused and turned sideways to peer at her.

“What’s it going to be this time?” he asked. “A game of hiztap and tezwoul through the station corridors? Or do I turn away at the wrong moment and take a blow to the back of the head?”

Jay tucked her hands behind her back, her grip on the vial tightening. “We have declared a truce. For the duration of that alliance, or until you break faith, you are under my protection.”

His eyes widened. He stilled, not even breathing as far as she could tell. Emotions she couldn’t identify flashed across his frozen countenance. He finally sucked in a sharp breath and the sly, feral gleam returned to his eye. His heated gaze fell on her like a caress.

She flushed head to toe.

Did Damen know that when he didn’t know how to respond to a situation he turned straight to sex?

“Your protection,” he repeated, lingering on the words as if tasting them.

It hit her. She’d offered to protect a predator. Her smile felt grim. “I meant only that you are safe from me.”

He went on studying her with a gaze that felt like he’d gotten inside her skin.

“No one said anything about you being safe from me,” he noted.

Her head spun and her body heated.
No, damn it.
She had a job to do. They both did. Forcing the haze from her brain, she gathered her courage and stepped up to face him. “Fair enough.”

Damen detected the sharp, smoky bite of anger and the faint salt tang of fear.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Had he finally frightened her? How? And why did he feel no hint of triumph?

She tucked something warm into his hand. “Here.”

Damen glanced at the vial.

Blood. Her blood.

Staggered, he stared. Did she have any idea what she’d done? He glanced at her.

Uncertainty fired her eyes while uneasiness drained the color from her face.

No. She thought she understood what she’d done and even her limited understanding filled her with dread. She had no idea what a gift freely given blood was among his kind. Nor did she realize what it implied.

A mating offer. He blinked back dizziness. His first. And all wrong. She was supposed to have offered her blood to him in the throes of passion. He shouldn’t be holding a vial of her blood extracted by a cold, unfeeling medical leech that couldn’t taste the desire and devotion in her blood, that couldn’t gauge the thunder of her heart as it trembled in awe at the risk.

He sucked in a ragged-sounding breath, dismayed to find that it didn’t matter how she’d offered her blood. Only that she had. His own heart beat so hard against his ribs, he wondered if Jayleia could detect the noise.

He closed the precious vial in his fist. His head spun, and he imagined he could detect her body heat still radiating from the container.

Every drop of blood he’d ever had in his past, he’d had to take. Even if she didn’t grasp the magnitude, the gift cut straight to his heart. Here he was holding her blood in his hand. Had she known she’d make him bleed with her gesture?

“Thank you.” He could barely squeeze the words past the burning knot in his chest.

Alarm touched her perfect features, the flutter of hope in her eyes crashed.

She wants to please me.
The awareness arrowed through him. And now, she either couldn’t read how she’d stunned him or she was misinterpreting what she saw.

Brushing her cheek with his free hand, he brought the fist clutching the vial to his chest and willed her to see how her gesture had moved him.

She met his gaze. Relief swept her features; tension melted from her body.

He smiled, reveling in both the gift and at her flattering desire to delight him.

“This way,” Damen directed, slipping the vial into his pocket until he could store it properly. “Public areas are safe at this volume. Say nothing in lifts. Keep an eye out for anyone watching or following.”

“Understood.” She stiffened her spine and glanced down the ramp. All business.

He led her out of the bay, into the public corridor and straight to a lift. Two Jjurtak natives, both in glaring, iridescent yellow freighter uniforms, slid into the lift with them and went on chattering at one another in their language of nasal hums, audible puffs of air from their cheek pouches, and gestures of their three-fingered hands.

Damen pulled his sleek, military-issue handheld from his belt and activated it.

Frowning, Jayleia retrieved her unit and turned it on. When nothing came up on her screen, she glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

He met her gaze and stifled a grin at the covetous gleam in the look she shot at his handheld. Her unit had been designed and customized to maintain contact with the
Sen Ekir
as long as she remained within a few hundred planetary kilometers of her ship. From the speculation in her face, he could see her guessing that his handheld ignored the stringent rules governing what the devices could do.

He concentrated on linking his unit with hers.

Her screen went active. She scanned it and nodded. He’d been locking down the
Kawl Fergus
. She apparently approved of the precaution.

A symbol glowed in one corner of his screen. Incoming transmission. He accepted the message.

“Safe?” it said. He glanced at Jayleia.

She lifted her thumbs from the front of her pad as if asking, “Well, is it?”

“Safe and ironic,” he replied via the handheld. They couldn’t speak in the transport without fear of being recorded. Yet, handhelds were everywhere. Attempting to intercept a specific data stream would be akin to trying to grab a single proton from a beam of light. The Mining Guild wasn’t the only government that found it easier and cheaper to simply bug the elevators in an effort to capture secrets.