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  Tom shrugged. “Not my business, but seeing what those smugglers do affects some people. She wouldn’t be the first to blow up a ship full of assholes.” Tom leaned back and studied the man. “Ain’t sure what you want me to do about this.” He thumbed the unit to the next picture and Da’shay was standing there with such a blank look on her face that he felt chills up his spine.

  “From what I hear, she almost blew you up and you didn’t do anything to stop her.”

  Tom fisted his hands and had a flash of anger that left him wanting to pound the shit out of this guy. “She didn’t set the bomb.”

  “No, but if your engineer had left the intake vents open, that explosion would have swept through the Kratos. And certain government officials and your captain aren’t doing anything to hold her accountable.”

  “There’s a real old saying. It goes, ‘That’s above my pay grade.’” Tom smirked at the man and leaned back in his chair. This conversation was making him more than a little uncomfortable, especially given that Ramsay had shut him down when he’d tried talking about Da’shay. Ramsay was better than most captains, but there were times that he simply didn’t talk to Tom because Tom wasn’t an officer.

  “Maybe,” the man said. “But I’m willing to bet that you’re not the sort to let friends get killed because of orders. Your captain has orders. But this is what you need to ask yourself.” He leaned in, scooting his chair closer. “What would have happened to that engineer if she’d had the vents open?” Tom didn’t answer as he thought about hot, poisonous steam filling the ventilation, all pouring down onto Becca who wouldn’t have been able to get free. “What would have happened if your captain or the sergeant hadn’t taken shelter in the smuggler’s ship? I read the reports, and from what I can see, you four barely survived Da’shay’s latest spell.”

  Tom couldn’t really argue with that. He’d survived his step-father, basic training and sixteen years of policing parts of the universe most soldiers tried to avoid, and one bomb had just about blown him up. Didn’t feel right. And looking at the expression on Da’shay’s face—looking at the utter joy as she cut into human beings, it did seem to make it more likely that she’d had something to do with the bomb. At the very least, she knew it was there and she hadn’t cared enough about their lives to do anything about it.

  The man lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper. “The people I work for think that Da’shay is out of control.”

  “Then tell her to fuck off,” Tom suggested. Exiling genta worked. No one knew where they went…maybe to the colonies and maybe back home to where the species had first come from. Maybe they killed themselves; Tom didn’t care. He just knew that if a genta was told to go away, it did. If someone up the chain of Command told her to get lost, she would. Hell, she wasn’t even regular crew. Da’shay pretty much only piloted when she felt like it and she’d quit half-way through a blessed shift. The Kratos would be fine without her.

  “Certain people want to keep her around. You understand our problem?”

  Sucking air through his front teeth, Tom looked around at the room. Yeah, he understood. Some Commander didn’t mind having Da’shay around, even if she was helping someone blow up Tom and the crew of the Kratos.

  “Just because the decision comes from someone with rank, that doesn’t make it right. We have reason to believe that you’re an intelligent enough man to find a solution.”

  Tom gave the man a shit look. He wasn’t dumb enough to fall for that kind of flattery. Compliment him on his shooting and he’d believe it. Compliments about his intelligence when it came to these kinds of complicated problems, that was flat out insulting.

  The little man leaned closer. “On Ishum, your captain’s hover was hit with a grenade blast. It knocked him out while the crew went into a fight with a mercenary named Pada.”

  Tom scratched his chest. “I remember.”

  “Yes, and it seems rather convenient that the captain was incapacitated.”

  With a shrug, Tom stared at the man, daring him to make whatever connections he wanted. Tom had filed his report and he was sticking by it.

  “You suggested that one of Pada’s men got a lucky hit with a grenade launcher.”

  “Happens,” Tom said. “Yesterday, I shot two men dead from five thousand meters out.”

  “Yes, but that seems unlikely since Pada was paying the captain to pull his men back at the last second. That was the third time your crew had Pada cornered, and yet it was the first time you managed to capture even one of the mercenaries. Captain Severn’s accident was very well-timed. Your cover story, however, could use some help.”

  If Command knew he’d turned on his own captain, they’d arrest him for treason and throw him under the jail. He’d lived with that fear for years, especially after Command had transferred him days later. But in the last six years, he thought he’d put that bit of treason to rest. Instead, Tom could feel the familiar panic. They knew. They knew and not even killing this little flea of a man would change the fact that someone had written down in a report that he’d turned on his commanding officer. Tom leaned forward. “You have something to say, you say it. Otherwise, you go away, because you’re bugging me, little man, and you would not like to find out how I deal with annoyances.” The fear in the man’s eyes was enough to make Tom feel a little better about this whole fucked up situation.

  “You’re a survivor, Tom Frieden. We happen to think that you’re smart enough to see that getting rid of Da’shay is the only way for you and the crew to survive.” The man’s gaze darted around the room as if he expected cops to jump out at him. “We also think your captain can’t do anything…not without ending up in the same trouble you’re in. We’re trying to protect you and Captain Ramsay.”

  “Yeah, because you care so much for us.” Tom crossed his arms and dared the little man to try to say that.

  “No, we don’t. We do, however, want to stop more disasters before the Command and the government end up with a big black eye. This genta massacred a crew begging for help and then stood by while terrorists nearly blew up a Corps crew. If the press got that, we would care very much about that.”

  “Are you trying to set me up? You recording this? What, do you want me to say I’ll turn on the Corps? Is that what you’re looking to get on tape?” Tom leaned closer so that any microphone would pick up his next words. “I ain’t turning traitor. So run along, little man.” Giving the man a feral smile, Tom leaned back in his chair and watched to see what he’d do now. Ramsay didn’t let him do undercover much since Tom didn’t always have a good hold on where the entrapment line was, but he knew for a fact that a statement of outright refusal meant that a cop was on mighty shaky grounds with recorded evidence.

  “No recordings. I don’t want this recorded any more than you do.” The man leaned in so close that Tom could practically smell the fear. “Look at it this way, we want you to consider something. Just consider it. You don’t have to do anything, but maybe if you have a few resources, you might find a way to make the right choice.”

  “You think so?”

  The man took a deep breath. “I know it. Look at her. She’s a killer.”

  Tom looked down at the display. It showed a slave pen with a woman whose dead fingers clutched the wire of her cage, and right in front of it, a severed leg lay with a trail of blood leading off camera. Tom shrugged. “She’s genta. None of them are well balanced.” Tom ignored the tight ball of fear in his stomach.

  The man poked at this display so that the images blurred until he landed on the one where Da’shay was looking around the blood stained room with undisguised glee. “Really? Have you ever known any of them to do this?”

  Tom rested his hand on the butt of his gun and thought about that. Genta were an odd lot, but Tom hadn’t ever seen one get that violent. Like most people if you pushed ‘em, they’d push back, kill even, but the glee in Da’shay’s face as she’d swung that knife was a terrifying thing.

  “There’s somethi
ng wrong with her and too many people are willing to treat her like a nuclear weapon—dangerous but controllable if you have the right safety equipment. However, if she’s walking around, do you really think she’s controlled?” The man leaned over and hit the forward button on the display several times. Eventually Tom recognized the Kratos. From the angle, the picture had been taken from a satellite and the image was a little grainy from being enlarged, but he could recognize the ship’s lines anywhere. She was sitting in the middle of a burnt out field with another ship next to her lying on its side with one of the wings ripped and twisted.

  Da’shay stood in the middle, her clothes burned off and her skin blackened by the fire. For a human, that would have been fatal, but Tom could see from her body language that she was calm.

  “You’re in the ship at this point. You and your captain and sergeant.” The man poked his finger at the damaged freighter. “Becca is pushing every panic button on the bridge and calling for help so loud that she’d convinced half the system that they were being invaded by some new alien life form and Da’shay is walking around. Now someone who knows how to survive…is he going to get back on a ship with her?”

  Right now, the man had just about convinced Tom to walk away from his pension to avoid doing exactly that, but he suspected that this man and his employers wanted something else out of him. “What sort of resources do you think I need?” Tom asked.

  The man leaned back and sighed with relief. Rubbing his hand across his sweaty face, he nodded. “Good. Good,” he muttered.

  “Ain’t promising anything,” Tom warned. He looked around for anyone who might be this twerp’s backup, but everyone in here looked to be up to no good, which was normal enough for this place.

  “No promises, and you aren’t agreeing to do anything,” the man quickly answered. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small disk. “This is a transmitter. We only want to keep track of Da’shay—where she is, what’s she’s doing.”

  Tom took the small metal disk. It was an Agni series bug, one of the later ones, the WL or HL lines. “What she’s saying and what people are saying to her,” Tom added. The L lines all used audio signals that a microchip compacted and then broadcast in a tiny burst on a regular schedule. That’s why they were so big. This one was almost as big as the fingernail on Tom’s pinky finger. “I ain’t taking that on the Kratos.” His hand shot out and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, but in this bar, no one even bothered pretending to look shocked at the threat of physical violence. An audio signal from inside the Kratos was a security breech that made blowing up your captain look like a child’s prank. After all, Captain Severn had survived one little grenade, even if his hover hadn’t.

  “No, no, I wouldn’t expect you to.” The little man’s voice rose a couple of octaves. “When she’s on the ship, you can keep that in an electronic safe. That’s fine. We only want to know what she’s doing when she goes wandering off on her own. We want to know if other people are going to end up like that crew.” The man looked down toward the display. “Command thinks she’s not going to do that again, but I say that what a person does once, he’s likely to do again. You were smart enough to protect yourself and your crewmates against Captain Severn, even when it meant doing something illegal. I’m hoping you’ll do that again.”

  Tom narrowed his eyes and studied him. “So, you think I’m smart enough to know how to keep myself alive?”

  He nodded frantically.

  “But then you think I’ll conspire against a genta? That’s suicide. You tell me Da’shay is violent and we both know she’s genta-strong and crazy as fuck, and you think someone who knows how to protect his own skin would conspire against that? Someone in your organization has a few screws loose.” Tom pulled the man even closer so that their faces were inches from each other. The man’s hands grabbed at Tom’s shoulders, but there was no way he could physically fight his way free and he knew it.

  “You aren’t doing anything. Your hands are clean. We’ll do everything. This is just a way to minimize the risk to others. Your hands are clean.” The man’s words tumbled out in a raw panic and Tom pushed the man back into his own chair. White knuckled hands clung to the arms of the chair and he stared at Tom the way someone might look at a wild tiger. That made Tom smile.

  “Hand it over, then.” Tom picked up his drink and tossed it back. The vodka burned all the way down.

  The man reached out with a trembling hand and put a small silver disk on the table. “Press the center and little hooks will grab any porous surface—wood, cloth, foam, unsealed—”

  “I know what porous means. Idiot.” Tom slammed his drink down on the table and grabbed the small disk.

  Chapter Four

  Tom nodded to the tech who was checking the lines to the Kratos. The woman nodded back and then kept running her checks. Becca could do all this, but after watching the rest of the crew get blown up, the captain had given her a little down time. If Tom was lucky, she might spend it with him.

  There were hover races in the afternoon or the junkyard had lots of good pickings this time of month, right after the Corps ships got upgrades. Tom had seen Becca heading out there more than once, so maybe she’d like a little help carrying back some of the heavier parts. He was guessing that she was building her own atmosphere hopper or maybe even a shuttle. Took brains to know how to do something like that, but Becca had those to spare. Hell, she’d got through the engineering academy.

  Leaning against the side of the Kratos, Tom hit his communicator. “Becca, you in there?”

  “Tom?”

  “Who else does it sound like?” Tom flinched. That had been a bad opening. “You feel like getting out of the ship for a while?” Tom scratched his chest and started to feel a little nervous as the time seemed to get awfully long considering it was a mighty short question. The tall blast wall created shade that hid half the ship and Tom started wandering toward the sunlight. The ship sat on a thirty-five-degree angle with her nose to the sky and her thrusters to the blast wall, so the bunks weren’t exactly comfortable and the passageways all turned and angled in ways that made it hard to walk. She should jump at a chance to get out of there.

  “Um, sure,” Becca finally answered. “You got any particular place in mind?”

  “I ain’t particular. You want to go to that junkyard you like picking through?”

  “The junkyard?” Becca sounded confused now and Tom could feel his stomach tighten. He wasn’t doing this right and he wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “If you have some place else in mind, say it,” Tom snapped. Why wouldn’t she ever tell him what she was looking for? Some days Tom envied the doxies. People walked in and told them exactly what they wanted, no games required. They gave sex, you gave them money and everyone was happy. Instead he was stuck trying to read between the lines, and reading had never been his strongest skill. Tom knew how to field strip a gun. He could take out a half-dozen enemy before they could spot him in his sniper’s shelter, and he knew how to run his thumbs between a woman’s legs so that she writhed in pleasure. But no matter how often he sat in that rainbow colored engine room of Becca’s, he couldn’t seem to figure her out.

  “Cupcakes.”

  Tom just about slammed his head into the Kratos’ wing when he spun around to see Da’shay walking up behind him. “God damn it.” Her long hair was gone, but short black curls had already grown out in the two weeks since the explosion. Maybe it was his imagination that her skin looked a little more blue and a little less green, but other than that, he couldn’t tell she’d been standing at ground zero a few short days ago.

  “Damn cupcakes would be hot,” Da’shay announced, as if that made any sense at all. Damn it. He hadn’t wanted to see her. If he could avoid being around her, he wouldn’t have to think about the small button in his pocket. He could just wait until they had their orders and drop it in the trash. The problem was that Tom could drop it in the trash now, but he hadn’t. He kept it, fingering it w
hen he thought about the fire that had engulfed the Kratos. The captain wasn’t keeping track of Da’shay, the little man had been right about that. Da’shay stopped her wandering and looked at Tom with a small smile that gave him the creeps.

  The hull door slid open with a heavy thunk. “Tom! You okay?” Becca was there with a gun in hand. Tom stared up at her, trying to figure out what she was doing.

  A new voice called, “What’s wrong?” Tom looked over to see Ramsay closing in on him.

  “Don’t rightly know,” Tom answered. “Becca’s taken to answering the door half dressed with a gun in hand.” He gestured up to where she stood with her shirt unbuttoned. The fabric only hid her breasts because luck and gravity made it drape right. She gave a short yelp and then vanished back into the ship.

  “What the hell?” Ramsay asked loudly. Tom could only shrug because he really had no idea what bug had crawled up Becca’s ass.

  “Captain, he was cursing and running into the ship and I just thought—” Becca called from inside. Ramsay turned to give Tom a weary look.

  “What?” Tom demanded. He hadn’t done anything.

  “Why were you out here cursing?”

  “Da’shay sneaked up on me.” Tom glared at the woman. He’d had a good plan going until she went and screwed it up. Da’shay ran her hand over the line of rivets along the side of the Kratos and walked on her tiptoes. Freak. “Are we going to get rid of her before the next mission? I can’t trust someone like that at my back.”

  For a second, Ramsay could only stare at him in shock. “I don’t remember anyone asking your opinion.” Captain Ramsay crossed his arms and gave Tom of those real sharp glares—one that promised that Tom would be scraping the undersides of deckplates with a handknife if he didn’t watch his tongue. Friendship was one thing, publicly questioning the captain was another, and Tom knew he was over the line. However, Tom hadn’t ever been particularly good at staying inside the lines.

  “I don’t trust her at my back, Captain. Always sneaking up on a man like that.”