Chapter 27
Velda lay in Ethan’s arms, staring up at the frame of the bunk above them.
At least they had gotten some sleep. They had both really needed it.
No one had come for them again since Linao had returned them to their cell, and she was still turning over Sylvester’s potential motivations for summoning them and then essentially abandoning them in her head.
Either he’d let his argument with Linao take precedence or he’d been distracted by the thought of the silver balls being damaged and found that more important.
She decided she was going to ask Linao.
She might refuse to speak, or she might blurt out everything, like she had done to Ritter about the discovery of the ancestral wreck.
She also wondered what had happened to Linao on Fjern. There was some really bad blood there.
If she’d understood correctly, Linao accused Sylvester of ordering her ship destroyed, and she’d barely gotten out alive. Velda remembered her saying she’d spent a week as a prisoner afterward.
And now her father had destroyed a ship with her in it again.
It had obviously stirred up trouble.
And Ritter arriving would stir up more.
Linao didn’t like him, but Sylvester seemed to be looking forward to his arrival.
We need the last four balls, the voices in her head said. It’s good Ritter’s coming if it means he gives them to us. We are tired of being in hibernation.
She turned her head slightly to look at Ethan as he dozed beside her. If he got two more balls, it would be almost impossible to hide the changes.
Her panic spiked, and the balls inside her tried to calm her down.
No, she told them. This is a legitimate worry.
He hadn’t grown in height, but he was so much more muscular, it looked as if he had.
She lifted her arm, turned it one way and then another, and admitted she looked stronger, too, but her muscles had only gotten more defined, she hadn’t put on the same bulk as Ethan.
It was as if the balls had taken a look at their opponents, the much bigger, bulkier Caruso, and had molded Ethan’s new physique to match them.
All the better to fight them, the voices told her.
Let’s be clever about this, she warned them. I don’t want Ethan getting hurt.
She felt a rush of approval and agreement from them, and her fingers tingled where they rested against Ethan’s arm.
He stirred beneath her, and she looked up, found him watching her.
“You thinking good thoughts about me?” he asked, voice husky.
She lifted her brows. “Maybe. Is that what the voices told you?”
“That’s what they told me,” he agreed. “They’re very happy about it.” He bent his head and kissed her, and she moved her legs restlessly as she kissed him back, wishing, as she had many times since this whole thing began, that they had the privacy they’d had in the mountains.
Ethan stilled, his hand gripping her arm as if to stop himself touching her anywhere else.
“I want this ship to ourselves,” he said.
She gave a low chuckle. “You’re going to get rid of them so we can finally have some us time?”
“Yes.” He sounded quite serious. He shifted, pulling her over his body and against the wall, his focus going to the door. She was suddenly glad of the overhead bunk, because it created a pool of shadow beneath it—shadow that could hide Ethan’s changes, because it was clear someone was coming.
“Let me deal with this.” She swung her leg over him before he could sit up, pinning him beneath her, and he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up, the move so effortless she gaped at him.
“No.”
“Yes.” She glared at him, suspended along his length, as she heard footsteps getting closer. “You can’t see yourself, but you’re just not the same as you were.” She whispered it, in case the lens in the room was sound and vision. “I’m going to sit in front of you and block their view.”
He looked distinctly annoyed as he lifted her completely over his body so she could put her feet on the ground.
She straightened up, standing directly in front of him, as Linao opened the door.
“Good, you’re up.” Linao smiled. “I thought you might like some actual food before Ritter prods and pokes at you again, so I’ve arranged for you to eat breakfast in the mess.”
“We would like that.” But she was panicking as she said it, because then Linao would see Ethan.
Maybe his changes were just obvious to her? Maybe Linao wouldn’t notice anything.
“Give us a minute to use the bathroom, and we’ll be ready.” She waved back toward the facilities, and Linao sighed and gave a nod. “I’ll even give you five minutes, not just one.” She stepped out and the door closed.
She sensed Ethan rise up behind her and she turned to look at him with a critical eye.
“Shit,” she said with feeling, then lowered her voice. “Can you pretend to still be dragging a bit from your laz hit?”
He looked down at himself, looked up. She thought he looked surprised and a little freaked out.
“Sure.”
They took turns in the bathroom and as Ethan stepped out, Linao was back.
“Still not yourself?” she asked, and Velda thought there was more than a touch of suspicion in her voice.
Suspicion was better than knowing, she decided. Much better.
“Have you forgotten how it feels to be hit with one of those big laz?” Velda asked, stepping forward with her hands on her hips.
“No.” Linao turned to look at the weapons in the hands of the Caruson guards outside the door. “I remember how much it hurts.”
Ethan’s face had gone a paler shade than usual, and Velda assumed it was the balls at work.
She approved.
They walked with Linao down gloomy passages to the canteen, and Velda wondered why they had a Caruson guard and not a Cores unit.
It looked like Linao planned to eat with them, because she sat down at the table with them.
“My father and some of his team went back to his ship, but they sent back some food and one of the cooks to feed those of us who aren’t Caruson.
” She glanced at the Caruson guards standing behind them.
“The rebels need to preserve their own food because there’s more than double the people in this new Caruson crew than there were before. ”
“When are we leaving this ship?” Velda asked. Surely it should be soon? She didn’t understand why some of the Cores were still onboard.
“That’s a good question.” Linao glanced at the Caruso again, and Velda wondered if she was worried about it. “Nirro wanted some of us to stay here while he and my father negotiated the terms of their deal.”
In other words, they were hostages to the Caruso until Nirro had what he wanted.
And once again, Sylvester had left his daughter in a dangerous situation, while he got himself to safety.
Food came out of the kitchen, carried by two Cores staff, and then a Caruson came out with food as well, set it on a nearby table, and the guards around them moved off to sit and eat their breakfast.
It made things far less tense, no longer having four large laz pointed at them.
“So what’s the story?” Velda asked, keeping her voice down. “I didn’t know the Caruso had any internal conflict, but obviously they do.”
“Looks like Raxia and Arkhor are keeping secrets from their allies,” Linao said, and there was such a layer of smug in her tone, Velda realized her hands were clenched.
“Raxia and Arkhor know about an internal power struggle among the Caruso?” Ethan asked.
“Well . . .” Linao shrugged. “Maybe not the specifics, but they know all about the incident that sparked the issues.”
“And what incident was that?” Ethan asked.
Linao smirked again and bit into a piece of toast.
“Veltos,” Velda said, and the look on Linao’s face made her think she was right. “That’s the only incident I can remember where the Raxian and Arkhoran military had some kind of incident together with the Caruso.”
“Veltos?” Ethan took a sip of jah. “I vaguely remember the VSC had a run-in with the Caruso. I thought it was just the same kind of low-level incident that’s been happening more and more these last few years.”
“The Caruso snuck onto Veltos and set up an illegal mine, and when an earthquake collapsed the mine tunnels, they had mass casualties on their hands. In order to get their people off-planet without tipping off the VSC, they took out a VSC satellite and tried to kill everyone on Veltos.” Linao leaned back in her chair.
Velda hadn’t heard any of this. “How many people were on Veltos?”
Linao smiled. “Only three scientists and a group of VSC soldiers participating on the Veltos Trail.”
The Veltos Trail. Of course.
Velda had nominated a few Department of Defense personnel who’d been injured to be awarded a place on one of the groups walking the Trail. It was a real honor to be chosen, and there were a limited number of places.
“How did that whole incident create a split in the Caruso?” Ethan asked.
“Apparently, once it became clear they couldn’t kill everyone on planet, and that the people on the Trail had been able to call in an Arkhoran warship to help them, the Caruso tried to simply kill their own people on the planet, so no one could spill their secrets.
” Linao dropped her voice even lower. “The head of the mine sent his most severely injured people up to their own ship to save them, and called for something that’s very specific in Caruson culture—”
“Fraknvos.” The Caruson who’d spoken with them yesterday, and who Linao had called Nirro, came to stand directly behind Linao.
Velda had noticed him come in, and he must have excellent hearing, because he had obviously heard every word Linao had said.
Either that or this table had a listening device hidden somewhere on it.
“They called for fraknvos, and that is a call that can never be denied. And yet, on that day, it was.”
“They asked for help, a special kind of help that must be honored?” Velda was beginning to understand.
Nirro nodded. “Vrk asked for it, to save those under his command, and they turned him away and then tried to kill him and everyone else they’d sent down to the mine to keep them quiet.”
“I remember the name Vrk.” Ethan turned to look at the Caruson. “He was taken prisoner by the Arkhorans, wasn’t he? Him and a group of others?”
“He had no choice but to surrender to the VSC after our own military tried to kill him.” Nirro’s narrow nostrils flared.
“He and his people were eventually returned to Caruso, but by then the word had gotten out through the contact he and his people had with their family and friends while they were being held on Arkhor.”
Velda wondered how well the Arkhorans had monitored those communications. Not very well if they hadn’t realized what was going on.
“So everything that had happened to them was made public?” Ethan asked.
“They’d have preferred to keep it secret and I’m sure the Caruson government would have liked to have had Vrk killed on his return, but it was too late by then.
Even they could see that would not be wise,” Nirro said.
“The captains of the ships who refused to help, who tried to kill Vrk and his people, they were tried and convicted, but they had been under orders, so then the people looked at who above them could have ordered such a thing, and when no one was prosecuted for that most horrendous of crimes, the people began to wonder if they wanted such leaders leading them anymore.”
“When did this happen?” Velda asked.
“It’s been a long, slow process.” Nirro crossed his arms. “First, Vrk and his crew were under Arkhoran control, and then after months of negotiation, they were returned, and then came the captains’ trials, and then the demand for accountability, and then the realization that nothing was going to happen.
We have been fighting the system for perhaps six months or more. ”
Which is why things had definitely gone quiet in the last few months. Velda and her advisors had assumed the Caruso were either biding their time, waiting for an opportunity, or they were stockpiling weapons and getting ready for an attack.
Arkhor and Raxia really should have weighed in and let them all know things were not exactly happy between the group they’d taken prisoner and the home planet. Unless they hadn’t realized the full extent of it.
It was possible the Caruso had kept things low key, because even the group who wanted to overthrow the current Caruson government probably saw the VSC as an enemy.
“So what’s the deal between the Cores and the rebels?” Velda asked. “Weren’t the Caruso already cooperating with the Cores?”
“The original agreement wasn’t honored.” Linao said. “We found new allies.”
This explained so much. Velda had wondered for a long time how the Cores kept dealing with the Caruso when they’d reneged on their bargains over and over again.
It looked like all this time, they’d been in secret talks with the competition. “Was this ship takeover the first fall of the hammer?” Velda asked.
Linao and Nirro exchanged a look, and neither answered.
There was something else going on here.
Nirro was called to by someone in the passageway outside the canteen, and he left them, striding off.
“He won’t let you leave, will he?” Ethan asked.
Linao shot him a quick look, then lifted a shoulder. “We’re still hammering out the final details of our cooperation. It may be they’re a little reluctant to let us go until they have some assurances.”
Ethan’s lips twitched. “I wondered how the Cores kept getting into alliances with the Caruso, only to have them do whatever suited them best over and over. Now I’m wondering what the Caruso could be thinking, trusting you lot.”
Linao’s eyes narrowed, and she pushed back her chair and stood. “Time for me to take you to Ritter.”
She meant that statement to cow them.
Velda kept a neutral face, but the voices inside her were cheering at the thought of new balls.
That might not be what’s going to happen, she warned them. We have no idea what he plans to do.