Wing turned his attention far from Darsey slumped at his feet, to his would-be killer, now half-crouched in front of him.
“Enjoy,” Jileea instructed him caustically, and he raised an eyebrow.
“Enjoy which?”
“Gloating. Triumph. Throwing me to the mutt.” Her voice grew firmer as she named her fears and she almost managed to stand straight. Her cold and uncaring expression was only betrayed by an anxious twist of her lip. She looked defiant and unrepentant as she cradled her damaged wrist and slouched against the wall opposite Wing. She glared at him and he studied her challenging expression with a sympathy that surprised him. Well, perhaps he could still save someone today. If she’d let him.
“I’ve no skill with gloating,” he admitted softly. “Too little chance, mayhap. I’ve more experience with being gloated at. That’s a major part of losing Honor.”
There was a brief silence before Jileea laughed sardonically and tossed her silver hair, but the gesture made her gasp and clutch her injured arm. She gulped repeatedly, but whether she was swallowing bile, or tears was uncertain.
One thing Wing could sense clearly from her was pain, so he stepped across the corridor and before she could pull away, laid a regen strip on her arm. It curled around her broken wrist and she gasped, while a lone tear stole down her cheek. “Stop,” she ordered thickly, but seemed unable to form any more words.
Wing moved away immediately, with his hands spread wide to either side. See? No threat. It was doubtful she’d hear his thoughts, but perhaps she could feel the emotions. “You must truly hate me,” he stated, and her surprise was exactly what he wanted. She looked up from her injury and he tried a wry smile.
“My scan shows you used a gene-tailored, combinant anaesthetic to knock me out. That must have cost credit plus and taken true patience to apply. How much time did it take to introduce each part and then wait for it to pass my met field with no alert? Hours? And how many times did you need to repeat that? How long did it finally take to introduce each innocent component, until the total drug was present in my cells to combine and activate? Days?”
“Weeks, to be safest,” Jileea rasped and Wing sensed more surprise from her.
“So, I figure you must hate me,” he concluded, but she shook her finger in denial, before freezing with a scowl.
“Why… why am I telling so much?” She dropped her head to study her arm, before laboriously looking up so she could glare at Wing. “My arm, the warmth. It’s more than healing. You put a relaxant in the regen strip” she accused, and he raised a forefinger in acknowledgement.
“It was needed. Don’t be annoyed that it’s helping the conversation. Dialogue really only works when both people speak and your tough, resentful act wasn’t helping.”
“It’s not supposed to help you,” she admitted bluntly, before shaking her head in an effort to clear it. “Drak. My tough, resentful act, as you judge it, was supposed to see you dead.”
Wing tried to smile, but he could find no warmth to put behind it. Without Darsey his throat would now be very cut. Curse all pirates. This wasn’t the life he’d been raised to.
“Your attempt to kill me is irrelevant-” Jileea laughed, but he ignored the interruption. “It no longer matters, because we have the same enemy. Greon is the true target and we need to strike combined if we want to win.”
He paused for Jileea’s reaction, but she swayed slightly, and then yawned. Her expression was rapidly becoming as listless as Darsey’s. He surely knew how to bring out the best in females. “Stay with me, Jil.”
“Now you ask.” She yawned again. “You know Greon’s watching all this?”
“Not, actually. At present, he’s watching me hand you to the mutt.”
Wing’s reminder of the punishment she must have heard Greon order had the desired effect. Jileea straightened against the wall and her forehead crinkled in an effort to concentrate. “So you’re sending a false feed to the Leader. Why?”
“If you’re keen to start your date…”
“No,” she blurted, and her lips creased. “I mean, that’s all right. Dialogue’s better than such. Though I don’t know where your thoughts are. I want to be leader and you’re right. You are certain-sure in my way. Your rank comes first. It’ll be easy-as to put down Greon once I’m senior. So why would I work with you?”
“Because you’re not that stupid. It’s never going to be easy to put down Greon. Senior or other. I’m in a position to know and I know that I can’t make it work. Unless…”
Jileea’s head jerked up to bang against the wall. “Ow. I catch you. It won’t work unless you have an ally. Someone with full system access, but someone you can trust. Someone like me.”
“Exactly like,” the kres admitted.
Jileea tipped her head to one side, as if trying to think about his proposition, but then her body tilted too. Her legs went from under her and she thumped onto her bottom, still leaning against the wall, but back on the corridor floor.
“More ow.”
Wing sighed and took a stride so that he could crouch before her. Their eyes were level and he studied her with exasperation. “I suspect I used too much relaxant-”
“Nah,” Jileea denied, and turned her head away, defiant again.
However, that movement revealed something unexpected, something Nightwing had seen on mermaridian before, but never on the Rim and never on Jileea. Swinging away from him exposed her throat and, with it, two lines of bright tattoos that had previously been camouflaged by her com.
Wing rocked forward on the balls of his feet, razorback quick and his hand flashed out to grasp Jileea’s chin. She realized her mistake and tried to duck her head, but was unable to free herself from his grip. She stiffened instead and her lips twisted with shame. However, she made no further effort to stop him from tilting her head.
There was silence while Wing studied the markings on either side of her throat. Each tattooed strip ran along the bottom of her jaw line from its mid-point on either side and down her neck to stop when it reached her shoulders. The colors in the rows of symbols were bright and the detailing superb.
“A genuine lineage tattoo,” Wing murmured.
Jileea’s lips twisted further and she tried to twist her head away too, but the kres’ grip tightened. In fact, he scarcely noticed the attempted movement. His mind and com were busy deciphering the hieroglyphs that traced high-caste mermaridian ancestry, with the maternal line on the right side and paternal on the left. There was not much of note on the left, a Council Comet a few generations back and a Harvester Sickle before that, but on the right… Wing hissed quietly and finally released Jileea’s chin. “What’s a Luck’s daughter doing on the Rim?”
She scowled at the question. “How does one of Kresynt’s royal brats get disHonored?”
“Family quarrel,” Wing answered levelly, and felt more surprise from Jileea at such honesty.
She considered his response and started to laugh. She threw her head back and howled, despite Wing’s low growl.
“What’s funny?”
“You,” she accused, slurring the word with delight. “You think you’re superior plus. You thin’ kres are so much more than the rest of us, but your family sold you too.” He tried to answer, to deny it, but she raised a finger to halt his heated response. “Yes, they did. Don’ care if it was for rank, marriage or money. Politics, culture or cash. It’s no matter. They sold you an’ you fought it, so here you are.”
Nightwing’s anger seeped away, swallowed in ice. A familiar chill spread from his heart and he realized with dread that it was too late to stop it. He didn’t need a mirror to know how he looked, with his face set still and so expressionless that he might be a statue. An image of his hated Uncle, with a hard face and predator’s eyes.
Jileea gulped for air and was abruptly talking, apparently without much thought or sense. She threw words at him as if they were scraps that might appease this unexpected stranger.
“I’m fine. We’r
e all fine, ye? All good? No-one’s going to… to hurt anyone. Right? So, what’s the deal as such? How do we team? I help you take down the Leader and you keep me from the mutt? That’s great, that’s good, certain-sure.”
There was a brief, frigid moment and then Wing felt something shift inside. The change was small, much less than a thaw, but it must have shown, because Jileea breathed a sigh and sagged to the floor.
“That’s part,” the kres agreed slowly, “but there’s more. If you back me when I call, you get the ship. I’ll gift you the Bandit and be gone.”
“Wha’?” Jileea gaped at him, while her numbed neural paths presumably scrambled to comprehend such an offer. “What? I get to be leader? When? Next era?”
“Soon-as.”
Her lips shaped ‘no’, but without sound, and Wing held her gaze.
“Yes,” he insisted, trying to drive that word through her drug-induced fog with all of the conviction he could. “I’ve no care for the Bandit. It’s nothing to me and so is being its leader. No insult, Jileea, but I want more.”
The mermaridian studied him with obvious disbelief. “What’s more than your own ship?”
Wing hesitated over the word, but managed to push it out. “Honor. My Honor and my people. I have a duty I ran from...” He stopped abruptly and waved his hand, brushing aside unnecessary details. “I just wish to get my life back and I need a lift in the Bandit. That’s all. I’ve no idea where yet, but I’ll wager it’s on the Rim. One ride and you can be leader.”
Jileea’s lip curled and she looked at Nightwing with obvious disdain. “You want to crawl back home. Luck! Back to cosy Kresville. Drakkit, Wing, I always thought you had orbs. You think I’d run to Mermaridia if I could? Never. I’m here by choice and I’ll stay by choice. This is my ship. Sure, my father lost me in a bet and my owner was dung, so I ran, but that’s not over me any more. I could have stopped being Debted last year. I earned enough credits to pay the wager, buy my freedom and run home full legal. Forget that. I can fly here, even if you can’t.”
The kres abruptly stood, his hair stirring around the ship’s crest braided down one side in painful shame. “Sorry to disappoint. Such is a habit of mine. But back-now, perhaps you won’t find it so easy to fly when you’re in with the mutt. Do we deal or not?”
Jileea paused in her tirade and fear flickered across her face again. “Alright,” she said carefully. “I like the deal. How do I know you’ll keep to it?”
Wing grinned in response and hoped his smile was as chilling as any of Greon’s. “What choice do you have? Mutt or no mutt? If I tell them that you’re rankless and to enjoy themselves, they will. But if I say instead just to share quarters, you can easily keep them from sharing more. Certain-sure, if you’ve got a com. One of mine. Greon will want yours compressed. As for the chance to lead when Greon is tossed, think of that as a potential bonus. One that needs to be earned. So, when I ask for help, will you give it?”
Jileea’s top lip puckered and Nightwing leaned forward expectantly, until her mouth opened in another yawn. He stifled a curse and his fists clenched uselessly, but she flapped a hand in lazy reassurance. “You push… hard bargain, kres.”
“Is that yes?”
“What do you hear?”
“Not enough.”
Jileea’s eyelids drooped and then fluttered, before she finally managed to focus on Nightwing. He leaned forward until their faces almost touched and she licked her lips before answering distinctly and with exaggerated care. “Yes, Senior, I’m yours. Luck-bound, for whatever, whenever you need.”
19
Friendly Fire