Alsea Rising: Gathering Storm (Chronicles of Alsea Book 9) Read online

He glowered. “Captain Serrado, have you received instructions from Lancer Tal or any member of the Alsean government?”

  “I have not.”

  “Has your command been mentally or emotionally influenced through your tyree bond?” He pronounced tyree with extra emphasis on the first syllable, making it sound like a profanity.

  “It has not.”

  “If you receive an order in conflict with anything you’ve promised Lancer Tal or your wife—”

  “Dr. Rivers is my bondmate, not my wife. It was an Alsean ceremony. We prefer the Alsean term.”

  “Your wife,” he repeated, “how will you respond?”

  “I will uphold my oath to the Protectorate.”

  He opened a file on his pad, tapped it several times, then threw the pad on his desk with a clatter. “And we’re done for another day. What a load of useless crap. I ask, you deny, and you’re probably lying through your teeth. But I’m supposed to take you at your word.”

  She refused to show the anger that coiled through her stomach. “The value of my word has been established through a lifetime of service to Fleet.”

  Disdain dripped from his voice. “Right up until you disobeyed orders, sided with a foreign government, and then got yourself some jacked-up alien brain bug. You’re a liability, Captain. But somehow you keep climbing to the top of a shit mountain without getting a speck of it on your boots. You may have fooled half the brass at Command Dome, but you don’t fool me.” He leaned forward. “Don’t get complacent. Sholokhov won’t always protect you.”

  She stared at him, shocked, and a genuine smile lit his face.

  “You didn’t know. Interesting.” Resting against the chair back, he steepled his fingers and studied her. “I was being literal when I said you fooled half the brass. The panel was divided until Director Sholokhov came in and tilted the scale in your favor. You’re here because he wants you here. I thought you were a favorite, but if he didn’t tell you . . .” He chuckled. “Then you’re nothing more than a game piece he’s moving around. He’s not protecting you, he’s using you. When he’s done, he’ll move you right off the board.”

  In all the times she had stood here for this farce of a check-in, Greve had never been able to rattle her. Now she stood speechless.

  Sholokhov had interceded on her behalf and kept it quiet. Not only was it a favor unasked, but he had passed up the chance to hold it over her head.

  He wanted something from her. Worse, he was biding his time, waiting to demand it.

  Greve was speaking, exuding satisfaction at this perceived win. She paid no attention. Let him think he’d struck terror into her heart; it would get him off her back for a few days. She could use the time to think.

  What did Sholokhov want?

  3

  Colonel Grand Shit

  The fourteenth floor of the State House was always quiet.

  Beneath it were the gears of government, churning and whirring, powered by a thousand dedicated Alseans from all six castes. Those corridors were never empty, even at night.

  Few State House staff ever set foot above the thirteenth floor, having no authority to pass the biolocks on the lifts and stairwell doors. But for those with the security clearance, the fourteenth was a world of hushed corridors and rich tapestries, inhabited by the most powerful people on Alsea. The Lancer’s office was here, as well as those of her closest advisors and support staff. Here also was the famous Unification Chamber, where the original High Council had come together to work out a power sharing system that brought a millennium of peace. The caste Primes had met there ever since.

  On the other side of the great dome were the equally famous guest suites, each a museum in its own right, yet seen by very few. Staying in a State House guest suite was the pinnacle of achievement for Alsean political society.

  Colonel Corozen Micah would never sleep in one of those rooms—his quarters were several floors down—but as the Lancer’s Chief Guardian, he had an office on the fourteenth. For the son of low-ranking warriors with more love than prestige to offer, such an achievement felt unreal even after eight cycles.

  Duty had kept him in his office well past evenmeal this night, and he emerged into a corridor so quiet that he might have been the only one here. An illusion, of course, but one he embraced. These glorious artworks, this ancient bench pieced together and carved by a crafter when Blacksun Temple’s molwyn tree was still young—in this moment, they were his to enjoy.

  He strolled down the hall, hands behind his back, bootsteps muffled by a handwoven rug still resistant to traffic after three hundred cycles. Lhyn Rivers had once told him that in most Protectorate cultures, this rug would be behind protective glass in a museum.

  “What a waste,” he muttered, his gaze on the intricate patterns beneath his feet. How strange, to lock away things that were meant to be used.

  The rug curved gracefully around a corner, and he saw a small boot and bare calf just before a body collided with his. Instinctively he reached out, his hands settling on the slim shoulders of a woman.

  A Gaian woman, in a formal dress and jacket that smelled of hyacot. She had been to an expensive restaurant, then. Hyacot twigs were generally used in ceremonies or as atmospheric enhancers in the type of restaurant he tried to avoid.

  He steadied her as she found her feet. “Dr. Wells. Are you all right?”

  “Hm? Yes, yes, I’m fine.” She straightened her jacket with the deliberate movements of one who has overindulged. “Can’t find my room, though. This place is a damned ant nest. Passages going every which way, and half of them dead ends.”

  He kept his amusement off his face. “You’re on the other side of the dome from your suite.”

  “What? No, that—” She lifted her head and looked around in confusion. “Oh. Are these the offices? How did I end up here?”

  “With the help of several bottles of spirits, I suspect.”

  Her gaze snapped back to him, remarkably sharp despite her inebriation. “I can hold my spirits, Colonel.”

  “Since you’re still walking upright, I agree.”

  She frowned. “Why does that feel like a disagreement?”

  “I have no idea. May I escort you back to your suite?” He held out a hand, indicating the direction from which she had come.

  “I suppose you’ll have to,” she grumbled, turning in place. “Ant nest.” After a tick of silent walking, she spoke more quietly. “But Shippers, what a beautiful ant nest.”

  “It is, isn’t it? Sometimes I wish the State House tours could come to this floor, so more people could see it.” He put a hand on her elbow, gently nudging her through a doorway.

  “No wonder Ekatya and Lhyn love living here. I don’t know how Ekatya goes back to the Phoenix after a few nights in this place. I have one of the biggest suites on the ship, and it’ll feel like a shannel cup after this.”

  In his few interactions with Dr. Wells, she had been edgy and sharp-tongued, forcefully sharing her professional opinions while keeping anything personal behind stone walls. This was a different view of her.

  “I can imagine,” he said.

  She glanced over. “Imagine? You don’t have a suite here? Aren’t you the grand shit of security?”

  “The grand what?” It was an effort to hold back his laugh, especially when she put a hand to her mouth with an expression of genuine surprise.

  “It’s possible,” she said, enunciating carefully, “that I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

  “A bit, yes. Does ‘grand shit’ mean anything more than what it sounds like?”

  She chuckled, then let out an open laugh that melted her reserve. “It does, and I’m just drunk enough to tell you. It’s Fleet slang, dating back to the days when our ships were a lot smaller and the, hm, facilities were much less reliable. And by facilities, I mean sewage plumbing.”

  “I assumed.” She looked so elegant, standing there in her fine clothes and the formal hairstyle that bared her neck. Gemstones flashed at her throat
and sparkled from her ears, she smelled divine, and she was talking about sewage.

  “In those days, if someone produced . . .” Her hands lifted, slender fingers curving to indicate a sizable object. “. . . a fecal output that was larger than normal, or more solid, it would block the plumbing. When you block a ship’s plumbing, everything else is secondary. Unless you’re in the middle of a battle, of course.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, losing control of his smile.

  She grinned at him, a flash of teeth and satisfaction that warmed his skin. “So a grand shit is important enough to bring everything to a stop. You are, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t say I ever thought of myself in those terms. But yes, I’m the Lancer’s Chief Guardian, which does indeed make me the grand shit of security.” He offered a short bow. “And therefore the most important escort you could have back to your suite.”

  “I’m honored.” She matched his bow, looking up briefly with an impish gleam in her green eyes. When she straightened, the gleam was lost behind a familiar wall of reserve. “You’re different from the healers. I’d think it was because of your caste, but you’re different from Rahel, too. Is it your job, or just you?”

  “I’m not sure I can answer that without knowing what you see as different.” He resumed their journey, noting that she walked closer now, her movements less guarded.

  This was dangerous territory, and he should put a stop to it.

  He wouldn’t. That look in her eyes, the flash of teeth—they had done something to his insides that he hadn’t felt in too long. He wanted to see them again.

  “On my home planet, we say we have three faces. One we present to the world, one we show our friends and family, and one we keep for ourselves. I’ve just finished seven days in the company of a whole herd of healers. They don’t have three faces. I’m not sure they have two.” She paused when he touched her elbow, guiding her around a corner. “Rahel should have three faces, and sometimes she does. Other times, it’s all there for anyone to see if they know how to look. But you, Colonel. You have at least two faces.”

  They walked the length of a corridor while Micah considered how to answer.

  “Have I offended you?”

  “No. Intrigued me, perhaps. Not offended.” He opened a door and motioned her through.

  She stopped, gazing around with a furrow in her smooth brow. “All right, I know where I am now. But I don’t know how we got here.”

  “The main corridor follows the dome.” He drew a circle in the air. “In theory, you could have kept walking and returned to this point eventually. But that would take you past the Lancer’s office; you wouldn’t have gotten much farther before my Guards stopped you.” Making a straight line through his imaginary circle, he added, “We took a route that crossed the dome. And here you are.”

  “Here I am.” She looked down the hall to her suite, three doors away, then back at him. “And you’ve managed not to answer either of my questions. Would you like to come in, Colonel? I won’t offer you a drink, but if you’re in the mood for a cup of shannel . . .”

  He ignored the practical voice informing him that this was an extremely bad idea. “It would be my pleasure.”

  Her suite was half the size of the one given to Lhyn and Ekatya, but every bit as splendid with its tapestries, historically significant furniture, and priceless art. On a table near the tall windows, a vase the size of his thigh held an enormous bouquet of flowers. Such bouquets were a standard courtesy for guests, assembled from park plantings by State House producers. They were also a subtle indication of the guest’s importance or favor with whomever had issued the invitation.

  “Make yourself comfortable.” Dr. Wells slipped off her jacket, exposing bare shoulders and the insubstantial straps of her dress, and vanished into the small kitchen space.

  In that brief glimpse, he had seen only smooth skin where an Alsean’s chest ridges would be. His fingers itched to touch it, to feel that difference, and he hurriedly crossed to the bouquet to give himself something else to focus on. Inhaling the delicate scent of tintinatalus blossoms helped only a little, a small distraction of one sense while his entire body seemed attuned to clinking cups and the whoosh of a shannel dispenser. When her footsteps returned, he moved to wait by the sofa.

  She appeared with a cup in each hand, walking with less care and more grace than he expected.

  “You’re not drunk any longer,” he said, accepting his cup.

  “Good eye, Colonel. I brought a few doses of kastrophenol with me. It neutralizes most of the negative effects of spirits.”

  “Yet I’m still here.”

  “Yes, you are.” She took a seat facing the window and smiled when he chose a chair opposite. “Definitely a warrior. Every soldier I know sits facing the door.”

  He lifted the cup in a salute. “You see more than you allow others to know.”

  “Three faces.” She matched his gesture and sipped her drink, the motion drawing his eyes to that smooth expanse of skin and the shadowed valley between her breasts.

  Dragging his gaze away, he pointed across the room. “Do you know the significance of this bouquet?”

  “I didn’t know there was any.”

  “All guests receive them. The bigger they are, the more status they convey. Yours is as big as they come, and it’s not made with flowers that put out new blooms every nineday. Those branches are tintinatalus. A tree, not a shrub. It’ll take a cycle for the tree to regrow them.”

  She studied the bouquet with new appreciation. “They came from Prime Scholar Yaserka. He’s the one who authorized this collaboration.”

  “He holds you in high esteem. The producers who made that bouquet know it, the staff who prepared this suite know it. It’s surely common knowledge in the State House by now.”

  “Did you know?”

  “Yes, but I get my gossip through a different route.”

  “Top down instead of bottom up, hm? Fleet works like that, too.” She kicked off her boots and pulled up her legs, sitting sideways with knees bent and one arm resting on the back of the sofa. “I believe you owe me a few answers, Colonel. Is it your job or you?”

  He hadn’t forgotten. “If we’re in your suite talking about faces, call me Micah.”

  “Your family name?”

  “It’s what I’m most comfortable with. A warrior tradition for those of us in the protective forces. The eldest uses the family name as long as they’re serving.”

  “Rahel doesn’t go by Sayana.”

  “Rahel is unique. She never served in a normal Guard unit, and her oath holder styled himself a parental figure. He always used her first name.”

  “I don’t think Shantu styled himself a parental figure. I think he was her father. If he hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have obeyed those orders.”

  “You’re protective of her,” he observed.

  “Yes, I am.” Simple and firm. “I’ve read her file. I know what she did to you. I don’t know how you handle being her commanding officer after that, but I’ll tell you right now: don’t say a word against her to me.”

  A tendril of tension rose between them, poised for explosive growth.

  “What an advantage she has, with someone like you as her shield.” He watched the slight drop of her shoulders, a result of her relaxing spine, and added, “Rahel has paid her debts. I made my peace with her some time ago.”

  “That’s a story I’d like to hear someday.”

  There were quite a few stories he suddenly wanted to hear.

  “I don’t think I can answer your question,” he said. “I can’t remember a time when there was a me separate from my job. Can you separate from yours?”

  This laugh was not the uninhibited one from earlier. “Do you know what I was doing tonight?”

  “I know you were in a very nice restaurant.” At her visible surprise, he tapped his nose. “Your clothes. They’re infused with the scent of hyacot twigs.”

  “Oh. Those are wonderful, a
ren’t they? I’d like to bring some back with me.” She sipped her shannel, then slid cup and saucer onto the side table. “I was celebrating the success of our first medical collaboration. Ten of us went out to do what healers do best, regardless of species. We self-medicated.”

  “Is that how you separate from your job?”

  “That’s how I forget enough of my job to remember who I am without it.”

  “But you’re sober now.”

  “I’m not bringing a man into my quarters if I’m too drunk to handle him.”

  “Has that been a problem before?” He forced himself to stay still, but his blood thrummed at the mere thought of it.

  “I learned that lesson the hard way, yes.” She pinned him with a glare that said pity was not welcome. “But I’m told that’s very unusual on Alsea. Only one of the healers I worked with had ever treated a victim. I still can’t quite believe it.”

  “Unusual and swiftly punished,” he said tightly.

  “Oh, he was punished. Just not by the Fleet judicial system.” She retrieved her cup and took a sip.

  He shouldn’t ask, but . . .

  “What did you do?”

  She cradled the cup between her hands, her gaze on the bouquet. “He was an officer, which meant he had a personal matter printer. About a moon after my experience, I treated an ensign from data systems with familiar symptoms and a very familiar story. She wrote a self-deleting program that delivered a toxin to his next food order, and I found a medical code to authorize the installation. He’s not in Fleet anymore,” she added offhandedly. “Medical discharge. Not fit for active duty.”

  “Great Mother,” he blurted. “You’re not like any healer I know.”

  He caught a glimpse of wide, startled eyes before she dropped her head and rubbed the back of her neck.

  “I don’t think the kastrophenol neutralized everything,” she muttered. “Dammit. Must be the difference in Alsean spirits.”

  She had not meant to tell him that much. He had taken advantage of the vulnerability she had tried to eliminate.

  “It won’t leave this room.” When she looked up, distrust written across her face, he added, “I swear on my honor as a warrior. I hope Rahel has taught you what that means.”