The Skypirate Read online

  Damnation, he thought as he cut himself off. She’d almost startled him into very incautious words there. But of all the things he might have expected, to find that this woman who had so beguiled him was one of the foremost authorities on tactical situations in the system was the very last. Any formally trained first-year flight student knew of her, and that she had retired to run the academy school after an injury. Her leg, he thought, still a little dazed. It was so barely noticeable he’d forgotten.

  “How in Hades,” he said slowly, “did the pride of the Coalition wind up”—he gestured to the collar—“like this?”

  “I . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. She still seemed a little startled herself. No doubt that an outlaw skypirate had heard of her, Dax thought wryly, regaining his equilibrium now. Or, at least as much of it as he ever seemed to have around her. Odd how finding out she was one of his hated enemies had had little effect on that.

  “May I sit?” she said at last. Dax gestured at the empty chair beside the table. She sat, looked at him for a moment, then lowered her gaze.

  “They . . . the Coalition hold me responsible for the escape of a slave. A gold collar. The only one to ever escape. They made me a gold collar to replace him.”

  Hasn’t been but one gold collar ever escape, and a lot of people parted company with their heads over it. And even more just plain disappeared.

  The prison guard’s words echoed in his mind, giving credence to her story.

  “Why you?” he asked.

  “The slave was at my school.”

  “You . . . owned him?” God, how ironic, he thought when she nodded reluctantly. “Did you help him?”

  “No! I had sold him before he escaped.”

  “How convenient,” Dax said, feeling his stomach knot at this casual talk of selling a man. “Why were you blamed?”

  “Because I had owned him last.”

  Dax blinked. “Well, that makes a Coalition kind of sense I suppose. Could you not convince them it wasn’t your fault?”

  “I hoped to, at first. To regain my honor, I mean. But as they began to . . . train me, I realized I could not buy back what had never existed.”

  That, Dax thought, is learning the truth the hard way. “Why were they so convinced you were guilty?”

  She raised her gaze to his face. “They thought at first I had sold him to the dealer and then taken him back to sell him again in the underground market. To deprive them of both a slave and his value made them very angry. When they realized he had truly escaped, they assumed I had helped him. They were furious.”

  “Pleasant thought,” Dax began, then, as what she’d said registered, he asked, “What dealer?”

  She lowered her eyes again.

  “What dealer?” he repeated, his voice deadly soft.

  “Ossuary,” she whispered.

  He straightened up and his raised foot hit the floor. “Damn you to Hades,” he spat out. “I should have let them kill you. Better yet, I should have left you there in that prison, so they could ship you there. It would be a small piece of justice for you to wind up in that abyss. Perhaps I can still arrange it.”

  Her head came up then. Her eyes were moist, the pale blue brilliant now, but she didn’t shirk his burning gaze again. Whatever else she was, she had courage, he thought.

  “I make no excuses,” she said. “I was born to this system. It’s all I’ve ever known. Slaves were always there, not to be thought about, any more than a child’s pet. From the day I entered the Coalition Academy, I was taught how to handle them, and that we had the right to own them. It was as normal to me as firing thrusters to turn.”

  “And now?” His voice was still low and ominous, his gaze shifting to fasten on the collar that marked her as no better than those she’d once thought she owned.

  “What do you want me to say? That I’ve learned my lesson? That a year as a slave has taught me the pure injustice of slavery? That now I know better, that no one should be able to own someone else? Would you even believe me if I said it, all of it?”

  Dax leaned back against the edge of the table wearily. “I don’t know.”

  He rubbed his temples, feeling an ache there to match the one in his shoulder. He didn’t know what disturbed him most, that she had been a Coalition officer, or a slave owner. And seller. Or perhaps what was truly bothering him was that he had responded to a woman like her, with a heat he hadn’t known in . . . ever.

  “Couldn’t you prove you didn’t help him escape?” He wasn’t sure why he was asking; the answer could make little difference.

  “Does it matter?” She sounded as weary as he felt. “Haven’t you already made up your mind?”

  “We’ve gone this far. You might as well tell me the rest. Wasn’t there some way for you to prove your innocence?”

  “I have learned,” Califa said flatly, “that guilt or innocence has little to do with Coalition justice.”

  “Congratulations,” he said sardonically. “We’ve all known that for years.”

  “Perhaps it is easy to be right when you are not in the middle, looking out.”

  “Can’t see the zipbugs for the swarm? Perhaps. Why were you found guilty?”

  She hesitated, then seemed to make her decision. “Because I wouldn’t tell them who was.”

  Dax went very still. “What?”

  “I knew who helped him. At least, I had a good idea.”

  “But you didn’t turn them in? To help yourself?”

  “I . . . could not.”

  “Why?”

  “I . . . it’s a very long story.”

  “I’ve got time. But those men outside will be running short on patience soon.”

  It was a moment before she spoke again, and he could tell by her voice it was a painful process.

  “I had a . . . friend, a shipmate, when I was on active duty. Younger than I, but we got along well. We flew together for a while. We used to joke about who would get her own ship first. But then I got hurt, and was retired.”

  “You didn’t want that?”

  Her head snapped up. “Of course not! Would you like never to fly again?”

  He had to give her that one. “No.”

  “They said I couldn’t. That I wasn’t . . . fit.”

  “Your leg seems to give you very little trouble,” he remarked.

  “Enough so that you noticed,” she pointed out, her voice bitter with loss.

  “Actually,” he said, “the guard at the prison told me, or I might not have been sure for some time.”

  Distracted, she looked at him quizzically. “Why did the guard tell you that?”

  Dax coughed. “I, er, asked him if you were for sale, too.”

  He saw her swallow visibly. “You would have bought me? To get me out of there?”

  “To get us all out of there,” he corrected, irritated. Why did people always seem to think he was some kind of altruist, when there wasn’t an altruistic bone in his body? “I wasn’t doing you any favor, just trying to avoid a fight. So what does this friend of yours have to do with it?”

  “Shaylah was . . . different. She only wanted to fly. She never really saw eye to eye with the Coalition.”

  “Sounds like my kind of woman,” he muttered, and was surprised when Califa flushed. “If that was her attitude,” he said, “she must not have gotten far in the ranks.”

  “Oh, but she did. She had her own starfighter at twenty-four. Shaylah Graymist was the youngest graduate ever to make captain.”

  Something tugged at Dax, some memory he couldn’t bring to the surface. He wrestled with it for a moment, then gave up and gestured to Califa to continue.

  “She collected medals like coins. She once destroyed three Romerian warships that had tried to attack Zenox.”


  That, Dax thought, would have taken some fine flying. And fighting. But he said nothing; something else about Califa’s account, something in her voice, distracted him. There was pride for her friend there, but something else as well.

  “And how did you feel about her flying to all this acclaim while you were relegated to teaching?”

  She drew back sharply, and Dax knew he’d hit a nerve. He knew he should force her back to the point, but he found he wanted to know this, too, and he didn’t understand why.

  “Jealous, hmm?” he said, his tone mild.

  “No!” The protest was immediate, and a little too fierce. “Of course not. Running the school is—was an honor.”

  She hadn’t admitted it even to herself, Dax thought. “Go on,” he prompted.

  She took a deep breath as if to steady herself and went on. “That . . . slave, at the school, was a man. When Shaylah came to visit, she saw him, and . . . Eos, she was always such a fool, believing in love, and bonding, and all that ridiculous nonsense civilized people gave up on aeons ago.”

  “Bonding?” His voice was sharp.

  “Yes. Her parents taught her about it. She even said they were bonded, although they weren’t Triotian.”

  “A Coalition pilot whose parents were bonded?” It hurt him just to say the words, and he couldn’t hide the edge in his voice. Califa looked at him curiously. Then she shrugged.

  “I told you, Shaylah was . . . different.”

  “Was? Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re saying . . . what?” He began to pace. “That she fell in love with this slave? And helped him escape?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but she never, ever took a slave for mating when she visited. Her fastidiousness was legend. Yet she took this one. I don’t know what she told him, but when she was recalled, he went berserk. Not even”—she swallowed tightly, as if only now realizing the full import of what she was saying—“Eos, not even the pain system could control him. I was afraid they would fry his brain with too much power through the probes.”

  “So you sold him.”

  “I had no choice! He was disrupting things, and if it had gone on, Legion Command would have learned of it.”

  Dax restrained himself from comment on that. “How do you know this Shaylah helped the slave?”

  “When she came back from her assignment, she asked for him. I had to tell her he was gone. She was furious. But when she found out he was in Ossuary, she went crazy herself. She swore she would never fly another mission, fire another round, or do anything in support of a system that believed one person could own another. Nor would she . . .”

  Dax wanted to cheer the unknown Shaylah, but he merely prodded Califa to finish. “Nor would she what?”

  “Have anything to do with someone who did. Meaning me. She left without another word. I doubt she thought of me as a friend at all, by then.” It was a harsh whisper, tinged with the pain of loss. Dax told himself not to feel sorry for her; she’d brought this on herself. It was harder to suppress the sympathy than he would have expected.

  “And?” he prodded again.

  “And the next day, the slave was missing from Ossuary.”

  Dax gave a low whistle. “She broke him out? Of Ossuary? That took some doing.”

  “Yes.” Despite her distress, there was pride back in Califa’s voice. “She was always resourceful.”

  “And I suppose you, the great tactical strategist, taught her everything she knows.”

  Califa’s chin came up. “Yes, I did. She was one of my best students in the advanced classes.”

  Then her original words came back to him, and it hit him why he’d been having trouble painting her with a totally black brush.

  “You didn’t turn her in,” he said softly.

  She lowered her eyes. “No. I told myself I should, that she had betrayed both me and the Coalition, but I couldn’t. She was my friend. I owed her my life.”

  “Your life?”

  “I was hurt on Darvis Two. My leg. She risked herself, disobeying a direct order, to come back for me. I would have died.”

  Dax lifted himself up to sit on the edge of the table. He felt battered, pulled in so many directions at once he wanted to let go and see which one won. He rubbed at his gritty eyes, wondering what in Hades he was going to do.

  How could this woman, once a Coalition officer who had owned and sold slaves, tear him apart with a story of a rare loyalty? She could no doubt easily buy back her position, her honor, and probably a glorious promotion with the knowledge she had, that of a medal-winning Coalition pilot who had committed what the Coalition would unquestionably see as high treason. Yet she did not, condemning herself to a life of the same miserable slavery for the sake of a friend.

  “They escaped?” he asked suddenly, seized with the need to know.

  “I don’t know. I . . .”

  “What, Califa?”

  She looked up again, startled, perhaps that for the first time since they’d begun this, he’d used her name. Then she looked down again, staring at her hands.

  “I hope so,” she whispered.

  “Because if not, your sacrifice was for nothing?”

  “No.” Her voice was hushed. “Because, foolish as it is, deep inside I . . . I hope she was right.”

  “Right?”

  “About love. And . . . bonding. It’s a beautiful thought, even if only fools and Triotians believe in it. You’d think people who live so long would learn.”

  Dax fought down the rage and guilt that flooded him at the mention of that once-beloved and now-dreaded name. His laughter was harsh, bitter. “I thought the Coalition had decided they were one and the same.”

  Califa sighed, as if she were as weary as Dax. “If so, they were wrong. Wolf was no fool. He had us all convinced he was beaten. Except Shaylah. She found something in him she’d never found in any other man. I could see it in her eyes.”

  Dax was so tired it took a moment for the implication of her words to register. When it did, he went rigidly still.

  “Who,” he said carefully, “is Wolf?”

  Califa stared at him. “The slave we’ve been talking about all this—”

  Even more carefully, he said, “What is Wolf?”

  She looked at him, bewildered. “We just called him that because when he was chained at the market on Clarion, he nearly sawed his own hand off trying to get free. The Triotians have a legend about a wild creature who has been known to gnaw off its own paw to—”

  “I know.” He couldn’t stop the edge in his voice. “Why a Triotian name?”

  “Because he was.”

  Though he’d been half expecting it, Dax’s breath caught in his throat. When he went on, he spoke each word as if the fate of the system depended on its clarity.

  “This . . . slave . . . was . . . Triotian?”

  Still looking bewildered, Califa nodded. “I know there aren’t many, and they’re so valuable, I only had him because he’d permanently damaged his hand that time—”

  “Who was he?” She blinked at the snap in his tone, and at this line of questioning she obviously didn’t understand the reason for.

  “I don’t know.”

  He leapt off the table and into a crouch before her, his hands coming up to grip the back of the chair on either side of her, trapping her with the muscled strength of his arms.

  “What do you know?”

  “I . . . only that he’d been taken at the fall of Trios, so a slave for five years. And a problem every day of it.”

  “He survived this”—he moved one arm and flicked a finger at the yellow crystal, then imprisoned her again—“for five years?”

  “He was very strong. And stubborn. Marcole—the schoo
l’s enforcer—had a very difficult time with him.”

  “The school’s enforcer,” Dax muttered venomously.

  “I didn’t build the system,” Califa burst out. “I know that’s no defense, I did my part to support it, but don’t you see? The Coalition was all I had! It was all I ever had.”

  Something in her voice pulled at him, made him want to know of the woman who had had nothing in her life but a cold, monstrous machine. But something else was far more important now.

  “What did he look like, this Triotian?”

  Looking like she wished she had restrained that outburst almost more than the one that had given her away, Califa spoke slowly.

  “Big. Your size. Strong. Golden, with a great mane of hair, all shades of blond. Like all Triotians.”

  Dax felt himself tense, and tried to fight it off. She wasn’t exactly right, but close enough that it made no difference. There were far too many Triotians—or had been, he amended painfully—that matched that description for his imagination to skyrocket like this.

  “In truth,” Califa said suddenly, “if you had Rina’s color hair, or she your color skin, you would have it.”

  He couldn’t fight off the tension this time; she had to be deflected from that idea. “His eyes,” he prompted sharply.

  Califa shrugged. “Green eyes, like yours, but not . . . we had a patch of Triotian grass at the school, in the garden. His eyes were that color. He carried himself well. Proudly.” Her mouth twisted ruefully. “Too proudly, for a slave. He was . . . quite beautiful, actually.”

  “Do you know where he was captured?”

  Her forehead creased for a moment. “I . . . near the capital city.”

  “Triotia? You’re certain?”

  “Yes. I heard a rumor that they’d found him in the hills north of the city, and that if he hadn’t been slowed by a woman, they might never have caught him.”

  “A woman?”

  Califa nodded. “Not a Triotian, apparently. She was dark-haired, and very small, they said.”

  He felt as if he’d been hit by his own flashbow. His stomach knotted anew; he wanted to ask if the woman was dead, but he already knew, knew in his gut, and couldn’t bear to hear it aloud. And then she told him anyway.