Blood Will Tell Read online

  Again she spoke to Thorn, not knowing whether he could even hear her. “I’ll be back soon. I have to get a stretcher for you.” Thank God the med unit was equipped with a powered stretcher. She knew there was no way she could have dragged Thorn all the way from the parking garage to the med unit.

  As it was, the trip nearly finished him. Just the act of dragging him out of the skimmer and onto the stretcher caused him to cough up a great gout of dark blood, staining what remained of his jacket, as well as half of the shapeless tunic she wore. After that his swarthy skin took on a strange, grayish pallor, and the black shadows beneath his eyes seemed to spread. All Miala could do was guide the stretcher along as quickly as possible, keeping one hand resting on his as she did so. Somehow she thought it was important that he know at some level someone was still with him, even if he had retreated so far into unconsciousness that it seemed almost like death.

  Mast had spent a chunk of change on a mech for the med unit, probably because a mech could be trusted to keep its mouth shut. Its hum seemed to become steadily more disapproving as it moved its sensors over Thorn’s motionless body, almost as if it thought she were somehow responsible for his current condition. After a moment, though, it began hooking him up to various life-support devices, even as it started to cut away his shredded clothing and the few bits of armor that still clung to it.

  Embarrassed, Miala looked away, but not before she could see the extent of the lacerations that covered his torso, angry burns and something that looked like marks left by pulverized sand or bits of metal. She shuddered, then went to a cabinet off to one side of the bed on which Thorn now lay. Her back was beginning to throb, and she hoped she could find some sort of painkiller to keep the ache from getting any worse.

  Sure enough, there was a row of analgesics and narcotics in the first cabinet she opened. She selected something low-level enough that it wouldn’t make her drowsy but at least would take the edge off the pain. She had a feeling this was going to be a very long night.

  Behind her the mech methodically worked away at Thorn, wrapping his body in some sort of healing pads until he was practically cocooned in them, with only his face visible. He had a few cuts and bruises across his forehead and on his chin, but that seemed to be the least damaged part of him; Miala supposed the fabric wrappings he normally wore had protected him somewhat before they were torn away.

  “Will he live?” she asked finally, as the mech stepped away from the bed and began disposing of the bloodied pieces of clothing it had cut away from Thorn’s body.

  If a mech could shrug, Miala thought it might have. Instead it said only, “A chance. Not much. He is strong. That helps.”

  Yes, it does, she thought. She supposed he would have to be, to survive for so long and so well in a profession as ruthless as his.

  “The night will tell,” the mech added cryptically.

  For a moment she could only look at it, uncomprehending. Of course, she thought. If he lives through the night, he might survive after all.

  “I want to stay with him,” she said at length. “Stay here, of course, but you can shut down for now. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  The mechanoid nodded its assent, then resumed its normal station in a far corner of the room, powering down against further need. The light in its eyes dimmed, and its head slumped forward.

  Miala waved a hand to bring down the light level in the room; it was too harsh, too bright. She didn’t know how Thorn could rest in that sort of light. Once it was a softer, more reasonable level, she went to one side of the room and rolled the chair she found there next to the bed. Then she took one of Thorn’s hands in both of hers, but lightly, so the pressure of her fingers wouldn’t do any more damage to the wounded flesh underneath.

  “I’m here,” she said again, wondering as she did so whether it made any difference. Really, why should she care if this man lived or died? She didn’t know him. She was nothing to him. But irrational tears rose up in her throat and choked her as she thought of her father, dying alone and unregarded in this place, surrounded by strangers who had laughed and jeered at him. No one should have to die that way. Not even Eryk Thorn.

  Was it her imagination, or did she feel a momentary pressure on her fingers from the hand she thought had lain so still beneath hers?

  “I won’t let you die,” she whispered fiercely, and there it was again, a flutter so infinitesimal it could have merely been an involuntary reflex, just overtaxed nerves twitching beneath the flayed skin. But she refused to believe that.

  The night will tell, she thought.

  But what the next day would bring, she didn’t dare think. All she could do now was sit here in the soft semidarkness and pray that the shadows in Mast’s compound wouldn’t claim yet another uneasy ghost.

  II

  At one point during the night she was certain Thorn had died. She had slipped into an uneasy sleep even as she sat in the chair next to the hospital bed, only to be awakened by the strident beeping of the equipment monitoring his vital signs. Before she could fully realize what was happening, the mechanoid was already at Thorn’s side, making adjustments to the liquids that dripped into his arm and sliding an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. When that didn’t produce the desired result, the mech shocked him twice with the fibrillators built into its hands, and suddenly the alarm subsided into the low-level pulsing of a normal sinus wave. It was probably the soft murmur of the machine that had put her to sleep in the first place.

  Through all of this Thorn hadn’t moved. Miala reflected, as she tried to settle herself into a more comfortable position in the chair, that the only thing about him which seemed alive was the pulsing light of his heartbeat on the monitor.

  “You shouldn’t scare people like that,” she said finally, after making sure the mech had settled back down into deceptive quiescence. Obviously it was on a hair trigger if anything in a patient’s condition changed—she hadn’t even awakened fully before the machine was working on Thorn.

  She wondered whether he could hear her at all. Somewhere she thought she had read that people in comas could still sense when people were talking to them, but perhaps that only counted when the people involved actually knew one another. At any rate, talking to him made her feel better, and she hoped it would help keep her awake. Talking helped—if she kept talking, maybe she could shunt aside the worry that at any moment one of the other crime lords was going to figure out that Mast’s compound was currently “guarded” by a young woman and a half-dead mercenary.

  “You don’t know me,” she said, making her tone as soft and reassuring as she could. “My name is Miala, and I work here in the compound. That’s where you are now, in the med unit. You’re going to be fine.”

  Pausing, she glanced down at Thorn’s slack features and thought he looked anything but fine. Still, a little misplaced optimism couldn’t hurt. “Anyhow,” she continued, “I’m hoping that you can help me out once you’re on your feet again. I want to get off Iradia, and I know you’ve got a ship out back on one of Mast’s private landing pads.” Again she laid her hand on top of his bandaged one. “And if saving your life isn’t enough, I’m willing to share Mast’s treasure with you. I’m close to cracking the code. A day or so more, probably. That’s what I’m doing here—I’m no more a kitchen drudge than you are, but it was a good disguise.”

  She stopped then, wondering if she had said too much. What was to stop him from killing her after she had broken the security system? Oh, she had saved his life, but was that enough? She knew next to nothing of him except his reputation as one of the most ruthless enforcers in the sector, but even mercenaries had to follow some sort of code, didn’t they?

  Well, there was no help for it now. Very likely he couldn’t understand or even hear what she was saying, as far into unconsciousness as he had retreated. And if he had heard and understood, perhaps the lure of Mast’s riches would be enough to give him the will to survive. It was what had sustained her over the past few month
s, ever since she realized that Mast had murdered her father after the final code for the security system was delivered.

  The money...and revenge.

  At first, of course, she had merely been unbelieving. Her father had been secretive about his latest job, but he had promised her that it was finally the big score, the one contract that would earn them enough to get off Iradia forever. His skills with computers had never translated to any sort of talent with finances, and they had always led a precarious existence, never sure if they were going to make the rent or have enough to eat—at least until Miala was old enough to take matters into her own hands. From the time she was fourteen she had managed the household, and things had run a bit more smoothly as a result, but they had never been able to scrape together enough units for passage off Iradia.

  Lestan Fels was a Gaian native. It was a freelance assignment with a mining company that had brought him to Iradia, where he fell in love with the beautiful red-haired daughter of a silk weaver from Aldis Nova. That much Miala knew, but what exactly had transpired when she was barely six months old, her father would never say. All she knew was that her mother had left, apparently with the remainder of his earnings from the mining contract. Lestan ended up trapped on Iradia with an infant daughter to raise and no immediate prospects of returning to his home world. It was not in his nature to complain, but Miala knew he hated Iradia almost as much as she did.

  When he had been missing for two days, she’d known that the worst must have happened. Although of course Lestan hadn’t told her for whom he was working, it didn’t take a differential equation to figure out that there were only one or two potential clients in the area who had both the need for that high-level a security system as well as the means to pay for it.

  Not knowing what else to do, she’d gone to the local Gaian garrison to make a report. Unlike most of the other inhabitants of Aldis Nova, who maintained that Iradia was a sovereign world and should not have to submit to any sort of Gaian presence, she was on good enough terms with the troops stationed there. Perhaps the rumors of Gaian oppression were true, perhaps not. All she knew was that the presence of the squad of soldiers and the officers who led them kept at least a semblance of order in the rough desert town. Certainly she would not have been able to walk the streets so freely if it weren’t for Captain Malick and his men.

  It was Captain Malick who saw her, and for that she was grateful; he was young for the post and had always been friendly. Too much so, her father had grumbled—he didn’t like the idea of his daughter flirting with the leader of the local garrison. Miala hadn’t seen what the problem was. Captain Malick was charming and only seven or eight years older than she, and certainly of a far higher caliber than the local boys, who talked incessantly of target practice with the local fauna or tricking out their skimmers and not much else. At least Gerald Malick was educated and well-spoken, which was more than she could say of the boys her own age.

  But when she sat down in his office and poured out her troubles to him, at first he had looked away, his pleasant features clouded.

  “We can file a missing-persons report, of course,” he said formally, and she could see his blue eyes shift past her to the two soldiers standing on either side of his open door.

  “How can he be missing if I’m pretty sure I know where he is?” she demanded, and after that he stood and palmed the door shut, then returned to his desk.

  “I wish I could help you, Mia,” he said, and even the sound of her father’s nickname on his lips had brought the tears she had been suppressing for too long to her eyes.

  “Why can’t you, Captain Malick?” She had been deliberately formal, using his title, although she had spoken his given name before in private.

  Even though the door was shut, he had lowered his voice. “The GDF has a policy of not getting involved in Mast’s affairs. We leave him alone, and he leaves us alone to do as we wish. The arrangement has worked thus far.”

  “Even if innocent people are involved?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  She’d wanted to hate him then, but couldn’t; the dismay in his face was all too obvious. He wasn’t responsible for the Gaian government’s edicts and was only trying to make the best of a difficult situation. An officer who asked too many questions would soon find himself on the fast track to nowhere—although she couldn’t think of many posts worse than Iradia. It was, as she’d heard one of the soldiers comment once, the “ass-end of space.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” she’d asked at length. “Just pretend that nothing’s happened?”

  “That would be the wisest course, yes.” Unexpectedly, he had reached out and taken one of her hands in his. “I know this is improper of me, but—”

  She’d narrowed her eyes then, wondering what was going to come next. Unwanted advances were certainly the last thing she needed right now.

  But he had surprised her. “I have enough saved to get you off-world. You could be in danger, if your father has let Mast know that he has family here. Let me get you away from here—my tour is over in three months, and I could come see you before I’m sent on to my next post.”

  The unexpected generosity almost undid her. It would have been so easy to let Captain Malick take care of her, hustle her off-world to someplace safe. Perhaps he had convinced himself that he was in love with her, or perhaps it was merely some sense of old-fashioned honor that spurred him to attempt her rescue.

  She hadn’t known what to say. She’d made a few inarticulate attempts, had begun to really cry, then let him fold her into his arms and hold her while she wept. If nothing else, it had felt good to have his strong arms around her, to feel the reassuring roughness of his uniform jacket against her cheek.

  In the end she had been able to leave without really promising anything, knowing even then that she would never forgive herself if she didn’t do something to avenge her father’s death. What poor Captain Malick thought of her disappearance, she didn’t want to contemplate. Probably that Mast’s goons had spirited her away, finishing the job once and for all.

  But now Mast was dead, along with all the rest of his hangers-on. It wouldn’t be too long before the next piece of scum rushed in to fill the vacuum his death had caused, but Miala thought she had a few days before the news spread. She only hoped that a few days would be enough.

  The compound was empty of all but a few maintenance mechs, for which she was thankful. She never thought she’d be grateful for Mast’s raging ego, but obviously he had wanted the largest audience possible for his latest—and last—round of executions.

  There was the slightest shift of the hand that lay beneath hers, and she glanced down, startled. Thorn did look better after all; the shadows under his eyes seemed a little less black, and that frightening grayish tint had disappeared from his face. And now she could actually see his chest rising and falling as he breathed, sending the healing oxygen through his body.

  “You’re too mean to die, aren’t you?” she asked, but softened the words by reaching up to touch the dark wavy hair at his temple, now matted with blood. Once he had recovered enough, he was definitely going to need a good cleaning-up.

  Miala wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw the smallest quirk at the corner of his mouth. Then again, it could have just been a trick of the lighting.

  Speaking of cleaning up, she thought, looking down at herself as if for the first time. The right side of her tunic was splattered with blood, and she was streaked with grime everywhere. Thorn looked as if he were holding on, and now she could think of nothing else but an extended spell in a shower. And clean clothes. There had to be something fit for use somewhere in the compound.

  After rousing the mech and instructing it to keep a close watch on Thorn, Miala went down the hall and up to the third story, where she knew the slave girls’ dormitory was located. That is, everyone referred to them as “bond servants” to pay lip service to Gaian laws, but “slave” was a lot closer to the mark, and as long as the w
hole sordid business was kept more or less quiet, no one interfered too much. Miala had always felt sorry for the girls and wished she could do something to help them, but they were far beyond help now. However, the rooms they once occupied were probably her best chance at finding the toiletries she needed, along with a change of clothes.

  Sure enough, the bath chamber was stocked with all sorts of little luxuries; apparently Mast liked his slave girls sweet-smelling and moisturized before he loaned them out as “favors” to the scumbags who came to visit from time to time. Miala stood in the shower for at least a half-hour, reveling in the warm water that cascaded through her filthy hair and washed the grime from her body. In her own meager house the shower had a five-minute timer, to save water, but obviously Mast did not care to participate in Iradia’s mandatory water rationing. She had to wash her hair three times before she felt it was clean enough, and it was utter bliss to finally cleanse her face of the dirt and false blemishes she had adopted as part of her disguise.

  After that she dried off and then wrapped the towel around herself, going in search of something to wear. Although Miala didn’t doubt Eryk Thorn would enjoy waking up to see her in one of the slave girls’ scantier ensembles, she had something a little more substantial in mind. She had seen several of the girls when they arrived at the compound, and they had worn ordinary enough clothing. It had to be around here someplace.

  As it was, shoved into the farthest corner of the wardrobe that all of the girls had apparently shared. Miala thought she even recognized the fitted tunic and loose pants the Eridani girl Genna had first worn when she came to Mast’s compound. That was good, because Genna was closer to Miala’s size than any of the other slave girls, and the outfit fit very well.