Renegade Magic (Star Renegades Book 1) Read online

  12

  Dania

  The ship rattled around her. Dania stared up at the camera monitoring her cell. She could tap into the wiring to access the computers, if she’d wanted to, and find out what was going on.

  Bumbling as this crew seemed, though, they must be somewhat competent to have garnered the reputation and the high ranking on the king’s wanted criminals list. Chances were they could get out of a small trading spat.

  The shaking finally stopped, so Espinoza must have managed to outrun whoever had been chasing them.

  Boots tapped in the hallway, and Dania approached the glass wall of her cell.

  The pink-haired woman smiled at her. “Hello.”

  Dania raised a brow. “I get the feeling you aren’t here to exchange pleasantries.”

  A bandage showed through a burned hole in the woman’s shirtsleeve. Interesting.

  Alanna shook her head. “Back at the supply station where we first picked you up, your friend saved Doc’s life.”

  Yes, much to Dania’s chagrin. Not that she’d known the doctor was a criminal at the time, rather than the innocent Alexander had thought him to be.

  “Can you do it again?” Alanna asked. “Can you heal someone?”

  Ah, so Dania had been correct about them being in some sort of a fight. “I don’t have the skill to heal bullet wounds like my friend can.”

  Her eyes saddened. “It’s not a bullet. He was hit with a particle beam.”

  What a horribly painful way to die. “Was it Espinoza?”

  She shook her head. “Ethan, our engineer.”

  The copper-haired man who’d managed to get the shackles on Dania’s wrists? She should leave him and allow the particle acceleration to sear through his flesh like acid. A criminal was a criminal.

  At least, that’s what she would have thought before seeing those encrypted files.

  Providing any assistance to these people was wrong. However, she hadn’t been able to free herself from this cell without using the primordial energy the bindings stole at every turn.

  At the moment, she was trapped here, and helping him would mean leaving this cell and seeing more of the ship again. If they could trust her and continue to take her along on their nefarious expeditions, she would have a long list of places to return to and destroy once this little game had played out.

  Maybe helping save another of the crew would ingratiate her enough in these humans’ minds for them to grant her free run of the ship long term.

  She nodded. “I’m not a healer, but I might be able to help.”

  Hope sprang in the woman’s eyes. Could she possibly have feelings for this engineer?

  Dania had taken for granted that the woman had been paired with the doctor from her reaction when the man had been shot on Midway Station, but this might be something else.

  The woman wiped her damp cheeks.

  Dania’s chest clenched. Friendship was one of the few human behaviors she understood. Dania would die before she allowed anyone to hurt Alexander.

  Could human feelings be so strong? Would any of the men’s deaths affect Alanna so deeply?

  The woman pressed a few buttons on the wall, and the glass doors split apart.

  Dania smiled. This one, out of all the crew so far, interested her the most. Alanna didn’t seem so much like a criminal, but more like someone who had gotten mixed up with the wrong sort of people.

  And then there was her odd ability to bend space to jump the ship out of danger. Dania hoped to ferret out that little mystery long before she had to end this crew’s reign of larceny.

  When Dania and Alanna entered the medical area, Espinoza’s eyes flared. “What is she doing here?”

  “I asked for her.” The doctor pushed past him. “She’ll help?”

  “I can try.” Dania held up her bindings. “Can you remove these?”

  That was more of a challenge to Espinoza than anything else.

  The captain shook his head. “It’s not going to happen.”

  The doctor turned on him. “Boss, Ethan is dying. I can’t stop it.”

  Espinoza’s gaze remained lanced to hers. “She will kill every last one of us if those cuffs come off.”

  True, but not right away. “What if I make another promise not to kill anyone?”

  He shook his head. “How about you explain how particle beams work so Doc can treat him on his own?”

  She sighed. “That will be a very long seminar that your engineer will probably not live through.”

  The doctor pointed at her bindings. “Are those absorbing all of your power?”

  An interesting question that they should have asked earlier.

  “No.” There was no use in denying it. She needed to gain their trust.

  “Can you at least try with the cuffs on?” Doc asked.

  Of course she could, but it would be painful.

  She glared at Espinoza but acquiesced. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d risked herself for the good of a mission.

  The engineer was strapped stomach-down to a table, his orange hair sticking to his scalp in thick clumps. Blankets covered him to his hip, leaving his back exposed to the bright examination light above him. His skin pocked and oozed as the particles ate away at his flesh. She crinkled her nose at the stench of impending death.

  “Who shot him, and why?” Dania asked.

  Espinoza folded his arms. “We’re traders. Sometimes trades go bad.”

  “Legal trades rarely go bad.”

  “Just tell her what she wants to know!” Alanna’s eyes reddened as she picked up a carton the width of a meal platter. “Ethan might die for this piece of trash, and I don’t even think this is what they went out there for.”

  Dania very much wanted to take a look in that box, but first she needed to gain a little trust. She considered the severity of the man’s wounds. She’d seen something similar before.

  On Teseon Minor, Miguel had allowed himself to be distracted and had been hit with a particle beam. Alexander was engaged in the more important task of healing a small bruise on Prince Geron’s shoulder, so Dania had been left with a fully grown man in tears as his flesh blistered down to the bone. After knocking Miguel out, she’d surveyed the situation, and while she couldn’t heal him, she could at least stop further damage.

  She held her still-shackled hands over the engineer’s wounds and released a small burst of power. Her sight wavered as the skin stretched and started to bubble.

  The engineer’s rusty-haired head jolted before his eyes sprang open. He screamed until the doctor gave him an injection.

  Espinoza pushed her back. “What are you doing?”

  Her power shot back into her. The shackles began to chill. She braced for the pain and released her breath when it didn’t come. Next time, she might not be so lucky.

  Dania lifted her chin. “Do you want me to save him or not?”

  Alanna held her captain’s shoulder. “Cal, please, let her try.”

  Espinoza muttered something as he stepped back.

  Dania raised her hands again, then drew them back, licking her lips. Another release of her strength might invoke the pain. Was saving this man worth the risk?

  Alanna’s eyes were beseeching.

  Both the doctor’s and Espinoza’s grim faces were turned to the prone engineer.

  To them, this man’s life was worth a sacrifice. To gain their trust, she needed to believe the same.

  Taking a deep breath, she released a surge of cooling energy to counteract the particles.

  The engineer whimpered. Even in his unconscious state, the pain must have been unbearable. The doctor monitored him as the bubbling in the patient’s skin intensified.

  Espinoza took a step toward her, but Alanna pulled him back again.

  Smart woman. More importantly, the captain listened to her. She cataloged the information for future use.

  “Do you have something to safely store the particles in?” Dania asked.

  The doc
tor quirked a brow. “How would you get the particles out?” He stared at her before his eyes widened, as if suddenly remembering who she was. He scampered to a storage unit and returned with a gray-tinted flask. “Is this big enough?”

  “Is the polymer reinforced?”

  “Yes.”

  Dania flicked her wrist. The particles rose from the body like a stream of clear, pure water and fountained into the flask. When the last drop disappeared inside, the doctor placed a stopper on the bottle.

  Dania stepped back, wiping her brow with her sleeve.

  Her stomach roiled. “I don’t have the capability to heal, but I believe you can now treat him for severe burns.” She swayed and steadied herself against a table.

  “Is he going to live?” Cal asked.

  The doctor scanned the patient several more times. “Yeah, but he’s going to be a very unhappy camper for quite a while.”

  “Do your best.” Espinoza eyed Dania’s shackles. “That was a lot of magic for someone handcuffed with Palian steel. What more are you able to do?”

  This man’s suspicions were endless. It was probably the reason he’d lived so long.

  The room spun. Dania blinked hard, bending over the table so she wouldn’t fall.

  Alanna steadied her. “Are you okay?”

  Dania grabbed her head. The answer was no, but she wouldn’t admit that to a human.

  Espinoza took a step, reaching for her, then drew away, frowning.

  Had he almost helped? Nonsense. Dania must have imagined it.

  However, it wasn’t going to be hard to look unthreatening when the world seemed to press in on all sides. “That shouldn’t have bothered me. I feel like…” What did humans normally say tired them? “I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”

  Alanna eased her over to a gurney. “Here, sit.”

  “She’s playing you,” Espinoza said.

  Dania wished he was right. The king was correct to try to eradicate Palian steel from the universe. This metal shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

  Her vision skewed again, and she grabbed the edge of the gurney. “I just saved your man, as requested. Should I send the particles back into his skin?”

  Espinoza’s nostrils flared, and Dania trembled.

  This man, this normal human man, now held her life in his hands, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt herself cower under that gaze, and hated herself for it.

  “Lay her down,” the doctor said. “I wanted to run a few more tests on her, anyway.”

  More bothersome tests. She had to admit, though, that the doctor wasn’t a completely annoying companion, and if he could negate any of her symptoms, she certainly wouldn’t complain.

  Alanna helped her onto the cot.

  As Dania started to lie down, the room spiraled again. Flashes of light ignited throughout the medical bay. She gasped, clutching the gurney.

  “Whoa!” Alanna grabbed her. “Hold on there.”

  The room fogged. The shackles iced as a tingling jolt ran up her arms.

  “What happened?” The doctor’s voice. “Crap, she’s pale. Well, pale-er.”

  The bindings tightened. Dania grimaced, lifting her wrist. “Hurts.” She wanted to say more, but no words could encompass the sensation of ice and fire battling within her.

  “You have to get them off,” Alanna said.

  “No way.” Espinoza’s voice lingered like a beacon of doom. “They-do-not-come-off. Period.”

  Dania clenched her teeth as another jolt ran up her arms. Her blood scorched her, boiling from within.

  This was it. She was going to die here, and no one would ever know what had happened.

  A shriek echoed through her ears. She didn’t realize it was her own scream until her throat burned.

  The fog deepened before something pinched her neck.

  Her eyes sprang open. “What did you do?”

  The doctor stepped away, holding a needle as darkness crept in from all sides.

  13

  Cal

  Cal sat beside Ethan on the gurney. He couldn’t believe what a relief it was to see his engineer sitting upright.

  Ethan rubbed his head. “Have I really been unconscious for three days?”

  “You got pretty banged up.” Cal just hoped it was for a good reason. He held up the small octagon Doc had found in Ethan’s pocket. “Can you tell me what that is?”

  Ethan took the metal device, grimacing like the small movement hurt. “It’s a frame relay transducer. A damn nice one, too.”

  Cal hated it when his crew made him feel dumb. “And what would one do with a frame relay transducer?”

  Ethan smiled. “Whatever we wanted.” He looked over his shoulder and winced. “Did we get the casing they wanted to trade?”

  “Yeah, but it was worthless. They’d spliced it already.”

  “Yeah, but when I add this, it won’t be.” Ethan held up the octagon. “The casing will allow us to add the transducer to our shields or pump our engines to ridiculous levels.” He closed the octagon in his fist. “Or we could not attach it to the ship and do the humanitarian thing, instead.”

  Across the room, Dania startled. Cal swore sometimes she could hear them, even when they were whispering. Doc gave her a drink, which she guzzled down.

  “What are you thinking?” Cal leaned closer to Ethan.

  “I’m thinking that any of the dome colonies would be damn happy to get a backup system to bolster their oxygen supply.”

  Seriously? There was no possible way they’d gotten their hands on that kind of tech. “The pirates wouldn’t have given something like that up.”

  “But they didn’t.” He held up the tiny device. “Your buddy knew we were about to get screwed, and he gave you something better. Actually, you probably owe him one.”

  Great. The last thing he needed was to be indebted to a pirate.

  Ty entered with Alanna behind him. “You wanted to see us, boss?”

  Cal stood. “I didn’t call you.”

  Doc walked up. “I did. There’s something I need to talk to you all about.”

  Across the room, Dania fell off the gurney and slammed to the floor.

  Alanna cried out and ran to her. “What happened?”

  Cal bolted toward the fallen woman but hesitated. Dania had been pretty much incapacitated for the past three days, but who knew when she’d be back to threatening them all again?

  Now, though, she lay limp and not moving, her shock of pearly-silver hair completely covering her face. The high and mighty enforcer wasn’t a threat to anyone at the moment.

  “That’s my fault,” Doc said. “I gave her enough sedative to take down an elephant, just in case.”

  “In case what?” Cal reached down and helped Doc heft her back on the gurney.

  Doc pulled the bars up on the sides of the bed so she wouldn’t fall off again. He pressed a few buttons beside a screen in his wall and called up a zoomed-in picture of blood cells.

  “I ran a genealogy on our enforcer friend and confirmed what I suspected.” He tapped the screen twice. “She was born human.”

  Cal tensed. This wasn’t news to him, but he still wasn’t buying it.

  “What?” Ty walked toward him. “That’s impossible. Enforcers are some sort of unknown species.”

  “Not this one.” Doc changed the picture to a young human girl with dirty blonde hair, maybe ten years old. “Meet Dania Rain. She was the daughter of a merchant on Kellis Nine when she got sick.”

  Cal looked into the eyes of the little girl, seeing no resemblance to the woman who’d threatened him countless times.

  Doc continued. “The colony doctors took a blood sample for testing and must have uploaded it into the archives. Two days later the Banes showed up.”

  “They took her?” Alanna asked.

  Doc nodded. “After that, she dropped off the grid, never to be seen again. A tidy sum of eleven million tigara was deposited into the merchant’s accounts, and he moved his family back t
o Earth and retired.”

  “Are you telling me that the Banes bought her, like actually paid money to her parents?” Ty asked. “Isn’t that illegal?”

  Cal’s shoulders tensed. Nothing was illegal if you were a Bane.

  Doc moved to a records page. “It was documented as an adoption. The royal family has been known to seek out children they deem special. In many cultures, it’s considered an honor to have a child taken, and the families are always rewarded highly.”

  Ethan limped over and sat slowly into a chair. “Yeah, like eleven million tigara highly. That’s insane.”

  “It’s hush money,” Ty said.

  Doc called up side-by-side pictures of red cells. On the left, the cells trembled. On the right, they flowed more smoothly. “Whatever they did to her, she’s not human anymore. These pathogens they placed in her body made her something else.”

  “Something lethal,” Cal said.

  Doc tapped on the screen. “But like I told you, she’s slowly devolving and becoming more human every day. However, her body is so degraded, she might not be able to survive as a human anymore.”

  Cal walked over to the enforcer and brushed the hair back from her eyes. Could it be true? Could she have actually been just a regular girl once?

  She looked so peaceful when she was asleep. So normal.

  Cal turned back to Doc. “Is it something you can fix?”

  Doc paced, tapping his fingers against his lips. “I was hoping I could come up with something to replace whatever it is they did to her.” He shook his head. “But that would be nearly impossible. This pathogen is a complex microorganism. Creating something with technology would take years, far longer than she has.”

  Ty laughed. “So that means this is your new top priority?”

  Doc’s grin beamed. “I do love a challenge.” He turned to Cal. “You need to know something, though, and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  Great. “What?”

  “After they took Dania from her family, she was taken to the Bane home world. Soon after, she was documented as Dania DuBane, ward of the king. A few weeks later, the king gave her to his son as a gift.” Doc turned to Cal. “Prince Geron.”