Dark Tempest. Manda Benson

complexity. Only men of the highest Blood lineages can use it, and she’s of the Blood, it’s there to be seen—dark hair, pale skin, grey eyes and the wasted keenness of regular conurin use.”

      Jed stared into the man’s face. After all her years of solitude, eye contact with another frightened her. He was bigger than her, he was very much real, and he was in her ship.

      “Walk!” snapped the other man, and he dragged Jed about so she was facing back toward the bridge. She stumbled on, arms still restrained by his grip, and searching hopelessly for some flaw in their defense she might exploit.

      “Cover her, Wolff,” Jed’s captor ordered the tall man. He handed him a gun and he held it against her right temple. “Now sit there.”

      Jed bent her knees and felt for the bridge seating with her hands. The speaker revealed himself to be a squat, ugly-looking man with greasy curls of black hair hanging over his eyes, and a stubbled, heavy jaw. He was not of the Blood. “We kill her, should,” he said, glaring at Jed. She wasn’t sure whether his speech and coordination were attributable to alcohol, or if men of the lower castes typically behaved in this way.

      “We can use her, Taggart.” The taller man set down a box and turned away to look at the bridge consoles.

      “Ay.” Taggart’s face slowly creased into a lecherous leer. “For something.” He inclined his head, leaning his face forward to where she sat until his eyes were level with hers and his hot breath gusted on her face. Jed did not flinch, but a maelstrom of intimidation and fear started up inside her.

      “The Archer’s ship does not work without the Archer!” Wolff pulled Taggart away from Jed by the shoulder. “We have little enough time here as it is.” He threw a sudden glance to the bridge windows.

      “Where is the computer?”

      “I shall find it.” Wolff handed his gun to Taggart, who pointed it at Jed. Wolff stepped forward to stand in front of the consoles. To Jed’s surprise and scorn, he bowed deeply before them, lowering his head almost to the level of his knees, but this didn’t compare to her alarm when she felt the Shamrock respond to him in a subtle, unfamiliar way.

      “It’s here.” Wolff pointed to the access panel underneath the consoles.

      Jed tensed as the shorter man glanced at the sloping consoles, beneath which the core of the hardware lay, the gun remaining in his hand and pointed at her. What he might do to the Shamrock could be worse, by far, than anything he could do to Jed herself. Within a few seconds Wolff had a panel off and was wiring in an interface unit. Flickers of rogue code ran through Jed’s ship.

      The shorter man frowned. “It’s not responding. Sort it out, Wolff!”

      Wolff bowed to the Shamrock again, and with a rising anger, Jed cancelled out whatever it was he was commanding it to do. The Shamrock’s senses were still not responding, but its mind remained hers.

      “What are you doing, Wolff? I thought computers liked you said?”

      Wolff’s shoulders gave way to a disparaging sigh. “It’s her.” He pointed casually at Jed, and Taggart’s hand and the gun’s muzzle drifted out a fraction as he turned toward Wolff. Jed sprang from her seat and threw herself at his Wolff’s back, putting his body between herself and Taggart’s gun. Her fingernails dug into his neck and she held onto him as he turned, using his motion to add force to a backward kick, catching the shorter man hard in the diaphragm with her heel. He doubled up and fell to his knees, wheezing.

      The tall man had picked something up. He swung it over his shoulder and it struck the side of her head. Jed lost her grip and felt the jarring impact of her shoulder against the floor, before consciousness departed.

       Chapter 2

       Deadlock

       Fear not the cold and dark without,

       But the colder dark within;

       Permit to your soul the Seeds of Doubt,

       And you’re foundered before you begin.

      Jed could hear the taller man saying something, but his voice was distorted and unintelligible.

      “Mind interface ships...” The shorter man’s cracked voice broke into an incomprehensible splutter. “Nigh impossible to reprogram.”

      Jed shivered, wondering what they might have done to her or the Shamrock during her unconsciousness. A dizzy pain filled her head. She moved her arms. A tight cord bound her wrists together and, flexing her knees, she realised her ankles were tied likewise. She reached up and touched the interface crown on her forehead. The Shamrock still felt close and properly connected. She was lying on something—against her side and back. The feel and smell of it told her it was the seating at the bridge’s back wall.

      “You don’t have to reprogram the ship, merely replot the course tensors. Here, let me try.”

      “Stand back, Wolff! Foolish bastard, Samaritan of Archers.”

      “We need that Archer, Taggart.”

      “Star Archers work under no one. She will nothing be but a threat and a liability. Broke her neck down there near airlock I should have.”

      “Taggart, when you speak you don’t concentrate, and we have little enough time.”

      The other man struggled to form words. “Soon this vessel will be under my control.”

      “You’re not even in control of yourself! If this ruse of yours fails, on your head be it!”

      “Silence!” A smash of glass accompanied the shrill exclamation, making Jed wince and draw her arms over her face.

      The blurry shapes of the men became visible, the shorter one hunched before the console and the other standing back with an arm raised in a defensive posture. The tall one had the gun. She smelled alcohol, and saw the wet shards of the bottle lying on the floor before the seating.

      “Petulant fool. There. The ship flies to my command.”

      An instant of fear gripped Jed. A disoriented pain forced from the inside of her skull, and her vision took on strange colours. She twisted forward, bending her arms and pushing her elbows out so she could reach one hand to her belt pouch for the conurin that would steady both nerve and resolve. The pouch was empty.

      She struggled to stop despair engulfing her. Conurin was just an enhancer. Her teachings and inherent qualities were what gave her iron will and lightning reflexes. Conurin was just a fine-tuner. Conurin was just frippery. She must draw strength from the Code now.

      The recollection of the debacle down in the starboard corridor hit her and made her doubt herself again.

      She watched the men—the shorter one engrossed in the Shamrock’s console and the taller one observing him. She had to act now.

      Bending forward slowly, she angled her legs down and leant into a seated position, head down and doubled up at the waist. The colour and sound drained from the world for a moment, and Jed’s vision swam before her. Craving for conurin at this time of need compounded her pain, but she held it off, refusing to fall back into the peace of unconsciousness.

      Stretching her arms between her knees, she selected one of the longer shards.

      “Has it accepted the course yet?” The taller man’s voice made her start.

      “Silence while I am working!” Taggart, or whoever he was, berated him.

      Jed drew her hands back into her lap, flattening the blade between her thumbs so it lay between her wrists and across the rope. Keeping a furtive watch on her captors, she gripped it in the heels of her hands.

      Head down and spreading her fingers over her face so as to conceal the action, she pushed down on the glass with her teeth. She felt