Dark Tempest. Manda Benson

one eyebrow. “But trust you that I should not come upon you in a moment of vulnerable somniance and there slay you in cold blood?”

      “Or you the same?”

      “I can outlast you in waking moments.”

      Wolff’s eyes darted to focus on the pouch at Jed’s belt. “You keep chewing on that shit until you waste from lack of sleep.” Wolff’s manner was confident, but his eyes betrayed apprehension.

      Jed detected a tremor through the floor. The Shamrock strained like a pent beast, alien and wild, and it set a palpitation pounding in her chest. The thunderous warble of the ship cresting the light barrier shattered the air. A vibration ran through the floor and walls. A wan smile played on Wolff’s thin lips. “Where wanders your ship, Archer?”

      Jed’s temper boiled. Was this peasant trying to play games with her? “Tell me where!” she shouted at him.

      Wolff raised his free hand, palm toward her. His gun hand rose fractionally, but he steadied it when he saw the tendons in Jed’s arm flex. “I don’t know.”

      “What is the destination of this trajectory you have imposed upon my vessel?” She had intended it to sound impassive, but it came out as an intemperate snarl.

      “I said, I don’t know.”

      “My assumption was that you were leader of this two-man farce.”

      Another half-smile. “Appearances must be deceptive, but no. Taggart may have appeared bourgeois, but he was a schemer and an exploiter.”

      Jed watched him. Was he lying? What strategy could there be in such a lie? Somehow that contingency didn’t suit him. “I could see it in Taggart. He was not of the Blood!” Jed widened her eyes. “And I see it in you, you are of the Blood!”

      Wolff’s mouth fell open, before tightening into a ludicrous grin. “I am of the Blood? Archer, you jest!” He exhaled. His shoulders sagged. “This is folly. You propose to stand here indefinitely?”

      Kill him, said Jed in the privacy of her mind. Finish him, Shamrock.

      She felt anger with Wolff for his inconvenience, but more with herself. Now what was to be done? She couldn’t stay here, with him. She couldn’t let him wander off and try to creep up on him again, or risk him creeping up on her.

      Jed’s gaze didn’t leave him, but she reached for the wall and stepped backward. He moved after, keeping his distance.

      Slowly in this fashion, they made their way back up to the bridge. The console panel still lay on the floor. All traces of Taggart’s existence had been erased.

      Wolff waved his gun—Jed’s gun. “I cannot shoot you. I believe you will not shoot me while your own life is at risk. Do we have a truce?”

      “My word as an Archer?” said Jed sharply. “And yours, as a felon?”

      “My word,” said Wolff. “Or one of us may die of the stress.”

      “Ya? And what honour rides on your word? You implied not one moment ago that you are not of the Blood.”

      “My honour as a sentient creature.” The man turned his head this way and that, taking in the scene, and slid the neutron gun into a holster on his belt, watching Jed uneasily. “My name is Gerald Wolff.”

      She looked at him, tensing her finger on the trigger. Did this constitute surrender? She had never been trained for such a confrontation. Could she shoot a man who backed down from her? This was lunacy. It was for her own interests, for the interests of her ship. Not to shoot him would be to endanger her future. Her other fingers tightened on the weapon’s grip, but she could not do it! Some primal instinct prevented it. He said he was not of the Blood, yet she could see he was of the Blood, and men of the Blood honoured their words, and she was of the Blood and she must honour an agreement with another of the Blood. What would happen here if she let him live? What indeed?

      “Come now.” Unease showed in Wolff’s countenance. “I give you my word.”

      Reluctantly, she holstered the gun. “Jed,” she returned. She could kill him later.

      “Jed? One syllable? Nothing more to it?”

      “Jed of the Shamrock of the clan hortica.” Jed regarded him coldly, settling her shoulders against the window.

      He cast a glance in the console’s direction. “Taggart I see remains to haunt us.”

      Jed’s temper reached an angry crescendo, and she jerked her hand back toward the gun. Only Wolff’s guarded stance and her sense of logic stilled her. She hated this frustration—how Wolff was still holding her at a compromise. Vehement emotions were frowned upon in the Code of the Archers. They indicated poor self-control, and now she had failed to dispose of him she would have trouble getting the Shamrock back under control.

      “You expect me to believe that you came aboard this ship, to hijack it, with no idea of where it was to be sent?”

      “I did.” Wolff kept his hands up with the palms toward Jed as he spoke. “This is hard for me to explain. I didn’t exactly come here of my own volition.”

      “Didn’t exactly? How can one not go exactly of one’s own volition? You either choose or you go under duress, and I did not see that man point a gun at your head!”

      “Look, calm down. I’ll try to explain this to you the best I can.”

      Jed knew losing her temper would not help her or the Shamrock. The best she could now do was to find out as much as possible. Still watching him, she sat.

      Wolff gestured to Taggart’s device. “You cannot override it and stop the ship?”

      Jed’s glare told him not.

      “And you can’t disconnect it, not while the program’s in operation?”

      “That device is feeding the course data into the ship. Disconnecting it would result in the chimaera array crashing and the stabilising machinery of the Alcubierre drive going out of kilter very fast.” Jed scowled. “It could culminate in the destruction of this vessel.”

      “Can you broadcast a tachyon distress call, then?”

      Jed cast her eyes toward the ceiling. “This ship is among the swiftest by man’s forging hands. No other could race it and win. If a distress call were an option, I would have done it. Do you think me stupid?” There was only one who would and could oblige the Shamrock’s distress signal, and pride and fear would not let Jed bring Mathicur to the Shamrock in this sorry state.

      Wolff slid his jacket off his shoulders. Underneath it he wore a sleeveless thigh-length engineer’s waistcoat with a utility belt carrying a plethora of tools, over a vest of a dirty blue-grey colour. A lopsided, thorny black tattoo in the form of a snake eating its own tail encircled his left bicep. He must have stood about four inches taller than her, and his hair wasn’t completely grey as she’d first thought—its original tawny brown showed beneath the roan. Neither was he old. Probably he was even younger than her. With slow, deliberate movements he sat. His presence disconcerted Jed and he smelled–a strong odour of male with overtones of sweat and ship dirt.

      “Sit you not at such proximity.”

      “Oh yes, I’ve heard of the Code of the star Archers and your tenets on cleanliness. So, which would you risk, sitting here until we both suffocate in our own filth, or have me strangle you when you go to wash?”

      Jed glared at him. “So, whose tenets do you follow?”

      He exhaled emphatically, and crossed his legs. “I make my own life.”

      A silence descended over them, and Jed searched herself for some way out of this deadlock. She felt for the Shamrock, but the navigation still wasn’t responding. The fusion engines added a steady hum to the background as the ship rode an Alcubierre wave at a thousandfold