Ghost in the Machine (Corwint Central Agent Files) Read online

  “Of course. Anything for the Black Bitch.” Flick’s hand flinched. The other T’jaros in the hangar made no movements to aid their leader. Orynn’s aura was floating like a ghost through them, coiling around their hearts and enveloping their minds. Flick gently retrieved the grenade and held it up to show Orynn with a look of pride on his face. “I didn’t touch her a bit, I promise.”

  “Swallow it.” Orynn’s tone darkened and she motioned for Tara to start walking toward Hank.

  Hank walked around the containers as Flick eyed the grenade with continued stuttering. He could see the man’s eyes were full of confusion as his mind struggled to force him to do something that was against self-preservation. When Tara reached him, Hank wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. He caught himself breathing in the scent of her hair as his heartbeat steadied in relief at her safe return. “Are you alright?”

  “I was dragged around a space port, threatened with a knife and then almost vaporized, Hank.” Tara gave her worried Captain a smile as he lifted her away from his chest. She was happy to see the concern in his eyes, and for a moment, she let herself pretend it was more. “I’ve had better days.”

  “I’ll see if I can get you bonus pay.” Hank chuckled lightly and cut the rope on her wrists. He gently held her face and examined the cut on her cheek, wiping away the blood with his thumb. Luckily, it was just a surface wound and wouldn’t require any stitches. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

  “Swallow it.” Orynn repeated, bringing everyone’s attention back to her.

  “If it would please you.” Flick tilted his head back and held the bullet-sized metal cylinder over his open mouth.

  “It would please me greatly.” Orynn’s voice had changed to a seductive whisper as she cooed the man into submission. She watched with satisfaction as Flick dropped the grenade into his mouth and, after a small struggle, swallowed it. She could feel Merik’s own satisfaction grind into hers, and she let a grin slide onto her lips that rivaled his own in its carnality.

  Flick looked to Orynn with a smile as she stepped closer to him. “What else may I do for you, lovely?”

  Orynn leaned in to Flicks ear and whispered. “You may die.”

  “Gladly! Oh-ho...” A look of fearful realization came over Flick’s face at the last moment before he hit the trigger on the remote. “Oh.”

  Orynn stood stoically in place as Flick’s body erupted from the inside out into a hot blast of vaporized skin and bone. The ash from his corpse rose up from the self-extinguishing fire and floated around the hangar. Behind her, she heard Tara gasp and Hank curse. This was not a side of her she wanted them to see. It was part of her, none the less.

  Flick had harmed Tara and threatened the crew she had begun to feel an attachment to. The filth of his aura had been offensive and ripe with the tarnish of the crimes he had committed. It had broken through the thin veil of control she held over the darkest part of her. She heard the sound of clapping behind her and turned slowly to face the rest of the T’jaros and Merik, who still stood amongst them with their blood dripping from his fingertips as he gave her applause.

  Merik stopped clapping, the empty smile on his lips replaced by a playful grin as Orynn’s eyes locked with his. Mercury staring into the black abyss. He couldn’t keep the hunger from his aura as he looked at her with a new appreciation. She may present a smile to the world, but under it, she was just as twisted as he was. He breathed in deeply and flicked his tongue against his upper fangs. I definitely want to fuck her. “Exquisitely done.”

  Orynn could feel Merik’s eyes roaming her body as his mind tried to penetrate her thoughts. To say that she wasn’t enjoying their game would have been a lie. He was still young, but the power he possessed was magnetic and she felt it drawing her to the ledge of her control. Merik wanted her to jump off it and join him in the slaughter of these men. They were criminals, thieves, rapists and worse. The vile and pungent musk from their auras was sickening. Not a single one of them had any redeeming qualities. The universe deserved to be rid of them.

  Her hand twitched. She wanted to kill them all.

  The sound of Ethan’s voice as he whispered to Tara brought her back from the brink. The surroundings of the hangar rushed back in through the desires that had been drawing out a side of her she worked hard to keep contained. She could see the disappointment on Merik’s face, despite its subtle nature. He wanted her to join him, and he couldn’t understand her reluctance to let go and be who she was. The thought of going that far in front of Ethan and the rest of the crew scared her.

  She raised her hand and pointed to Merik’s shoulder. “You are injured.”

  He turned his head to find a small pocket knife sticking from his left shoulder. His playful grin collapsed into a sneer. “Fuck.” He pulled out the knife and turned to the cowering pirate behind him. He picked the small wiry man by his yellow stained shirt and arched the knife to gut him.

  “Merik.” The tone of Orynn’s voice gave the Trexen pause. “I believe that is quite enough.”

  He kept the man dangling in the air and looked over his shoulder at her. “You never let me have any fun, mom.”

  “Drop him, please.” Orynn raised an eyebrow, but kept the same cruel grin on her lips. Conversing with Merik was like trying to communicate with an entire pack of wolves. Her aura hit against the jagged edge of his own playfully. When he mirrored her expression and dropped the man, she relaxed and exhaled a shallow breath.

  Trexen are tricky.

  He was playing a game with her and she needed to keep it going or he would slaughter them all before she got what she needed from them. “And do wipe your hands, dear, you are getting blood all over the floor.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” And fuck her repeatedly.

  Merik kept his eyes on her as he reached down and tore the shirt off the man he had just dropped. He wiped the blood from his hands and threw the rag into the man’s face then made his way over to her side. When he reached her side, he stopped and leaned into her ear.

  The black void surrounding him snaked its tendrils around her body looking for any weakness. Though their auras were invisible to all but he and Orynn, a visible shimmer wavered in the air as their auras collided. He was going to find a way to make her show him her true nature. She couldn’t fight him forever. He knew part of her wanted it and that part of her also wanted him.

  Ethan watched the exchange with grinding teeth. Though his assistance had been somewhat of a cursed blessing, Merik was quickly outliving his welcome again. When Merik moved his hand along Orynn’s stomach and rested it against her right hip, Ethan took a step forward with a cold glare.

  Merik continued to whisper in her ear, but lifted his eyes up to look at Ethan. The grin on his lips widened and he raised his eyebrows tauntingly at the Mecha. He may not be able to read the mind of the man-shaped machine, but he knew a possessive aura when he felt one.

  Ethan’s possessiveness toward Orynn intrigued Merik. It made the thought of fucking her even more desirable, just to see what unexpected reaction it may cause in the Mecha. The sharpened black fingernails of Merik’s hand scraped across Orynn’s thigh, and he delighted in the way Ethan sneered at him. Merik was too busy toying with the machine to notice the sharp change in Orynn’s aura.

  Orynn’s body went rigid and she angled her neck just enough to whisper in Merik’s ear. As she continued speaking to him, Merik’s hand abruptly flexed and raised away from her thigh. His eyes went wide and his mouth opened slightly. The cold grin was replaced by a genuine lopsided smirk and his right eyebrow twitched. Orynn turned her face forward again as Merik stepped away from her and headed toward the group behind her.

  Hank had never seen an expression like that on Merik’s face, and he couldn’t discern its meaning at all. He imagined that if a wolf tried to smile sheepishly, that’s what it would look like. “What exactly did she say to you?”

  “Some things are better left unrepeated.” As Merik neared the group, the expression o
n his face slowly sank back into his normal cold flat smile the further removed from Orynn’s aura he became. He stepped in between Hank and Ethan then turned around to face Orynn and the remaining T’jaros.

  Ethan leaned over to Merik, his voice slightly gloating at Merik’s dismissal. “Shouldn’t have touched her.”

  Merik gave Ethan a sideways glance with his pitch-black eyes. “Jealous, tin-man? Besides, who says I’m done with her? ”

  “I do.” Ethan’s tone carried a warning. “She isn’t for your amusement.”

  “Oh I have barely begun to amuse myself.” Merik flashed the Mecha his fangs.

  “If you two are finished...” Brom stepped up and muscled his large frame between them, then pointed at Orynn who hadn’t moved from her spot a few feet away from the gathered T’jaros.

  “Thank you, Brom.” Orynn took in a deep breath and gathered her aura back around her, charging it with a selected mix of emotional energies.

  Ethan smirked as Merik worked to keep the sheepish smirk from making a reappearance. “Vesparians. Exceptional listening skills.”

  Refocusing on the T’jaros in front of her, she sent out her aura and they all simultaneously smiled peacefully. Their shoulders drooped, and those who had been standing sank slowly to the ground. Their clouded eyes look up at her face with an air of admiration. Reverence was one of the easiest emotions to bring over the brain.

  “Hello, men of the Pack. That large Trexen, who just disemboweled several of your friends while reading your minds, has told me that you came here on an assigned bounty. He told me that you were led to believe by this bounty that I was only pretending to be a Vesparian. True?”

  “Oh yes.” Several of the men nodded. “The bounty said to find the Vesparian, but not to worry cuz you was no real Vesparian.”

  “Yeah, going after a real Vesparian would have been dumb. All know they don’t exist.” One of the men who had been making lewd gestures at Tara earlier sat with dazed toothy grin. The broken Common he spoke was heavily enunciated with his T’jaros accent. “The Pack is smart.”

  “Indeed.” Orynn raised an eyebrow and focused her attention on the man. “And was it you who attacked Captain Eros’s ship, the Zera, on our way to Chronos?”

  “That was not us.” He shook his head vigorously. “That was the Vipers. They’re a stupid lot, them Vipers. Not smart like the Pack. We planned and waited with this trap, and here you are!”

  “Here I am.” Orynn nodded. “So, there are more than one T’jaros factions who have been given this bounty call?”

  “Yes! All T’jaros! Was a general Bounty Call, it was. First get, first collect. Triple the normal rate. All factions boasted they would be the first.” The man raised both hands proudly and the rest of the group nodded. “But we Pack have caught you!”

  Hank frowned. “Great, just what we need. More T’jaros coming after us.”

  Tara looked over at Brom. “How many factions are there currently?”

  Brom looked up and did some slow math in his head, then joined Hank in a frown. “Thirty-seven, unless you count the T’jarosa, then there are forty-two.”

  The self-appointed speaker for the T’jaros group laughed. “T’jarosa too busy making babies.” He turned his eyes up to Orynn and sighed. “You would put them all to shame. Come be my T’jarosa. I’d take good care of you.”

  “I am sure you would.” Orynn leaned down close to him and stroked his hair. “How many T’jarosa have you stolen and raped?”

  “Fourteen.” The man said with pride.

  “I thought as much.” Orynn fought to keep the reverence pouring from her as her disgust with the group increased. “How did you know I would be on the Zera?”

  The man shrugged. “Bounty said so. Didn’t say where ship was going, but lucky us, Vipers followed you from Last Star. We got their distress call and picked up the trail. Stupid Vipers.”

  “I don’t get it, Orynn.” Hank scratched the back of his neck. “Why send a bounty out on someone they thought was pretending to be a Vesparian? And how did they know you were on my ship?”

  Orynn turned around and looked at Hank and the others. If there was any sign that vaporizing Flick had caused them to think differently about her, it didn’t show on the surface. She feared that may change before this ordeal was over. “I am afraid that may be my fault, and I apologize for putting your crew in danger. I knew my actions in the hangar, using the guise of Kera Ruistra, may draw unwanted attention. I believe I know who put the bounty out, and it is someone who has been tracking me for quite some time. He sent the bounty out knowing full well I was no pretender. He sent these men to test the waters, so to speak.”

  “Clever, when you think about it.” Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If Orynn wasn’t aboard our ship, or if she wasn't the real Vesparian he was looking for, then the T’jaros would report back that all they found was us. If Orynn turned out to be a Vesparian, chances are they’d be dead and he’d have his suspicions confirmed.”

  Brom didn’t know about clever, but he thought it sounded sadistic. “Can’t you just mess with their heads and send them back to tell that guy they didn’t find anything?”

  Merik gave a cold laugh. “Not with that bunch. Clever, indeed.”

  “Why not?” Tara questioned.

  Orynn looked over some of the rapture-filled pirates, their eyes glazed over as they studied the ceiling of the hangar. “T’jaros are what is left of a race called the Thetos Jarkarzians. Once, they were a rising empire of space nomads who owned some of the most lucrative ports throughout the inner systems. They had a superior and complex intellect.”

  Tara shook her head in disbelief. The T’jaros had been around for centuries, as far as she knew. She had never heard of these Thetos before. “What the heck happened to them?”

  “Just a thousand years of trade wars and a drug called Epsilia.” Merik explained. “A Tarsen design, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Orynn nodded as Merik turned his black eyes to her. “Correct. The Thetos owned prime planetary and port holdings that the Tarsen wanted. The Tarsen engineered a highly addictive drug, and then they introduced the drug into the Thetos food chain. A few decades later, there were very few who weren’t addicted to it. Their holdings crumbled into the waiting hands of the Tarsen. The Tarsen grew in wealth and the Thetos Jarkarzians became pirates. Epsilia is now known as Sil.”

  Tara understood. “I knew most of those pirates are junkies hooked on Sil, but I had no idea it wasn’t their fault.”

  “Twelve hundred years is a long time to use the actions of others as a crutch to justify your current circumstances.” Orynn stated to no one in particular and turned back to the group of pirates. “Sil makes their minds very vulnerable to the influences of my empathy and visual projections. However, combined with the complex nature of their brains, Sil makes them immune to any type of memory alteration. One would almost think the Tarsen planned it all in advance.”

  “But the Tarsen are long dead.” Brom commented.

  “Are they?” Orynn and Merik both asked at the same time. She looked over her shoulder at him and a mutual acknowledgment passed between them. Orynn felt a small amount of happiness to have someone to relate to, even if it was someone like Merik. Despite his outward appearance, he wasn’t heartless. As for his enjoyment of mutilation and his toying with her, he was only following his nature. No less so than she.

  Ethan was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the moments passing between Orynn and Merik. The idea that they could communicate with each other on some hidden emotional level irritated him. “So what are we going to do with them?”

  Orynn glanced at Ethan, confused by the irritation in his voice. “I am going to use them to send a message.” She kept her eyes on Ethan a moment longer, then brushed away the emotion rising in her heart and turned back to the pirates. She smiled down at their glowing faces. “Would one of you like to relay a message to the Bounty Caller for me?”

  “Oh yes!” They all n
odded emphatically. “Please, let us do this for you!”

  “Did the Bounty Caller provide his name?” Orynn wondered if her hunch was correct.

  “No, but he had a message!” The new leader loved being able to give Orynn answers that would make her happy. The feelings pouring from her aura increased in him as reward. “He said if we should find the girl, we should say...” The man paused and furrowed his brow, then his face lit up as he remembered. “We should say ‘Great is the sun that burns the wicked, pure is the... the wind that blows their ashes, and... and...”

  “Justice is the word that will be spoken.” Orynn finished for him in a soft whisper. Her assumption was correct.

  “What does that mean?” Hank felt as if he had heard it some place before, but his memory was drawing a blank. “Who is this guy after you?”

  “It is an old Xen’dari saying.” Orynn kept her back to them to hide the melancholy in her eyes. “It is ‘Great is the son that burns the wicked’. A son seeking justice for his father.”

  “You mean he is seeking vengeance after you?” Ethan questioned.

  Orynn turned to him. “Is there a difference? In his eyes it is justice. What it is called makes little difference. The end result is the same.”

  “Death is the only resolution.” Merik understood her point perfectly. It was something he didn’t expect the machine, or any of the others in the room, to truly comprehend. In order to know the identical nature of justice and vengeance, one had to have experienced it. Or dealt it.

  “Or forgiveness.” Tara added in. “You can just forgive the person.”

  Orynn looked to Merik, but knew forgiveness was not something he held a high belief in. It was not something she felt much hope in, either. “Sometimes, forgiveness becomes impossible.”

  “I think you’re wrong.” Tara refused to back down. Killing people over some bullshit vengeance was how wars were perpetuated. Her dad always told her that the best thing you could ever do for yourself is forgive someone who hurt you.

  The aura around Tara was beautifully strong in its resolve, and it brought a faint smile to Orynn’s face. “I am glad that you do.”