CHAPTER 7
Nicholen took the full fifteen minutes to get himself under control. The one perk of being thought the trincaar was that he had his own personal bathroom in which to splash over his face the most extremely cold water the tap could produce. He was probably using the entire trip’s allotment, but he needed it.
Forebears, but Xaviara was an amazing woman. She was smart, sexy, and bolder than he’d expected her to be. She’d mostly faded into the background before, the picture-perfect junior delegate. The only things outstanding about her were her impeccable manners and obvious, intriguing knowledge of his culture. She was definitely destined for great things, and he was astounded that she’d taken an interest in him.
And her arousal was evident in the flowery bloom that his psy-sense manifested. It intoxicated him, lingering in his room even after she left. What he wouldn’t give to have been able to slide those pants off her curves and lick her until she cried his name.
This wasn’t helping his problem.
He knew full well that humans were off-limits until the treaty had been signed. In fact, he shouldn’t be enlisting her help in finding the saboteur, but it had made sense when she’d asked: she knew the humans on board, and he wasn’t sure which of the kadyyza he could trust. Who else on her team could he go to? Ah, but she had him in knots already.
He turned on the water higher and swallowed a gulp before splashing himself in the face again.
Finally, after too much cold water and too many thoughts of the last time he and Camlan practice fought—the most unsexy thing he could think of on short notice—he was ready to appear in public again. He adjusted his pants. From the way Xaviara had been eyeballing him, he was certain she’d seen exactly what she’d done to him.
Damn it, that’s not helping.
Before his thoughts could go racing that way again, he pushed the door open button and strode into the hall.
The library was on the other side of the ship. It took most of his willpower not to stop by the bridge, but he knew if he ended up there, he’d jeopardize Camlan’s secret. Despite the situation, he’d promised his prince to keep up the charade, and without an order to the contrary, he had no right to disclose it.
The library was a room lined with wallscreens and projected keyboards, used for more intense research purposes than links or the personal consoles in each room allowed. Just like the links, each connected up to the quanten network in the heart of the ship, allowing access to the wider net. Xaviara was sitting in front of one, typing away at a tablet, when he entered.
She said, “Everything seems to be under control on the planet, although we haven’t been able to get through the planet’s magnetic field to talk to them.”
“Oh?” Nicholen’s heart raced. He hated being out of control, and this situation was the epitome of that. He slid into a chair, and then for good measure, he reached over and tapped the door close button. It wasn’t strictly polite to shut the door to a public space, but as trincaar—he smiled wryly—he could get away with it.
Plus he liked being trapped in a closed room with this woman, even if his every logical thought screamed that he should be running away.
Xaviara said, “They’re still inside the ship. Gloria is attempting to establish real-time communication. She’s keeping all channels open and monitoring their vitals when they get a break in the field. Everything seems to be going smoothly. She’s doing all the right things.”
Nicholen smacked a hand on the desk. “I wish I could do something.”
Xaviara finally looked up. Her brown eyes pierced him. “We are doing something. This is the most important thing for your trincaar. If you want to get him out safe, you have to make sure you stop whatever the saboteur is planning.”
“I know.” It didn’t make the raging frustration abate, though. “Where do you want to start?”
Xaviara swiped upward to push the image from her tablet to the wallscreen. “I used my security clearance to check whether the computer’s automated security recorded anything unusual. I’m not able to get into everything, but I did find this. The audvid footage of the entire ship went dark moments before the ship fell out of mu-space.”
Four scenes showed in each quadrant of the wallscreen: the bridge, the engine room, a hallway, and the mess hall. Then they went black.
“This continues for several minutes, and then it all comes back up. I’ve cycled through every camera in every location, and it’s all the same.”
“The saboteur didn’t want to show his or her hand by blanking out only a few of the feeds.” Clever. And it made their job even more difficult, of course. Through the haze of attraction for Xaviara, a thought was nagging him. He put a hand on hers, ignoring the spark that traveled up his arm to take root at the base of his neck. “How do I know you’ve not been sent to distract me?”
Xaviara’s brown eyes met his. They dropped to his lips and jumped back up again. He kept himself tightly reined, not allowing wandering thoughts. She could merely be playing him for an advantage.
She said, “You don’t.”
The admission unwound something in him. He pulled his hand away. “How did you know I wasn’t the real trincaar?”
“I… don’t know.” Her hands fluttered over the tablet and came to rest in her lap. “As soon as you walked in the room, I felt ill. Everything went watery. I thought I was having a bout of food poisoning. When the world righted itself, I saw you wearing the trincaar’s cape, but I remembered your dossier. You’re the captain. I knew it for sure.”
She seemed so confused and vulnerable. Nicholen had interrogated hundreds of people over the years, and he knew a liar when he met one. He might not always know what the lie was, but he could tell when a person was hiding something.
Xaviara was not.
“I don’t know what else to tell you.” She shrugged. “If you want me out of here, I’ll go. You can even have my tablet with my security access to the Sol Alliance Coalition database. I’ve already broken one of the rules,” her eyes flicked to his lips again, “so I might as well break more of them.”
Fuck, he didn’t want to be in this position, but he had to decide. He could trust her, work with her, breathe in her delicious scent while they tried to figure out the true saboteur—or he could send her out of the room right now and go it alone.
He did not want to go it alone.
Am I letting my cock make the decisions for me? Except he wasn’t—he knew very well they couldn’t have a relationship. As if to underscore it to himself, he said aloud, “We can’t have a relationship.”
“No, we can’t,” she answered. “I could get fired.”
He would likely fare better—an official reprimand from Camlan, delivered in a joking manner—but he didn’t want to jeopardize her job. “No more kissing.”
“No more kissing.”
“Or anything else.”
“Or anything,” she blushed, “else.”
How long is that going to last?
“I believe you’re not the saboteur,” he said, hoping he wouldn’t regret it later. He would keep his bullshit detector on high alert, and anything out of the ordinary, he’d be sure to take action on. “Do you have any inkling as to who it might be?”
The pink was fading from Xaviara’s cheeks. “I started researching the humans on board since I have more information on them than the kadyyza. I’ve come up with one strong suspect so far, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Why? Who is it?” This was not calming him.
She looked up, her long hair spilling down the back of the chair. “It’s Gloria.”
“The Senior Ambassador who’s worked for the Sol Alliance Coalition as a diplomat for twenty-five years?” Yeah, he’d done his background checks. “The one who you just assured me is doing everything she can to get Camlan off the planet?”
“Yes. As much as I really don’t like the woman, I don’t want it to be her either. That’s why I said she seems to be doing everything she should. If it is her, she’s at least going through the motions. But what I found seems so glaring.”
“And what is that?”
“The rest of the team is way too junior to pull off a sabotage of this magnitude.”
“She did come onto the bridge after the disaster, but she had no reason to be there before it happened,” he mused. “But what’s her motive?”
“I don’t know yet. I just began investigating her when you walked in. I started by running through the other eleven humans on board since I have access to their internal profiles. None of the others seem capable of this. That fact alone makes Gloria a suspect because she’s the only one with clearance level Lambda. The next closest clearance level is Theta.”
“Three below hers.”
“You know your human security clearances.”
“It’s my job to know,” Nicholen said.
“Fair enough.” Xaviara tapped her fingers on the side of the tablet. “And that’s the thing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she hand-picked this team to be as junior as possible without arousing suspicion in her higher-ups. Even the fact that she put Manda in charge is odd. Don’t get me wrong, I admire her—she’s a good boss, maybe even something of a friend—but this is not the kind of delegation you have a Junior Ambassador leading.”
“She was so determined to get me off the bridge.” He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all. “I need to take over the rescue effort.”
“Not yet,” said Xaviara.
“What do you mean?” He wasn’t used to anyone disagreeing with him—except, perhaps, the trincaarit.
“If it is her, you don’t want to tip her off. We need more information. I’ll see if I can find a motive first.” She tapped to swap from her notes to another program. “I’ve started a search for any pieces of information that seem out of the ordinary. The AI should be able to find something based on my parameters.”
“Like… ?” Nicholen was good at surveillance, in-person interviews, and detecting mechanical failures—which meant he was still kicking himself over missing whatever caused the lead ship to crash. Xaviara’s savvy with computers impressed him.
“Out-of-system trips that weren’t tied to diplomatic missions. Monetary transactions that were out of the ordinary. Even public displays of support on her social media channels for any dubious organizations.”
“Anything so far?”
“No. I mean, I just started it. It’ll take about an hour to complete.”
He didn’t want to wait. “I don’t know about this.” He was itching to leap up, storm onto the bridge, and order the older woman into the brig.
“Isn’t it possible that the saboteur could be a kadyyza? They’re the ones who know the prince is actually on the planet.”
Nicholen’s muscles were taut with frustration, but her logic stopped him from leaping out of the chair. “I suppose you’re right.” What if it was one of his own people? Camlan would have chided him for his lack of loyalty toward his own species, but Nicholen had been doing this job long enough to know that Imdali produced just as many security threats as any other place.
“It seems dangerous for them to know about that swap.”
“Maybe. I do a thorough background check on all new team members, though. There’s only one I don’t trust.” And fuck, do I not trust her. He took the tablet from her and punched into the Imdali internal database. “…Verrytto Lianndra. Camlan and I have argued more times than I can count about her. He insists she’s a skilled diplomat and grateful for her job. We always end with the same conclusion: until I can find a shred of evidence she’s doing anything wrong, he’s not going to kick her off the team.”
“Why? Who is she?”
He wasn’t sure if he was smiling or grimacing. “His ex-girlfriend. They dated for years back when they were in university together. And there’s no love lost between them, especially with how he’s been playing up his playboy image lately.”