Collision Course (Class 5, #6)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

“I picked up Rose singing.” Sazo murmured the words into Dav’s ear. This information was clearly not for general consumption.

Dav turned, walking off the bridge and into the corridor outside.

There was no one around, and he paced away from the door, headed for his office.

“Singing?” he asked.

“Three bursts of it, then silence.” Sazo sounded strained.

Dav allowed himself a moment of pure relief. “Can you tell where she is from that?”

“Not an exact location. I have a general direction, though. Wherever it is, she found a way to transmit, at least for a short time.” There was no hiding the admiration in his voice.

Dav felt a similar lift of hope and pride. “She freed you and Bane, remember? She’s a force to be reckoned with.”

So much had happened since they’d first met, he sometimes forgot all the things she’d accomplished.

He’d never been happier that his lifemate was clever, determined and ingenious.

“What next?” Dav asked.

“Hopefully they haven’t taken her earpiece, so I’m transmitting back, along the trajectory of her signal to us, but I’ll need to get closer. The area she could be in is wide. If I leave you here to negotiate, I can search the area as fast as possible.”

Dav didn’t want that. He wanted to go with Sazo. But this was high-level diplomacy, and if Sazo failed to find and rescue her, he might be able to negotiate for her safe return as a fallback.

They needed more than one path to success.

“Agreed. Pretend to go back in the direction we came. Maybe they’ll think you’re off to get the proof they’re demanding.” Dav reached his office and stepped in, automatically looking to check his comms to see if the messages he’d ordered go out to Paxe and Irini had had any response.

It was way too early for that, but he couldn’t help looking anyway.

Rose was in the hands of unfriendly strangers, and she was very close to giving birth. He had to concentrate on going through the steps he knew he had to complete, or he would lose his cool.

It was unacceptable. Unacceptable. And this stunt by the grynicha , as Irini called them, made him very unwilling to come to any alliance or friendly understanding with them, even if Rose was returned completely unharmed.

There was a light tap at his door and Jia Appal stuck her head in. “Everything all right?”

He motioned her in and she stepped inside.

“Sazo picked up a transmission from Rose. She was singing.”

Jia took a step back, mouth slightly slack, and then she grinned. “Rose is already free and trying to reach us?”

“She’s sending a signal somehow. We don’t know the situation, but she’s certainly not completely under their control. Or wasn’t, for a while.” He hoped the silence now wasn’t because they’d managed to capture her again.

“Of course not.” Jia shook her head. “They might live to regret taking her more than they know. And not just because it makes us all a lot less willing to play nice with them.”

“They’ll regret it if Sazo has anything to do with it.” Dav knew his tone was grim, but he couldn’t truly feel sorry about it. Most Grih saw Sazo as a barely controlled monster on the most delicate of leashes. What they didn’t understand was that he was their monster.

Rose had thrown in with the Grih, and as long as that was true, Sazo was all in with the Grih, too.

Jia looked at him sharply. “He’ll cause havoc?” she asked.

“If they’ve hurt her,” Dav said, “he’ll raze them to the ground.” And Dav would be right there, helping him.

“Call from Priyan.” Borji cut into his comm.

“Put it through here,” Dav said, and synced to the speaker on his desk so Jia could hear it, too.

“Where is that ship going?” Priyan asked.

“You wanted answers to your questions, but we are too far from our communication satellites to send out a request for the proof you require.” Dav kept his tone curt. They needed to understand how unhappy he was about Rose’s abduction. If they could even understand his tone and verbal cues. It could be meaningless to them.

“Are you responsible for cutting off our comms with our own people?” Priyan asked.

Dav leaned back in his chair in surprise, his gaze going to Jia.

She shook her head and lifted her shoulders, as clueless as he was.

“No.” Dav paused. “Is this a common phenomenon?”

“It happens when there is increased solar wind activity from the nearby sun.” The words sounded stiff.

“Can you let me talk to Rose?” Dav asked. “Just to make sure she is all right?”

It was Priyan’s turn to pause. “She is not onboard this vessel, and as I said, we have lost comms with our people, so that isn’t possible.”

“Let me know when it comes back up, so we can assure ourselves she is fine.” Dav kept his tone short. “Taking her against her will, taking her from us, is unacceptable to us.”

“You took our people,” Priyan said.

“We did not take your people. And we came to let you know what happened to them once we learned about their existence.” He knew they had some right to outrage, but they had really left the moral high ground the moment they took Rose.

They had made a mistake. Because he was the only one other than Rose who could rein Sazo in, and right now, he was not inclined to.

Priyan cut off the comms without responding, and Dav and Jia exchanged a look.

“Do you think the comms issues are from a solar wind?” Jia asked.

Dav shook his head. “I think Sazo’s making sure they don’t get a panicked message from their people that they’ve somehow lost control of their prisoner.”

He wished Sazo had told him about it, but he knew Sazo didn’t feel obligated to share information very often.

“That’s probably wise,” Jia said. “It makes it difficult to negotiate, though.”

Dav nodded. If he knew Sazo, negotiation was now off the table.