Shades of Dark (19 page)

Jerisina Petroksi, Maida Bell, and Ademar Javieros were gone. And not all had died of old age.

That was something else Jodey had commented on.

Hayden and his father, Morley Burke, were still alive. And as the ranks thinned, they gained power, but also fears. When the rights to those worlds were finally doled out, what if they found themselves shorted?

“Gregor was working for Hayden Burke?” My guess shocked me. I’d seen vids of Sully’s older cousin. Darkly handsome like Sully, but with light eyes and a polished, almost artificial demeanor. And where Sully was sensual, I found Hayden smarmy. Though according to the celebrity gossip commentators, he rarely lacked for noteworthy female companionship.

But Burke hiring Meevel Gregoran? No, that did make a bit of sense. Hayden wanted the Sullivan fortune, badly. Knowing where Sully was would be important to him.

Sully was shaking his head. “Cousin Hayden had Lazlo. He didn’t need Gregor.”

“Then who?”

“The one person Guthrie trusted. The one person he confided in. The one person who suddenly came to Hayden’s defense after Marker.”

“Tage.” First Barrister Darius Tage. A man who’d had the ear of the emperor for over two decades. Yes, a Legalist who was in opposition to the Admirals’ Council, but known for being a middle-roader. A peacemaker. A man most believed kept the government running when Prew became increasingly unfocused and uninterested in the problems of a rapidly expanding empire that neither the economists nor the military could quite control. The worst criticism I’d ever heard of Tage was that he was a benign despot.

Even Philip had liked him.

Had.

“But you read Gregor after our systems failure. How did you miss that he was working for Tage?”

Sully let out a short sigh. “One, I read him through Ren, if you remember. A fine example of my cowardice at the time. Two, we’re not talking a
zral
or
zragkor
here. We’re talking a basic truth scan. Three, I was specifically looking for information on Lazlo, Burke, or Ilsa. Four, out of all my crew, Gregor has the most knowledge about
Ragkirils
. He also was the most agitated when Ren and I interviewed him. I thought that his agitation was because he’d seen
Ragkiril
interrogators. Which was to a great extent true. It never occurred to me to ask if he knew Tage. There was no reason to.”

I still couldn’t see it. “How did he hook up with Tage?” If I’d thought Gregor and Burke were a mismatch, Gregor and Tage were even more so.

“He didn’t. He’s never met Tage. He works peripherally for Pol Acora, who for quite awhile now has specialized in recruiting Fleet dissidents for the Legalists to put on parade as examples of why the Council should be disbanded. Probably the only reason Acora didn’t get Dalby is that the Farosians got to her first.”

I didn’t know Acora but I knew of the groups he purportedly fed information to. If an ensign ends up in a bar fight on liberty, then Acora’s group releases data showing the mass brutality rampant in Fleet ranks. The free medical clinics established and run in the rim worlds by the Admirals’ Council are ignored until one med-tech out of hundreds is caught stealing illegal drugs. Then all Fleeties are thieves and addicts, preying on the poor at the behest of the Council.

His people were all over my arrest and trial. I was the perfect example of the mindless killer mentality fostered by my military family and encouraged by Fleet. Another stellar example of the failure of the Admirals’ Council to police its own.

“I didn’t know Acora worked for Tage,” I said. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if I found out he was part of CCNN. They echoed his opinions almost verbatim.

“There’s no proof he does. Tage isn’t that stupid.”

“So what do Acora and Tage want with you?”

“You have to understand I only know Gregor’s beliefs in this. Not unlike Aubry, he does what he’s told—to an extent. And Acora isn’t going to confide in the likes of Meevel Gregoran. Tage sure as hell isn’t even going to talk to him. But Gregor’s recollections tell me that he came to Acora’s attention when I decided to play dead two years ago, on Garno. I buried the
Karn
in a salvage depot on the rim. Gregor, Marsh—they all knew I needed four to six months of not existing, of letting things quiet down so that I could reestablish a relationship with Sophia, my mother.”

And with me. Ren had revealed that and Sully had confirmed it. After our brief encounter in Port Chalo, Sully knew a mercenary and pirate had no chance with the likes of Captain Chasidah Bergren, pride of the Sixth Fleet. So he faked his own death, giving him a chance to reinvent himself for his mother and for me.

“My father was dead,” he was saying, “And, yes, there was an enormous amount of money involved—an inheritance my father denied me. Did I want that? Of course. But not to be like Hayden, not to live like Hayden. I wanted it for different reasons, not the least of which was to reward Marsh, Dorsie, and Gregor for their loyalty. Or what I thought was their loyalty.”

He shook his head. “They didn’t know that, of course. I told them to have patience. I continued to shift funds to their usual accounts. I just asked for some time. Gregor thought I was running out, selling out, so he decided to do one better. When Acora’s people found him, looking for information on me—apparently about a week before I faked my death—he knew that was his way to do it.”

Pieces began to fall into place. “That’s how station security knew Nathaniel Milo was waiting for us on Moabar Station.” Gregor told Acora’s contacts who told Tage who alerted the Ministry of Corrections.

Sully nodded. “And that’s how Burke’s people knew we were headed for Marker. Gregor to Acora to Tage to Burke. Berri Solaria was just Burke’s little bit of extra insurance. It might also be that Acora doesn’t fully trust Gregor. For good reason.”

Gregor was also now working for the Farosians. Greed was one hell of a motivator.

“Did he know Berri beforehand?”

Sully shook his head. “But once she came on board, she identified herself to him. We thought they were getting cozy. They were just comparing notes.”

“But he was threatening to leave the ship at that point.”

“Evidently Berri told him a big move was being planned against me. He had no desire to get caught in the crossfire.”

“So why did he come back for us after leaving us on Marker?”

“Orders. If we’d been captured on Marker, he was to deliver the
Karn
and my crew to Acora’s people. We weren’t. He was told to stay with us.”

“Goddamned son of a lousy bitch!” I muttered harshly under my breath.

Sully smiled ruefully. “It’s no excuse, but maybe now you know what made me lose control with him.” His mouth thinned. “I wanted him terrified. I wanted him to suffer. To a
Kyi,
revenge is almost as seductive as pleasure.”

“The desire for revenge is nothing unique—”

“No, but my methods are. Unique and dangerous. Because he has been holding back one nice tidbit of information. A fail-safe, if you will. And this fail-safe information will be released if it appears something’s happened to him.” He paused then answered the question before I could ask it. “He has proof that I killed my mother.”

“No.” The word came from my lips hard and definite. I could believe many things about Gabriel Ross Sullivan—being a
Kyi-Ragkiril
came with both power and price. But I could not see him being in any way responsible for killing his mother.

It’s not that Sully had never taken a life. He had. So had I. And both of us would again. But each death pained him, diminished a part of him, as it did a part of me. Duty and protection made it necessary. It didn’t make us like it.

But I could never see him killing his mother, even if she attacked him first. There was always something in his voice when he spoke of her, in spite of the fact they’d never been close. Sophia was the socialite, Gabriel the obligatory heir. But he admired her. That wasn’t hard to do. For all her wealth and glitter, Sophia Rossetti Sullivan was an admirable woman. From what I’d heard, she’d been highly intelligent, scrupulously fair, and unfailingly kind. Sully’s charitable streak was all Sophia. Her servants worshipped her. Her rivals grudgingly respected her.

There was a lot of Sophia in Sully.

He could never kill her.

He was watching me with an odd mixture of emotions on his face, his gaze zigzagging as if he was reading lines of data between us. Which he was, I realized.

“No,” I said again. “That I will not believe of you.”

A long exhale, a thinning of the invisible wall between us. It hadn’t shattered yet—there was still anger, shame, and fear—but it wavered. “Thank you,” he said, his voice catching. He studied his hands for a moment, cleared his throat, then looked back up at me. “Unfortunately, most people won’t share your sentiments.”

“What kind of proof does Gregor have?”

“Circumstantial, courtesy of my own stupidity. My mother died in a shuttle accident on her way to keep an appointment with her barrister. That was fact. Investigators stated she was going to change her will to name Hayden as her legal heir. That’s not fact, but I can’t disprove it. ‘Client wants to discuss inheritance issue’ was what was in the barrister’s logs.

“It was right before I put the
Karn
in salvage. I’d opened a dialogue with her a few shipdays earlier, for the first time in years. Then in her next transmit she tells me,” and he hesitated, his gaze drifting to a distant, undefined point somewhere, “that she needed to talk to Halli Rillman. Rillman was head legal counsel for the firm that had handled Sullivan matters for decades. Sophia already had an upcoming appointment scheduled weeks prior. She’d use that to discuss what she’d recently found in my father’s personal effects. It disturbed her. She wouldn’t tell me what it was and as we were conversing via transmits, I couldn’t read her. But she was very adamant that I not be involved. She was frightened.” He shook his head as memories washed over him, some I could see: his mother’s face on the deskscreen, elegant brow furrowed, mouth pinched. A beautiful woman under a terrible strain. And there was nothing Sully could do. He was on his ship. She was in her estate on Sylvadae in Aldan.

“She said she couldn’t deal with this issue and with me at the same time. It was too stressful. I tried to tell her I could help, I had sources and resources she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I couldn’t tell her, yet, what I was. But if what I was could help her, then I wanted to be there.

“When my next two transmits bounced back to me, I got angry. I sent another. ‘Shutting me out is the most dangerous thing you could do. You’re forcing my hand here,’ is what I think I said. I gave her a planetary day to return my transmit, ‘or else.’

“I was in the ready room, the door to the bridge open, when I sent that ultimatum. It was just a short transmit, a few seconds. I left the ready room right after because, well, I have a hard time sitting still when I’m angry. Anyone else overhearing it would have no idea where the transmit went or who it went to. But Gregor was on duty. He archived it, saw who it was sent to, made a copy as a fail-safe.” He shook his head. “It was his insurance policy should I ever find out about his deal with Acora. And later, with the Farosians.”

“That transmit doesn’t prove you killed her.”

“It puts me high on the list of suspects. I had motive, means, and opportunity. And I’d made a threat. Couple that with her purported change of will, and it looks very convincing.”

“But your father disinherited you years ago!”

“From the Sullivan monies, yes.” He looked pointedly at me. “My mother was a Rossetti.”

And the Rossettis were almost as obscenely wealthy as the Sullivans.

“My grandfather died about six months earlier,” he continued. “Natural causes. He was in his nineties. She’d come into a large inheritance from him. Part of it was specifically earmarked for me.” A small smile found its way to his lips. “He was a bit of a rascal. He found my mercenary lifestyle amusing. But the Rossetti estate wasn’t why she was going to see Rillman on that particular day, even though that’s what was originally calendared.”

“Did Rillman know the real reason your mother was coming to see her?”

“We have no way of knowing. It was Rillman’s private shuttle that crashed. She’d gone along with her pilot to pick up my mother. When you’re a Sullivan
and
a Rossetti, you get that kind of special treatment.”

And someone also makes sure you can’t testify that Sophia Sullivan’s appointment had nothing to do with changing her will.

“Sully, your mother was murdered.”

“Quite obviously. But if I ever tried to open an investigation, I guarantee that all evidence would point to me. Especially now that I may have sealed my own death warrant with what I did to Gregor.”

“He’s not dead. You just wiped his mind.”

“But whoever’s holding a copy of that transmit will know something’s happened to Gregor. I was not,” and he closed his eyes, his mouth thinning in self-condemnation, “kind to him.”

“You don’t know who has the copy, do you?”