“She seemed relatively cooperative during Dashel's interrogation,” Ranel smirked, “even under those conditions.”
I resisted the urge to shoot Ranel a dirty look.
Tarion clapped his claws together briskly. “Ah, so she's already being forthcoming! Excellent. Then I imagine you'll have the rest of this planet neatly wrapped up within the next few cycles. In that case, I suppose I'd better return to Coovoo to check on the progress by Lehar's crew.” He grasped my claw in his earnestly. “Keep up the good work, Captain Dashel, and one day soon, you might find yourself the youngest fleet member ever promoted to the rank of admiral.”
He turned, striding out of the room. Once the door closed behind him, Ranel turned to me, raising a scaly eyebrow.
“And then again,” he said, “you might not.”
7
Natalie
“I saw everything that happened in here earlier, you know.”
The one called Ranel was in my cell, frowning down at me with his arms crossed. I returned his gaze evenly. “How nice for you. Is that why you're in here? Hoping for a personal encore?”
“I'd sooner bed a Nk'athen with dysentery.” He showed me all of his fearsome teeth in a mirthless smile. “I suppose you thought you were being terribly clever, seducing our captain like that.”
“Not really. It was just one of those moments that happen in life. He wanted it, I wanted it, so we went for it. I'm sure the same thing happens between consenting adults on your world all the time.”
“Earther, you have no knowledge of what happens on Thirren, I assure you. For example, it may interest you to know that on our world, we have entire harems– of all races, including human – whose physical attributes put yours to shame. You might think you're something special because of what went on between you and the captain. You might even think you've managed to get inside his head somehow. But the truth is, he only indulged his appetites with you because he was bored. He was...” He stopped, tilted his head as though trying to remember a difficult word, then grinned. “He was, as you Earthers say, slumming it. You understand the meaning of this term, yes?”
I smirked. “I understand that when a second in command like you takes the time to come in and feed me this line of horseshit, it means you're genuinely concerned that I've managed to exploit a character flaw in your captain. Which means you're scared of me.”
He grunted, unhappy that he hadn't managed to rattle me. “Think what you wish. But know this: If you don't give the captain the information you possess regarding the Pax and their insurgency, I'll be the next one digging around inside your pink little human body with an array of extremely unpleasant surgical implements.”
He turned, leaving the cell. I tried to watch him key in the access code, but like Dashel before him, Ranel kept the panel hidden from view.
Damn.
I hated to admit it, even to myself, but he had a point. I might have managed to shake the captain up a bit, but I was kidding myself if I thought my only reasons had been tactical – which disturbed me, since I preferred to understand my own motivations more clearly. I hadn't intended to give myself over to him so completely, to get lost in the moment the way I had. Why would I, when he was my jailer and I'd spent so many years trying to be free? Yet I couldn't deny my attraction to him on some primal level, and it was damn frustrating.
What's worse, I hadn't managed to gain the upper hand in any real way that would lead to my freedom.
Which meant I'd have to figure something out for myself, if I wanted to get out of the cell. And the longer I stared at the keypad, the clearer my plan became.
First, I checked the buttons on the pad to see if Ranel or Dashel had left any marks with their fingertips, indicating the code sequence. I didn't expect to have any luck there, though. Their reptilian skin was too dry to secrete any oils, and they must have had tremendous control over their talons to keep from leaving little nicks or scrapes which would yield clues.
But...
If this room had previously been used to store cleaning supplies, that meant janitorial staff would have been going in and out of here on a daily basis. Since they'd be working with dirt and chemicals, odds were that they would have left some on the buttons. There was no reason to believe the code would have been changed since then, or that they wouldn't have simply synched the force field projectors to the same code the door already had.
After all, they'd had to put this whole setup together rather quickly in order to accommodate me, right? Plus, based on the taunts I'd gotten from Ranel and Dashel, it seemed like these Hielsrane tended to underestimate humans (much like every other race in the cosmos, from what I'd experienced).
Sure enough, there was some corrosion and discoloration on three of the buttons – very faint, but if I strained my eyes, I could just make it out.
So those were the buttons to use. But what was the sequence? And if I got it wrong on the first couple tries, what would happen to me? An alarm? An electric shock? Something worse?
I shook my head. No. Again, I had to remember this room wasn't originally meant to keep captives, so why would they build in a system to punish some ship's janitor who might be (understandably) too distracted by
