Command Decision Read Free Page A

bedcovers over himself. It was like something Ky had said—tried to say—about her family’s death. He had been so sure he knew how she felt, what it was she had to cope with. An adult, someone who’d been out on her own…how bad could it be?
    He had known nothing. As the shiver built into shudders, as he felt himself engulfed in a sorrow colder than death itself, he knew that she had felt this: the last of her family, as he might well be the last of his. Bereft, alone…and so much younger than he was, so much less experienced.
    And she had gone on. He let himself hold to that, for the moment. That crazy idiot, that stiffly, stubbornly upright prig of a girl, who shared with him a guilty secret delight in killing: she had not collapsed under this sorrow. She had fought back. She had saved him—humiliating as that was—and Stella and Toby and her ship and her crew, and gone on being who she was.
    He was warm again, and able to breathe. She was probably dead by now, or soon would be, and because of that it was safe to admit what he felt. To himself, anyway. And what would she do, in his situation? He almost chuckled, imagining that dark, vivid face, those intense eyes. What he himself would do—would find a way to do—when he’d had some rest.
    What a team they could make, if they didn’t kill each other. If they didn’t each die before they met again. And on that thought, he fell asleep.

    The smell woke him. A chemical knife, it stabbed deep into his awareness; he was sitting bolt upright before he realized he was awake.
    That miserable implant. Ky. It must be Ky trying to use the cranial implant. He staggered into the bathroom—the only logical excuse for waking so suddenly if someone had breached his security.
    Only the alarm functioned without an external power source. He did not want to link himself into the room’s power outlets, and yet—he came out of the bathroom, checked his security devices, and burrowed into his luggage for the special cables. He had checked the quality of the line signal and was about to hook himself up when he had another thought.
    What if it wasn’t Ky?
    Here, of all places, someone knew that he had a cranial ansible. His father knew. The technicians who had built and installed it knew. They were supposed to have been told that it had failed, that it was both useless and dangerous, and all their notes and so on were supposed to have been destroyed, but what if not?
    What if whatever had happened to his family had let the enemies know not only that he had a cranial ansible, but also how to contact him?
    He would be immobilized, nearly helpless, as long as he was hooked in.
    But if he didn’t hook in…
    The hotel room had not been designed to be impenetrable, but he did the best he could, as silently as possible, with the chair and the ottoman. Then he arranged the cables, took a deep breath, and activated the ansible.
    It was not quite like using an ordinary skullphone. Ordinary skullphones didn’t smell like gas leaks, skunks, rancid butter, wet dog. The smell associated with being called changed to the one associated with a connection being made. Then a faint sound he associated with an open line, nothing more.
    Somewhere, someone’s telltales should have gone from standby to connected. Someone had placed the call…someone should be speaking. Rafe said nothing. Ansible-to-ansible was not the same as implant-to-implant; he could not strip data from someone’s implant this way even if they had the same setup he did. Which he hoped no one but Ky Vatta did.
    His only safety lay in patience—waiting out whomever had called.
    Seconds passed. Minutes. A trickle of sweat ran down his back. If it had been someone friendly on the other end, they’d have spoken by now. Ky, certainly. His father, if nothing was wrong with him. Anyone else—would be trying to trace the signal? Would be planning to send some devastating blast right into his brain? At least he knew—hoped he