Enemy Within Read Online Free Page B

to manipulate her emotions? Didn’t he know the Chekydran had beaten them out of her?
    “Decontamination, Captain,” she said. “And if you want off this moon without anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary, I need my father’s crew free to stow their experiments and their gear.”
    Seaghdh backed away a few steps, lifted his blade before his face, and swept it away in salute.
    The unexpected courtesy of one fighter acknowledging defeat by another warmed her, but the inkling of respect she saw in his gaze pierced through a tight place inside her. She held her breath at the sudden burn behind her eyes.
    He lifted the hilt of the blade in his hand. “This is yours?”
    She nodded.
    “Blade rank?”
    “Doesn’t matter,” she said, even though she suspected he’d already guessed she’d been highly placed military. Her competition ranking would only confirm his impression.
    “Second in System,” Raj, her father’s medical officer, said.
    Seaghdh’s eyes widened. So did his cocky grin. “Ever fight the first-place holder?”
    “No. Not likely to get that chance,” Ari replied, stripping her sliced-up jacket and lobbing it into the recycler. Not now that she was in the process of being drummed out of the military. “Now. Captain. About getting off this muddy rock . . .”
    “Aye. You want me in decon. That eager to have me out of my clothes, then?”
    Her body whispered yes . Ari strangled the traitorous voice. “How can you imagine I’d notice?” she shot back. She stalked to the line of lockers outside decon and flung them open.
    “Help yourself,” she instructed, gesturing to the clothes and coveralls in the lockers. “Assure Jayleia that your men won’t be shooting her today, would you? And order the crew cut loose so we can get this stuff stowed.”
    “Bossy, aren’t you?” Seaghdh countered, smiling down at her. “I do like a woman who knows her mind.”
    “Turrel!” he barked. “Pull perimeter, assign guard duty, untie the crew, and get this gear cleared. Our girl, Ari, prefers to be our insurance policy. This lot tries something silly, shoot her, instead.”
    The Shlovkur took the energy blade from Seaghdh, scowling at his captain as he did so. “She’s the only one with the command codes.”
    “She is, isn’t she?” Seaghdh agreed.
    She smiled so she wouldn’t frown. He’d guaranteed that Pietre would try something stupid, regardless of the codes, just to see her shot. Seaghdh’s beatific leer as the decon door closed in front of him told her he knew precisely what she was thinking.
    “Lock these up.” Turrel handed the energy blades to a man in bloodstained freighter coveralls. “Then free the prisoners. Don’t care what Captain Seaghdh says. Any of them make a wrong move, shoot them. Then I’ll shoot her.” He pointed his gun at Ari.
    She grinned. After a decade and a half in the military, she recognized bluster. These men did not want to shoot anyone. Orders? Or were they trying to appear to be something they weren’t?
    “I suppose me stowing my specimens is out of the question?” Ari asked.
    “I can hit a moving target,” he snapped. “I just won’t waste the ammo it would take to put you down clean. Stop grinning at me like I ain’t holding a gun to your face. Only the captain gets to do that.”
    Clearing her throat, she wiped the smile from her face and turned to her father. “Dad?”
    Her father rubbed his wrists and shot a glare at her. “Damned shameful display of ego,” he grumbled.
    The censure jolted Ari. She pressed her lips tight to keep from swearing aloud. Ego? No. More like very potent seduction. Shaking off the remnants of sensual awareness, she curled her hands into fists. The man had manipulated her into believing that he identified her as an equal, if not quite a trusted ally, and he’d used her runaway hormones to do it.
    She might not have a command, but she was still an Armada captain. She had a job to do. One that didn’t afford her