Jaded, page 3
He chuckled. “It seems to be my duty to provide sustenance.”
Over her shoulder, she said, “It does seem that way.”
She was putting on some casual clothing before her grin wore off. Her hair was loose and she was wearing a light pair of trousers and kimono top. Her feet were bare and she wriggled her toes on the deck plate before she joined him in the galley.
He was turning with his hands occupied by the hot plates, and he froze. “Jayd, you look…”
“Waiting for a descriptor. Is that mine?” she smiled brightly and took one of the plates from him.
“You have a lot of hair.”
She laughed. “I am aware of that. I keep it tied back unless I am having a day off. Today is that day.”
“Shouldn’t you be preparing for the case?”
“No. I am the judge, not the prosecutor or defense. I have to come in with an open mind and let the jury see the evidence while I make my own decision.” She shrugged and sat on the bench near the table, crossing her legs and eating her meal while he seemed fixated on her appearance.
“You had better eat, Truanic. Your meal is getting cold.”
“I am sorry. I was just not expecting you to look so…soft.”
She blinked and her blush crept up her cheeks. “What were you expecting?”
“I thought you would remain the businesslike woman I met in the courtyard. I had not expected you to have a relaxed side for some reason.”
She laughed and finished her meal. Jayd rose to her feet and prepared a pot of tea for them. “You cannot remain in work mode all the time. You have to make time to play and relax. Some folks do it by playing games, some read, some masturbate. I exercise and dress in comfortable clothing followed by a vid. What is your preferred method to unwind?”
His cheeks darkened and he focussed on his meal.
“Okay, that puts you into the masturbation camp.” She laughed and waited for the water to boil.
“Not solo pleasure, it is not my preferred method of relaxation. I prefer to spend a relaxing day with a companion.”
She cocked her head. “Then you had best hope for a few days off.”
Jayd poured the water into the teapot and leaned against the counter. Being attracted to her bodyguard slash executioner hadn’t been a problem before. The other guys had definitely not even been close to being in her attraction spectrum. He had her wishing for a few days off on one of the pleasure worlds herself. It was too bad that she had to sit on a case.
She poured two cups and put sweetener in his. He liked the equivalent of two sugars in his tea. Jayd set his cup down in front of him and began scrolling through her data pad looking for a vid to watch.
A Nyal romance was appealing, but it would be a little too hot for the current conditions.
“So, Truanic, do you have any siblings?” It was one thing that had not been discussed.
“I do, but I am not able to discuss them, given the nature of my job.”
“Ouch. Right. Sorry. I forget sometimes, but do not worry. The moment the concealers go on, you will be Ex-Hess.”
“Thank you, Jayd. My family means a lot to me and their anonymity is important.”
She blinked, but as she thought about it, he had not once mentioned anyone by name, though she could easily pick them out of his head. It was getting less and less appealing to pick his brain. She would far rather that he offered the data freely.
Sighing, she brought up the briefing folder on her new partner. His home world was confidential, but he had an extremely distinguished record. None of his charges were ever injured seriously. He always got them out alive.
“You have a good track record.”
He was sipping at his tea. “Um, thank you?”
“Even old Judge Mra came home in one piece. Pity. She’s a pain in the ass.” Jayd smiled slightly.
“You are reading my file?”
“Just the public briefing that was sent to me. I thought it was time that I did. You have a distinguished mission history.” She looked up and grinned, “I feel much safer now. Thank you.”
He snorted. “I doubt you frequently feel vulnerable.”
She shrugged. “It comes and goes. Do you have any recommendations for a nice, light vid? All of the romances are a little too heated for my tastes this evening.”
He took the data pad and pulled up a documentary on the Guardian project. “Here you go. This should be relatively entertaining.”
“Harry, can you play this documentary?”
“I can. Holographic generation commencing.”
“Thank you.”
Truanic looked at her curiously. “Why do you have the ship’s voice set as a baritone?”
She grinned. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
She settled in to watch the holographic projection as the lights dimmed. “I may be older than most of the Volunteers, but I am not disinterested in the opposite sex. Harry’s voice reminds me of that.”
She glanced at him and the surprise on his face was all the comment she needed. Honesty was the best policy, but you had to be careful what you asked for.
Chapter Five
“All rise for Judge Dex.” Ex-Hess announced her and the room fell quiet as everyone got to their feet.
Jayd moved carefully in the concealer, and the bizarre feeling of being unable to identify her own limbs was as distracting as it always was.
She took her position on her dais and the dark shape of her partner spoke again. She opened her mind to the jury, and when they were assembled, she signalled Ex-Hess to commence.
“This is file nine forty-eight in the case of Ekalina Keeys, charged with wilfully infecting the population of Yiksadu with a designer disease.”
The woman in question was sitting with her council, a smug smile on her features.
Judge Dex sighed, “Prosecution commence.”
A day of listening to the witness statements and the smug satisfaction of the defendant remained unshaken. Her council was very good at making it seem that the men had chosen to take an aphrodisiac to be with the defendant. Once she had slept with them, the infection had spread to their wives until each infection had two victims and not just one.
Every dying man who took the stand was humiliated and that was what the defendant had counted on. He had hidden his indiscretion from his wife until it was too late for her as well. Ms. Keeys was the wealthiest woman on Yiksadu, bored with life and she wanted to take as many victims down with her as she could. A hypnotic and aphrodisiac combo in the drinks she forced her employees to have with her, and they were prime targets.
As each victim took the stand, Ms. Keeys replayed the insertion of the drug into their glasses and the triumph she felt at that moment.
Inside her head, Judge Dex heard, We have enough. We have our decision.
That was surprising. Normally, the jury enjoyed drawing out the process, but all seven voices in the jury corridor of her mind were in agreement.
The prosecutor stood. “I would like to call my next witness, Judge Dex.”
She spoke. “Unnecessary. Defendant, stand for sentencing.”
The defense council went into shock. “Judge, this is highly unusual. We have not been able to present our case.”
“Your client has testified every time a witness has stood to speak. I have seen the events in her own memories and her eagerness to have a worldwide pandemic as her legacy shrieks in her mind.”
“Her mind, Your Honour? I do not understand.” The opposing council honestly was flabbergasted.
“I am of the capital circuit court. I carry a jury of seven within my mind and I examine the minds of those I have been sent to judge. Now, get your client to rise. I have little liking for the manipulation of the system your client has engaged in to date.”
Stunned, the woman got to her feet.
“Ekalina Keeys, you have been judged by the laws of the imperium, the laws of Yiksadu and the laws of the victims’ species. Are you prepared to hear the verdict?”
The woman reached into her blouse and Ex-Hess was there before she could complete her extraction. A neurotoxin in a vial had been her way out. His shadowed form removed it from her hand and she finally began to show fear.
“Are you prepared to hear the verdict?” Judge Dex repeated it.
The woman began to shake. She shook her head. “No.”
“That is unfortunate, but your desires have ceased to be a factor here.”
The victims smiled a little; their wives clutched their hands. Judge Dex took in the entire room and Harry recorded every expression.
“Ekalina Keeys, on the first count of infecting with the intent to spread a pathogen, guilty. On the second count of infecting with the intent to spread a pathogen, guilty.” Judge Dex continued until she went through the entire roster of charges.
“You have been found guilty on all charges. Your estate shall be divided equally among the families of your victims and your sentence is death.”
The shock in her mind was both terrifying and gratifying but that was not why Judge Dex was here. “The trial is over. The sentence will be carried out immediately. Executioner, to your duty.”
Judge Dex kept her mental corridor open for the jury to watch the sentence being carried out. Ex-Hess took the woman’s hands with his own shadowed ones and she began to shudder and shake as her body was simply turned off.
When the defendant collapsed, Judge Dex lifted her medical scanner from the case next to her and walked over to the dead body.
The executioner stood back and she ran the scans. She nodded, “The sentence has been carried out.”
From under her robes, she withdrew a dagger, and she thrust it into the jaw, piercing the brain on the off chance that they attempted to revive the woman.
“Given her state of contagion, her body should be burned to keep anyone from attempting to revive her or the pathogen.”
The prosecution nodded. “We will take charge of the body. She will be burned as you say.”
“Do it soon. The records of the death will be made public within two hours. The details of the reparation to the victims’ families will remain sealed. Only those here today will know of the order. They do not need to be hounded for the money that has come at the cost of their parents.”
Each of the victims had a family; it was part of what had made Ms. Keeys so happy to destroy them.
She resumed her seat and the rhythmic sound of the gavel tapped out. “Court is dismissed.”
The sobbing and relief of the families as well as the overlying sadness of the situation washed over her and she let it touch all of the jurors before she dismissed them. Having her mind to herself once again was the best part of the day.
The moment that the last person was gone, she gave the signal to Harry to close the ship.
“File the records with the imperium courts and get us off the ground. Requisition me another dagger.”
“Yes, Judge Dex. We will be on our way in thirty minutes.”
“Thanks, Harry.” She turned to the shadow of Ex-Hess. “Executioner, you are dismissed.”
“Thank you, Judge Dex.”
There was a world of relief in his tone. He headed back into the private section of the shuttle.
She did a final sweep of the closed courtroom and put a sterilizer on the blood left behind by the guilty party. No sense in courting a deadly pathogen.
“I will sterilize the courtroom after you are out of it, Judge Dex.”
“Thanks, Harry. This was a tricky one.” When she said tricky, she meant painful. Wading through the victims’ lives and their impending deaths was hard and Harry had a program that let him analyze her stress response.
With a deep sigh, she left the collapsed courtroom and returned to her home away from everything.
Even in the living area of the shuttle, she couldn’t take off the concealer until they were off world. If she was seen and associated with being the judge, her life would be more at risk than it already was.
A shadowy black blob was making a pot of tea. He sat heavily on the bench seat and she could feel his fatigue. “How often do you do that?”
“What?”
“Deal with that particular brand of monster?”
“Whenever they need me to. The people of Yiksadu have nothing in place to deal with this sort of thing. The jury found the defendant guilty on several parts. One was the intent to damage a person not involved in the initial interaction, another was the forcible ingestion of a substance they were unaware of. The actual act of contamination was not a chargeable offense, but the means of using the husbands as an incubator to kill the wives was a bio-warfare tactic. So, she was charged under the deliberate transport of a viral weapon on sixteen counts.”
“How did you manage that?”
“This sort of filing allowed me to present an altered set of charges to the jury. It is judge’s discretion.”
A shadow slid a cup of tea toward her.
She laughed and took the tea between her palms. “I am guessing that you haven’t travelled with a jury channel before.”
“Um, no, but the way you were speaking, there was no doubt that you had more than just yourself in your head.”
“Yup. I can contain a jury of seven.”
“How does that work?”
“I open a corridor in my mind and the jurors enter. When I have seven, no more can join. Those seven are all around the imperium and selected just as a regular jury would be. As judge, I have power of veto, but I rarely have to use it.”
She drank the tea and unkinked her shoulders. Having the seven jurors in her mind had not been the stressful part. Sorting their reactions to every bit of information had definitely been the roughest part of the day.
“How do you do it?”
She sipped at the cup and relaxed a little. “Do what?”
The engines hummed and they lifted off.
“Stare into the face of evil and weigh the evidence when you know they are guilty.”
“Guilt is not always the actual crime. Cruelty is far more of a concern to me. A good man may carry guilt with him for his actions, but a cruel man revels in them and shrugs the guilt away. We are here to find the difference between the two.”
“That is one helluva difference.”
She finished her tea and got up to refill it. She carried the pot over to the table and his cup appeared out of the shadows.
“We are leaving the atmosphere. Communications with the surface are off.”
Sighing in relief, Jayd turned off her concealer. The belt and harness were heavy with tech, but it was the shadow that caused the issues. Being robed in darkness also had a psychological effect on those testifying. It freaked them out.
Truanic resumed his normal appearance, but his fatigue was visible in his eyes. “I believe that I am going to rest. How long until our next assignment?”
“Four days of travel. It is one system over so no jumps.”
He finished his cup of tea in one long draught and got to his feet. He was gone seconds later.
Jayd recognised a good idea when she heard one. She put the tea paraphernalia into the cleanser and headed to her room. It was time for a crappy night’s sleep.
Chapter Six
Jayd closed her eyes and saw the weeping faces of the victims every time. Finally, she sat up, slipped on a robe and left her quarters.
The door to Truanic’s room was open and she peeked inside. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“Are you all right?”
He looked up at her, his red eyes tired. “I can’t sleep.”
She walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Neither can I. Can you think of an alternate activity?”
“I thought you said that you weren’t up for this kind of relationship.” His hands slid over her waist and undid the tie holding the fabric together.
She sighed when he slid his hand into the part of her clothing.
“This isn’t a relationship, this is sleep therapy.”
His tired face suddenly was overtaken with heated amusement as he pressed his hand to her back and pulled her into the vee made by his legs. “It’s a good starting point.”
He threaded a hand through her hair and pulled her head to kiss, kissing her ravenously.
Heat took over the fatigue and she pressed him back, crawling over him, rubbing her breasts and belly against his chest and the thin barrier of bunched sheet that separated them.
She ran her hands over his chest; the texture of his skin was heated velvet with a soft nap of fur that she only guessed at when she first saw him. His chest abraded her skin as she rocked back and forth urgently, her body’s pulse was strong and she was slick enough to take whatever he had to offer.
She heard her sighs and moans, and while her hands were roaming all over him, his were stroking every curve and was doing something with his nails on her back that was driving her wild.
He traced designs into her skin, and it caused her to shiver uncontrollably in his arms. She heard a soft laugh as her skin’s sensitivity went into overdrive.
Her tongue slid along his and she continued to rock against him. She tilted her hips to grind her clit against him. She felt desperate for release but doing it herself felt like cheating.
He reached between them and pulled the fabric away. His erection was hard, thick, and when she palmed it, it was silkier than the rest of him.
He groaned and put his fingers over hers, guiding her. She eased him into her wet heat and he gasped while she moaned as the first few inches slid in, and she tilted her hips to let her take the rest.
She sat up on him, her hands flat on his belly. With her knees to either side of his hips, she barely had enough height to rock on him, but what little motion she had was devoted to circling her hips against him.
He stroked her breasts, using the tips of his fingers to scratch her lightly across her breasts, down her ribs and belly and back up again. The shaking and shuddering grew in her body until her body quivered from the inside out and she was moaning until she lost her breath.
