[01] Elite: Wanted by Gavin Deas Read Free Book Online

… ah, En, I don’t know what to say. This guy, I should have had him two weeks ago and I missed him and now he’s all over the place and I know it’s—’
    ‘You could say you’re coming home, Ziv.’ Enaya cut her off. ‘You could say you’re sorry you didn’t come home when you promised, just like you didn’t the last three times. I need you here. I don’t know what to do. Aisha needs you.’
    Ziva scoffed. ‘Aisha doesn’t need
me
. She hates me.’
    ‘No, Ziv. She just knows that you won’t put up with her shit the way I do. She’s so … Oh, Ziv, you don’t know how it is with her. And that … that
man
. She’s talking about going away with him and I don’t know how to stop her. She’s sixteen, Ziv, that’s all. Sixteen! And he’s six years older and … You know what he’s like. I found this out only yesterday: he’s already been in prison!’
    ‘I know, En. I checked him, remember?’
    ‘And you didn’t tell me?’
    ‘He was gone, En. I didn’t think …’
    ‘I don’t know what to do, Ziv. I need you to help me with this. I can’t do it on my own.’
    ‘I …’ Ziva closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I can’t, En. Not yet. Not now. Look, as soon as I’ve got Newman, I’ll come. I promise. But I’ve got to get this guy. He’s a—’
    ‘I don’t care what he is.’
    ‘I got flagged, En.’
    ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘It means I’ve got to clear this one or I might not work again.’
    For a moment the video cleaned up and Enaya was looking right back at her in crystal clarity. Ziva stared, struck by how beautiful En could be. That was why they’d fallen for each other five years ago. Ziv was a skinny, scrawny fireball with a manic energy that was exactly the same now as it had been thirty years ago when she’d hit her teens, with all the strength and fortitude Enaya wished she had but didn’t. And the only thing that had ever made Ziva pause was staring at En, because no one could be that statuesque. Even now, En still had that magic. She was a genetic throwback, almost pure Persian. Most people assumed she’d had chromosome therapy or been cosmetically tailored pre-birth on some back-water black-market genetic chop-shop, the sort of places that hived out in the asteroid belts in systems like Pethes and powered down and prayed every time a Federation battlecruiser came past. But Enaya was natural. There might have been some in-breeding somewhere in her past but Ziva didn’t ask and didn’t care. She was what she was – however she got that way – gorgeous and beautiful and a wonderful lover.
    ‘Is that it? Is that all you’ve got to say?’ asked Enaya.
    Ziva jerked back from her memories. ‘Don’t you get it, En? I might not work again. I might have to sell the
Dragon Queen
.’ She wouldn’t, though. She wouldn’t ever do that.
    ‘Good,’ snapped Enaya. ‘That would be good. I’d like that. You don’t need to do this, Ziv. Not anymore. We could go to Alioth and Andbephi. I always wanted to see places like that. Places where the universe shows us its colossal beauty. We could surf the chromosphere of a Canum Venaticorum variable binary and skim hydrogen all the way from one star to the next. We could find our own Delta Scuti and bathe in its wax and wane. We could see the attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion or whatever it is. Together. I remember, Ziv, all these things you said you wanted. We could take Aisha with us. We could go to Earth …
    ‘He’s going to ruin her, Ziv. He’s going to get her into all sorts of terrible things.’
    Ziva bit her lip. Thank fuck for crappy k-cast bandwidths and shitty video. ‘I got to go,’ she whispered. She broke the link before En had a chance to see how her eyes glistened.
    She’d been thinking, after buzzing the battlecruiser, that she might leave the
Dragon Queen
in dock and spend an evening carousing some of Toad Hall’s bars, checking for names in person. It never