The Gilded Cage by Blaze Ward

purred loudly. “I’m in.”
    Wilhelmina reconsidered whether bringing Javier here had been a good idea, after all.
    Part Four
    The bed was cold.
    Not physically. Wilhelmina had thrown the covers down to keep from completely overheating as Javier slept. The man was a portable furnace.
    No, emotionally.
    The need for Navarre and Hadiiye to remain in character all the long way back to their own ship, having seen what they needed to see and made friends enough with Captain Tamaz.
    Navarre silent in thought and triumph. Hadiiye silent in worried fear.
    There was no love lost between Javier and Djamila. She knew that. She had hoped that his own decency would overcome his hatred, at least long enough to save Sykora from a fate worse than death.
    She was beginning to question that assumption.
    Javier barely snored as he slept beside her.
    There had been little physicality between them, save the one time. It was normally almost like sleeping in a bed with her brother, when they were still children.
    Tonight, it was like sleeping with a soon–to–be ex–husband, trapped in a bed and unable to go sleep on a non–existent couch.
    The ship was too small to get away from him.
    Had she really brought them all this distance, just so he could get his revenge on Sykora personally?
    The thought sent shivers down her spine, in spite of herself, or Djamila’s stories, or that look in Javier’s eyes.
    And that vial. Tamaz’s frumpy little assistant had pulled the glass tube, filled with a bright green liquid, from a nearby refrigerator, for Tamaz to show off to his new, drunken friends.
    Wilhelmina had studied the social sciences, the liberal arts. She had degrees in sociology, psychology, history, and accounting. She barely knew anything about medicine, beyond the basics of field first aid on primitive planets.
    The conversation between Tamaz and Navarre had quickly gone over her head. But that was to be expected from someone who once owned a steel coffee mug with THE SCIENCE OFFICER etched into the side. It had made good memento. Wilhelmina wondered if it would be a terrible reminder if they failed.
    Tamaz’s plan was simple.
    Empty the vial into Sykora with a needle.
    Ransom her off to Sokolov as a carrier.
    Wait twenty–four hours for a plague to vector its way through Storm Gauntlet ’s crew.
    Death. For everyone but Djamila.
    Tamaz and his friends had already deserved whatever punishment could be meted out. Now they deserved a first class trip to hell.
    Hadiiye looked forward to punching their tickets.
    Javier stirred.
    A hand snaked out under the sheets, caught hers before she could twitch it away.
    She was trapped.
    He opened his eyes.
    Javier, not Navarre.
    “Are you ready to talk?” he asked her simply.
    “Do you have anything to say that I’ll want to hear?” she replied with far more edge that she had expected when she opened her mouth.
    He stared at her for several seconds.
    “Djamila Sykora is almost everything I hate about deep space,” Javier began with a shrug. “Stick–up–her–butt rules–follower who is constantly belittling everyone around her for not measuring up to the impossible standards she sets.”
    Wilhelmina nodded, unwilling to trust her reply.
    “But she’s just an asshole,” Javier said. “Tamaz and his friends are evil .”
    Something changed in his face. In his hand as well, pressed up against her side and twined with her own.
    “Once upon a time,” he continued. “I was one of the good guys. It didn’t work out, for reasons we won’t go into here. But nobody deserves that.”
    What THAT was, she left dangling, just as he did. This was yet another side of an already complicated man, one she had certainly never met before.
    Wilhelmina wondered again if she had ever met the real Javier Aritza, or just the many roles he played to keep the world at bay. She could tell that there was someone underneath that façade but there were enough flashes to keep her guessing.
    She felt his hand