by JC Hay
Grenville
A TriSystems: Rangers Romance
By
JC Hay
Table of Contents
Title Page
Grenville (TriSystems: Rangers, #2)
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Are we orbiting each other, or falling?
Yancey Grenville thought he knew his place in the pack—the clown. A stress reliever for his battle family and for the women he’d spent time with along the way, but no one to be serious about. He thought it suited him, until a solo mission with the one person he hoped would see him as more leaves him scrambling for a way to be someone different.
Lt. Imee Lewis fought tooth and claw to earn her reputation as one of the best pilots in the TJF, and no one cheered her on, or up, like the ranger she’d pulled off the battlefield more than a year earlier. Not that she thought she could ever be serious about “good-time Grenville”—her own scars, and the divide of rank, were enough to keep the relationship strictly friends.
When a covert mission traps the two of them together in a half-derelict mining ship, proximity leads to more than familiarity. As the gravity between them gets stronger, the walls they built begin to crumble. Can the fantasy survive when they crash back into reality?
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by JC Hay
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Metal Pig Press
4301 NE 4th St., #3016
Renton, WA 98059-9998
www.metalpigpress.com
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. The characters, places, and incidents are either fictional or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead; their invisible, empathic wolves; actual events, implanted memories, or current events and organizations is coincidental.
Editing by Sasha Knight
Cover by The Killion Group, Inc.
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Roche Limit: The distance at which the gravity of one body overcomes another body’s self-attraction, causing the second body to disintegrate and form a ring.
One
Yancey Grenville let out a stream of curses, using half the languages he spoke. Triptych hadn’t just boxed in the rangers with their little trap, they’d slammed down the lid. High-grade jamming shut down any communications heading out of the area, which meant no rescue was forthcoming. An explosion sent rock cascading down onto their position. His wolf, Djehuti, slammed into the back of Grenville’s knee and knocked him to the ground as a piece of sharp obsidian the size of his head shattered against the cover where he’d been a heartbeat before.
He ruffled his fingers into the blurry field of the wolf’s coat, mentally reassuring his bondmate that he was okay and easing the wolf’s concern. “Thanks, Dje-dje.”
“Thank him later, Grenville. We need a way out of here.” Fireteam Bravo’s leader, Corporal May, shouldered their plasmacaster and squeezed off a quick burst. Somewhere beyond the rocks, someone grunted as the plasma bolt struck home.
“He’ll get us out of here.” Ren Inouye, second-in-command and Grenville’s fireteam partner, helped him up and leaned close enough to whisper. “You’d better get us out of here.”
“Ah yes, the hot date.” Grenville gave his friend a playful elbow to the ribs. “Never fear, lover boy. Have I ever disappointed you?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.” Inouye grinned.
“Bullshit, you could count the number of times I didn’t follow through—"
“On one hand. Yeah, we know.” Ren finished the joke before Grenville could bring his right hand up, the two missing fingers the source of one of his favorite punch lines.
Inouye and his wolf, Inari, crept to the edge of cover. “’Ri and I are going to buy Yancey some time.”
May didn’t look away from where their collective enemy was massing. “Take Nodens and Nujalik.”
Grenville thanked fate that they hadn’t asked Djehuti to go along as well. His wolf helped him focus, kept him calm enough that he could work, and having Djehuti out of eyesight made him nervous, empathic bond or no. Inouye and Inari disappeared, and the fireteam’s remaining wolves followed suit. As soon as they were gone, the fireteam leader turned to the last member of the team. “You able to give them some covering fire?”
Rakhi Chen glanced up from tying a bandage around the shrapnel wound in her arm. The dispersion mesh armor worked well against plas-fire but was useless against blades. Or razor-sharp shards of volcanic rock. She gave a lopsided salute and lifted her thump gun to her good shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do. Can’t hit shit cack-handed.”
May nodded and turned back to the no man’s land before talking. “Don’t need you to be accurate. Just keep their heads down.”
Chen’s thin lips grinned, and she leaned out of cover. The pauldron of her armor had “I love it LOUD” scrawled on it in white paint, technically in violation of protocol. Fortunately, the rangers cared more about effectiveness than rules, and few were more effective than she was.
Even cack-handed.
The thumper—actually the Acinonyx RGL-90—barked out its namesake noise. Two grenades lobbed in high arcs out toward where Triptych’s thugs had the squad pinned down. A moment later, paired explosions rocked the ground beneath Grenville’s feet.
An idea hit him. “May! Give me Chen’s rangefinder?”
“We already know where they are, Ranger.” They fired off another quick cluster of rounds, and the ignition chamber on their rifle glowed with overuse.
Grenville leaned over and unhooked the rangefinder from May’s pack, undeterred by his commander’s uncertainty. “Right. But the Hunting Cry doesn’t know where we are.” And if he could reach the ship, then they could send help. They’d probably even send...
If the commander was going to save them, he’d send the best pilot he had. Grenville felt his heart squeeze and tried to turn off that part of his brain. He couldn’t afford to worry about Imee flying into this hornet’s nest. She was the best, his Warzone Valkyrie. Triptych wouldn’t be able to touch her.
He tugged out his micro tools and removed the side panel protecting the sensitive inner workings.
“Don’t break my rangefinder, Grenville.” Chen’s icy warning came in between the soft thump of her weapon firing. “I use that thing, unlike you.”
He snorted. “Please. You’ve been able to sight-range as long as I’ve known you. You don’t like relying on tools any more than the Ghost does.” The rangers’ commanding officer was notorious for his aversion to overreliance on technology, an amusing quirk in the leader of one of the most advanced militaries in the Three Systems. Grenville shifted, and the microfine soldering tool rolled off his leg. Before he could form his lips around the profanity that came to mind, his wolf had already darted forward and caught the tool in his mouth.
Grenville collected the soldering iron from Djehuti’s mouth, thanking him with a quick rub on the cheek. “Nice catch, mate. What would I do without you?”
“Stop gabbing, Ranger.” May’s voice was curt, a tell as to how stressed they were. “This is my last magazine. If you’ve got a plan, execute.”
Once the cover was off the rangefinder, it only took him a matte
r of seconds to splice in the charge pack from his plas-rifle. The pack provided too much power for the focusing lenses on the ranging laser, and they’d probably melt under the abuse, but it was a risk he had to take. The Forces could bill him for ruining equipment. He’d have to be alive to pay, and that’s all that mattered. Another splice let him put a modulator on the beam emitter; he hoped his signal code hadn’t rusted too much from lack of use.
Spotting the Hunting Cry against the night sky was trickier than rigging up the ranging laser. The corvette that served as the rangers’ home was still in high orbit, more visible because of the reflected red light of the sun than any of its own illumination. The communications jamming that Triptych had deployed stopped broadcasts, but a line-of-sight laser should bypass whatever systems they’d put in place. Grenville buried his fingers in Djehuti’s coat and paused a moment to draw strength from his wolf. The animal’s faith in him was unwavering, an affirmation that his idea wasn’t as harebrained as Grenville thought.
“If this works,” Grenville muttered, “I’m buying drinks.”
“Shit, that never happens. Are you trying to curse us all?” Chen’s basso chuckle rolled off the rocks.
He’d have flipped her off if he could afford having a free hand. And if doing so with his right hand didn’t look ridiculous. Instead he smiled and lined up his shot. “Come on. There’s a first time for everything. You’d think my putting up money would make you want it to succeed more.”
Out beyond their cover, there was a string of yips and howls as the rest of the squad’s wolves made contact with the enemy. Fast, vicious, and nearly invisible, the umbra wolves earned their fearsome reputation, one that the rangers were more than happy to share. Djehuti whined in response to his squad-mates charging into action, and Grenville gave the wolf another comforting scritch along the ribs. “That’s our cue, mate.”
He activated the rangefinder, hoping like hell he’d accounted for atmospheric lensing when he targeted the Hunting Cry. His free hand slapped at the modulator, turning the single beam into a rapid sequence of long and short bursts. With luck, the Cry would catch the message and send help. Imee’d give him hell about needing her to bail him out again.
A yelp of pain sounded from the battlefield, and Chen fell forward with a grunt. Her voice was whisper thin, at odds with her usual rumble. “Fuck. Nujalik...”
Panic fueled Grenville’s desperation. He repeated the sequence until the focusing lens burned through with a hiss and a puff of acrid smoke.
May slumped behind the rocks, reached over, and squeezed Chen’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine. We just need to get back to the ship.” Their look of concern to Grenville gave the lie to their easy confidence. “Did it work?”
Grenville offered a shrug. No point in lying to them. “We’ll have to wait and see.” He patted his pockets, pulled out his last magazine, and tossed it to May. “That’s my last clip.”
May leaned their head against the rocks and took a deep breath. “Let’s hope they don’t make us wait too long.”
LT. IMEE LEWIS HIT the release as soon as the light went green, indicating clear for launch. The dropship rocketed out of the Hunting Cry’s aft bay toward the moon below. Her copilot, Lt. Ole Matir, was already plotting in a course toward the commander’s best guess of the rangers’ location. Whatever stunt Triptych pulled to knock out communications left the Cry blind as well as deaf, but somehow the soldiers had managed to get a message out, calling for a pickup.
It seemed like with every fight, the crime syndicate showed up better informed and, more distressingly, better armed. It was only a matter of time before the thugs had the upper hand. And now they’d caught Bravo. Grenville’s fireteam. She thought about him, pinned down and under fire, and had to shove away the concern knotting her gut so she could focus on flying.
"You okay over there?" Matir didn't turn to look at her, didn't take his attention off the computer into which he was inputting coordinates. "You seem a little edgy."
"I hate flying blind, Ole, that's all." It wasn't an untruth. Then again, it wasn't exactly the whole truth either. They’d been paired together for the last year, had flown enough sorties that he knew there was something wrong. She briefly wondered if she could have him transferred, get someone in the seat opposite who didn’t know her as well. Or at least someone she could trust not to comment on her emotional state. But even putting in the request could put focus on her, and she’d worked too hard to have some O-5 tell her she wasn’t qualified because of her gender.
She took a deep breath and jammed the stick forward before her partner could follow up with another question. Acceleration slammed them into their seats as she fired the thrusters on full. To her right, Matir grunted against the strain. Good. Nothing helped restore the quiet of the cockpit like one of the crew getting G-LOC’d.
Imee checked the instruments and corrected course slightly so that the ship wouldn't shatter on impact with the edge of the moon's atmosphere. This was just a regular run, nothing out of the ordinary. She picked up ground pounders all the time. This run wasn’t any different. She forced herself to ignore the flutter in her pulse.
The message said there were wounded, and the idea that Grenville could be hurt down there, that his wolf could be in trouble, made her palms sweat inside her gloves. In her better moments, she could tell herself that she worried about all the rangers, that her concern was what made her good at her job.
This wasn’t one of those moments.
Which was why nothing was going to happen to him. Or anyone else in the fireteam. That’s why Commander Penzak was sending his best pilot to pick up his wayward children. She was the Rangers’ lucky charm: no one died while she was on the stick.
The dropship shook violently as it inserted into the atmosphere above Burbidge. Her teeth slammed together with enough force to make her jaw ache. The angle was still too steep, but there were only so many options if they wanted the job done fast. Safety couldn’t always be the first priority. She switched her HUD over to atmospheric systems, and the display in her helmet started feeding her an array of information about the surface temperature of the dropship as well as what other birds might be in the sky.
From his seat, Matir gave an annoyed grunt. "I'm looking at sat imagery of the area, and I'm not seeing much in the way of landing."
"Don't need to land. Just need to hover close enough for them to get on board.” She gritted her teeth and pulled a hard curve to bleed off some of the ship’s speed. The ship shook hard, structure groaning, while heat warnings lit up in her HUD. “What are we looking at for defense?"
“You keep flying like that, they won’t have to shoot us down.”
“We don’t know how long those rangers have been trapped. We need to get down there. If you’re not going to help, shut up.”
“’Cause you’d risk it like this for any ranger, right?” Matir muttered.
“What was that?”
“Not seeing anything out of the ordinary." His fingers clicked over the mechanical switches in a rapid staccato. "Safe to guess it'll be small arms. But if our luck’s running, we can expect a SAM or two."
"Charming." Nothing she couldn't handle. Surface-to-air missiles were fast, but the ship should get a paint warning first as the missile tried to lock on. That would give her the few heartbeats she needed to get countermeasures into place.
Another sharp turn slowed the dropship down to a safe flight speed, and set her on a direct line toward the rangers’ location. It may have been aggressive, but her insertion had shaved a few vital minutes off their projected arrival time.
She had to hope it was enough.
A final drop of altitude brought them in nap-of-the-earth, just skimming the elevation. It put the dropship in range of ground fire, but it kept them off any big radar Triptych might be using. The trade off made sense—no point drawing attention if they didn’t need to.
Two heartbeats after coming into the lowland valley that was their destination, the
paint warning sounded. In her HUD, a tight diamond highlighted a source to their right a heartbeat before a Pilum-class SAM launched toward them.
In perfect synchronization, Imee and Matir spun the ship on its wingtip and discharged a cloud of reflective chaff. Out of the corner of her eye the missile, disoriented by the countermeasures, arced past the dropship and back toward the floor of the valley.
As soon as they were past, she fired the afterburners again. If Triptych brought one missile, they likely had two, and being out of the area was safer.
Matir tracked the missile until it detonated well behind them and nodded. “Nice flying.”
She shrugged. It was a team effort, as well he knew. “There’s a reason they don’t call them ‘hit-iles’.” It was a common joke among the other pilots; despite holovids to the contrary, the weapons could be easy to shake unless they were drone-piloted. Had Triptych brought something more advanced than a Pilum it would have been a different story.
“There.” Her copilot pointed out the front viewscreen, where the telltale blue flashes of plas-fire scattered in and among the rocks.
Whatever jamming Triptych had in place must have been set farther out, as her HUD immediately identified the armor trackers for all eight members of Fireteam Bravo. Four rangers, four wolves, all up and moving. Her luck was running.
Down below, the rangers had spotted the dropship and were charging in their direction. Several dozen Triptych raiders were in hot pursuit. She spun the bird into their path and fired the positioning jets that left her hovering just above the ground, then slapped the control to lower the ramp. “Count them in! I’ll cover.”
Matir jumped out of his seat and dropped down the ladder from the cockpit to make sure everyone got on board. That left it for her to grant safe passage.
She flipped open the cover for the dropship’s weapon systems, and the “death dot” immediately appeared in Imee’s HUD. As soon as she had the reticule past the rangers, she opened up with both plasma lances.