by JC Hay
And certainly not the heavily camouflaged listening post he’d finished installing to eavesdrop on their secure channels.
He ran a gloved hand over the back of his neck, rubbing against his vac-suit but not able to scratch the itch of anxiety that welled there. He should have Djehuti by his side; he was used to the wolf moving with him in combat. Unfortunately, he’d decided it would be easier to leave him in the cockpit with a secure atmosphere. And Imee.
Regret soured in his mouth. The fight shouldn’t have happened over a comm channel. It wouldn’t have been different in person, but at least he could have tried to explain it better. Could have read body language better. He looked toward the cockpit, but the tiny windows gave no indication of anyone being inside.
The ground beneath him vibrated with what he hoped was the rapidly retreating anchors holding the ore hauler fast to the surface. Grenville reached down and turned off the safety on his plasmacaster, thankful he’d loaded it onto the runabout before leaving the ship.
“Attention unregistered vessel, stand down and prepare to be boarded.” The message broadcast across all channels, the voice sharp with a harsh sunward accent. “Comply or be destroyed.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Imee responded. She sounded relaxed, rather than flustered and facing down a superior foe. “Didn’t know this was anyone’s hunting ground let alone you Tri-skull boys. Thought I could do a scrape for H-3 and deuterated benzene.”
His chest hurt to hear her, to know she was trying to take care of this without blowing their cover. Triptych might not buy it—they were suspiciously close to the communications post after all—but the close horizon gave a convenient excuse for arguing that she hadn’t seen it.
If Triptych didn’t buy the story, they’d have to open their ship and cross the open ground to board the ore hauler. That would give him all the opportunity he needed.
“Mining rights for Castulus have already been assigned. I say again, shut your power unit down.”
“Filed where?” Imee had the perfect mix of annoyance and disbelief in her voice. He wondered how much of it she’d learned dealing with him. “I did a review before I came out here, and there was nothing. I can’t afford to waste my fuel mining someone else’s claim.”
The lances on the Triptych ship snapped open, blue light glowing in their core as the ignition chambers heated up, and Grenville’s chest caught in a vise. A shot to the cockpit would kill Djehuti. Would kill Imee. He’d be left with nothing.
“Okay, okay. I’m closing down. Ramp’s open.”
The Triptych vessel didn’t close down their lances, and Grenville wondered if they’d decided that shooting would be easier. It wasn’t like the criminal organization was above murder. He switched over to a scrambled comm channel and hoped Imee was listening. “Listen to me very carefully. I need you to prep to have the engines back up as soon as possible.”
“No kidding.” Unguarded, he could hear the stress in her voice. “Get back to the ship. The anchors are up. Once they open up their ship, I can have us up and behind the horizon before they can respond.”
“Their weapons are still powered up. You’ll never make it. Get Djehuti into his vac-suit and send him out.”
“There are better solutions that aren’t guns blazing. I’m telling you they want us to run,” she growled. “I’ve dealt with bullies my whole life.”
“By running? That only makes them bolder.” Unbelievable. There weren’t any worse ways to push the situation.
“And fighting just calls attention to what happened here. The wolf’s staying with me.”
Grenville reached out across the wolfbond; Djehuti couldn’t get into a vac-suit without assistance, but at least the wolf could get to a part of the ship where he could hide. Ambush anyone who made it aboard. The anger and frustration that filled his senses almost made Grenville recoil. He’d expected the wolf to resent being kept out of the action, but this...
No. The wolf wasn’t mad at Imee. Grenville sensed it a heartbeat later. His wolf was mad at him. Had sided against him.
A ramp opened on the Triptych vessel, the square of light glowing over several slow seconds. Grenville could see three people in vac-suits standing at the top, and wished Chen were here with him. She memorized ship stats for fun, would have recognized the vessel as soon as she saw it, and could have rattled off the standard crew complement easy as breathing. Instead he had to rely on his own guesswork. One in the cockpit. Maybe two. Three on the ramp. The ship looked small enough that five people would be crowded.
“Don’t do anything, Grenville. Get back here.” Her voice was a plea. But if they tried to flee, he knew the ship would open fire. He could play out the damage, the out-vent that carried her and Djehuti’s bodies into the vacuum around Castulus.
Unless he stopped it.
The trio hopped down the ramp in the shepherd moon’s half-grav, taking the characteristic bounding steps across the surface that made them easy to track.
His first shot hit the farthest one at the top of their parabola, the sudden puff of spark and vapor from their helmet a precursor to the body ragdolling back to the surface. His second shot dropped the near target before the first landed, while Grenville jumped on the runabout and hammered open the throttle.
And then all hell broke loose.
All the landing vents on the ore hauler opened at once, a wave of compressed air that launched the ship up and back. The shock wave of dust and rock it unleashed washed past him, knocking the runabout—and his rifle—to one side, before flipping the small vehicle and forcing him to jump free. The plasma lances on the Triptych vessel opened fire, twin blue-white lightning rocketing through the dust cloud that preceded the silent flare of them striking home.
Rage and grief carried him into the remaining Triptych soldier on the ground. Grenville tugged a wicked-looking blade free of the soldier’s belt and dove to one side. His opponent wasn’t prepared for vac-suit fighting, looked to defend the normal vulnerable areas. Human reflex.
In vacuum, everywhere was vulnerable. Grenville rolled low, catching the Triptych soldier by the foot as he tried to jump. The knife sliced up the leg of the vac-suit from ankle to mid-thigh. As the soldier panicked, Grenville finished the grim task.
Up ahead, the Triptych ship was raising its ramp. Grenville righted the runabout and charged across the short distance to try to get to the ramp, but they were in the process of lifting off before he’d started. He leapt, fingers outstretched, but even in half-gravity, it was already out of his reach. He dropped back to the ground in slow motion, watching helplessly as the main engine on the ship ignited and carried it away from the moon.
Ten
The ore hauler was surprisingly well built, for all that Imee had trash-talked it. Assuming they all survived, she’d really have to come up with a name for it. “The ore hauler” was tedious, even just thinking about it.
That said, the lance strike had left them badly damaged. Right main engine off-line. Cargo ramp damaged. Main power wouldn’t restart. And the damage to the ramp meant the whole vessel was exposed to vacuum except for the cockpit. At least they’d built a second airlock into the cockpit hatch for redundancy purposes.
A heavy, furred head pressed into her lap, and Imee stroked Djehuti’s ears absently as she brought the ship around for another pass. The Triptych vessel had hightailed it as soon as it could. The threat that it could be back with reinforcements had her pulse hammering in her throat.
“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “He’s down there. He’s too dumb to die.”
Concern thrummed into her blood, as well as the warmth of the wolf’s trust. She knew Grenville was still alive because Djehuti knew he was still alive. But that didn’t mean he might stay that way for long. There was no telling what had happened to him as the other ship took off.
Her first pass over the area revealed the overturned runabout, but nothing else. She gripped the controls so hard her knuckles ached. She could hear her tendons creak as she br
ought the ship around for a second pass.
She spotted him in the lee of a rock, and he waved a hand to make sure she saw him. Relief flooded through her, putting her frustration on momentary hold. She could be happy to know he survived, and still be angry with him. The ship responded as well as it could while she hovered it, and he signaled from the bay when he climbed aboard.
Getting into the pressurized bridge would take him a while, giving her time to collect her thoughts. It also allowed her to radio the constellation, alerting the Hunting Cry that she and Grenville were damaged. Hopefully they could send a ship to meet them, otherwise it would be a long, slow crawl back home.
The interior door of the airlock opened, and Grenville stepped in, vac helmet in one hand. For a heartbeat, she hated how her pulse eased just knowing he was safe. She let that fuel her anger. “I told you not to do anything stupid, and what did you do?”
“My job. I solved the problem.” His eyes narrowed. “What the hell did you think I would do?”
She threw up her hands in frustration. “Unbelievable. Just because you’ve got a hammer doesn’t mean every problem’s a nail.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that violence isn’t the only way to solve a problem!” Her voice was too loud in the tiny space.
“And just because you’ve run from every difficult thing in your life doesn’t mean that it’s the only solution either.”
The words hit so hard Imee was surprised she didn’t physically recoil. For a second she clenched and unclenched her jaw, not sure what else to say. She settled on the easiest choice. “Fuck you.” After a moment she added, “Then again, who hasn’t.”
From the look on Grenville’s face, he realized he’d crossed a line. “Imee, I—” He reached toward her when the damaged ship course-adjusted, and the thrust change threw him off balance. His hand came forward, and Djehuti leapt from the chair and knocked him back. The wolf’s blur took a protective position between her and Grenville, and he stared back at his bondmate. “Fine. But you’re stuck with me, so you’d better learn to get over it.”
After a moment, he turned to look at her. “And as for you, wake me when we reach the constellation.”
She wanted to tell him it would be at least a week, but he’d zipped himself into one of the emergency beds hooked to the wall of the bridge and sealed it up to close her out.
Eleven
Imee felt Grenville in the mess before she saw him. Even after two weeks back aboard the Hunting Cry, things hadn’t returned to normal between them. The same electric spark, like too much ozone, charged the air whenever they were in the same room, but now it was a repulsor, two aligned fields unable to be in each other’s presence. She walked through the line, grabbing breakfast from the fabricators and pretending not to notice him.
When he stepped into line behind her, she didn’t have to turn to know he was there. Her entire skin pulled toward him, iron filings in a magnetic field. She cursed the slow print from the fabbers and grabbed a premade drink off the counter. Anything else would mean waiting next to him. Anything else would risk doing something she’d regret.
Something else she’d regret.
She steeled herself and turned, unsurprised to see him watching her. He had become the unusually quiet eye in a storm of chattering rangers and looked as confused and uncertain as she felt. Normally her schadenfreude would kick in and she’d be relieved not to suffer alone. Instead, seeing the pain written on his face only made hers hurt more. Before temptation could make a fool of her, she took her tray to the far side of the mess and eased into a chair opposite her roommate.
Akomi watched her through narrowed eyes hidden behind the fringe of her hair. Each bite the woman took of her breakfast was slow, measured, and silent, her scrutiny unwavering.
Imee tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the plate in front of her, but the weight of Akomi’s judgment felt like being caught in a gravity well, and finally she snapped. “What?”
“Nothing. You just don’t usually drink OJ.” The curve of Akomi’s smirk could have been simple curiosity, but Imee knew her roommate too well.
“I’m building up my vitamin C levels. I had a long trip.” Her cheeks burned as she remembered drinking fresh orange juice on the ore hauler with Grenville. And other decadent memories from their time together. She should have paid more attention when grabbing the pre-print.
Now she’d have to choke down the too-sweet fabricated juice, while the memory of fresh OJ was still on her taste buds, just to back up her story.
“Mm-hmm. Got to watch out for that scurvy. It’s a killer.”
“Screw you, Nikao.” She tried to grin around the flush of nervousness that ate into her gut. Reflexively, her eyes sought out Grenville on the far side of the room, sitting with his fireteam. He turned to look back, and she stared quickly at her plate.
“Mm. I’d be flattered by the offer, but it seems like you’re more interested in someone else.” Akomi snapped her eyes toward her shoulder, indicating without turning. “I mean, I can’t blame you. Tall and gangly always did flip your switches.”
“Not the place, Akomi. Seriously.” Her back ached from the tension that surged through her. “And even if it was, there’s a simple choice available. Like you always say, chase what makes me happy. Nothing makes me happier than flying.”
“And yet, you’ve been in a foul mood since you got back. You’ve still had patrols, still had time in the cockpit, so that can’t be why you’re unhappy.” Akomi smirked again. “Can’t blame me for thinking you’re upset about not getting some sweet D anymore.”
Imee’s laugh came out as a startled bark. “Trust you to be a romantic about it.” When her roommate didn’t respond, Imee looked up to see the genuine surprise on Akomi’s face.
“Shit. You actually fell for him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” The denial came out quick, too sharp. She pushed down the concern, tried to pass off her frustrated hope as humor when she lightened her tone. “He’s not relationship material.”
“Good-time Grenville—”
“Don’t call him that.” She stepped to his defense automatically, knowing he’d have just shrugged it off. “It’s shaming, and it’s bullshit. You’re better than that.”
Akomi spread her hands defensively. “I rest my case. And you’re right, all I really wanted to say was you could make worse choices.”
Something nudged her hand before licking the backs of her fingers. Without thinking about it, Imee carded her fingers into the wolf’s pelt. The familiar sparks of comfort and satisfaction danced along her awareness. Nothing like the hit she knew rangers shared with their bondmates but intoxicating and addictive all the same. She smiled down at the wolf. Where he wasn’t in the shadow of the table, the polarized light of the mess made Djehuti’s fur as black as his eyes. “You should go back to your squad.” Before your partner comes over here.
“Holy sh—” Her roommate started and looked under the table. “Are you petting his wolf?”
“No. Not really. He only came to say hello.” Grenville had already stood up, was headed directly toward them, as though he knew where his wolf would be. But then of course he would. They were connected. A pang of jealousy flared in her chest and died just as quickly. At least someone could look after Grenville, even if it wasn’t her. She patted the wolf on the haunch. “Go on.”
Grenville leaned down and wrapped his fingers around Djehuti’s collar. “Sorry. He’s got a mind of his own.”
Akomi chortled. “Usually when a man says that he’s talking about his—”
“Wolf,” Imee said loudly, cutting her roommate off. “Or sometimes a cat. I get it. It was nice to see him again. Or actually see him, this time. Whatever.”
Akomi rolled her eyes and smiled at her before turning to Grenville. “You know, I was just leaving, if you wanted to have a seat.”
“Unfortunately, I have to go too.” Imee looked down at the food on her tray,
which was barely touched. “Early patrol.” She stood with Akomi and moved out from behind the table.
Grenville nodded. “Yeah, got to get back to my squad. Anyway, thanks for looking after Djehuti for me.”
“Anytime.” Not sure what else to follow it with, she stepped around him and headed for the reclamation bins. At the end of the day, they’d each made their choices. She’d chosen to keep flying, and he’d chosen to stay a ranger.
Now, she had to live with that choice.
Twelve
Air burned in Grenville’s chest as he planted one foot and rotated out of Marcel’s reach. Up court on the right, Chen had slipped past a defender from Fireteam Gamma and was already leaping toward the goal with her hands open for the pass. He shoved a quick two-hander in her direction as Sgt. Marcel moved to counter his spin. Her elbow cracked into his forearm, sending the pass wide.
Another member of Alpha, Nik Gasto, snagged the errant ball out of the air and arced it toward Bravo’s goal. With most of Bravo and Gamma in a tête-à-tête in the third end, no one was left to intercept the shot. Grenville launched himself too late, knowing he wouldn’t catch it, but feeling he had to try. The ball tapped the rim on its way in, giving him a moment of hope before it rattled into the scoring chamber with the characteristic thrum for which BoomBall was named. A heartbeat later the buzzer sounded.
He glanced at the scoreboard. Ten points for Alpha, and eight each for Gamma and his fireteam. That was the problem with Boom—with three teams on the court, alliances were made and broken in seconds, and the game could turn on a single missed shot.
As the teams headed toward the locker room, Marcel, sergeant over the four fireteams that made up First squad, came to his side, the grin on her face not quite an apology. “Sorry about your wrist, Grenville. Still, all’s fair...” She slapped a bag of water into his uninjured hand.