by Alison Aimes
“But I have not finished,” she added. “I am confident you can trust Ryker and me, but keep a watchful eye on the others while we are hunting Tyson. Because, and this is the most critical part of the secret, I am likely not the only one the Council sent to carry out this mission. And whoever they sent is somewhere nearby, determined to do what I no longer will. Especially since, if he does not, the nano-bomb inside him, the same as the one in me, will detonate and he will die.”
“What?” shrieked the kid.
“What!” came a familiar husky roar from behind.
17
“You didn’t want to tell me before?” Ax raised high, Ryker slipped around the next cluster of rocks and tried to rein in the storm of emotions seething inside. With very little luck. “I get it about the crude bombs you hid in the cave. That’s your personal extraction plan. But withholding the rest? That’s something else altogether.”
She’d been sent to the planet to not simply steal the weapon, but wipe out all the inhabitants. Him. His team. Rafi and the others.
Nor was that all. He’d also learned there was another operative intent on the same game plan.
And, for icing on the screwed-up cake, it turned out she had a fucking nano-bomb implanted inside her that would detonate if she failed to complete her mission.
Unbelievable. He really hated the Council.
But he hated the thought of her dying even more.
“It hadn’t yet come up.” Right behind him, wrapped in even more layers of cloth and emergency blanket than he, Jade followed, her knife out and ready.
With a growl, he scoured the ground for some sign of the man they hunted. The storm had wiped away most of Tyson’s tracks by the time they got going and Ryker wasn’t near the tracker his crewmate Grif was, but he’d been able to find a few deep depressions in the sand where their quarry had obviously stumbled and fallen, all pointing back toward the settlement.
Which was why they were headed in that direction.
But the storm had only picked up since they’d ventured out last. The winds so strong they were tossing around giant boulders and pieces of the nearby settlement like specks of dust. The only silver lining: with the storm at its peak, the worst of Dragath25’s animals appeared to have bedded down and taken cover. Proving once more how much smarter they were at survival than man.
“How much time is left on your countdown?” He had to yell to be heard over the howling wind.
“Eight lunar rotations, minus travel time.”
His hold on his weapon tightened. That was it? Dragath hell. Something close to panic skittered beneath his skin.
“It’s insane to be out in this.” His gaze tracked the arc of some kind of metal sheet as it sailed overhead. His drawstring pants and extra coverings would protect him from small debris, but it wouldn’t keep him from being flattened.
“At least it’s unlikely anyone else is out here, too.”
Her optimism only pissed him off more.
He crouched, pausing to assess a clump of tracks near a protected ledge. “He’s still headed toward the settlement.” The strides were closer together, indicating their target was tiring.
“Look out.” She seized his shoulder and yanked him back.
A burnt-out hull slammed into the ground a few lengths away. Metal splintered.
“Shit. We need to take shelter and wait for the winds to settle.”
She shook her head in disagreement, two green orbs peering out from behind the cloth that swaddled her face. “We can’t allow Tyson to make it to 223.”
“Look at it out here. He’d have to be invincible to achieve that. No one can be out in this storm right now. It’s too dangerous.”
She surveyed the flying debris. “You think he’s taken cover somewhere, too?”
“Yes.”
This time she eyed him. “Enough to stake your life on it? And that of your team?”
He paused. “I don’t own a crystal ball, but I do know if we end up crushed by a flying boulder there will be no one to save Rafi and the others from what’s coming.”
Her fingers clenched tight around the shaft of her knife. “Fine.” She cocked her head toward the settlement. “But only until the first sign of a break comes. Then, we go hunting.”
“Couldn’t come soon enough.” It wasn’t as if he was exactly pleased to be hiding out with her in close quarters. Not after what he’d learned. Truth be told, he felt almost as much of a fool as when she’d chained him to the cell wall.
Actually, screw that, he definitely felt like more of one. She’d fucked him. Bantered with him. Sparked to life something inside his chest he hadn’t felt in a long while. And all that time, she knew she had an impending expiration date.
This was exactly why caring was never a good idea.
Dodging flying debris and the battering wind, they stumbled into the more protected alleys of 223’s settlement.
After the roar of the wind, the sudden silence was disorienting.
He had little time to get used to it.
“You are upset.” She moved to where he stood. A hulk of twisted metal that passed for a door just off to their side.
He glowered at her. “Yup.”
“I did not deceive you. I merely omitted certain pieces of information.”
“Bullshit. Your partnership skills suck.” A faint bang echoed in the air. Not too close—this time—but somewhere nearby a boulder about the size of a small shuttle had just crashed back to the planet’s surface.
Grabbing her elbow, he flattened them both against the alley wall.
“Partnership?” Her single word was laced with doubt.
“Yes,” he reiterated. “Partnership. It may be only temporary, but that is what you agreed to when you told Rafi you’d be back. When you agreed to help me get these people settled.” He paused. “When you fucked me and let me come inside you.”
A long pause. “I was not aware such actions carried such a commitment.”
“They’re implicit,” he lied, a muscle ticing in his jaw. Then, he turned and, without warning, slammed a boot into the burnt-out slab of metal that had once been a door.
A part of him had really hoped Tyson would be standing inside or, even better, Grif, smiling his Boy Scout smile.
“Empty,” came a voice from right behind. Then, the soft rustle of a knife being sheathed.
He grunted in response. Stepping farther into the room, he unwrapped the rags from around his face and gave himself some additional cooling off space. Like so many of 223’s huts, the place was a barebones, primitive shit hole. A single rickety table in one corner. A dirty pallet on the floor. A few pieces of twisted metal and personal items strewn around the room, likely scavenged or stolen from some other poor bastard.
“I did not tell you about the second part of my mission because I had already determined I would not be carrying it out.” Her words were clipped, as if she did not like having to explain herself. “Nor will I be returning the device to the Council. My new plan is to acquire the weapon, remove myself to an isolated location, and let it detonate when my own device discharges.”
The ease with which she spoke of her own death stoked his rage higher.
He didn’t want her fucking sacrifice.
“I see.” It was hard keeping his voice level. Sure, it was a relief to realize he didn’t have to worry about her returning the weapon to the Council.
But the rest of her impersonally imparted words? They sucked.
He wasn’t up for watching someone else he’d held in his arms die. Not again.
Still, he was determined to act as nonchalant as she. “And your plan for dealing with the second assassin?” He crouched by the entrance. Prints. Someone—or something—had been here recently. But these didn’t look human. The hair at the back of his neck prickled. Was something else taking shelter from the storm just like them?
“Handle him.” Succinct, certain. Her absolute confidence would have been hot, if it wasn’t so risky.
Like the rest of her terrible, horrible, self-sacrificing bullshit plan.
So much for cool and composed.
He shot to standing, turning toward her to unleash the full extent of his fury, and got sidetracked. “What in the hell happened to your thigh?”
She looked down. Shrugged. “I’m fine.” Unwrapping the rags from around her face, she used one to wipe away the track of blood while he wondered if he’d ever get used to how beautiful she was. “Some sharp debris that made it beneath the coverings,” she added. “No big deal.”
“It is a big fucking deal,” he snarled. “What happens to you is a big—” He cut himself off. Took a deep breath. He really should never have fucked her again. It was seriously messing with his mind.
Cool eyes stared back at him. “I’ve done a million missions while sick or injured. It will not impair my abilities.”
The woman really had no clue. “That wasn’t my concern.”
She paused, cocked her head as if considering, and then tried again. “I didn’t tell you about the operative because I don’t have much to offer. I don’t know who they are or the parameters of their mission. I don’t even know if they’re actually here. I only suspect because that is exactly the kind of thing I would do if I were Council. But if I am correct, I will take care of the problem. I did not see the point of adding to your burden.”
“Uh-huh.”
Her lips flatlined. “I didn’t mention the nanotechnology inside me because I intend to be well away from you and the others when it detonates.”
“Un-fucking-believable.”
“Your reaction is out of proportion to the issue.”
His control slipped another notch. “Do not go all robot girl on me now.”
“I do not like that nickname and you know it.”
“Know what I don’t like?” he roared. “I don’t like this tightness in my chest when I think of you dying. I don’t like the fact that it pisses me off that you told that kid Rafi something that you should have told me.”
The surprise in her gaze—and the clear fact that such a reaction hadn’t even crossed her mind—only drove home for him exactly where the blame for his idiocy lay. His own stupid self.
“God damn it,” he raged. “I’m not supposed to be responsible for anyone else. Care about anyone else. Especially not someone determined to let herself be smeared all over Dragath25’s cave walls.”
She reared back as if struck. “No one asked you to be concerned for me. I’m not some fragile creature who needs tending. I am at peace with my plan and ready to die for a just cause.” She moved to push past, heading toward the door. “I cannot understand why you would care what will happen to me after all we have recently learned anyway. I worked for an organization that tortured and tormented innocents. Remember your own words? The only good Council lackey is a dead one.”
“Wait.” He caught her arm. “I…I don’t think that anymore.”
She stilled in the doorway. Without breaking a single one of his fingers.
Her wary gaze found his. “What do you want from me?”
Nothing. Everything.
He drew in a shuddered breath. “Stay.”
Knowing eyes found his. “If I stay, we’ll have sex again.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, and then couldn’t. She was right. That’s where his combativeness was leading. The excuse to touch her. Without having to admit a damn thing.
He already knew he was one fucked up bastard since his wife and son died, but Jade was bringing out a whole new side of him. Making him desperate to hide every emotion that wasn’t anger behind a wall of aggression.
“Dragath hell. You’re right.” He dropped his hold, moving to step back and let her go, for both their sakes—when he heard it.
The click of nails. A puff of breath.
Arm encircling her waist, he yanked her to his side. “Something’s out there.”
Tucked into the wall beside the doorway, her warm body pressed tight to his side, they waited. Neither moved.
The shuffling sound came again. Louder now.
Neither so much as breathed.
A musky, rank odor choked the air. The scrape of nails out in the corridor grew louder. The ground vibrated.
Against him, Jade tensed.
Something big sauntered by the open door. Paused.
Ryker’s heart slammed against his ribs, his hand creeping toward the handle of his ax.
18
A low purr vibrated through the room.
Ryker stifled a curse. He knew that sound. Not good at all.
He clutched the handle of his ax.
The scuffle of nails started up again.
It took him a moment to believe it. The creature was once more on the move.
Relief swept through him, making him almost giddy. Finally, something was going his way.
From his limited vantage point, he caught the literal tail end of the tigos, its striped hide, flickering tail and massive, muscular flank unmistakable as it prowled down the alley. The human arm peeking out from its snout equally hard to miss.
With its meal already well in hand, it hadn’t needed to investigate their scent.
He shut down a grateful shudder.
“What was that?” Jade’s voice was a whisper.
“Tigos.” He kept his response equally low. “They’re not as big as the sabanthers down below, but they’re equally as vicious. Best to avoid them whenever possible.”
“Noted.” Her tone was tinged with wariness, but the local fauna of Dragath25 could do that to a person. She might be well briefed about this place, but living through it was another experience altogether.
Or her tone could be the result of the fact that he was still holding her tight. Even though the beast’s lumbering footsteps had long since faded to silence.
He forced himself to release her and, for good measure, morphed into Captain Obvious. “It’s gone.”
“Yes.” Her gaze shifted once more to the doorway.
She still intended to leave.
But the creature’s surprise appearance had given his blood time to cool—and remind him of what really mattered.
“Stay.” He spoke fast. “Stay and we’ll talk.”
“Talk?” She eyed him warily.
“Yes.” He fought the edge that crept into his voice. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know how to be part of a team. Or that every time she took two steps back from him all he wanted to do was pull her closer. “And not because that damn creature is out there, but because that’s what partners, even temporary ones, do. They share critical intel.”
More silence.
He took the opportunity to grab what had once been the door and prop it back up. It wouldn’t stop a tigos, but it would give them a little warning. And with those beasts, every heartbeat counted.
Mission complete, he turned toward her once more. She hadn’t moved from her position by the wall.
“Is there any way to disable the nano-bomb inside you?”
No change in her expression. “It can only be deactivated by pressing a particular sequence of pressurized points beneath my dagger skin design. I do not have the sequence. Only my employers do. Attempting to cut out the device will only trigger immediate detonation.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand down his jaw. “I’m all too familiar with the Council’s experimental nanotechnology. My Commander’s woman, Ava, used materials she found underground to neutralize the trackers the Council forced inside us while we were in the mines. Maybe she could do the same for you?”
“Unless she appears over the next few lunar rotations with a serum in hand, there isn’t enough time. My deadline to complete my assignment grows ever closer.”
“There’s got to be some way.”
“There isn’t.”
“Bullshit.” He was snarling at the last person who deserved it, but the fear and frustration were proving hard to rein in. “I’m confident my Commander’s woman can help. You do
n’t have just blithely accept this death sentence. Nor do you have to do everything by yourself.”
“I was taken from the orphan barracks and trained at the Facility as a child. We were taught to work alone. Beaten if we showed any signs of dependency or exhibited emotion. Trained to die so that others could live. That is all I know.”
The vise around his chest tightened another notch. A helpless child in the clutches of such psychopaths. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what she’d endured. But, somehow, despite the way she’d been raised, it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that Jade Lakotesh had nonetheless retained a humanity that was all too rare in this universe.
Janus help him, but the fact that she didn’t realize that made him want to show her the truth all the more.
Maybe then she wouldn’t be so surprised to learn there were others, like himself, who weren’t as cavalier about her impending death as she clearly expected them to be.
“Alone may be all you know, but it isn’t all you are. Otherwise, why give me back my carving? Look for Grif?” He moved closer, invading more of her space. “Why help those people when you could easily slip away? You care, too.”
Her chin lifted higher, meeting his challenge head-on. “What I saw in that dwelling…and what we heard from the others, it did make an impact. Rafi and Marika are no murderers or rapists. They don’t belong here, but the Council placed them here nonetheless, gave them as chattel to a gang of murderers and rapists…it is unconscionable.”
“You’re right.” He kept himself from touching her, but he couldn’t stop from using his body to corral her backward, away from the damn door. “Outside of a certain dark-haired operative, there’s nothing about the Council that isn’t pure evil.”
Shockingly, she let him move her. Matching her pace to his as she glided deeper into the room, her expression fierce with challenge. “Do not make the mistake of thinking this means I will give you the weapon to use against the Council. We can use my crude bombs together to drive 223 and his men from the cave, but I will take ownership of the weapon and destroy it. The Council may not be the right recipient for 223’s laser, but neither is the Resistance.”