“Cam, leave us to engage. Keep your shields up and make it into the range of the secondary base’s targeting system.”
“Copy that. If I’d wanted to shoot stuff from inside a ship, I wouldn’t have taken a ground posting.”
Leigh grinned as his ship hit the resistance of Ilari’s upper environment, his jet shuddering slightly as gravity and atmosphere changed. The engines made slight adjustments to keep him stable and at high speed.
By the time he broke through the burn, Lawler had already engaged the enemy.
One of the older CSS clunky, armed shuttles took a hit and spiraled out of control, leaving a corkscrew of black smoke as it plummeted toward the landmass below.
Leigh swung his jet out from behind Cam and swooped in close above the personnel carrier, destroying a blast of weapon’s fire that would have put a serious dent in Cam’s hull. The smoke hadn’t cleared, but he followed it up with a second round of fire, relying on his jet’s targeting system to lock onto the enemy ship.
A third enemy ship slipped around to his portside. An alarm beeped, warning him of a targeting lock on his position. He banked aggressively and cut back, putting him in a half loop. The streak of energy fire exploded out of the smoke and clipped his left wing, flipping him into a full spin.
“Alpha, are you hit?”
Leigh couldn’t answer as he fought the controls in the opposite direction to his jet’s barrel roll. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, his heart galloping against the inside of his ribs. His upper arms and chest burned from the exertion.
He pulled the jet up and got it stable in time to see a second enemy ship exploded, with the last two breaking off from pursuit. He forced a slow inhale as he glanced out at his damaged wing.
The jet shook forcefully from the hit, trying to buck his control. He gauged the remaining distance to the secondary base, considered ejecting for half a second. They were only minutes away, so he’d take the risk on sticking it out.
Landing was going to be a bitch.
“Any damage to report?” He asked into his comm, glancing out to see Lawler’s jet and Cam’s personnel carrier both appeared to be in one piece.
“We’re all good. But your wing looks like Swiss cheese,” Lawler replied.
“Yeah, the maintenance crew is going to be really impressed. That was some nice shooting, Lawler, I owe you one.”
“Thanks, Alpha, and I’d love to take full credit, but Cam shot down that second bastard.”
He gave a short laugh as the relief of getting through another battle mixed with the downhill side of his adrenaline high. “For someone who didn’t want to shoot at things from inside a ship, you’ve got killer aim, Colonel.”
“Or a whole lotta dumb luck,” Lawler interjected.
“I never said I couldn’t, just that I didn’t want to.” The deadpan tone of Cam’s voice came through loud and clear on the radio.
“Well if you ever get sick of being on the ground, I might be able to find a place for you in FP squadron.”
“Thanks, but no deal, Alpha. I like my boots planted firmly in the dirt.”
They were coming up to the secondary base, and ground control contacted them, interrupting the conversation. Leigh confirmed he’d taken damage, and they directed him to a specialized landing pad, while Lawler and Cam split off to the general launch bay.
Tightening his already hard grip on the controls, he slowed his decent, fighting the jet’s pull to portside, not quite able to lock into a level trajectory as he maneuvered over the emergency landing pad.
Clenching his jaw, he tipped the jet into the precise angle and lowered the thrusters, bringing himself down by gradual degrees. The closer he got to the ground, the more his jet shook, fighting to buck out of the slanted descent. By the time the landing clamps bumped into contact with the pads, his shoulders had seized up. He took a moment to drop his head against the back of the seat, forcing some of the tension out of his tight muscles.
Again, the CSS were on them, despite encoded launch times and trajectories. Damn. More and more, it pointed to a traitor in the FP ranks. He needed to get back to the Knox as soon as possible and talk with Bren.
When most of the aches had subsided, he hopped out of the jet, tugging his helmet off and wiping his forearm across his sweat dampened face. He paused to fill out the appropriate logs, then made his way from the emergency landing pad to find Lawler. If his sub-officer was feeling generous, they could both squash into Lawler’s jet for the flight back, otherwise he was going to be stuck on the ground for who knew how many hours until the transports resumed. Of course, if he’d been feeling particularly mean, he could simply commandeer Lawler’s jet and leave the sub-officer to cool his heels on the dirt for a few hours. He grinned as he walked through the base, imagining the look on Lawler’s face if he decided to leave the guy on the ground.
Being the CAFF wasn’t all bad.
Leigh shoved a spoonful of rice into his mouth and tried to pretend he wasn’t looking for a certain golden-haired recruit. What the hell. Might as well give up the game and admit that, yes, he’d spent half the day since Lawler and he had gotten back to the Valiant Knox hoping to catch a glimpse of her when he wasn’t preparing for tomorrow’s class to start. But only so he could avoid her. Or work on totally alienating her.
He’d been sure he’d see her at midshift messdeck. All of the newbies tended to congregate in one area until they got to know the rest of the ship’s crew a little better. But he hadn’t seen any sign of her and had to assume she’d learned her lesson after folding towels and gone to rest.
Except now the evening crowd had started thinning, and he still hadn’t seen her. Okay, so she might have been resting, but she needed to make sure she ate something as well. The unforgiving training regime would start tomorrow and fasting the night before wouldn’t do her any good.
And why was that his concern? The faster she washed out, the quicker she became someone else’s responsibility. Except he did care. And he sure didn’t want to examine why that might be.
A couple of female recruits passed by his table, and like a damn mutt, his ears perked up at one of the newbies mentioning Mia, followed by folding towels. So they’d heard about it already, huh? Well, it would serve as a good lesson to them all. Follow orders, or pay the consequences. And he’d gone easy on her, because folding towels was one of the painless, nondisgusting duties.
He picked up his tray and trailed the recruits to where finished trays of food were discarded. Snatches of their conversation came to him and he paused, waiting for the pair to get on with dumping their leftover food. Except they’d gotten into some sort of disagreement.
“We should take something down to her. She hasn’t had lunch or anything,” the one with strawberry-blond hair said.
“They’ll let her eat when they want her to eat,” the dark-haired woman replied. “She’s the one who didn’t follow orders, and personally I don’t want to go attracting the wrong kind of attention from the CAFF like she has already. You think that’s going to make the next few weeks any easier for her?”
The words went on repeat in his head. Something about them—
Damn it to hell. Was Mia—Recruit Wolfe still down in the godforsaken laundry folding towels? He’d told one of the other recruits—Benton?—to go and tell her she was relieved of laundry duty not even an hour after getting back from escorting Cam to the ground.
He brushed by the two women, who both went wide-eyed and scurried off when they saw him. He slammed his tray down on the pile and then stalked out of the messdeck, across to the common room. He found Benton playing cards with a couple of other recruits.
“Benton!” His pissed-off CAFF tone echoed across the large room, plunging it into silence.
The kid jumped about meter and then fell off his chair. At any other time, he might have found the guy’s scramble to get upright hilarious. Right now, with the way he was fuming, the stupid-ass fumbling just kicked his temper up a few more notches.
; “Benton, did I or did I not order you to follow up on Recruit Wolfe?”
For a moment Benton stared at him blankly, but then he blanched, the color literally draining from his face.
“Sir, you did, sir. But Lieutenant Brenner asked me to do something else on my way there and I—” Benton gulped, snapping his mouth closed.
He leaned closer. “You what, recruit?”
“Sir, I forgot, sir.”
Leigh stared at him. Forgot? “You mean to tell me you can’t follow more than one order at a time, Benton?”
The kid swallowed again, keeping his lips compressed.
“Report to Lieutenant Brenner immediately. She’ll be able to help you with that memory problem.”
The guy needed to be reprimanded, but for the life of him, Leigh couldn’t think of anything except hauling ass down to the gym and saving Mia—Recruit Wolfe—from the pile of dirty towels. Had she really been folding them all day? Surely she would have eventually asked someone if she’d done enough. Except he already knew the answer to that.
Benton sent him a sloppy salute and lowered his head, then left the common room. Leigh cast a hard-ass glare over the recruits sitting nearby and they all suddenly made themselves look busy.
As he turned to head for the gym, Seb shot him a grin and a covert thumbs-up, while Lawler sent him a wise-guy half salute. Leigh shook his head as he passed, and the two guys shared a laugh before returning to the beer and poker game in front of them.
Leigh went down to the gym where the lights were low, the space empty. Occasionally he came down here at this time of night to run on the treadmill when no one else was around and tabbed up an image of an open road stretching in front of him on the vid screens instead of four ship walls.
Before he got to the laundry, he could hear the periodic puffing noise of the towels coming out of the clean chute. He stepped in, his gaze finding Mia—goddamn it Recruit Wolfe—leaning against the wall on the dirty side, feeding dirty towels into the yawning mouth of the wash system.
Stay on the ship long enough and a soldier got to learn pretty quickly that the container of dirty towels never emptied. Sure, a person could come close, but then a new influx of soldiers in the gym would stack it right back up again.
But now, the clean container was the fuller of the two, though it looked like she’d given up on folding a fair while ago.
“Stand down, recruit.”
She didn’t react, so he walked farther into the room. “You’ve done more than enough, Recruit Wolfe. Time to pack it in.”
When she still didn’t respond to him, he walked over and touched her shoulder. She dropped the towel she’d been holding and spun to face him.
Her dark eyes were glazed with exhaustion and she leaned back against the wall behind her, as though she couldn’t even hold herself upright.
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t manage to get through all the towels—” She listed to the side and he caught her before she crashed into the container.
Hell, he should have come down here himself and made sure she’d been released from duty. But he hadn’t had a reason to suspect damn Benton wouldn’t see his order through.
“Okay, let’s get some food into you.” He tugged her arm and led her into the locker room, where he urged her to sit on one of the benches. In the wall by the door was a vending machine full of protein bars and energy drinks. He ordered a couple of each, since dinner at messdeck would be over by now. He could have taken her down to commerce since there were places serving food twenty-four-seven on that level, but she looked too washed out for that.
By the time he brought the snacks over, she seemed a bit sharper, her dark gaze staring up at him warily. Her looking at him like he was the devil incarnate made his chest ache, even though it was exactly what he’d set out to achieve. Usually he enjoyed putting the fear of god into the newbies, but doing so to Recruit Wolfe sat uncomfortably on his shoulders for some reason.
“I’m not about to inflict another punishment on you, so quit looking at me like that.” He ripped the packaging off one of the protein bars and handed it over to her.
She tilted her head down as she started eating, the soft light catching deep gold highlights in her hair, which had mostly unraveled from the knot she’d had it tied into. Wisps fell around her face and neck, making her look too damn touchable.
He tightened his hold on the energy drink. Need to get laid, not lust inappropriately after new recruits. Yet the thought of hitting the mattress with another woman didn’t do anything for him. Annoyed at himself, he pushed all sex-related thoughts from his mind and started running training drills through his head.
Mia finished the protein bar, and he handed her the energy drink.
“Thanks,” she murmured, her voice a little on the husky side.
“I’m sorry.”
Her head snapped up, dark gaze clashing with his. He wasn’t sure who was more surprised at the words. He sure as hell couldn’t remember the last time he’d apologized to a recruit for anything. And this really didn’t run with his plan of alienating her.
“You weren’t meant to be down here this long. The messenger who was supposed to relieve you of duty never made it. I shot him.”
Her eyes widened and a grin tightened his mouth, but he swallowed over the urge.
“That was a joke. But thanks to Lieutenant Brenner, he’ll be wishing he’d been lucky enough to pull laundry duty.”
“Oh.” She took a small sip of the energy drink, her gaze slipping off to the side.
“About what happened yesterday in the medbay…” Jesus, did he really want to have this conversation? But avoiding it wouldn’t help anything. He needed to know they understood each other. “I was inappropriate. You’re aware we have to pretend like nothing happened, right?”
“I know. I should have said something before things went that far. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know I had been assigned to you.”
Frustration pulsed through him. “Well it’s damned well not your fault either. I shouldn’t have acted so improperly, no matter who you are.”
She speared him with a direct gaze. “It’s not improper to want to talk to someone every now and then, to let out stuff that’s been bottled up for too long.”
His chest tightened and he clenched his fists. Why did she have to be so understanding?
She sighed and half turned away from him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It doesn’t help anything. Sure, let’s get on with pretending it never happened.”
He locked his jaw against replying. Because deep down, he didn’t want to pretend like it had never happened. However, circumstance dictated they do exactly that before he found himself in deeper trouble… If he wasn’t already.
The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, and he had a lot to answer for here. But personal feelings didn’t count when it came to duty, and duty always came first.
Chapter Five
Sitting so close to Captain Alphin was unsettling in too many ways for her tired mind to catalog. He was an intimidating man; there was no doubt about it. Even though he’d been nothing but friendly with her since he’d come to relieve her of laundry duty, there was a hardness to his gaze that was common to many seasoned soldiers who’d seen death in all its terrible forms.
But the cool stare seemed in direct contrast to the glimpses of heartfelt honesty she’d seen from him in the medbay yesterday, and just now when he’d apologized for another recruit’s mistake. She didn’t want to feel any of these things for him, didn’t want to wonder what else might lie under that tough, hard attitude. And she definitely wished that the feel of his large, warm, slightly roughened thumb sliding over the inside of her palm hadn’t imprinted on her memory like a bright flash illuminating an otherwise-dull room.
It had been the briefest of touches, hardly lasting more than a split second and probably not even done on purpose. But the sensation had rippled up her arm and lodged into her chest, her mind conjuring up the breathless feelin
g at the stupidest random times since. Thinking about that wasn’t helping things right now, but neither was his knight-in-shining-armor routine, rescuing her from the evil laundry containers and then feeding her when she hadn’t eaten anything all day.
Still, he hadn’t said anything in response to her agreement they pretend like that conversation between them in the medbay had never happened. His hands clasped between his knees and he stared off across the gym, his features tense.
The aloof expression should have warned her away, but instead it widened that crack in her defenses she’d been trying to ignore. It shouldn’t matter to her if he was lonely or what kind of life he lived outside of his role as her CO. But for some idiotic reason she did care—or maybe curious was a better word. Whatever it was, she was invested way too much, considering their respective positions.
Ever since the shuttle had been attacked on route from the Farr Zero, she felt like she’d been in a tailspin, unable to find her breath or gain perspective. She needed some time and distance. Maybe this whole thing with Captain Alphin didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was some kind of deferred gratitude for the fact that he’d been the one to pull her out of the damaged transport. With a good night’s sleep in a bed that wasn’t a hospital gurney, she’d probably regain her common sense and then be totally mortified that for even half a second, she’d thought she’d started to like him a little too much.
Pushing to her feet, she grabbed on to the sanity of that resolve, stepping back to put some distance between them—physical and mental.
“Thanks for the drink and the energy bar. I really should be getting back to the dorm.”
He stood with a fluid movement, clasping his hands behind his back as he straightened.
“Let me escort you.” Said in a tone that expected no argument. Yet the need to get away from him was swiftly building within her.
“That’s not necessary.” She took another step back, even though she couldn’t leave until he’d dismissed her or at least given an indication that she was free to go.
One side of his lips quirked upward for a brief second in an expression that was more cynical than amused. “As one of the recruits assigned to my training program, consider that it is necessary.”
Damage Control (Valiant Knox) Page 5