Except, the niggling question of what she’d do if she did wash out of the program stuck into the back of her thoughts like a burr and refused to dislodge, no matter how hard she tried to banish it. She didn’t want to end up on the ground, particularly if it meant fighting on the front lines, which was what happened to most soldiers who failed fighter-pilot training.
Since she’d arrived on the Knox, she’d started getting the idea that she’d be satisfied living and serving on the battleship. On the heels of that vague sense of belonging, she chastised herself, because there was every chance those mushy feelings had something to do with a certain CO she shouldn’t be thinking about in anything other than the most professional, platonic terms.
At this time of evening, squadron level was all but deserted, many of the rooms and less-used corridors powered down to auxiliary lighting. There wasn’t the constant chatter and low din of people going about their duties, only the hum and buzz of the Knox’s systems working in the background.
She took one wrong turn before finding the ready room they’d been in this morning, everything looking a little different in the half-light and without other crew members milling around.
As she stepped into the darkened room, she swiped her hand over the sensors, flooding the room with yellow-white light. She blinked as she moved forward, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the brightness.
A figure loomed up in front of her, and she took half a step back as surprise jolted her system.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else—” Her words cut off on an anxious half breath. Something wasn’t right. The man wasn’t wearing a UEF uniform, but dark pants and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.
He lunged at her, and she tried to sidestep, but he clipped her shoulder, putting her off-balance and knocking her datapad out of her hand to smash on the floor. By the time she jerked out of his reach and regained her stability, he’d put himself between her and the door.
Though she couldn’t see his features with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled so far down, leaving shadows to obscure half of his face, something about his body language made it seem as if he knew her, because he hesitated.
She held up her hands in a peaceful gesture. “Look, technically neither of us are probably supposed to be up here. I’ll pretend I didn’t see you, if you return the favor.”
He didn’t say anything, but took a slow step toward her. Something in his demeanor sent cold rippling under her skin and warning alarms in her head telling her she needed to get out of here now.
“Okay, I’ll take that as a yes.” Her voice came out slightly uneven as she resisted the urge to retreat. Instead, she took half a step forward, angling toward the exit.
The man lunged again, and this time she wasn’t quick enough. He grabbed her arm, stopping her from sprinting for the door. With a vise grip on her elbow, he clamped his other hand onto the back of her neck and twisted until her arm was bent at a painful angle behind her.
She clenched her jaw against crying out, her breath cutting in and out too shallow, making her dizzy.
“I-I s-swear I won’t t-tell anyone I saw you.” Her words were choppy to the point of incoherent, and her captor made no indication that he’d either understood her or cared. He swung her around and she sucked in a deeper breath to ask him what he planned on doing with her. Before she could get the words out, he loosened his grip on her arm, but used the hold on her neck to smash her face-first into the corner of a nearby desk.
Pain exploded through her head, but not enough to put her out. In that second, as everything swam and agony pulsed through her skull, God did she wish she had blacked out. Maybe her survival instincts kept her conscious, because she knew if she passed out, she probably wouldn’t wake up again.
Working on the instinct she’d honed through long hours of combat training, she twisted out of his grip, but lost her balance because of the way her brain was spinning from the impact with the desk. Still, she was free, and she scrambled toward the door. Glancing back, she saw the man hadn’t come after her, but had pulled a gun. She froze using a nearby chair to keep herself upright while her head throbbed.
Oh God, he wasn’t going to let her leave here alive.
Leigh stepped out of the transit on squadron level: his last refuge. Yep, he had totally been avoiding everyone—particularly Seb—since he’d fled the PT room earlier today, telling himself that he needed to start investigating the possible mole.
He’d spent a few hours in his office reviewing each member of his squadron, until his churning thoughts and a damned traitorous mind distracting him with Mia had nearly sent him on a long spacewalk with a short oxygen supply. He’d hit the gym, but Bren had come looking for him, so he’d headed back to his apartment. Except who had he seen lurking outside his door before he’d even stepped off the transit? Seb. Sure, the guy had been doing a bad job of hiding the prohibited bottle of whiskey he was holding, but even the temptation of taking the edge off his frustrations with some smooth liquor hadn’t been able to change his mind about the conversation that would surely come with it.
So as a last resort, he’d come up to squadron level, intending to go over the notes for tomorrow’s class, even though he’d done it fifty times already and knew the planned curriculum for the day inside and out.
As he turned down the passageway to the ready room, he frowned at the wide shaft of light breaking up the shadows of the corridor under auxiliary lighting. Before he stepped through the hatchway, his gaze landed on a datapad on the floor, the screen cracked and the outer casing broken. What the— He reached the hatchway, finding Mia with her back to him. Annoyance washed through him, because she shouldn’t have been up here at this time of night, and he’d escaped here specifically to get away from everyone. He pulled to a stop when he saw the second figure in the room a few short steps away with a gun pointed at her chest.
A bolt of shock zapped through him. He dove forward on instinct alone, the sharp sound as the electromagnetic gun fired echoing through the room. He hit Mia and they went down, sliding into the row of desks. The shooter let off a few more rounds in their direction, and he dragged one of the desks in front of them to provide cover. A burning-chemical smell hit him as the outer side of the polymer-resin on the desks melted under the energy pulse.
But the shooter didn’t seem as interested in killing them as he did in escaping. Leigh watched, fury lighting through him as the guy ran from the room, keeping him pinned down with a few wildly aimed shots. He waited a beat, then pushed to his feet and sprinted out into the corridor after him.
There was only one place the shooter would be headed—the transit-porter. When he came around the final corner, he saw the man slipping into the transit, turning to punch at the screen controls. The shooter saw him and brought the gun up again. Leigh swore and ducked back behind the corner as energy pulses pinged into the bulkheads.
After a second, he risked a peek around the corner to see the transit doors close. Jogging up to the door, he watched the display as the transit went down a level. He hit up his comm, getting an ensign on the ship-wide emergency line.
“This is Captain Leigh Alphin reporting condition code alpha-three. Gunfire on FP squadron level—I repeat, gunfire on level foxtrot-papa. I need the transit locked down and a MP unit on standby to apprehend the shooter.”
The ensign confirmed, but even as he did, the transit had stopped and let the shooter out somewhere on port side of the level below him. He swore under his breath and put in another comm call to make sure the ensign had noted the transit stop and to get someone tracking the shooter straightaway. On a ship like this, there was no way that person would escape. Dark satisfaction rolled through him, since there was a very good chance he was about to find out who the traitor was in the FP squadron.
Now, for his other immediate problem. Mia needed to answer a few questions about what the heck she was doing up here at this time of night. He backtracked to the ready room, but when he walked in, he d
idn’t see her right away, and for half a second, thought she’d also somehow escaped while he’d been distracted. But then he spotted a pair of boots from behind the clutter of desks and chairs where he’d taken cover.
His heart took a free fall as he realized she hadn’t moved from when he’d tackled her to the floor.
“Mia?” Even as he shoved a desk out of the way and dropped down on his knees next to her, he saw the small puddle of blood that had formed beneath her.
His throat closed over, cutting off his breath. With an unsteady hand, he reached down and pressed his fingers into her neck. Her skin was warm, and a steady pulse registered under his fingertips. An exhale of relief burst out of his chest, releasing the rigidity that had set into his muscles when he’d thought the worst. She’d been hit in the left shoulder and had a gash above her right eyebrow.
He tapped his comm, putting him through to the same ensign he’d talked to a moment ago.
“This is Captain Alphin again. I need a medico response team to ready room one-four on squadron level, condition code bravo-orange.”
“Yes, sir, right away.” The ensign ended the comm after the clipped answer, and Leigh turned back to Mia.
The pool of blood beneath her had spread, and he swore under his breath. He sat back and pulled off the tank top he wore underneath his shirt. After quickly shrugging back into the shirt, he wadded up the tank top and pressed the material against the shoulder wound, trying to move her as little as possible in case of spinal injury.
The seconds dragged while the silence pressed in on him.
“Damn it, Mia, what the hell happened?” he muttered to distract himself from the seconds ticking by while he waited for help. Why had she been up here facing off with a masked shooter?
Her breath hitched and she shifted, derailing his thoughts. With one hand keeping his tank top against the wound, he set his other palm on her opposite shoulder to hold her in place. She seemed to be coming around, her face tensing into a grimace before her eyelids flickered.
“Mia, just stay still until the medics get here to assess you.”
“Leigh?” She brought a hand up to press into her forehead, her eyes staying closed. Already, a purple bruise had started creeping from the edges of the gash along her hairline to darken the skin around her right eye and brow.
“Yeah, I’m here, Mia. I’ve got you.” The words didn’t exactly come out steady, and he swallowed down the tension in his throat.
Her grimace deepened and she shifted slightly beneath his hold. “Oh God, it hurts.”
“I know it does, but I need you to stay as still as possible until the medics are here.” Even as he said the words, he could hear footsteps from out in the passageway.
“Captain Alphin?” someone called out.
“In here,” he threw over his shoulder. The only room with the lights on, guys. He would have thought their position would be obvious. A second later, a male nurse and sub-doctor rushed in, followed closely by Dr. Sacha Dalton.
“What happened?” Sacha shot at him as she dropped her emergency kit to the deck and got down on her knees on Mia’s other side.
“She’s been hit, high left shoulder. Not sure how the head injury was sustained.” He hoped he hadn’t done it to her when he’d pushed her down. He sat back as Sacha leaned forward and took over where he’d been pressing the now-bloody garment to Mia’s chest.
The nurse handed him a cloth, and he distractedly wiped at the blood on his hands as he watched Sacha examine Mia and ask her a couple of questions.
Movement in the doorway of the ready room caught his attention and he glanced up to see Bren and Seb stepping into the room.
He pushed to his feet and tried to pretend he hadn’t caught the slightly panicked look Mia had cast him. And then he had to clamp down on the urge to get back down on his knees and reassure her that everything would be okay. If he started acting like he had a right to comfort her, like he needed to comfort her, the disaster he’d been trying to avoid would come crashing down on them. It was far from his place to be the one offering her any kind of reassurance, no matter what familiarity had developed between them.
“What the hell happened?” Seb demanded as Leigh walked over to join his subordinate officers.
He shook his head to indicate they couldn’t talk about it here and motioned for them to follow him. He stepped out into the passageway, well out of earshot from Sacha and her two attendants.
“I came up here to check the notes for tomorrow’s class. When I got to the ready room, I found Mia facing off with some guy holding a gun. He took a couple of wild shots at us as he went for the door. She was hit. I chased him down to the transit, but I didn’t get a good look at him, and he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”
He clenched his fists, belatedly realizing he’d slipped and said Mia instead of Recruit Wolfe. But neither Seb nor Bren seemed to notice.
“Do you think it was the squadron traitor Yang warned us about yesterday?” Bren’s question effectively cut off the dark turn his mind had sucked him into.
“What other explanation could there be?”
“Wait just a second, did you say traitor? In FP squadron? That’s impossible.” Seb abruptly closed his mouth as the medics came past with Mia on a stretcher.
“I’ll fill you in later,” he replied as he half turned and cast a look over Mia. She had her eyes closed, and Sacha had wrapped a bandage around her shoulder and upper chest.
As the nurse and sub-doctor maneuvered the stretcher out of the ready room, Sacha stopped next to them.
“She’s got a nasty gash on her head and the shoulder wound from the shooting, obviously. It looks worse than it is. The shoulder wound is superficial. We can repair that easily with a micro-laser. I’m going to admit her to med level overnight to monitor her concussion. I’ll do a head scan just to be sure, but I don’t think it’s anything more serious. She should be fine for discharge around lunchtime tomorrow.”
“What will this mean for her training?” Bren asked.
Sacha shrugged one shoulder. “Depends on your dictates, I suppose. I would recommend she abstain from any physical activity for forty-eight hours after discharge and then light activities for another seventy-two hours after that, keeping an eye out for any headaches or dizziness. If that means she’s going to miss anything important to the agenda, then it’s up to you whether you give her a medical exemption or simply cut her from the program.”
Relief jolted through his system, clashing right into a stream of disappointment. This was it. He had a legitimate reason to decide right now that Mia couldn’t continue any further with the program, and his issues with her would be solved. Except then he’d have to live with the guilt of taking advantage of an already bad situation she’d been thrown into.
“Thanks, Sacha. I’ll contact you in the morning for an update.” He sent her a respectful nod, which she returned as she left.
Leigh crossed his arms and turned back to Seb and Bren. This wasn’t the first time they’d had to make a decision about an injured recruit over the years. But none of them had ever presented such a multilayered complication for him.
If this was any other recruit, one he had no knowledge of outside of the classroom, where would his decision fall? Because to be fair to Mia, he had to make the right decision for the right reasons, even if it meant leaving temptation in his path.
Chapter Nine
Mia settled against the pillows as the nurse ducked out of the room, leaving her alone at last. Not long after bringing her up to med level, Dr. Dalton had given her some painkillers, so at least her face, head, and shoulder didn’t hurt as much any longer. But it hadn’t helped the sleepy fatigue dragging at her. Unfortunately, she’d had to stay awake as a sub-doctor used a micro-laser to repair her shoulder and then positioned her for a head scan.
Next there’d been a visit from a pair of military police, one stern-looking female officer and her bored-looking male counterpart, who’d questioned her about being
on squadron level at that time of night and the man who’d attacked her. The questioning had brought on a headache, her answers increasingly jumbled, while the female officer seemed to become impatient, as though they needed something from her. Whatever it was, she didn’t have it to give. In fact, she’d been able to offer them very little. All she’d known for sure was her attacker had been male. Any other features or clues to his identity had been hidden beneath the dark clothes and hoodie he’d used to obscure his identity.
Dr. Dalton had eventually returned and shooed the officers away, then had a nurse come in to check her vitals. All she wanted to do was sleep away her aching head and hope she felt better in the morning. She didn’t want to consider what this would mean for her spot in the FP program, though the thought had surfaced and refused to go away.
She half turned on her side, settling into her pillow as she dropped into a doze. But before she could sink into a deep slumber, she sensed someone nearby, jolting her from sleep.
She blinked open her eyes to find Leigh sitting next to her bed, his elbows braced against the edge of the gurney and chin resting against his hands. The sight of him sitting there made her heart skip a beat. And that was saying something, considering she was half doped-out on painkillers and swimming in exhaustion.
“Sorry. I thought you were asleep.” The nearby lamp cast shadows across his intense expression.
She shifted so she could look at him without keeping her head on an uncomfortable angle. “Not quite. What are you doing here?”
A cynical smile flashed over his lips. “Can’t the CAFF check in on an injured recruit?”
Damage Control (Valiant Knox) Page 9