Adams’s muffled baritone came back after a short moment. “Eve, are we glad to hear you! We’re locked in.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” She smiled at how sincerely apologetic she sounded. “The spacer crew said you were already aboard their ship, so I sealed the holds out of habit. I’ll get you out right now.”
She entered the proper code sequence, and the door opened. She hugged Adams when he came out, taking care to make skin contact with him so he’d feel a little wave of pleasure. Her exciter talent was so low-level that it barely registered in CPS testing, but she’d learned to use it very effectively. She’d tried the same trick with Foxe, but unfortunately, there were always a few who were immune or averse. At least he felt normal. The few times she’d tried with Morganthur, it was like trying to excite a reptile.
Eve angled away so her back was against the wall, then pointed her high-res beamer at them. “Park. I have a deal to make.”
Adams’s mouth gaped in disbelief. Her tone and the look on her face must have told them not to fuck with her, because they froze in place, their full attention on the business end of her weapon.
She subvocalized a command into her earwire, then spoke. Her voice boomed over the shipcomm.
“Morganthur, I have something you want. You have something I want. Bring me the xeno kit and don’t fuck with me, and I’ll give you Foxe and Adams. Find a wall comm and respond, or I’ll start frying delicate parts of your loverboy.”
Foxe’s face was admirably stoic, but Adams was looking sadly shocked. If she let him live, maybe it’d be a lesson to him.
Long seconds went by. The ship was silent.
Eve stamped her foot in frustration and swore. The spacer crew didn’t seem like the indulgent type. “On a schedule here, Morganthur. Two minutes and I cut my losses.”
After a long moment, Morganthur’s voice sounded from the shipcomm and echoed in the cargo area. She sounded calm, as if discussing whether or not to have tea.
“Leave alone now and live. Stay and die.”
“I’m holding a high-res beamer on Foxe, you subhuman freak!” Eve bit out angrily, and it boomed throughout the ship. “I don’t know how you’re awake, but get your goddamn ass down here with that kit! Ninety seconds.”
There was no response, and no sound from the lifts. Eve swore again, steeling herself to shoot Foxe’s torso. She didn’t like close-up wetwork, but she’d do it if she had to. At this distance, his exosuit and flexin armor wouldn’t hold and she couldn’t miss.
CHAPTER 24
* Interstellar: “Beehive” Ship Day 02 * GDAT 3237.045 *
It had taken Luka an embarrassingly long time to figure out that he and Jerzi hadn’t been locked in the hold accidentally.
After the door automatically sealed but didn’t respond to his commander’s access, and no one answered their calls on the shipcomm, he assumed it was because Eve was temporarily busy. When Mairwen didn’t respond right away via the earwire, he’d thought she was waiting until she could do so without being noticed.
He’d already explained to Jerzi that she preferred to let strangers think she was an inconsequential security guard with barely two brain cells to rub together. Jerzi was skeptical that anyone who spent more than ten minutes with her would believe that, but had been willing to play along if Luka wanted.
Worse than being sealed in was not knowing what was going on outside the hold. When Eve had finally shown up at the hold’s door fifteen minutes later, he was just happy to be rescued, after torturing himself with visions of them having been left to die, and anguishing about what could have happened to Mairwen.
Eve’s beamer pointed at him had been a shock, but less so than he would have imagined. Mairwen had been right after all. He wanted to tell Eve that the person not to fuck with was Mairwen, but of course she’d never believe that.
Too late, his intuition began filling in the gaps and drawing conclusions. Eve had been on someone else’s payroll from the beginning, and her objective was to retrieve the biological samples from the hybrid planet. The exploration spacer’s presence was just too damned convenient, and the fact that they weren’t accompanied by Space Division should have set off alerts in his mind a lot sooner.
He’d bet a month’s pay that Eve worked for Korisni Genetika, Loyduk Pharma’s rival, looking to take advantage of Loyduk’s emergency withdrawal from the hybrid planet. Other players were possible, though, such as a blackmarketer, or even the Citizen Protection Service, which had turned up in the investigation too many times for coincidence.
He didn’t know if Eve had planned the attack on Ta’foulou, but he thought she definitely hadn’t expected the Berjalan to be sabotaged. Looking back, he conceded that Eve had done an excellent job of keeping everyone off balance the whole trip. He resolutely fired up his talent and focused on her, like he should have done a lot sooner. They needed any advantage they could get.
“...your ass down here with that kit! Ninety seconds.” Eve was practically vibrating with rage. The look on her face reminded him of the berserking ramper in Etonver. The beamer’s barrel centered on his chest, and he knew she wouldn’t miss.
His talent said Eve was corrupt, narcissistic, and amoral, but not an ice-cold killer. His intuition said to distract her.
“Do you believe in any of those deities you swear by?” he asked conversationally.
It visibly derailed her train of thought and relaxed her trigger finger. “Not really.” She shrugged. “Hedging my bets.”
Luka nodded, projecting calm. “Protagoran logic, then.” He felt a draft and suppressed a cold shiver, the price of using his talent.
Eve looked startled, then annoyed. “What?”
Through his earwire, he heard his beloved angel of death. “Luka, Jerzi, down.”
Luka dropped like a stone, gratified when Jerzi did the same. Faster than he imagined, even though he’d seen her in action, Mairwen blurred into view and closed her hand over Eve’s. By the time Eve started to react, the beamer was already up under her chin and triggered. In his mind, Eve’s essence faded to nothing.
Her face still wore its annoyed expression as her body slid down the wall and slumped forward. The back half of her head was missing.
A whiff of burned hair stung his nose. Mairwen was already halfway to the airlock controls.
Luka shook off his daze and spoke urgently to Jerzi. “Get our package. When we decouple the airlock, we need to give our spacer friends something else to think about.”
Luka ran to the airlock and took the beamer from Mairwen to cover the airlock door, in case someone from the spacer came looking for Eve. The Beehive’s painfully slow airlock sequence was still engaging when Jerzi joined him, holding the cube they’d made to blow the hold’s door. Luka was glad neither the spacer’s crew nor Eve had noticed they’d been sealed in the hold with four flat cases of KemX explosives.
“Set it for thirty seconds and throw it down the ramp as far as you can,” ordered Luka.
Jerzi complied and achieved admirable distance. The package landed in the corner of the ramp, right outside the spacer’s hull.
“Nav pod, now!” ordered Mairwen. She started toward the ramp.
The Beehive’s airlock was still closing with agonizing slowness as he and Jerzi ran up the ship’s circular ramp as fast as they could. Mairwen outdistanced them like they were running in place.
“Seal your suit!” Luka shouted as he ran, fumbling at his exosuit’s controls. If the KemX explosion pierced the Beehive’s hull, they’d lose air mix violently fast.
The circular ramps were dizzying, and Luka had time to decide that whoever designed them should be launched into the nearest black hole.
They had just cleared the third level when the whole ship shook, and the grav compensators stuttered. Jerzi stumbled, and Luka dragged him up. Luka could have run faster, but he didn’t want to chance leaving Jerzi behind. Not again.
The ship shuddered again, throwing off his gait and triggering sharp deja
vu from when he’d been aboard the Berjalan. He grabbed Jerzi’s arm and dragged him into the nav pod. Mairwen was already at the nav console, fingers moving so fast they were a blur. The nav pod door sealed and locked quickly behind them.
“Our hull is intact,” she said. “It’s okay to unseal for now.” Luka gladly opened the exosuit so he could hear and breathe better. Jerzi did the same.
She pointed to the co-pilot seat. “Jerzi, lasers.” The interface popped into view.
Jerzi adjusted the angle on the holo. “What am I looking at?” he asked. “Oh, I get it. Like an oversized 3-D scope.”
“I highlighted targets on the spacer. Their torp tubes are priority. Be ready to fire on my mark.”
“Copy,” he replied. He adjusted the holo viewing angle again. His expression settled into his detached sniper’s look.
Luka moved out of the way to a corner, only to discover it was already occupied by the medical and xeno kits. He couldn’t imagine when she’d had time to drag them in. He leaned against the wall instead, trying to stay focused. Mostly all he could do was stare in wonder at Mairwen, who’d saved their lives so many times he was losing count.
“Jerzi, tube’s coming around. Five-second burn. Track target movement manually.”
“Ready,” said Jerzi. They both sounded so calm.
“Now,” said Mairwen.
Jerzi powered the laser, counted the burn time out loud, then shut it off.
Mairwen watched her display intently, then smiled slightly. “Dead bang.”
Jerzi smiled in response but didn’t take his eyes off his targeting display.
“Luka, I need your help.” Her voice was suddenly thready.
Luka was deeply alarmed. She never asked for help. He was beside her in a heartbeat. She was ash pale. “What do you need?”
She pointed to icons on the navigation interface with shaking fingers. “This is us, this is the spacer. Their airlock is gone. They’re spinning out, but they’ll get control soon. They’re guessing we used regular debris lasers on their torp tube, so they’re trying to get away. We have to be within a hundred K for our lasers to slag the other torp tube before they can use it on us, but we can’t be closer than fifty K, or their lasers can cut us open.” She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them and met his gaze. She looked deathly tired.
“I’m having trouble reading. I can control the system drive, but I need you to read out the distance and angle to me every ten seconds, or sooner if something changes fast.” She pointed at two numbers on the interface.
“I can do that.” He knelt in front of her and read off the first set of numbers.
She made a minute adjustment to a control on the interface, then closed her eyes and went inert, like a power switch had been turned off. Although he was scared out of his wits for her, he waited the full ten seconds before reading off the numbers again. Some of his terror eased when she opened her eyes. How would she get any rest in ten-second intervals?
“I’m fine,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear it. She met his gaze with the hint of a smile, and he realized with astonishment that she was teasing him. He smiled back at her with all the cockiness he could muster, but he was sure his anxiety was still glaringly obvious.
A shipcomm alert startled them all.
“Attention. Four transit displacement signatures detected.”
If Luka had been a religious man, he would have been praying right about then, because the arrival of four new ships meant they were either saved or damned.
He read off the numbers again.
CHAPTER 25
* Interstellar: “Beehive” Ship Day 02 * GDAT 3237.045 *
Luka’s deep, steady voice soothed her like velvet. As long as he was safe, all was right with the universe.
“Active-scan detected from unknown ship A.”
From the readings, it looked like the spacer they’d targeted was firing its trim jets all at once, apparently in an attempt to startle her into moving the Beehive away. She couldn’t think why the spacer hadn’t just engaged its system drive and taken off, since it had gotten what it came for.
Actually, she was having a hard time thinking at all. Despite her bravado for Luka, because he’d looked so vulnerably scared for her, she wasn’t fine.
As soon as she’d woken from Haberville’s slap patch and staggered out of the engine pod, she’d downed two abandoned cups of cold coffee in the nav pod to help counteract the residual effects of the anesthetic, knowing the caffeine would be a double-edged sword. It had helped her to recover enough to use full-tracker mode to find Luka and Jerzi, and then to kill Haberville, but she was now perilously close to flatlining. Her stomach felt like she’d swallowed lye. When she wasn’t losing focus, she kept seeing spots, and the lights made her head throb. She was afraid if she tried even a single second of half-tracker mode, she’d pass out cold.
“Incoming broadbeam message from unknown ship B.”
It took her two tries to hit the shipcomm key to play the message out loud.
“This is the Concordance Command dreadnought Khong Met Moi. Stand down and identify your ship.”
The message was in Mandarin and English, and accompanied by the Space Div identification signature that was almost impossible to counterfeit. Mairwen aimed a tightbeam comm at the dreadnought and spoke as clearly as she could. “This is transport Beehive. Luka Foxe from La Plata Security in temporary command. We’re under attack by exploration spacer. We need help now.”
She never realized how much energy talking took. Her vision grayed out, and her hands became too heavy to hold up to the interface.
From far away, she heard Luka’s voice. “This is Foxe. Our only pilot is badly hurt. If you don’t help us now, we’re dead.”
She regretted that she hadn’t told Luka how much she loved his voice. The world faded, and she fell into black, and silence, and oblivion.
“...ljósið mitt, you have to wake up.”
She felt more than heard the murmur of Luka’s vocal vibrations through her body. She awoke enough to realize she was being cradled in his lap, her head against his chest. His scent curled up into her nose and soothed her.
Her left hand had an IV unit that was delivering fluids or nutrients, she couldn’t tell which. Her right hand, too. She was still in an exosuit, and they were still in the Beehive’s nav pod, so not much time could have passed. She tilted her head up to meet Luka’s gaze.
“Hi there,” he said, with a soft smile.
“Are we safe?” Her voice sounded weak to her ears.
“The dreadnought’s pilot talked Jerzi through getting us stabilized. They’re setting up an airlock join, and Jerzi’s down there now. The spacer is disabled, and its crew is under lockdown. When we blew their airlock, it damaged their system drive guidance. I’m guessing the KemX set off the thermobarics they took from the Beehive.”
“How long?”
“You passed out twenty minutes ago. You need to listen. Jerzi and I took apart the overload flux line and cleaned the laser guidance system, but if anyone looks at the lasers themselves, they’ll see the modifications. None of us knows anything about it. If there are healers on the Khong Met Moi, I won’t let them near you, and I won’t let the medics put you in an autodoc.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her hands felt cold.
“There’s more. Eve Haberville saved us with superb pilot skills, led us safely through the forest, and led the assault on the base. She was trying to rescue all of us from the hold when she was tragically killed by the thieving, murdering spacers. We escaped and blew the airlock with the KemX. Jerzi and I didn’t like Eve, but we concede she was a hero.”
It was simple, believable, and hard to disprove without a telepathic scan. She tried to smile at him, but was feeling numb, so she wasn’t sure she was successful.
“Okay,” she said.
He gently pushed a lock of her hair out of her face. “So, what made you suspect her?”
“Engine comp. Lef
t it open. Saw the message she sent to the spacer. Too late.” She knew she was sounding like a newsfeed burst, and made an effort to string words together better. “She gave them our names… told them to say they were from La Plata. Wanted all the hybrid samples. She surprised me with an anesthetic slap patch.”
“Which she expected to keep you down for hours.” He stroked her hair softly. “You moved the kits, then tracked her.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll clean the engine comp before we leave. Wouldn’t want messy details to get in the way of a good story.”
She was flooded by emotion she could finally put a name to.
“I love brilliant men,” she whispered.
He tenderly kissed her forehead. “I love you more than any of those other men do.”
She discovered tears could come with happiness. “There’s only you.”
His smile widened and his eyes were bright. “Then I’m a very, very lucky man.”
He kissed her lips softly and rocked her in his arms for long moments. Her world shrank to only him, only the exotic, buttery pearwood scent of him.
Jerzi’s voice came over the shipcomm. “The lock is open and we’ve got company. I asked for a stretcher for Morganthur. They’re on their way.”
“Mairwen, promise me something.” The look on Luka’s face was suddenly serious. “I want you in my life, and to be in yours, but I know that may not be possible because of your former employer. All I ask is that if you feel you have to leave, tell me. Otherwise, it’ll become my life’s obsession to find you again.”
She lifted her fingers to caress his face, the attached IV unit on her hand making her clumsy. “I promise.” He was so perfectly handsome, so perfectly human. Maybe he could teach her to be, too.
CHAPTER 26
* Interstellar: “Khong Met Moi” * GDAT 3237.047 *
Luka leaned back in the military briefing room chair and arranged his face and limbs in the attitude of relaxed boredom, in case anyone on the Khong Met Moi cared to look in. Jerzi was trying to do the same, but the younger man couldn’t quite stop fidgeting in small ways. Mairwen, of course, surpassed them both with her ability to remain completely, impassively still. Her only concession to her recent injuries was to sit instead of stand.
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