by Jade Archer
The edge of the solar storm could be seen in a long ribbon of colour dancing off the port bow. It rolled and rippled in a swirl of multi-chromatic brilliance—yellow, red, green and blue and all the colours in between. A spontaneous explosion of energy that was a frequent visitor in the unstable fringe of the sector.
Grateful for the distraction, Devlynn shrugged. He’d seen hundreds of solar storms over the years. And not all of them from the right side either.
“Don’t you think it’s spectacular?” Rachel looked shocked at his nonchalant attitude.
“One solar storm’s pretty much like another.”
“What? How can you say that?”
“Sixteen years of deep space travel.”
“Oh! Well…okay. But…I still think you’re wrong. I mean…just look at it. It’s…amazing.”
Devlynn couldn’t look. He couldn’t take his eyes off the wonder on her animated face as she watched the cosmic display move and twist and swirl away.
Rachel turned back to him, bubbling over with excitement and everything…stopped.
He wasn’t sure what she saw on his face, but gradually her broad smile turned into something deep, sensual and serious. With infinitely slow and cautious movements she reached up and touched the side of his face—her small hand caressing along his slightly stubble-roughened cheek.
“Life’s too short not to stop and check out amazing things, don’t you think?” she breathed.
Rachel held his face steady. He could’ve pulled away at any time, but he found he really didn’t want to. Then she leant forward and pressed her lips very gently to his. It was sweet and tender. Nothing demanding or aggressive. More a question really.
It felt so right. So good and real. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared the intimacy of a kiss. Completely ensnared, Devlynn pressed forward—offering a gentle caress with his lips in return. Savouring the exquisite moment of connection. Of their own accord, his hands pulled Rachel closer. The feeling of her running her hands up his arms and onto his shoulders, of her leaning into him, pressing her soft breasts into his hard chest as they kissed drove his need higher. He reached forward with the tip of his tongue, wanting to explore where their lips met. Wanting—
“Dev, what’s—”
Devylnn and Rachel broke apart at the sound of Arek’s voice, but not before the man rounded the corner of the corridor and stopped dead in his tracks.
No one moved or spoke—too shocked even to breathe. They just stared.
Then Arek’s face became a hard, flat mask devoid of any expression. Without a word he spun on his heels and walked away.
Devlynn felt his heart lunge in his chest, before settling into a fast, panicked rhythm.
“Arek! Wait!”
But Arek kept going. Refusing to look back at them.
Arek concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
Get to the cockpit. Check the flight plan. Where can we save time?
But no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, the mess left behind by seeing Devlynn kissing Rachel, Rachel kissing Devlynn—whatever—bubbled and writhed inside until he wanted to haul off and hit something.
Fuck. He wasn’t sure what he felt right now. Hurt. Angry. Betrayed. Jealous. Turned on. And the really fucked up thing was he wasn’t sure who was responsible for which feeling.
Did it hurt that Devlynn was kissing Rachel, or that Rachel was kissing Devlynn? Was it jealousy at seeing them together or petulance that they hadn’t included him that was digging its claws into his chest? Or was he just angry that he hadn’t seen it coming? Bitter because he’d listened to Devlynn earlier and started…thinking?
Or was the real problem the fact he’d decided—as he sat in the cockpit getting his thoughts together—that he wouldn’t pursue anything with Rachel because he didn’t want Devlynn to feel left out? Didn’t want him to be isolated and alone as the odd-man-out?
It looked like he’d got the players wrong in that little scenario. In his version, he’d decided to invite Rachel to stay, but he’d thought they could all cruise along much as he and Devlynn had done for so long—best friends and comrade-in-arms.
Maybe he was just feeling plain stupid right now.
“Damn it, Arek! Just stop and listen for a minute!” Devlynn demanded behind him.
“It’s none of my damn business what you two get up to. Just remember what I said. Don’t go getting too attached.”
Devlynn caught hold of his arm and forced him to stop and turn to face him.
“Are you saying you’re not going to let Rachel stay?”
“Did I say that?” Arek shot back.
Honestly, he didn’t know what he was saying right now. And he was trying hard not to think. Too painful.
“No, you didn’t, but—”
“All I’m saying is it’s not a good idea to get involved. To get attached to people. You’re no good to me if you get distracted and can’t focus on the job.”
Devlynn looked as if he’d just been sucker punched. All the colour drained from his face, leaving his normally tanned complexion pale and drawn.
“You…I—” Devlynn blinked a few times, then the pain and anguish in his eyes changed to anger. “You really are an asshole sometimes you know that, Arek.”
Without another word, Devlynn turned and stomped away. Heading back the way he had come towards the engine room.
“Devlynn!” But Devlynn just ignored him and kept right on going. “What the fuck was that all about?”
“Do you really not know?” Rachel asked softly.
He hadn’t even realised she’d been standing there—too caught up in Devlynn and watching him walk away.
“Know what?” Arek snapped.
“How much you just hurt him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You just shut him out. Said you didn’t care about him, just what he does for you and the ship.”
“What? When? I never—”
“Don’t get involved. Don’t get attached. Don’t get distracted. How long has Devlynn been with you? By your side. Every day. Do you really think it’s just about the job?”
“I never said that!”
“You and Devlynn need to stop prowling around one another. You’re going to miss out on something good if you’re not honest with yourselves and each other.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look I’m…I’m not trying to come between you and Devlynn.”
“It’s not like—”
“But it could be.”
“I don’t—”
Rachel put her hand up to silence him.
“What do you want, Arek? ‘Cause I’m saying it doesn’t have to be either or neither, but you’ve got to decide what you want.” Rachel suddenly faltered, her eyes going wide. “That is…I mean if you want…I mean it doesn’t have to…” Rachel stopped and took a deep breath. “There isn’t any reason why one of us has to be…left out, but you have to work out what you want and you need to tell us all what it is.”
Arek blinked at her, totally at a loss for words…or two coherent functioning brain cells to rub together. They’d all gone out for lunch apparently—abandoning him to his fate and the crazy woman standing in front of him.
“Wha…? You…?” Arek shook his head and growled in exasperation, his hands clenching into fists at his side. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
“A few intelligent, preferably considerate thought processes would be nice. Just answer me this, do you want to be lonely your whole life?”
“Who the fuck said I was lonely?”
“You’re keeping everyone at a distance.”
“Getting too close just fucks everything up.”
“So what do you want, Arek? You need to decide if you want to stay at a distance or…come closer.”
“There didn’t look like there was any room for me in what I saw in the corridor.”
“Do you want there to be?”
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Arek clamped his jaw shut, trying to hold it together. Not trusting himself enough to open his mouth right now.
Rachel didn’t back down. In fact, she took a step closer. “What. Do. You. Want?”
Arek snapped. He slammed his mouth down over hers. It felt good. Hard. Demanding. Aggressive. And Rachel gave every bit as good as she got. Meeting him thrust for thrust and nip for delicious nip.
It was so right. And he instantly felt like he was betraying Devlynn. What had started off as a way to shut her up had turned out to be so much more. And wasn’t that just fucked right up.
Arek stumbled back, putting some much needed distance between them. “I can’t do this.”
Before he’d taken more than a few steps, Rachel’s soft, steely voice stopped him in his tracks.
“I like Devlynn, Arek. Whatever you decide…I won’t let you hurt him again.”
Arek saw red. Never in a million years would he hurt Devlynn. He moved to loom over her.
“Where the fuck do you—”
The entire ship suddenly rocked with the force of an explosion, sending Rachel tumbling forward into his arms. He caught her easily, pulling her close to hold her securely against his body.
The warning klaxon blared to life and echoed off the tight confines of the corridor.
“Fuck!”
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked, looking both shocked and perhaps a little frightened.
“We’re under attack.”
Chapter Four
Devlynn rushed into the cockpit—out of breath and sweating. He’d run flat out from the engine room as soon as he’d felt the first explosion rock the ship. After years of experience with deep space conflicts, he knew the characteristic sound of a torpedo impacting on ray shielding. The anger, hurt and need to stay well away from Arek for a while was completely overridden by a deeply engrained instinct to work with the man to survive.
Suddenly a burst of phaser fire buffeted them from the port side.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Arek didn’t look up from the helm controls as he worked frantically to outmanoeuvre the incoming fire. “Fennrus Mercenaries. Looks like they were using the solar storm to mask their approach.”
“Shit!”
Arek sent them into a sudden spin to avoid another unexpected volley of phaser fire and Devlynn stumbled forward, finally managing to brace himself on the back of the third officer’s chair. Rachel looked up at him, pausing as she worked the operations console—her face pale and drawn, but tightly controlled.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to make sure she was okay, or offer any comfort if she wasn’t. He lunged for the co-pilot’s chair and fell into position, letting years of experience take over—he’d need every one of those years to help get them out of this giant cluster-fuck.
“How the hell did they find us?” Devlynn snapped, desperately trying to locate a clear escape route while working to reinforce the shields at the same time.
“I don’t fucking know. Just find a vector to get us the hell out of here.”
“Shit! They’re everywhere! Incoming! Two-eight-six-nine!”
Arek banked hard then spun away on a crazy angle to avoid the approaching torpedo of their starboard bow.
Behind him, he was vaguely aware of the sounds of Rachel working away—doing what she could to help. In a quiet corner of his brain that wasn’t busy trying to keep them alive and get them the fuck out of there, Devlynn felt a sense of pride flow over him. He would have completely understood if she was too terrified to move, or even ended up hiding under the bloody console. But no. Not Rachel. She jumped right into the fray and beat back with whatever was on hand.
“Incoming transmission,” Rachel announced.
“Put it through. Audio only,” Arek shot back, still busy manoeuvring them through the enemy fire.
The comm. burst to life with an annoyingly familiar cackle of laughter.
“Hello, Arek. Nice of you to be so easy to sneak up on.”
“Razzein!” Arek spat in a low, angry hiss—his voice infused with the same loathing Devlynn felt for the puffed up, arrogant bastard currently trying to wipe them from the face of the universe.
“Oh! You remember me!” Razzein replied.
The staccato wash of high energy phaser fire splashed across the forward shields as a dozen fighters buzzed over their bow.
“You’re pretty hard to forget, asshole.”
“Why, thank you. Tell me, is Devlynn still alive and panting at your heels, or did you manage to get him killed off too?”
“Shut the fuck up!” Devlynn snapped, wanting to reach through the comm-link and wring the Lathorian’s skinny green neck.
He couldn’t spare the time to look over at Arek as he deployed the torpedo decoys, but he knew the reminder of Danni’s death would have hit the man hard.
“Ah! So good to hear you’re still with us, Devlynn. Though, of course, that’s about to change.”
“You’re so fucking dead, Dev!” a gravelly voice snarled through the comm-link.
“Ren sends his regards.” Razzein chuckled.
Fuck! Could this get any worse? Ren was a psychopath. A psychopath with a grudge. Devlynn hadn’t intentionally taken the man’s eye out in a brawl when he’d caught the man cheating at holocards, but when you ran with pirates you didn’t hold back or you might as well space yourself.
“Say what you’ve got to say and fuck off,” Arek said between clenched teeth as he banked hard again.
The Wyvern groaned under the strain and the console shuddered under Devlynn’s fingers.
Razzein tsked. “The boss wasn’t pleased when you up and left like that. I think your decision really hurt his feelings, Arek.”
“Fuck you!”
“Hardly.”
“We’re not going back.” Much as he didn’t like scratching and scraping to make a living running dead-end cargo, Devlynn didn’t want to go back to pirating with Fennrus. They had fallen into pirating by accident in the first place. The adventure and thrills had been exciting at first, but the cold viciousness that had gradually crept in over the past few years since the new ‘alpha’ had taken over turned Devlynn’s stomach. He wanted something different, something survivable—at least theoretically survivable. And he wanted it with Arek. And Rachel.
“No one said you’d be welcome,” Razzein observed nonchalantly.
“Nah!” Ren sneered. “The last thing the boss said was to bring some-a them back, Razz.”
“Oh yes! I think it was their heads, wasn’t it, Ren?”
“Yep. Don’t think he much cared for the rest though.”
“Shut him up, Rachel,” Arek snapped.
The comm-link instantly disconnected with a sharp chirp.
“Assholes,” Devlynn growled.
“Just as well he’s a fucking lousy tactician as well,” Arek replied.
Devlynn grunted in agreement. Razzein always was too keen to hear the sound of his own voice. As a pirate, he was notorious for playing with his victims. He could and should have made the first shot the last shot. Devlynn wasn’t going to complain, but it really was badly done on Razzein’s part.
Still, at least this way gave them half a chance. Slim as it was.
At that precise moment another torpedo slammed into them, shaking them violently—like a mowc caught in the jaws of a wrataar. The warning klaxon blared to life again as the stabilisers fought to control their erratic movement.
“What are we going to do?” Rachel’s cried out over the din of the battle—obviously fighting the panic that was edging into her voice.
Devlynn looked over at Arek—his captain, the man who’d got them out of more scrapes than he cared to remember—before he was forced to pay attention to his console again as the fighters and torpedoes continued to bombard them.
But even as he worked, he was completely focused on Arek’s silence. The blank look, devoid of any response or reaction to Rachel’s question, haunted him. For
the first time in his life, Devlynn wasn’t sure there would be an answer from his commander. A wash of fear swept over him, leaving a cold sweat in its wake.
He risked another look, and saw Arek’s jaw clenched—a course of action and the determination to follow it through clearly evident in his expression.
“Deploy decoys to clear a path on heading seven-four-nine-one.”
Devlynn forgot to breath. “But…that’s heading right into the storm.”
“Yep.”
“But—”
“Those bastards aren’t going to stop until we’re subatomic particles on their shields. At this stage, the storm’s the more forgiving option.”
Devlynn studied Arek for a few precious seconds—all stoic confidence and screw-you attitude—then turned without a word to follow orders. He only hoped they weren’t some of his last.
Rachel’s heart felt like it was beating in her throat, but no matter how hard she swallowed she couldn’t get the unruly organ to move back down. Swallowing wasn’t all that easy actually—the saliva in her mouth had long since dried up and left for parts unknown. She was, quite literally, scared spitless.
Explosions rocked the ship fiercely now as the pirates seemed to realise what Arek was doing and got desperate to finish them off before they reached the ‘safety’ of the storm.
“They’re calling the smaller fighters in,” Devlynn observed.
“Stupid bastards are going to follow us.”
While Arek’s assessment of the enemies’ lower-than-average IQ might have been accurate, Rachel wasn’t at all sure who won the prize for biggest idiot right now. She had a feeling it might have been her for jumping on an ex-pirating-turned-transport vessel instead of being curled up in a nice warm farmstead.
“Hold on. This could get a little rough,” Arek said as he accelerated to full speed, straight into the undulating waves of energy ahead of them.
Rough didn’t even begin to describe the brutal shock of entering the storm. Rachel was pretty sure her teeth were going to be bruised—if they all managed to come out of this alive that was. The Wyvern was battered mercilessly from all sides and all at once. Left and right, up and down. There would be a lull as they were swept between eddies, then the pounding would start again as they were swept up in another wave while they tried to bully their way through the solar storm.