Only the Walker Colonies and Port January were playing coy, but then, Port January had long been an Imperial base of operations.
She spied an empty row of bench seats facing the floor-to- ceiling viewports and headed for them, only to realize why they were empty. They were broken, their seat backs still connected but the seat bottoms stripped out. She turned and walked again past humans hunched into coats, children huddled close in a mother’s or father’s lap, and a few Takas lounging casually, not bothered by the cold at all, their furred hands and wrists sticking out of lightweight shirts or thermals. Shipyard patches on their chests marked them as returning workers.
The schedule board suspended over the center of the room flashed, catching her eye. A low groan went around the room even before she finished reading the advisory that all shuttles were delayed one hour due to heightened security concerns.
A baby wailed loudly.
Rya completely concurred with the sentiment and tossed her empty tea container into a trash bin.
Movement near the dirtside shuttle tubeway signaled a family vacating several of the benchlike seats— the delay likely meant time for a lavatory stop, or maybe food. Rya was only a row away. She quickened her steps, then slowed, her duffel bumping her hip. An elderly man and woman pulled themselves off the cold decking, tugging two toddlers with them as they ambled for the seats. A pair of hard-body guys did as well. Dockworkers, Rya guessed, noting their stained coveralls made from a heavy-duty tan fabric. Both wore dark high-necked thermals underneath. They were dressed to deal with the cold temperatures on the docks, not the artificially controlled environment on a ship.
She stepped in front of the men, blocking their path, trying to give the people with the small kids a chance to get there first.
The bearded hard-body stared levelly at her as she shifted her stance until she stood bladed to him, gun-side away. Ingrained habit. The man was about her age and not much taller than she was, maybe five-ten. But he outweighed her by at least sixty pounds, and Rya was no lightweight—a factor Matt Crowley had found less than appealing.
“I have hips, I have thighs,” she’d told him more than once when he’d patted her ample rump with some snippy comment. “Get used to it.”
The bearded man’s gaze dropped to her chest, as if he’d heard her thoughts.
Okay, so she had an ample chest too.
“Kind of you to let them have the seats,” she told him, bringing his gaze back to her face as her right hand found the small laser tucked against her back.
“Yeah, I’m Mr. Wonderful,” he drawled with a quick glance to his friend. His hands edged into his pockets.
She palmed the laser, flicking the setting to stun.
“So now I gotta go sit on the floor again,” he continued. “It’s real cold on your ass, you know. I think you should come and keep me warm.”
“I think you’ll do just fine by yourself.” She put her professional tone in her voice. “Have a good one, gentlemen. Now, move on.”
Maybe it was the tone of her voice, or maybe it was that Mr. Wonderful’s friend’s gaze flicked to her beret and down again, possibly catching the outline of the gun in the shoulder holster that even her womanly charms and leather jacket failed to fully hide. He nudged his friend. “Let’s go, Alvie.”
“Hey!”
“We’re going now.” Alvie’s friend grabbed Alvie by the arm and steered him in the opposite direction.
Rya tucked away the L7 at the small of her back and didn’t miss the low comment when they were a few steps away.
“Striper? Shit.”
No, not a striper. ImpSec Special Protection Service. Polite, professional, and prepared to kill.
She sighed, caught the grateful gaze of the elderly woman with the sleeping toddler in her lap, and shrugged her acknowledgment.
The shuttle delayed sign still flashed. Rya wandered away from the tubeway hatchlock and finally ended up leaning against the wall—holding up the bulkhead, as her father would say—where the corridor dead-ended into the waiting area. There was a heat vent overhead, the little warmth trickling out a pleasure almost beyond words at this point.
A few more people stood and filed out, tired of waiting or hungry, or both. Or just needing to move. Mr. Wonderful and friend claimed two seats quickly, but she didn’t intervene this time, because no one smaller, weaker, or older needed them.
She glanced away from them and watched the corridor instead.
That’s when she saw him. A solitary figure in a bluish-gray thermal overcoat that her mind automatically tagged as Fleet-issue, moving with a determined but limping gait. He leaned on his cane with every other step, the wide strap of a duffel a dark stripe against the fabric of his coat.
He was too far for her to see his face, but as he moved under the dim overhead lights, his short-cropped silver hair made her immediately tag him as a veteran. Not recent Fleet, then. Probably a casualty from the Boundary Wars twenty years ago.
Officer? Yeah, she tagged that too. It was in the way that he held himself, in spite of the pain and his limp. The set of his shoulders. The lift of his chin. Retired officer, silver-haired, probably in his seventies. Coming here at Commander Adney’s call?
God, were they down to that now? Relying on rheumy old men to try to stop Tage’s insanity?
An end seat on the long bench bordering the bulkhead became available when a fidgety young man in plain green coveralls pushed himself out of it and loped for the corridor. She slid quickly into it, next to a dozing Takan shipyard worker on her left. She’d give the space to the old man when he passed by, as he’d have to given his current trajectory. Then maybe she’d splurge on another half mug of sweet tea to thaw her insides and her hands. It was only money, and the damned shuttle—
The old man, about fifteen feet from her now, limped under a dangling spotlight, the harsh glow illuminating his face. And Rya, already rising to offer him her seat, was surprised to realize two things.
He was not an old man at all. And he had the most incredible blue eyes she’d seen in years.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, because that’s what she’d planned to say. And, old or not, he was still limping. Injured. Weaker than she was.
He hesitated slightly, those marvelous blue eyes narrowing in a face that was masculine in a classic, rugged sort of way that set her body to tingling. Damn.
“You want this seat?” she continued, tugging her duffel’s strap over her left shoulder. “I was just leaving. The shuttle’s delayed and seats are hard to come by in here. And this one’s under the heat vent.”
He stopped in front of her and leaned on his cane.
Rya looked up. Yeah, up. Six-two, three. Stocky, maybe two thirty-five. Fleet thermal coats were a thin fabric. He had wide shoulders, a muscular neck, and a dual shoulder holster. She judged that too.
Something flashed over his face, a wariness, then it was gone.
Her beret. He was Fleet. He knew its significance: ImpSec. And if he’d ever worked out of Aldan Prime, he knew it could also mean assassin. But his features had relaxed, and he wasn’t reaching for whatever rested snugly in his shoulder holsters. Not Fleet inner circle, then.
A baby wailed somewhere behind her, its cry dissolving into a series of hiccups.
“AWOL,” Rya said quietly in explanation of her headgear, because that wasn’t all that far from the truth. Then she said a name and watched for his reaction. “Adney.”
Confirmation came in the slight lessening of tension around his mouth, an almost imperceptible nod.
“That’s pretty much why a lot of us are here,” she said, her voice still low. She didn’t know why she’d added that information. No, she did. For some reason she couldn’t define, but based on her cop’s sense she’d honed over the past few years, she trusted this silver-haired man. It wasn’t because he was attractive. She appreciated attractive—okay, her body did—but her mind knew attractive could just be a shallow package. This was something more. He was …
He exuded something. An aura of command, of respect?
Yes, command and respect, now that she thought about it.
But more than that, she sensed that Adney’s request was why he was here. And she wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. Because in addition to the aura of command that ringed him like an impenetrable halo, she also felt a deep loneliness in him. A heavy weight that maybe had something to do with his injury, or maybe not.
But it was there and it was palpable.
And it wasn’t just her cop’s instincts telling her that but her years as the daughter of Lieutenant then Commander then Captain Cory Bennton.
“Would you like to sit, sir?”
“How long is the delay?” His voice was deep, resonant.
“One hour, max, due to heightened security concerns.”
He was shaking his head in dismay.
The Takan on her left rose to his feet and called out to a group exiting toward the corridor. They waved. He headed for them in a long, striding gait.
When Rya turned back, the silver-haired man had let his duffel drop to the floor next to his boots, its strap still in his fingers. It was heavy, but he wasn’t going to let it go or out of his sight.
“This is never a pretty maneuver,” he said, and, twisting slightly, angled himself down into the vacant chair.
She sat in the Taka’s seat, dropping her duffel to the floor. She caught the tail end of a half smile, half grimace on his face and realized her error. She’d said she was leaving.
“My leg thanks you,” he said with a hint of wry humor, “but my ego is severely deflated.”
She grinned back, doing another mental tally of him as he wedged his cane into a niche on the benchlike seats, then dragged his duffel between them. Early to mid-forties, perhaps; the silver hair was an anomaly. It was thick and, judging from some still-dark patches, had once been a rich brown about as dark as her own. Odd that he hadn’t tinted it. Most people did. No one wanted to be mistaken for old.
Maybe he didn’t care what people thought. That piqued her curiosity as much as his injury.
“Accident?” She pointed to his right leg, extending stiffly out.
“Let’s just say negotiations with a possible enemy combatant didn’t go as planned.” He adjusted his coat as he spoke. She glanced at his hands, looking for a wedding ring, then chastised herself at the small warmth she felt on seeing his ringless finger.
She studied his hands again. They were square, strong, the backs dotted with scars.
No mere pretty boy, this former Fleet officer. Engineer, she thought. Or chief of maintenance. Worked with his hands and cared little about gashes and barked knuckles.
“And the loser bought the beer?” she quipped, because part of his mouth was still quirked when he’d answer her question. Not a real combatant, then. Probably a bar fight.
“Something like that.”
His expression sobered.
God, when would she learn her flippancy wasn’t appreciated by everyone? The guy had probably been respectfully called Chief by dozens of subbies, and here she was making light of his injury.
The schedule board flashed again, halting whatever apology she was hastily throwing together and hushing a good percentage of the conversations around her.
This time there was a definite announcement. A two-hour delay for the shuttle to the moon colony, and a four-hour delay for the shuttle to Seth’s shipyards. The shuttle for Umoran, however, would arrive in fifteen minutes. Boarding would commence ten minutes after that.
Sighs of relief mixed with groans.
“God damn it.” This softly, from the man next to her. Well, he’d tagged her as Fleet as clearly as she had him. What were a few epithets between friends?
He leaned forward as if to stand, then stopped, slumping back slightly, his gaze pinned on the wide viewport across the waiting area as if he could see all the way to Seth. Or the shipyards.
Shipyards, she guessed. No doubt as to that being his destination. He hadn’t questioned her use of Commander Adney’s name.
His eyes narrowed, his brows furrowed. She’d seen that look on her father’s face when he was forced to make decisions he didn’t like. Or when decisions he wanted to make weren’t possible. The shuttle delay clearly had this man on edge.
“Life’s not going to change all that much in the next four hours,” she commented, her voice low.
He slanted her a glance. The hard, angry emotions she saw in his eyes startled her and almost had her reaching for her L7. But he looked away, removing the immediacy of the threat. Still, she watched his hands, because she knew he was armed. One fist clenched.
“It already has.” He spoke suddenly, his voice as low as hers but harsh. “Tage hit Corsau an hour ago.”
She felt her eyes widen. He was looking at her, studying her, not only anger on his face but grief.
“No.” She breathed out the denial, her chest tightening. “How bad?”
“Bad.”
She motioned to the solitary vidscreen hanging in the far corner, flickering with images of a concert in Port Chalo last year. “There’s been nothing—”
“I noticed. I’m guessing the dockmaster doesn’t want to deal with a panic situation. Or the news simply hasn’t been cleared for the civilian outlets yet.”
“Where did you hear about it?” Maybe it was rumor. Maybe it wasn’t true.
“From an Alliance captain.” Blue eyes studied her again. “I don’t have four hours to waste. How many besides yourself are here to see Commander Adney?”
“No direct knowledge, sir. But guessing from dockworker uniforms, and discounting families, I’d say thirty or forty.” She motioned to a group of men and women about her age seated in the first three rows nearest the shuttle tubeway. “My flight out of Calth Nine got in late. They were already here. I haven’t talked to them, but they haven’t reacted to any shuttle announcements for the moon colony or Umoran.”
She shifted her gaze to their right. “Those three males at our two o’clock position. Middle one in the white thermal, two females in black behind him. They all feel like Fleet to me, or maybe one of the dirtside forces.”
“How long were you with ImpSec?”
She looked at him. “Four and half years, sir.”
“Academy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Last posting?”
“ Sub-lieutenant with SPS, Calth Nine, sir.”
That rewarded her with a raised eyebrow. Special Protection Service officers were not only polite, professional, and prepared to kill but received additional undercover and high-security operative training. And the old man next to her knew that.
No, not remotely an old man. But the Old Man. He’d known she was ImpSec. He’d known Adney was a commander, even though Rya hadn’t volunteered that information. She felt his rank even more strongly from him now, in the tone of his questions, in his demeanor.
“Well, Subbie, we’re about to make the passengers wanting to go home to Umoran very unhappy,” he said. “Can you handle it?”
“You intend to commandeer the shuttle?”
“I do.”
“I can handle that, sir.”
“Find out who’s here for Commander Adney. Discreetly. Put them on alert. While you do that,” and he shoved himself, grimacing, to his feet, “I’m going to enlist the help of the local stripers.”
“Whoever’s chief probably won’t like that. You may have to get clearance from the dockmaster.”
“I fully intend to.” He lifted his duffel—clearly heavy—effortlessly. “Ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” She fought the urge to salute and instead watched him head for a striper standing in the corridor, realizing she didn’t know his name or rank. Not that it mattered. There was something very familiar about him, something that resonated in a distant yet warm part of her heart. Something that told her she not only trusted him but that she’d follow him into the jaws of hell and out again. And never regret it.
Philip watched the wariness increase in the striper’s eyes as he approached. No rank pins dotted the thin man’s brown shirt. A rank-and- file officer, then, meaning he’d have to contact his superior, who’d contact his superior … More delays. Not four hours’ worth, however.
One hour Philip could live with. Four or more hours he could not. He’d almost called back the Nowicki, but she’d kicked engines hot on departure. Her return at this point might gain him only an hour, hour and a half at best. And it would delay what the Nowicki had to do.
No, he needed to commandeer that shuttle scheduled for Umoran. He needed his people on the way to the shipyards now.
“Officer Holbers,” he said, reading the name tag as he slowed at a safe and respectful distance from the man with the god-awful Blue Surger across his back. “I need you to contact your chief and your dockmaster immediately.”
Holbers’s demeanor shifted from bored to very bored. “Them shuttles run late all the time. There’s nothing—”
“I’m Admiral Philip Guthrie. I just came in off the Alliance cruiser, the Nowicki. You can verify that while you contact your chief.”
Holbers’s dark eyes bugged out slightly in his thin face.
“Now, Officer Holbers.”
“You got some ID?”
“I do. Upper right pocket.” Philip raised his hand slowly. “I’m also armed. I’d appreciate it if you don’t shoot me.”
“Uh,” Holbers said.
God save me from moronic stripers, Philip pleaded wryly, pulling his ID from his pocket. Not like his strapping young subbie, who’d tagged him as ex-Fleet as easily as he’d tagged her, dark-blue ImpSec beret notwithstanding. There was a keen intelligence in that face, in those hazel eyes that watched, categorized, and quantified everything. She’d already identified those who might be there for Adney and those who were not. That part reminded him of Chaz, but little else did.
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