Quantum

by Jess Anastasi

  What he wouldn’t give for one of Callan’s big-ass machine guns right about now. Over thirty rounds in just a few seconds, and that scum-bastard Reidar would be on the floor. Rian shoved his pulse pistol away and yanked out his nucleon gun. He ducked his head around the edge of the counter, leading with his gun.

  Faulkner had closed in on their position, but before she could fire off another blast, he kicked it up with the nucleon gun. Round after round peppered her body, but the alien still managed to stay on its feet. The power chamber in his nucleon gun only sustained about forty shots, and he hadn’t bothered packing a spare when he’d left his room that morning.

  At last, the alien tumbled backward, the ion blaster knocking free of her grip as she hit the floor.

  He pushed up from behind the counter but didn’t stop firing, getting in a few last rounds as he approached the body. When he got closer, he eased up on the trigger and edged forward, ready to light up again if she so much as twitched.

  As he watched, the face of Alyssa Faulkner kind of melted away, features shifting and changing until the Reidar underneath was revealed.

  Ella brushed against his arm as she came up beside him. “It’s dead, Rian.”

  He didn’t lower his gun but chanced a quick look at the priestess. “Are you sure? How can you tell?”

  She laid her hand over his on the nucleon gun and urged him to lower the weapon with gentle pressure. “I can sense all life force, and this creature’s is fleeting.”

  He studied her calm expression. Okay, chalk that up to one more freaky ability of hers he hadn’t known about. For about the millionth time, he wondered what else she was capable of, and what the aliens wanted with her. Which, in a roundabout way, brought up questions about the Reidar presence on this no-account world. Just what was going on here?

  “Goddamn it, after we found that lab, I should have known one of these bastards would be lurking nearby.” He shook his head as he jammed the gun away.

  He glanced over his shoulder, taking in the number of unconscious officers and destruction from their short battle. At least he and Ella had a way out now—the ion blaster had left a hole in the doorway and the wall of the law offices, letting in a glimpse of the street outside.

  “We’ve got to go. If Faulkner really did call in the IPC military, or worse, some kind of Reidar reinforcements, then we need to get off this planet.”

  Ella nodded, but she wasn’t looking at him; she was staring at the body of the dead Reidar. “What are we going to do about her?”

  Rian returned his attention to the prone form, a ripple of unease skittering through him. The sight of those things in their true form always brought back recollections of those torturous months he’d spent in that lab on Cassius. Part of him wanted to simply leave her, let it be someone else’s problem for a change. Except he knew what the Reidar would do to this planet if one of their kind was discovered by the locals.

  “We’ll have to take the body. I’ll find somewhere to dump it a few blocks away so it liquefies before anyone sees it.” Not that he wanted to touch the thing, but unless he didn’t care about seeing this planet turned to dust, he didn’t have much of a choice.

  Shutting his mind down against the task, he bent and hauled the body up, slinging it across his shoulders. He walked ahead of Ella and ducked out into the deserted street. A few people peered cautiously out of windows and doorways as they hurried away from the building. Obviously, the commotion inside the law offices had sent the locals into hiding.

  No one tried to stop them as they headed back to the Imojenna. In fact, they pretty much didn’t come across another person. Halfway there, he found a big enough waste disposal unit to dump the body. Rian kept glancing over his shoulder, sure that if there’d been one Reidar, there had to be another somewhere just waiting to take Ella and him down. But they made it to the empty field of the spaceport without trouble. He huffed a sigh of relief as he slapped at the atmospheric door controls.

  Zahli came down to meet them on the cargo bay floor. “What the hell happened?”

  “Reidar.” He brushed by Ella and jogged up the steps two at a time. “The IPC military might be on their way. We need to leave, now.”

  “But what about the charges?”

  “That’s the last of our frecking problems right now.”

  Rian made it to the bridge as the ship rumbled to life. He dropped into the captain’s chair and swiveled toward Lianna.

  “Making a run for it, are we?” Lianna asked calmly, getting the Imojenna off the ground and bringing her up and around to gain altitude.

  “Do we ever leave a planet any other way?” He leaned back in his chair and blew out a long breath, shoving his hair off his face.

  “We’ve got company,” Lianna reported in an even but urgent voice.

  “What are we looking at?” He sat forward again as short-range scan data flickered across the viewport.

  “One ship. IPC Ravager class. Fully loaded armaments, counting six personnel onboard, coming in hard and fast.”

  “A specialized tact team.” Obviously the IPC backup Faulkner had been talking about. But was it IPC or a shipload of Reidar here to take Ella and him? There were no IPC outposts anywhere near this system, so a tactical or retrieval team couldn’t have gotten here this fast if Faulkner had only called them this morning. It would have taken days—which meant they’d already been on their way.

  The Reidar wanted Ella and him like no one’s business, so why hadn’t Faulkner made her move as soon as they’d hit dirt on this backwater world? Because she’d been waiting for her backup to arrive? It was the only explanation that made sense.

  “Bring the mannequin into play.”

  Lianna nodded and half swiveled her chair to access another area of her control screen. Sometimes when they were in the central systems, they traveled under forged registration beacons. If a passing IPC ship or outpost scanned them, the registration file had to hold up across several layers of information. It took time to swap out the Imojenna’s real registration with the fake ones. But when they needed a cloak, and fast, they used Callan’s override they called the mannequin. For a quick scan, it would give the impression they were a different ship entirely.

  “Mannequin is online. Thirty seconds to crosswire.” Lianna swiveled back to face the viewport, where the two separate dots of the Imojenna and the Ravager class ship tracked closer together. Rian closed his hands around the edge of his console, leaning forward as the two dots came together, and Lianna cleared the viewport to show sky. The Ravager streaked toward them on an adjacent angle. In another moment it had flashed from sight. The console beeped, alerting them to the fact they’d been scanned, but as he’d hoped, it had been a quick, superficial check.

  He blew out a short breath, pushing his hair off his forehead.

  Clearly taking a convoluted route across the galaxy to get to Barasa had been a massive waste of time—they’d still run afoul of the Reidar. Had the damn bastard aliens infiltrated every planet in some way? He should have put more thought into exactly why he’d wanted to land here after getting that hinky feeling.

  He scrubbed both hands over his face, the latent frustration forever simmering within him heating up and pushing outward.

  If the frecking aliens were everywhere, there was absolutely no point in trying to avoid them. And if what Faulkner had told him the night before was true—that some people in the IPC military questioned the intergalactic terrorism charges laid against him—then maybe he didn’t need to work so hard at avoiding his ex-employers, either.

  Of course, he was going on information from a scum-licking parasite, so he’d contact a few of his old war buddies to confirm the rumor.

  He braced an elbow against the armrest of his chair and set his chin against his hand. “Lianna, scrap whatever roundabout nav you set to get us to the Swift Brion. I want us on the most direct intercept route.”

  Lianna glanced at him with a concerned expression. “But that will take us righ
t through—”

  “I don’t care where it takes us, just do it. I don’t want to waste any more time skulking through the galaxy while the Reidar do god knows what to advance their incursion.” He swiveled away from her to face the viewport, which was getting steadily darker as they reached Nadira’s upper atmosphere and headed out into the black beyond.

  He waited until Lianna had set a new course, which he then double-checked. Frecking great. They had to fly through cold-space to get there. They’d have to skirt around, adding an extra day to their journey.

  Since he’d just left Nadira with trumped-up murder charges hanging over his head, and considering the whole intergalactic terrorism thing, he couldn’t risk taking the Imojenna through the stretch of space the IPC had declared a no-fly zone due to some kind of outbreak that had ripped through four planets and left less than 5 percent of the population alive. The IPC didn’t want to risk the super virus getting out to the rest of the galaxy and obsessively enforced the borders with extreme and deadly prejudice.

  “Adjust navs so we skim cold-space, but don’t actually cross any IPC lines.” He stood, glancing over to see her make the adjustments. “I’ll be back on deck later. Comm me—”

  “If anything comes up. I know. You tell me the same thing every time you leave the bridge. I think after three years, I’ve got it covered.”

  Rian shot her a hard look. “Oh, yeah? What ever happened to that ‘help wanted’ ad I had you draw up last time we were on the Rim?”

  “It’s stored in the Imojenna’s archives. As if anyone would even apply to work a decommissioned Nirali class.” She cut him an unimpressed look, though he could tell she wasn’t really worried. And she didn’t need to be. It’d be a freezing day in hell if he ever replaced his nav-engineer. Without her, the Imojenna would have literally fallen apart years ago. Unfortunately, Lianna had a clue of just how irreplaceable she was, which was why he put up with her good-natured impertinence.

  “I’d have to beat applicants off with a stick. Who wouldn’t want to be on a ship with a legendary war hero?” Yeah, he could make jokes at his own expense, but he could never quite keep the cynicism out of his voice.

  “And your humility is my favorite thing about you, Captain,” she retorted as they cleared Nadira’s gravitational pull.

  Rian shoved his hair back and moved around his console. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got dead alien goo to wash off.”

  “Because when there’s a body, it’s just another day on the Imojenna,” Lianna muttered as he left.

  He quickly made his way down the steps, wanting to wash and then find himself a drink while he tried to work out exactly how he was going to play the situation with the fake Zander.

  As Rian reached the bottom of the stairs, Ella stepped out of the galley–slash–common room.

  “Not now, princess.” He didn’t pause as he passed by her and headed toward his cabin.

  Despite the growled words, she followed him into his office. “I have been thinking of all that has happened since we landed on this planet, of the pattern we walk in the greater scheme of all life, trying to assimilate where these unknown, outside forces fit into things.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her, hating it when she spouted doctrines like she was in some temple, cowing the masses. “Is that uncertainty I hear from the Arynian priestess?”

  Her brows dipped, not exactly in a frown, and not exactly in confusion, but it was definitely an expression of insecurity.

  “On Aryn, we are taught that all life is sacrosanct, no matter its form, even those who are other that we do not acknowledge or understand. But ever since I left Aryn, I have learned a great deal. I was never afraid before. There is still not really anything in this universe that does scare me, except—”

  She crossed her arms, pensive gaze focused on nothing.

  Rian turned to face her and leaned against the front of his desk. “There’s no shame in being scared of something. It’s part of what makes us human.”

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. “It’s not that. Fear itself is not the issue. It’s what I have learned, what I have sensed of these creatures. I think the elders on Aryn can’t have really experienced these beings firsthand or they would know—”

  She swallowed, the haunted shadows in her moss-colored eyes sending a shaft of alarm slicing through him. He straightened and stepped closer, a small part of him wanting to comfort her, but of course, he couldn’t bring himself to touch her.

  “They would know what?”

  At last, she looked back at him. “These beings view us much like we view chimps, as somewhat sentient beings but well below their level of evolution.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.” Rian’s mind wasn’t able to process this latest development. Later he would think on it and work out how it fit into the Reidar puzzle. But one problem at a time. First he had to wash, and then he had to deal with the fake-ass captain admiral on the Swift Brion.

  “Well, considering we ganked Faulkner, console yourself that it’s one more Reidar down. Only a quadrillion left to go.”

  Ella didn’t even crack a smile at his lame joke. Her uneasy expression was starting to give him the bejeebees. He’d rather take on an armada of the IPC’s finest than see the usually calm and collected Ella looking so unsettled.

  The foreign urge to comfort her continued building in his chest. But what did he know about comfort when his talents lay in hurting and killing?

  Still, he released a quick breath as he pushed at his hair, searching for words that might help her. “I know things have been hard for you since you were taken from Aryn, but we’re safe enough onboard the Imojenna. And right now, there’s nothing to do besides take yourself back to the galley and make a cup of that godforsaken tea you like so much.”

  Her gaze settled on him, a small smile edging onto her lips. “You’re not actually trying to comfort me, are you, Rian?”

  “Impossible. As if I ever think about anyone but myself and my own ambitions. You’re totally imagining it.”

  She shook her head, though at least her expression wasn’t so troubled any longer.

  “A cup of tea sounds perfect. Would you like me to make you a coffee while I’m in the galley?”

  Before he could answer her, his personal comm chimed, and he flicked at it with annoyance. Now what? He couldn’t even get five minutes to wash off dead alien goo without getting interrupted?

  “What is it?”

  “Captain, I’ve received a comm from a ship called the Ebony Winter. Captain Qaelen Forster wants to speak with you,” Lianna replied through the device.

  Qaelen Forster? What in the fiery pits of Erebus did he want? It’d been five, no, six years since he’d last talked to the man. Long before this mess with the Reidar and Forster had become one of the IPC’s most wanted marauders. He tried to imagine what could have possibly prompted the call… Nope, got nothing.

  “Did he say what it’s about?”

  “He said”—Lianna cleared her throat—“he’s got information about Mae Petros and Zander Graydon.”

  Rian exchanged a quick look with Ella then yanked off his shirt as he ducked into his room. He grabbed a cleanish one off a pile of clothes at the foot of his bed and shrugged into it as he took off toward the stairs. Whatever the news might be, he couldn’t imagine it’d be good, especially considering the way these past few days had played out. But come hell or invading aliens, he needed to know what had happened to two of his closest friends.

  Chapter Twenty

  Onboard the Ebony Winter

  Zander leaned farther over Forster’s shoulder, trying to read the data on the crystal display. “Is Rian taking the call or not?”

  Forster used his elbow to shove him back a step and then glared. “I don’t know, I’m still on hold. And you getting all up in my personal space bubble like a two-credit hooker on a cashed-up dirt-leave soldier isn’t helping any. By the way, you’re totally paying me back for however much this
is costing me.”

  Zander took another step back and crossed his arms. “You want credits? Take it up with the alien currently in control of my bank accounts.”

  Forster cracked a grin. “Is it sleeping in your bed and banging your missus, too?”

  “Hilarious. I think you missed your calling as a professional comedian.” He turned his attention back to the screen before he did something totally unhelpful like punch Forster in his smarmy face.

  Forster opened his mouth, probably intending to say something even more moronic, but the comm chimed.

  “Forster?” Rian’s voice came through, and the viewport flickered to show him standing on the bridge of the Imojenna.

  “Good hail, Sherron.” Forster leaned back in his chair and nodded to the side. “Got a couple of stowaways here who insisted on speaking with you.”

  Rian’s gaze shifted, and Zander couldn’t help grinning at the stunned expression that flitted across his old buddy’s face. Unfortunately, it was quickly replaced by sharp suspicion.

  Zander held up a hand. “Before you start trying to accuse me of not being myself, let me assure you that I’ve been almost killed more times this week than all those months we spent in the dead zones of Minnea. If you’re looking for an alien impersonating me, call up the Swift Brion.”

  Rian hooked a hand into his weapons belt. “So you know about that, huh?”

  “Yeah, and I’d be dead three times over by now if it wasn’t for Mae signing on as my admiral’s assistant. I believe the two of you know each other?”

  Mae stepped forward from the back of the bridge, sending Rian a quick wave. Rian’s gaze flicked over to her then shifted away. “Yeah, I’ve known her almost as long as I’ve known you. She’s real good at saving people.”

  Zander glanced down at Mae, though her expression seemed to be carefully neutral. Obviously there was a story behind their relationship. A small surge of acidic jealousy rose up, but he shoved it down. This wasn’t the time or place to get all territorial over Mae—plus, he’d tried that once before and it hadn’t gone down so well.