Hierax: Star Guardians, Book 4

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  It wasn’t that hard imagining herself developing feelings for a smart engineer. Even if he was arrogant, somehow, he managed to be charming rather than irritating, for the most part. Nobody was perfect.

  “It felt good,” Hierax said, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb and gazing up at her.

  The urge to kiss him flashed through her, and those hot tingles returned to her groin.

  She swallowed. “I should clean your face. It’s bloody. You look like something Treyjon’s svenkars chewed on.”

  “I shall happily endure your ministrations.” He closed his eyes and tilted his chin back, the model of a good patient. He did not, however, let go of her hand.

  Oh, he wasn’t gripping it hard, and she could have pulled away, but if he wanted her touching him, she wouldn’t object.

  Leaving her palm resting on his abs, she took the wipe with the other hand and rubbed the damp material over his jaw and his cheek. His nose wrinkled at the antiseptic smell, so she didn’t linger, though she wouldn’t have minded tracing the lines of his face with her fingers. Her lower hand did start to roam, as if it had a will of its own, running over the ridges of his abs, then up to stroke his pectoral muscles.

  “You probably shouldn’t take off your armor,” he said, sighing.

  “No…” she agreed, wondering what had prompted the statement. “I wasn’t thinking about it.”

  His eyes opened and that boyish grin returned. “I was.”

  “Oh,” she said, not sure what else to say, though her cheeks warmed again. She’d finished cleaning off his face, so she tucked the wipe away.

  “It seems that fondling should go both ways, don’t you think?”

  “I…” An image flashed into her mind of them both naked in a bed in a dark bedroom somewhere, of him cupping her bare breasts, then lowering his head to trace them with his tongue.

  “But we should be ready in case danger comes.” He sighed again. “I should put my armor back on.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, trying to banish the bedroom thoughts from her mind.

  Besides, with him, it probably wouldn’t be a bed in a bedroom. He would want to show her his tools, and then maybe he’d take her hand and pull her into some dark alcove in engineering. He would push her back against some machine that pulsed with power against her back as he leaned into her and kissed her, his rock-hard body pressed against her front, his cock thrusting against her.

  Damn it, what could one kiss hurt?

  She leaned down, watching his eyes to make sure he wouldn’t object, though if he was thinking of fondling her, surely a kiss wouldn’t bother him. His eyes widened slightly, but he parted his lips and lifted a hand to the back of her head, pulling her close. Several of her braids had come free, and they tumbled about their faces, but she barely noticed.

  Their lips melded together, and Indi’s body hummed with electricity, the hot tingles from before escalating to a searing fire. He returned the kiss with enthusiasm that surprised her, given how indifferent he’d seemed to the idea of sex before. Maybe he was also imagining them in his engine room, limbs entwined as they pressed each other up against machinery.

  A clank sounded at the door, and Indi scrambled backward and grabbed her helmet. If that door opened, the atmosphere would whoosh out of the room.

  Hierax sprang to his feet, cursing as he snatched up his armor.

  The door opened, and air was blown out with an audible gush that tugged Indi’s braids away from her head. She grabbed them, even as the air thinned and the warmth of the room vanished. She stuffed everything into her helmet. It wouldn’t fasten. She joined Hierax in cursing, a chanting stream of curses that she couldn’t stop, even though she knew she should conserve her air.

  She patted all around her head, trying to figure out why her helmet wouldn’t fasten. There, damn it. More braids were sticking out. She jammed them up behind her head with fingers quickly growing numb from the frigid environment.

  A white bolt flashed through the doorway and slammed into the far wall, blowing up a gauge. The drones?

  Indi raced and grabbed her gauntlets—they’d skidded most of the way to the exit—careful not to show herself to whatever was firing from outside.

  As she straightened, two drones backed through the doorway.

  She almost screamed as she leaped away.

  “Take cover,” someone yelled over her comm.

  “What the—”

  Hierax grabbed her arm and pulled her back so hard that she tumbled to her knees. He pushed her down, and her faceplate clanked against the floor. Weight came down atop her. Hierax?

  “What’s going on?” she yelled, not wanting to be on the floor and vulnerable if those drones zipped in, firing all over the place.

  A brilliant flash of white answered her. Something pelted her side. Many somethings. Shrapnel? Had that been an explosion? Would her armor end up punctured?

  As the light faded, Hierax jumped off her and ran across the room. He had his helmet on, but he hadn’t gotten his torso armor on yet. His tank top was shredded, and fresh bloody wounds gouged his back and shoulders. God, could he even breathe? Would he freeze before he ran out of air?

  “Hierax!” she yelled, pushing herself to her feet. “How can I help?”

  She watched in horror as he dropped to one knee.

  9

  By all the gods in the pantheon, he was freezing.

  With shaking fingers, Hierax fastened his torso armor. His ribs ached, but enough adrenaline was flooding his veins that he barely noticed. His helmet flashed alerts at him, letting him know how low the oxygen in his tank was. He should have been figuring out a creative way to refill it while he’d been in a room full of air—hells, he had his tool bag. He could have improvised a pump. But no, he’d been kissing Indi instead.

  He was a fucking idiot.

  Not that there was anything wrong with kissing a woman who liked math puzzles and remembered the names of his tools, but it could have waited until they were back on the ship and off this planet full of trouble.

  At least friends strode into the room, four men clad in black Star Guardian armor, rather than enemies. Though with the way they were hurling explosives around, maybe using the word friend was delusional.

  “Damn, sorry, Chief,” someone said—that sounded like Ensign Renshu, a tank of a man who’d won wrestling at the Olympics before being recruited to the Star Guardians. “We weren’t expecting you to be, uh—”

  “Why weren’t you in your armor?” another voice asked, this one cool and condemning. That was Lieutenant “Killer” Ku from the bridge, weapons officer extraordinaire. He’d probably thrown the grenade.

  “I was injured, Lieutenant,” Hierax said, reminding the man that he outranked him, even if he currently felt like a fool. He finally secured his armor and turned to face the newcomers, glancing toward Indi to make sure she was all right.

  Of course she was all right. She’d gotten all her armor back on in time. Idiot that he was being today, he’d instinctively grabbed her and thrown her down, intending to protect her when he’d seen the grenade hurtling through the doorway. That would have been far nobler if he’d been wearing all his armor.

  “And now I’m more injured,” he added, his voice scathing, even though he was more irritated with himself than the men.

  They had no doubt been trying to save him from the drones, drones that now lay in a hundred pieces on the soot-stained floor.

  “Sorry, Chief,” Renshu repeated. “We came to rescue you. Guess we got it wrong. That’s why we’re the beta team.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Ku said. “I go on any team I wish.”

  “No, no,” Hierax said, ignoring Ku. He regretted his huffy words. Renshu was a good kid and didn’t deserve a dressing down for this. “The rescue was…” About five minutes too early, he thought, wishing he’d had more time to explore that kiss with Indi. Then again, that would have been a bad idea. It might have gone to places that would have involved sheddi
ng even more armor. Then he truly would have been in trouble. “The rescue was fine,” he said. “Glad you found us.”

  “We found everybody,” Renshu said, his tone brightening. “And we found something else. Something you’re going to want to see.”

  “Is our entire team back together and uninjured?”

  “Better.” Renshu waved and led the small team out of the room.

  Indi looked at Hierax as she headed for the doorway.

  “You all right?” Hierax asked, wanting to say more, but now that they had their helmets back on and shared the channel with the other Star Guardians, he did not want to discuss anything personal.

  She looked at him again, but he struggled to read her expression through the faceplate with her headlamp shining at him. “I wasn’t hurt. Sorry, I—” She glanced toward the backs of the four Star Guardians walking ahead of them. “That was a mistake. You could have been killed. We both could have been. It won’t happen again.”

  Hierax frowned. That wasn’t what he had wanted to hear. She sounded like she blamed herself. She might have kissed him first, but he’d been the one encouraging her to rub his chest. He might not have done that without the painkillers mellowing him more than usual, but he still couldn’t put the blame on her or anything else. He’d been enjoying her caresses. A lot.

  Besides, blame wasn’t what he wanted to assign or worry about now. He needed to make sure she didn’t think she’d been at fault for anything. And he wanted to let her know that he didn’t regret the kiss, no matter how much his back stung right now, and no matter how many pieces of shrapnel he was going to have to ask Dr. Tala to dig out later. As soon as this was all over, he wanted to invite Indi to engineering so they could spend more time together.

  But that was far too much to say over the comm, especially since Ku had already glanced back at them a couple of times. Was Hierax walking too close to Indi? Suggesting intimacy? Not that it was any of Ku’s business if Hierax wanted to be intimate with someone.

  He bumped Indi’s hand with his own, wanting to find a way to let her know that everything was fine. Better than fine. They could get together later and—

  She stepped to the side, putting space between them without looking in his direction.

  Hierax’s shoulders slumped, her words ringing in his mind. It won’t happen again.

  Maybe she wouldn’t join him in engineering, after all.

  • • • • •

  “This isn’t the structure with the energy source that we were trying to get to,” Hierax noted as Ku’s team led him toward a huge building, somewhat similar in size and style to the hangar he and Indi had tried to reach when they’d been fleeing the drones.

  “Nope,” Ku said. As always, a man of many words.

  “This is what you should have been trying to get to all along,” Renshu said, sounding smug and glancing back, like someone about to spring a surprise birthday gift.

  The team strode toward a huge opening in the hangar. It had the usual twelve sides, though the shape was elongated and sideways, making it large enough for shuttles to fly through.

  Hierax spotted Treyjon walking around inside with his helmet off. A forcefield must have covered the doorway, keeping the atmosphere in and heating the space. Hierax didn’t care how nice the air was in there. He wouldn’t risk taking his helmet off again. Not until he was back in his comfortable engineering room on the ship. Or—he grimaced as one of the gouges in the back of his shoulder twinged—in sickbay.

  “You can step through it,” Renshu said as the team approached the opening.

  He grabbed the bottom ledge and hopped over it.

  Hierax waved for Indi to go ahead of him, having gotten into the habit of watching out for her, even though she wasn’t likely to need help in a building secured by two teams of Star Guardians.

  “Where you been, Chief?” Treyjon slapped him on the shoulder as soon as he stepped inside.

  Glad his armor kept that from hurting any more than it already did, Hierax said, “Exploring the under-city.”

  “Ah, is that it? We thought, when you disappeared with Indigo, you might be exploring each other.” Treyjon offered an affable grin to Hierax and Indi.

  Hierax knew it was meant as a joke, but it hit uncomfortably close to home.

  “Truth be told, I’m exploring broken ribs and a back full of shrapnel,” Hierax said to deflect the joke. “We got shot at by drones, and I fell through a roof. The roof fell through after me.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Where did the tube end up taking you?”

  “Here.” Treyjon stretched an arm toward the dim interior of the hangar.

  Since one of the system’s suns had come up and was blazing light through the opening, Hierax had to squint to see into the interior. He made out a huge object raised on a series of stands and platforms. All manner of crane-like, articulating equipment hung from the ceiling and dangled over it. Was it some half-constructed spaceship? It didn’t look much like a spacecraft, or any other kind of craft, but what information he had read about Wanderer vessels was all speculation.

  “After a crazy journey through the bowels of the city, we came up on the other side over there,” Treyjon said. “And we’ve since figured out that the drones were trying to direct us here from the beginning. It’s possible they were programmed to prefer peaceful interactions and never would have opened fire if we’d simply gone where they directed.”

  “Oops,” Ku said, though he didn’t sound that remorseful about the drones he’d blown up.

  “Woo figured out that they were never firing with that much power,” Treyjon said. “More like herding vulfar, nipping at your heels to get you going the right direction.”

  “They had quite a nip,” Hierax said, remembering how the drones had drained his forcefield. But he acknowledged that a real weapon, something like a bolt bow, would have drained it much more quickly.

  “Clearly, we were an obstinate flock,” Treyjon said.

  Captain Sagitta walked over with Lieutenant Coric, their presence surprising Hierax. It was turning into quite the party down here, with the new team, the original team, and several more Star Guardians considering the object taking up most of the building. Hierax wondered who was left on the ship. Maybe the Gaian women were in charge. Or Treyjon’s svenkars could be running things.

  Hierax wanted to explore the facility and figure out what everyone was looking at over there—was it a good thing that the drones had wanted them to come here?—but he supposed he had to talk to the captain first. Sagitta wore his armor and helmet, but the faceplate didn’t quite hide his intent I-want-answers expression.

  “Nice of you to join us, Chief,” Sagitta said.

  “I was busy injuring myself. I don’t suppose you brought Dr. Tala down?”

  Sagitta frowned. “No, we have a dearth of suits small enough for women. How badly injured? Do you need to go back to the ship? I’d prefer you look at the gate first.”

  “I’ve got about three hours until the painkillers start wearing off, at which point, I need to be in sickbay or I’ll end up curled on the ground in the fetal position. Unless some fascinating alien tech distracts me. I might forget about the pain then. Wait, did you say gate?”

  Hierax’s first thought had been that the captain referred to the one anchored at the edge of the system. But as Sagitta gazed pointedly toward the object Hierax had thought looked odd for a ship, realization struck him like an axe cleaving into a tree.

  Not hearing the captain’s response, Hierax walked toward the object—the gate?—feeling dumbfounded. And insanely curious.

  His walk turned into a run, and he did a big lap around the gate. It was on its side, which was why he hadn’t recognized it, and he’d also never seen one from so close. Out in space, as ships flew toward the gates, the sides appeared to be smooth, but the surface of this one looked like a cross between a circuit board and blue corrugated cardboard.

  He leaned in close to examine an uneven crevi
ce. Magnify, he ordered his helmet, and a portion of the faceplate turned into a lens, zooming in on the sides of the crevice. They were jagged, but he knew it wasn’t random.

  “It’s like a fractal antenna,” he said, not surprised fractals would come in again. “Do the gates talk to each other? Transmit and receive data? We’ve never detected that before, have we? Is it possible they’re communicating with each gate in the network with some type of communications technology we don’t know about?”

  “I was hoping you would have more answers than questions,” Sagitta said from behind him.

  “If we were playing trivia, I would, but this is…”

  Hierax reached out and laid a hand on the surface of the gate. He promptly had the urge to touch it with his bare skin. After double-checking the atmosphere—once again, there was heat and air—he tugged off his gauntlet. He ran his fingers along the rough metal.

  “Do you think he ever touches his lovers with that much reverence?” Treyjon asked.

  “What lovers?” Hammer asked.

  Hierax flushed and made a point of not looking at Indi. He wasn’t embarrassed that they’d shared a kiss, but they shouldn’t have been fooling around during a mission. Besides, he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him now.

  She had followed him over to examine the gate, but so had Sagitta, Coric, and the two Star Guardian teams, so it was hardly a private moment. If anything, Hierax felt like he was on display. Most of the people were looking at him instead of the gate. They probably wanted him to say that all they had to do was figure out how to get this into space, anchor it in the system near where the broken one was, and turn it on. Then they could leave.