by Mina Carter
“No, it’s an experimental. My engineer built it from the ground up. Uses the JM100 array but with AI tweaks.”
“Okay, you decided to use an untested comp on Icaria. Did I tell you already you are freaking nuts?”
“Yeah, you may have mentioned it a time or seventeen. What do I do now?”
Silence filled the comm-line again.
“Hey…” He reached over and tapped the comm to make sure it was working. “You still with me? What do I do now?”
She sighed. “Nothing. If the comp’s dead and you can’t fly manual, you’re screwed.”
His heart stuttered in his chest. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Wait, what? I can’t do anything? At all?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. You need your ears cleaning out? Let me damn well think, would ya?”
Kel leaned against the dead helm console and resisted the temptation to beat his head against it. There was no point. Abusing the console wouldn’t reboot the computer and would just give him a pounding headache.
He groaned. After all the time he’d spent in the sailing community trying to build up a good reputation for himself as a serious player, he’d gone and blown it all by getting carried away with the Artemis. Why on Terra hadn’t he tested her on another road first? Why Icaria?
“Start powering down.”
The order was brisk and businesslike. Kel frowned, wondering if she’d ever been in the military. She certainly had that ring of command in her voice. He bit back his initial resentment of being ordered around. He was a war-commander…an enhanced soldier with a system that cost more than most people made in a lifetime. Several lifetimes. People just didn’t order him around. Except he needed her help, so he was just going to have to suck it up.
“I’m going to extend my shielding to bring you aboard. There’s a port just above you that leads onto the cargo deck. Make it snappy or I cut you loose.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kelwin dropped his pride and started flipping switches. One by one, the consoles on the tiny bridge went dark as the Artemis closed down. He left the shields until last, his hand hovering over the switch as he looked through the plexi-glass canopy above him. Without the backup of the atmospheric shielding, even the hardened plastic wouldn’t stand up to shit.
Like a child blowing a bubble, the iridescent shimmer of the bigger ship’s shielding expanded and enveloped the Artemis. As soon as the bubble snapped shut, Kel killed his own shields.
Almost before his hand left the switch, he was moving. He grabbed a bag and stuffed it with the few essentials he’d unpacked. Luckily, war had taught him to travel light. Bag over his shoulder, he took a last look around the darkened bridge.
“Maybe next time.”
With that promise on his lips, he popped the access hatch and started the climb up the side of the bigger ship to the port above him. Still as fit as he had been in the service, it didn’t take him long to ascend the ladder. The port slid aside as he approached. Funny, he’d thought the ship was too old to have anything as fancy as motion detectors. His gaze swept the plating below the canopy. Smooth as a steel-skinned baby’s ass—there was nowhere to hide the sensors. She must have gotten lucky with the timing.
“Are you getting your ass in here or what?” A yelled demand from over the comm spurred him on. Shoving his pack ahead, Kel wriggled through the gap and landed in an ungainly heap on the other side.
The port snapped shut behind him like the jaws of an irate dog, almost skinning his heels in the process. He rolled to his feet, his weight balanced as he automatically assessed his surroundings for danger. Several cargo containers looked back innocently.
Closing his eyes, he ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. When was he going to learn there weren’t Alkari warriors waiting around every corner to attack? The war was over, done…he was retired.
Retired and should be living the high-life.
Instead he was fucking about pretending to be a solar-sailor and having to be rescued like a damn damsel in distress. Sighing, he grabbed his pack, nodded to the containers and walked along the narrow catwalk toward the bridge.
Heart in her throat, Nerys blanked her face and waited for her guest to reach the bridge. Of all the people to get into trouble, why did it have to be him? And in a place she couldn’t refuse to offer help. No one left a ship to its fate out here. Ever. It was the law—the code of the roads—and if anyone broke it, then they could forget working Icaria or any road. The gods must truly loath her.
Footsteps rang on the metal ladder from the cargo deck as she swung the Lady back out into the main current. Perhaps he wouldn’t recognize her. It had been ten years, after all, and she’d changed a lot. She wasn’t the wide-eyed naive teenager she had been. These days she looked more like her mother than her father, thank the gods. A little cosmetic work had enhanced that impression, altering her features slightly so she could work without being recognized, and the years had matured them. A new name and even her own father wouldn’t recognize her if she stood in the same room. Not that she planned on getting near that self-serving piece of shit anytime soon.
“You took your time,” she grumbled as Kelwin reached the top of the stairs. She concentrated on bringing the ship in the middle of the current to avoid having to look at him. The helm fought her. Gritting her teeth, she threw her weight against it, all the muscles of her arms standing proud as she forced it into submission.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was a limited-time offer.”
Without the slight crackle of the comm, his voice was richer and deeper than she remembered it. Of course, he’d only been in his late twenties when she’d known him, fresh from the war but still young. Now he was older…he would be fat, she decided. All that muscle had to have gone to seed. And bald. Yeah, he was nearly forty—he had to be bald by now.
She pushed irritably at a loose strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear as she kept the Lady on track. She’d wasted an hour helping Kelwin, and with the added drag of his ship strapped to the Lady’s hull, she needed to haul ass now.
“The offer isn’t, but I’m not on the road for my health. Cargo needs to be delivered, and I’m not losing my bonus for a pretty-boy who should know better.”
“Where’s the rest of your crew?”
She shrugged. “You’re looking at it.”
His laughter was rich, deep and annoying as hell. “What? A little thing like you? Pull the other leg—it plays ‘Glory of the Fleet’.”
They hit a swell so hard that golden particles sprayed up across the canopy. The deck skewed to port hard. Nerys hid her grin as she heard him slide off his perch, picturing a near-tumble down the ladder onto the cargo deck below.
“Watch your feet there—this part of the road is a bitch.”
A swift glance whilst he recovered his balance took her breath away. Moving to lounge against the post by the ladder, arms folded and his foot hooked into a restraint loop, he looked as if he’d been born on the deck of a solar-ship. He wasn’t fat or bald—not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he looked the same as he had on their wedding day…if a little more rugged and hellishly handsome. Unwanted heat hit her down low, her body reminding her that she was female and had needs she’d been ignoring for way too long.
“So I gather.” His voice was clipped, and the sharp look he gave her said he suspected she’d skewed the deck on purpose. “Well, since you were good enough to rescue me, I can repay the favor by helping. Where do you want me?”
Oh gods, the temptation. Nerys cleared her throat and nodded toward the navigation readouts on the main console. “There. Keep an eye on the pre-plotted course. Thanks to the delay, I’m gonna have to take a few shortcuts to shave time off the journey. I hope you’re okay being dropped at Staten group HQ. That’s where I’m heading.”
She didn’t expect an argument. It was part of the code. If you were picked up, you didn’t argue with the destination, just thanked your lucky stars someone had been th
ere to help you out.
He grinned, a flash of white teeth in his tanned face. “Sit down, don’t touch anything and stay out of your way? Got it.”
She was beautiful and hauntingly familiar. Kel lounged on the foldout Put-U-Up stool at the main console and blatantly studied his rescuer. A petite redhead, she had the sort of figure that made a man want get down on his knees and thank the gods he’d been born with a cock and balls. Lush hair tumbled around her shoulders in a cloud of curls he just ached to run his hands through to see if they were as silky and soft as they looked. And that was all before he got to her face. Heart-shaped with feline-cast grey eyes that lent her an aura of the exotic and full lips that led his thoughts down all sorts of carnal paths.
He’d seen her before—he was sure he had. But where? Frowning, he searched his memories for a female with her characteristics but came up blank. Odd—his implants must be on the fritz.
“It’s rude to stare.”
He arched an eyebrow. If she’d looked at him twice since he’d come aboard, he’d be surprised. Perhaps she hadn’t been joking and she really was into women. Everything male in him rebelled at the thought. He hoped she wasn’t—not looking like that. A soldier’s wet dream, she was made for bedding.
Unbidden, his mind filled with the image of her spread over his bed with all that fiery hair like a halo around her head. His cock hardened, a savage ache. How long had it been since he’d had sex? Shifting on the stool, he tried to ease and conceal his erection at the same time. It wouldn’t be polite to show such a reaction to his rescuer. He didn’t feel anywhere near polite at the moment, but his mother had tried to instill manners in him. Some had actually stuck. The rest…well, they’d disappeared the day they wheeled him into surgery and installed all the fancy-schmancy hardware that made him a killing machine.
“I wasn’t staring. I was merely…worshipping your beauty.”
She favored him with a look over her shoulder, skepticism clearly written on her features. “Yeah, right. Stop taking the piss and keep your eye on that nav. If we’re late, I’m counter-charging you for rescue and recovery.”
Kel gave her a mock salute and studied the readouts again. There was no point—as soon as he mentioned she was off course, she’d already changed it. How she was anticipating the twists and turns of the currents, he didn’t know, but somehow she was.
He settled back and stole a few more looks. She seemed oblivious to his interest. How could she not realize what she looked like or the power of her own allure?
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.
Was it his imagination or did she pause before answering? A split-second pause but still there, which left him to wonder why. Didn’t she want him to know her name?
“Rhys Devin.”
Rhys Devin. He rolled the name about in his head a couple of times. An unusual name for an unusual woman. She’d have to be—not many women took to the solar roads, but from the faint golden sheen over her skin, he could see she’d been on them for a few years.
“Pleased to meet you, I’m Kelwin—”
“Sayeed,” she finished for him as she swung the ship into another swell. “Yeah, I know. You were a big war hero at one time.”
Kel’s eyes narrowed. She knew who he was. Either she came from a military family or she’d followed the progress of the war and its major players, or… Okay, maybe those were good enough reasons. During the war, the Soldiers had become mini-celebrities, the public fascinated by the process to take a normal man and turn him into an enhanced combat operative, the risks they took and their higher sex drive. Back then he couldn’t walk past a vid-screen without seeing one of his brothers-in-arms on it.
Still, he couldn’t shake a feeling of familiarity.
“Er, yeah. I was. Long time ago now, though.” He stopped and looked around as another question occurred to him. The bridge was empty apart from the two of them, the hatch to the crew quarters open and battened back. “Hey. If you run solo, when do you sleep?”
She gave him her back to look at. It was a nice back. The traditional sleeveless vest of a sailor laced up the sides and across the shoulders, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of tanned skin. Leather was the only fabric that had a chance of standing up to the discharge particles that reached through any shield, no matter how good. Even so, it toughened, baked in the rays, and had to be replaced often. It was easy to spot an older sailor—they wore leather rather than a normal fabric shipsuit and their skin was usually a dark golden color. Rhys was young—in her twenties somewhere—but already her skin had changed. He found the sheen as erotic as hell.
Icaria was at least four days’ travel. No one could stay awake that long, unless…
His voice was iron-hard. “Tell me you’re not using Euphoria.”
A product born out of the war, the drug was as addictive as it was stimulating. He’d used it in the last months of combat when the fighting got so bad he’d begun to think he’d been born with scarlet skin. It kept a soldier awake for days on end, but the cost was high—way too high. Years of broken sleep, fractured dreams, nightmares inhabited by the people he’d killed.
And she was using it to stay awake. Anger filled him. No one needed to use Euphoria. Not just to save time or money. The damn stuff was a weapon, designed to keep human weapons like him running faster and longer.
His fists clenched at his side and he breathed deeply. One day, sometime soon, he and others like him would bring down the Euphoria dealers and take the vile stuff out of circulation. Until then, he’d work out if she was using, and get her off it…
Chapter Three
“Huh? What? Where did that come from? No, I am not using ’Phoria.”
Nerys’s voice echoed her disgust at the thought of using the drug, and she didn’t look at him as she lined up for the Onaris turn. One of the trickier parts of the road, it was an S-bend with an inverted camber that caught a lot of ships—and their captains—off guard.
There were reams of advice out there on how to deal with Onaris. Every old sailor had a story and a recommendation, and she’d heard them all before she’d even set sail on Icaria. After ten years of running the road, she’d developed her own method of dealing with it.
Straight down the middle, hammer down, hell for leather.
Gritting her teeth, she lined the Lady up. As she did, she reached under the helm for the restraint rope and clipped the carabiner onto one of the loops on her wide belt. Spinning the retainer, she punched the button to retract the maneuvering engines into their cradles. They were sturdy, but even so…they wouldn’t stand up to the fury of Onaris.
“Clip in,” she yelled over the roar of the surf. “This one’s going to be a little rough.”
“Who…what?” Kelwin’s blue eyes widened in surprise as he glanced over the bow at the view ahead of them. “You’re not…lady, you are fucking crazy!”
“And this is news how? Woo-hoo!” she yelled in sheer exhilaration as the current snatched them and the ship lurched forward.
The sails above snapped taut and the Grey Lady did what she was best at—she flew. Straight and true, she took the treacherous bend head on. The current roared around them, surging to port until the waves rose high above the canopy. Concentration in every line of her body, Nerys pushed the heavy ship hard into the starboard, hugging the lip of the inner curve.
Behind her, Kelwin started to pray aloud to the gods of war between cursing her for being an insane bitch out to kill him and wondering what evil he’d perpetrated in a previous life to deserve to die so young. She hid her grin as the first curve spat them out. A wall of golden spray reared ahead of them, and death stared them in the face. If they hit it at the speed they were going, then they wouldn’t be sailing the solar road anymore—they’d be on their last voyage into the lap of the gods.
The wind whistled over the canopy, penetrating enough to whip her hair around her face. Whooping again, she swung the ship hard, canting the rudder to skew them through the current. T
he Lady slid sideways, her stern riding the rise a little. But the current had them and Nerys’s hands were iron-hard on the helm as she caught and piloted the inner curve on the opposite side of the bend. Gold rose again, almost surrounding them as the star-scape opened up ahead of them.
“By the gods, I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that before.” Kelwin’s voice was filled with admiration. Unable to help herself, she shot him a grin over her shoulder.
During the second her attention was distracted, disaster struck. With mere meters to go before they were clear of the bend, the ship lurched to starboard. The Lady creaked in protest, the high metallic scream chilling Nerys to the bone.
“Fuck, what’s that?” Kelwin’s voice was wary.
With a swift spin and flick of her wrist, she disengaged from the safety rope. Another movement locked the helm off. Not that it mattered. Something had the ship. The stern was yanked around as then hull screamed. If they couldn’t pull loose, then the road would tear the Lady in half. Her heart thundering in her chest, she raced across the deck away from him and looked over the side.
“Hey, is that safe?” Kel demanded, grabbing her arm as she pushed off again, passing him on her way to the other side. His face was grim, worry lurking in the depths of his blue eyes.
“Is war safe?” she shot back and shook herself loose to carry on. “No, and you wouldn’t be asking a soldier than question. Would you?”
Reaching the side, she looked over and bit back a gasp. A black mass reached out of the gold, long tentacles wrapped around the slight protrusion of the starboard engine.
“Fuck it! Spacial architeuthis.”
She pushed off from the side as Kel reached it to look over, leaving him there to race across the deck. There was nothing for it—they were going to have to ditch the engine. The tentacles she could see were only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the creature was hidden under the current, but judging from the size of the arms, she knew it could easily overwhelm the Lady. Destroy the ship just for the treat of her tiny maneuvering engines.