The guy looked him up and down, scrutinizing. He probably wasn’t used to meeting anyone taller than him, but Xander tended to tower above everyone he met like an English oak in a field of bushes. “You’re kinda big for a doctor.”
Xander laughed. “What can I say? I take fitness seriously.”
“Daniel Viljoen, by the way. I run the Combat Department. Mind if I sit here?”
“Please.” Xander gestured him to an empty seat. “What do you think of the Jemison? This is my first time on one so large.”
“The ship is good. Top-notch facilities. Some of the crew needs whipping up, but that’s my job.” Viljoen grinned, flashing white teeth.
“Guess that means I should expect a high visitation rate in medical? I’m not used to having a lot of work.”
“Heard they’re sending us a bunch of mutants and mechies. That’ll keep your hands full right there.”
Xander stiffened at the slur. “Cyborgs dislike the term mechie.”
Viljoen only smiled. “I guess you’d be the expert on that.”
A blonde sergeant arrived with their trays before Xander could snap out an irritated reply. And then she drank them both in with unabashed, unmistakable interest. He’d seen her type before. There were always at least a handful on every ship. Nothing ever changed, but he’d learned to be polite without encouraging them.
“Thanks,” Xander muttered, dismissing her.
Viljoen leaned close and lowered his voice. “That one’s the leading rank-tagger around here.”
Another filthy term twisted his stomach, sent daggers lancing through his gut. Guys like his dinner companion deserved a hard right hook in the mouth. Xander forced down bites of mashed potatoes to stall his response, and it worked until he stole a glance at Viljoen, to see him hanging on anxiously. “Yeah? Every command’s got to have one, I guess.” He didn’t particularly want to become a notch on anyone’s figurative bedpost.
“The Jemison has her fair share.”
“Know it from experience?”
The man smirked. “I don’t kiss and tell, but there’s plenty who do. Besides, nothing in the rules against mingling. Heard there was back in the olden days.”
The tension wavered and diminished, disintegrating with each bite of food and forced sip of water. “As long as they don’t bring it to medical. You don’t want to know how many requests I’ve received to perform gyno services since my licensure. It isn’t even my field.” He gulped down the water that accompanied the meal and took a quick glance at his watch.
“Ha! I’ll just bet.”
“Anyway, thanks for the lowdown of the ship. Guess I’ll be seeing you around.” Combat guys always ended up in medical eventually, prone to taking their training beyond safe limits.
“Nice chatting with you, Doctor.”
Xander stood and strode from the Wardroom, in no rush to chat with Daniel Viljoen again.
Chapter Two
Thandie Kruger had only served on a single vessel since her enlistment seven years ago, but the chance to transfer to a ship with its own cybernetic specialist was an opportunity she couldn’t miss.
What had startled her the most was that the request had come in from Commodore Bishop himself, a damned hero from the Terran-Lexar Rebellion. Having a cybertech on-board his ship had only sweetened an already awesome deal.
As an added bonus, the Jemison was a damned beautiful ship, far more advanced than her last command vessel.
After checking in with the ship’s administration and receiving her bunk assignment, she spent her first couple days learning the layout between her duties in the armory and meeting her peers. Her direct supervisor was a chief with a reputation for his laid-back demeanor, the sort of guy who didn’t put a lot of pressure on his division as long as they were on time and worked hard.
And then there was Commander Viljoen.
Like the ship’s commanding officer, Viljoen had made a name for himself in battle a few years back when a few societies broke free of the United Nations of Earth and decided they’d go and join the Lexar’s sworn enemy—the Zaecady, a race of insectile beings with a hunger for all humanoid flesh.
Looking back at history, she wondered why humans enjoyed working against their own self-interests.
According to some of the tales out there, Commander Viljoen had saved an entire human colony from becoming overrun with drones. She’d actually looked forward to serving with him, but the ideal in her head hadn’t matched up with the reality. He’d taken one look at her service record before summarily dismissing her like she was trash.
“We’ll see if your upgrades are worth a damn in the ring. Gear up. Training begins in five minutes.”
An hour later, after a grueling physical, she stood in sweat-dampened shorts and a tank alongside a line of her fellow marines, both her living and cybernetic fists wrapped in sparring mitts while Viljoen kicked off the day’s combat instructional by hurling a poor new guy across the mat.
Thandie winced. “Is he always like that?” she whispered to the young man beside her.
“Oh yeah. Guy’s intense. He really takes our training seriously. Says he’d rather be the one to fuck us up in a closed environment than to see us die out in the field, you know.”
“I suppose that makes a morbid sort of sense.”
“Yeah it does, plus I kinda get a sick sense of pleasure when the guy he has facedown is an asshole.”
Thandie laughed quietly.
“Anyway, you’re new, right? Name’s Lopez. I’m on the ground assault squad.”
“Thandie, and I hope to join you.”
The next sparring match began. While she appreciated that the commander didn’t pull punches for the females, she dreaded going up against him. He took down his next opponent in under two minutes, pinning her to the mat with his knee pressed into her spine. Thandie winced.
And so it went for the other half dozen members of the training session. Lopez held his own, but he was nursing a swollen jaw with an ice pack held to his face.
“Kruger, you’re next,” Viljoen barked.
“Good luck,” Lopez muttered.
She stepped into the training ring and studied the muscular man across from her. Wherever Thandie was stationed, she was always among one of the tallest women on the ship, measuring in at a little over six feet. Despite that, this guy had about three inches on her and a good hundred pounds of pure muscle. And despite going up against the other marines, he still hadn’t broken a sweat.
“Let’s see what you’ve got, Kruger. Come at me.”
Without further prompting, she moved in, choosing to focus on her speed and agility versus his strength. She ducked his first swing and went in with a precise jab to his left kidney, maneuvering around and behind him instead of making the obvious blow to the solar plexus. Cheers went up from her fellow crewmen as she danced out of reach again.
For a man built like a living tank, Viljoen whirled with unexpected speed, nothing about his expression betraying the fact that he’d just taken a hit that would incapacitate a lesser man. She threw up her cybernetic arm to block his strike and grunted. He hit like a hammer. Put on the defensive, she moved back and regained the space between them.
They both advanced at the same time, Viljoen leading with a kick she knocked aside with her strengthened arm, twisting at the same time to kick his knee. Back and forth they went, exchanging blows. The first trickle of perspiration rolled down the officer’s brow.
About damn time.
Spotting an opening, Thandie went for his side again, sacrificing her defense to get a hard strike in. Viljoen’s fist hit her square in the sternum and knocked the breath from her, but she came back with a lip-splitting uppercut. The commander wiped the blood from his mouth and narrowed his eyes.
He chopped her in the shoulder, the side of his hand pounding the seam of her living bone and cybernetic implant, sending pain resonating through her nerves. She blocked it out and thrust him back from her with a palm-heel strike
from her throbbing right arm.
She recovered in time to weave to the side and avoid another left-right combo. She swept aside his right cross like she was batting away a kitten, finding a pattern to his attacks. And since her kicks were her greatest strength—next to her implants, anyway—she used them to her advantage by going for his thighs and shins, each blow brutal in execution and too fast for him to get an attack in. She had to keep him on his toes.
“Holy shit,” someone muttered from the sidelines.
The longest anyone had lasted in the ring with Viljoen so far was two minutes. Someone clocked their spar at three.
Just as she prepared to triumph over the commander, Viljoen surprised her with a shin scrape, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her in close enough to headbutt her. She stumbled back, temporarily blinded by the pain as blood trickled down her face.
He capitalized on her moment of weakness with a brutal punch to her cybernetic shoulder. The strikes came hard and fast, and it would have been punishing to her forearms if not for the benefit of the reinforced metal limb shielding her. Thandie grunted and yielded ground a step. The man must have lifted weights ferociously for hours a day to compete with cybernetic muscle.
He didn’t aim anywhere else.
The shoulder took another hit, and before her blurring vision clarified, he planted the sole of his boot in her shoulder with a hard kick that sent pain rocketing down her spine. All of his weight must have been behind it, every ounce of his power dedicated to one strike. She hit the mat, trying to scramble to her feet the moment it was under her.
But Viljoen was on her again, strapping her arm between his powerful legs.
Trying to pry apart his thighs was like moving two boulders. She squirmed and fought, hitting him with her left fist, pulling with the right, but he’d damaged something earlier and the arm malfunctioned instead of effortlessly sliding free.
He wrenched again, and something in her shoulder popped. The zinger traveled up and down her back, sparking little explosions of pain everywhere from her fingertips to her hip. She hadn’t even known all of those things were connected.
Her world was misery and fire, worse than the injury that had taken the limb from her in the first place. Agony paralyzed her, froze the rest of her body until she couldn’t comprehend breathing, let alone moving.
Viljoen twisted again. “Yield!”
The spectating crowd was on the proverbial edge of their seats. No one spoke. They were waiting for her to masterfully escape a crippling hold that was five seconds from reducing her to tears. Weakly, she tapped the mat with her left hand. She didn’t trust her voice enough to speak.
He released her and stood. Didn’t even have the decency to pull her off the floor.
“Dismissed.”
The commander strode from the training room. The second the doors closed behind him, the overbearing silence shattered and everyone started talking at once.
“I totally thought you had him, Kruger.”
“Are you all right? You looked green there for a second.”
“That was amazing.”
She wished they’d all shut up. The words blurred with the pounding in her head. Lopez chased off her nearest admirers and knelt down beside her. “Want me to walk you to medical?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. A few aspirin and some sleep and I’ll be fine.”
Four hours later, after she’d taken the max dosage of aspirin, Thandie’s black and blue shoulder disagreed.
Bright lights activated across the training room, and intermittent blips glowed from holograph apertures scattered around the expansive room.
“Is this honestly necessary?” Xander asked. “It’s only my second day aboard the ship and I’ve been in medical all day.”
“I know, but I can’t send you out into the field without verifying that you’re not soggy around the middle, mate,” Ethan replied.
Xander patted his flat abdomen. “Soggy?” All that those months spent on Paradiso had given him nothing but time to hit the weight room and vent his frustration. “You wish you looked as good as me.”
“Put your money where your mouth is, Xander. I do this with all my officers. Lieutenant Shahid holds the speed record for the course, by the way.”
“Haven’t met him.”
“Her,” Ethan corrected. “Intel. Nice Astreyan girl. Pretty, too. You’d like her.”
“Ethan.”
“All right, all right. I was only saying. Besides, she’s seeing some bloke in Navigation, I think. So that ship has sail—”
“Ethan.”
“Sorry. Are you ready?”
Despite his friend’s good intentions, Xander held no illusions about involving a woman in his future on the Jemison. He wanted to work. Romantic entanglements, no matter how casual, weren’t in the cards.
“I’m ready.”
Ethan tapped in the final sequence and the empty chamber immediately morphed into a full military training course. Cubes, ramps, stairways, and ladders rose from the floor and slid from the walls and then a holographic overlay gave them the appearance of a mountainous stronghold. A synthetic sun blazed overhead, with lights so intense that sweat beaded on Xander’s brow.
“You don’t do anything half-arsed do you, Ethan?”
“Nope.”
A buzzer activated and they took off at a sprint down the room’s length. Xander’s longer stride gave him an advantage and he reached the first station ahead of Ethan. A series of human silhouettes popped up behind various obstructions and opened fire on the pair. Bright red paint splattered against his side, accompanied by a sharp, breath-stealing punch in the ribs. The painful rubber bullets within the paint capsules reminded their marines that errors came with a price.
“Five second penalty,” Ethan whooped, ducking past him. He aimed his training pistol and fired at the programmed assailant.
How did a man in his fifties move so quickly? Xander swore under his breath, loathing Ethan a little more with every step.
They raced through the obstacle course, ducking into cover, bobbing and weaving as necessary, sliding beneath shelter and surviving make-believe hazards. Droids sprang from nooks and crevices to perform hand-to-hand combat maneuvers while automated turret guns attempted to mow them down with a hail of agonizing, non-lethal rounds.
Holographic projections paired with physical components created a realistic scenario without live opponents. Xander blocked the merciless, rapid-fire assault from a four-armed mech, staving off punishing strikes aimed at his face and upper torso.
“You dancing or fighting?” Ethan taunted from fifteen feet above him.
Xander blocked a hit with his left arm and struck with his right. A green flash cleared him to continue forward after the penalty ended. Ethan had moved ahead of him, and he clung precariously to a wall designed with as few handholds as possible. He didn’t use a harness. Those wasted precious seconds.
Not to be outdone, Xander ignored the climbing rig and hurried up the rocky surface.
Xander gained better time on the thirty-foot wall, and they were practically neck and neck when they each heaved over the edge. His booted feet pounded the ground for the finish line. He lunged for it, powerful legs launching him across the end zone seconds before Ethan’s arrival.
Fuck yes.
While Ethan slumped over with both hands on his knees, Xander feigned nonchalance, like a few moments of their match hadn’t been a close call. “I haven’t run one of those since battle school. You make everyone do this?”
Ethan laughed. “Only the best on my ship. This is a better way to assess them than that jargon in their personnel records. It’s personal.”
“Fair enough. C’mon, let’s see the results.”
Xander took a long drink then activated the computer panel on the wall, prompting a holographic display of their course and stats.
Ethan grimaced at the readout. “Damn. You always have been a be
tter aim than me. Still, you ended up with more holes in you. I know you’ve got Lexar blood in you, mate, but I hope you don’t take these risks on actual missions.”
“Never. Anyway, have I proven to you yet that I remain up to performance standards?”
“I’ll allow you to pass.”
“Appreciated,” Xander replied dryly.
“By the way, I have plans to run through a secret quest I found in Spellbound. Our usual tank said he’d be on tonight and we could use a healer who won’t stand about with his thumb up his arse when we need him. Interested?”
Xander considered the offer. He and Ethan both participated in the same guild of a popular online video game. It was a hoot when their schedules matched together. “That isn’t a terrible idea. I could use the R&R.”
“You also have nothing better to do than to join your good friend in a heroic virtual reality game. We can never find a better healer than you.”
Xander grinned at Ethan. “Well, when you put it like that.”
“Hit the showers and have a brief kip on your cot before meeting up with us. You’ve earned it.”
“I would, but Oshiro organized a medical staff meeting I’m going to be late for, thanks to you.”
Ethan chuckled. “Give Oshiro my apologies for delaying you. See you tonight in game.”
Long after Hart, Oshiro, and their techs left the meeting, Xander remained behind with Dr. Matthews to discuss the latest discoveries in microbiology. She seemed like such a nice girl—young woman, he corrected himself—but her interest in nanite technology impressed him the most. Cybertechnology and Nanotechnology were like bastard brothers to one another sometimes.
Needing to be in his room within the hour for game night with Ethan, he hurried from medical to the Wardroom to grab a bite to eat. Maybe even take a sandwich back to the room with him. With that plan in mind, he veered for the quick-grab line rather than sit and order a meal.
The broad-shouldered blond ahead of Xander offered his hand. “You must be Commander Vargas, right? Heard a fair bit about you. I’m Lieutenant Etherington. Engineering.”
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