by Robyn Bachar
Gabriel sighed and focused on the gentle rhythm of Lindy’s heartbeat where her body pressed against his, and the whisper of her breath against his skin. Coming here, accepting this mission, had put Lindy in precisely the sort of danger he had broken her heart to avoid. He had been such an idiot—filled with the righteous certainty that he was doing The Right Thing, and that he had hurt her to protect her. Now he understood that he had no business making a decision that important about their relationship without consulting her. Lindana had had a right to know, to decide whether or not to continue on or break things off. And of course Gabriel had promptly blundered into making that mistake again, charging ahead with his orders instead of trusting Lindy.
Trust. That was the heart of their problem, perhaps at the heart of the entire galaxy’s problem. Everyone was wound so tightly while living in constant fear of each other, waiting for the other side to strike. Humanity suspected traitors among their friends and family instead of enjoying the blessings they had, and spent their lives braced for sudden but inevitable betrayals.
Gabriel was through living like that. Lindana made him want to be a better man, and by God, he would do his best to never disappoint her again. He wanted a better life, and he wanted to start that life now.
“I can’t sleep when you’re thinking so loud,” Lindy muttered. She stretched and yawned, and he smiled sheepishly.
“My apologies. Go back to sleep.”
“Can’t now. You have to spill what was fueling that frown.” She propped herself up on her elbow and peered at him.
“I have something for you. I’ve been carrying it around for years, God knows why. I’ve even worn it on a chain around my neck when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself.” Gabriel activated the lights, slid from the bunk and liberated the copy of Pride and Prejudice from his pack. The pages were marked with a golden ring looped through a fine chain necklace, and he held the jewelry up for Lindy to see. The thin golden band was adorned with a sparkling diamond, and it swung ponderously back and forth as Lindana blinked at it with a stunned expression.
“Whoa. That would buy a lot of power converters.”
“I bought it for you when I returned to New Britain for my father’s funeral,” Gabriel explained. “I was going to propose on our anniversary, but the spec ops recruiter was waiting for me before I even left the planet.”
Lindana snorted, though there was a slight sniffle to the sound. “You should’ve sold that and put it toward your debt.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. A drop in the bucket.”
“Oh.” Lindy tore her attention from the ring and met his gaze. “I’m not saying yes. We’re not there yet.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth for a moment and Gabriel’s cock roused at the sight, distracted by thoughts of the wicked things her lips had been doing earlier. “Maybe you should wear it for now. It’s pretty. Like you,” she added with a mischievous grin.
Something fluttered in his heart, a rush of hope with sharp wings. “Then I will wear it until you deem yourself ready.”
“Until we both deem ourselves ready,” she corrected. “This is a two-way deal, Lieutenant. You’re still learning that.”
“I am.” Gabriel joined her on the bunk and rolled her beneath him. “Now that we’re awake, is there anything else you’d care to educate me about?”
Lindana kissed him. “Definitely.”
* * *
The blare of an alarm shocked Lindana out of a deep sleep. She jolted up and whacked her head on the low ceiling over her bunk, and was promptly elbowed in the ribs by Gabriel.
“Ow! Watch it,” she snapped. Then the ship suddenly dropped out of hyperspace and they both tumbled onto the floor. Lindana landed hard on her ass, sure that the impact bruised her tailbone. She cursed and barked for the lights to turn on—in English, which the Soviet computer ignored. Gabriel supplied the correct word in Russian, and they both blinked in the sudden illumination as they scrambled for their respective clothing.
“Is that battle stations?” Gabriel asked.
Lindana frowned as she attempted to judge the correct pitch of the alarm. “Fuck if I know. You’re bleeding here.” She tapped her forehead to indicate where Gabriel’s fall had gashed a bleeding slice across his forehead, and then she activated her comm. “Bridge, report.”
“There’s an emergency in the engine room,” Jiang said. Lindana wondered if she ever slept. “The hyperdrive is offline and we’re bleeding fuel.”
“What’s their status?” Lindana asked.
“They’re not responding.”
“Keep us updated. Gabriel and I are headed there now.” She pulled her shirt over her head.
“Saboteurs?” Gabriel guessed.
“Probably. Could be related to the damage Kowalczyk caused. Best to be prepared.” Lindana belted her pants and added her machete. She handed Gabriel her pistol, and he smiled grimly.
“We should have slept in my quarters. I have a rifle.”
“It’s not about the size, it’s how you use it,” she said, and Gabriel chuckled. Lindana grabbed a bandage from the room’s med kit and pressed it over Gabriel’s injury. “You’re the most accident prone intel officer I’ve ever met.”
“Because you keep hitting me,” he countered.
“Is that a spanking reference?” Lindana teased. Gabriel chuckled again as they hurried out of the room.
Lindana expected to find an engine room in turmoil from an equipment malfunction, but instead they nearly tripped over a corpse when she and Gabriel stepped off the lift. A Soviet crew member lay facedown in an enormous pool of blood, stabbed in the back. Gabriel cautiously knelt beside the victim.
“His throat’s been cut,” he said.
Lindana nodded and commed the bridge. “We have a security breach in the engine room. Lieutenant Steele and I are investigating.”
“Aye, Captain. I’m sending a team to check on our guests. It’s possible either the pirates or the loyalists escaped.”
“Or there was another KGB agent aboard,” Gabriel added. “A covert operative.”
“Lovely. Acknowledged, Lieutenant Chen. We’ll keep you updated.” Lindana cut the connection and drew her weapon. “I’ll take point.”
“I have the firearm,” Gabriel argued.
“And you’re still recovering from your injuries. I have point. Don’t shoot me in the back.”
He frowned but nodded. “Aye, Captain.”
They glided down the corridor, checking for signs of saboteurs. Alarms continued to blare and yellow warning lights flashed at regular intervals. Lindana’s heart pounded—there were too many access hatches to cover, and a rat’s nest of pipes, wires, conduits that could be concealing numerous dangers. They rounded a corner and Lindana’s breath caught as she spotted a Soviet tech specialist slumped against the wall, his throat sliced from ear to ear.
Shit. These people had pledged to help her, and she had failed to protect them. Adrenaline flooded her veins and her grip tightened on her blade. She raised a fist and motioned for Gabriel to halt at the sound of raised voices ahead.
“I’m telling you, these is the wrong kind of cells. Shuttle won’t take them, and it don’t have enough fuel to get far.”
Kowalczyk’s men. Figured. The loyalists wouldn’t have killed their former crew mates unless absolutely necessary. And the crazy pirate bastards had pulled fuel cells from a ship in hyperspace. They could’ve blown the whole section up, or worse. Gabriel lowered his pistol and holstered it, drawing a knife instead. Most of the sensitive equipment wouldn’t react well to stray energy discharges.
“We don’t have to get far. Just far enough to send a signal to the captain to come get us.”
“We have to live long enough for him to pick us up. We run now and they’ll shoot us like fish in a barrel.”
<
br /> “Can’t you disable their weapons? Initiate the self-destruct sequence?”
Lindana considered chancing ricochets and ordering Gabriel to stun them, but to what end? To lock them up until they broke out again? How many more people would they kill? How many had they already killed? Kowalczyk’s men were ruthless—having one’s throat slit was a blessing compared to the hell of being one of their prisoners.
No, stunning them was not an option. There was only one punishment that would be justice for their crimes. Lindana motioned for Gabriel to attack.
She rushed the pirates. Four of them were arguing over the pulled power cells. Shit, there should be six. Where were the other two?
Mindful of the possibility of additional combatants, she engaged the closest one. Machetes were messy, hacking and slashing weapons, and she disemboweled the bastard in one swing that cut a diagonal slash from shoulder to hip. He had enough time to scream before she reversed her momentum and decapitated him.
The three remaining pirates rushed her, and Gabriel used their distraction to stab one through the back, thrusting up to pierce heart and lung with the same blow. It was a smooth, well-practiced move that made Lindana reassess her previous dubious opinion of his combat skills.
Lindana dodged a wild swing of a makeshift blade—bastards must have fashioned shivs to facilitate their escape. Her attacker lunged, and Gabriel yelled, “Behind!”
Lindana dropped and rolled—quite a trick while holding a machete, which was why she’d often practiced it while dueling Ryder with blunted blades. She came up in a squat, balanced on the balls of her feet, just in time to see the man who was about to ambush her crash into his comrade instead. Well, that answered the question of where one of the missing pirates was. Gabriel eliminated another pirate with a well-timed thrust that stabbed his target through the eye—three down, two still standing, and one missing in action.
The remaining two turned on Gabriel, and Lindana sprang forward and hacked the closer man’s legs. He fell screaming, and Lindana loomed over him and finished him off with a slash across his throat. Gabriel circled the remaining pirate. The man’s hand shook as he clutched his makeshift weapon, and for a moment Lindana thought he might surrender, but then he lunged at Gabriel. Lindana darted in, swung her blade above her head and sunk it into the pirate’s skull.
Lindana and Gabriel stood tensed for the appearance of the last pirate. When nothing happened, Lindana activated her comm. “Bridge, this is Nyota. Engine room threat neutralized. One hostile unaccounted for.”
“Do you need medical assistance?” Jiang asked.
“No.” Lindana nudged a corpse with her foot and cleaned her blade on the pirate’s trouser leg. “We’re going to need a cleanup crew though. Someone with a strong stomach.”
“Understood.” The call ended, and Lindana looked to Gabriel.
He stood over the fuel cells. “They don’t look too badly damaged, but I’m no engineer. Someone will need to examine them. Are you all right?”
“Fine. These bastards are used to slaughtering civilians with automatic weapons. I doubt anyone’s ever given them a real fight.”
“You’re not used to this much combat either,” Gabriel reminded her gently.
She scowled, prepared to tell him off, but then she nodded. “Not since the war. We try to avoid violence. Most of our missions are completed without a shot fired or a weapon drawn.”
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I know.” Lindana nodded, then straightened. “I’m glad you’re here to watch my back.”
“It is a lovely view.” Gabriel grinned.
* * *
“How bad is it?” Lindana asked.
Vlad, the Novosibirsk’s chief engineer—or new chief, as the case may be, because the former chief had died during the pirates’ attack—rubbed the grease from his hands on to a faded red rag. “Could be worse.” Vlad shrugged. “Could be better. They pulled four fuel cells, but didn’t know what they were doing. They could’ve triggered an explosion. But they damaged the cells, and we don’t have the equipment to repair them. As it is, we have enough fuel to get to our destination.”
“And after that?” Lindana prompted.
“We’ll either need to get cells from the station, or the equipment to repair the ones we have.”
“Understood. Do what you can, and keep Captain Chen updated.” Lindana left the engine room to find Jiang and Sveta frowning together over a large blood stain. Lindana understood—they felt the same weight of responsibility that she did.
“Any news on our missing guest?” Lindana asked.
“No. We’re guessing he was sent to prep the shuttle while the rest of them grabbed fuel, but we haven’t seen any sign of him. There are a million places he could hide on a ship this size, and he doesn’t have an ear cuff or an implant like the Soviet crew does, so we can’t use the computer to locate him.”
“We’ll post guards outside sensitive areas and around the shuttle,” Jiang said.
Lindana nodded. “Have nonessential personnel sweep the ship in teams,” she suggested. “We had guards on the engine room before. Unfortunately they weren’t successful.”
“They were understaffed and overwhelmed,” Sveta said.
“I know. I don’t fault them. But now they’re even further understaffed and more vulnerable to attack. We can’t risk any more damage to the engines. If we end up marooned in Soviet space...” Lindana trailed off. They would be lucky to be sent to a gulag if they were discovered. The Soviet navy would probably obliterate them on sight.
“I’ll take care of it. If you’ll excuse me.” Jiang nodded politely and left. Sveta continued to stare despondently at the blood on the wall and floor.
“This is my fault,” she murmured. “I brought this upon them.”
“No,” Lindana said. “On the list of people who are responsible for this, you’re not even in the top ten.”
Sveta smiled weakly. “That is kind of you to say.”
“I’m not sure it’s kindness. It’s practicality. You stumbled onto something huge and ugly, and you’ve been paying the price for it. But you didn’t come up with the weapon out there. Someone in the Soviet Union did because they wanted to put the fear of God into the Alliance.”
“The fear of communism,” Sveta corrected. “Organized religion is against party policy. What they wanted was proof. Proof that we are better. It’s foolishness. Alliance, Soviet, neither is better than the other. They’re all just people, trying to live their lives as best they can.”
“Which is what we’re doing. Trying to live.”
Sveta nodded and sighed as she ran a hand over her bald head. “I miss my hair,” she admitted sheepishly.
“It will grow back. It looks okay on you. You have a nice head.” Lindana smiled, and Sveta laughed.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“You’re welcome.” She glanced down the corridor. “We can clean this, if you want. I’ll help. Shouldn’t take too long if we do it together.”
Sveta smiled gratefully. “Thank you. I would appreciate that.”
Chapter Eleven
This was without a doubt the farthest into Soviet space that Lindana had ever traveled. During missions the Mombasa kept to the edges of Soviet territory and only crossed the border to pounce on ships traversing trade routes, and then hightail it back to Alliance space when the job was done. It helped that Soviet space, the Core Colonies and Alliance space were tangled like a Gordian knot. Territory was officially claimed once permanent settlements were established, and as humanity spread from system to system some colonies flourished while others failed, leading to polka dotted maps where Soviet planets shared solar systems with Alliance ones. Things had begun to even out as the two superpowers consolidated their claims into clumps of influe
nce, but the C3 upended that. Maybe that was why the Soviets had developed their mysterious super weapon—to paint the entire galactic map red.
From her spot on the Novosibirsk’s bridge Lindana watched the final moments of the countdown tick away as she fidgeted with the collar of her borrowed uniform jacket. The Mombasa didn’t have an official uniform to speak of, other than to insist that everyone wear pants, shirts and shoes while on duty. Even that didn’t always happen—Ryder had a shirt allergy, preferring to display the intricate tattoos covering his torso, and Maria and the rats often shucked their shoes when crawling around the ducts, claiming that they needed the extra climbing traction that toes provided. Lindana hadn’t realized how used to casual attire she had grown until she donned the Soviet uniform. The stiff jacket was itchy, but the true torture came from the fur cap. Sveta had assured them that the fur was not real, but it still made Lindana feel as though a small animal was precariously perched atop her head.
Three, two, one. The hyperdrive disengaged and the Novosibirsk—now temporarily named the Yangtze, according to their forged ship ID—dropped into real space. Lindana said a silent prayer for their success. They needed all the help they could get.
“Hail Korolev Station when in range,” Jiang ordered. Command seemed to come easily to Jiang, her rigid posture as natural as if she spent all of her time in the big chair. Lindana wondered again what other “nonrelevant” details of her pilot’s past Jiang had failed to mention—or remember, due to the head trauma she’d suffered during the siege of New Hong Kong. Jiang’s long-term memory was like Swiss cheese filled with black holes.
Korolev Station loomed into viewing range. The enormous structure bristled like a metallic hedgehog, a roly-poly ball covered in spiny antennae. Lindana wondered how they were supposed to dock with the pointy bastard, but that wasn’t her job. She was seated at one of the sensor stations, scanning for potential threats and other spacecraft. At the moment Korolev Station was alone, and it should stay that way. Communications stations weren’t high traffic areas, and the few visitors they hosted were only stopping on their way to somewhere else.