Ariston_Star Guardians

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Both my ship’s scanners and my armor’s?”

  He spread his arms, not knowing what to say. But he was growing more and more convinced that there might be more to the stories of hauntings than he’d believed.

  “Earlier,” Mick said, “I was thinking that there was no way I wanted to spend the night on this planet. With that shuttle gone and my ship damaged, I suppose there’s no chance of that not happening now.”

  “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for the oddities people are experiencing,” Ariston said.

  “That’s what Dr. Garcia said, and now he’s dead.”

  “Not because of hauntings, though.”

  “No, because of assholes.”

  He thought she might skewer him with another glare, but she clenched her gauntleted fist and scowled at the ruins again.

  “While I work on repairing the ship, our scientists can figure it out,” she said.

  “I can help with the repairs,” he offered. Interesting that she’d called them scientists again. Had she brought archaeologists to help identify valuable artifacts to extract from the ruins? If so, that made her a very organized relic raider. “I have a background in engineering.”

  “You’re an engineer?” she asked skeptically.

  “I used to be. That’s why the salvage crew captain hired me.”

  That was true enough. If he’d shown up, asking to sign on as one of the fighters, Ariston doubted Eryx would have considered him, but his current head of engineering had made enough booty in his career that he was ready to retire. Ariston felt a twinge of guilt. Mrook had been so excited to have an experienced apprentice, one who might take his spot sooner rather than later. The engineer hadn’t said as much, but Ariston had sensed Mrook hadn’t cared for the “extraneous” salvage missions that Eryx chose.

  “You don’t seem nerdy enough for that,” Mick said. “I haven’t met any engineers who would throw themselves into fights with the odds six to one against them.”

  “There were six opponents to my one, assuming we don’t figure you into the equation, since at the time, I didn’t know you would open fire on them. Odds are another way of saying probability, and they’re calculated based on the various abilities and advantages of the parties in question, not simply on numbers. Based on what I knew of those men and my assessment of myself and my armor’s attributes, I estimated the odds to be roughly two to one. Not in my favor, perhaps, but not statistically impossible to beat.”

  “That sounded nerdy. Maybe you are an engineer.”

  He might have responded, but her comm came on, and he heard a woman’s faint voice. “We’re done scrubbing our pits. You and your new friend can come in.”

  “He’s not my friend,” Mick said.

  Ariston could only agree with that, since they’d only known each other for thirty minutes and she was likely a criminal. But for some silly reason, he felt a twinge of disappointment at the words. He had helped her out. Twice, now. What did it take to win her friendship?

  “No? Doctors Lee and Woodruff say he’s not their friend, either. I thought someone had to have befriended him because it didn’t otherwise seem like a good idea to invite him aboard.”

  “Just open the hatch, Dev.”

  “If you’re sure.” The woman sounded like she wasn’t. “He looks a lot like the people who’ve been trying to kill us and destroy the ship. They fired at us without warning, you know. The shields took a ton of damage and then collapsed.” Her voice lowered so much that Ariston almost couldn’t make out the next words. “I don’t think we can take off again, Mick.”

  “That’s why I’m bringing this guy in to help. He’s an engineer.”

  “Oh?” The woman—Dev—sounded less distraught at the statement. “How do you know?”

  “He told me. And he says nerdy things.”

  “I say nerdy things all the time, and I’m a soil scientist, not an engineer.”

  “Ariston promises he has no interest in soil,” Mick said, sounding exasperated. She looked at him. “Right?”

  “Correct. I’m quite indifferent to it.”

  “Really,” the Dev woman said with what came across the comm as a haughty sniff.

  Finally, the hatch swung open.

  Mick hopped into the airlock, and Ariston moved to follow her in, but she paused on the threshold and looked at him. With her standing in an elevated position, they stood eye to eye.

  Several long seconds passed as she considered something. Him, presumably. Maybe she wondered if it was safe to invite him in. She’d seen him fight, so she had to know that he could pose a threat to her crew. What would he do if she jumped in, closed the hatch, and made him stay outside? Sure as Hades’ spit, Eryx wasn’t going to send a shuttle down for him. He might send shuttles to hunt him down, firing at him from above and not giving him a chance to fight back.

  Now he wished he hadn’t told Mick that she was his prisoner. He should have claimed to have been a prisoner of the salvage ship, using this opportunity to escape. Then maybe she’d have been more likely to see him as someone on her side. Of course, she would have been suspicious that a prisoner had escaped in full combat armor. Gods, he was bad at lying.

  “Where did you learn to fight so well?” Mick asked.

  Lie? Tell the truth? He wasn’t sure she had believed his earlier lies, and if she detected a lie now, that might be all it took for her to slam the hatch shut on him. Oh, he could catch it first and force his way in, but then what? Hold her at knife point and demand her crew let him in? Or else?

  “I was a space fleet officer for more than fifteen years,” Ariston said, leaving out that he’d transferred to the Star Guardians after the war. No need to mention them. “Until my captain—my wife—was killed in the Battle of Amarr, one of the few skirmishes since the Territory Wars with the Zi’i.”

  Ariston didn’t know why he’d added such personal information, other than that it might humanize him in her eyes. But he immediately regretted sharing it, making himself vulnerable to someone he might have to arrest. He shouldn’t have given her anything she could use against him, and even after four years, Zya was very much a lever that could be applied to him. Friends and family back home had told him often that it was time to move on, to find someone else, but he hadn’t wanted anyone else, and he had never stopped lamenting the loss of the person who had completed him.

  Mick kept gazing at him, her expression unreadable. If she was more sympathetic toward him now, she didn’t show it.

  He cleared his throat. “If there’s a booger hanging out of my nose, I can’t do anything about it as long as my helmet is on.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good enough reason to let you in.”

  She stepped into the airlock chamber, making room for him to come in behind her. The hatch clanged shut, and they stood in darkness for a second before a red light came on. Machinery hummed, and he imagined ultraviolet radiation killing the bacteria on their armor.

  The lights flashed twice, and a computerized voice said, “Stage one complete. Remove your clothing for stage two.”

  “Uh, what?” Mick said, turning to face Ariston and frowning at him, as if this was his idea.

  As he’d told her, there was little to fear from the bacteria on this planet.

  “Remove clothing for stage two decontamination,” the computer said.

  “Dev, are you there?” Mick asked. “You didn’t have to get naked for this, did you?”

  “Yes, we all did. Dump your armor on the deck and spread it out so everything can be decontaminated to the best of the system’s abilities. Normally, your clothing would be destroyed afterward, but that’s not practical here.”

  “Destroyed? You don’t destroy combat armor.”

  “Right, just put it aside for a scrub down, please. The shower’s designed not to let you out until it’s run through its cycle.”

  “How did I let this fascist thing be installed on my ship?” Mick demanded.

  Dev
did not respond.

  Mick sighed, giving Ariston another exasperated look.

  “Do you want me to go back out?” he asked, though he was reluctant to do so. Given time, she might decide to leave him out there, after all. “Dethocoleans aren’t particularly shy, but I know humans on some other planets have qualms about nudity.” He also figured she might not be comfortable being naked with him, since they were, by her words, not friends.

  “No, I’m not shy, and I don’t have qualms. I just don’t want to be naked if your buddies show up again and start attacking the ship.”

  He nodded. “Understandable.”

  “The sooner you shower and wash your armor, the sooner you can put it back on,” came Dev’s voice over the comm.

  “Yeah, yeah, tyrant.”

  Mick turned her back to him and undid the fasteners for her helmet. Ariston shifted so that he wasn’t looking at her—not that there were a lot of other places to look in the small airlock chamber—and did the same.

  He grimaced at the fresh dents and scorch marks adorning his armor, and he also thought of Raztror, the one crewman he had unintentionally killed instead of subduing. Star Guardian undercover operatives were given a lot of latitude and were trusted to make decisions that would help them complete the mission they’d been assigned, but he wondered if this time, he was in the wrong. Eryx was the one responsible for slaying people—his crew was simply following orders.

  After he removed the last of his armor and peeled off his undershirt and underwear, he bent to lay the pieces on the deck so the shower could spray them, and he accidentally bumped butts with Mick. She, too, had removed everything and was spreading her gear out.

  “Sorry,” he said, by habit glancing at her to apologize.

  Their eyes met briefly, and her mouth opened—maybe she’d been about to say something too. But she closed her mouth and simply waved an acknowledgment, then turned away from him again.

  He quickly turned his back again to give her her privacy, and to hide the Star Guardian tattoo on his forearm, but not before he got an eyeful of… just about everything. Enough to know that she was as sexy as the Sirens.

  Mick wasn’t entirely different from what he had expected under the armor, with a lithe muscular form that spoke of athleticism as well as femininity, but he hadn’t anticipated her full, amazing breasts. They were the kind a man wanted to hold in both hands while alternately burying his face between them and sucking on those pert pink nipples.

  His cock swelled, growing hard and erect in record speed. Shit.

  He faced the outer hatch more fully, hoping to the gods that she wasn’t looking over at him. What kind of dumbass got a hard-on in a decontamination shower?

  He tried to banish thoughts of breasts, not to mention the rest of her body, from his mind and willed his cock to soften. The last thing he wanted to do was stroll out to meet her crew of archaeologists with his penis emulating a rocket ready to launch.

  The water came on, spraying from two nozzles that were clear after-market additions to the airlock chamber. The splatter that hit his chest and shoulders was tepid. Damn, he’d been hoping for cold.

  He planted his hands against the hatch, dropped his chin to his chest, and again tried to think unsexy thoughts. The ruins, the pyramid, the dead men outside. He definitely didn’t want to think of Mick or the way he could see her bare feet and calves under his armpit as she nudged her armor pieces around, flipping them with her toes to expose both sides. Beads of water trickled down her muscular calves, following their appealing curve. They were perfect for the warrior woman she clearly was. And he couldn’t look away. Nor could he get his cock to do anything but stiffen further.

  It wasn’t his fault that he’d always gotten aroused by the warrior woman type, nor was it his fault that he had no trouble imagining turning around, jamming her against the wall, and pressing himself along her length, feeling her every delicious curve against his body. Then tasting her, his mouth taking hers while she—

  “Shit, are bolts waterproof?” Mick asked.

  Ariston blinked. Since his people used bolt as a penis euphemism, it took him a second to realize what she meant.

  “The bolt bows?” he asked, making sure his voice sounded normal and didn’t reveal any of the lurid thoughts stomping through his brain. “Yeah, they can fire in space and underwater. They’re sturdy. It takes something like molten lava to destroy one.”

  “All right, good.”

  A soft clunk sounded as she leaned her weapon against the bulkhead under her shower.

  Ariston drew in a slow breath, looking down at his armor while he wrangled his libido under control. Hearing her voice had helped, reminding him that she was a virtual stranger, that he had no romantic interest in her. His foolish body didn’t particularly care about romance or stranger status, knowing only that it hadn’t had sex all that often in the years since Zya had died. There had been a handful of one-night dalliances at space stations, but he didn’t care for those, having always wanted to have a partner and confidante, not a temporary bed mate. His one-nighters had only happened when he’d been drunk and lonely and feeling sorry for himself. None of those things were happening now, so this teenage horniness was uncalled for.

  The water shut off, and the red light disappeared.

  The hatch opened almost instantly, as if Mick had been standing by the controls, longing to escape as soon as possible. Gods, she hadn’t seen his stupid hard-on, had she? If so, she would be understandably alarmed. She had no way to know he was an honorable man and wouldn’t do anything unwelcome to a woman.

  “I’ll find some towels,” she said, and rushed out, disappearing into a well-lit corridor.

  He gathered up his gear, draping his long-sleeved undershirt over the tattoo on his forearm to hide it, and took a step after her, but he realized he still had a problem. He frowned down at his penis, which seemed to think it should stay rigid until he attended to it. He was half-tempted to masturbate while he was alone in the dark airlock chamber, but he didn’t want to explain that if she or her crew opened the door while he was in the middle of it.

  “You’re forty-three,” he muttered to it, “not thirteen. Knock it off.”

  Despite the admonition, his penis refused to droop. This was what he got for not making more frequent drunken, lonely stops at space stations.

  He artfully rearranged his gear in front of himself and strode into the light.

  7

  Dripping wet, Mick strode toward the sleeping cabins in the back half of the ship, knowing she had a couple of towels in there. But Dev had anticipated her and stepped into view, holding a stack of them.

  Too bad. Mick had wanted an excuse to disappear into her cabin for a minute to recover her equanimity. She could tell her cheeks were flaming red, as if to reveal to all that she’d been sneaking peeks at her not-a-friend in the decon shower.

  That hadn’t been her intention of course. She’d been standing in her corner, and he’d been standing in his, their backs toward each other, but then there’d been that moment when they’d bumped butts and inadvertently glanced at each other at the same time.

  Earlier, she’d decided Ariston was a handsome guy, but after seeing him fight, she’d figured he’d have a thuggish, scar-covered body underneath his armor. He did have a few scars, including a burn mark—or maybe an en-bolt scorch mark?—across his left pec, but they did nothing to diminish his looks. He had the kind of magnificent torso one usually only saw in men’s bodybuilding magazines under articles entitled “5 Exercises You Need to Be Doing for Killer Pecs” and “The Secret to Washboard Abs Women Die for.”

  She’d seen guys with hot bodies before, but it had been a while since one was standing scant inches away from her in an enclosed space. And dripping with water.

  Her cheeks flushed even hotter as she remembered the way the water had run in rivulets down his full pecs and chiseled abs, disappearing into the wiry dark hair of his groin, hair that hadn’t done anything to hide
his cock.

  He’d turned away from her as she spun back to her own corner, but she’d seen plenty in the two seconds they had faced each other. And then, like some pre-pubescent girl fascinated with the male body, she’d kept sneaking glances while she’d crouched to arrange her armor on the floor. His ass was as hot as his chest.

  Finally, she’d torn her gaze away, reminding herself firmly that he’d appeared in the company of the assholes who’d killed Dr. Garcia and had half-destroyed her ship.

  “Thanks,” Mick said, accepting the towels.

  “No problem, Captain. I, uh—” Dev looked past Mick’s shoulder, her mouth dropping open.

  Ariston had come out of the airlock, several pieces of his armor gathered in his powerful arms, rivulets of water running down his muscled thighs. Dev might have been eyeing Dr. Woodruff earlier in the mission, but for the moment, she looked like a panther that wanted to spring and devour their guest. She recovered quickly, masking her features and looking away.

  “Did you say something about monitoring comm chatter, Captain?” Dev asked.

  “Yeah, go turn on the channel hacker, will you? I’m going to show Ariston to our engineering room, and then I’ll be right up.” Mick looked down at herself, her naked self. “I may throw on clothes at some point too.”

  “It’s your ship. I think you get to decide on the strictness of the dress code.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Mick took a step toward Ariston, intending to hand him a towel, but she hesitated. If she got close, she might do something stupid like reach out and run a hand down the contours of his arm. He was looking resolutely at the bulkhead opposite the airlock instead of at her, or her nakedness, so she suspected he wouldn’t appreciate having his arm groped. No, she kept getting the sense that he thought she was one of the bad guys and that he was supposed to collect her and turn her over to some law enforcer.

  She tossed him a towel from afar. Was it possible he was a bounty hunter himself? And that he’d attacked those men because they had bounties on their heads? Even if he was, Mick didn’t know why he would be thinking of collecting her. His prisoner, he’d called her. Why?