Shame. Guilt. Fear. Rage. Resolve.
There was no softness in her now. She was a warrior.
It felt like she was already engaged in battle.
I'd be going out soon and I breathed a sigh of relief when the commander informed us that all ReCon and assault teams had been called back to the Karter as a precaution.
“Pilots, head to the flight deck,” Commander Karter said. “Be prepared to depart at my command. Good luck.”
I was leaving then, but Seth was on his way back. He would be here. Life or death didn't matter to me any more or less than it ever had. I wanted to live, but I had to fight. The only thing I cared about as we were dismissed was making sure my mate was protected.
I rose and made my way over to Chloe, who was surrounded by Atlans and Prillons who seemed twice her size.
I pulled her aside and drew her into my arms briefly, just so I could take her scent, her touch with me into battle. I wrapped my arms around her and she squeezed me tightly. I placed a soft, lingering kiss on her lips. I felt her need for me through the collars and I was sure she felt the same in return.
“Come back to me, Captain,” she whispered. “I’m totally in love with you.”
My heart threatened to burst at the words. The feeling coursed through me, and I couldn’t hold back what I felt for her. She sensed it through the collars, but I wanted her to hear it, too. To know the truth of it all. “I love you too, mate, to death and beyond.”
I let her go, but walking away from her was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I knew she'd be safe on the battleship right next to Commander Karter, but Seth wasn't here. Not yet. Both of us would be out there, in danger. But it was the best I could do.
Chapter 12
Dorian
* * *
“What are we doing here, if we’re not flying the freighter? It’s our ship.” The Prillon pilot seated next to me in the freighter’s launch bay looked as unhappy as I felt. His name was Izak, and we’d been flying together for two years. He was a damn good pilot, perhaps even better than me. But he wanted answers I didn’t have.
“I don’t know. But we’ve got the I.C. on board, so the gods only know what kind of bullshit we’re about to get tangled up in.”
Izak groaned and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Can you hear that?”
I stilled and listened, really listened. Nothing. “No.”
“They gave me this damn armor, and now I can hear them.” He rubbed his temples before sitting up and leaning his head back against the wall.
“Who’s they? Who gave it to you?”
“The I.C.”
Intelligence Core. “And you hear them? Who can you hear?”
His eyes met mine. “The Hive, Dorian. It’s the fucking Hive.”
The Hive. The I.C. Strange armor and stealth ships? Yes. We were fucked.
We were in a small launch bay, where we’d been told to report. Two stealth shuttles sat at the ready. They wouldn’t hold more than a handful of crew, less than ten warriors, and that was if everyone onboard was standing in the tiny cargo area directly behind the pilots. The ships were designed to be infiltration units, used to do collect intelligence behind enemy lines, and I had a very bad feeling about where this mission was going.
“What are they saying?” I asked. Izak’s armor was different than mine. I wore the standard issue black camouflage for space ops, but his was filled with silver streaks and odd circuitry that was unmistakably Hive.
He shook his head. “Can’t understand a damn thing. It’s like buzzing insects inside my head.” Izak started taking his armor apart, dropping pieces on the floor. “I can’t fly like this. By the gods, I can’t.”
Izak stripped in record time, then walked, naked, to a flight cabinet and pulled out new armor. He was bending over to put on the pants when the mission doors opened and in walked a dozen people, including Commander Karter and my mate. Chloe was dressed in the same silver streaked armor that Izak had worn and my heart plummeted into my stomach.
No. Gods, no. She was supposed to be sitting at a desk, not wearing battle armor. And was that an ion cannon strapped to her thigh?
The beast, Warlord Anghar, was behind her, wearing similar tech. The only one not wearing battle armor was Commander Karter. He called for Izak and I to join them, and I remembered the warrior’s naked state. A hot flame of jealousy rose up as I thought Chloe might see the warrior’s body. But when I looked up at her, she was staring at me, only me, with so much love in her eyes my throat threatened to close up. Her emotions flooded me through the collar. Love. Hope. Fear. Resignation that we were all going on this mission, and that we might not come back.
Gods, no. I didn’t like that coming from her. Not at all.
I grabbed Izak’s chest armor, threw it at him and nudged him on the shoulder. “Come on. Hurry up. Karter is here.”
Izak followed me, putting on the rest of his gear as we walked across the deck. When we reached them, it was obvious that there were two very separate groups. The Intelligence Core had a full infiltration unit of eight wearing the special armor that Izak had just removed. Then there was Chloe, Anghar and two Prillon warriors serving as guards or protectors, I wasn’t sure which. The commander rattled off everyone’s names and I noted the way Bruvan glared at my mate. He also wore the strange silver attachment over his ear that Chloe did. Hers was the first I’d seen, but I recognized Hive tech when I saw it, and seeing that thing attached to my mate’s head like a parasite did not alleviate my fear for her.
Short introductions over, the commander cleared his throat. “All right, warriors. You all know why you’re here. We need to get that net down. We’re sitting in the middle of a trap and I don’t like it. But we also need to know how it works and how to detect it. They could be deploying this weapon in other sectors, targeting more battlegroups. We need to know what we’re dealing with and how to destroy it.”
Karter turned to me and Izak. “Captain Kanakar, you will be piloting the shuttle with Commander Phan and Warlord Anghar. Your team is to operate in a support position. Coordinates and instructions have been loaded into the shuttle’s system. You will take your orders in the field from Commander Phan. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded. The commander made a point to force me to acknowledge that Chloe was to be the commanding officer on my shuttle, but I didn’t mind. I was too flooded with relief that Chloe was in the support team and wouldn’t be part of those going out there, into space, battling the gods only knew what kind of Hive treachery.
“Captain Morzan,” he addressed Izak. “You will be piloting the assault shuttle. You will take your orders from Commander Bruvan.”
“Yes, sir.”
Commander Karter looked at us, hard. “I’m not going to insult you two by reminding you of your rank and the rules of command, but this isn’t a standard op. This is I.C. Do you understand?” He stared directly at me when he said the last, a second blatant reminder that Chloe would be giving the orders, that my mate outranked me, and that even if I disagreed with her decisions, it was my duty to follow her authority. No matter the danger.
Fuck.
We both nodded, but chills raced over my skin and a feeling of foreboding weighed down my limbs. Izak seemed unaffected, but he wasn’t heading into a war zone with his mate to protect.
If she’d let me protect her.
Commander Bruvan spoke, “I am ranking officer on this mission, followed by Commander Phan. Once we leave the ship, we will operate on short wave radio frequencies only. No exceptions.”
“But we’ll be out of range for communications with the Battleship Karter,” Izak said.
“Exactly.” Commander Bruvan lifted his helmet onto his head. “Load up. Let’s do this.”
Izak and I exchanged a warriors’ goodbye, holding each other by the forearm, and we each led the way onto our small shuttles. In a matter of minutes my mate, the warlord and the two Prillon warriors were behind me
and I closed the shuttle doors. Chloe sat in the co-pilot seat and, to my shock, helped with the launch sequence. “What other secrets do you have for me, Commander Phan?”
“You’ll have to wait and see, Captain.” She smiled at me, her face framed by the black helmet she wore, and my heart felt light, despite the fact that I was probably heading out to the most dangerous mission of my entire career with the Coalition Fleet. With her beside me.
As fast as it appeared, her smile was gone, and a commander was seated where my mate had been moments ago. Chloe was all business, her focus and determination clear through the connection we shared in our collars. “Follow the other shuttle. We’re going to drift in close to the net and do some scans before we decide how to disable it.”
Warlord Anghar stood directly behind us, and the two Prillon warriors behind him. There was standing room only on the tiny ship for warriors so big, and no privacy.
I concentrated on flying, on what I knew, and followed Izak’s shuttle out of the launch bay and away from the battlegroup. I saw nothing ahead of us, but I knew we’d lost a freighter. Something was out there.
“I can hear them.” The deep rumble of Anghar’s voice washed away the last of my contentment at having Chloe beside me. The warmth and love flowing between our collars ended abruptly, replaced by cold dread. Her next words replaced any lingering warmth in my body with a chill.
“So can I. And they know we’re coming.”
Chloe
* * *
The net was massive. Much larger than anything I’d ever seen before and I realized that in my job with the Intelligence Core, we’d only ever seen test cases of this weapon, small deployments done by the Hive to test its effectiveness.
This was something completely different. It was huge. Thousands of miles across and nearly invisible to sensors. A battlegroup moving at high speeds would be completely destroyed before they realized what had hit them.
Shocking Dorian with my piloting skills was the one bright spot in this mess. All I.C. officers were required to have basic training in piloting a vessel, just in case they happened to be the last man standing, the only option for an escape. I’d only ever flown once before, and that incident had forever cemented Bruvan as an enemy, and gotten me kicked out of the Core. But it had saved my life. And his.
Ungrateful ass.
Whatever. I couldn’t focus on the past, not with a massive network of Hive explosives forming a net around Battlegroup Karter and the two men I’d grown to love. One of whom sat beside me now, so much devotion and protective mojo flowing through our collars that I felt damn near invincible. The feeling was heady and addictive, and increased my determination to survive this mess, to make sure that this time, nothing went wrong.
At drift speeds, it took us nearly an hour to reach the perimeter of the network of Hive mines. Behind me, Warlord Anghar knelt on one knee, his hand on the back of my chair, massive head scanning ahead of us as if he could see them with his eyes.
He couldn’t. None of us could. They were invisible to the naked eye. And to most of our sensors.
But not to me. Or Angh, through our special technology. And we were close.
“Stop here,” I ordered Dorian and we stopped moving as Bruvan’s shuttle drifted closer to the network.
“I don’t see anything,” Dorian said.
“Trust me, Prillon, it’s there.” Angh’s face moved side to side, his gaze roaming the huge monitor in front of us. “Can you magnify the screen, Captain?”
“Of course.” Dorian’s hands moved deftly and the images before us magnified, far off stars growing in size until they filled the screen with fist sized beacons of light.
“Enough.” Angh shook his head and waved a hand. “They are very well hidden.”
I agreed. It was disconcerting, how strongly I felt the presence of the Hive weapon, yet could see nothing. It made me feel like we were chasing ghosts.
But that freighter blowing up wasn’t from a ghost. Those men died because something very real was out here.
“What now, Commander?” Dorian turned to me and I shook my head.
“Turn on your low frequency radio. We wait for Commander Bruvan’s orders.”
“For how long?” Angh asked.
I wanted to snort with disgust, but kept it professional. Barely. “Knowing him, at least an hour.”
Dorian didn’t say a word, but his annoyance came to me clearly through the collars. As, I was sure, my dislike of Bruvan was shared with him.
Sure enough, an hour passed with no word from Bruvan or his crew on the second shuttle. Angh paced the tiny confines of the rear of the shuttle, the two Prillon warriors pressed with their backs to the wall to give the agitated beast as much room as possible. Even with their accommodation, he could only take three steps before turning to repeat the process.
I was used to this, to Bruvan’s head games. He claimed he took so long to make his decisions because he needed to analyze all the data first. But he and I knew the truth. The real analysis went on inside our minds, where the special NPUs we both had implanted in our skulls worked overtime breaking down Hive communication and codes.
I was support only. Both Commander Karter and Commander Bruvan had made that absolutely clear. So I hadn’t butted my nose in Bruvan’s business. But something wasn’t right. I was sure Bruvan could feel it, too. That was probably why he hesitated now. And Angh’s pacing? I had a hunch that Atlan beast could hear a lot more than he wanted to.
“Do you hear it, Angh? The deep hum in the background? Behind the buzzing of the others?”
“Yes.”
I stood, walking toward him. “What do you think it is?” I wanted his take on it, in case I was mistaken, or making things up in my head.
“It’s their mother.”
“Yes!” I jumped up and hugged him briefly. As he stood, stunned, I rushed back to the copilot seat and pulled up the communication with the other shuttle.
“Commander Bruvan, this is Commander Phan. Do you copy?”
“This is Captain Morzan. Commander Bruvan is not onboard, Commander.”
“What?” I felt my jaw go slack. “What do you mean, he’s not onboard? And why wasn’t I told?”
“Orders, sir.” The Prillon warrior was unapologetic.
“Can you patch me through to him?”
“Yes, Commander.” Izak paused a moment and I could hear him moving in his bulky armor. He was a big Prillon warrior, with a very nice… I cut that thought off before I could finish it. “Commander Bruvan. Do you read?”
“This is Bruvan. Go ahead, Captain.” Bruvan’s voice was distant, coming from his helmet audio. I knew where he and his team were—floating in space with jet pods strapped to their backs.
“Commander, this is Commander Phan. Where are you?”
“We are approaching a nexus point of the grid.”
“Why wasn’t I told? What is the plan?” I was fuming, anger welling inside me like a volcano. How dare he endanger all of us, his crew and mine, simply because he didn’t like me? Let us sit here and stew for an hour while he suits up and goes on a space walk with his entire team? Asshole.
“It’s need to know.”
“As your support team, I believe we need to know, sir.” The sir came out closer to a snarl, but I didn’t care.
He sighed, audibly, as if I were the most annoying human being in this sector of space. “Very well, Commander. We are approaching the nearest nexus point along the grid. Once there, my demolition team will place explosives and destroy it, creating a chain reaction that should bring down the entire net.”
I cleared my throat and Angh’s snarl let me know he was thinking the exact same thing. “That won’t work, sir. One of our freighters hit the net a few hours ago. It destroyed the ship, but the net remained in place.”
Commander Bruvan’s reply was short. “We are using a very special type of explosive, Phan. Designed for this type of situation.”
My head began moving side to side be
fore he even stopped talking. “Sir, there is an object floating behind the net controlling them all. If you listen closely, you will hear an almost imperceptible rumble. Warlord Anghar and I believe it is coming from some kind of master control mechanism.”
Angh spoke to Bruvan. “It’s their mother. It controls all of them.”
Commander Bruvan was silent for a full two minutes, and I held my breath as he was most likely listening with the same experimental NPU that I had. Surely, he would hear it. He had to. There were too many lives at risk for a mistake.
“I hear nothing, Commander Phan. And Warlord Anghar, all due respect, you are too heavily contaminated with Hive technology to give a trustworthy opinion.”
Angh growled, but I held out my hand to keep him back from the pilot area. “Bruvan, please listen to me. Commander Karter wanted Warlord Anghar on this mission for a reason. He wanted us all here for a reason. We have to work together, not fight one another and not get caught up in the past. Please. I am telling you, blowing up one mine isn’t going to do any good. We have to take out the mother.”
Beside me, Dorian had my back. “Taking out any more of their mines could trigger a full-scale Hive assault, Commanders. One hit could be attributed to flying debris, a meteor or asteroid. Space junk. But two might tip the scales, alert them to the battlegroup’s presence here.”
“Duly noted, Captain. Commander. But I am in charge of this mission and we are going to destroy this thing. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” I muttered, slumping back in my seat as Dorian, Angh, the two Prillon warriors and I sat quietly and listened to their microphone chatter. The two explosive experts placed their mines and the team reconnected, drifting as one back toward their shuttle. Once safely inside, they would detonate the explosive and we’d all run like hell.
Fighting For Their Mate Page 11