Diffraction

by Jess Anastasi

  When she broke for the main doorway, Rian stepped into her path, blocking her exit and forcing her to look up at him. He smiled down at her, even though he never got anywhere near looking friendly. The woman took half a step back, only to bump into Callan, leaving her looking even more nervous.

  Maybe he was a paranoid sonuvabitch—actually, no maybe about it—but on the small chance she’d worked out who he was, he didn’t want her leaving here and calling the station authorities while he negotiated with Grigor.

  “I’m sure they can do without you for a few minutes while you keep us company.”

  The woman glanced past him at the door, as if maybe she was thinking of leaving anyway.

  “Take a seat.” He nodded toward the cluster of chairs. If she wouldn’t cooperate, forcing her to stay would no doubt end with Lianna giving him some kind of disapproving glare over the way he treated people. Although, after the revelations of the dead ship, maybe his nav-engineer wouldn’t even call him on that today.

  Callan clamped a hand on the woman’s shoulder, steering her over to perch on the edge of a chair and then all but standing at attention beside her. She clasped her hands in her lap, posture tense, and shook her head when Lianna offered to pour her a glass of water. Yeah, he wouldn’t have drunk it, either, considering it now had Callan’s slobber in it.

  “Don’t let them intimidate you.” Lianna finally shot him a chiding look, putting them back on familiar ground. “My name is Lianna.”

  “I’m Nyomi.” The woman raised her arm to shake Lianna’s offered hand, a slight tremor in her fingers.

  “How long have you worked here?” Lianna sounded genuinely interested, but Rian immediately tuned out as the pair launched into small talk.

  He re-scanned the room, double-checking he hadn’t missed anything the first time. After finding that dead ship and then coming onto a central system station, his senses were already jacked way up. Standing around here, it felt like the walls were closing in on him, like the bulkheads above him were going to come down and crush him in a trap. Bad things were skittering under the thin-ice surface of his calm.

  He wanted to believe it was just a culmination of factors causing the creeping sensation in the back of his neck to rake like talons down his spine. But his instincts had kept him alive and one step ahead of the Reidar for a long time now. Something wasn’t right about this situation—something way more wrong than just being on a central station where the Reidar, IPC, or UAFA could nab him without expending any resources. Just as he was about to start demanding Nyomi here take her ass back out that door and find Grigor, the hatchway slid open to reveal the man himself.

  “Rian. I thought there must have been a mistake when Nyomi told me, but it really is you.” Grigor stepped into the room and stopped by the chair his assistant sat in, not sparing a glance for Callan or Lianna. “I never thought I’d see you on Kalaheo again.”

  “Why? Because I’m a wanted intergalactic terrorist?”

  Grigor shook his head. “You never did let anything get in the way of what you were doing. But I’m sure this isn’t a social visit. What do you need?”

  Good. Down to business, just the way he liked things to go. “I’m here about the favor you owe me.”

  Grigor raised both brows. “The favor?”

  Asked as if the guy had no clue what he was talking about. Which only sparked his fraying temper. “You’re not reneging, are you? Because we both know—”

  “No, no.” Grigor held up both hands. “I just—I suppose I thought maybe you wouldn’t ever call that marker in.”

  “Is it going to be a problem?” His voice had gone the way of an arctic breeze, and Nyomi stood, making a show of clearing the glass Lianna had used, smartly putting herself out of the firing line. Callan had an eye like a terrier on the woman, leaving him free to concentrate on Grigor.

  “No, no problem at all. I’m a man of my word. I promised you a favor, and so you’ll have it.”

  Something in the man’s tone was a little too blasé, and the talons in his spine dug in harder until a cold sweat prickled his skin. He slowly shifted his hand to the butt of his razar. “You remember what that favor was in return for, right, Grigor?”

  Grigor’s gaze dropped down to where he gripped the gun and then sliced back up, nervous tension in the lines around his eyes.

  “Of course. It’s not something I’m likely to forget.” But sweat had started beading along the man’s hairline, his skin washing out to a paler color.

  Frecking christ. Rian yanked out the razar, and across the room, Nyomi squealed as Callan mirrored his action and Lianna surged to her feet. But that was all happening in his peripheral, not impacting his awareness locked onto Grigor as he fired off a round from the razar.

  Grigor stumbled and went down to one knee, a hand braced against the floor while he shook his head, as if to clear it. When the man looked up, Rian wasn’t surprised to find himself face-to-face with a Reidar.

  They’d replaced Grigor? Frecking Grigor? Because of his connection to the man, or had it been another awful coincidence of his luck continuing to run the crappiest streak in the history of mankind?

  “Well, Sherron, that was a mistake.” The Reidar formerly known as Grigor reached behind himself, but Rian palmed his nucleon gun in his left hand, getting off a shot before the alien had brought his weapon halfway up.

  The shifter took the shot in the middle of his chest with not much more than a flinch, but it threw off his aim. Rian sent his second round of ammo into the alien’s arm, causing him to drop the weapon.

  He took a slow step forward, keeping his aim true. “I’m more than happy to kill you if you’re looking to die today, or we can have a nice chat, because there’s a few questions I’ve been meaning to ask you scum bastards. Unfortunately, every time I run across any of you, you seem more interested in getting dead than having a civilized conversation.”

  The Reidar had clamped a hand over the wound in his arm, expression a mix of disdain and fury. “I’m not the one who’s going to die today.”

  Going low, the alien went for the weapon where it had fallen on the floor. Cursing under his breath, Rian lit up with the nucleon gun, Callan letting loose with his own weapon, firing until the shape-shifter fell still and half pulped on the floor.

  “God-frecking-damn-it,” he muttered, holstering his guns. One of these days, he was going to catch himself an alien for a nice long chat. But right now, they needed to get offstation before someone sent the authorities up here for a report of weapons fire.

  Glancing around, he found Lianna standing half in front of the Nyomi chick. But the frightened woman wasn’t staring aghast at the dead alien carcass—which was swiftly liquefying as alien carcasses tended to do—but had her freaked-out gaze fixed on him like he was the boogeyman in this scenario. And when those dots connected, he almost couldn’t believe it, but didn’t have a doubt he was right.

  He stalked over and reached around Lianna to yank the cowering woman out from behind his nav-slash-engineer.

  “You knew.” The words weren’t much more than a snarl, because either she was a Reidar herself, or worse, she was human and helping the frecking invading aliens.

  “Rian, what are you—” Lianna reached for the woman, but Callan intercepted her.

  Rian jerked Grigor’s assistant away and shoved her so she stumbled then dropped into one of the chairs.

  “You knew what he really was.”

  Nyomi’s mouth opened and closed, but no intelligible sound came out. He tugged out his razar for the second time in a matter of minutes and pressed it to the middle of her chest.

  “No! Wait, please, I—” Nyomi blubbered, but it didn’t make him hesitate for even a second before he pulled the trigger. Except nothing happened. The pulse of energy passed through her with no discernable effects.

  “You’re human.” The word conveyed all his confusion and disgust that she could know the truth and be working happily alongside him. “And you knew wha
t he was.”

  She held up her hands, whole body shaking. “Yes, I knew. I know all about them.”

  His fury snapping through the remaining threads of his control, he reached down and grabbed a handful of her hair, yanking back her head and leaning over her.

  “Why did they replace Grigor?”

  Nyomi flinched from him. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know.” He tightened his grip, forcing her deeper into the cushions of the couch.

  “Rian!” Lianna shifted closer—as near as she could get with Callan still holding her arm—but didn’t touch him and didn’t make a move to Nyomi. No, his nav-engineer knew him better than that. “She’s not the enemy.”

  “No, but she was sure as frecking hell sleeping with them. She knows something, and she’s going to tell us.”

  “Okay!” Nyomi held up her hands and he eased the tension in his hold on her. “All I know is that when I told Grigor you were here, he called someone…someone named Niels. They told him to alert the authorities and station-jack your ship until the nearest IPC vessel could get here.”

  Callan muttered a string of curses—the same ones he was thinking—as he let Nyomi go and stepped back.

  “We have to move.” This sector of space was crawling with IPC military ships and UAFA vessels. If there wasn’t already someone docking to take him and the rest of his crew down, there would be within minutes.

  Callan had already headed for the door. Lianna’s features were tense, but she didn’t say anything as they left Nyomi where she sat frozen on the chair and stepped out into the main storelet—empty, of course. No doubt the shooting had sent everyone fleeing.

  He set his hands on his guns, grip light, as they hurried out into the main thoroughfare where red emergency lights were flashing but no alarm sounding.

  “Contact the ship. Get Tannin working on that station-jack right now.” If he wasn’t already. Hopefully his tech analyst was earning his keep and knew about security clamps locking them onto the berth.

  Lianna had her comm out, the conversation with Tannin short as they came into another section and plunged into a milling crowd, only just slipping past the station security officers who went running toward Grigor’s storelet.

  “Tannin’s on it,” Lianna reported.

  “Good, with any luck he’ll have it freed by the time we get back.”

  None of them said anything else as they continued through the station, making it back in half the time it had taken when they’d set out.

  Zahli was waiting for them and hit the hatchway controls the second they set boots on the ramp.

  “Tannin said the IPC flagship Marshal Beacon docked three minutes ago. They’re on the opposite side of the station, two berths up, but it won’t take them long to get here.”

  “Has he kicked those detainment clamps yet?” He hit the stairs without waiting for an answer.

  “Not when I came down here a minute ago,” Zahli answered from behind him.

  Up on the bridge, Tannin was standing at the captain’s console, leaning over the screen and working with fast fingers on the crystal display. But his expression was grim and definitely not the look of a man who was about to get them free. Callan had followed him, but stopped at the back of the bridge in the process of adding more weight to his arsenal, getting weapons strapped and ready.

  “Report?” He shot at Tannin, glancing over the tech analyst’s shoulder and seeing nothing but gibberish.

  “It’s Reidar. It’s all frecking Reidar. Some kind of coding I’ve never seen before. I can’t get through it.”

  Zahli came up on Tannin’s other side and put a hand on his shoulder. “Just take a breath. You’ll figure it out.”

  He shook his head in a sharp movement but hadn’t paused in navigating the program or even looked up from the screen. “No, I won’t. Not before the officers from the Marshal Beacon get here. I’m tracking them through the station. We’ve got ten minutes until they’re on the other side of our hatchway.”

  A calmness born of the deep-seated, permanent glacial fury toward the Reidar settled over him as he gripped Tannin’s arm.

  “Everette, can you get the Imojenna free before the IPC officers get here or not?”

  Tannin finally paused and glanced over at him, his gaze heavy with a defeated, grim shadow, similar to how he’d looked the day they’d taken him off the prison planet, Erebus.

  “If I had more time—” He clenched his jaw, glancing down at the screen. “No. Not before the officers get here. But I can lock down the ship. Maybe give us a chance to—”

  “Shut it down and wipe the system.” He stepped back and turned, tapping open the console in the side of his chair and pulling out his spare weapons.

  Tannin didn’t need to be told twice, diving straight into a full system cleanse.

  “Everyone else, grab anything you can’t live without and head up to the skimmers.”

  “What are you saying?” Zahli moved away from Tannin, her gaze locked on him, burning with denial.

  “Abandon ship.” He slammed the empty console closed and threw one of the bigger nucleon rifles to Callan.

  “We can’t leave the ship.” Her voice went up a notch in strident disbelief. “This is all we’ve got left.”

  “We’ve still got our freedom, which is worth a hell of a lot more. If the IPC have us, that means the Reidar have us. And whatever those frecking aliens have in store for us, it’s certainly not worth standing our ground here. So grab anything you need and head up to the skimmers.”

  He didn’t wait for Zahli to reply but took one last glance at the viewport, flashing with the words “total system erasure,” before stepping off the bridge, trying not to let the thought that it would be for the last time swim through the furious, burning fog of his thoughts. The Reidar had taken nearly everything from him, including his ever-damned soul.

  Right in this second he was giving ground, because he had to protect his family and crew. But he sure as hell didn’t plan on letting this stand. Somehow, someway, he’d get this ship back. And if the Reidar unscrewed so much as a single bolt on the Imojenna, he wouldn’t just kill the scum-sucking parasitic bastards. No, he’d get inventive. And then he’d get messy.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kira rolled out of bed at the pounding on her door, body going into automatic action before her mind had even fully awakened. She stumbled over her shoes on the way, tugging her T-shirt straight and then pushing her hair out of her face as she swiped a hand over the controls to open the hatchway.

  “What happened?” she asked before the door had even finished sliding open. Zahli was already retreating across the hallway when her bleary eyes focused in the brighter light.

  “We’re abandoning the ship. We have to leave now. Grab anything important; I don’t know when we’ll be coming back.”

  What the hell? She scrubbed a hand over her face, forcing the last tendrils of foggy sleep to clear. They were abandoning ship? What the freck had happened while she’d been sleeping?

  She turned and scrambled for her shoes and then rushed to the locker and grabbed the emergency medical bag stashed in the bottom, flinging a spare pillow and other shoes out of the way to reach it. She tossed a single change of clothes on top, but when she left her cabin, instead of heading up to the skimmers, she sprinted down all the flights of stairs and through the cargo bay.

  The door to the brig was open, like she’d left it, Varean still chained up. But now he was slumped, his chin on his chest. For a wild second, the panic that he’d gone and died on her ripped the air right out of her body. She rushed in and dropped the bag at his feet.

  “Varean!”

  His body twitched at her voice, bringing relief as she gasped in a quick breath.

  She pressed her fingers into the crook of his neck, his pulse registering as fast but steady.

  Cupping his jaw, she ducked her head to see his face more clearly. “Varean, wake up.”

  He mumbled so
mething she couldn’t understand, something definitely not in any language she could recognize. But he was definitely responding to the sound of her voice.

  “Come on, that’s it,” she coaxed as his eyes opened, taking a second to focus as he lifted his head.

  “Kira?” Confusion colored his tone as he straightened from the slump. “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t give herself the time or luxury to dwell on the relief rushing through her. “I have no idea. But we’re abandoning ship.” She shifted around him to examine the chains, except they didn’t look any better than they had last night when she’d failed to release them.

  Callan had wanted to make damn sure Varean wasn’t going anywhere and had double-wrapped them around and through the thick outer metal frame of a brace on the bulkhead above him, securing it all with two separate electronic locks she didn’t have the keys for.

  Cursing under her breath, she moved back to face Varean. “I can’t unlock this without Callan. Just give me a minute.”

  Before Varean could reply, she ran back out of the brig, but only as far as the cargo bay, where Callan was flipping the lid off a crate and pulling something out, shoving it into the bag he held.

  “Callan! Give me the keys to unlock Varean.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her, slamming the crate shut and then bending over to pick up a huge nucleon rifle that had been leaning against another crate.

  “Sorry, Doc, it’s every man for himself, and since that cocksucker tried to kill me—” Callan headed for the stairs with an uncaring half shrug, but she darted over and reached the bottom landing before him, blocking his way.

  “Give me the keys.”

  “Rian didn’t say a word about releasing the commando. Unless you want to get left behind, get your ass up to the skimmers.”

  She crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving without Varean.”

  Callan elbowed her aside with a disgusted glare. “Fine, have it your way. I’m sure we can find another medic. One who actually follows orders.”