Diffraction

by Jess Anastasi

  Wiping a hand over his face, he shrugged. “They needed a wash almost as badly as I did. Don’t know how the other three will feel about it, but I’m sure you won’t mind if I have to go naked until we reach Barasa.”

  Reaching down, he flicked free the fasteners on his pants and then paused with the top open but not revealing anything. However, the outline of his erection was unmistakable. When she realized she was practically drooling to see him strip off the sodden garment, she snapped her gaze back to his face.

  “You being naked will be a huge problem. How about I go see if I can find you something?”

  “Huge is definitely a good word for it,” he murmured as she turned and groped for the door control.

  She threw him an unimpressed glare over her shoulder, but he just grinned in return, shoving his pants down far enough for her to get a glimpse of his lower abdomen and dark hair, but nothing else.

  Forcing herself to turn away and escape—because if she watched him take off those pants there was a very good chance she’d throw what little respect and dignity she still had to the stars and join him in the shower, despite the risk of getting caught.

  She couldn’t begin to imagine what the others would say if they found out about what she and Varean had been up to.

  Back out in the main cabin, she was relieved to find that no one seemed to have stirred from their sleep. She went to one of the lockers. Rian usually kept a stash of emergency supplies in the skimmers in case they ever had to do exactly what they’d done a day ago and abandon ship without grabbing anything. She found a pair of pants and a T-shirt, and though they were probably Rian’s, looked like they’d be kind of small on Varean.

  Well, if his other choices were wet pants or naked, she guessed he wouldn’t complain. She didn’t go inside when she returned to the privy—she totally didn’t trust either of them. Instead, she opened the door far enough to lean in and set the clothes on the sink, all without looking at him. His low laugh followed her out as she firmly closed the door and went to sit in the pilot’s chair.

  They were still twenty hours out from Barasa, but it didn’t seem like enough time. Somehow, she had to come up with a convincing argument so the others would let her take Varean to a lab.

  Honestly, it was going to be a fine line, coming up with a reason that sounded logical, not emotional, especially since she was clearly so far beyond the bounds of doctor-patient relations when it came to him. If nothing else, she’d proven that to herself just now when she’d climbed on top of him and let her hormones do the flying.

  And then when he’d taken her into the bathroom— A low echo of gratification rolled through her, and she couldn’t regret her out-of-character recklessness. Not when the conclusion had been so very rewarding. She only felt sorry that Varean hadn’t found the same fulfillment. Of course, he was now alone and very naked in the shower…

  She tightened her fingers into the armrests and took a deep breath against the crazy pound of her heart. That thread of thinking was not helpful in any way whatsoever. This wasn’t about the irrational and likely foolish attraction that’d sprung up between them. This was about what was best for Varean after everything he’d been through.

  With a goal in mind, a purpose to focus on, she had something else to think about rather than dwelling on the fact that she’d had to leave behind everything—leave behind the only home she’d known for the past three years. Though she hadn’t signed up for war when she’d joined the Imojenna’s crew, she’d found herself in the middle of a fierce battle, which definitely wasn’t what she’d envisaged for her life. But the morbid joke was on her, because though a smart person might have walked away, she couldn’t. Not even to save herself.

  …

  Skimmer One, Dunham

  Rian blinked against the shaft of sunlight shining in his face, bringing up a heavy arm to shield his eyes as he rolled away into the shadows. Both arms went with the movement, since apparently they were attached to each other, bringing back his last clear memory with the head-aching alacrity of putting down the entire bottle of Violaine and then having Callan cuff him.

  With a low groan for the fact he ached everywhere, he pushed himself up, half turning to lean against the bulkhead behind him. The skimmer was empty, light shining brightly through the single viewport, rimmed in blue sky and edged on either side by slim buildings reaching upward into the ether.

  Obviously they’d arrived on Dunham while he’d been out of it; he only hoped the half of his crew he had with him hadn’t ventured too far from the skimmer. One, because he wanted these cuffs off now. And two, because Dunham was an outer-central systems planet with a large military population—they were at risk of being grabbed by any number of any IPC officers, UAFA agents, Reidar, or all of the above.

  He dragged both hands over his face, the hangover from Reidar-induced blackouts far worse than anything he could inflict on himself with Violaine. Which was partly why he preferred to put himself down with the hard liquor, rather than go through this particular type of purgatory.

  His wrists chafed, slippery under the cuffs, and he glanced down, unsurprised to find his hands and forearms streaked with blood where the metal had bitten into him. Closing his eyes, he blew out a hard breath and leaned his head back against the wall behind him. If Callan, Jensen, Nyah, and Ella hadn’t been afraid of him before, they sure as hell would be now that they’d gotten to witness his meltdown firsthand. A few times he’d questioned the intelligence of keeping an entire crew, when the past had proven that literally no one was safe when the darkness took over, and no one could bring him out of it.

  Until this little episode, he’d thought a steady regime of Violaine, bloodshed, and keeping focused on the singular goal of bringing the Reidar down had helped him get a handle on things.

  If he’d been a spiritual kind of person, he might have taken losing the Imojenna as a sign he needed to cut everyone loose and strike out on his own. But selfishly, he’d come to realize he couldn’t take out the Reidar alone. He needed people at his back to do that. So he told himself that he was well enough contained, not as bad as he used to be.

  But it had all turned into one giant cosmic joke, with him as the punch line. He’d had his wings clipped, because without the Imojenna, he couldn’t do frecking much of anything.

  A heavy-treaded fall of boot steps echoed from behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Callan emerge from the single narrow ramp access to the skimmer.

  “Good. You’re awake. Was starting to think someone would have to go all prince charming and kiss that ugly face of yours.” Callan tossed him a bottle, which he caught against his chest.

  A moderately expensive brand of vodka. It wasn’t Violaine, but it also wasn’t watered down backworld moonshine. He twisted off the lid and raised the bottle, chugging down half a dozen long mouthfuls before coming up for air.

  “Knew that would perk you right up.” Callan shoved a hand in his pants pocket and produced the key to the cuffs.

  Rian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another quick mouthful of the vodka while Callan crouched down and unlocked the bloodstained cuffs.

  “FYI, I don’t think these were necessary, but you were damned insistent.” After the cuffs were free, Callan sat back, taking the vodka and helping himself to a long swallow. When he handed the bottle back, there was something a little too much like concerned caring in the guy’s mindful gaze. “I ended up knocking you out with my pulse pistol. If you’re aching all over, that’d be why.”

  “Thanks.” His voice came out a bit on the gravelly side, so he took another drink of vodka to wash away the tightness. It was a relief to know he hadn’t tried to hurt anyone, but he hated that Callan and the others had seen him like that—nothing more than a rabid animal, a messed-up, deranged product of the frecking Reidar. At least Callan wasn’t outwardly treating him any differently.

  If anyone so much as even looked at him with a hint of pity, it would tip his recently patche
d temper right back into fraying. Yeah, what the Reidar had done to him, what he was now stuck living with, sucked ass. But he would not—nor would he ever—tolerate being pitied. If they wanted to feel sorry for someone, they could waste that sentiment on the who-knew-how-many-thousands of people the Reidar had already killed.

  “How long ago did we land?” He handed the half-empty bottle off to Callan and pushed to his feet, clenching his jaw over a groan. Aching all over was a vast understatement. He felt like someone had put his insides through a meat grinder and then unceremoniously stuffed the minced leftovers back into him.

  “About four hours.”

  He dragged himself a few steps over to the privy and slapped at the door controls.

  “Where are the others?” He shuffled inside, leaving the door open as he tabbed on the faucet over the sink to splash water on his face. Goddamnit. Even his skin hurt.

  “We got a layover room in the spaceport under a false identity of mine.” Callan stepped up beside him, shoving a cloth under the running water to wet it down then wiping the blood off the cuffs. “They’re safe for the time being. I ordered them some food and told Nyah to buy supplies online to keep them distracted.”

  “Good plan.” He glanced down at the abrasions on his wrists, debating whether or not they were serious enough that he needed to do something about them. No doubt if Kira had been here, she would have insisted on patching him up. But the doc had taken the other skimmer with his sister, her fiancé, and Lianna. He only hoped they stayed safe on Barasa while Tannin followed up on his childhood friend and the possible Reidar connection. Of course, if Kira and the others hadn’t loosed that commando, and the authorities found someone locked in the bowels of his ship, it was going to be one more reason for UAFA to hunt them all down.

  He cleaned the worst of the blood off his hands and forearms, poured some vodka on the wounds with a hiss through clenched teeth at the sting, then splashed more water on his face, wetting his hair and letting rivulets drip down his neck, onto his back and chest under his shirt, before rinsing out his mouth. He needed to get his shite together, get himself cleaned up, and then contact Commander Captain Colter Routh and hope to god the Reidar hadn’t already gotten to the guy.

  Colt had been the leader of his original military unit, the one he’d trained with as a green recruit when he’d been just a rich kid who’d run away from home at the age of sixteen and used a fake ident to join the military. The same unit where he’d met Zander, who’d been on leave for an injury and helping Colt get the newbies into shape. Zander had been the first one to work out he wasn’t as old as he’d pretended to be, but he and Colt hadn’t kicked him out. The two of them had kept quiet, made sure he got his ass through basic training, and survived the first eye-opening years of war.

  Being that Colt was only a commander captain, he was hoping the guy wasn’t ranked high enough to have attracted the Reidar’s interest. He was also hoping the guy didn’t believe the BS charge of intergalactic terrorism that frecking Baden Niels had brought against him. He was taking a huge chance even setting boots on Dunham—half the planet was basically one big military outpost. If going onto Kalaheo had been like flipping off the authorities, coming to Dunham was like stripping himself naked and running right through the middle of a Yarinian government sitting.

  Still, there was very little he wouldn’t do in his efforts against the Reidar. And having recently succumbed to the demons inside him, they’d be quieter for a while. So he was less likely to flip out and kill anyone with an overabundance of stupid today.

  He shrugged out of his shirt, clenching his jaw at the rippling ache through his upper body. As he came out of the privy, he took another hit of vodka, then searched through the meager emergency supplies for a new one.

  Once he’d drunk a few more mouthfuls, which started doing a damn good job of dulling the aches and lessening the pounding of his head, he slipped on a cleanish T-shirt and followed Callan out of the skimmer.

  Mysteriously resourceful as always, Callan had fake UAFA idents for them to pass through the security checkpoints, all without needing any kind of palm scan or DNA test. On the other side of the terminal, they took an elevator up to the fourth level where the others waited in a layover room.

  As he stepped in after Callan, he didn’t meet anyone’s eyes and refused to feel guilty or ashamed about his little meltdown. It was what it was, and if they didn’t like it, they knew where the hatch was.

  Callan joined the other three at the table where they were eating, while he made a beeline for the single smallish crystal display in the room, tabbing up the comm system. As he dropped into the chair, he could feel that now-familiar tingle buzzing just in the periphery of his awareness and knew that Ella was looking at him. He’d been trying not to think too closely about it, but ever since she’d healed him a few months ago, it was like she’d somehow forged a permanent link of consciousness between them.

  Though they hadn’t talked about it, and he sure as shite hadn’t asked, he got the sense she always knew exactly what was going on with him, while he could unfailingly tell exactly where she was at any given time. The only good thing about it had been his advantage in avoiding her.

  Shaking off the distraction, he accessed Dunham’s public comm network and looked up Colt, gratified to discover he was currently stationed at the Succession MTB—military training base—just outside the capital city. He’d heard Colt had permanently moved into overseeing the training of new recruits, which hadn’t been a surprise; the guy was a natural leader and always cared more than most people about the others in his unit at any given time.

  It took him a few minutes to come up with a way to send the message for a meeting so Colt would know it was him, while ensuring any random security checks wouldn’t pick up the same thing. The last thing he wanted to do was get Colt in hot water over meeting with a wanted terrorist. But that concern didn’t reach far enough to make him hesitate about meeting up with his old buddy.

  He was going for broke here. If he couldn’t get Colt to help him, he had no frecking idea how he’d otherwise get the components.

  Once he’d sent the message, he took himself over to where the others sat and helped himself to the food. The table sat only four, and though Callan had left the last seat vacant—instead balancing a plate on his hand, eating as he looked out the window across the city—Rian didn’t sit, either, taking his meal to join Callan.

  “I know it’s kind of obvious, but the question needs to be asked,” Callan said between bites of food. “What the freck are we going to do without the ship?”

  “I don’t plan on being without her for long. And, lucky for me, I happen to have one of the universe’s most wanted marauders for a cousin. Once I’ve made this contact and the others have concluded things on Barasa, we’ll organize to meet up with Qae and see how he feels about going on a good old-fashioned pirating raid of whatever IPC impound yard the Imojenna ends up in.”

  Callan sent him an exasperated frown across his plate. “If I’d wanted to be a pirate, I would have made my way to the Barbary Belt years ago. A man’s got to have some respect. No offense to your cousin, but pirates are like the bottom-feeders of the universe.”

  “Why do you think Qae hates anyone calling him that?”

  Callan coughed a short laugh, scraping the last of the food off his plate. “You can put a monkey in a dress and call it Sally, but it’s still going to be a monkey.”

  “I’m going to tell Qae you said that next time I see him. The look on his face will be priceless.”

  Balancing his empty plate on one hand, Callan leaned over and grabbed a beer off the table. “Speaking of pirates, are you sure aligning ourselves with Rene Blackstone is such a good idea? You might be a deranged sonuvabitch on your best of days, but Blackstone is a total sociopath.”

  “I’m sure we don’t have any other choice, unless we want to sit back and watch the Reidar make the universe their bitch.” He helped himself to one of the beers
as well, feeling a little more like himself now he’d had a meal and the vodka had taken the worst of the edge off his blackout hangover.

  “Yeah, but on the other hand, we end up being Blackstone’s bitch.” Callan shook his head, returning his gaze out the window as he took a contemplative swallow of beer. “You know, some days I think we’re the wrong people for the job. Saving the universe wasn’t one of my life goals.”

  The revelation came as no surprise. Callan was a good soldier, and he didn’t want to lose the guy. But Rian needed to know that the people he took into this fight had his back all the way. By the same turn, this was his personal crusade and at the last stand, he didn’t expect anyone else to take the fall with him.

  Callan had given him three good years. If the guy felt like it was time to move on to different hunting grounds, he wasn’t going to cry into a gallon of ice cream about it.

  “Can’t say it was one of mine, either. My goals are more along the lines of slaughtering every last frecking alien I can get my hands on. If the universe gets saved in the process, I guess that’s a bonus.”

  Callan sent him a grin with a definite bite of viciousness to it, as if he didn’t really believe the declaration, but was up for killing a few Reidar all the same.

  “Anyway, if you’ve got better prospects elsewhere, don’t feel like you owe me anything.”

  “Better prospects than killing aliens?” He shook his head, draining the last of the beer. “Don’t think I could come up with anything more entertaining. And if I didn’t know you better, I might think you were trying to get rid of me or being some noble asshat.”

  “Noble?” He scoffed, setting his empty plate aside. “There’re a lot of interesting words you could use to describe me, but noble sure as shite isn’t one of them.”

  The crystal display chimed an incoming message alert. Rian went over and tapped the screen, bringing up a reply from Colt, who was ready and willing to meet. Except the location wasn’t what he’d been expecting.