by Layla Nash
He wouldn’t let her endanger the crew.
Trazzak grabbed the tablet and the communicator and stormed out of his quarters, heading for the sick bay. It was still early, but maybe if he woke Jessalyn up she’d have less capacity to come up with lies and excuses. He wanted the truth. A growl rattled in his chest and a younger crewmember leapt out of his way, ducking his head in deference as Trazzak strode past.
The doors to the sick bay didn’t open fast enough, and his fist dented one as it retreated. Dim lights illuminated the sick bay, and brightened as he slapped his hand against the wall. Jessalyn, pale and still in the bed, didn’t move. His anger wavered as he saw the dark circles under her eyes and the awful redness that still striped her arm. Trazzak clenched the tablet in his hand, hard enough to hurt, and rattled the bed. “Wake up.”
Jessalyn blinked, her blue eyes unfocused, and looked at him with a complete lack of recognition. “Huh?”
Trazzak tossed the tablet on the bed next to her hand, forcing back the sympathy that made him want to brush her hair back and bring her water and food. She was a traitor and a spy, regardless of how enticing her scent was. “Explain this. Fast.”
She lifted her good arm to rub her eyes, and the sheet pulled away to reveal the smooth, soft curve of her calf. “What are you talking about?”
“This,” he said, holding up the communicator. He pointed at the tablet. “And mountains of information on a new technology that you have no reason to have. Are you still working for them? Still calling back to the Alliance?”
That did it — she went still, eyes narrowing, and he watched the struggle play out across her expression. Trying to remember or trying to forget, he couldn’t tell. But still she said nothing.
Trazzak growled, his scales rising. “At least deny it, Barnes. Say something. I won’t believe you, but at least get your story straight before I get Vrix in here to arrest you for treason.”
She took a deep breath, her hand shaking as she touched her forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just — can you slow down? I don’t remember a lot.”
It felt like more lies. He wasn’t going to fall for it, not for a second.
Jess
Jess’s dreams brought her images of the Xaravian second-in-command, and the memory of that soft touch on her throat and forehead. She felt warm and safe, finally, and relaxed into his embrace. Trazzak wouldn’t betray her, not like the losers she dated from work. His rough lips revisited the path his hands traveled, down her throat to her chest and teasing into her cleavage, and his weight settled next to hers with a comforting heat. Jess tangled her hands in his long hair, not minding the bones and beads at all, and arched her back to meet his mouth as all her clothes disappeared and her breasts tightened in anticipation. Newton help her, she wanted him.
Just as he kissed his way down her stomach, hands teasing her inner thighs, a loud noise disrupted everything and she blinked awake. A dream? Jess stared into the half-light as a figure loomed over her, talking loudly and shaking something metallic at her, and tried to process where she was as the slow burn of desire evaporated.
It took far too long to recognize Trazzak, since she’d never seen his scales and skin so red with anger, and then embarrassment from her dirty dream of him took over and further sealed her mouth shut. The Xaravian accent was difficult enough to understand in any of the universal languages, even when her brain functioned at capacity, so Jess couldn’t do much more than stare at him as Trazzak said something about treason and betrayal.
He finally held up a small metallic device with buttons and screens on it, and her mind started to catch up — not just with what he ranted about, but with what happened on the spaceport. It was an Alliance Information Ministry orders relay, a way for officers to securely communicate with each other and the home office, even from the farthest, darkest reaches of space. Someone from the research department even claimed the relays would work from inside a black hole, but no one yet had the courage to try.
Trazzak couldn’t have gotten it anywhere but her, and she couldn’t have gotten it anywhere but the spaceport. When she asked the Xaravian to slow down, it just angered him more. He held up a tablet covered in schematics and formulas, advanced physics that looked like one of the dead languages on Earth — Greek, maybe, or Russian. One of the tough ones.
Her hands shook as she took the tablet and fought back the fog in her memory. She met someone in a cafe on the spaceport, somewhere isolated from everyone else, and talked about the bounty on her head. One last mission...
The monitors attached to her started to beep and bing faster, almost alarming, and Trazzak glanced at them before turning his ire on her once more. “Just admit whatever it is you’re hiding, Barnes. You said you met someone named Nathan. Is he telling you what to do? Is he blackmailing you?”
Nathan. Jess wanted to groan and cover her face as more of the memories returned. Her old boyfriend — well, really just a hook-up, since he couldn’t be trusted with her heart for not even a second. And he’d sat across from her at the cafe and gently threatened her and the rest of the crew with death if she didn’t figure out a way to steal the fancy new technology... which must have been the weapons system described on the tablet.
She put both the relay and the tablet down, not wanting to see another iota of information until she could sort out what the hell she wanted to do and what she needed to tell Isla and Griggs and her crewmates. Before Trazzak publicly accused her of treason. “Can you sit down for a second? I can’t focus with you dancing around over there.”
His scales rattled and his eyes narrowed and flashed silver as he loomed over her. “You think this is funny? I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and get your side of the story, but clearly I’ve lost my damn mind. I’ll let Vrix deal with you.”
He turned to go, even the spikes standing up on his shoulders, and Jess forced herself to sit up, biting back a cry as sharp pain ran up her arm. “Wait.”
Trazzak paused but didn’t face her. “Talk fast.”
“I’m trying to remember everything,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Everything is blurry after I left the ship for the spaceport. I’m not screwing with you and I’m not trying to buy time, I promise. I just don’t remember. And it’s weird to see you so pissed off.”
The Xaravian turned, arms folded over his chest as he scowled at her. “Talk faster.”
Sitting up and focusing took way too much energy. Jess lay back, sweating from the exertion and a little from panic and adrenaline. If Trazzak got Vrix involved, Jess didn’t have much hope that everyone would be reasonable. She’d end up stranded on a neutral planet, and she sure as hell wouldn’t survive long with the bounty on her head. “I think I met someone on the port, and he gave me those things.”
“You think? Why should I believe you?”
Jess opened her mouth to try and explain while still keeping her options open for denying it all later, but the door opened and Maisy strode in, frowning at a tablet. “Jess, your heart is a little —”
The doctor paused when she saw Trazzak looming over the bed, and Maisy started to grin. “Your heartrate is elevated, but I guess that makes sense. How are you doing, Trazzak? Did I interrupt something?”
The Xaravian scowled. “I had some questions about what happened on the port.”
“I’m sure you did.” Maisy waggled her eyebrows as she meandered over to Jess’s side, and Jess covered her eyes as her cheeks heated. The doctor checked the machines around Jess’s arm. “But you’re getting her all worked up, and we still have to run the cleansing routine one more time to make sure we’ve got all the poison out. So maybe take a break and you guys can go back to flirting later.”
“Flirting?” Trazzak practically roared, and Jess winced. Maybe Maisy hadn’t learned what red and orange scales meant on the Xaravians. It sure as hell wasn’t lust. The second-in-command practically expanded in his irritation. But he didn’t immediately shout that Jess was a traitor and a sp
y, so he still had some degree of control. Instead of dealing with Maisy’s giggles, Trazzak glared at Jess. “Get your story straight, fast. Otherwise Vaant and Vrix will make the decision for you.”
Before Jess could sort out her thoughts, he stormed out and snarled and snapped all the way down the hall. Maisy gave her a sideways look. “Didn’t see that one coming. What did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” Jess said. It was almost the truth. “Just a misunderstanding.” Or so she hoped.
But Maisy kept up the teasing as she reviewed the records from the heart monitors and poison-removal machines, poking fun at Jess and Trazzak alike. Jess considered for a split second revealing the naughty dream she’d had about Trazzak, just to give Maisy something to laugh at, but she stopped — she didn’t want to share that with anyone. Even with Trazzak, at least until Jess figured out what the hell was going on in her own head. She hadn’t trusted a male in years. She couldn’t trust herself, frankly. What if she talked in her sleep and let a secret slip? What if the male was only interested in her for her work, and was working for an adversary or criminals or bounty hunters?
She lay back in the bed as Maisy ordered breakfast, and Jess slid the tablet under the sheets on the far side of the bed. She could study the information before she tried to explain everything to Trazzak, and hopefully that would give her enough to save her skin. Or maybe she just needed to go to Vaant first, and throw herself at the mercy of the captain and Isla. Isla would at least give her a chance to explain, and maybe even a chance to redeem herself.
Trazzak was still too much of a wildcard, especially when she took into account the soft murmur of his voice as he reassured her through the chaos and darkness of the poison dreams. Jess stared at her bracelet and toyed with the small compass, watching the needle spin aimlessly. She wished it could show her the easy way, even in the depths of space.
Trazzak
He went back to the infirmary at least three times that day to try and talk to Jessalyn, to figure out what kind of treason she was working on, but every time, one of the other Earthers or his crew were in there talking to her. So he fumed and paced and kicked himself for leaving the tablet with her. And she had plenty of time to delete or alter the records. At least he still had the odd relay device.
Instead of wasting his time pissed off in his quarters or on the bridge, Trazzak went to the gym and beat up several of the younger Xaravians who needed to work on their martial arts. Only when he could hardly stand from exhaustion did he retreat to his quarters to clean up, then went to the small research room on the ship. It doubled as a library, even though they didn’t have much research to conduct on the Galaxos, but the tech linked to some of the largest databases in the universe. If there was any information on how to use the relay thing and the weapons systems, he would be able to find it.
He debated just outing her to Vaant and being done with it. There was no reason to keep her secret any longer, not when it was clear she took orders from someone in the Alliance. Something stopped him, though, and he didn’t know exactly what. Maybe it was the fear in her eyes when he first revealed he knew what she was. Or maybe it was the softness of her smooth skin and the curve of her lips.
He growled and forced away the thought. He wasn’t some lovestruck adolescent. He was a grown warrior and the second-in-command on a rebel ship. He couldn’t waste time being distracted by a troublesome Earther with questionable motives. There wasn’t room in his life for any of that mate stuff, and he’d seen how the Earther women changed Vaant and Vrix. Trazzak wasn’t ready for that type of life.
He picked up the relay after finding an entry on how they worked, and started pressing buttons. The open sequence didn’t work, and the relay only beeped three times and went dark. He tried a different series of buttons, and the same thing happened. Trazzak growled and got up to pace before he crushed it in his fist.
Luckily the library had a set of tools. He retrieved a few small picks and shims, some pliers, and other tools so he could fiddle with the case. Maybe that was the problem. Removing the case might give him better access to the guts of the relay so he could bypass whatever cryptography prevented him from giving it commands.
He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t revealed Jessalyn’s background, other than that he knew what it was like to regret things he’d done and to be not particularly proud of the results. He’d hoped she felt the same way about her time as an information officer, but if she was still meeting them, then clearly it wasn’t as terrible as he thought.
His scales rustled as he slid a shim between the edges of the case, starting to lever the thing open, but a soft voice said, “That’ll destroy it,” from behind him, and he froze.
Trazzak looked back to see Jessalyn, pale and a little shaky but upright, standing in the door to the research office. She hobbled slowly into the room and around the table to drag out a chair, and it took all of Trazzak’s willpower not to leap up and carry her before she fell. She didn’t look well at all. The oversized, bulky uniform she’d stolen from somewhere didn’t help.
“How did you get out of the sick bay?” He paused in his examination of the relay, not wanting to destroy it if she was right.
Jessalyn shrugged and smiled faintly. “I have a few tricks left in my kit. It won’t be long until they figure out I’m not still in bed.”
Before he could wind up with some tough questions, Jessalyn picked up the relay and tapped a few buttons, twisted the device sunwise, and set it on the table as it sprouted legs. The relay chimed and chirped, lighting up, and Trazzak stared at it as it projected information above the device itself, right in the middle of the air between he and Jessalyn. She flicked through the images in the air, sliding some messages aside and sorting others, but glanced at him briefly as she turned it so he could see. “These came out after you left training. Very high tech, very useful — but so specialized that no one else has them. If you get caught with one, the jig is up — you’re an information officer. So most of us prefer not to use them or even carry them, but some of the headquarters officers think the relays are the only ways to communicate.”
Trazzak frowned as he tried to read the messages — orders, mostly, and travel directives — that scrolled by so quickly, but he couldn’t keep up with Jessalyn. He didn’t like the defeated look on her face.
She took a deep breath. “I hadn’t opened it after Nathan gave it to me, but I suspected what would be on it.”
“So you are in contact with the Alliance — working on their behalf?”
“Not yet,” she said, though she hesitated. He wondered how she kept all the lies and secrets straight. “Look, he asked me to do something. In exchange, he promised to have the Minister retract the bounties and allow us all to retire with full pensions. I didn’t agree yet. I swear I didn’t — but I haven’t had a chance to actually look at what they want.”
Trazzak’s eyes narrowed as he studied her. “What did he ask you to do?”
Jessalyn sighed, rubbing her shoulder, and her hands shook as she flicked at the relay once more, until it shut down and closed back up. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. It would endanger the ship and most of the crew, and frankly, it’s too dangerous. It would just —”
The ship shook and something exploded nearby, and after the heartbeat of silence as they stared at each other in confusion, alarms blared throughout the ship. Shouting echoed down the halls and Trazzak launched to his feet. Adhz, on the bridge, spoke into the communications system. “Attack. Repeat, we are under attack. All hands to stations.”
Trazzak bolted for the bridge, ignoring everything else as the engineering team raced to shore up the damaged quadrant. Under attack in rebel territory? That should never have happened. It wasn’t possible. He skidded into chaos as he reached the bridge, and took over the controls as Vaant called for backup from the nearest rebel ships. Trazzak stared at the viewing screens and the fast-moving fighter ship that attacked from everywhere at once.
He held onto th
e navigation panel as another strike made it past the Galaxos’s shields and the ship spun off its course. He glanced over as the doors slid open once more and Jessalyn gripped the wall, face pale as she stared around the bridge. Trazzak growled at Adhz to get someone to take her back to sick bay, but in the middle of a battle, no one could be spared. Trazzak focused on fighting off the faster ship. There wouldn’t be anything to argue about if the Galaxos was destroyed, so priorities had to shift. Jessalyn would have to wait.
Jess
It took Jess longer than she liked to follow Trazzak to the bridge, but with parts of the ship exploding and everything jostling around, she had to keep a hand on the wall the whole way. Even that didn’t save her from a couple of stumbles and falls. She got a few odd looks from some of the Xaravian crewmembers as they raced to fix the ship and put out fires, but luckily no one scooped her up and hauled her back to sick bay.
Her heart pounded and leapt to her throat at the same time as she finally made it onto the bridge and saw what attacked them: a Xerxh cutter, a small and highly maneuverable ship built for destroying larger ships. Jess staggered to one of the comms stations and collapsed on the seat, putting on a headset so she could listen to whatever stray communications were picked up.
Her head swam as people raced back and forth and Trazzak maneuvered the Galaxos to keep the strongest shields facing the nimble cutter. She still didn’t believe that she’d told him about Nathan or the meeting on the spaceport. The poison from the Xerxh’s knife must have stolen her sense of self-preservation along with her balance and memory. Her arm tingled as she adjusted where it rested on the comms station, and Jess braced herself as the cutter swung around to the port side and disappeared from view.