The lockdowns released and the Peacemaker gave a gentle lurch. Lyon made a quick retreat. The gangway retracted and sealed while Wulfe squeezed himself into the copilot seat. The ship began the short journey to the launch doors.
`Tee minus thirty.'
"Do you want a standard automatic launch, Captain, or should I control our release manually?"
Wulfe squirmed deeper into the seat. The straps locked around him. "Hands on. Show me what you've got, Commander."
Catherine laughed richly, as if she knew something he didn't. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours, huh?"
`Tee minus twenty.'
Catherine thumbed the communication pad again. "Chief, I'll take control from here. We're going manual."
The fingers of her left hand moved in swift, intricate patterns over the control pads. The fighter pivoted, headed toward the launch doors. Catherine's right hand wrapped around the thick joystick, grasping so firmly Wulfe winced in male sympathy, while he watched and imagined with absolute male fascination.
Their fighter screamed out of the bay. They flew in clear space five-hundred kilometers from the Falchion before Wulfe's stomach realized they'd left the mother ship. "Narg," Wulfe grunted as he slammed into the resistance of his seat. The straps cutting into his upper thighs tightened even further.
Catherine pulled an end-for-end flip. Too late, Wulfe realized he should be watching a fixed object--hard to do with Catherine maneuvering the fighter so daringly. The only thing bouncing harder than his eyeballs was his stomach, and it hit home with a sickening thud that threatened to revolt.
"Find your stomach yet, Captain?"
"Aye." His frantic gulps and swallows must have given him away. He couldn't have invoked the Creator's name aloud.
Catherine ran a caressing hand over the control panel. She twisted her other hand on the joystick, her thumb flicking at two tiny pads on the end. The intimate familiarity made Wulfe's groin muscles tighten and jump.
"She really moves, doesn't she, Captain?"
Watching her hand, Wulfe cleared his throat and tried not to breathe so heavily. "Definitely." Her tone of prideful ownership sparked a new suspicion. "All the other fighters equipped the same?"
"Well, I have, uh, tweaked the Peacemaker a bit here and there. Some minor nonregulation adjustments."
"Figures. You plan to show me how she reacts under fire?"
"Could, if your stomach's up to the maneuvers."
"To quote my executive, I'll show you mine..."
"Oh, I'll show you, all right." Catherine jabbed the comm pad. "Culver to Falchion. Pipe me through to Lyon."
`Lyon'
"Send out the drones."
"Hold up," Wulfe ordered. "The drones are targets only. Thought you had something that fired back."
`We do, Captain. I can give you a half dozen shadows.'
Catherine cut in. "Mykal, send out a dozen furies."
Wulfe heard Lyon's sharp intake of air, quickly followed by Catherine's pointed inquiry. "Problem complying, Lieutenant?"
`No, Ma'am, not at all. A dozen furies, as the commander prefers. Launch in thirty seconds.'
Catherine gave Lyon new coordinates well away from the station and any of the surrounding ships.
Wulfe waited until the comm channel terminated. "Is there some sort of problem? Why doesn't Lyon want to send furies?"
"We haven't tested them yet. They have no remote destruct. The only way to stop furies is for the fighter to destroy them, but that's not a problem, Sir."
"Don't overtax your abilities on my account, Commander."
Catherine thumbed the autocontrol, twisted around in her seat to look at him, her face dead-calm. Only the thin, tender skin around her left eye moved, a fragile twitch revealing her anger. "I'll be piloting and taking out targets while you're still looking for this morning's breakfast. Sir."
Shocked, he listened to how easily the words, spoken in perfect Bellonese--a rare dialect used by the Nomads, at that--rolled from her tongue, intonation and inflection native-pure. "No problem then, because I didn't eat breakfast, Commander."
She flashed him a look, half pique, half amusement, before she turned around to resume control of the fighter.
How the narg did she know Bellonese? Few Earthers ever managed more than a handful of syllables.
The furies descended and it didn't matter. The Peacemaker and her pilot battled to stay space-worthy and alive.
Chapter 9
CATHERINE DESTROYED the furies with a calculated efficiency capable of impressing Wulfe even more if he hadn't been so occupied keeping control over his stomach. It rolled and flipped with every quick maneuver of the fighter. Why did he only have this problem when someone else piloted? Albright would give him a ridiculous load of of'al about control issues or some such blather. Leave it to an Earther to complicate things.
The mutiny going on in his stomach finally subsided when Catherine took the Peacemaker back to the Falchion and set the fighter into the flight bay with a delicate touch. The woman flew with the skill of a Bellon. Now that he could concentrate on something other than his internal organs, Wulfe had to wonder who'd taught her the language and how to fly.
She got up from her seat the second her harness released and leaned a shapely hip against the backrest. Catherine watched him, one of her eyebrows slanted at an insolent angle, while she refastened a bronze clip at the end of her thick braid of hair. "Need some help getting pried out of there, Captain?"
Wulfe growled out a response barely acceptable in Bellon company, let alone Earther, then a terse, "I can manage."
"Suit yourself. Only trying to be friendly."
Wulfe glared at her back when she turned away. Friendly! Bah! The woman needed a firm hand. Right now, he'd willingly oblige. One more uppity response from her...he watched the way the Space Corps uniform conformed to her body as she maneuvered her way through the narrow cockpit to the hatch. Catherine's destiny: usher him into complete lust madness.
"Argh!" Cat muttered to herself. "Some things never change." Churlishly self-reliant, Wulfe made a point of not accepting help from others.
She opened the hatch, itching for the chance to shake some sense of reality into the big oaf, force him into remembering. She and the others sought to preserve Wulfe's sanity with the requisite silence about the relationship between them. If he didn't remember soon, she'd be edged toward the damnation of eternal space madness. One weakness of her Erosian heritage she'd have to live or die by. At this rate, die.
Lyon waited for her deckside, an island of sanity in her ever-increasing sphere of chaos. "The captain's conscious?"
She nodded, still worrying how much Wulfe had noticed about her craft. More than enough, if she knew him at all. She'd probably need to distract him. "How'd the run look from here, Mykal?"
Lyon grinned. "I'm impressed, and I knew what to expect. What about the captain? Suitably surprised?"
"Maybe his stomach complained too much for him to notice everything, but I'd be shocked if he missed the smaller inner dimensions of the fighter."
"Guess we'll find out." Lyon's gaze moved up to a spot behind her. "He seems to be walking okay."
A few seconds later, Cat felt Wulfe's presence to her left. The heat generated by his body reached her a heartbeat before his deep voice cut into the conversation.
"Think you two can teach the new pilots to fly like that?"
Lyon nodded. "That's the goal."
Cat stayed silent while she watched five of the newly arrived pilots make their way to the trio of officers. A Halfblood female--the tall and muscular Blackwood, the mouthy one from the first meeting--stepped forward first.
"I want a shot at the furies, Commander."
"When you're ready, Blackwood."
"Now."
Cat spun to face the belligerent pilot. Temper and patience warred to cross the fine, fragile line of her control. "When you and your craft are ready, Pilot. Not a nanosecond before."
"My ship is
ready, and so am I."
Temper crossed the line as victor, but Cat gritted her teeth in an effort to keep her voice level. Lack of sleep and the general chaos continued to push her to the brink of breaking. Too much depended on her, though. Too damn much. "Not anymore, Blackwood. You've just volunteered your ship for the first teardown. No pilot will be fully certified for combat until he or she can take the fighters apart and put them back together."
Blackwood glared down at Cat. "I fly. I don't do maintenance and repair. That's why we have techs aboard."
"You do maintenance now if you ever want to fly the stars for the Corps. What happens if you get stranded with a damaged craft? Who's going to repair your fighter for you? The Mallochons? Or maybe your arrogance can do the job." Cat ran an appraising gaze over the other four pilots, allowed the sarcasm to sink in. "I'd intended for the squadron to draw lots, three at a time working on teardown. Do I have two more volunteers?"
Xiang, a Fullblood male, darker than Blackwood, nodded. "First to complete the teardown and rebuild has first shot at the furies, right?"
Cat nodded, satisfied. Bellons seldom ignored a challenge. "Unless something else stupid gets in the way."
Xiang taunted Blackwood, "I'll be in the air before you figure out how the targeting links connect."
A third male, Cervantes, another Fullblood, stepped forward. "Might as well give you the three you need right now, Commander. I wouldn't mind a go at the furies."
"You three and your copilots will comprise the first flight squad. I expect you to set the standard for the others. First team done--and approved by the tech crews--gets the chance to rotate position as temporary squadron leader. Prove yourselves, you might get to keep the extra stripe on your snappy new tan and burgundy uniforms."
Glad the confrontation had ended, Cat eyed Blackwood's stiff back as the pilot strode away with the others. "That's a bomb waiting to go boom. It's going to be loud when it goes."
Wulfe whistled softly between his teeth. "Looks like you just made your first Bellon enemy, Commander."
Cat shrugged, too tired and depressed to even care. "Blackwood's not the first. She bloody well won't be the last."
"I'll keep an eye on her, Commander," Lyon said quietly.
Cat sighed. "She'll have to come around on her own, Mykal."
WULFE CARRIED his tankard across the officers' mess. The aromas of exotic foods from an array of worlds encompassed him, sweet and spicy, strange and homey. He even detected the unique smell of bresk't stew, an occurrence reflecting the extra Bellons aboard.
He sat across from Catherine at the secluded game table where she studied a holographic projection coloring the white bulkhead next to her. The image contained four separate lists of names: planets, space stations, two different series of ships' names with their home registries. Each entry contained a date.
Wulfe took a deep swallow of Bellon ale, savored the familiar bite while he waited for Catherine to speak. She looked tired. He wondered how much time had passed since she'd actually slept. With a body so delicate, she'd need adequate rest. When she only glanced at him with one brow arched in question, he took it upon himself to begin the conversation. "Looks like you have more than the usual on your mind."
"What, exactly, would be usual?" She toyed with a dark rook from the chessboard set up between them, let the piece settle back into its original place. "Did you see the report about the Mallochons raiding the Stowiak mining operation, Captain?"
"I did." Wulfe moved a light pawn forward, enjoying the texture of the game piece in his hand. So much more pleasurable than the holographic version of the game where you touched nothing but the flat control pads. He frowned at Catherine, not wanting to admit to his uncertain memory. "The raids are becoming more frequent, aren't they?"
"Aye." She gestured to the holographic image. "The first three lists contain the site and ship names of all confirmed Mallochon attacks. The fourth is a list of missing ships we can't verify as Mallochon targets, though all evidence suggests as much. I finished this last roster a few minutes ago."
Wulfe studied the names, tried to make correlations between them, something solid and inarguable. "The attacks seem more random than I'd expect from the Mallochons."
"I know." A single, fine line of concentration formed midway between her eyebrows. She moved one of her dark-colored game pieces, countering his cursory opening gambit with an obviously unplanned move. Catherine drank jeela from her mug.
He tried to keep from staring at her mug and the muddy-looking brew. He favored the tea, but hadn't seen too many Earthers drink jeela. How had she developed a taste for the potent tea?
Wulfe skimmed the list in an effort to make sense of the attacks. "Very random. Unless..."
Catherine sat up a little straighter. "What?"
She looked at him, her remarkable amber eyes wide as they called to him, pulled him in with their promise of glorious magic. Catherine's perfume, rich with exotic sensuality, embraced him. Either Albright hadn't completed her assigned task, or Catherine had ignored the offered advice about the perfume. No matter; he'd miss the scent if she stopped wearing it now, anyway. Wulfe fought an oddly dizzying sense of familiarity that spoke to him at every level of his being, and wrenched his gaze from hers.
He refocused on the names and dates. "I'm wondering if the Mallochons are trying to make us think the hits are random."
"Random on the surface, but in a manner controlled by them?"
Wulfe nodded in agreement, appreciating the way they seemed to work together, to think alike. "To throw us off."
"In other words, you think some of the targets are genuine, but some are decoys."
"Exactly." He pushed one of his light knights forward recklessly, threatening her advanced pawn. "Not every one of the ships and sites are League property. Some belong to the non-aligned worlds. What do the majority of the ships or sites have in common?"
Catherine touched a control pad. The groups of names reformed into two separate lists, one markedly longer than the other. "Mining? Wulfe, look! Mining operations and ore carriers."
Wulfe paused a moment, realizing he liked the way she said his name. "Ore. Sweet Creator, the Mallochons are looking for plunarium!"
"Hang on." She tapped out another sequence on the pads and the names reshuffled. "And stations that had ore carriers in orbit at the time of attack. I should have caught this."
"You would have. This all but confirms that the Mallochons can't replicate the power source for new shrouding devices any more than we can."
"I'd say so, blessings upon the Creator."
Startled by her use of the Bellon phrase, Wulfe watched her and recalled all the nuances that pointed to a Bellon connection. What was the key factor? She made another hurried and haphazard move on the chessboard, as if she did it only to keep busy. Her sudden nervousness distracted him. "Catherine, they haven't figured out we possess their shrouding technology, have they?"
"I don't see how." She gave him a quick, tired smile. "Not that the technology does us much good without plunarium."
"Our replication efforts still exploding in our faces?"
"Within seconds of activation." A dark shadow haunted her eyes for a moment. "Your technical knowledge hasn't suffered any with memory loss."
"I know. I can remember all of that as clearly as the Sacred Desert, but certain other things..." Certain other hazy glimpses drove him space happy!
"What kind of other things?" Catherine leaned forward, an expectant look on her exquisite face. "Perhaps I can help."
"I doubt it." If she only knew the kind of help his body needed! Wulfe tapped a finger to his forehead. The intrusive ache expanded with hateful determination. Every time he tried to force a memory, the dull ache bloomed into full-blown pain. To distract himself, he made a countering move on the chessboard. "Too bad we have only the one shrouding device."
"Isn't it, though?" Catherine shot him a quizzical look that set him to wondering.
"The equipmen
t must have been dismantled down to its molecules by now." He watched for her reaction.
"One would think so." Bland enough answer. Maybe too bland. Chin propped in the palm of her hand, Catherine studied his countering move. A frown crept across her features.
A server placed another tankard of ale on the table in front of Wulfe. "Congratulations, Captain. Looks like you have the commander on the run again."
"Again?" Wulfe asked, surprised and somehow pleased by this new discovery--he played chess! When the server walked away, he shook his head. "How about that? I didn't realize I knew the game." He glanced at Catherine only to see her frown had deepened, her eyes narrowed. "What?"
Catherine sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest. "Actually, you're quite a chess man. I ought to know. I taught you, you bloody fraud." Something that could have been pain dulled the green flecks in her eyes. "What else do you remember that you haven't told us?"
He watched in amazement as she shoved back her chair and stormed out of the mess hall.
OUTRAGE PROPELLED Cat as far as sickbay. She paced the confines of Albright's office, so torn between rage and jubilation the room spun around her. She heartily disliked the suspicions about Wulfe swirling through her, detested even more what they could mean about her mental stability. "I'm telling you, Nora, the bloody idiot remembers. He must!"
"Calm down. Remembering how to play chess is equivalent to remembering how to--oh, I don't know--how to take a shower."
"Oh, come on!" Cat growled a sound of disgust. She slapped her palms flat to the top of Albright's desk, leaned over the surface and hung her head, so close to admitting defeat. "You can do better than that!"
"Catherine, you've had enough medical background to know I'm right. If you could feel the captain's emotions, you'd agree with me."
"Maybe. Maybe not. The point is, I can't feel his emotions! What about the technical information Wulfe's able to recall? What about it?"
"Even that follows the same pattern."
"How?" She'd moved beyond recognizing anything as logical as patterns. Only frustration and pain registered right now.
Devoted Deceptions, A 4th Millennium Adventure, Book 3 Page 12