Faultless

by Kate Rudolph

  She must’ve hit something vital as the lid to the box released with a violent hiss and she was suddenly blinded by the bright sunlight overhead. Laurel tried to get a look around, trying to figure out where she was, but it was all chaos. The Oscavians were yelling near the hatch of their smoldering ship and the acrid scent of smoke burned her nose. Blasters fired all around her, their shots making the morning light momentarily even brighter.

  Had she really slept through the ship crash? Maybe she had been drugged.

  She levered herself up from the box and had to suppress a groan as her shoulder and neck protested the movement. Too bad she wasn’t about to stay there any longer than she had to. Who was shooting? Was she being rescued? Had things gotten even worse? Laurel didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to care. She chose a direction that didn’t seem to be raining blaster fire and took off running. She couldn’t risk falling into even worse hands. Maybe Varrow had other enemies on Earth, and she wasn’t about to become their pawn.

  Laurel didn’t know these woods. Back home she could walk in any direction and find her way back, no matter how dense the growth, but here it was a different story. It didn’t matter. Lost in the woods was better than captured by nefarious aliens. It had to be.

  Branches snapped under her feet and pushed against her, cutting into her flesh and leaving little abrasions that were already starting to sting. Laurel pushed past it; this was nothing and she couldn’t let it stop her. Though the sun was bright by the ship, in the woods dawn hadn’t quite caught up and the shadows were long, making it hard to see. But all she needed to look at was the ground in front of her. Besides, she hoped that if she couldn’t see much that it meant anyone chasing after her was in the same position.

  She tripped and had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from crying out when she started to slide down the muddy incline of a ditch almost as deep as she was tall. She dug her hands into the dirt, trying to stop her descent, but it didn’t do much except slow her down. When she finally righted herself, Laurel took a second to breathe. Her heart beat hard enough to knock around her ribs and she couldn’t quite catch her breath. When she started to calm, she found a sturdy root and used it like a ladder to step up. When her head popped up above the edge of the ditch, she stopped climbing. By some trick of the forest she could see out to where she’d run from.

  Varrow’s shuttle was a smoking mess, like it had been shot out of the sky. Flanking it were two smaller shuttles that looked to have come from Earth. Blaster fire shot madly between Varrow and his opponents and Laurel thought she caught a glimpse of blue flesh, but she couldn’t be sure. She hoped with everything inside of her that it was the Detyens, but without getting closer there was no way to tell, and she wasn’t about to risk that.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the forest around her, but the sound of the fight in the distance was too much; she couldn’t hear any wildlife or anyone in pursuit. At this moment it meant nothing. She had to keep moving. She had a vague plan of getting away from Varrow and finding humans who would let her use their communicators to contact her people. It wasn’t much of a plan, but she wasn’t about to start getting clever now.

  She scrambled out of the ditch and kept moving away from the fight, now caked in dirt. Laurel grimaced but didn’t let it stop her. She could shower later. As the path in front of her opened up she picked up her pace, desperate to gain some distance on everyone behind her.

  And then the woods came to an abrupt end, the trees ending in a line as straight as if it had been cut into the earth and just a little beyond that a drop off into a deep valley below. Laurel skidded to a stop, falling to her knees to stop her forward momentum before it could send her vaulting over the cliff.

  Laurel pushed herself back up, her hands scratched up and dirty, stinging whenever she put pressure on them. She looked in either direction, but the valley seemed to go on for miles and she couldn’t see which way she should run. She just needed to move, no matter where she went. But when she turned around she froze in place.

  Varrow was standing there, blaster aimed straight at her and a desperate expression on his face.

  IN THE END THE SIMPLEST plan was best. They’d managed to lure Varrow exactly where they wanted him and disabled the ship with a modified electromagnetic pulse. Dru’s heart had threatened to stop as he watched the ship gently descend from its altitude to where it landed, its engine smoking and obscuring their lines of sight. But the Oscavians must not have realized that the EMP was what brought them down. They started moving, evacuating the important things from the ship, including a large box that was big enough to hold a human. Laurel.

  With the Detyen and SDA forces combined it wasn’t much of a fight. Four of the five Oscavian soldiers lay dead and another had surrendered, laying down his weapon and raising his hands to submit to incarceration. The only one missing was Brakley Varrow. And when Dru got to the box where Laurel had been held, he found that his denya was gone as well.

  He caught sight of a shadow dashing into the woods and followed on instinct, the bright purple skin of the Oscavian scientist standing out against the trees. Dru raised his blaster to shoot, but it was no use. He could run, or he could stop to aim, but he couldn’t get off an accurate shot while vaulting over fallen trees and deep ditches. He closed the distance between him and Varrow until the man was easily within sight, but there was no sign of Laurel.

  For the moment, Dru was relieved. At least Varrow didn’t have his mate. If she was in these woods somewhere, they would find her. And the denya bond pulsed so strongly in his chest that he knew she still had to be fine. In fact, it pulled him forward, as if she were right ahead of him.

  Right in the path of Brakley Varrow.

  The trees fell away so suddenly that for a moment Dru was disoriented. He came out a little to the north of where Varrow had, and by a fortunate accident was hidden from sight by the shadows cast by the towering trees. Beyond the tree line, the forest path dropped off into a valley, the cliff steep and a sure death sentence for anyone who couldn’t stop.

  And right at the top of it, hands raised and looking at Varrow with utter disgust and resignation, was Laurel. She didn’t see Dru, and though Dru was tempted to step into the light and offer her comfort, he stayed where he was. He couldn’t give up the advantage of his position, not when his mate was in danger.

  “You couldn’t have planned this!” Varrow sputtered, waving his blaster like a madman, his grip loose and unpracticed.

  Laurel’s fingers twitched, but she otherwise kept absolutely still. “I didn’t,” she said. “Can you really blame me for running?”

  Varrow jabbed the blaster at her and Laurel flinched. “I saved your life! I would have given you everything! How could you betray me like this?”

  His mate’s eyes widened before she sputtered out a laugh. Her hands fell and it was like she forgot that Varrow had a weapon pointed at her. “Really? You kidnapped me, you asshole. What the fuck?” She glanced over and her gaze locked on Dru. There was no way she could see him, not with the way the trees had grown, but he was certain that she knew he was there. Her lips quirked up into a thin smile and she seemed to relax.

  “You’re coming with me.” Varrow took a step towards her and that was enough.

  Dru lifted his blaster and fired twice, hitting the Oscavian squarely in the back. He fell with a gasp and his blaster clattered out of his hand. Laurel kicked it away with a scowl and looked ready to spit on the scientist, and it was only Dru’s approach that stopped her.

  She threw herself into his arms and he swung her around, clutching her close as the realization that the threat had been neutralized finally started to settle around him.

  “You found me,” Laurel breathed against his neck. She was covered in dirt and mud and her face was scratched from her run through the woods, and in that moment she’d never been a more welcome sight.

  “You’re my denya. I’ll always find you.”

  Beside them, Varrow groaned, and tried
to move. Dru let his mate go and pushed her back, getting her out of Varrow’s reach. He pressed his boot to the man’s back and kept him down in the dirt.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Laurel asked. She’d scooped up his blaster and now had it pointed at Varrow. Dru noted that her grip was a lot better than the scientist’s and he wondered where she’d learned to shoot. But they could answer that later.

  “He’s going to give us some answers.”

  IT TOOK A WHILE TO get everything set up. The SDA had to secure the scene and answer a lot of questions when the cops showed up, but luckily no one had noticed when Dru and Laurel snuck off and headed back to the base. The shower steamed around him, the hot air a little slice of paradise that could only be improved if Laurel was there with him. But no matter how much he needed his mate in his arms, needed to prove to himself that she was alive and okay, Varrow could be brought back for interrogation at any moment and Dru could not miss it.

  Laurel had insisted.

  Once he was clean, things moved quickly. Their concerns about timing had been right and Dru was called directly to a sublevel where he was surprised to find they had a holding cell and interrogation room. The SDA really was prepared for everything.

  Varrow and his surviving subordinate were being held separately and everyone understood that if they were going to get information from anyone, Varrow was the one who had it. Dru wanted to storm in and do the interrogation himself, wanted to take out all of his anger on the man who had dared to lay a hand on his mate.

  That was why Sandon had stuck Dru in a tiny observation room beside Kayde and Kendryk, both of them there to make sure that he didn’t do anything too destructive. A part of him wished that he had killed the Oscavian when he had the chance, and if Laurel had given him the slightest hint that that was what she wanted, it would have been done and damn the consequences. But the more logical part of his brain knew that he’d done the right thing.

  They watched the whole thing play out on a holo screen. Varrow was chained to a chair in the middle of the room while a Detyen warrior and an SDA official interrogated him. They wanted to know the size of the invading fleet, their weapons capabilities, their motives, everything and anything that Varrow might know.

  But no matter how they asked, no matter what they threatened or how they intimidated, the Oscavian gave nothing up. It wasn’t that he had nothing to give—the glint in his eye was proof enough that he was holding back, playing with the interrogators. He knew there was nothing they could offer him that would induce him to talk.

  The only thing Varrow wanted was Laurel, and no one in the building would pause to consider giving her up. Not after all they’d just done to save her.

  If there was any more room in the observation chamber, Dru would have paced. Surely they could get something out of the Oscavian. And, if not from him, then from his associate or from his ship. They had everything that Varrow had brought to the planet. There had to be some kind of advantage in that.

  The conversation lulled as the Detyen and the SDA official reconsidered their strategy. When several minutes had gone by in silence, Varrow laughed, finally making a noise for the first time. “You’re all pathetic,” he spat.

  The interrogators froze and neither Kendryk nor Kayde seemed to be breathing.

  Varrow continued to talk. “You’re questioning me like you think there’s anything you can do to stop what’s coming.” He leveled his gaze at the Detyen. “At least your people didn’t have the time to be so foolish. If you think that there’s anything you can do to thwart your reckoning, you’re delusional.”

  He was scratching at his wrist as if he could dig something out of it. Dru’s eyes narrowed. He thought he saw something dark under the man’s skin, almost like a clan marking if he’d been Detyen.

  “Yormas of Wreet will end you all. And I look forward to seeing the carnage.” He hissed in pain and something popped out of his skin. He crushed his wrist against the chair before the feed went fuzzy for a moment.

  When it cleared up, Varrow’s chair had tipped over and he was howling in pain as blood poured out of an unseen wound.

  “What in all the hells was that?” Dru demanded.

  He and his two minders rushed out of the room, all of them curious for answers. Sandon was already standing outside of the interrogation room, as if he’d expected them to come running. “He had a short range teleportation key embedded in his skin,” Sandon said, answering the unasked question. “They’re not common on Earth, apparently, but the SDA has a standard signal scrambler. It interrupted the pulse and prevented him from jumping to whatever is on the other side of the teleporter.”

  A young SDA soldier opened the door and handed a small bag to Sandon. In it was the still bloody token that must have been taken directly from Varrow.

  “What can we do with that?” Dru asked.

  Sandon stared at the bag for a long moment, as if he was trying to commit the thing to memory. “We’ll have the lab look at it. Whatever we find, it can’t hurt.”

  A teleportation token. Dru hadn’t even considered the possibility. Teleportation worked great when moving inanimate objects over short distances, but it was incredibly risky to move living beings. The failure rate was too high and the consequences too dire to be used by many people. “If he had that, why did he need our help to get off the planet?”

  Sandon closed his fist around the evidence. “This thing can only move one person at a time, and it’s not reliable at all, as we just saw. It’s too dangerous for anyone but the desperate to attempt. We have a medic tending to Varrow now. We’ll have to see if he’s more willing to talk in the morning.” Sandon clasped his other hand on Dru’s shoulder. “Good work, soldier. Now get some rest. You’ve been separated from your mate for long enough.”

  At those words Dru wanted to turn around and run back to Laurel, but what Varrow said sat ill with him. “Do you think he’s right? Do you think Yormas will try to do to Earth what he did to Detya?” Even with the warning, there was no way to evacuate like they had at Detyen HQ.

  Sandon’s face grew grim. “Whatever he can do, we’ll fight him. Let’s not give up hope just yet.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE DAY ENDED WITH nothing but sleep, and with his arms wrapped tightly around his mate, Dru couldn’t be disappointed. The next morning he woke first, his mate’s scent strong in his nostrils and her body soft against his. Thoughts of Brakley Varrow and the threat he posed lay far away. There was nothing Dru could do about that now. His mate was safe from him for now and the man wasn’t escaping his holding cell.

  It was a fitting punishment.

  “Stop thinking about him,” Laurel murmured as her eyes fluttered open. They were as bright as he’d ever seen them, even as she blinked away the sleep that had claimed her.

  “About who?” Dru asked. He traced the edge of her cheek. A little bit of regen gel had taken care of yesterday’s injuries and other than a little dehydration, the medic had said that nothing was wrong with Laurel. But Dru still had to see, had to feel for himself. “Varr—”

  Laurel’s finger pressed against his lips shut him up. “We’re not going to say his name anymore. Not in here. He’s done enough and now we’ve stopped him. We’re leaving it in the past. Got that?”

  His mate’s strength never ceased to amaze him. Her eyes blazed with determination and he didn’t sense a hint of regret. She was done concerning herself with the fate of Brakley Varrow. And now, so was he. “It’s behind us.” The pounding need for revenge was still there in his chest, but Dru loosened his grip on it. If Laurel wanted to be done with it, he had to walk away. He had to trust that his people would see to Varrow’s punishment. He had to keep his mate happy, no matter what.

  “So you don’t want to know what he said in the interrogation?” Dru asked. It was one thing to decide against revenge, but that would be something else.

  “Let me guess.” Laurel tapped her finger against her chin a few times before rollin
g her eyes. “Dire threats, Yormas can kill us in a single shot, you’ll never get away with holding me, blah, blah, blah. Right?” She stared at him in challenge.

  It startled a laugh out of him. “You’re taking this whole thing rather well.”

  She shrugged under the sheet and it fell down, exposing a delicious line of pale flesh that Dru was hungry to taste. “Maybe it catches up with me, but when I’m with you I always feel safe. I knew you were coming for me in here,” she placed her hand over her heart. “Even when my brain was sure everything was going to end horribly, I could feel you. I knew that nothing could stop you from saving me.”

  “You never doubted?” Dru had doubted himself, how could she have so much faith?

  She held up two fingers a few centimeters apart and scrunched up her face. “Maybe for like a second. But every time I started to panic, I knew that you were out there somewhere. It saved me. You saved me.”

  “You saved me first.” Even if Laurel was willing to let it all go, he couldn’t forget those months on Varrow’s ship. If it weren’t for Laurel, he didn’t know if he would have ever made it out of there alive. Even if he’d had the capability, he might have lost the will.

  “Are you worried?” his mate asked. She laced their fingers together and squeezed his hand tight. “There’s trouble coming and we don’t know how that’s all going to turn out.”

  Dru kissed her forehead. “We’re ready for it. Those bastards don’t stand a chance.”

  He could feel the tension leave his mate’s body as his words sank in. They both knew there was no way to predict the future. They both knew that Yormas of Wreet could still have access to the superweapon that he’d used to destroy Detya more than a hundred years ago. But in their room, it didn’t matter. They would face the future together, as a mated pair, and be stronger for it.