Collision Course - An Aeon 14 Space Opera Adventure (Perilous Alliance Book 3)

by M. D. Cooper

  “Forgive me if I can’t take anything at face value, especially if that face is on a beautiful woman.” He caressed her cheek. “Have you told your crewmates yet?”

  “Not yet. What they don’t know…”

  He laughed. “Of course. If you have something to do, run along, but I expect you’ll join me privately for dinner.”

  “I wouldn’t dare be anywhere else.” Nadine sauntered toward the exit and smiled brightly as she turned around to give a parting glance. She even blew him a kiss.

  It was easy to make promises when you lied. Even easier when you expected the person holding you to that promise to soon be dead.

  REPATRIATION

  STELLAR DATE: 09.31.8948 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: SAS Hanover

  REGION: Edge of Trio System, Silstrand Alliance

 

  Samuel left the Hanover’s bridge and entered the lift.

 

  He rode the lift to the flight deck where the shuttle from the Excelsior would dock. It was almost surreal that after all this time, Lana was nearly back with him. Though it had only been ten weeks, it felt like years.

  Grayson had finally completed his mission to bring Lana back, but it was also Grayson’s fault that it had taken so long in the first place. Samuel had not forgotten how Grayson had sided with Kylie Rhoads on the Dauntless.

  That Lana had survived that encounter intact was both a miracle, and a testament to the power of the technology she held.

  Samuel also laid the civil war they now waged with Maverick at Grayson’s feet. It was that stubborn man’s actions which had forced Samuel to attack The Futz—though Vaax and Maverick were also to blame.

  A series of events that now had Maverick—a lump of human excrement as far as Samuel was concerned—holding the reins of the Gedri Freedom Federation. The system’s puppet government no longer operated under even a façade of legitimacy with that man in power.

  In the end, however, it all boiled down to two things. Lana agreeing to smuggle the nano-tech out of Silstrand and Grayson siding with the junker. Though he was ready to do what was necessary to elicit Lana’s cooperation, Samuel would never forgive either of them. He had come too far to back down now.

  He strode onto the flight deck as the Excelsior’s shuttle eased through the grav shield and onto its cradle.

  A squad of soldiers from the Hanover stood ready as the ramp lowered, and Captain Quinn of the Excelsior walked down with Lana at her side.

  Two soldiers followed, then came Grayson tailed by another pair of guards.

  “General Samuel, sir,” Captain Quinn saluted. “Your daughter and the traitor.”

  Samuel saw Grayson’s eyes widen at Quinn’s words and a smile formed on the general’s lips. Grayson’s wrists were cuffed in front of him, and he looked well enough, though his face bore the scars of the torture he had suffered while rescuing Lana.

  As far as Samuel was concerned it was no less than what the fool deserved. If Grayson had honored his commitment to Silstrand, Lana would never have ended up on a Scipian spy ship.

  Lana, on the other hand looked well. She wore grey SSF-issue pants and a white tank top. Her hair was longer, but kempt. If he didn’t know that she had undergone torture at the hands of Harken’s people, he would have never suspected anything untoward had happened to her.

  There was, however, an energy in her eyes he had never seen before. He suspected that she had grown up a lot during her ordeal.

  Samuel had captured several of Harken’s scientists in a raid on her facility on Perseverance. He had wanted to find out what they had discovered about extracting the nanotech from her. What he had learned horrified him.

  The knowledge that his daughter had been tortured there, and would have died there, had Kylie Rhoads not saved her had preyed on his emotions for some time.

  Samuel had let them know that before he’d killed them. It had been the first time in many years that he had killed someone himself. He wouldn’t go so far as to say it had felt good. But it did feel right.

  He pushed his worries aside and nodded to the captain. “Thank you, Captain Quinn. Your efficient and diligent handling of this matter will look very good on your record. Thank you for seeing them here personally. You may return to your ship.”

  “Yes, General Samuel.” Quinn signaled to her team, and they turned Grayson over to Samuel’s squad before returning to the shuttle.

  “Secure Grayson in a holding room for debriefing,” Samuel said without looking at the man.

  Lana sighed and cast a glance between them. Samuel knew what she’d say but he’d have none of it. He wouldn’t speak to his daughter with Grayson around.

  “Be careful,” Grayson said with a warning tone in his voice; Samuel wasn’t sure who he was warning. The squad left with Grayson and Samuel stood alone with his daughter. She seemed surprised to be without guards, looking around as though she expected them to emerge from the deck.

  “I don’t need them here while we talk. Rumor has it that you could take them all out without breaking a sweat.”

  “It’s true. I could if I wanted to…”

  But she didn’t want to? Good. “I hear no room or cuffs hold you as well. Were you trying to prove a point or just showing off?”

  Lana stuttered and glanced down at the ground, the way she had often done as a child. Then she straightened her shoulders and met his gaze. “Both.”

  “You look all right. Did the barbarians at Freemont hurt you?”

  Lana shook her head. “They put me in cyro but they didn’t hurt me. Grayson was able to wake me up and save me before the ship made the jump to Scipio.”

  A close call. A really close call.

  Samuel shifted his weight from one foot to the other and sighed deeply. “There’s much for us to say to each other, much of it starting months ago. When word came you were abducted the only thing I could think of was getting you back. But when I heard what you had done, what you had agreed to do…I raged. Plain and simple. I know you’ve wanted nothing more than to hurt me. And you did. Does that news make you happy?”

  Lana shook her head. “No, sir. It makes me…sorry.”

  Sorry? Well, that was a new one. Samuel didn’t know if his daughter was capable of being sorry for anything. “Explain.”

  She licked her lips and gazed up at the ceiling, then the walls, looking anywhere but at him. It had been the same since she was nothing more than a little girl and Samuel hadn’t understood it then either. He thought she would’ve grown out of it by now. “Everything I did, I did to hurt you. To get back at you. So, you’d notice me for more than a party girl who does nothing but drain your connections and money.”

  The solution to that was easy. Samuel didn’t understand why she didn’t see it. Stop partying, stop making excuses and dropping out of every university and school that would have her.

  Lana’s eyes filled with tears and it took Samuel by surprise. “I hurt everyone else instead. It’s my fault Grayson is where he is. It’s my fault you assaulted Freemont. It’s my fault I have this nano in my blood where it’ll probably always be part of me. I’ve changed everything and I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I was just so…angry.”

  “Why?” Samuel demanded. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you.” Lana’s jaw ground back and forth. “You hate me.”

  That wasn’t true. “That’s about as far from the truth as anything I’ve ever heard. It’s…ludicrous to think it’s possible for me to hate my one and only daughter.”

  “You’ve been nothing but hard on me. You never approve of the things I do or the people I hang out with.”

  “Because you are capable of so much more. You’re smart, gifted really, and you do nothing but squander it on lavish parties and so-called boyf
riends. I want you to succeed.”

  “And I wanted you to be something other than just the general!” Lana squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head, as if doing so avoided her some amount of pain.

  Samuel stepped up and came close to touching her, but stopped short. “I don’t know how to be anything else. I did what I thought was right. What I thought you needed.”

  “Yeah,” Lana’s tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth, “great job.”

  “If you’re trying to say the mess you’ve made in Gedri…all across Silstrand is my fault…” Samuel wouldn’t accept it. “You’re responsible for your own behavior, Lana. I might have wanted to save you, I might have wanted to rip the head off the GFF, but I didn’t get us into this situation. You, and you alone did that.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. I knew I could always count on you. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. I knew you’d dump it all on me, but if I didn’t bite, they would have found someone else. It wasn’t like I was the only option when it came to smuggling the nano out. They picked me because I was vulnerable.”

  “What do you expect me to say?” Samuel shouted with more anger than he realized he had. “What do you expect from me?”

  “To say you’re glad I’m safe! Tell me how much you love me! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? The kidnapping, the tests, the changes in my body brought me to the brink of death. Then your soldiers shot me. Under your orders!”

  Admittedly, a low point and a line Samuel hadn’t meant to cross. “I wanted them to harm the crew of the Dauntless. Not you. I was trying to get you back.”

  “They saved me when you couldn’t, or wouldn’t. You turned on them, you lied. How can I ever trust what you say if you lied to the very people you hired to save me?”

  Samuel didn’t have an answer for that. “I did what I had to, all right? I made some bad choices but they were unavoidable and the best I could do at the time. If you expect me to forgive you, why can’t you forgive me?”

  Lana bent her head down low and Samuel wasn’t sure what she was feeling or thinking, but it was clear, she was thinking of something. “I want to help Silstrand and the SSF, but to do that, I need you to do something for me.”

  “All right,” Samuel said with hesitation. He couldn’t imagine what it would be that Lana could want.

  “You can take some nano from me and do whatever you want with it. Replicate it. But take the cuffs off Grayson. Give him back his position.”

  Samuel laughed like he hadn’t laughed in months. “Oh, Lana…”

  “I want him with me in the procedure room. He’ll make sure nothing bad happens to me and when you get what you want, you clear his name and Kylie’s, and the whole crew.”

  Samuel straightened up taller and his face twitched. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. There’s no way…”

  Lana cupped her left hand and a storm of silver filaments grew out of her hand twisting like vines in a tornado. “I studied the weapons your soldiers carried. I thought you might need a demonstration to see what I can do.” The nano took shape and created an exact replica of the pulse pistols his soldiers were equipped with when on station duty.

  Samuel’s mouth fell open as he extended his hand and Lana placed the gun in his hand.

  “There’s no charge cylinder, batteries are a bit harder.”

  “How? How can you do that?”

  Lana shrugged. “Beats me, but imagine what a trained solider can do. Imagine what a ship can do with this sort of tech. It can be yours, if you agree to my terms. Otherwise, I’m never letting you anywhere near my blood.”

  “Agreed.” Samuel said quickly. For this sort of tech, a few old vendettas were worth letting go. Not to mention what it would do for his position with the admiralty. He was already putting off a call to return to the Silstrand System to explain his attack on Freemont.

  “Then I’ll go wherever you want, and do whatever you want, but if you double-cross me…I can kill anyone on this ship. I can get to you.”

  “You’d threaten to kill your own father?”

  “Everything changed with what you did that day aboard the Dauntless. This is where we are. I didn’t see you fighting back the tears when you ordered your men to kill me.”

  “Lana,” Samuel sighed, “I’m—”

  She pushed passed him and strode toward the flight bay’s. “Can we just get this over with? Get me to your lab and have Grayson delivered. That’s all. No reason for us to talk.”

  * * * * *

  Grayson took Lana’s hand. Laying on the laboratory table made her appear younger and more vulnerable than she was, younger and more vulnerable than how Grayson had come to know her. It didn’t surprise him that General Samuel was prepared to perform the procedure on the Hanover. He was not a man who liked waiting.

  “You’ll be fine. Just close your eyes and count backwards and soon you’ll be asleep.”

  Lana shook her head and pushed the lab technician away. “No sedatives. I need to stay awake.”

  Grayson sighed. “Lana, be realistic. There is some pain with this procedure. There’s no reason for you to—”

  “If I don’t sleep, things can’t go wrong. If they put me asleep, I don’t know what condition things will be in when I wake up again. You should understand that.”

  He did but he hated Lana to put herself through unwarranted pain. “If that’s what you wish.”

  “If I don’t reset the nano’s imprinting, it will self-terminate when you take it. I don’t know how it works, but I know that S&H didn’t want it to spread to just anyone. Besides, it’s just a few needles. I can take that, right?”

  “Right.” Grayson smiled and gave the go ahead to the lab technician. “Honor her wishes to the best of your ability.”

  “I can’t sign off on this. She’s the general’s daughter.”

  “The general is right here,” Samuel said as he stepped up to the foot of the bed. “If my daughter wants to stay awake to trust us, we’ll do as she asks. Consider it a direct order.”

  “Dad,” Lana said with surprise and raised her eyebrows as she peered up from the bed. “You came.”

  “My daughter is undergoing a major medical procedure. You think I’m not going to be here for that?”

  Lana rested her head back on the light pillow they had given her. “I’m not scared. You don’t have to be here.”

  “True as that may be, I’m not leaving. Be quiet and let the scientists do what’s necessary.”

  Lana bit her lip and Grayson reflected on how just bad Samuel was at fathering her. The general couldn’t see what she needed from him as a father but it was painfully obvious Samuel wanted to give her something. He just didn’t understand what that was.

  Samuel said to Grayson privately,

  Grayson paused at hearing his rank.

  * * * * *

  With the nano stems extracted, and their ownership protocols reset, the scientists when to work on replicating base sets to experiment with. Others monitored her vitals, though there was nothing wrong with Lana; the nano was still within her and already replenishing itself.

  Samuel was already gone, and Lana was sitting on the edge of the table. “That was anticlimactic.”

  Grayson laughed. “It really was. Nothing as dramatic as when—” he almost said ‘when it transferred to Kylie’ but stopped himself. There was no need for anyone in the SSF to know that Kylie also possessed the same tech as Lana.

  “Colonel Grayson,” a sergeant said from the room’s entrance. “I’m here to escort you to the general.”

  “Go,” Lana said. “I have Abby to keep me company.”

  Lana had only said that to put his mind at ease, but all it made him think of was the absence of Jerrod.

  He gripped her hand. “Call if you need anything.”

  Lana nodded. “Of course.”

  The sergeant escorted Grayson to the general’
s ready room and he prepared himself for a tongue lashing…or prison, or execution. Maybe all of the above. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure exactly what Samuel would say to him.

  When Samuel entered the room, the foul expression on his face spoke volumes. He wanted to knock it off the man, but instead saluted smartly. “Sir!”

  Samuel sat without returning the salute and gave Grayson a wave to indicate that he could stand at ease. When had Samuel become such a sloppy officer? Had these last few weeks and the general’s desperation to win at any cost ruined him?

  “My daughter’s expressed loyalty to you. Not in so many words, but what I saw clearly shows the lengths you went to return the nano tech to Silstrand. For that, the SSF is in your debt. What I saw, as a father, reminded me of something I’m not. A comforter, a protector. You did what I couldn’t for Lana these last few months.”

  Samuel’s jaw clenched and it was obvious he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Granted, Grayson wasn’t so certain, either.

  “After we rescued her, I did what I could, sir.”

  “Yes, I’ve gone over your debrief and Quinn’s interviews with Lana. She became part of the Dauntless crew. I’m not sure that was wise considering what she was carrying.”

  “It gave her something to do. She was useful, and if she didn’t want to be held, we couldn’t hold her. She’s no longer just your daughter.”

  “A super soldier with no training. It’s no wonder she’s had outbursts and been unable to control herself in combat situations. Even with Abby it’s a wonder Lana’s managed to survive this far.”

  “The crew of the Dauntless, what’s your plan for them?”

  Samuel held his hand up. “First is the matter of Jerrod, a highly respected and important member in the SSF. He was removed by force, was he not?”

  Grayson took a deep breath. “He gave us no choice.”

  “You didn’t make that choice either, did you? It was forced upon you by Kylie Rhoads and her crew. Yet you and Lana would have me go to great lengths to grant her immunity in this deal.”