by Kelly Jensen
Qek’s head bobbed as she surveyed the group. “What did I say?”
Zed opened his mouth, but Felix beat him into the ring. “Just the right thing, Qek. Just the right thing.”
He grinned at Zed, let his gaze dip to the darkly outlined musculature, then lifted his chin. Beneath the beginnings of a beard, Zed’s cheeks flushed again. Ducking his head to study his cards, Felix savored the moment. It had been too long since he’d flirted and he’d forgotten how it felt. The thrill in his chest, the pull down low.
Shame I can’t follow through.
The bitter thought could not sour his mood, though, not tonight. He had the company of good friends, his oldest and his best, and a damned good hand.
The lights chose that moment to flicker.
Chapter Eight
Qek pulled a wallet out of her pocket and flipped it open. A very human frown creasing the top half of her face, she pushed back her chair. “Throughput in the c-core is fluctuating beyond expected parameters.”
“Damn it.” Felix nudged his chair away from the table. He still held his cards defensively in front of his chest. Did he have time to win a hand before—
The ship lurched, threatening to rock him off his feet. Felix gripped the table, realizing only as it began to tip with him that a flimsy card table would not hold him upright. He braced and swallowed, eyes squeezing shut as he prepared himself for a fiery explosion or an unscheduled exit from j-space. As experiences went, either would suck. The lights continued to flicker as the familiar tug at his internal organs suggested the latter had occurred. Bracing an arm across his middle, Felix concentrated on keeping his intestines where they should be, all looped in the correct order. An involuntary gag teased his throat. He could hear Nessa groaning.
“Holy hell,” Elias cursed.
Through the strobing light, Felix saw Qek clutch the side of the refrigerator. Zed’s dark bulk appeared unmoved.
Phase two of the unscheduled drop from j-space included a moment of weightlessness as the gravity generators struggled to figure out the acceleration differential. The card table drifted up off the floor with him. His stomach rolled and cramped. Gravity asserted itself with a leaden fist and the table dropped back to the deck. The tinkle of coins scattering across the floor sounded louder than it should. Felix stumbled as he fell back down. He dropped to one knee and rolled into the booth, his shoulder connecting hard enough to rattle his teeth. Elias met him there, the captain’s larger frame crashing into his upraised knee. Nessa’s chair flipped backward, taking her with it.
Felix craned his neck, lifting his chin over Elias’s shoulder to see if he could find Zed. Whether or not he’d been dumped like the rest of the crew, Zed had already reached Nessa’s side where he was helping her out of the chair.
“Everyone all right?” Elias pushed to his feet, extending a hand back down. Felix gripped it and pulled himself up.
From her niche between the fridge and the wall, Qek waved her wallet in the air. “Errors across the board, Fixer.”
“Of course there are,” Felix muttered, shaking his right hand to loosen the cards stuck to his palm.
“Any idea where we are?” Elias asked.
Qek’s eyes widened to an alarming degree as she studied her wallet’s display. It wasn’t a good look for her; ashie eyes were already large. “According to my calculations, we are four billion kilometers from Denebola. And we are not alone.”
“Can you identify the other ship?”
“Ships,” Qek corrected. “Yes, I can. But I’d like to confirm on the bridge. Of course, if the smaller signature is indeed a Guardian vessel, they will already know we are here.”
A Guardian vessel? A man might go a lifetime without seeing a Guardian anything beyond an overdramatized holo. Shit.
Felix tapped his bracelet, pulling up a display, and despite an overwhelming urge to study the dot in space that represented the presence of the ever-elusive Guardians, he accessed the ship’s systems to begin tallying the damage and likelihood they could jump before anyone could ask them for their hall pass. Error after error scrolled through the air. Double shit.
“What about the larger signal?” Zed asked.
Qek looked up from her display. “I believe it is a stin frigate.”
Felix jerked in place, fear licking through his veins like the spread of cold poison. Anger soon followed, curling up from his gut. He hated his instinctive fear, and hated more the fact that he wasn’t equipped to take on a stin ship. A battle raged within, between his fear and his fury. Disparate urges called for flight and fight...and he could do neither. Not now, Fix, not now. He drew in a shaky breath and tried to focus his wavering vision on his display. Duty first, fear second. Rage third. Always third.
Elias rounded the upturned table and wrapped an arm around Nessa’s waist. “Okay, folks, you all know what to do when shit hits the fan.” The crew all had assigned emergency duties.
Zed was not crew.
Elias paused in front of their guest, appeared to size him up, and then said, “You going to sit this one out?”
“Hell no.”
Elias returned a short nod. “Qek, send us a list of systems to check. I want this tub back in j-space, or inside a convenient black hole, before anyone thinks to ask us what we’re doing here.”
“I would not advise traveling through a black hole.”
“Now is so not the time.” Elias turned to Felix. “Fix it.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Elias disappeared through the forward hatch, Nessa close behind him.
Qek blinked at the mess in the mess. “I will forward diagnostic reports to engineering if you want to confirm core containment.”
Felix beckoned Zed. “On me.”
Zed strode to his side, large and purposeful. “Tell me what to do.”
“The lights flickered first. I want to check life support, then we’ll rock into engineering and kick the c-core until it burps.”
Zed didn’t look like a man with fear crawling beneath the surface of his skin, anger burning in his gut. Still, his answering smile had a certain tightness to it. Felix decided that was a good thing.
They encountered the first problem just outside the mess. The containment door between the middle and aft decks had closed, blocking access. Much as he’d like to see that black shirt stretch over Zed’s shoulders while he muscled open the door, there was probably a good reason it was closed. Felix pressed his palm to the door and pulled it back quickly.
“Crap.”
Calling up an emergency overlay, he poked at the shimmering schematic until he found the right hallway. A small heat signature bloomed on the other side of the door. He overrode the fried alarm and triggered the fire retardant foam. A minute later, the hatch released and slid back to reveal a pile of gray powder. The smell of charred metal and dust wafted through the gap. Through the haze of smoke clinging to the corridor, lights flashed and an alarm squawked.
“First fire out.” Felix stepped into the murk. “On we go.”
* * *
Put him on a battlefield, and Zed could do a shitload of damage—with a gun or without. Put him in front of a map, and he’d plot out a strategy for whatever needed to be done. Hell, put him in an armory, and he’d have the weapons cleaned and organized within a few hours.
Put him in engineering—or life support, as the case may be—and Zed just felt lost.
He knew the rudimentary stuff, having learned the basics at the Academy. Even with some of the blanks filled by Command School, half of what Flick was doing was a mystery. Now wasn’t the time to ask why Flick was messing with a panel that had shown all green lights when another panel showed all red. He didn’t have to understand to hold the flashlight and the spare tools.
“Motherfucking—ow!”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Flick sucked on one of his fingers, jerking his elbow upward. “Keep the light up. I’m not done.”
“Sure you don’t want me to get Qek?”
&nbs
p; Flick shook his head, his gaze on the innards of the panel. “Best she’s on the bridge.”
“Right.”
Once they got the c-core rebooted, they’d want to snap back into j-space ASAP. And if the Guardians hailed them, Qek was probably the only one in the crew who could respond without wetting herself. Or who could keep the fact that she’d wet herself from showing in her voice, anyway.
Knowing there was a Guardian ship a few thousand kilometers away made Zed’s shoulders hunch. The Guardians were a mystery to all the lesser races; no one knew what they looked like or what they sounded like—though the classified bits Zed had heard suggested they had synthesized voices, which pointed to the use of computers to make sounds other races could understand. Their technology was far more advanced than even the ashushk’s. They created and controlled the gates; they had the means and the power to take over the galaxy, and yet they stayed on the fringes, stepping forward only when something needed to be corrected. Like the scales of war.
They allowed war to happen. The stin and the ashushk had fought more than once, well before humanity appeared on the galactic scene a hundred years ago, battles that had almost wiped the ashies from existence. But despite their fewer numbers, the ashushk had proven too resilient for the stin to conquer. Once humanity proved it was more interested in making friendships in the black instead of finding fights, the ashushk formed a loose alliance with the AEF: technology for assistance against the stin, should it become needed. When the stin had turned their attention to the humans, instead, the ashies couldn’t offer much but support and a cheer squad.
It had been the Guardians who had finally ended the Human-Stin War. Zed had been dealing with the repercussions of that damned viral video of his team when the Guardians had swooped into all battlefields, at once, and ordered both sides to stand down. They’d brokered a basic treaty between the humans and the stin, the or else unspoken but very much heard.
Now a Guardian ship hovered nearby, with a stin vessel too. The implication of that was more than unpleasant, it was fucking terrifying.
Focus on the job, Zander.
“I think I...” Flick swore under his breath, then pulled back, his eyes aglow with success. The red lights on the other panel flipped over to green, one by one. “Yep. Done. Who’s the master?” He held up a hand for a high-five. “I am the fucking master.”
Zed smacked his palm to Flick’s. “And what did you just master?”
“Oxygen circulation and renewal.”
Zed’s smile dropped away. “You mean, we were running out of air?”
“Not anymore. Let’s go kick the c-core.”
Eyes wide, Zed glanced back at the newly green panel as he forced himself to trail after Flick. This was Flick’s ship and he’d always known his shit, right from their first year in the Academy. Flick was a born tinkerer. Give him some wires, a power source and a circuit board for soldering, and he’d make...something. Something useful, or something annoying, just something.
“You need to make a list of the ship systems that need upgrading,” Zed said once they arrived at the engine room.
“Yeah, Qek’s on it.” Flick kept his attention on the monitor in front of him.
“How much do you figure it’d be? Credits-wise, I mean.”
One of Flick’s shoulders rolled in a shrug. “Probably ’bout a million, to do everything we—” His head jerked up. “No. No, Zed.”
“Consider it a bonus.”
“A six hundred freaking k bonus? No.”
Zed scooted closer. “I’d feel better knowing your life support wasn’t going to kick it while you were in the middle of the black.”
The words hung between them. What wasn’t said echoed—the insinuation that Zed wouldn’t be out there with them past this job. Of course he wouldn’t be; the Chaos was Flick’s place, not his. But they could still be friends. They could stay in touch.
“No. Look.” Flick paused in his number crunching and lifted his gaze to meet Zed’s. “You don’t have the right to throw your money at my problems.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re my problems and it’s your money!”
“So let it be your money to solve your problems. Christ. This is not a difficult concept.”
“You are so fucking infuriating.”
“Why? Because I want to take care of you?”
“Yes!” Flick blinked. “No. Fuck, I don’t know. Just...” He waved his good hand at the door. “Go over there.”
“Does me standing here infuriate you?”
“You want to see how well I punch with my glove on?”
“Bring it on, Inge—”
“Corvette Chaos, human ship. Please respond.”
Zed bit back what he’d been about to say and stared at Flick’s wrist wallet. The precise, modulated tones of the Guardian’s synthetic voice made the hair on his arms stand at attention.
Qek’s soft, clear voice drifted over the comm. “Greetings, Guardians. This is the pilot of the Chaos, Qekelough.”
“Please explain your presence.”
“We experienced difficulty with our star drive and stalled out of jump-space. We are currently working on repairs and expect to return to jump-space soon.”
“Do you require assistance?”
Oh, God. Zed’s gaze jumped to Flick’s.
“No, Guardians, but we thank you for your generous offer.”
“We expect your departure within an hour.”
“Yes, Guardians. Safe journeys to you.”
Zed let out a shaky breath. “An hour, huh.”
Flick eyed the electronics solemnly. “We’ll be out of here in forty-five minutes.”
* * *
It took fifty minutes and a pair of failed starts before the Chaos jerked back into j-space. Zed drew in a deep breath and held it, watching the lights dance across multiple displays. He didn’t know what most of them meant, but it was better than the dead blackness that had greeted them when they’d first arrived in the engine room.
Stepping forward, Zed clapped a hand on Flick’s back. “Good job.”
Flick nodded and wiped a hand over his brow. Sweat darkened his blond hair and etched a vee into the neck of his SFT—indications of both how hard Flick had worked to get the boat running again, and how close they’d come to not meeting the Guardians’ deadline.
Zed didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened if they hadn’t. His own shirt and hair were less than dry.
“Fixer, Loop, to the bridge.”
Flick thumbed his bracelet. “Aye, Captain.” He glanced up at Zed. “Look, about the money—”
“It’s just money.”
“Only someone who’s never been without can say that. Just...” His gaze dropped to the floor. “Don’t make promises.”
Right. Because he’d made this promise before, that he’d take care of Flick, that he’d be there when he needed him—and he’d failed. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t have upheld it, not against the tide of the stin and the war. Hadn’t he made the same promise to Emma, or one close enough to count? He’d failed at that, too, up to this point, and this last-ditch effort to be there for her might be far too little, far too late.
It was a joke that he’d dedicated his life to protecting people and consistently failed at protecting the ones who meant the most to him.
“Noted,” he said gruffly and pushed past Flick to head for the bridge.
Elias, Nessa and Qek were already in place when he and Flick arrived. The bridge wasn’t a big space to start with, and having the entire crew—plus guest—in it made it seem that much smaller. The familiar scrawl of star trails covered the windows, such a normal scene to the crew of the Chaos that they didn’t acknowledge it.
Zed wasn’t quite as used to space travel—at least, not space travel where he was on the bridge. He’d visited the command centers of a handful of AEF cruisers as an observer or to offer input on the best touchdown point for a shuttle, but for the most part
he’d spent his space jaunts with the rest of the grunts down in the cargo bay or the mess, making up their own entertainment to while away the journey.
“We need to report it to the AEF.” Nessa’s hands were clenched together in her lap, the knuckles white.
Elias offered a grave shake of the head. “I don’t want that sort of attention.”
“That was a stin ship, Eli! In AEF space!”
“And the Guardians—”
“We don’t know what they were doing,” Nessa pointed out, her voice rising. Her hair jumped as she gestured, her agitation plain. “Maybe they were discussing the best way to get to Earth. We don’t know what the Guardians want from any of us. Freaking hell. The AEF should know.”
Zed gave her an incredulous look. “You don’t think they do?”
“If they did, why wouldn’t they be here?”
“What do you think would’ve happened if they were?” Zed continued before she could respond. “War. Again.”
“You don’t—”
“Yeah, I do know.” No, he hadn’t been involved in the disarmament and treaty agreements, but his rank was high enough that he’d gotten the lay of the land. “The stin are pissed that the Guardians stepped in. They were winning. You know that, right?” Maybe not—the propaganda machine had been spinning at full tilt for years to keep the truth from the masses, to keep them from panicking. The damage the stin inflicted on civilian colonies and stations was bad enough without out-of-control mobs of humanity contributing their own share. “The stin want an excuse to renew aggression. Their society thrives on conflict, even more than humanity does. We’ve found other outlets—exploring, colonizing, sports and so on. The stin need to fight. War is essential to their nature. The chemicals released during battle are required to keep each individual stin vital, fit and healthy.”
Nessa’s brows rose. “I didn’t know that.”
“Few people have found study of the stin to be rewarding or worthwhile.” Qek tilted her head, watching Zed. He felt like he was being evaluated, and he didn’t particularly like it.
When they’d recruited him into covert ops, Zed had started his research into the stin. There wasn’t a lot out there, as Qek had stated, but he’d devoured whatever information he could find. It had helped them plan more than one mission. When he’d been approached for the project, it had helped there too.