by Kelly Jensen
Fucking stin. It wasn’t enough that they’d ravaged humanity, no, their talons had to poke at individuals, too, steal years, family, friends...
Anger coursing through his veins, Felix yelled and cursed with each new strike. He worked until his feet slipped on the mat, until his blood buzzed and hummed and sweat stung his eyes. Until his breath billowed from his lungs and his muscles quivered with fatigue. Then he hopped in place, switching stances, and began again.
“Fix!”
Felix ignored the voice. He didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want to think. His brain had finally gone numb under the repetitious exercise. Maybe soon he could sleep.
“Felix!”
Another hand latched onto his shoulder.
What was with all the damned hands? Why did everyone want to touch him all of a sudden? Felix whirled into his uninvited guest, right fist cocked and ready to strike. He didn’t care who it was.
Elias ducked the strike and followed up with a punch, catching him right in the sweet spot below the ribs. Grunting, Felix attempted to repay his foe with a reverse elbow. Elias ducked again.
“What the fuck?”
“You started it,” Felix panted, preparing to strike again.
“Holy hell.”
Elias caught him in a bear hug, front on. Even his fear of confinement did not lend Felix the strength to fight the hold; he’d worked himself weary. Still, he struggled until Elias picked him up and tossed him toward the bed. He hit the side and crumpled to the floor. He rolled, preparing to stand and fight again, but Elias was faster. A knee pinned his arm and an elbow caught him under the chin.
“Stay the fuck down.”
The anger that had sustained him through his workout leaving him, Felix relaxed.
“If I let go, are you going to go rabid again?”
“No,” Felix answered, his tone sullen.
Elias let him go and Felix rolled onto his side and sat up. He leaned back against the side of the bed and rubbed his throat. “What are you doing here?”
Elias dug in his pocket and pulled out Felix’s wrist comm. Felix blinked at it, only vaguely remembering he had slipped it from his wrist with his glove. “Oh.” Closing his eyes, he let his head tip forward.
“I’ve been trying to contact you for about half an hour.”
Felix waved at the comm unit mounted on the wall of his quarters.
“You didn’t hear that, either. What’s up with you?”
I think I broke my heart without even trying. Again.
Pulling his knees up, Felix attempted to curl himself into a ball. Elias stopped him, his hand tugging at Felix’s shoulder before he could fully tuck.
“Fix.” His voice had gentled. “What happened?” Felix shook his head, but Elias figured it out anyway. “Oh, man, you slept with him, didn’t you?”
“No, I fucked him.” It had been sex, just sex.
Elias rubbed the shoulder he had a hold of. “You stupid shit.”
“Thanks for the understanding.”
“I get it, all right? But still—”
“I know, it was stupid.”
“Am I going to have to kick Loop off the ship like that pirate you picked up in Coolus?”
“That was three years ago and your dad did the kicking.”
“Mmm-hmm. You grow a brain between then and now?”
Felix answered with a grunt.
Elias let go of his shoulder and settled beside him. He observed a manly silence for a while, which Felix appreciated.
Felix spent the quiet minutes comparing the color of their skin, his pale arm next to Elias’s darker one, and trying not to contemplate his mistakes in life. Then he gave in to impulse and let his head flop onto his friend’s shoulder.
“Wanna talk about it?” Elias asked.
“Nope.”
“Smells like sex in here.”
Felix closed his eyes. “I know.”
* * *
It wasn’t until an hour or so after he’d left Flick’s cabin that Zed realized his mistake. He’d had sex with Flick. That, on its own, wasn’t a mistake, despite the awkwardness afterward and the weird pain in his chest he was trying to ignore—and the not-so-weird pain in his ass that acted as a reminder every time he moved. However, having sex with Flick when his inoculation against infections had expired so long before he couldn’t remember when...
Yeah, that was a problem.
Not that he didn’t trust Flick. He did. Mostly.
Fuck.
Nine years ago, he would’ve proclaimed his trust for his friend without a thought. But a lot more than time lived between them, now. There were scars, so many fucking scars—metaphorical and literal. The memory of seeing the marks etched across Flick’s skin made Zed’s gut tighten like it did right before he killed something. The memory of how his friend had pulled away hurt even more.
Doesn’t matter. If Flick hadn’t done it, Zed would have. Besides, they had a mission. They needed to focus on finding Emma instead of being distracted by attraction that could go nowhere.
He paused outside the med bay, shoving those thoughts down deep. The last thing he needed was to give Nessa more questions to ask—she was already going to ask plenty, probably. He tapped on the door and waited for her shout before he entered.
“Hey, Loop,” she said over her shoulder, then turned back to the counter to examine the holo of something microscopic and nasty-looking. “Just checking my cultures. What can I help you with?”
Zed shoved his hands in his pants pockets. His shoulders canted forward, stretching the fabric of his gray shirt—he wouldn’t be wearing black again anytime soon. He opened his mouth to state why he was here and what was needed...then closed it without uttering a word, which was just fucking ridiculous. He wasn’t sixteen. He could ask a doctor about the sex shot.
As the silence stretched, Nessa glanced over her shoulder again, arching an auburn brow. “Uh-oh.” She turned and leaned against the counter. “Okay, come on. Spill.”
A smile flashed across Zed’s mouth, there and gone in the space of a breath. He liked Ness. He liked her a lot. The thought of telling her he’d just fucked Flick without protection...
“My sex shot is out of date,” he blurted.
Nessa’s other brow rose to match the first and she smiled slowly. “Okay. No problem, I can hook you up.” Stepping to his side, she clapped one hand to his shoulder. “It’s good to plan ahead.”
“Uh...”
Her smile faded. “You are planning ahead, right?”
“I, uh...I kind of forgot.”
“And you’re how old? Thirty?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Freaking old enough to know better, then.” She shoved her hand against his upper arm and he rocked sideways. “So you and Fixer...”
“Yeah.”
“You’re lucky, you know that? Everyone on the Chaos is clean, I make sure of that. Apparently I should’ve scheduled your checkup as soon as you came on board.” She waved at the examination table. “Sit. Sexual history?”
Zed hitched his butt onto the table and tried not to wince. “Nothing recent. Other than Flick. Fixer.”
“Recent meaning what? Six months, two months, three weeks, five days?” Nessa bustled around the med bay, collecting the tools and serum she needed.
He held off answering as long as he could, buying time while she was busy putting all the items she needed on a little tray. He knew his dry spell was nothing to be ashamed of, but thinking of the reasons for it made him feel just a little less human.
“Three years.”
Nessa paused in the process of picking up the tray. “Huh. That’d explain why your shot lapsed.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t ‘forget’ any other times?”
“I’m sure,” he growled.
“Hey, your words.”
Zed sighed. “I know. I’m not in the habit of forgetting, believe me. It’s just...Flick...”
“
You love him.”
“No. I did, once. But the galaxy went sideways before we could really figure shit out between us and...he’s different than he was.”
“He’d say the same about you, I think.”
Zed didn’t try to deny it. “What happened to him?”
Nessa made a tsking sound as she lifted the sleeve of his SFT and swept the disinfectant wand over his skin. “Not my story to tell. But you seem like a smart guy. ‘Forgetting’ aside.”
Zed nodded, letting his head droop forward. He’d been trying like hell not to think of Flick’s lost time. He’d already spent a fucking year thinking about it, a year he purposely fought to not remember well. Being captured by the enemy had been a very real fear among the men and women fighting toe-to-toe with the stin. Rumors had flowed through the ranks about what happened to troops who went missing, and Zed had tried not to listen to them. He didn’t want to know how the stin treated captured humans like slaves, of all sorts; he didn’t want to know how the stin gloated over their prisoners, as if they were trophies of war; and he especially didn’t want to know how they tortured them, for no reason other than to hear them scream. But that was what the rumors said, and as far as Zed knew, they were true. He had no reason to believe they weren’t.
And now Flick was here, alive, and bearing all the marks of those rumors, and...
God, it hurt to know he couldn’t do anything. The past couldn’t be changed, but even now, in the present, there was nothing he could do for Flick.
He sucked in a ragged breath and forced his emotions aside, focusing instead on Nessa’s actions. She pressed the syringe to the muscle of his upper arm and the sound of the serum being released filled the med bay. Zed barely flinched. A few seconds passed before she ensured the shot had fully dispersed. She swept the wand over the injection site again.
“Done. You’re good for a year.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
One corner of her lip twitched at the address. He hopped down from the table and rotated his arm, which did nothing to assuage the ache settling in. Didn’t matter what got injected into muscle, it always hurt for a bit.
“Want a lollipop?”
“I think I’ll survive.”
“Loop...” Nessa paused. “Think the galaxy’ll stay steady for you guys this time?”
Zed’s smile dimmed as that pain in his chest pulsed. “Not a chance.”
Chapter Eleven
Zed stood on the tension-filled bridge with the crew as the Chaos approached Chloris Station. Jumping from station to station was something a ship like the Chaos did on a regular basis—but such trips didn’t usually include an encounter with Guardians or a half-blown c-core. He couldn’t fault them anticipating the next crisis; he felt it too. Maybe because he knew what likely awaited them on Chloris, better than the rest of them.
The station wasn’t much to look at, particularly not at this distance. It was little bigger than a star, though its size grew exponentially with each moment that passed. Chloris orbited a rock of a planet that humanity had once hoped to terraform. That initiative had failed, costing Anatolius Industries a significant amount of funds, if Zed remembered his family history correctly. It had been one of the deciding factors in curtailing the company’s diversification into colonies and keeping it focused on stations, instead. After the failure of the terraforming and the abandonment of the colony, Chloris had remained in orbit, the hydroponics in place originally to support the colony’s efforts to tame the planet now a resource for research into space-bred vegetation. Zed had visited the station once when he was younger, and as he’d told Elias, he had the station’s blueprints in his bag, which he’d memorized.
“Chloris Station, this is the Chaos, requesting a berth per booking 285A99F,” Qek said, her voice soft and perfectly modulated.
“Standby, Chaos.”
“We’re late, you know,” Flick pointed out needlessly.
Elias grunted.
“They probably gave our berth away.”
The captain only nodded. Flick slouched in the copilot’s chair, one foot bouncing where it rested on the opposite knee. Zed had the urge to lay a steadying hand on Flick’s shoulder, but he resisted. They’d given each other space over the past day. He’d wanted to track Flick down and talk, but what could he say? Zed exhaled softly and shifted against the wall, watching the dot grow larger.
“Chaos, this is Chloris Station. We had your arrival scheduled yesterday at 1300 Standard.”
“Yes,” Qek said. “Unfortunately, we experienced a temporary failure of our c-core, which took time to repair and left us unable to achieve full speed.”
“Understood,” Chloris Station control returned. “However, be advised that the delay has placed you at the end of the line for arrivals. We are still addressing war damage to one of our docks and have limited capacity.”
Flick sat up and waved a hand at the console, giving Elias a see? sort of look.
“Roger, Chloris. What is the adjusted time for our berth?”
“Standby, Chaos.”
“Two days,” Flick said. “I’ll bet you. And we’ll have to hover all the way the hell out—”
“Chaos, this is Chloris Station. Your berth time is now estimated at forty-six hours from now. We ask that you remain within comm distance but do not approach until your docking time is confirmed.”
“Roger, Chloris Station.”
“Told you.” Flick slumped back in his chair.
Elias rubbed a hand over his face. “Shut up, Fix.”
“So we’re stuck out here?” Nessa grimaced. “Guess we’ll have time for that poker tournament you keep wanting to do, Eli.”
Spending two more days with Flick and the crew of the Chaos wouldn’t be a hardship. In any other circumstance, Zed would shrug off the inconvenience and offer to deal up the cards. But Emma might not have two more days. Two days stuck in space was two days they weren’t on the station’s decks, searching for her. Two days during which she could get into more trouble, or even worse, grab a transport off Chloris. He’d have no way to track her.
Leaving a trail for his family to find seemed like a small price to pay. Particularly because he wasn’t really hiding from them, he just...didn’t know what to say to them.
Stepping forward, Zed reached over Qek’s shoulder and tapped the comm. The ashie clicked in surprise. “Mr. Loop, I do not believe—”
Zed ignored her. “Chloris Station, this is the Chaos. Access code incoming.”
Silence drifted over the channel for a moment, then, “Roger, Chaos.”
“Access code 52238-Alpha-Gamma-Omega-334.”
“Access code confirmed, Mr. Anatolius. How can we assist you?”
“The Chaos requires an immediate berth.”
“Roger that. Proceed to docking bay Alpha Two. Do you require accommodations, Mr. Anatolius?”
“No, Chloris. Thank you. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t publicize my arrival.”
“Roger, Mr. Anatolius. Welcome to Chloris.”
Zed thumbed off the comm and turned to look at the captain and Nessa. Unlike the calm, stoic expression Elias wore, the doctor’s red brows had risen as high as they could go.
“Anatolius?” she said, her gaze switching from him to Elias, and then to Flick.
“That is the name he used,” Qek said. “It is surprising to discover a client is a celebrity.”
“I’m not a celebrity,” Zed huffed.
“Hah,” Flick said. “Tell that to the holos, mate.”
“Wait, you’re Zander Anatolius?” Nessa’s eyes widened. “The soldier who saved the transport? Holy shit.”
“It wasn’t just me, it was my team that—”
She reached out and smacked the back of Flick’s head. “Why didn’t you tell us? You ass. He’s a hero.”
Flick jerked forward. “Ow! Damn it, Ness. He wanted me to keep it quiet.”
Zed couldn’t stop his shoulders from hunching up. He didn’t want Nessa to treat him different
ly, however a “hero” should be treated. He turned to Elias. “You figured it out.”
“Fixer called you Zander.” Elias shrugged. “It’s not that common a name.”
“I am embarrassed that I did not recognize you, Mr. Anatolius.” Qek directed the ship closer to the station. “That holo was a popular choice for the news networks for quite some time. But I suppose humans look too much alike, so I can be forgiven.”
Flick produced a dry chuckle. “Sure, Qek.”
“Zed is sufficient.” Zed fidgeted. “Or Loop. Or Zander, even. Just...not Anatolius.”
“Family problems?” Elias asked.
“No.” Zed met his gaze. “It just invites too much attention.”
The captain snorted. “Right.”
“I think perhaps objecting to the use of your surname now would be like closing the barn door after the cat has run away.”
“Horse, Qek,” Flick said.
“I thought the horse was let out of the bag?”
“Pretty big goddamned bag.”
Qek’s brow smoothed with consternation. “I do not understand.”
“If we’ve got time before Zed’s adoring fans descend on us, I’ll explain it.”
* * *
The woman standing in front of the lowering gangway looked like she should still be in school. Her cheeks bloomed pink beneath her tan skin and her brown eyes all but sparkled with excitement. Like most up-and-coming Anatolius Industries employees, she sported a well-tailored suit—but instead of opting for a bold color, she’d chosen a pale yellow that complemented her skin tone and dark hair beautifully.
Gritting his teeth, Zed resisted the urge to scrub a hand over his smooth jaw. The impulse to shave before meeting any of his father’s employees hadn’t been all that logical, but he’d given in anyway. If word got back to his folks that he looked like a ruffian, they’d worry.
Right, like they wouldn’t be worrying about him already. He knew they’d understand not being in contact during the war, but the war had finished six months ago. They had to be worried. The guilt of that was a lump beside Zed’s heart, but he didn’t see any way around it. He wouldn’t risk his parents or his brothers by sharing what he’d been a part of, or by being around them if he ended up like Emma.