“I review all new candidates,” he answered with a shrug. “So, yes, I’ve reviewed your record a few times. From that, I ascertain this request has something to do with your parents and siblings being killed in a pirate raid on your home colony.”
Liv nodded. “The pirates struck at night. There were only a few survivors. I was just a child at the time, and I don’t remember much of the attack now. Doctors say it was the trauma—that I’ve repressed the memories.”
“I’m sorry.” Vengeance’s inquisitive expression turned sympathetic. “I know what it’s like to experience terrible things and the need to forget them.”
Liv glanced back toward the energy web and pretended to study the scout ship, hoping he wouldn’t notice that his admission bothered her.
“I think,” Liv began and then paused. She needed to word this carefully so that she wouldn’t raise his suspicions. “I think my memories of that time aren’t as repressed as the doctors once thought. Sometimes, I have these nightmares, and I can clearly see the monster that destroyed my life. It all seems and feels so real that I know it has to be more memory than imagination.”
“The likelihood that this pirate ship is the same one that attacked your colony world is slim,” Vengeance countered. “However, I didn’t take the name Vengeance for no reason. I know the burning need to see wrongs righted. I’ve just assigned another engineer to man your station. Report to Master Engineer Goodwin.”
Apparently, her mind’s control over her body was enough to mask her own bio-readings. It likely helped that there was enough truth in the tale to eclipse the lies. Whatever the cause, Liv stopped herself from sighing in relief.
“Thank you,” Liv said. “I won’t ask for special treatment again. But this is important to me.”
“Then it’s important to me as well.” With a quick nod, the holographic version of Vengeance vanished.
Liv might not have been able to see him, but she could still feel his attention on her. A chill raced down her spine and gooseflesh covered her body in a rush of sensation as the knowledge that Vengeance was watching her settled in her mind.
The feeling should’ve been dread.
Instead, it was a mixture of delight and longing.
Fantastic.
As much as she wanted to deny it, she could easily fall for Vengeance. Unfortunately, he was also the one person who could completely derail her new life.
But it was too late.
She was falling in love with Vengeance.
As instructed, Liv had joined Master Engineer Jason Goodwin. The tight knot of tension between her shoulder blades soon subsided. Her mentor never failed to ground her and put her at ease. It helped that Vengeance had already informed Goodwin and the other senior engineering staff why Liv was present. They accepted Vengeance’s request without question or comment. Master Engineer Goodwin even began explaining a new theory the Spire scientists and engineers were developing that might lead to more efficient jumps in and out of transit.
Liv continued to relax while Vengeance made the transit to their destination, but he only stayed at Excelon-7 long enough to sync with the station AI and share data about the attack before he resumed his hunt for the pirates.
It didn’t take long to find the stolen scout ship. Vengeance’s long-range scanners quickly discovered where the pirate ship had gone into transit. The warship gave chase, hopping in and out of transit multiple times, mirroring the pirate ship’s path.
Vengeance’s engines were getting a workout, and by the seventeenth transit jump, the senior engineering officers were growling and barking orders to their subordinates, growing grumpier by the moment.
“Seventeen jumps! We’re leaping all over half the galaxy,” Goodwin complained as he scanned a report on his handheld energy web. “Are we chasing a scout ship or an alien space rabbit?”
Liv didn’t know about alien rabbits and half the galaxy was an exaggeration, but Goodwin’s sarcasm landed near the mark. No regular pilot could have avoided the warship’s pursuit as long as this pirate ship had.
But even with so skilled a pilot, it was only a matter of time before Vengeance, with his more powerful engines, finally outpaced the smaller scout ship. Liv’s anxiety increased with each transit jump.
This had to be one of her telepathic sisters. She had no idea what the hell they were doing hitting a Spire station, but the foolish raid was going to out all her sister telepaths if Liv didn’t find a way to prevent Vengeance from capturing the smaller ship.
“Journeyman Engineer Hawthorne,” Vengeance said moments before one of his holographic forms shimmered into existence. “I have a visual of the enemy ship.”
Liv stood behind Master Engineer Jason Goodwin and the other senior engineering staff as she studied the image of the scout ship displayed on the three largest energy webs.
The ship’s birth stamp confirmed Liv’s fears. This was the Agrona, which meant the ship was likely piloted by one or more of her sister rogue telepaths.
“Is something wrong?” Vengeance asked.
“I… No. It’s just that it’s been so long.”
“Can you confirm that this is the same ship that destroyed your colony?”
If she lied now, he’d pick up on it. But going with a version of the truth had served her well in the past. “That’s the ship that’s haunted my dreams.”
“Your colony wasn’t the only one hit. I recognize this ship as well.” A threatening edge colored Vengeance’s voice.
“You know this ship?” she asked. Of course he would. He hadn’t purged all his memories from Nualla. His duties as a warship required him to keep all tactical data.
“Yes. The ship used to be controlled by an AI named Agrona. I’ll capture it and question her crew. If I discover anything pertaining to your home world, I’ll share it with you.”
That was a clear dismissal. Liv thanked the hologram and started back to her assigned station. Vengeance would be on top of the scout ship in minutes. He was already within weapons range but wasn’t opening fire. He’d said he wanted to capture not kill. She would have to do something before that to give the other ship a chance to escape.
She was halfway to her station in the far back of engineering when she knew what she had to do. As soon as she reached her station, she dismissed the ensign who’d been covering her duties before she could change her mind.
After scanning the area to ensure there was no one nearby who would be endangered, she allowed her telepathic gift to unfold.
Pushing her abilities farther, she reached out toward the nearest access hatch, where the shield protecting the sensitive parts of the ship was thinnest. She reached deeper into the conduits that encased the bio-circuitry in a protective gel. Neural impulses flashed down those conduits, acting as the ship’s nervous system.
Liv followed one nerve cluster down a side branch where she found the transit engines’ cooling systems. Perfect. They were already under stress from all the transit jumps. A small malfunction could easily be explained without looking too suspicious.
She redirected a tiny amount of power from a subsystem and fed it into the branch of the coolant system. Before the fail-safes could kick in, she neutralized them then disabled the warning alarms. A cascading system failure caused a sudden spike in energy levels in the nerve conduit.
A simple power surge overloaded the neural pathways, killing a small section of Vengeance’s bioorganic nervous system, temporarily rendering him blind to what was going on in that area. Now hidden, she tore apart relays and ruptured conduits so it would look like an uncontrolled pressure buildup had led to a blowout.
Warnings lit up her energy webs and flashed schematics in pulsing reds and oranges, denoting a critical heat buildup in the main transit engines while screeching alarms did their best to shred her eardrums. Liv ignored them and tapped on her handheld energy web.
“Vengeance, this is Journeyman Engineer Hawthorne,” Liv said as she accessed a storage locker to grab a repair kit. “I h
ave warnings and error reports coming in from the port-side engine coolant system. Looks like we’ve had a blowout. It’s not life threatening yet, but repairs will require the port engines to be taken offline. I’m on my way to the nearest access panel.”
“Are you hurt?” Vengeance’s voice echoed through her small work area. “My sensors in that area were damaged by a secondary power surge. I’m sending a sentinel and a drudge unit to your location.”
“I’m fine,” Liv insisted as she ran toward the location of the blowout. “But the drudge will be helpful if the entire relay is fried. Have him bring a spare, just in case. It’ll save time.”
“Both units are on their way.” There was a long pause before he continued in a more uncertain tone. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, really.” Please stop worrying about me. I already feel so guilty. “I’m sorry this happened on my watch. I don’t know why I didn’t catch it before the malfunction evolved into a blowout.”
“Don’t blame yourself. It was likely my abuse of my own engines that caused too much stress on an aging part.”
“Still, I’m really sorry the pirate ship got away,” Liv said as she turned down a side corridor. She came to a closed bulkhead door, scanned the nearest terminal for environmental readings of radiation levels, which were acceptable, and palmed open the hatch.
“My hunt was a success. The pirate ship didn’t escape me.”
What the hell? How had he captured the ship so quickly? “Really?” Damn it. Surprise and disappointment were evident in her voice so she added, “That’s good news.”
From somewhere behind her in the corridor came the heavy tread of a sentinel as it neared her. The twelve-foot-tall, lethal machines were surprisingly fast on their feet. The hatch was still sliding back into its housing as the sentinel halted next to her.
Liv glanced behind the massive sentinel, looking for the more useful drudge, but there was no sign of the slower repair unit yet.
Vengeance continued his conversation, using the sentinel’s voice capabilities instead of the ship-wide comms. “When my sensors went dead in this area, I determined that it was likely a relay overload which would compromise my engines. I targeted the pirate ship and took out its engines.”
Liv’s throat tightened. “Did you destroy the ship?”
“No.” The sentinel stepped through the hatch and scanned for dangers on the other side. “And I’ve already dispatched transports with sentinels to collect the pirate ship’s crew.”
Damn. Double damn in a black hole. Liv hurried to the access panel and found she didn’t even have to unseal it. The access cover, which was taller and wider than she was, had been blown off its mounting brackets and clear across the hall. Inside the panel was a jumble of twisted metal, fried relays, and the burned stench of super-heated bio-gel.
“What a mess,” she murmured. “This is going to take a while to fix, but after my shift, would I be able to see the crew of the pirate ship—once you’re finished interrogating them, of course? If it’s the same crew who murdered my family, I would appreciate the chance to finally put a face to the darkness that’s haunted my dreams for so long.”
The sentinel’s red optic sensors studied her for a moment, but he finally answered her. “While your request is outside of normal procedures, it isn’t violating any regulations. Once I have the prisoners in custody and have assessed the situation, I will make a decision and advise you.”
That was the best she was going to get from a rule-following, three-thousand-year-old AI. “Thank you, Vengeance.”
“You’re welcome, Liv.”
Three words spoken by a twelve-foot-tall killing machine shouldn’t have sounded so intimate… sexy-as-hell voice notwithstanding.
Unaware of the inner turmoil he’d caused, the sentinel walked to the next panel and scanned it. When he seemed satisfied with what he’d learned, he moved on to the next panel, repeating the procedure for each one in the hall. Once he’d finished those, he turned down an intersecting hallway.
While he surveyed the extent of the damage, Liv pulled apart the fried components before her so she could repair the injuries she’d caused. She heard the sentinel returning long before it reached her side.
“What’s the damage?” Liv asked, already knowing it was worse than she’d intended.
The sentinel’s “dreadlocks” shifted as some of the appendages separated from the rest and reached forward, infiltrating the panel directly in front of him. “This is going to take the better part of twenty-seven hours.”
“Twenty-seven hours,” she repeated quietly. “Seriously?” How had she miscalculated so badly?
“I’ve never seen this type of cascading failure in all my 3125 years. I only have nine relays in storage. I’ll have to fabricate the other twelve myself.”
Why the hell did he sound so happy about that?
“Twelve relays,” Liv sighed. “That’ll take a long time.”
“Yes, but Renee will be happy.”
“Why?”
“Well, she wanted you and me to spend some time together and form a friendship. Twenty-seven hours should be time enough for you to get to know me better and relax in my company.”
Liv choked on air but managed to form a reply. “Right. I suppose that’ll do it.”
Vengeance’s drudge came lumbering up to them, hauling what was likely to be the first of nine new relays. The repair unit’s arrival broke what might have been an awkward moment otherwise.
While part of her looked forward to the next twenty-seven hours, there were likely women aboard that scout ship about whom she cared deeply, and her only plan to allow them to survive had failed.
And she couldn’t do this to Vengeance again. Keeping her telepathy hidden for so long meant she was out of practice, unskilled, with a tremendous power that could kill him if she weren’t careful.
Ultimately, no matter what she did now, she risked losing someone she loved, and she already feared she’d have to make a choice between betraying a sister or the one AI she’d risk her life for.
And in the end, she could lose them both.
Chapter Ten
When Vengeance first boarded the enemy ship, the lack of resistance surprised him. After the chase the pirate ship had given him, he’d expected his sentinels to come under heavy fire the moment he stepped onto the other ship’s deck.
Instead, it was empty. He carefully approached the door leading to the next room, but it was completely unresponsive. Upon closer inspection, all the controls had been fried by weapons fire. Unfortunately, the door was designed to be blast proof, so he would have to wait until another transport could bring one of the ion-torches to cut through the door.
While he waited, he performed repeated deep scans of the ship, but he could only find one life-sign on board. Whoever it was had gone to a lot of trouble to make Vengeance’s job as difficult as possible. That spoke of a deeply rooted stubbornness and an unwillingness to admit defeat.
That almost sounded like one of his brothers and sisters.
It took the better part of an hour to get the supplies he needed and cut through the first door, only to find all the rest of the scout ship’s doors similarly sealed. It would serve the stubborn fool right if Vengeance left the pirate to starve.
But now, his curiosity was piqued. He would get to the bottom of this mystery no matter how long it took.
Almost ten hours later, he extracted a swearing, laser-blasting, kicking, screaming hell-cat from the depths of the ship. She continued her tirade the entire flight back to his warship body.
As days went, this had been an interesting one. And although he liked solving a good mystery, he found he enjoyed fixing fried relays with his favorite Journeyman Engineer more. The ten hours he’d spent in Liv’s company had turned out to be extremely pleasant. Likely too pleasant, but he didn’t care. He deserved the enjoyable distraction as a reward for dealing with the spitfire female pirate.
Vengeanc
e finally dismissed Liv an hour after her shift would normally have been over, ordering her to find something to eat before he started her new evening chess lessons.
Even though he knew she had to be starving, he was still disappointed when she quickly acknowledged his command and left him without as much as a smile. But he didn’t wallow in self-pity for long. Tracking showed Liv wasn’t heading toward the mess hall. She was making her way to the brig.
As Ven’s sentinel dragged the battered captain of the pirate ship aboard to throw her in the brig, Liv peeked around a corner, her curiosity once again getting the best of her. Liv’s breath caught in her lungs as she whispered, “Amelia.”
She couldn’t help it. Her telepathy immediately reached toward her childhood best friend, and Amelia’s head snapped up, her dark brown eyes immediately settling on Liv as she cowered against the wall. Amelia shook her head quickly as if reprimanding her for using her gift, and realizing what she’d done, Liv reined it back in like rolling thread around a spool. But Amelia was here… the girl who’d once played with her on Nualla, the girl who’d helped her keep her sanity after they’d been kidnapped.
Liv made an impulsive decision and darted around the corner, stopping Ven’s sentinel by holding out a hand. The red warning lights along the sentinel’s face twinkled as if blinking at her then Ven’s voice asked, “Journeyman Hawthorne?”
Liv nodded toward her friend. “May I speak to your prisoner?”
“Didn’t I order you to eat?” Ven asked, clearly confused. “Extracting this human from her ship took much longer than planned. I haven’t even had a chance to question her yet. And I promised you I would share what I’ve learned later tonight during the chess match. What’s so important that it can’t wait until you’ve eaten, and I’ve had a chance to do my job?”
That’s a damn good question, Liv thought.
“Since I told you about how I lost my family in the pirate raid, I haven’t been able to think about anything else. I just need to know if this pirate is the one who took them from me. If she is, then there’s some unfinished business between us,” Liv lied.
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