by JL Madore
Kenzie was still riding the high of her afternoon twenty minutes later as she waved to the kids and steered inside the wall of tethered ships. Moored together and anchored to the ocean floor, forty houseboats, yachts, and pontoon boats acted as the wave breaker to what was once an active drilling rig.
As soon as she was clear of the floating reef, she used the light of the rising moon to gauge the distance from the hull of her boat to the rubber bumpers covering the concrete support columns of the Defiant. She eased the wheel to port and closed the gap to docking.
Fifteen feet.
Five.
The controlled bump against the rubberized columns earned her a nod from the night watch guard and a harsh scowl from Shadow looming large behind him. Busted.
She took her time tying off the lines and climbed the ladder rungs affixed to the concrete column of the rig. When she accessed the platform, she lifted her chin and smiled. “Good evening, gentlemen.”
“Don’t even.” Shadow pointed toward the door, and she took the lead. She entered the twelve-digit access code and opened their way into the rig’s interior.
The metal door clanged shut behind them and echoed Shadow’s annoyance. Sealed in the steel corridor, her confidence wavered. She hated this part—the tight confines, no windows, metal walls, floor, and ceiling.
It was like being trapped in a metal tomb.
Her heart pumped hard in her chest, and she focused on the stairs thirty feet ahead. They led up to the living sections of the old rig—open space, fresh air, humanity.
“What called to you today, Mackenzie? Tracking a pod of dolphins? Checking the health of a reef? Maybe you were hot on the trail of those mercenary poachers you hate so much, is that it?”
“Not today, sorry to disappoint.”
The hot glare he threw her was nothing she hadn’t faced a hundred times—not hot in a sexy way, though. She was immune to Shadow’s battle-hardened, dark-haired, green-eyed, Amerasian beauty. “I swore to your brother that I’d watch out for you, but you don’t make it easy.”
“Easy isn’t living.” She read the exhaustion on his face and regretted her part in that, she did, but if she toed the line and abandoned the life she loved before the Rising, she’d cease to exist. “Don’t you want more than to hide on a floating town in the open waters of the Pacific?”
“We’re not hiding. We’re rebuilding . . . regrouping.”
She took the stairs, the peeled paint poking at the soles of her bare feet. “Okay, so if we’re rebuilding, wouldn’t it be nice if parts of our old world survived too? This planet was seventy-percent water before the Rising and almost eighty percent now. There’s a lot going on out there, Shadow.”
“Yes, a lot of dangerous, violent things, which you choose to ignore. Nature will recalibrate and find a balance, whether or not you risk your life to witness it.”
“Nature needs an entire ecosystem to rebalance. The dolphins, the reefs, and the sea turtles—especially with those asshole poachers trolling the waters.”
Shadow reached around her at the top of the landing to get the door, and they emerged into the bustle of the first-floor community areas. “Sea turtles? Please, Kenzie, save my last shred of sanity and tell me you didn’t go ashore.”
Oops. She’d said too much. “Not really ashore—only maaaybe thirty feet in from the waterline. That’s it.”
He stopped, his full ex-military bad-assery kicking in as his hands fisted on his hips. That tough-guy warrior stance drew the attention of every woman within eyeshot.
She rolled her eyes. Yeah, yeah, hunky man in a muscle shirt, get over it.
“Kenzie?” he said in that deep, drawn-out way he had when he lost his patience. “Where was your gun? I assume, no matter how reckless you are, you had the common sense to keep yourself armed at all times, right?”
Kenzie squeezed his bulging bicep and blinked up at him. “I had my gun”—on the boat—“and I’m fine. Honestly.”
Unlike the dainty damsels that he watched out for on this rig, she could take care of herself. Before the Rising, her curvy-girl figure and tomboy tendencies were a social disadvantage. She wasn’t the female image men desired. Now, her solid build and physical strength gave her an edge over the beauty queens quivering in their bunks.
The fact that Shadow didn’t see the difference was both annoying and endearing. “I’m sorry you worried, but I’m good. I spent a spectacular afternoon escorting baby turtles to the sea and honestly, you’re harshing my high. Can we change the subject already? Tell me how the repairs went on the generator this afternoon. I bet that kept you busy.”
He exhaled a breathy curse and wrapped a strong arm around her neck. Dragging her toward the tavern, he scrubbed his knuckles on her damp hair. “Some days I wish I could quit you, Kenzie. I really do.”
She wrapped her arm around his hips and hooked a thumb in the belt loop of his khakis. “Leave no man behind, soldier. Besides, if I wasn’t here, who’d fend off all the horny women darkening your door. That’s like a full-time job.”
Shadow snorted. “Maybe you should stop cock-blocking me and focus on your own sad state of sexual affairs.”
Blowing a wayward strand of chestnut hair off her face, she laughed. “Yeah, there’s that.”
Taryn docked the small watercraft in bay six and tapped in the command codes to vent the freezing cold, ocean water from the docking hatch. When the ballasts emptied, he accessed the tight confines of the holding area and bent to the retinal scanner beside the door.
“Taryn5253,” the sterile voice of the ship chirped as it recognized him. “Captain of Atlantis First Armada Scouting Squadron. Access granted.”
As the ship’s AI system welcomed him home, he stepped into the shuttle bay and handed the mission’s nav-tablet to the awaiting ensign. “Here are four hours of readings. Have your boss focus on the stress fissures in quadrant D4-6. The last attack caused visible damage to the dome’s outer structure.”
“Visible damage?” Draxon dismissed a shuttle engineer and strode from behind an observation station. The commander’s gait implied he hadn’t yet gone in to have his family’s royal scepter removed from up his ass. Not that he would. Draxon took this job to laud it over the lowly working class and to find some grounds to shut down the cybernetic enhancement program. “Your ocular implant failing, C5253?”
Taryn ignored the use of only his cybernetic allocation and straightened before his commanding officer. “No, sir.”
“If you were malfunctioning, would you even know it?”
Taryn clasped his hands behind his back. It was more a move to keep from strangling his commander than a show of respect. “I assure you, sir, my genetic enhancements function well above the maximum requirement. There is visible damage to the dome.”
“I won’t debate with you, cyborg. I think you’re seeing things and aren’t worth the money and resources we put into developing your type. If you want to embarrass yourself, who am I to stop you?” The disdain in Draxon’s voice hung like a cloud over the room but didn’t affect him, or anyone else.
Everyone knew the man was a waste of atmospheric resources.
Taryn dipped his chin nodded to the junior officer he’d given the mission’s nav-tablet to. “Relay the message as reported. If I’m wrong, it’ll be my mistake.”
The boy’s sage green skin had paled to a light mint. “Apologies . . . I mean, of course, sir . . . I’ll tell him, D4-6.”
Taryn watched the young man shuffle off. When it dawned on his boss that he’d run out of steam and had nothing more to offer, he sputtered off to bother someone else.
Once Draxon vacated the ops center, Taryn turned to leave. He met the dark-blue gaze of Atlas, head of Atlantean security. “You rattling the chain of command again, Captain?”
Taryn shrugged, eyeing the security tablet in the man’s hands. “We each have burdens to bear. I doubt you’re wasting your night hanging around in the shuttle bay to watch my balls get busted. What’s on yo
ur mind?”
“A female from your progeny group, Alyandra5255.”
Taryn frowned. Why would the head of security bring up his sister? Alyandra was a bio-tech, a sweet, docile scientist who spent her days in her lab. There was no good reason for Atlas to have her in his sights. “What’s happened?”
Atlas tapped the tablet and turned it for him to read. “This authorization got flagged and forwarded to my department. When one of my men saw your signature, he brought it to my attention. Why would an armada captain authorize a scientist’s surface expedition?”
Taryn examined the signing authority for the off-ship authorization, and his stomach sank. “This is my signature, but I—” He caught himself and shut his mouth. To falsify a ranking officer’s signature was a serious infraction. Alyandra could lose her security clearance, her station in the bio-labs, everything.
Atlas reclaimed the tablet and pursed his lips. “I’m certain it’s a simple misunderstanding, clerical error, perhaps. You’ll take care of it?”
Taryn stifled his emotions and met Atlas with an easy nod. “Rest assured. You needn’t think of it again.”
“Good. Then it is forgotten.”
It took every ounce of control Taryn possessed to keep his feet rooted until Atlas left the shuttle bay. Once the door wisped shut, he raced to an unmanned tracking station and accessed a display panel. “Atlantis, find Alyandra5255.”
“Alyandra5255 is not aboard the ship.”
Taryn closed his eyes as a wave of nausea hit. The ocean above was filled with innumerable dangers for which his delicate sister had no defenses. He jogged over to the shuttle bay log station and pulled up the departures. There.
At the beginning of the sun cycle, she left the ship with another bio-tech scientist, a shuttle captain, and two security members. Thank the gods.
At least she had the sense to take guards with her.
Not that it made him any less furious. As he jogged back into the docking area, he hit his comm. “Atlantis, track the power signature of Depth Diver Four and route that path information to Depth Diver One.”
“Routing now.”
Taryn sealed himself into the watercraft and sank into his seat. Ignoring the startup protocols and ship diagnostics, he started embarkment. “Fracking hell, Alyandra, what are you up to now?”
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE