by JC Hay
Inouye
TriSystems: Rangers Romance
By
JC Hay
Table of Contents
Title Page
Inouye (TriSystems: Rangers, #1)
Copyright
Dedication:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Old wounds can leave the deepest scars.
LANCE CORPORAL REN Inouye has spent a decade forgetting his homeworld and the girl who cut out his school-age heart. With the help of his umbra wolf partner, he’s almost succeeded. When he’s ordered back home, the last thing he wants is for her to drop back into his life and tear open those scars he thought long-healed.
Lucia has spent five years doing refugee work, trying to make up for her family’s name and her own spoiled childhood. When her aid shuttle gets shot down, she’s forced to rely on the one person she thought she’d never see again.
Thrown together, it’s impossible to ignore that their old passions still run hot. If they want a future, they’ll need to put the past on hold and work together, because someone’s trying to heat up a cold war on their homeworld, and the fastest way to do that is to make sure they’re both dead.
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by JC Hay
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Metal Pig Press
4301 NE 4th St., #3016
Renton, WA 98059-9998
www.metalpigpress.com
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. The characters, places, and incidents are either fictional or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead; their invisible, empathic wolves; actual events, implanted memories, or current events and organizations is coincidental.
Editing by Sasha Knight
Cover by The Killion Group, Inc.
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Dedication:
This one’s for you, F’
One
The cargo cabin shuddered as the shuttle dropped through the atmosphere. Ren rested his head against the cool metal of the hull and ruffled his fingers into the fur at the back of Inari's skull. He felt her curiosity. The wolf wanted to know why he couldn’t settle and what might be going on outside.
Military cargo trans-orbital wasn't the smoothest way to travel, nor was it the most luxurious, but it was cheap. He didn’t need a window to see what it looked like outside. He'd grown up on Tyson. The rose-colored skies and the majestic, banded swell of Kronus beyond the horizon held no surprises for him.
The cabin jolted again, lifting him out of his seat, and this time Inari grumbled her displeasure, shifting in the chair next to him. An added benefit of a military flight; no one here was going to complain about the sixteen-kilo canid taking up one of the seats. The military knew all about umbra wolves: symbol, pride, and partners of the TJF Rangers.
"Easy, 'Ri," he cooed. "We'll be on the ground soon enough, then you'll have plenty of space to run."
The wolf turned her head, tilting slightly at his voice.
Even without their empathic bond, the look on Inari's face told Ren laid her thoughts bare, and he couldn't help but chuckle. "Trust me, you'll like the ground just fine. You grew up dirtside. Just give it time and you’ll remember it. Until then, think of it as a filthy deck. With plants growing out of it."
She didn't seem convinced, shifting again to curl up with her head resting on her front paws. The wolf was careful to move slow enough to keep his hand on her, though. God forbid he stopped petting her.
Ren sympathized with her discomfort—he wanted the leave even less than she did. Especially on a planet he’d tried so damn hard to escape in the first place. Not that it stopped the brass from demanding he take time off. Just bad luck that the closest world in-system happened to be his former home.
Yes, shit got real during his fireteam’s deployment on Sagan, and Triptych’s traffickers had dug in hard. The firefight had been ugly, but Ren and the rest of Bravo had come through it with only slight injuries. Fireteam Charlie had been the one got chewed up. No amount of leave would bring Hagan or the others back.
Ren would have been fine with a couple days of light duty, but Commander Penzak had been insistent. Mandatory leave. Psych eval on the return.
Fucking quacks. Like he didn't know his own limits.
The ship gave another lurch, and the high whine of directional thrusters told him they'd changed direction for a final landing. One of the zoom-crew entered the cargo area from the trans-orbital’s bridge and walked toward him, a wireless in her hand. She glanced at the umbra wolf and took a step back. "You Inouye?" She pronounced it ee-new-yay.
"In-no-ay," he corrected without thinking. "Yeah. Give over." He held out his hand for the headset, and she passed it off, her eyes never straying from Inari, or at least where she presumed Inari was. Without polarized light in the trans-orbital’s cabin to override the metalensing effect of her fur, his wolf was just a dog-sized translucent blur to anyone looking at her who wasn’t wolfbonded.
Ren settled the cans over his ears and dropped the mic into place at the corner of his mouth before announcing himself. Commander Penzak's distinctive, hollow-sounding voice straightened Ren's spine in a reflexive desire to hit attention. "Inouye. I've got bad news. I have to rescind your leave."
Ren resisted the urge to fist pump. As it was, Inari sat up, tail wagging at their shared happiness. He scritched his fingers across her shoulders and tried to sound disappointed. "I'll catch the next ride into orbit and be on board the Hunting Cry in..." he paused to calculate travel times back to Sagan's orbit, "...eleven hours."
"Don't bother," was Penzak's curt reply. "I need you right there on Tyson. A diplomatic transport flitter registered with TriSystem Refugee Aid went off the sensors about thirty minutes ago, and I want boots and eyes on the ground. With the local tensions running hot, the brass don’t want to see it used by either side as an excuse to ramp up hostilities. You just happen to be the closest wolf I've got. Lucky you."
Ren rolled his eyes, thankful the comms were audio only. There had always been fighting on his homeworld, though in recent years it had cooled to a skirmish-punctuated standoff between the recognized government and a federation of mining towns who had turned themselves into a nation without borders and refused to submit to what they considered a hostile power. He didn’t have skin in that game, but he knew what mining conditions were like, so he couldn’t blame them for rebelling.
Penzak continued, his voice emotionless. “You'll have a flitter hot at your landing point, ready to drop you at the transport’s last coordinates. Bring her back, but be careful. Make me proud, Ranger.”
“Sir, yes sir.” Ren took a deep breath. He hadn't wanted to go on leave, sure, but somehow this still felt like a goat-screw.
Two
This is not a promising start for my aid negotiations.
Lucia Sarmiento took a deep breath and tried to move her leg. Pain and nausea fought against consciousness as a result, but her ankle stayed pinned. Her vision swam in time with her pulse, a sure sign she'd been concussed in the crash. She couldn’t remember what you were supposed to do for a concussion, other than not falling asleep. Not that there was any danger of that. Who could doze off through this much pain? Even if you were
okay with burning to death in the wreckage.
And there were few things with which she’d be less okay. She’d made too much progress to lie down and die now.
She shoved against the seat in front of her and the pressure on her calf lessened slightly. Before she could talk herself out of it, she tugged her leg free and threw herself backward into the aisle. Pain ripped through her again as she felt something tear free, and she screamed against her fist. Blood soaked through the now-ripped fabric of her trousers, already beginning to drip on the deck below. She forced herself not to see the ruined flesh beneath, pretended it was someone else's limb. The lie lasted only until she put her weight on it, and the agony sent her crashing to the tilted floor.
Take a breath. Try again. How many times had Mama said those words to her, with her patience like a mountain that could never be eroded.
Lucia shoved up onto her knees and crawled toward the front of the flitter. She needed to check on the pilot. Rasmus? She couldn't remember the name he'd given her anymore.
It took barely a glance to realize, regardless of what his name had been, the pilot wasn't going anywhere. She swallowed against the sour flooding the back of her throat, nostrils recoiling at the overwhelming smell of burnt flesh and spilled blood. A short stumble from the cockpit got her to the exit. She slapped at the emergency release. Twice. Three times. It finally triggered, and the evacuation charges blew the door open. With no way to catch herself, she tumbled through to the ground below. Pain washed over her again, and this time she did throw up. Somehow it only made her head hurt more. At least her leg had gone mostly numb.
That had to be a good thing, right?
She crawled out from under the wreckage. Things definitely looked worse from out here. While the paired rotor mounts at the back of the plane seemed fine, one of the wing structures had sheared off on the rocks. The front end had crumpled to useless garbage, like a paper airplane thrown at the wall. Flames licked at the forward housing, which explained the smoke she’d smelled inside.
She tried to figure out how much time had passed since they’d gone down. She needed to get away before the flitter exploded. She knew that much from watching action movies on the vid—vehicles always blew up after a crash.
Lucia dragged across the ground to some rocks and hoped it was far enough. Even that short distance had exhausted her. If she'd had anything left in her stomach, it would have come charging out too, but fortunately that was already on empty. Among the rocks, she was safe. She couldn't see the flitter, so if it blew up, maybe she'd be protected? It made sense.
Gods, she hoped so, because she was so damn tired.
She let her eyes close for a second. A quick nap wouldn't hurt.
Just a moment. That wouldn't be too bad, right?
LUCIA WOKE TO SOMETHING licking her face and found herself staring into a pair of night-black eyes surrounded by a hazy blur of colors. She squawked and recoiled, bumping her head against the rock behind her and sending a new wave of nausea flooding through her body. Other than the creature's eyes and tongue, the only other clearly visible part of it was a collar made of woven cord.
"Whatcha got, 'Ri? You find someone?" The man's voice pitched slightly high, an almost singsong tone that reminded her of talking to children. As he stepped in close, his shadow fell into the space between the rocks. "You did find someone! Good girl!" He crouched down to pet the animal, and clearly Lucia had a bad concussion because his fingers disappeared into nothing.
She blinked and refocused her eyes, looking up into a face that seemed hauntingly familiar. Dark-amber eyes, flecked with hints of gold, watched her from beneath a furrowed brow. "That's a rough-looking head wound. You shouldn't fall asleep."
Lucia shook her head slowly to keep the nausea at bay. He was right of course. With an effort she tried to piece together the information she had—beneath the unique eyes was a face, a neck, broad shoulders wrapped in a light-gray military uniform. On the shoulder closest to her, a tone-on-tone patch depicted a wolf atop a promontory, surrounded by a crescent moon. She knew that symbol—Rangers. TriSystem Joint Forces. That meant he wasn’t part of the conflict, and the dog-sized blur that had licked her face was one of the fabled umbra wolves. She let out a shaky sigh of relief and reached a hand out to touch the fascinating creature in front of her.
The wolf shied away, ducking its head and stepping back, and its handler responded instantly. "Don't. She's working. And seriously, just rest. I need to look at that head wound." He ripped open a biodegradable pouch and pulled a pre-moistened cloth from it as he leaned in to clean things up.
"Leg." Her throat was dry, and the word felt like grit in her mouth. The buzzing in her skull kept trying to make the soldier's face, his voice, feel familiar.
"The leg won't kill you. If you've got a skull fracture, that's a lot more serious. Just sit still." A strong hand immobilized her head while he lifted her hair out of the way. Her head protested the contact, but she forced herself to keep still. "It's a nasty cut. Seems to have bled plenty, but scalp wounds do that. Injury looks clean. Bone's intact, which is better news, though I suspect you'll have a hell of a migraine."
His fingers peeled back the hair from her face, and he looked into her eyes before he hissed in surprise. "Shit. Lucia Coronado."
She wanted to correct him, but the inflection on her name brought all her memories clicking into place, and the nickname he’d had in school tumbled out as one word before she could stop herself. "In-the-way."
Except Ren Inouye hadn't been a soldier, and he certainly hadn't been... She stopped herself from thinking “hot.”
And yet, the way concern and color drained out of his face at the schoolyard taunt left no doubt in her mind. The last person on Tyson she wanted to see, and of course he’d be the one to find her.
Three
Just like that, he was sixteen again. Part of him felt like he should have recognized her more quickly—she’d been his first kiss, and more besides—but she was so out of place. No way the popular girl from a rich family had ended up doing something as unglamorous as diplomatic work. But then that hated nickname had tumbled out of her mouth, as though she'd never stopped using it, like she couldn’t remember how she’d gutted him, and his stomach lurched into a zero-G barrel roll.
So much for this being easy. Ren made a mental note to request having his previously unwanted leave restored. Getting shot to hell in the forests on Sagan had been bad, sure. But dealing with Lucia deserved hazard pay.
Lucia. Her name flooded into his memory and left his senses tingling. Of all the people he'd expected to see again, she wasn't even on the list. Especially not as an aid worker on the crappiest, most strife-riddled edge of the planet's main continent. She belonged in a mansion somewhere, living a fairytale lifestyle from some reality-vid drama. Any place where he wouldn’t stumble across her and all his memories of what they’d had that summer.
Inari leaned against his leg, her confusion playing across his senses as she tried to understand what had him so unsettled. He dug his fingers into her fur as much for her comfort as his, and swallowed his tattered pride. He was a TJF Ranger. He’d bonded with one of the wolves for which the special forces were both known and feared. He had all the affirmation he'd ever needed. He certainly didn't have to concern himself with the thoughts of a woman he hadn't seen since she’d broken his heart a decade ago.
He'd get her to safety, because it was his damn job. And then he could get the hell off Tyson. Maybe the commander would let him jump system for leave. Kanaloa wasn't that far away, and he could definitely see the appeal in a world of endless beaches.
He held out the steri-cloth. "You'll probably want to wipe your face clean, since the cloth’s already open. I'll go grab a splint from the big med kit." He’d left the kit by the wreckage he’d found when his ride dropped him off. He would have brought it with him, but Inari had grabbed the scent almost immediately, and he’d hurried to follow her. He’d debated leaving it at the time, but now
he was glad he’d done it. It gave him the perfect excuse to get away from Lucia and find some breathing room. He needed to clear his head and put his mind back on the mission at hand.
Inari looked at him, her head tilted in question. "No," Ren answered. "You stay here. Make sure she doesn't get up from there until I get back." He hopped down from the rocks and looked back at his wolf's confused whine. "I don't know. Sit on her."
It would be a short walk back to the wreck, fortunately, and then he could call for his evac. Even with a splint, he didn't think she'd last too long on that ankle. Badly broken, it was certainly the worst of the two injuries. At least as far as he could tell without a 3D imager to check inside her skull. Her pupils were light-responsive and the same size, which was a good sign. She would likely have emotional scars from the trauma, but at the end of the day, didn't everyone?
He dragged a hand down his face, physically resetting his attitude before continuing the trip toward the wreck, when he heard the distinctive rhythmic whine of an incoming flitter. He shielded his eyes and squinted to make out the circular dots of the aircraft’s rotors against the rose-hued clouds. It was all the warning he had before the missile hit and blew the wreck to smithereens.
REN COULDN'T HEAR, could barely piece together what had happened. One minute he'd spotted the oncoming flitter. The next he'd been hurled through the air as a pair of AGMs slammed home and destroyed what was left of the wreck. It didn’t make sense—who would blow up a wreck?
His head and back were killing him, and the silence had been replaced with a high-pitched whine that felt like a cheese grater across the ragged nerves of his agony. Lay still, he told himself. If they're watching, let them think you're dead.