by Bex McLynn
She glanced up at Seph. “The Fleet’s cruiser’s gone dark. That’s what all this means, right?”
Seph, in turn, directed her troubled gazed to Rannik. “Ran?”
The young Teras frowned as his eyes roved over the screen. “This is all standard procedure, Seph. Da used his technopathy to kill the lights and defenses on the cruiser. The strike team’s now boarding. It’s practically a training exercise.”
Standard? Although Maude sensed that Rannik truly wanted to reassure them, how could any of this be standard? Therion’s arrest had been rescinded an hour ago, and rather than him walking free, an armed confrontation was underway.
“Training exercise.” Seph’s scoff drew Maude’s attention. Her cousin jutted her chin out at the desk’s display. “This, right here, is a perfect example of the Teras playing ‘truth or dare dodgeball’ with freaking guns instead of balls.”
Good lord, Zver’s voice echoed in Maude’s head. Before he’d headed out with his strike team, he’d commented, rather unfazed, that he’d anticipated this outcome. That although he’d wielded Therion’s arsenal to administer Therion’s release, TerTac wouldn’t simply hand Therion over. Physically securing Therion would be House Borac’s show of strength.
That damnable arsenal had Maude blinking back tears. First of all, it contained volumes of unsavory information that knotted her stomach. Names. Dates. Evidence. Maude’s auction was only the ant hill, a tiny mound that led to a dark, twisted underworld. But what truly broke her heart was that Therion had been the one to amass all that data. That he’d willing exposed himself to scandals and crimes to keep Zver’s hands clean and to protect House Borac.
Did she despise what Therion had done? No. How could she? The evidence he collected showed her the Teras world in stark clarity. Their entire society was a never-ending cycle of intrigue and desperation, all driven by the need to secure status.
Seph, however, was wrong. The Teras weren’t locked in a playground game. Their entire society was a chessboard littered with landmines.
Suddenly, Seph jolted and looked up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where do you think you’re going, young lady? Zver told us to stay put.”
Prykimis, however, stayed her course, pushing closer to the space station in minuscule increments.
Maude and Seph exchanged knowing, worried glances. Whatever the Teras might think, Prykimis and Kora had moya and would do as they pleased. Hell, Kora proved that when she’d added herself to the strike team by simply attaching herself to Zver’s armor and not relinquishing her hold. In the end, Zver had turned to Maude, of all people, for the mission’s final go-ahead.
“Kimis,” Seph called out.
Prykimis simply said, “[I go.]”
Her cousin released a shuddering exhale. “There isn’t a time-out corner big enough for her.”
Therion threw himself to the deck as blaster fire seared overhead. The helm disc flew from his hand, rolling away from him. Then Curumek, that little shit stain, was on him. The smaller Teras grappled like a six-armed monkey, using his size and speed to swarm over Therion.
Therion’s only advantage was the syringe. Curumek refused to drop it as he tried to overwhelm Therion with one hand.
He could hear the guards thundering down the corridor, charging toward blaster fire that echoed from an adjacent corridor. Whatever orders Overeager and his partner received, they overrode Curumek’s enraged bellows for assistance.
Perfect. Therion wasn’t an honor-bound Teras. He’d take the underhanded advantage. Betting that his undignified brawling trumped Curumek’s speed with the syringe, he pulled back and punched the little fucker in the throat. Rolling on top of the smaller Teras, he gripped Curumek’s hand, brought the syringe to Curumek’s uniform tunic, and pressed the trigger. The syringe gave the tell-tale hiss that it deployed its payload. He prayed that enough of the syringe’s injectors penetrated the tactical fabric to knock Curumek out.
Curumek roared and kicked at Therion, knocking him flat onto his back. Therion readied himself, waiting for Curumek to pummel him. Instead, he heard the solid thump of a body hitting the deck. He turned and saw that Curumek was out cold.
Groaning in relief, he rolled up to a sitting position and found a rifle muzzle in his face.
Ah. Overeager. He must have doubled back.
Therion coiled, readying to dodge an unavoidable blast.
Overeager jerked, his helm turning sharply to the right until Therion heard a sickening crack. The armored grunt landed on his knees and pitched face-first onto the deck. Attached to his back, with spindly vines around his neck, was Kora.
Kora had popped TerTac armor like Therion would crack a nut.
She rippled her plates at him.
Therion released a long, haggard breath. “Aye, Kora. It’s good to see you too.”
She scuttled across Overeager’s still body and snatched the helm disc with a vine. She tossed it toward Therion as her plates flared and clicked in alarm.
He snagged the helm disc. “You want me to—”
The corridor exploded.
Maude reeled as chaos broke out over the comms. Prykimis had brought her railguns online.
“You fire?” Seph cried out as she gripped the edge of the Cuneiform desk. “No! Don’t fire on the cruiser, Kimis!”
“Seph, look!” Rannik pointed to a surveillance feed on the screen. “There’s another ship by the cruiser.”
Seph held her breath, then said, “Kimis just targeted it.”
Rannik manipulated the screen with his hand, rotating and enlarging the surveillance feed. “That’s a cloaked spirefighter and it's firing at the cruiser.”
Maude shook her head. “Why would it fire on the cruiser?”
Prykimis rocked.
Maude stumbled and caught herself on one of the bolted-down chairs. “What was that?”
“Railguns,” Seph said grimly as she righted herself by the Cuneiform desk. “Prykimis just fired.”
“On what?” Maude’s stomach dropped. “The cruiser?”
Seph inhaled, then said, “No. On the spirefighter.” A haunted gaze shrouded her eyes. “She blew it to bits.”
“Um, Seph.” Rannik’s wide-eyed gaze darted between her cousin and the Cuneiform. “Kimis is still on the move. She’s drifting toward the cruiser.”
The dread in the young Teras’s voice drew Maude over to the Cuneiform. The surveillance display continued to stream a live feed, and she could see the floating debris and a hole blown through the outer hull of the cruiser.
A report flashed, blinking like a beacon.
Dread crept down her spine as she pointed to the beacon. “There. In the… um… spirefighter debris. What’s that?”
Seph swallowed. “That’s our clade scrum code.”
Maude stared at the blinking light. “Would Therion use it to signal us?”
Seph shook her head, a helpless look on her face.
But Rannik cleared his throat and said, “Aye. He would.”
Oh, good lord.
Maude staggered back from the desk. “He’s in the middle of a debris field? In open space?”
Therion winced as Kora wrapped around his leg, becoming a tourniquet and doing her best to create a seal. It helped, but wisps of his breathable air continued to escape through the jagged tear in the spacewalk suit’s leg, along with drops of his blood. The air and his dripping blood both crystallized in the cold, hard vacuum of space.
Well, he’d been in worse spots.
He sighed and activated the short-range comm within his helm. It was meant to communicate with other helms and interface with a WristCune for further comms access, which he didn’t have.
He gave Kora a wry look. “You don’t happen to have thruster capabilities, do you?”
Silence.
He suspected as much. She’d probably stowed away on Zver’s strike team transport, or even hitched a ride on some grunt’s armor, to gain access to the cruiser.
He appreciated her ingenuity and
tenacity. She’d saved his life. What was left of it. He floated in a mixed debris field. Part of the cruiser—torn apart by the spirefighter—and the spirefighter itself encircled him.
So, that was Curumek’s plan. To offload him to a stealth ship and spirit him away.
Therion patted Kora as she constricted about his leg, numbing his whole limb. “Well, thanks for trying, Kora. And thanks for the whole fixing my cock thing. I’ve been meaning to say something. That was a right fucking solid that you gave me. I’m not sure how I can repay it, but thanks.”
More silence.
“I actually got to use my cock a ton, too, before being sucked out here. Seriously. Thank you. It was absolutely brilliant on your part ‘cause sex with Maude is amazing.”
Perhaps it was the stubborn Borac arse in him, but he did his best to pivot around toward Prykimis. To face the last place where he knew Maude to be. He didn’t have much time left because Curumek, that little fuck, fitted him with a suit and helm that held limited air, and those reserves were being sucked out of the tear in his suit’s leg.
How fucking typical of an end for him.
A drifter. Forever to roam.
He gazed at Prykimis and sang “The Ne’er-Do-Well,” giving it one more go. As he ended the song, he readied to sing it again. To sing it until he had no more air to breathe.
His helmet comm crackled to life. “You done feeling sorry for yourself?”
Of all the fucked up—
“Godsdamn it, Gummy!” he shouted. Hell, he sounded elated, didn’t he? “They sent you?”
His grandmother grumped. “Commandeered a transport.”
Therion laughed. “On what grounds?”
“On grounds that I’d kick their asses if they said no.”
“You gave ‘em hell, Gummy?” By Unholde, to have seen that. No one filleted a green Fleet grunt like Gummy.
She snorted. “I’m sard through and through, Therry.”
“Aye, Gummy. Aye, you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Therion sagged into this grandfather’s embrace as the airlock of the small transport shuttle pressurized. With each hearty thump of his gappa’s fist on his back, Therion let relief flood his body.
By Unholde, he hated getting sucked out airlocks and hull breaches. Almost as much as he hated being indebted to his grandmother.
His gappa gave him a light jostle and then spoke through the comms. “You’re an arse, Therion.”
“Aye,” he sighed as he let his grandfather bear his weight. “That I am. I should’ve anticipated Fleet’s agenda. Done more to—”
“I’m not talking about that. We all got blindsided by Fleet’s interest in you. We were too consumed with protecting the Athelas.”
“So what are you yammering about, then?”
Therion wished he could see his gappa’s face, but he wore an armored spacesuit and helmet. Dyr could be as shifty to read as Zver when he chose to be a scheming bastard. It was the Borac in him. Hell, it was the Borac in all of them.
The airlock finished cycling, and the hatch slid open. Together, he and his grandfather hobbled down the short corridor. Dyr lowered him onto a jump seat while Gummy piloted at the NavCom station.
His grandfather removed Therion’s helmet, and Therion inhaled a lusty drag of the transport’s scrubbed air.
Dyr removed his own helmet, setting it aside as he gave Kora a solid knuckle wrap. “Does this need tending?”
Therion’s leg burned, and he was pretty damn sure he hobbled around with shredded parts of the hull embedded in his leg. But he trusted Kora to sort it out. After all, once she attached herself to him, he’d believed that he figured out Kora’s connection to Maude. That whoever had put Maude in the pod—hell, it was probably the Athelasans who had done it—had added Kora as well, as a medical device to monitor Maude’s pregnancy.
His certainty about this scenario didn’t sit well with him. If anything, Maude’s pregnancy should have disqualified her as an ideal… what? Subject? Candidate? Abductee?
But the bastards who had taken her earned his begrudging gratitude, because she was here in the Tendex. Because he had a chance to be hers.
Well, he had a chance, but he’d fucked it up.
Ah. Aye. That was what his gappa had meant.
He gave Dyr an incredulous look. “You think I’m an arse for protecting her?”
“I think you’re an arse for thinking that abandoning her would protect her.”
“She needs a thane,” Therion said softly.
A thane would never have been arrested on trumped-up charges by TerTac.
The shuttle lurched as Gummy left the controls.
“Move, Dyr,” she snapped.
His gappa leaned to the side, creating an opening for Gummy to smack Therion’s head.
“Godsdamn it, Gummy!” Therion whined as he rubbed his smarting scalp. “Shaved all my hair. That fucking hurt. Did you hit me with your sard ring?”
“Ech, caro’s all I need to batter your brains.” Gummy frowned down at him. “You don’t gotta be a thane. You’ve got gumption, Therry.”
“Always with you and the gumption.” He jabbed a thumb at his neck. “Gumption got me Unsworn, inked, and forever tainted. All my gumption drags me down, Gummy.”
Gummy grumped at him. “Ech. You’re drowning in your own piss bucket.”
Therion huffed. “Gumption got me swearing my clutch oath to a woman who I couldn’t even keep safe for a day. A damn day, Gummy. I don’t fucking deserve her and gumption can kiss my praal-puckered ass.”
“Gumption ain’t your problem, Therry. Zver ain’t got gumption. He’s all grit. Yet all his grit couldn’t save you.” She canted her head toward Dyr. “Zver’s too much like this one.”
Gummy said it like an insult, but it really wasn’t. Both Dyr and Zver were great men, stalwart thanes that carried the honor of House Borac without a bow to their shoulders. Without tainting their oaths. Gods, if only he could have been—
Gummy whapped him again. “Stop yer wallowin’.”
“Fuck, Gummy!” He pointed to the NavCom console. “Get back over there, you vicious git. Gappa! Make her pilot the shuttle.”
“Ech, you whine like a punctured lung when you get all caught up in coulda beens.” She jutted her chin at him. “What am I always telling you?”
Therion sighed. Not this again. “That I don’t need technopathy.”
“Fuck, not that. The other thing.”
Right. The other thing.
“That I gotta take over Fleet.” When Gummy opened her mouth to snap back, Therion flung out an arm, gesturing toward Prykimis. “But I did fucking take over Fleet, Gummy. I put the damn control collar right into Zver’s hands, and he used it to save me instead of safeguarding Maude. That noble idiot bought my freedom instead of hers. He wasted it.”
Gods, while repairing Prykimis, Therion had schemed for ages, scraping together incriminating data on the other houses and Fleet while he’d drifted about in the underbelly. Zver moved too slowly, setting snares using laws and regulations. Therion had dug through the sludge with his bare hands to ensure that House Borac never lost its status.
“Therion,” Dyr’s voice—commanding like Zver’s could be—drew him because Therion was well-conditioned to respond to that thaning tone. “Your gamma speaks from her heart so often that she forgets to cite her sound reasoning. Same as you.”
Sound reasoning. To Therion’s horrified delight, he and Gummy scoffed at the same time.
Dyr raised a brow, as if his point had just been proven.
Therion glanced at his grandmother. Hell, they both had their heads shaved and wore grumpy expressions, looking like mutated clones of one another.
With a pinch in his chest, he could hear Maude’s adorable laughter as she noted their similar appearance.
By Direis, he’d really fucked up.
Therion sighed and his exhale drained the fight from him. “What are you going on about, Gappa? What reasoning d
id Gummy forget to cite regarding Zver’s fuck-up?”
Dyr leveled him with a stare. “When have you ever known Zver to waste anything?”
Therion glared at his grandfather as he waited for the perfect in-your-face memory to surface. The first memory to jump at him was the time that he got Zver to run around their estate with him in nothing but their skivvies. Though, Zver hadn’t joined Therion. Rather, he’d chased him to get back his clothes. All of his clothes. Because Therion had stolen every last stitch. But, still, good times had by those who observed them.
Too bad it wasn’t a memory that supported Therion’s argument.
He turned to Gummy. Surely she had an example or twenty.
She grumped. “He never eats all his dessert.” Shook her head. “Never got that bit about him, Dyr. Who doesn’t finish cake?”
Therion pointed both of his index fingers at Gummy and laughed in triumph. “Right there! What she said. In your face, Gappa!”
“I’m saying,” Dyr grated, “Zver saved you for a reason. Maude can’t do for herself. By saving you, getting you back into her clutch, you can save her. Then Zver can focus his attention elsewhere. Zver, as the thane, needs Therion, the Bane.”
“But…” Therion stalled, his brain finally exhausted of schemes and plotting. “But how can I save her?”
Gummy whapped him a third time. “Fucking Unholde, Therry! You gave your brother Fleet’s anthers, and now you think you can’t shelter one caroa Athela?”
Dyr tsked. “Mind your words, Sarda.”
“I ain’t taking it back.” Gummy crossed her arms. “Not ‘til she makes someone bleed, like Seph did. ‘Cause that one time was hysterical. And I get another grandling outta all this. Win-fucking-win.”
Therion gawked at her. Gods, he should have known that clarity would come at the hands of his grandmother. Quite literally. Maude and her baby needed his protection.
Therion gasped in outrage. “There is no fucking way I’m letting you near Maude’s baby, Gummy!”