In the hallway, Clayton turned left and jogged a few meters to the first door. We were so close to the control room that I expected soldiers to pour out any second.
Clayton caught the direction of my gaze. “We looped the video, but it won’t hold for long. How do you want to do this?”
Alex swapped his knife for my gun and turned to Clayton. “You distract them, I’ll shoot them, and Cat will clean up the rest.”
“I’m not great with a blade,” I murmured. “Perhaps I should shoot and you should clean up.”
Alex grinned. “You’ll do fine. Just remember: the pointy end goes in the enemy.”
I looked at him with wide eyes. “Oh, so that’s what I’ve been doing wrong.”
Clayton barked out a laugh. We stacked single file against the wall outside the door and Clayton swiped his chip over the reader. The door opened and Alex dashed inside, the two of us on his heels.
The office was quiet and appeared empty. Two chairs, one on its side, sat in front of a heavy wooden desk. “It’s me, Aoife,” Alex said softly.
Her strawberry blond head popped out from behind the desk. She took us in with a glance, then said, “It took you long enough.”
“We were in the brig,” I said. “Is Ying here?”
“I’m here,” she said, her voice coming from under the desk. The chair pushed back and she crawled out.
“Just to be clear, you’re not secretly running House Yamado and betraying me right now, are you?”
Her shocked eyes met mine. “No.”
“Someone is trying to frame you.”
Anger slowly replaced the shock. “Hitoshi.” She spat out the name like a curse. To say there was no love lost between her and Hitoshi was a vast understatement. If he had anything to do with the attack and the death of their parents, Ying would kill him or die trying.
“Might be. De Silva tried to convince me that you’d led me here as a trap and you were acting as High Councillor for House Yamado.”
The flash of longing that crossed her face was for the position, not the betrayal. “I didn’t.”
“She’s been with me the entire time,” Aoife said. “They stunned us as soon as we hit command and then locked us up together. I got free and took out the guards.” She said it easily, like taking out four guards was no big deal.
Clayton cleared his throat. “We need to go.”
“What’s the plan?” Aoife asked as she handed out the weapons she’d confiscated from the guards.
“Out the north door, as fast as we can.”
“Okay, let’s move,” Aoife said. “I’ve got point.”
“I can’t let you risk—” Clayton started.
Aoife cut him off. “Save it. I can consistently shoot centimeter groupings at a hundred meters, and I know how to get to the door. If you can do better, you can lead. If not, shut up and follow.”
Clayton grinned at her and swept an arm toward the door. “After you.”
As soon as we stepped out into the hallway, the indistinct mumbling from my com got a lot louder. I still couldn’t make out words, but the timing was too coincidental. “I think they’re on to us. Run.”
Aoife broke into a sprint without a single question. Ying and Clayton dropped in behind her, and I followed them. Alex brought up the rear. My shielding cuff was dead and I felt entirely too exposed.
A side door just ahead of me swung open, but before I could even shout a warning, Alex was there, knife in hand. The two soldiers inside—thankfully not in RCDF uniforms—were dead before they realized they were under attack.
“Get them back!” Daniel shouted, loud enough for my com to pick it up. “Riccardo is going . . .” His voice faded out and no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t catch the end of the sentence.
If Riccardo Silva was here, then that meant the gates weren’t entirely down because he’d jumped from Andromeda Prime. Or Silva was using their own private FTL communication system to transfer jump coordinates. We’d long suspected they had the ability, but we’d never found proof.
Aoife rounded the next corner and I heard a controlled burst of blaster fire, three sets of two shots. By the time I turned the same corner a second later, three enemy soldiers were on the ground, dead, and Aoife was still running, apparently unharmed.
“Damn, you weren’t kidding,” Clayton said appreciatively. He swiped a second gun from a downed soldier and then fell in behind Alex.
We encountered another group of three before we made it to the door. One of them clipped Aoife before she could drop him, but she just switched gun hands and kept running.
My suspicions about her abilities began to harden into certainty, but I had no time to dwell on them, because the door to the northern tunnel was locked tight.
“Seems like a fire hazard,” I muttered to myself as I swiped my arm across the chip reader. The console beeped angrily and the door remained locked. Someone had figured out how to remove my access.
Time to bust out the big guns. I tapped the console and entered the House von Hasenberg override. If this didn’t work, then we would need to retrieve our explosives in order to breach the door.
I ignored the blaster fire behind me and Ying’s pained shout. It had taken me a long time to memorize Ferdinand’s code and I had to enter it all at once or I would miss a letter. And if I fucked up the code, the door would go into lockdown for at least five minutes. Heat seared my face as an energy bolt slammed into the wall centimeters away from my unprotected head.
Alex’s large form loomed behind me. “I’ve got your back. Keep going. You have time.”
I hesitated and nearly lost my place, but a quick mental repeat got me back on track. My hands shook as I entered the last few digits. Time slowed. Aoife growled out a curse. Alex said something I didn’t quite catch. I watched the keypad console with intense focus.
The door unlocked.
I heaved it open, afraid it would lock again. “Door! Go, go, go!”
The others piled through. Aoife came last, still shooting at the soldiers who were stupid enough to appear around the corner. It seemed like most of them had learned their lesson and now just snaked their gun arms around and shot blind. A blaster bolt to the hand was far less fatal than to the head. That bit of caution explained why we hadn’t been shot like fish in a barrel.
There was no way to lock the door from this side, so we just had to run for it. We needed to hit the exit before they had time to move soldiers there, so speed was key.
I was glad to see that everyone was well enough to run. Aoife held her left arm tight to her chest and Ying had a visible limp, but overall, we were in much better shape than we could have been.
Just when I thought we might make it, the lights went dead, dropping the tunnel into pitch-black darkness. Clayton cursed and stumbled to a stop. Ying tripped and went down with a short shout. Aoife ran for another few steps before she turned and looked back.
She didn’t have glasses on, but it was clear that she could see. She. Could. See. She was like me!
I shook myself out of the shock and helped Ying up. “Are you hurt?” I asked.
“Not more than I was,” she grumbled. “Those bastards stole my glasses. I should’ve disguised them like yours.”
“I’ll lead you,” I said.
“What about the others?”
I floundered for a second before Alex came to my rescue. “Aoife and I have ocular implants. Tools of the trade.”
Ying nodded gamely, but Clayton looked a little more skeptical. Ocular implants existed, but it was generally pretty obvious at a glance who had them.
Aoife started off again. Alex led Clayton, and I led Ying. She ran beside me, completely blind but trusting me to keep her safe. It was an honor, that trust, and I wondered how I’d ever thought our friendship wasn’t real. De Silva had tried to sow doubt, but he didn’t know just how close we were. Ying would not betray me, just as I wouldn’t betray her.
We made it to the end of the tunnel without any more mishaps. I pulled Ying to a slow stop. “We’re at the end.”
She nodded and looked around in the dark, blinking like an owl. Aoife opened the door and peered out. Ying squinted as the dim moonlight illuminated our surroundings a little.
Aoife waved us on, and we piled out into the night. The cold air bit at my exposed flesh and I wished I still had my cloak. With no time to waste, we ran straight for the ship, only altering course to avoid the largest obstacles. Alex ran beside me, quiet and quick.
The soldiers had confiscated our beacons, so we couldn’t actually get into Chaos until I connected to the ship and disabled the ground defense. Or until Cira saw us, which might be faster if she was paying attention.
Aoife topped the next rise then flattened to the ground. She gestured for us to crouch down. “Squad ahead,” she said. “They didn’t see me, but they’re between us and the ship.”
“Are they in RCDF uniforms?” Clayton asked.
Aoife shook her head.
Alex touched my shoulder. “You take Ying and Clayton and go around. Aoife and I will distract them and then catch up.”
“Or we could all go around,” I argued. “You don’t always have to volunteer for danger, you know. Maybe Aoife is tired of being shot at.”
“Not if I get to shoot back,” she said with a grin.
I mock-glared at her. “Shush, you.”
“I can keep us mostly out of sight,” Clayton said, “if I know where we’re going.”
“My ship is about half a kilometer northeast of here, in a little clearing with flat ground.”
“Surprisingly rubble free?” he asked. When I nodded, he continued, “That’s the graveyard. I know where you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t see any headstones.”
“They’re flat and covered by grass, but that’s why we don’t use that as our own landing zone. It’s more convenient, but the graves make it a historic site. Apparently RCDF’s request to relocate them was shot down.”
I felt bad about landing on people’s graves, but they were dead, and I was trying not to be. I figured they’d forgive me.
Clayton led us around the original squad and two more before we made it to the ship. We didn’t have much time before the soldiers caught up with us, so I got to work connecting my smart glasses to Chaos. It was a multistep process with several levels of validation.
I was still in the middle of it when Alex crossed into the defensive zone and triggered the audible alarm. “What are you doing?” I shouted.
“Getting Cira’s attention.” He stepped back a millisecond before the ship opened fire.
I tried to force my heart rate back to something close to normal rather than the hummingbird pace where it was currently. Then Alex crossed the line again.
Before I could storm over and murder him myself, the cargo bay ramp lowered and the door opened. “What are you doing?” Cira shouted, sounding almost as disbelieving as I was.
“Getting your attention. Did you disable the defenses?” Alex asked.
“Yes, but I almost didn’t get it done before you were skewered.”
“I appreciate your haste,” Alex said as he ushered us all to the ship. “Cat was going to be all night.”
“Those security protocols are there for a reason,” I growled. “Otherwise we could’ve come back to no ship at all.”
He grinned at me and bumped my shoulder. “My way was faster.”
I rolled my eyes at him and turned to the group. “Anyone with injuries, get to the medbay. I’m going to get us in the air. Try to stay clipped in as much as possible because it might get bumpy if they have ships in the area.”
Aoife, Cira, and Ying headed to the medbay. Alex and Clayton followed me to the flight deck. “How bad is it?” I asked as I slid into the captain’s chair. Both men remained standing. I worked on getting us into the air as quickly and quietly as possible.
“It’s not good,” Clayton said. “The Consortium is in chaos and the RCDF doesn’t have any clear leadership. We lost a lot of soldiers during the initial attack. House Yamado seems in on it, but I only know that because I overhead de Silva talking about High Councillor Yamado. What are you doing here? I thought you were off-planet.”
“I was, but once I heard about the attacks, I came back. I’m here to mount a defense.”
“You and what army?” Clayton asked.
“Benedict’s, assuming I can get the gates up and Rockhurst to agree to a temporary truce. I’ll gather up whoever I can and take back central command. I just have to hold it long enough for Benedict to jump in. He has an entire battle fleet. He can mop up the rest. And with the gates up, the RCDF ought to be able to send in reinforcements, too.”
“I’m not so sure everyone in the RCDF wants reinforcements to arrive,” Clayton said. When Alex moved protectively closer to me, Clayton laughed. “Not me. I owe Lady Catarina a debt, and my niece is awfully fond of her, though she pretends not to be just to be ornery. Pippa would banish me from the House if I did anything to harm Cat.”
That was news to me. I thought Pippa tolerated me at best.
Clayton continued, “Someone told them exactly where to hit and with how many. House Yamado may be involved, but that’s not information they would’ve had. Someone high up in the RCDF chain of command is a traitor.”
I agreed. Rooting out all of the traitors was going to be a monumental task.
The engines flared to life and we lifted into the air. There were no other ships showing on Chaos’s sensors. I input a roundabout flight path, heading south and east before sweeping back west. The Silvas would expect me to head for Serenity—it was the only other option on-planet. By taking an unexpected path, I hoped to keep them off my tail for as long as possible.
Unfortunately, that gave us nearly seven hours of downtime. I knew I should use it to sleep, but I had a feeling that sleep would be a long time in coming. It might be dark outside, but my body clock thought it was midafternoon. But by the time we arrived in Serenity, it would be close to midnight.
Clayton didn’t share my concerns. “Got anywhere I can bunk down? The backup base is not on Universal and I need some sleep before we land.”
I shook my head. “Quarters are tight. You’ll have to make a pallet in the exercise room downstairs.”
“You can use my bunk,” Alex said. “Just let Aoife know because you don’t want to surprise her.”
“I could see that. If only I were a decade or two younger.” Clayton grinned ruefully. “I’ll let her know. How long until we land?”
“At least six and a half hours.”
“See you then.”
After Clayton left, Alex settled into the second console, then spun to face me. “What’s your plan now?”
The unfamiliar weight of command settled heavily on my shoulders. I kept collecting people who expected me to have answers, but I’d spent most of my life dodging responsibility. Shopping trips and charm offensives weren’t a matter of life-and-death. This was.
I wasn’t prepared.
But I also didn’t have any other option. If I wanted my friends to live—and I did, desperately—then I had to figure it out, and quickly.
Alex didn’t rush me as I thought it through. Slowly, I ticked off points on my fingers. “Make it to Serenity in one piece. Meet with our deputy director of security and see how many people she can round up. Try to find a living Rockhurst and negotiate a temporary truce using my questionable authority as the de facto leader of House von Hasenberg.”
“Will they negotiate?”
I sighed. “Lady Rockhurst won’t unless she has no other option, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before she thinks that. Anne is clever and she’ll try to twist any agreement to her advantage rather than agreeing that we have bigger problems. But her status is unknown. Evelyn, her heir, is more likely to listen and agree—if she survived.”
“And what of your parents?”
Pain slashed at me. “I haven’t heard anything, but Father, like Anne, would not see a truce, however temporary, as a solution. It would be more expedient if he remained out of the picture until it was done.” It was the truth, but it felt like treason to admit it aloud. I didn’t exactly wish my father ill, but this was a case that would not be helped by his stubborn tenacity.
“After that, I’ll find any remaining loyal soldiers and negotiate an alliance of forces with Rockhurst to take back the command center. Maybe we can get some Yamado troops if Ying can contact them, but someone in House Yamado is dirty, probably Hitoshi, so we’ll have to be careful. Then I’ll have to coordinate the attack, bring up the gates, and get Benedict to jump in with backup forces to drive out the Syndicate. After that, it’s clean-up duty.”
“That seems like a lot,” Alex offered quietly.
My shoulders slumped. He wasn’t wrong. Was I crazy to think that I could successfully orchestrate so many moving pieces? Would anyone in House Rockhurst even talk to me? And if they did, would it just be so they could take advantage of the stupidest von Hasenberg?
The doubts were harder to silence when Alex questioned me, too.
I looked away before he could read the expression on my face, but I wasn’t fast enough. He stood and crossed to my chair, turned it to face him, then squatted down in front of me so we were eye to eye. “Hey,” he said softly, “that wasn’t criticism. It was an offer of help. You don’t have to do it all alone. You have friends and allies, probably more than you realize. You have me. And we make a badass team.”
That pulled a reluctant smile from me. “We do make a badass team.”
Then he moved, or I did, and our lips met and it felt like home. I cradled his face, sliding my palms against the thick stubble adorning his jaw. I licked into his mouth, moaning when he slid his tongue along mine. I pressed closer and he chuckled as he toppled backward onto his butt, pulling me with him.
I ended up straddling his thighs, and when I raised an eyebrow in silent question, he grinned wickedly and leaned in to kiss me again.
Until my stomach made its desire for food known with a loud and persistent growl.
Alex pulled back with a laugh. “You know what this badass team needs? Dinner. Come on, I’ll cook for you.”
“Well, that’s going to be tricky since there’s no stove onboard.” I didn’t cook enough to warrant having the extra space and weight needed for a real kitchen. Synthesizer food wasn’t amazing, but it was better than my culinary skills.
Alex shook his head sadly. “I suppose I will have to make do with the synthesizer. Prepare to be amazed.”
I reluctantly climbed off his lap and stood. I offered him a hand and helped him stand. With one last look at our flight path, I turned and said, “I will be amazed if you can make something delicious come out of that box of mediocrity.”
“You just need the right recipes,” Alex said.
“I have all the recipes. Doesn’t matter. Everything is bland.” Some unnamed emotion flashed across his face, too fast to identify. “What?”
He grimaced. “I forget who you are sometimes. Of course the daughter of a High House is going to have all of the recipes the rest of the ’verse has to pay through the nose for.”
“And then she still has the temerity to complain about it, right? Poor little rich girl should just shut up and be happy.” Bitter hurt bled into my tone.
I’d heard some variation of this since I could express emotion. Sad, tired, angry, or upset? Too bad, think of all you have. And it was true. I was incredibly privileged. Of course I was, and I knew it.
I tried my very best to use my privilege to improve the lives of the most destitute and vulnerable, as did my siblings, but foundational changes took years of careful negotiations and millions of credits behind the scenes. I’d built armor against the snide remarks and attacks—I knew what we were doing, even if no one else did. But Alex had a way of striking right at my heart.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said quietly.
I waved a tired hand and dropped back into my chair. “You go on. I’m going to keep an eye on our flight. I’ll grab something later.”
“Cat—”
“It’s okay, really.” I blinked and tried to make it true. Instead, I stared at the console without seeing any of it, hurt and hiding.
He moved closer. “It is not okay. I hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry.”
He crouched down next to me. I could see him out of my peripheral vision, but I kept my eyes firmly glued to the screen in front of me. I swallowed my natural urge to smooth it over, to accept his apology and move on as quickly as possible.
I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye. “If you didn’t mean for me to shut up and be happy, what did you mean?”
“Your feelings are always valid and anyone who tells you differently is an asshole,” he said fiercely. “No one gets to tell you to shut up and be happy. If they do, kick their ass.”
He sighed and rubbed the scruff on his jaw. “I have a lot of deep-seated resentment toward the Consortium, and it’s still a shock that the woman I care about is part of the very organization I hate. But that’s a me problem, not a you problem, and it was completely inappropriate for me to take it out on you. You deserve better.” He laughed bitterly. “You certainly deserve better than me.”
There was a lot to unpack there, but my mind locked on to one piece in particular. I turned to him and met his eyes. “You care about me?”
Tenderness tinted his smile. “Of course I do, Cat. I don’t go to war for just anyone, you know. I figured the kisses would’ve clued you in. If not, maybe I need to try harder.”
“If you try any harder I might combust.”
His mouth curved into wicked temptation. “I accept your challenge,” he vowed solemnly.
I debated it for a fraction of a second, then tilted my chin up and raised a challenging eyebrow. “Do your worst.”
His eyes darkened and his hands fisted on his thighs. “Have dinner with me,” he growled, his voice a deep rumble. “Then I will.”
I shivered at the promise in his tone. I nodded and he stood and offered me a hand up. I slid my hand into his, then took one last glance at the screen, only to freeze at the radio sensor reading.
When I pulled back, Alex released my hand and leaned over my shoulder. I frowned and tapped into the sensor’s details. I wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss, except I had kept the ship at maximum stealth. The sensors should not be picking up any transmissions nearby.
Unless someone onboard was transmitting or those bastards had tagged my ship with a tracking beacon.
I hit the ship-wide intercom button. “If anyone is transmitting signals, stop now.”
“Not us,” Ying said.
“It’s not me, either,” Clayton said.
“Aoife and I are radio silent,” Alex said.
“Looks like they tagged us. We’re landing to hunt for the tracker. Meet me in the cargo bay in two.” I closed the intercom and turned to Alex. “Dinner and dessert will have to wait.”
Alex agreed with a rueful smile. “I’ll head down to the cargo bay. Is there anything I should grab?”
“We’re going to need coms capable of tracking signals. I have a few spares, but I think my trunk is locked. I’ll open it when I get there. Probably some weapons wouldn’t be amiss. Grab the drone, too. If we find a tracker, we’ll send it off on a new flight.”
“Will do.”
Alex left, and I focused on finding us a place to land. We were over an endless, sandy desert. I found a relatively flat area tucked between two dunes and brought Chaos gently to the ground. As long as we were stopped, we were in danger, especially with a tracker on us. We needed to make this as fast as possible.
With all of us searching, finding the tracker was easy, but removing it was a bit more difficult. It had been shot at the ship, which put it up too high to easily reach from the ground, but too low to reach from on top of the ship.
Finally, Alex lifted me up to stand on his shoulders, and when that wasn’t quite enough, he had me step into his hands and he pressed me overhead. The sheer strength required was incredible, but his hold was rock steady.
I pried the tracker off with a combat knife and tossed it to Ying. She and Clayton went back to the cargo bay to work on attaching it to the drone we’d picked up from the supply drop. I sheathed my knife and looked for a safe place to jump down.
“Ready?” Alex asked. “Hop down in front of me and I’ll catch you.”
I jumped down, and he caught me around the waist and slowed my descent until I touched down softly. His hands lingered for a moment before he pulled away. We were alone, blocked from the others by the bulk of the ship.
I turned to him. “I’m going to steal a kiss.”
His eyes lit with his smile. “I don’t think it counts as stealing if you warn me first.”
I slowly slid my hand up the solid muscles of his chest, around to the back of his head, and into the short, soft strands of his dark hair. “I’m a polite thief.”
Then I pulled his head down to mine and the time for thinking was over. I may have started this kiss, but it spiraled out of my control almost immediately. Alex’s lips covered mine with slow, intent focus. Desire, hot and heady, turned my blood molten.
I sighed into his mouth and he nipped my bottom lip before sliding his tongue against mine. Lightning crackled through my system, and I pressed up, desperate to get closer. I wanted him to apply that same thorough focus everywhere, even if I wasn’t sure I would survive the pleasure.
A surprised squeak pulled me back to reality. I glanced to my right to find Ying grinning at me.
“Sorry,” she mouthed before clearing her throat. “The drone is ready whenever you are.”
“We’ll be right there.”
She dipped her head and turned back toward the cargo bay.
“When we’re done saving the world, I’m locking us in a room without distractions,” Alex grumbled.
I pressed a quick kiss to his lips and winked at him. “Not if I lock us in first.”