Chapter 25
Solid Plan
The last time Davik had been at a table with this many people had been after the funeral for his Nana. Nearly a lifetime ago, when he was a bright-eyed ten-year-old.
It had been him, Marius, their parents, Aunt Tisa, and two cousins. All huddled in their tiny housing unit aboard Kelba Station. It was a cramped, noisy place, but despite the somber occasion, all he could remember was the love in that dining room.
This night was equally somber. Equally cramped. Equally loud, and tinged with that same edge of loss. There was a similar note, though. Not quite love, but camaraderie.
Carissa wasn’t one to drop her guard too easily, but Theos had nearly fallen over himself when he realized she was pregnant and immediately carried her to the mess hall.
He thoroughly berated both Davik and Fia for not letting her rest, and to top it off, he had supplied her with her new favorite gun.
So, he was rapidly getting on her good side.
Maybe I should try carrying people and giving them firearms. I’m sure Fia wouldn’t mind being carted around the ship and being given weaponry. I could get her a nice thigh holster, and carry her back to my bunk, and—
“I can keep their communications jammed for longer, but the lighter touch gives us the best chance to remain undetected. Would a five-minute window suffice?” Fia asked Theos.
Davik whipped his focus back to the conversation. He scrambled to take a drink of his coffee to wet his suddenly parched mouth.
“Wait, Fia is going back into the tank, and Theos is breaking into the station?” he stammered.
He wasn’t excited about her traipsing into potential danger, but he knew she could defend herself well enough. He had seen her practice with that freaky whip-sword. And he was very, very familiar with just how much muscle she had beneath her scales.
The memory of her knocking out the guard after the casino exploit was also still fresh in his mind. If push came to shove, she could shove back and come out the other side unscathed.
But in the bell, she was defenseless. Vulnerable.
“Yeah, Theos is going to be in the research station posing as a KurelTec medic while Fia runs comms in her little sparky bathtub,” Carissa said, taking a long sip of her decaf.
“I still think they’ve got better chances if they both went down and used the buddy system, but at least up here she can play defense and hide his tracks. ”
“I’m a medic, and it’s a medical research facility. I can fake that I belong well enough if I keep my head down. But I don’t think I can spring the guy loose with my charm alone,” Theos mused, tapping his fingers on the table.
Davik noticed his claws were filed down, making his webbed hands appear oddly human.
“It will be quick and dirty, but Fia can cover me to get in quietly. I will get out … less quietly. TCIP doesn’t have any extra hands in the sector to spare on short notice, or I wouldn’t ask to involve any of you at all,” he said with a sigh, shaking his head.
“Fia will hide your ship on the sensor sweeps so you can avoid any blowback from this. I’m not fond of having to resort to violence, but if nobody tries to be a hero, I might get out with copious brandishing and no bloodshed. ”
Davik felt his stomach drop. She would need to go back into the tank. Back in the contraption he built. The one he had pulled her limp body out of just three days ago.
“Is that safe?” he asked, looking between Theos and Fia intently. “You are supposed to be on bed rest.”
“It is a risk,” she said, nodding. “But one I am willing to take.”
“No,” Davik said flatly. “That’s insane. You said it yourself, you normally have a technician to assist you on dives, and you fried your nervous system just days ago.”
Carissa shot him a curious grin. “So, what do you propose? Because I sure as hell am not waddling in there. You don’t know how to handle a firearm. And we both know that this is not a job we can call Drey in to help with.”
He felt Fia’s hand on his, and he looked to her for some sign that she wouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t be anywhere near that thing for at least a week, and definitely not for something as strenuous as this.
“There has to be another option.”
“Well, if you have one, I am always open to exploring alternatives,” Theos said, handing him the datapad they had been surveying the station layout with.
Davik furrowed his brow, staring intently at the screen. He mindlessly groped around the table in search of his coffee and didn’t even realize as Fia grabbed his wrist to guide him towards his mug.
The rest of the chatter faded into quiet as he pulled up a note screen to jot down a thought as it crystallized. There was a path forward, somewhere. A way to meet halfway.
Yeah, because when you play logistics, it always goes so smoothly.
He gritted his teeth, pushing the coil of self-doubt back and replacing it with a much more pressing need. He had to protect her. There had to be a solution.
A beautiful, stupid, perfect solution.
“Theos?” Davik asked, looking at his notes. “Can you dose and monitor Fia in the tank? Safely? Like her technicians on the Fleet would do?”
His tendrils flared with bright orange sparks of curiosity as he examined Davik and nodded. “I might not be as reckless as they are, but I can. Why?”
Davik pointed at Carissa. “C, do you feel up to playing cherry-picker again?”
She furrowed her brow as well, crossing her arms to match Theos. She didn’t have tendrils to flare, but there was a spark in her eyes that held the same effect.
“Maybe. Are you planning to elaborate?”
“Yeah, just hear me out.”
The curious and proud smile that spread on Fia’s face damn near made him blush, and he had to take a beat to get the flutter in his chest to settle.
“Theos, you stay here on The Argent with Fia. You play the tank tech, and she provides surveillance and cover. We dock with a shuttle at the station. Well, not ‘we’. I dock it, and I go to the station.” He saw Fia open her mouth to protest, but he charged on before his momentum gave out.
“Fia, you cover my tracks and keep a lookout as I make our way to the poor guy.”
“Shadow Operative Poor Guy,” Carissa corrected.
“Right, Shadow Operative Poor Guy. I’ll go in pretending to be maintenance.
It’s worked in the past. We’ll take this route to get to him,” he said as he traced a looping and meandering course using maintenance corridors to stay out of the main thoroughfare.
“It’ll add time, but it’s less access points to crack into. Less strain on Fia.”
“That’s a pretty long path,” Theos murmured as he surveyed the map. “If you took a straight shot, it would be half that, less time to get caught.”
“Even with her scouring the feeds, that doesn’t hide the fact that I’m physically there. I’m not a charmer who can talk my way out of trouble. The longer path minimizes the chance of bumping into anyone else.”
“Alright. But what about the return trip?” Theos asked as he tapped his ringed finger on the shuttle bay on the station map. “I doubt you can perfectly time it to get the guy back out without being seen by someone.”
“You’re right, definitely can’t take him out the way I came in.”
Davik paused for effect. Fia looked confused. Theos looked curious. Carissa looked miserable.
“Oh, fuck me,” Carissa breathed, staring at the map. “You want to pop out the goddamn fire escape, don’t you?”
“You’re great at snagging salvage in the ink, C! You plucked the cryo-pod out just fine. This is the same thing, basically!”
She didn’t answer, she just sank her head into her hands and groaned, running her fingers through her short crop of blonde bristles.
“It’s … not a bad idea,” Theos murmured, nodding slowly. “Carissa, I don’t doubt your competence, but I want you to know that you can say no. Especially with you having a child on the way, this is a risky job to be involved directly, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”
Davik did his best to subtly mouth the word “palladium” towards her, and she rolled her eyes in response.
“Christ. You don’t have to bribe me, Dav.
I’m pretty sure my mother would haunt me to the ends of the void if she found out I didn’t help.
She was a nu-Gospelite, so you know I’m not about to risk having to recite eight thousand catechisms to purge my guilt for leaving this guy to be skewered by Sol. ”
Davik winced. His family was not particularly religious, but hers was. He knew the fear an enraged nu-Gos matriarch could instill. They didn’t even need to raise a hand to threaten you. They would just glare, and you knew that if you kept doing whatever you were doing, you would be in deep trouble.
Carissa flicked the datapad to bring up a system map.
“It’s two days fast burn, and I mean fast-fast burn. I hope you brought snacks and some jammies, Theos. You’ve got two nights on this boat, and we’re not a hospitality ship.”
In every free moment he had, Davik was reviewing the plan. Re-reviewing it. Refining timelines, estimating travel distances, and checking the falsified credentials. As if making everything airtight would change the fact that he was, yet again, breaking into a facility to liberate an Icthian.
At least this time, he knew he was liberating one from the get-go. This one wasn’t quite his type from what he could see in the footage, so that was at least one point of difference.
Not that Fia had been his type to begin with.
He wasn’t one to pine after Icthians, really.
Sure, a shapely figure with a plump ass and a laugh like hers?
Killer. But beyond ogling, he had just never met an Icthian that he really related to.
Hell, he hadn’t met a human that he felt so comfortable rambling to, or sitting in silence with, or who seemed to understand his pain.
Plus, she could do that thing with electricity that made his muscles melt. He’d likely evaporate if she used that same trick elsewhere.