The SEAL’s Rebel (Alaskan Guardians #3)

Chapter 1

The diagnostic screen flickered once, then settled green across the board. Chief Engineer Jennifer James leaned back and stretched her neck until something popped.

Nominal. All systems nominal.

Reliable, unlike people.

Her engineering station occupied the northeast corner of the command level, a cramped rectangle of monitors and keyboards and the faint ozone smell of electronics running hot.

She kept one earbud in, tuned to the station’s general comms—a habit from her first month, when the silence had almost driven her mad. Now she barely noticed the indistinct murmur of weather updates and Coast Guard chatter. Background noise. Proof the world beyond the gray expanse still existed.

Through the reinforced window to her left, the Pacific Ocean stretched gray and endless under sky the color of old concrete. Forty-seven miles offshore. Aurora Cove—the nearest town—was just a dot on a map. She was closer to Russian airspace than to a decent cup of coffee.

She’d been here eighteen months. Eighteen months running diagnostics on defense systems that would—if everything went according to plan—never fire a shot.

Interceptor launch tubes slept below deck like bullets in a gun she hoped would never be drawn.

Months of isolation punctuated by supply drops and the occasional military inspection.

The work mattered. That was what she told herself when the walls closed in and most days she believed it.

These systems were the first line of defense against ballistic threats crossing the Arctic.

If someone lobbed something nasty over the Pacific, NORPAC-7 would be the reason families in Seattle or Vancouver got to finish dinner.

So she showed up, did the work that no one in their right mind would choose to do and did it damn well.

Her email pinged. A notification banner unfurled in the corner of her screen.

Clive Martin mentioned you on LinkedIn: “Thrilled to announce our adaptive targeting system—”

Delete. Delete. Delete like she could erase him out of existence.

Her finger stabbed her phone before the preview finished loading. She blew out a breath, pushing hair from her eyes.

Damn.

His system. His breakthrough.

Her vision. Her code.

Three years since Clive had smiled at her across a conference table and explained patiently that her contribution had been valuable, of course, but the breakthrough had been his vision.

She’d trusted him with the idea before the code was even finished. That had been her mistake.

His name on the patent.

She closed her eyes, inhaled through her nose, held for four, exhaled. The therapist she’d seen twice would be proud.

When she opened her eyes again, the screens were still green, the sea still gray, the rig still humming. The world didn’t pause for her past.

She rolled her shoulders, sipped cold machine coffee, and winced at the burn-and-metallic tang. She’d run out of her personal supply of Arabica and now she was stuck with whatever sludge the station’s dispenser coughed out. It was touch and go whether she’d survive.

The radio on her hip crackled.

“Chief, it’s Max. We got a situation in lower engineering. Stoller’s down.”

Jen rolled her eyes and thumbed the transmit. “Define down, Max.”

Last week it had been Hatch with a splinter he was convinced was septic. The week before, Marks swore he was having a heart attack—chili-induced heartburn.

Static hissed. Then Max Gibbs’s voice came back, stripped of its usual dry humor. “Unconscious. Bleeding. Chief, this isn’t a joke.”

Her pulse ramped. Max didn’t spook. The man had spent eight years on oil rigs in the North Sea before coming stateside. He’d seen his share of industrial accidents.

“On my way.”

Jen grabbed her tool kit, letting the door seal behind her, boots ringing on metal grating.

Seven was a vertical warren of ladders and catwalks that stank of machine oil and salt.

She’d learned every twist and passage in her first month.

Now her body moved on autopilot—east corridor, through the bulkhead door, heading for Level 3.

“Chief?”

Jen turned.

A young woman hurried toward her, tablet clutched to her chest. The collar of a pink T-shirt peeked out beneath her orange coveralls—her newest junior engineer, Caro Sparks. “I’m seeing a spike in missile tube seven’s coolant pressure. Maybe it’s a glitch but—I didn’t want to ignore it.”

Jen stopped. She had all the time in the world for Caro. She knew how hard it was to be a woman in this environment. “Quick. Show me.” She took the tablet, scanned the data. “It’s within tolerance. Keep monitoring. If it spikes again, flag me.”

“Got it. I’m heading back to the missile deck right now.” Caro hesitated. “And, uh, thanks for looking at my system efficiency proposal. I know you’re busy—”

“It’s good work, Caro.” Jen broke into a jog, talking over her shoulder. “Needs refinement, but the core concept is solid. We’ll review it next week.”

Caro’s face lit up. “Really? That’s—yeah, okay. Thanks, Chief.”

Heat hit Jen like a wall the moment she entered lower engineering—thick, wet and oppressive.

The machinery down here ran harder than anywhere else on the rig.

Coolant pumps chugged away at the seawater they pulled through the system.

Hydraulic lines hissed. Backup generators stood ready to power the entire station if the main systems decided to take a day off.

Max crouched beside a prone figure near the coolant manifold with Smith and Cutter—both propulsion techs, both pale under the fluorescent lights that turned everyone vaguely corpselike.

Stoller was on the floor. Blood matted his hair, a dark wet smear down his skull. His arm lay twisted, his chest rising in shallow breaths.

Shit.

Jen skidded to her knees. “What the hell happened?” She pressed fingers to Stoller’s neck. Faint pulse and his skin had a sickly greenish cast.

“He was checking the coolant manifold.” Max’s voice was strained. “He radioed he heard something—rattling, maybe. Next thing, nothing. We found him like this.”

She bent to examine Stoller more closely. The blood came from a wound at the back of his skull, just above where his neck met bone. The edges were torn. Not clean like a slice from sheet metal. More like blunt force, skin split against something unforgiving.

“Explain to me how someone hits the back of their head checking a coolant line,” she muttered.

Smith stared at his boots while Cutter shrugged.

Super helpful.

She pulled a penlight from her kit and checked his pupils. Left, blown wide, swallowing the iris. Right, a pinpoint. Her stomach clenched.

She wasn’t a medic. But everyone on the station cross-trained because when you were forty-seven miles from the nearest hospital, and you learned to handle things yourself.

Possible fracture. Brain bleed. Damn.

She checked the wound once more to be sure. Someone did this. And whoever it was—was still on Seven. She kept her mouth shut. No point panicking the men until she knew more.

“We need to get him to medical.” She looked up at her team. “And we need to call for an evac. This is beyond Doc’s pay grade.”

Max hesitated. “Chief, you know what happens if we call for an evac. Command’s gonna be pissed about the attention.”

Jen boosted up to her feet. “I’m not risking his life because Command doesn’t like paperwork. Get the stretcher and a neck brace.” She jerked a hand in command at Smith and Cutter. “Move.”

Smith and Cutter took off. Max stayed beside her as she shrugged off her heavy jacket and draped it over Stoller.

While she waited for the two men to return, Jen keyed the radio, switching to the command channel.

“Chief James requesting immediate medevac. We have a crew member with a serious head trauma in lower engineering.”

A beat of resistance crackled back. “Copy that Chief. Making the call.”

“Chief,” Max murmured. “This feels wrong.”

She glanced around the shadowy space. He was right. “I need Doc to meet us in the med bay.”

The faceless voice again. “Copy.”

She keyed the radio off as Smith and Cutter returned with the stretcher and neck brace.

No time to dwell.

The four of them lifted together—slow and coordinated, keeping Stoller’s head and spine aligned. He didn’t wake or give any sign he felt them moving him. That worried her more than the blood.

“I’ve got his head,” she said. “Max, you take point. Smith, Cutter, sides. Nice and easy. Let’s move.”

They wheeled Stoller toward the freight elevator. The doors groaned open far too slowly before they maneuvered inside. Jen kept one hand on Stoller’s shoulder as she hit the button to ascend back to the main level and medical.

The lift lurched and began its slow climb, the motor whining somewhere above them in the shaft. The space was cramped as the four of them stood around the stretcher, the air stinking of hydraulic fluid and rust. Stoller whimpered. She adjusted her jacket where it had slid off him.

What the hell had happened?

The lift crawled upward. Everything on Seven prioritized function over speed. Thirty seconds stretched into something almost geological.

The earbud in her left ear crackled. But this wasn’t the weather or Coast Guard chatter.

She didn’t recognize the voice. Clipped, precise. “Level Three, clear.”

We just left Level 3.

The accent slid ice down her spine. Eastern European. Russian.

Nobody on Seven spoke with that voice.

The lift shuddered to a stop.

That voice didn’t belong on an isolated missile defense station in the middle of the Pacific. Unless something had gone catastrophically wrong.

Max tensed beside her. “Chief, did you hear—”

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “When those doors open, be ready to—”

The elevator motor whined.

The doors groaned, then jerked open onto the main level.

Three familiar faces. Cleaning staff. But they wore tactical gear. Guns raised.

For a split second, her mind tried to paste their blue coveralls over the body armor—like reality had glitched. Lockhart from trash detail. Came through engineering every morning at eight. Quiet, but always smiled hello.

Months. They’d been here for months. Smiling, mopping floors, learning every corridor and shift rotation. Waiting for today.

“Out. Now.” Lockhart gestured with his gun. When he looked at her, his eyes were dead.

She lifted her hands. “We have an injured—”

His pistol grip cracked against her temple. White pain burst behind her eyes and Jen dropped hard, knees hitting metal, her ears ringing.

She gasped but her hand dropped to her tool belt, fingers closing around the torque wrench. Eight inches of cool steel, solid weight. Something she could control. Not much against guns, but—

“Don’t.” Max caught her wrist and yanked her to her feet.

Tears of pain blurred her vision. Warm blood slicked her fingers when she touched her temple.

Max steadied her on her feet, his mouth close to her ear. “You can lock them out of the missile systems. You run. Hide. Don’t let them get you.”

Was Max real? Could she trust him? If the cleaning crew had been sleepers, what about everyone else?

“Max—”

“Run Chief. GO!” Max lunged at the first man, driving his shoulder into the gun barrel and slamming both of them back against the bulkhead. A shot rang out—deafening in the confined space.

Smith and Cutter abandoned the stretcher and went for the other two. Smith got an elbow up into one man’s throat. Cutter grabbed for a weapon, fingers closing on the barrel.

She didn’t wait to see who’d been hit.

She swerved to avoid a grasping hand. Behind her, another shot. She didn’t look back.

Max’s voice echoed in her head. You can lock them out.

If they reached the launch systems in Missile Command before she did, there’d be nothing between sixteen interceptor missiles and whoever these people answered to.

Jen ran.