Chapter Four
Jax
I t took me over an hour to assist the crew with the bare minimum of repairs that was needed for the ship to be able to separate. They were more than willing to swallow the story I fed them about needing to meet a contact for a business deal.
I hated how eager they were to help me when I’d done nothing but lie to them, gotten their captain killed and now was responsible for their ship getting damaged.
Sort of responsible. Thanh was the one flying, but if not for me she wouldn’t be here. Ancestors and Heretics, that fucking woman!
With any luck Zephyr would straighten this out and get Thanh back to the Intrepid while I tried to track down this engine. Without Dev, it was going to be a challenge but I was sure that Zephyr would have some kind of lead for me. Even if she didn’t, I’d had successful missions with less to go on.
One of the crew members, a young Mishvaian woman by the name of Shayna, who was now assuming the role of captain, handed me a pack.
“There’s some food in there and some medicine. It was rough back there, so I included some pain hypos just in case you or your mate are injured.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” I said and tried to hand it back. “The crew needs this.”
“It would be a disgrace to send you off without provisions. But if you wanted to repay us, perhaps tell Queen Teneras how we helped you?”
Shayna’s eyebrows wiggled and I chuckled in spite of everything. It would go against everything a pirate believed in to let an opportunity for profit go unexplored.
“I think I can manage that.”
“Good. The repair station where you can drop off the front shuttle is already in the nav computer. We’ll be heading there now and will wait for your arrival. I think the crew could use a good shore leave, so don’t hurry.”
I nodded and grasped her forearm and thumped my chest with my other fist.
“May the gods smile on you,” I said, “and may fortune be favorable in all your dealings.”
“You as well, my prince.”
I almost cringed at the honorific, but held it back in the end, not wanting to offend her.
I swung the pack onto my shoulder and stepped into the airlock between the two sections of the ship. Thanh and I were taking the smaller front section, while the crew took the large, and much slower, freight section in the back. The front section had a bedroom, small lavatory and kitchen set up for times when someone needed to do a solo mission, or some such. It was really only for a single person and the space would be tight, but it wouldn’t be two of us for long. Once I dropped Thanh off with Zephyr and saw to the repairs at the station, I’d negotiate to use the shuttle for the rest of my mission. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be returning to the Gex-Corps any time soon.
When the thought hit me, as the airlock pressurized, I was surprised that I wasn’t as upset about that fact as I would’ve thought. I’d paid dearly to become a ‘respectable’ Gex-Corps officer.
But was it all I had? I’d assumed mother would have disowned me, but my tattoo never faded, and none of the Titusians we ever came across showed me anything but deference. And was I really respectable in Gex-Corps? What’s a spy but a pirate with a government name? I just switched teams and told myself it was different.
The realization left a bitter taste on my tongue and wished I could go back in time and lock up the younger me to keep him from forging his acceptance letter and registration to the academy. I’d been so stupid, so full of myself, that I thought I could actually get that shoddy ID past security. Now, I knew how to make an ID that no one, not even Zephyr, could detect as false.
I turned from the airlock as the freighter backed away from our part of the ship and watched them fly away. We’d navigated far enough from the debris field that there was no chance that it would cause any problems to the ship now. I hoped and prayed that Zephyr was close by. The last thing I wanted to do right now was deal with Thanh in a space where I couldn’t get away from her.
I stowed the pack in the tiny kitchen, securing it in one of the cabinets and made sure everything was ready for takeoff, cringing at how old and patched everything was. I would ensure the ship had an overhaul before returning it to the crew. They deserved a whole new ship for what they’d done, but from watching them repair the old bird, I could tell that they loved the hunk of junk.
I turned down the hall toward the cockpit, bracing myself for another fight with the infuriating, tiny woman but when I walked in, I didn’t see her in the chair. For a second I worried that she’d snuck into the freighter, but then I saw her small, pale hand on the floor and my heart leapt into my throat.
“Thanh!”
I fell to my knees by her unconscious body, my mind full of self-recrimination. I had seen that she was in pain before and trying to hide it, but I had been too angry to push her. And the healer had been busy with the crew so I hadn’t wanted to take away his focus from them.
Now I was cursing myself as I cradled her in my lap. This was the second time today I found myself holding Thanh and it was a total mind fuck. All the instincts I’d been denying and pushing away came roaring up through my mind. It was imperative that I take care of her, figure out what was ailing her and fix it. I could think of nothing else and my history with Thanh, for once, wasn’t mitigating a damn thing. Instead, I was taken completely aback by the full impact of my need to save her, to have her, to make her see that she was mine .
Terror gripped me by the throat the longer she lay unconscious in my arms. She was breathing, though it was shallow, her body so limp and lifeless.
“Please, Thanh, wake up,” I whispered, wanting to be angry at the way my voice cracked.
But once those mating instincts got an inch, they took not just a mile but fucking everything. They obliterated my long standing determination to hate her until the day I died and replaced it with an all-consuming obsession for her safety and wellbeing. It was like the first time it hit me in the control room of the palace on Sanctuary. I’d sounded like a love sick teen before running away from her. Now, my heart stumbled like a male who was on the verge of losing everything.
I can’t let these feelings get a hold of me…I won’t. The universe has screwed me over enough for one lifetime. Chaining me to Thanh would be the cherry on the shit sundae I never asked for.
I breathed.
I swallowed.
I remembered the way she’d treated me at the Academy, those sneering words that confirmed how unworthy I was.
I remembered how it felt to be laughed at by her friends and brother.
I remembered the bitterness of being reprimanded for failing my first mission because of her mistrust of a “low born alien from a nobody family.”
And it worked just enough to allow me to get control of myself, to think clearly.
“Tohm-Tohm,” I said, pushing authority into my voice, which made it dark and growling, “I need to know if she’s alright.”
It took a moment for the symbiote to come to the surface, something he did very rarely, and only when Thanh was unconscious.
Her eyes snapped open and glowed an unnatural yellow. Many would be put off by that alone, but the voice that came out of Thanh’s mouth was what made most people cringe, and sometimes flee. It was like a severely out of tune instrument trying to play something complex, the usual musical flow of the Seahdohn’s voice distorted and jarring.
“She…is…well…healing…on bed…sleep.”
And that was it.
Thanh’s eyes closed again and I was apparently expected to just carry her to the bed and let her sleep this off.
“Great, just fucking great.”
I huffed in frustration, definitely not relief, as I picked her up and carried her to the tiny back room. I pushed the button that released the bed and it descended from the wall to the floor, taking up most of the space in the room and leaving about two feet on either side and from the foot of the bed to the door. Inset into the walls on either side of the bed were small handles that I assume belonged to cubbies of some kind, but I’d explore later once I’d dropped Thanh off with Zephyr. Eddie, the Intrepid’s doctor, would know how to treat Thanh if there was anything more serious but right now I was going to follow Tohm-Tohm’s instructions and let her sleep.
I laid her down with reluctance lodged deep in my chest. It felt wrong to leave her alone here. And even more wrong to want to stay.
Yeah, I really needed some distance from her.
This might be the last time I see her if I don’t return to the Gex-Corps.
A stab of pain burned in my chest and I grit my teeth against it. This was unnatural, to be so drawn to this woman.
I forced my legs to turn, my head to stay looking straight ahead, and then my feet to take me out of the room and back to the cockpit.
“Stupid…fucking…mating instinct,” I said, punching in the coordinates to the beacon and dropping into the pilot’s seat.
It would take us thirty minutes to get there on our current fuel reserves. My skin itched and my body was jittery as I sat there, counting the minutes.
I did some push ups, sit ups, and found a way to do some pull ups to get the energy out, but the entire time my mind was on the room at the back of the small ship and the pain-wracked little body. I could almost feel her aches in my joints, the drag of fatigue. It was a strange duality inside myself and it kept pulling my focus from the mission to her.
Finally, the computer beeped at me, letting me know that we were approaching Zephyr’s ship. I was almost free of this and it wasn’t a moment too soon.
I followed the docking instructions that were sent over and was at the airlock the second it clicked over into green. I’d barely waited for it to open fully before I was striding onto her ship, that buzzing under my skin starting to become unbearable. My mind and my soul were at odds; one of them demanding we go back to Thanh, and the other manic in its need to get the hell away from the woman.
The shuttle I stepped onto was a rare stealth model that the GIB sometimes used for missions. This was the second time I’d seen Zephyr in one and wondered if she’d simply kept the damn thing. Ancestors knows I would have. The interior was clean, sparse and spacious, and from a brief look at the shelves behind Zephyr, well stocked with alcohol.
“Okay, so some shit went down,” Zephyr said, motioning for me to sit across from her at the table.
I shook my head and went straight for the Zores brandy, pouring a generous amount of the red liquid into a glass and downing half of it in one go.
“That bad, huh?” Zephyr asked once I plopped into the chair across from her.
“You have no idea,” I said, taking another sip. “That woman is a boil on the ass of all sentient beings.”
Zephyr’s smile turned wry but she thankfully kept her thoughts to herself.
“I’m glad you’re both alright. Is Dev on the ship with you? And where is Thanh?”
“She’s resting, pulling from Tohm-Tohm does that to her sometimes,” my lip curling at the worry in my voice, and I took another drink before continuing. “And Dev ran. I didn’t get anything out of him except confirmation that the K’Tavi are looking for the engine. I also got a location, Daedalus Five. I assume I’m going after it?”
“You are. Things are heating up fast and I need someone I can trust on this.”
“I’ll leave as soon as I get Thanh over here. And speaking of,” I drained the glass, “why the fuck was she there? And why the fuck didn’t you tell me there was another op going on?”
Zephyr let loose a low whistle.
“Damn, she really gets under your skin.”
I glared at her, not trusting myself to speak without sticking my foot knee deep in my mouth.
“It was last minute, I only received notice that the Octavian crew would be there two hours prior to your operation. Which is why I asked Lieutenant Nguyen to fill in, I couldn’t get an agent with a symbiote here in enough time. The Federations don’t usually come out this way unless they’re just doing a quick refuel or a legal delivery. This was maybe our one chance to find out if our theory was correct.”
“And what theory was that?”
“That the Pirate Federations are specifically hunting for anyone with a Seahdohn symbiote, and that the Federations that are doing that are the same ones that are currently hunting for the Thalanite engine.”
“So you knew about the engine?”
“I’d heard rumors a few days ago. Like you, I thought it was bullshit, but today proved otherwise.”
“You think the abductions and the hunt for the engine are linked, why?”
“We’ve intercepted intel from sentient traffickers that the price of those who have Seahdohn have skyrocketed in the last several weeks. It’s only those Federations who are vying for the engine that are buying up as many as they can get their hands on. What they can’t buy, they’re taking. Species with Seahdohn symbiotes are disappearing from stations, planets, even Gex-Corps ships. At the same time that these people started disappearing, there was a bounty placed on the Thalanite engine from Sylthor himself. Again, I thought it was a ruse. Sylthor has sent out several of those since the battle of Sanctuary, there was no reason to think the engine was any different. Until today.”
A sick feeling spread through my body. What would they have done to her if I hadn’t been there? While I knew Thanh could take care of herself, this was a different situation, a different world than the one she was used to. This wasn’t the sanitized rough and tumble trouble of cadets on a holiday. This was the world I’d grown up in, dark and dirty. The weak were targets, not protected.
“She shouldn’t have been there,” I growled, suddenly livid as I thought of her at the mercy of that Octavian captain.
Zephyr’s eyebrow winged up and her cybernetic eye whirred.
“Whoah…Jax, she’s fine, right?”
There was a sound coming from somewhere, low and rolling, dangerous, and it just egged me on.
“That’s not the point. She was pawed at by those filthy scum. She could’ve been taken and you wouldn’t have known because the coms were jamming. What if I hadn’t been there, Zephyr?”
“Jax, if you don’t calm down —”
“Calm down? She was vulnerable…she was…she’s…”
I swallowed, suddenly aware that I was standing with my hands on the table, leaning down and getting in Zephyr’s face.
Not only that, it seemed that strange sound was coming from me .
I was snarling like a beast or…
A male who’s trying to protect his mate.
While I hadn’t been raised by Zorestrans, my adopted parents had done all they could to prepare me for every part of becoming a grown Zorestran male. I’d been educated about what would happen if I ever found my mate and filed it away in the ‘never gonna happen, so I don’t need to worry about it’ place in my head, choosing instead to focus on how to get the most out of my Zorestran sexual stamina and the like. So my knowledge on how to control it all was limited, to say the least.
Just get through the meeting, hand Thanh over and it will be fine…hold it together Jax!
With extreme effort I peeled my hands off the table, stood up straight and forced myself down into the chair.
“I’m sorry,” I said through clenched teeth.
Zephyr studied me for a moment and then gave me a slow nod.
“I need you focused for this mission, you understand?”
“Yes.”
She stared me a little bit longer, eyes narrowing and then grunted as if she’d figured out a piece of a puzzle that had been plaguing her for years. It was unsettling, and I wondered what it meant for me.
I expected her to start telling me what came next. Instead, she snatched my glass off the table, poured me and herself another one, and sat back down.
“This is everything we know about Daedalus Five,” she said, sliding a data disc at me. “The planet is nearly impenetrable. But I’m hoping that this will be enough for you and your mother to figure out how to get the engine and destroy it.”
I nodded, almost missing one thing she said as I reached across for the disc.
“Wait…my mother? What does she have to do with this?”
“You’re going to need to get ahead of the other Pirate Federations on this, and the only way to do that is to use your parentage to our advantage.”
“I won’t use them. And I sure as hell won’t put them in Sylthor’s sights.”
“I’m not asking you to. Well, at least I doubt Sylthor will have an eye on them. It will pit them against the other Federations, but that’s already happening, if my contacts are right.”
I opened my mouth to ask and then remembered the last com I had from my mother. I let out a long sigh and ran my finger along the curve of one of my horns.
“The Augustine throne is still empty,” I said.
“Bingo.”
While each Federation was technically a kingdom unto themselves, there was always one faction that led them, kind of like an Emperor. The last one had died over a year ago and no one had come forward yet to claim the throne because no one had pulled off a job big enough to qualify.
The Thalanite Engine would do it though.
“So the throne is one more thing to sweeten the pot,” I said.
“Correct. Sylthor’s bounty is the biggest score seen in the outer rim in over fifty years. And, it comes with the promise of a boon from Sylthor himself.”
“Fuck!”
“Indeed. The Pirate Federations have an unspoken truce with the GUP, but if one of these warring factions get backed by Sylthor and take that throne —”
“War on two fronts.”
“Exactly. Sylthor will use the pirates to attack the supply routes, the border planets, our mining operations, anything and everything that we need to defend ourselves. So I want you to make sure your mother gets that throne.”
I choked on my drink and stared at her in utter shock.
“I’m not going to ask her to be a GUP puppet.”
“You want her to be Sylthor’s? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t pull this fucking weed up by the roots.”
I nodded, mind spinning with this new information. And then Zephyr dropped the bomb on me.
“Oh, and you’ll be taking Thanh with you.”
My ears started to ring, my fingers so tight on the glass I know I heard it crack.
“What?” I asked, voice as deadly as a blade.
“I’d gotten some coms back when you were doing your little ruse with the Octavians. I couldn’t talk to you but I could hear you. It was a good move, and if any of them escaped, they’ll spread word of your betrothal. And if they don’t,” she shoved a data pad my way, “the crew you escaped with already has.”
I grabbed it with numb fingers and scanned the short paragraph announcing the happy mating of the Seventh Son of Queen Teneras to a Human woman by the name of Thanh. It had been sent out the moment the freighter section had separated from our ship, which meant this would be spread to at least half the Federations and, most infuriatingly, to my mother.
I tossed the pad back to her and drained my glass, very thankful for my metabolism right now.
“I’m going to need a case of this if I’m getting through this mission without killing her,” I warned.
“It’s yours, just do the job. Together.”
“You’re putting a target on her back you know. If the Federations are hunting for symbiotes you’re feeding her right to them.”
“Not if she’s your mate, with all the protections that has.”
Which meant she’d have to be marked with the tattoo at the very least.
“Oh, she’s going to love this,” I muttered.
Zephyr snorted.
“Just be your charming self, what woman could resist?”
I gave her a ‘really?’ look and she just laughed at my pain some more.
“I also think that you’re going to need a symbiote for this job,” Zephyr continued. “There’s something on Daedalus Five that requires a Seahdohn, that’s the only thing I can think of as to why these pirates are hunting so hard for a symbiote.”
That made sense but I really didn’t give a damn at the moment. I didn’t tell her that I was on the verge of a full blown mating rut, or that I desperately needed to get away from Thanh before I did something we’d both regret. It wouldn’t do any good, I was backed into a corner here and I knew it.
But then an idea struck me, one I didn’t really like but that could get me out of this.
“Couldn’t you send Kyle? Or Walt? He loves this shit. They couldn’t be me, obviously, but I could get them into Titus.”
Zephyr’s mood switched on a dime and I watched her face fall.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Kyle and Walt are dead. Cypher has resurfaced.”
That name had the effect of a solid punch to my solar plexus. The air left my lungs and for a moment the world tilted before righting itself again. Then heat ran through me in waves, suffused with hatred so pure, so acute, that for a moment I was literally seeing red.
Cypher was the code name of a rogue GIB agent that was responsible for dozens of assassinations and terrorist attacks, including hiring someone to sabotage Thanh’s experimental ship and causing her to become paralyzed all those years ago. We’d never found him, though Zephyr and I both had our suspicions. Cypher’s associates all either took suicide pills or died mysteriously in custody. After that, it was like chasing a ghost. Zephyr and I pursued every lead across the galaxy and back for two years and never found out who it was. The trail went cold after that, with Cypher disappearing like they had never existed. That was eight years ago and the fury I’d felt at losing him had never faded. Neither had my guilt at letting it happen.
Though protecting Thanh and the engine she was building had been my first assignment at the Academy, and Zephyr had tried to comfort me with that fact, I could never forgive myself for letting Thanh get hurt. If I had just earned Thanh’s trust better, earlier even, if I’d not run afoul of her father and brother…
I can’t go down that road again. If Cypher is back, then I need to focus and make sure they pay for what they did to my…to Thanh.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked, my voice having gone unnaturally deep.
“You’re not going after Cypher.”
A vicious growl spewed from between my clenched teeth.
“Like hell I’m not!”
“Listen to me, I’ll only say this once.” Her real eye flared and her brown skin became darker as she glared at me. “I need you focused on the engine, not a vendetta.”
“Vendetta! You were the one that said we’d get them if they ever resurfaced again! You can’t send me away.”
“I have to, for your own safety.”
“Zephyr!”
“Hay-Ball and Adam are dead too! Someone got to everyone on my team except you and I need someone I can trust on this engine, do you understand?”
My jaw dropped and I suddenly felt sick. I’d come up through the ranks with Hay-Ball, and while I’d hated Adam, he’d been a good agent.
She took a deep breath and for the first time since I met her as a rookie at the Academy, I saw genuine fear in Zephyr’s eye.
“Going after the engine won’t be a sanctioned op," she continued. "I can’t risk Cypher knowing what you’re doing and I have no idea who I can trust at the GIB. That means there will be no data trail to confirm that you’re going on my orders. You will look AWOL and there will be a warrant out for your arrest as soon as someone figures out you’re not dead or simply missing. Same for Thanh. Do not, under any circumstances, contact anyone involved in the GIB or Gex-Corps. Don’t use any contacts or codes. Scrub everything . You’re going in without a safety net, understand? I’ll straighten it all out later, but for now, that’s how it has to be because I won’t risk you and Thanh being discovered and killed by Cypher. I’ll contact you when it’s clear but until then, you stay with Titus.”
I ran a hand over my horns and through my hair before nodding. My mouth was too dry for speech. I knew she’d make good on her promise to straighten out my record later, but in the meantime, everything I’d worked for would be gone. I’d be a traitor, just another pirate scum who went back to the life.
“What about Thanh?” I asked. “She’s worked just as hard for her career as I have and now it’s going to be destroyed. I knew the risks going into the GIB but she thought she was just doing one sting operation. Thanh didn’t sign up for this.”
“I’ll take care of it, even if…even if I don’t come back. I’ll have contingencies in place. You and Thanh will not be hung out to dry.”
My heart jumped at her ominous words and I shook my head in disbelief.
“You’re not going after Cypher yourself, are you?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Zephyr —”
“They took out my team. My people, and they did it without remorse to send a message to me. So yeah, I’m going to find the fucker and make them pay. This is personal now.”
“You told me to never make it personal.”
“Oh come on, Jax! You and I both know why you want Cypher so bad. It’s the same reason I do.”
I looked away from her, not surprised that Zephyr knew that I had always blamed myself more than Cypher when it came to Thanh’s injuries.
Thanh does a pretty good job of paying me back for what happened though. I suppose that’s only what I deserve in a way.
“Just do me a favor,” I said.
“What?”
“Before you kill Cypher, tell them about Thanh, tell them that they didn’t destroy her. In fact, they made her that much more resilient and tough. Tell them that they failed.”
“You have my word.”