Chapter 9
NINE
“Under attack?” Evie stared at him. The alarm screamed through the bay, the red emergency lights pulsing across rows of plants and turning everything the color of blood.
“How?” she shouted over the noise. “This ship is a fortified Baylan research vessel with impenetrable defenses. Who would attack it?”
Jarran’s shoulders were squared, his weight balanced, and his eyes scanned the bay with a calm focus that seemed to ignore the chaos of the alarm. “Don’t know. But this is a full-scale alert. We need to move.”
She grabbed her equipment bag and moved toward the bay doors on legs still stiff from sitting on the ground.
Her heart rate had already been elevated, after kissing her patient and preparing to deliver the news that she’d resigned and this was their last session.
Now the ship was under attack. The whiplash of it was disorienting to say the least.
They ran for the bay doors. Jarran moved fast, his stride eating up the distance, and she sprinted to keep pace.
“Can you open?” he asked, well aware that he couldn’t.
Evie pressed her palm to the access panel and punched in the emergency code Silca had given her during orientation. The panel beeped twice and flashed red. Access denied. She tried again. Same result.
“The whole ship appears to be locked down,” she said with rising panic. “My code isn’t overriding it.”
Jarran tested the doors with his hands, pushing, then pulling. The metal didn’t budge.
Evie turned and scanned the bay. The agricultural space was enormous, stretching the length of three football fields, with high ceilings and rows of planting beds radiating from a central irrigation hub.
The wall of windows along the far side looked out into dark space.
She could see four other patients in the distance.
Two had run to secondary exits farther down the bay and were pounding on them.
The two Baylan guards who’d been monitoring the bay had their hands full with the other two panicking patients.
One had restrained a screaming male who was clawing at the back of his head, the other was trying to calm a patient that appeared to be convulsing.
Their implants. The alarm, and the panic it was creating for the patients, had triggered every implant in the bay.
She looked at Jarran. “Is your implant going off?”
He blinked. Touched the back of his head. “No.”
“You don’t feel anything at all?”
“No.” He looked genuinely surprised. “That’s not normal, is it?”
She didn’t have an answer for that. Every other patient in the bay was in neurological distress from their implants, and Jarran was standing here, clear-eyed and alert.
Either his implant was malfunctioning or his neural pathways were responding differently to the ship’s alarms. She filed it away. There wasn’t time to figure it out now.
“Okay.” She pressed her back against the sealed doors and forced herself to think.
“The researchers on board are scientists, not soldiers. But the Baylan guards are well-trained. They’re strong.
They can manipulate metal, which makes them powerful in close combat, and the ship’s defense systems are state-of-the-art. ”
“Yet you still sound worried.”
She chewed her lower lip. “Yeah, because this vessel’s security is designed for containment.” She gestured at the locked doors. “Keeping patients in. Not repelling an attacker. Usually, patients are sent here because no one else wants or can handle them.” She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it. I wouldn’t want this…Pella Rin, either.” Jarran’s gaze moved over the bay, calculating. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the far wall, away from the main doors. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Hiding in storage.” He tugged her toward a maintenance shed built into the wall between two structural columns.
A narrow metal door, partially obscured by a rack of gardening tools.
He pulled the door open. The shed was small, barely deep enough for two people.
Shelves lined the walls, stacked with containers of fertilizer, coils of irrigation tubing, and hand tools.
Shovels, pruning shears, a soil auger. It smelled like mineral dust and damp earth.
Jarran stepped in first and pulled her in after him.
The space forced them to be close. Her back pressed against his chest and his arm came around her waist, settling there with a steadiness that made her breath catch.
His body heat seeped through her shirt, warm and solid.
His heartbeat thumped against her spine, fast but controlled.
She could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, and despite the alarm still screaming and the red lights pulsing through the crack in the door, she felt safe.
Completely, absurdly safe. His arm around her felt natural.
She leaned into him without deciding to, and he tightened his hold.
Through the crack between the storage room door and the frame, she had a narrow view of the bay.
The abandoned planting rows stretched out under the crimson lights.
The wall of windows showed dark space beyond.
She couldn’t see the main bay doors from this angle, or the guards and the stricken patients.
Her mind raced. She’d submitted her resignation to Silca that morning.
She’d spent an hour composing it, carefully choosing her words, citing professional concerns about maintaining clinical objectivity.
She’d planned to tell Jarran at the end of today’s session.
She’d been putting it off, waiting until the last possible minute because she was a coward, and then he’d told her he cared for her.
Her chance to tell him that she was leaving had been complicated when he’d kissed her and she’d kissed him back.
If she needed confirmation that she’d made the right call about quitting, that kiss was it.
She could not be his doctor anymore. Every ethical guideline she’d sworn to uphold was shattered by the best kiss of her life.
Yup, she needed to get away from him before she obliterated her reputation and caused harm to her patient.
But now, pressed against his chest with an attack alarm shaking the walls, the resignation didn’t matter. The ethics didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was staying alive.
A concussive blast rocked the bay.
The sound was enormous. A deep boom vibrated through the floor and up into her legs, followed by the shriek of metal.
She flinched hard and cried out. At the same time, the alarms ceased their noise.
The quiet that followed was worse than the alarms. It felt like a vacuum that was about to be filled with something bad.
Jarran’s arm tightened around her. His other hand came up and covered her mouth, his fingers pressing gently against her lips. “Quiet,” he murmured into her ear. His breath was warm on her jaw. She went still.
He dropped his hand and they both peered through the crack. Smoke wafted across the distant rows and the smell of burned metal made its way to her nostrils. Then she heard it. Footfalls. Multiple sets, moving fast. Voices barking orders in a language she didn’t recognize.
Blaster fire. Short, controlled bursts. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of a scream cut short. There was more blaster fire. A guard shouted in Baylan, but the words were distorted by distance. Then there was a metallic shriek, followed by silence.
Evie’s stomach turned. She pressed back into Jarran and the hand that had covered her mouth moved to her head as he smoothed it over her hair.
“They killed them,” she whispered.
Jarran was rigid against her. “The guards?”
“The patients. The guards.” Her voice shook. “They’re probably dead.”
A muscle in his jaw clenched against the top of her head. She could feel his tense arm around her middle and placed her hand on it. She needed his solid presence. It was the only thing that was keeping her from breaking down.
“Yes, probably,” he said softly.
Figures moved into her line of sight through the crack. She pressed her eye closer to the gap.
A group of armed males spread across the planting rows, weapons drawn, scanning methodically. They wore dark tactical gear, matte black, lightweight armor with no insignia. Their faces were uncovered. Mixed species. She counted twelve, fanning out in pairs.
And in the center, walking with unhurried confidence was someone she recognized. Her blood went cold.
He was tall and Virilian. Dark bronze hair was cropped close to his skull, and he had a heavy brow with a harder jaw.
This male was slightly older than Jarran, thicker through the shoulders, and had a scar that ran down the middle of his left eye, through his cheek, down to his chin.
He carried no visible weapon, but the way the other males oriented around him made it clear he was in charge.
He moved through the bay with his hands clasped behind his back, scanning everything with pale, calculating eyes.
She knew that face. She’d studied it for hours in Jarran’s file. Criminal intelligence dossiers. Surveillance images. Intercepted communications.
“Durik,” she breathed.
Jarran’s arm went stiff around her. “Who?”
“Pella Rin’s former lieutenant. His second-in-command. He’s in your file.” She turned her head, just slightly, so she could see Jarran’s face in the dim red light. “Do you recognize him?”
Jarran stared through the crack. His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed. “No.”
Durik stopped walking. He stood in the center of the agricultural bay, between rows of toramdo plants, and surveyed the space with a calm that made Evie’s skin crawl.
“Clear the perimeter.” His voice carried as he spoke in Universal. It was deep, flat, and accented with a Virilian cadence that sounded wrong to her ear. Colder than Taron’s. Harsher than Jarran’s. “I want every section swept. He’s here. The Baylan tracker implant confirmed it.”