Chapter 6
Dexter
The transport is a tactical mistake.
I know it the moment I step aboard the Whisper—a courier-class vessel designed for stealth runs, not comfort. Cramped corridors that force proximity. A galley the size of a closet. Sleeping quarters separated by walls thin enough that I can hear breathing on the other side.
And Astra's emotional signature, loud as a siren in the confined space.
I should have insisted on a larger ship. Should have requisitioned something with proper separation, proper distance, proper fucking walls thick enough to block the constant hum of her presence.
I didn't.
Make of that what you will.
Lieutenant Kesh is loading our gear when I board, his bioluminescence pulsing with nervous energy along his forearms. Young. Twenty-three, maybe. Full Empri, born on one of the core worlds where they still teach that our abilities make us superior instead of complicated.
He looks at me like I'm a legend. Like the stories he's heard—the campaigns I ran on the outer rim, the body count I accumulated, the reputation I earned for being willing to do what others wouldn't—are something to aspire to instead of warnings about what happens when you stop questioning orders.
"Commander Torrence." He straightens. Military precision that would be impressive if it wasn't so transparent. "The ship's prepped. Fuel cells at maximum, weapons systems green, course plotted for Gamma-7."
"Good." I scan the cargo manifest on my datapad. "Where's Specialist Torres?"
"Running final security checks with Ms. Venn."
Of course she is.
I move deeper into the ship. The recycled air tastes flat, metallic. Two days of breathing this. Two days in quarters close enough that I'll sense her every emotional shift, every moment of fear or anger or whatever else she's feeling.
Two days of trying not to do anything about it.
The corridor narrows. I turn sideways to pass a structural support, and there she is.
Astra. In the ship's small armory, checking weapon charges with Torres beside her.
Specialist Carmen Torres, human, mid-thirties, face like carved stone and a resistance to Empri manipulation that suggests either training or natural immunity.
I can barely sense her emotional state even when I try.
It makes her useful. It also makes her someone Astra would trust.
They don't notice me immediately. I watch.
Astra's movements are efficient, economical. No wasted motion. She pulls a plasma rifle from the rack, checks the charge, replaces it. Her green eyes scan the inventory with the focus of someone for whom weapons maintenance is meditation.
Torres says something low. Astra's mouth quirks. Not quite a smile.
I feel the ghost of her amusement before she locks it down. A flicker of warmth, there and gone, her walls slamming back into place so fast I get psychic whiplash from the shift.
She knows I'm here.
She's deliberately not looking at me.
Fine.
I step into the armory. Torres sees me first, straightens. Astra's shoulders tense fractionally, but she doesn't turn.
"Torres." I nod at the specialist. "Ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Get some rest. We launch in thirty."
She glances at Astra. Some silent communication passes between them—woman to woman, human to human, the language of people who've learned to trust each other in spaces dominated by those who can read minds.
Torres leaves quietly, the door sealing behind her with the soft hiss of pressurized locks engaging.
The silence that follows is thick enough to drown in.
Astra's shoulders remain tense, not the readiness of combat stance, but the rigidity of someone holding themselves perfectly still through sheer force of will.
She's checking another plasma rifle, running through the safety protocols with methodical precision that's just slightly too deliberate to be casual.
The movements of someone who needs their hands busy to keep from doing something else entirely.
I can feel the edges of her emotional state, fractured pieces leaking through her walls despite her best efforts.
Anger. Always anger, my constant companion from her.
And underneath it, threading through like a wire pulled too tight: apprehension.
Fear, maybe. Not of me, never of me, not in the way that would make sense.
Fear of this. Of what's between us. Of the conversation we're about to have.
She still hasn't turned around.
The back of her neck is exposed where her copper-red hair is pulled tight, and I can see the ghost of a scar disappearing beneath her collar. One I haven't catalogued yet. One she hasn't shown me.
There are still so many I haven't seen.
"You don't have to do that," I say finally.
My voice comes out rougher than I intend. The resonance in my chest—the thing that marks me as Empri even when everything else could pass—betrays the tightness I'm trying to control.
She goes completely still.
The rifle in her hands stops moving. Her breathing doesn't change, she's too well-trained for that, but I feel the shift anyway. The way her emotional frequency spikes just slightly before she crushes it back down.
"Do what?" Her voice is carefully neutral.
But I heard the fractional pause before she spoke. The moment she took to decide how to respond.
She's calculating. Same as me.
We're so fucking alike it's terrifying.
"Lock down every emotion the second I'm in range." My marks pulse along my temples. I can't help it. Her presence does that to me, always has. "I'm not going to push you. I've told you that."
"Words." She replaces another rifle. Her hands are steady. "I've heard a lot of words. They don't mean much."
Fair.
I step closer. Not crowding—just near enough that I could touch her if I reached out. Near enough that her scent cuts through the armory's gun oil and ozone. Something clean. Antiseptic. The nothing-smell of someone who's learned not to leave traces.
"The ship is small," I say. "We can't avoid each other for two days."
"Watch me."
"Astra—"
She turns then. Fast. Her green eyes lock on mine, and the intensity in them would drop a lesser man. I've stared down enemy commanders who flinched under less.
"Don't." Her voice is flat. Dead. The tone that means she's given up on something—or she's pretending to. "Don't use my name like we're friendly. Don't stand close like we're comfortable. Don't act like last night was anything except another tactical error in a long line of them."
"Is that what it was?"
Her jaw tightens. I feel the spike of her anger, sharp as a blade against my awareness. Copper and ice and something underneath that tastes like grief.
She's so fucking angry. All the time. The rage goes bone-deep, structural, part of her foundation now.
Six years ago, she wasn't like this.
Six years ago, she laughed. Not often, but real when it came. She used to touch my arm when she was making a point, lean against me when we were reviewing tactical displays, exist in my space without that rigid control.
I killed that. The woman who could be easy around me.
All that's left is this. The weapon who learned to walk. The soldier who rewrote herself to never need retrieval again.
And I still want her so badly I can taste it.
"The kiss was a mistake," she says. Each word deliberate. Clinical. "It won't happen again."
"All right."
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
She searches my face for something. I don't know what. Can't read it through her walls—they're too good, too thick, built over six years of learning to lock out anyone who tries to sense her.
"This is a mission," she continues. "Professional. We find Webb, we extract intel, we return. That's all."
"Agreed."
"Good."
She turns back to the weapons rack. Dismissal. Clear as spoken words.
I should leave. Should retreat to my quarters, run the mission parameters, check Kesh's work on the navigation plotting.
I don't.
"I meant what I said last night." The words are out before I can calculate whether they're strategic. "On the observation deck. Before the alarm."
Her hands still on a rifle charge pack.
"About what?"
"About—" Fuck. "About loving you. Then. Six years ago. About what I was going to say."
Silence.
The ship's systems hum around us. Life support cycling. Gravity generators maintaining the comfortable lie of down and up.
"Don't." Her voice cracks on the word. Just slightly. Just enough that I hear it, feel it. "Don't give me that. Not now."
"When, then?"
"Never." She slams the rifle back into the rack hard enough that the whole unit rattles. "It doesn't matter what you felt six years ago. It doesn't change what you did."
"I know."
"It doesn't make it better."
"I know that too."
She whirls. Her hand finds my chest, pushes. Not hard—she's not trying to move me. Just establishing distance. Claiming space.
I let her.
Her palm is warm through my shirt. I feel her pulse in her fingertips, fast and hard, the rhythm of someone whose control is costing them.
"You calculated my life," she says. Her voice is rough now. Raw. "You weighed my survival against mission success and I came up short. That's who you are. A man who can love someone and still sacrifice them."
"Yes."
The admission costs nothing because it's just truth, the kind that cuts clean instead of ragged. Simpler than the lies that would make this easier. Kinder, maybe, in its own brutal way.
Her hand fists in my shirt. The fabric bunches in her grip, knuckles white against the dark tactical weave.
She's close enough now that I can smell the gun oil on her skin, the sharp bite of her fear-sweat underneath.
Close enough that I feel her pulse hammering against her wrist where it presses to my chest.
Close enough that she can see my marks flaring with everything I'm feeling, everything she's making me feel—and there's nowhere to hide from what this conversation is doing to both of us.
"And you'd do it again."