Nansar (The Alliance Rescue #6)

Chapter 1

Chloe

The spaceship's engines hummed constantly, a low thrumming I'd grown accustomed to over the past three days. I sat in my quarters, staring out the viewport at the endless stars, my reflection ghostly against the cosmic backdrop.

The surreality of it all hadn't worn off.

Three months ago, spaceships existed only in movies and fever dreams. Now here I was, hurtling through the void in a vessel crewed by aliens—actual aliens—with scales and claws and languages that clicked and hummed in ways human vocal cords could never replicate.

I pressed my palm against the viewport, half-expecting to wake up in some hospital bed, the victim of a psychotic break.

After what I’d endured, I wouldn't be surprised.

But the glass was solid beneath my fingers, cool and unyielding, and beyond it, nebulae swirled in colors so vivid and strange that human language had no names for them.

We'd passed a moon an hour ago—not Earth's moon, but someone else's moon orbiting someone else's planet in a star system I couldn't even pronounce.

The physics alone should have been impossible. Yet here I was, defying everything I'd learned in high school science, breathing recycled air that smelled faintly of lemon and something else I couldn't quite identify, filtered through technology I couldn't begin to understand.

The stars didn't look the same out here. They didn't twinkle like they did from Earth. They just... were. Constant and cold and utterly indifferent to the way I stared at them, trying to reconcile my old reality with this impossible new one.

Somewhere out there, Declan Hewes was watching. Waiting. And I was the bait dangling on the hook.

My hand unconsciously moved to the small bump beneath the skin of my left forearm, barely perceptible to the touch.

The tracker. President Bradford had insisted on it before I left Earth.

"If something goes wrong," she'd said, her voice tight with concern, "we need to be able to find you.

" I hadn't asked what she meant by something. We both knew.

I closed my eyes and let my mind drift back to where this had all begun.

The FBI assignment had seemed straightforward at first. Infiltrate a human trafficking operation, gather evidence, find the mastermind, and bring it down.

I'd spent nine months working my way into the organization, playing the role of a low-level courier with just enough ambition to be useful but not enough to be threatening.

I'd been good at it. Too good, maybe. I'd gotten close enough to see the full scope of the slavery ring, the hundreds of women stolen from their lives and sold like cargo.

Close enough to finally learn the name of the bastard orchestrating it all.

That's when he grabbed me.

Eighteen months. That's how long Declan Hewes kept me locked away in that compound outside S?o Paulo.

Eighteen months of fighting, of refusing to break even when my body betrayed me.

The drug he used—some synthesized alien concoction I later learned—had been designed to strip away my will, to make me compliant through my own desperate need.

It made my skin burn like I was being devoured by invisible flames, made every nerve ending scream for touch, for release, for something to quench the unbearable fire.

But despite my body's betrayal, my mind never gave in.

Not to him. Not once. Even when the withdrawal made me shake and vomit, even when I wanted to die just to make it stop, I held on to the core of who I was.

My father taught me that.

I'd joined the service because of him, following in Admiral Cullen Blackwood's footsteps the way dutiful daughters sometimes do.

But I found my own path once I was in, carving out a place for myself in Naval Intelligence where my skills could shine independent of my father's shadow.

The FBI recruited me from there, recognizing I possessed the particular combination of discipline, adaptability, and controlled fearlessness they needed for deep cover work.

Now my father was out here somewhere, working with the Alliance Prime in some capacity he couldn't fully discuss.

I'd see him soon, though. That was one of the few bright spots in this entire mission.

My dad didn't know the full story of what had happened to me—and he never would if I had anything to say about it—but he'd spent over a year thinking I was dead.

I remembered the call President Bradford set up after my rescue.

The secure connection took a few minutes to establish—it was going across the universe, after all—and I used that time to compose myself, to build the walls thick enough that my father wouldn't see the cracks underneath.

When his face finally appeared on the screen, the relief and happiness radiating from him nearly shattered my control.

"Chloe." His voice broke on my name, and I watched this man—this decorated Navy admiral who'd commanded fleets and faced down enemies without flinching—struggle to hold back tears. "My little soldier. My Chloe."

I barely held it together. The part of me that still believed my dad could fix anything wanted to tell him everything, to let him shoulder some of the crushing weight I carried.

But I couldn't. I wouldn't. My father was a protector by nature, and knowing what Declan had done to me—the depravity I'd endured, the ways my body had been used and violated—would destroy him.

He'd blame himself for not being there, for not saving me, and he'd carry that guilt for the rest of his life.

So instead, I smiled. I made jokes about my "extended undercover assignment" and deflected his careful questions about my health and well-being.

When the conversation threatened to veer too close to dangerous territory, I steered us toward safer ground—how aliens were real, and by some twist of fate, we both ended up working with them.

The preparations for this journey had been extensive and invasive.

The translator implant was the worst part, the subcutaneous device inserted just behind my ear that would allow me to understand and speak the common languages of Alliance space.

The insertion required me to sit perfectly still while a medic named George—who looked all of twelve years old—worked on me with instruments that hummed and clicked.

His hands were steady and professional, but still hands. Still touching me.

I didn't like to be touched. Not anymore.

I made it through by focusing on a point on the wall and counting my breaths, each inhale and exhale a lifeline pulling me away from the panic that threatened to claw its way up my throat.

The vaccinations were more tolerable. A series of injections to protect against diseases I'd never heard of, pathogens that had evolved in the far reaches of space with names that sounded like they belonged in science fiction novels.

My arm was sore for two days afterward, but at least now I'd been vaccinated against the drug Declan used to steal my will.

I opened my eyes and looked at my reflection again.

The woman staring back at me was harder than the one who'd started that undercover assignment two years ago.

My dark auburn hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail, and there were shadows under my gray eyes that never quite went away anymore, like permanent bruises painted beneath the skin.

I still had nightmares. I still woke up screaming.

And I absolutely didn't like to be touched.

I didn't like people getting too close, period.

A handshake was tolerable if I braced myself for it.

A pat on the shoulder I could endure if I saw it coming.

Anything more made my skin crawl, made me want to lash out or run, made the walls of whatever room I was in feel like they were closing in. A side effect from my time with Declan.

The proximity alarm shattered my reverie with a harsh, metallic blaring that sent my heart into my throat. My body reacted before my mind caught up. I was on my feet, pulse hammering, muscle memory from my Navy days seizing control. The intercom crackled to life.

"Ms. Blackwood, we need you on the bridge. Now."

Captain Karvat's voice cut through the alarm, clipped and professional, but beneath the measured tone I detected something that made my stomach tighten.

I snatched the blaster from my bag—the one they'd given me upon boarding with a quick tutorial I hoped I'd remember—clipped it to my belt, then moved swiftly down the corridor toward the front of the vessel.

The lighting had shifted to tactical mode, dimmer now, bathed in red undertones that cast everything in a bloody glow.

The bridge was a study in controlled chaos when I arrived.

Crew members hunched over their stations, fingers dancing across holographic displays that cast shifting patterns of light across their faces.

Captain Karvat stood at the center like the eye of a storm, his gaze locked on the main viewscreen.

The Vaktaire captain cut an imposing figure even in crisis.

Tall and broad-shouldered, his light tan pelt seemed to shimmer in the red emergency lighting.

His long dark hair was pulled back in a practical braid that hung between his shoulder blades, and when he glanced my way, those startling blue-gold eyes held a mixture of concern and grim determination.

On the scanner, a ship had materialized like a bird of prey, closing fast on our position.

"How long have they been tracking us?" I asked, moving to stand beside him, my eyes already scanning the tactical readout despite the fact that the alien symbols meant nothing to me.

"Twelve minutes. They dropped out of slip-space right on our tail." He pointed to the display with one clawed finger. "We picked them up immediately, but they haven't responded to hails."