Chapter 3 #2
The first shelf went fast. A heavy steel tube that might matter, followed by a handful of couplings, the only purpose might have been to join one bit of expensive nonsense to another. He had no idea. They both went in the jacket.
Moving on to the next shelf, he selected a coil of flexible piping and a box full of things that might have been fuses if he squinted hard and looked sideways. There were two components he couldn’t identify at all, but they had that look of something engineers got hard over.
He moved down the line like it was a drill.
Grab. Assess. Throw in the jacket. Move on.
His arm began to throb… A hot line of fire that flared every time he had to reach up high. Hissing between his teeth, he stopped long enough to tear the ruined sleeve from his shirt and wrap it tight around his forearm. He tied it off with his teeth and yanked the knot tight.
Good enough. It would have to do until he reached the ship.
By the time he finished, the jacket had become a lumpy sack of stolen metal. Tying the sleeves together, he tested the knot, then hefted it. It was heavy and awkward, but that wasn’t a problem. He was strong, and he was used to carrying things that fought him.
Now the only problem is you’ve got to carry it through a hostile garrison without getting caught.
He ignored the voice in his head, even if it was right.
He got the bundle onto his good shoulder, wincing as the contents settled with a loud clank. He stilled and waited, his heart hammering a clumsy rhythm against his ribs.
Still nothing.
The thing rattled every time he took a step, and the metal dug into his good shoulder. His injured arm screamed about the arrangement. He told it to shut the draanth up and kept moving.
Then he stopped.
Yesterday, the team had run the warm-ups before he’d even stepped onto the field. Called marks. Adjusted lines. Made the corrections without waiting to be told. Twelve angry exiles thinking like a unit.
He’d almost been proud of them. Obviously, he’d been careful not to show it, but they were showing willing, and that was more than most trainees he’d had.
Now he was about to burn the whole thing to the ground on his way out.
Without him, they had no coach. Everything would be gone. The team, the reason for the team in the first place. Vaath would wake up half concussed and never know his coach was the reason his life had gone straight back to trall.
He was an asshole.
Yeah, right. But you were an asshole when you were the highest player in the league. No surprise that you’re still one now.
Yeah, at least he was consistent. As coach used to say… consistency mattered.
He shifted the bundle higher and walked out of the stores.
The return trip went faster. There was no need to think now. Speed was all that mattered. At the junction, he slowed, checking the corner before he committed.
Vaath was still there, slumped against the wall. Chin on chest. Legs sprawled. Looking exactly like a guard who’d decided the floor deserved more of his attention than his job did.
Still breathing.
Good.
He stepped over Vaath’s legs, careful not to let the bundle clip the wall, and kept moving. He didn’t look back as the corridor sloped upward. The air changed with it, thinning out, drying.
He hit the release on the outer door, and the heat came through before it was fully open. It was dry, dusty, and also kind of personal. It was the sort of heat that was offended by your existence and did its best to wipe you out. A real piece of work, this planet.
The sky outside was dim and ugly, the stars up there doing their usual draanthing nothing. Four weeks on this planet and he still hadn’t found a single thing worth the trouble.
The door hissed shut behind him as he set off into the darkness and headed down the track toward the landing pads.
A human female was waiting for him.
And he had a delivery to make.
Something slammed into the slabcrete. Hard. The kind of hard that meant either a toolbox or a body. Cait closed her eyes and sighed, she’d had enough issues today. Standing upright, she miscalculated and cracked the back of her head on the open access panel. Pain burst bright behind her eyes.
“Fuc-fudge.” The word came out through her teeth as her hand flew to the spot.
The alien hottie was back. Shirtless, because apparently the return trip had a different dress code—bare-chested, with sweat-slick skin, his arms were wrapped in torn fabric, darkening at the edges.
A bulky knotted bundle hung off his shoulder, and he wore that same smug smirk of a man who had personally solved every problem in the known universe.
He dropped the bundle at her feet, and the deck plating shuddered.
“Delivery.”
She shoved grease-streaked hair out of her eyes and looked up at him. “What?”
“Delivery.” He motioned to the bundle.
He smiled, all lean angles and that casual stance that said he could stand there all night and never get tired of being looked at.
Biological threat assessment complete, Fred said in her ear. He’s injured. Left forearm. Field dressing. Blood loss nominal.
She’d already noted it. Shut up, Fred.
“You got the part,” she said.
“Obviously.” He folded his arms over that wide, scarred chest and rocked back on his heels. “Told you. Not a problem.”
She crouched by the bundle. The knots were vicious…
pulled tight with the kind of brute force that suggested he’d throttled the fabric into obedience rather than learning how knots worked.
She picked at them while he loomed over her.
He’d probably call it standing guard, but it was looming.
There was a difference, which was about two feet of unnecessary proximity.
At last, one knot gave. Then another. The cloth slumped open.
“Well,” she said. “Yeah. That’s… a lot.”
It was a pile of junk. Not metaphorically. It was actual junk. There was a coil of flexible piping, a box of heavy-duty fuses, three steel tubes that looked like legs from a shelving unit, and one heavy block of metal crusted with valves she didn’t recognize.
Hydraulic intake manifold, Fred supplied. Class 4 mining drill. We don’t have a Class 4 mining drill.
No. They very much did not. They also didn’t have a water reclamation unit or a garrison-grade power grid, but here it all was, piled at her feet like the world’s worst care package.
“Options,” he said. His jaw tightened. The movement was tiny, barely there, but she saw it. “I brought options.”
“I see that.” She lifted the flexible piping, and it sagged in her hand with all the dignity of overcooked pasta. “This is plumbing.”
“Fluid transfer.”
“For a sink.” She dropped it to one side and picked up the fuses instead. “And these are for a garrison-grade power grid. If I plug these into the freighter, we won’t just blow the cylinder, we’ll blow the galley microwave and probably Fred alongside it.”
I resent that implication, Fred muttered. However, the assessment is technically accurate.
She dug deeper. It looked like he’d brought everything. Literally everything. He’d just gone along the shelves with an arm and swept everything into his bag. Uh… It wasn’t a bag, she realized. It was a jacket. The one he’d been wearing earlier.
Then her fingers brushed machined steel near the bottom, and she stopped.
There, wrapped in a rag and jammed between a useless servo and a floodlight bracket, sat a hydraulic cylinder.
She pulled it free and turned it over in her hands.
It was scuffed and battered, but the bore was clean, and when she tested the piston, it moved smoothly.
Not a Mark IV. Mark III. But it was compatible, and compatible was good enough.
She held it up. “This will work.”
He grinned, a flash of sharp white teeth. “Told you. I know what I’m doing.”
She bit the inside of her cheek and, setting the cylinder down beside her knee, reached into the pile. She hauled out the heavy block of valves. The mining drill intake. Holding it up to the light, she turned it.
“And this?” she asked, glancing up at him through her lashes. “What was the tactical application for this one?”
He looked at the block. Then at her. “Backup.”
“Backup.”
“System redundancy is critical in high-stress environments.”
“It’s a drill intake. We’re not a mining ship.”
“Multi-purpose,” he said, and his voice didn’t shift a fraction, but she could see right there in the tight set of his mouth that he knew exactly how full of crap he was. The laugh building in her chest was not going to get the satisfaction.
Setting it down, she picked up the shelving tubes instead and held them up.
He didn’t look at the tubes. “Structural reinforcement.”
“They’re legs for a shelf.”
He shrugged. “The ship looks flimsy. I thought you might need to prop it up.”
She pressed her lips together hard. She had to admire his bluster and confidence, standing there shirtless and ridiculous, defending stolen garbage with the confidence of a man who had never allowed himself to be wrong in his life.
He was bluffing, and she knew it. And worse, he knew she knew. That tiny crinkle at the corner of his red eyes gave him away. But the slabcrete was hard under her knees, and for the first time since she’d hit atmosphere, she wasn’t braced for impact.
“Thorough,” she said, dropping the tubes onto the heap. “That’s one word for it.”
“I prefer ‘proactive’.”
He unfolded his arms, and she could see the movement cost him. Only a fraction… just a tightening around the eyes before he locked it down.
Laceration on the left forearm, Fred cut in, his timing impeccable as ever. Open wound with ongoing blood loss. Probability of infection is high.
Her eyes widened. Oh shit, the bandage. She hadn’t noticed the dark stain creeping wider.
“Well.” She grabbed the cylinder and pushed to her feet. Her knees cracked. “You got the right one. Eventually.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t say thank you.”
“You were thinking it. You’ve got a terrible poker face.”
“The only thing in my eyes is grit and a real strong desire to get off this planet.”
Turning back to the open panel, she weighed the cylinder in her hand.
“Hold the light? Unless that’s below your pay grade.”
He stepped in beside her, sheltering her, and the hot wind that had been trying to scour her skin from her bones cut off.
He was too close, the heat rolling off him, making everything feminine in her sit up and take notice.
But instead of the spike of panic she’d expected, his bulk beside her, blocking the wind, steady and close enough to touch… grounded her.
The cylinder slotted into the housing. She locked the retaining bolts and reconnected the hydraulic line, pulled her diagnostic tool from her pocket, and tapped the interface. The panel lights flickered and cycled. Then went the most gorgeous, steady green she’d ever seen in her life.
Three hours of held breath left her in one long rush.
“Green across the board.” Fred, confirm fuel flow.
Flow is optimal, Fred replied. My objection to the mining drill is logged.
Noted, Fred.
She started closing the panel, hands steady now, the adrenaline draining into a dull ache she could live with. They could leave. Fire the engines and get off this rock. Everything was going to be fine.
Then the alarm went off.
The flat mechanical blare that slammed around the rock walls and rattled through the hull plating under her hands. Her fingers froze on the latch.
Alien Hottie was motionless. That easy swagger vanished so completely that it was like it had never existed. He turned his head toward the garrison lights. Slow. Deliberate. His jaw flexed, and then his gaze snapped back to her.
His face went blank. Customs officer blank. Contraband-in-the-hold blank.
“Just a drill. Standard garrison protocol.”
Garrison alert status is red. Fred said in her ear. There’s a 94% probability that your new friend is the reason.
The maths landed all at once. The torn sleeve. The blood. The smash-and-grab approach to “shopping.”
Cylinder is seated, Fred went on. Fuel flow is green. We have three minutes before they lock down this pad. Leave the alien, Cait. Get on the ship.
She locked eyes with the handsome alien. The engine was working, and the ramp was right there.
He stepped forward, so she planted her feet and slapped her palm flat to his sternum. Over his skin. The hot, damp skin over all that hard, carved muscle… He stopped dead and looked down at her hand on his chest, then lifted his gaze to her face. The running lights caught in his red eyes.
She lifted her chin.
“What did you do?”