Chapter 10
The freight dock at Ithaan’Dor was exactly what Fred had promised: absolute draanthing chaos.
Ships from half a dozen companies were crammed into berths designed for maybe four, crews shouting over each other in three languages Raaze recognized and at least two he didn’t.
Cargo stacked on every flat surface, crates blocking walkways, loaders weaving between obstacles like every one of them was late for something.
Cait walked beside him with a forged delivery data-slate tucked under her arm, her stride matching the harried pace of every other contractor on the dock.
There were other humans working the bay. Not many, but enough that she didn’t stand out the way she might have on Venrexx Prime. A female with dark hair was arguing with a Latharian supervisor about weight limits, while two males wrestled a crate onto a loader, swearing creatively.
He clocked them all, filed them away, and kept moving.
The route Cait had mapped took them through the main dock, past the secondary loading area, and into a service corridor that ran parallel to the facility’s spine.
From there, it was supposed to be simple: find the access panel for the ventilation shaft, pop it open, crawl through the maintenance run, and drop into the archive from above. Bypass the checkpoint entirely. In and out before anyone knew they’d been there.
Raaze’s shoulders tightened the second he clocked the human male’s stare from across the bay. He was watching Cait. Worse, he was watching Cait with the kind of hunger that Raaze recognized. Primal. Carnal.
The draanthic wasn’t even subtle about it, eyes dragging down the line of Cait’s body like he had the right.
A hot spike of jealousy hit him right under the ribs.
Moving without thinking, he closed the distance until he loomed directly behind her.
The male’s gaze snapped up, met red eyes and the promise of violence behind them, and suddenly found the far wall fascinating.
Raaze grunted, the sound low and rough in his throat. Smart move.
Cait’s head tilted. “Problem?”
“Nah.” He shrugged, keeping his voice bored even as his pulse thudded with rage. “Just stretching my legs. These corridors are cramped as draanth.”
She gave him a long look but let it drop, turning to carry on walking. He stayed right where he was, close enough to feel the heat of her body through his clothes.
Draanth. What if she decided she wanted one of her own kind instead?
Some soft human male who didn’t come with a forged diagnosis and violence issues.
The thought lodged in his chest. He shoved it down hard, buried it under layers of practiced indifference.
He didn’t have time to think about that right now, and besides, she was just a means to an end…
He turned his mind back to the mission.
She’d been right about every detail so far. The delivery schedule, the shift overlap, the window of maximum chaos. The female read supply chains like he read defensive lines…. all the moving pieces, all the gaps, all the places where pressure could be applied.
Not bad. You picked one who actually knows what she’s doing.
They moved through the secondary loading area at the pace of people who’d done this a hundred times. He kept his head down and his stride easy, but every sense he had was on high alert.
A loader swung wide around a stack of crates and he caught her elbow, pulling her half a step closer as the machine trundled past. The operator didn’t even slow down.
“Short by six, you draanthing half-wit!” a Latharian supervisor bellowed from somewhere to their left. “I signed for twelve—”
The service corridor door was propped open with a maintenance crate.
He stepped through first, scanning, then moved aside to let Cait pass him, kicking the crate free.
The noise of the dock cut out the moment the door slid closed behind them.
One second, there was the roar of the loading bay, the next just the soft tap of their footsteps on the deck plating.
“Should be just up here,” Cait murmured, slowing as they approached the section of wall marked on her schematic. “Panel’s supposed to be between these two conduits.”
Raaze looked at the wall.
It was solid and smooth. The wall stayed smooth under his stare, not a single seam or hinge to betray where the access point should have been. Draanth.
She ran her palm over the surface, her brow furrowing as she checked the position against her data-slate.
“This is the right spot,” she said. “We’re standing exactly where the access point should be.”
Should be being the operative words.
You absolute draanthing idiot. Picked yourself a tactical genius and still ended up staring at a blank wall like some rookie who forgot to scout the secondary routes.
“Fred?” Cait asked.
A beat of silence. Then Fred’s voice came through the comm Cait had pressed into place behind his ear before they’d left the ship.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” The AI’s tone was less composed than usual, angrier.
An AI with a godsdamn temper. Perfect. Just tralling perfect.
“Someone sealed the shaft,” Fred said, the words almost a snarl. “Sometime in the last eighteen months. Updated the physical structure, didn’t update the public records because why would anyone do their fucking job properly—”
“Fred.” Cait’s voice was calm and steady. Raaze got the feeling she’d dealt with outbursts like this before. “We need options. Like fast.”
“I’m working on it. Give me a moment.”
Raaze leaned against the wall, arms folded as he watched the corridor in both directions. It was empty for now. But for now had a way of changing fast.
“How long?” he asked.
“As long as it takes me to acquire the correct building schematic,” Fred snapped. “Which I am doing right now, thank you for your patience.”
Raaze bit back his snort of amusement. This was not the moment. The AI was having a minor breakdown, their route was compromised, and they were standing in a corridor where anyone could walk by at any second.
But draanth, it was funny.
Thirty seconds passed, then forty. Cait’s fingers tightened around the edges of her slate.
“Got it,” Fred said finally. “I have the current schematic. The shaft is definitely sealed… they converted it to cable runs during the renovation. But I can guide you through the service corridors on foot. It’s not optimal.”
“Define ‘not optimal’,” Raaze demanded.
“It means passing the checkpoint the long way round. Threading past people who might look at you twice. But it’s a route, and that’s more than we have at the moment.”
Cait glanced at Raaze. She looked small next to him. God, she’s cute when she’s wound this tight. He let his gaze linger on the line of her jaw, the stubborn set of her mouth.
“Do it,” she said.
“Proceed to the end of this corridor and turn left. There’s a stairwell that will take you down one level. From there, I’ll guide you through the maintenance section. Move like you belong.”
Move like you belong. He could do that.
Straightening up and rolling his shoulders, he started walking. Cait fell into step beside him, matching his pace without being told. Fred’s voice was a constant guide in his ear. Turn right. Straight for twenty meters.
Raaze turned. Walked. Cait’s footsteps stayed half a beat behind his, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her at his shoulder.
Stop. He stopped, and Cait nearly walked into his back. Someone’s coming.
A figure passed the junction ahead… maintenance uniform, tool belt, didn’t even glance their way. Raaze counted three heartbeats.
Clear. The stairwell should be just up ahead.
It was, and Raaze took the steps two at a time, boots ringing against metal, and emerged into the maintenance section.
Narrow corridors stretched in both directions, lined with conduit and junction boxes.
The hum of climate control filled the air.
He adjusted their pace to match the foot traffic.
Not too fast, not too slow. Walk like you owned the corridor, because that was the trick.
If you walked like you owned the pitch, nobody questioned why you were on it.
Great. Warball all over again. Just with worse lighting.
An administrator passed them, scrolling through a dataflex with a bored expression. He didn’t even glance up. The kind of male who’d been doing this job for fifteen years and had stopped seeing anything that wasn’t directly in front of his face about a year in.
Two techs came the other way, arguing about a requisition form. Something about signatures and the wrong date stamp. The taller one was red-faced with it. Neither of them looked at Raaze or Cait either.
A cleaning bot rolled out of a side alcove and bumped his boot before correcting its course. He resisted the urge to kick it into the nearest wall.
“Don’t,” Cait murmured.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You absolutely were.”
His lips quirked. She was right, but the fact that she was calling on him now, that she felt confident enough with him to call him on it, was cute. He liked it, liked it a lot.
Turn right, and go straight for fifty meters.
The corridor narrowed another half-meter on the turn, and the air got warmer. He felt the shift in the air, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.
Guard, Fred said, his voice sharp. Coming around the corner ahead. Fifteen meters. He’s not supposed to be here. You have maybe four seconds before he sees you.
Trall… Four seconds.
Raaze’s hand closed around Cait’s wrist, and he yanked her sideways through the nearest door.
He could have gotten it horribly wrong, and they were about to crash into the station’s command conference room or something, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.
He just pulled it open, shoved her through, and followed, yanking it shut behind them just as the guard’s shadow appeared at the far end of the corridor.
It wasn’t the command conference room. It definitely smelled like a maintenance supplies closet.