Chapter 12 #2
Emmy’s mouth parted. “Listen.” She leaned close. “Under the static—it’s her speech pattern. That’s Hannah trying not to cry and refusing to let anyone hear it.” Her throat worked. “That’s my sister.”
Core’s voice softened. “Not archival. Live. Repeating on a distress cycle.”
Apex didn’t lift his head. He drove the decryption into the frame until the pieces stopped fighting him and began to align. Letters fell into place inside the light. Codes. A string of authorization signatures. Two Councilors whose names didn’t matter as much as what they had authorized.
Containment Specimens Alpha-1 and Consort W. Alpha-5 and Consort H.
Varnoss IX.
Emmy read the H and flinched like she’d been struck. “Hannah.”
“Affirmative,” Apex said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t allow his hands to tighten. He’d learned long ago to cut his own fury down until it was a blade he could use. “Varnoss IX.”
He brought the system’s map up and let the ship draw the path in cold white. Lume tapped the coordinates with one curved claw and pulsed a little blue affirming light like a nod.
Emmy turned in and leaned her hip against the console. It was a careless pose, but he knew her now. Nothing she did was careless. The move put her heat close enough to touch and didn’t let his hand forget where to find her. “Then we go,” she said. No question. Just a stubborn, definitive statement.
He didn’t argue. “Affirmative.”
She searched his face like she wanted to ask why he wasn’t shouting, why he wasn’t tearing the station from its moorings with his hands since it wasn’t just her sister, but his unit’s warriors, as well.
She would never ask that question. She’d already learned that when he went quiet, the galaxy broke open and bled for it.
“Core,” he said. “Quiet launch. Burn only when the dock sensors cycle down. Kill our wake.”
“Understood.”
The new ship gave a low, eager hum. Bless the woman who had smuggled this hull into existence with no registry tags. Bless the greed that had put it in his hands. He would make the galaxy pay for the rest.
They lifted like a shadow. Traffic drifted beyond the bay mouth, slow as sleep. Keth-9’s halo fell away and space took them into its clean dark.
“Council frequencies rising sector-wide,” Core reported. “They will sweep again within two cycles.”
“We will be gone before they start counting,” Apex said.
Emmy loosened her harness and slid closer.
The motion put her shoulder against his upper arm and made his body think of other ways she could fit against him.
She stared at the starfield and he watched her in the reflection anyway.
Her lips had gone a little soft. She bit the lower one and let it go.
His hand closed on the armrest. He’d never been gentle by nature.
He was learning it one breath at a time because she taught him he could be.
“You know what they’ll do to her,” she said, voice low. “To them all. To Hannah. To Fifth.”
“To First and Winn, as well. Affirmative.”
“Then we cut them out of the Council’s reach before the rot spreads.”
“Affirmative.”
He looked at her mouth. She looked back at his, and the air between them took on a heaviness that pulled like gravity. He leaned in and their lips met—hard, desperate, all the restraint between them burning away.
Her fingers fisted in his shirt, dragging him closer, the kiss deepening until the world narrowed to heat and breath and the sound of their hearts colliding.
He cupped the back of her neck, tasting the soft gasp she made when he pressed closer, needing more than the thin control he usually allowed himself.
Then, too aware of the danger, too aware of what waited ahead, he forced himself to break the kiss. His breath came rough against her lips as he pulled back, eyes a dark violet, voice low. “Not yet.”
His restraint scraped like raw wire in his chest and still he drew away because there was work first and everything else after. But foukk, it just about killed him.
“Prepare for jump,” he said. He reached without looking and handed her his sidearm. He didn’t hesitate. She checked the charge and holstered it just the way he’d taught her, a clean little motion that told him her hands wouldn’t shake when they needed to take a man’s breath away.
Lume pressed her mouth to the nav housing and bit down gently where the casing met the panel.
Her body lit from the inside and a ribbon of light spilled into the seam, then spread through the console in a pale web.
To his amazement, the ship’s stealth field deepened.
The hum smoothed to a purr that no sensor looking in their direction would catch unless it knew exactly where to listen and exactly what to hate.
“Jump ready,” Core said.
“Execute,” Apex answered.
Space turned inside out, stretching long enough for the stars to smear into ribbons of white.
Core’s voice murmured readings, the dark drive whirring low while the ship stabilized on the far side of the jump.
The sensation of movement bled away, replaced by the slow reformation of space, the hum of reality knitting itself back together around them.
When the distortion cleared, a new world hung ahead.
It looked like a shard of black glass dropped into a pool of liquid metal.
Veins of silver ran through the dark, shimmering where charged storms climbed straight up into the sky.
Above the surface, entire continents hung on magnetic tethers.
Massive electromagnetic fields held the floating continents in place on plates of rock bigger than cities, drifting in slow rotation while lightning stitched between them in white ropes.
“Varnoss IX,” Core said. “Atmosphere conductive. Gravity pockets unstable. Lightning hazards extreme. Facility Omicron connected on Plate Three. Gravity chains live.”
Apex watched the arcs dance. “Perfect place to hide a prison.”
“Or to bury one,” Emmy said.
Lume placed her forepaws on the viewport and pressed her nose to the glass like a child. The stormlight painted her in cold white and made her eyes look older for a heartbeat.
She whispered a trill, then added softly, “Bad place. Hungry.” The small voice carried an eerie certainty, a warning and a promise in words that made the air between them tighten.
“Cloak full power,” Apex said. “No transmissions.”
“Stealth descent aligned,” Core reported. “Contact in eight sectors.”
Emmy’s palm found his thigh, quick and hot. “We bring them home.”
“Affirmative.”
He covered her hand with his and a small tremor ran through her.
He returned it with a steadiness that she immediately took.
He kept his gaze on the broken world and saw another thing instead.
Saw her mouth open on a gasp, saw his name fall out of it, soft and rough at once.
He shut the image down so he could fly the ship through fire.
Their new courier-class vessel slid into the charge.
Lightning wrapped the hull and let it go.
The plates turned like slow teeth waiting for meat.
Lume braced herself and spread her filaments into the board and the stealth field sank deeper, a blanket pulled tight over a body determined not to be seen.
“Hold,” Apex said. The ship obeyed. The storm took them into its throat, swallowed their light, and kept its secrets.
They didn’t come here to be careful. They came to cut something ugly out of the galaxy and take back what was theirs.
He’d do it with quiet hands and a cold voice.
He’d do it while the heat of the woman at his side burned a line down to his bones.
He’d do it because someone had dared put Hannah Ward in a cage and had written his brother’s designation on a form like a butcher notes weight.
“Final approach,” Core said.
“Mark it,” Apex answered. He looked at Emmy. She looked at him. Lume looked at both of them like she already knew how this would end.
They went down into the lightning together.