Chapter 6
Crash. Something smashed inside his quarters, the sound reverberating off the bulkheads. Dull thumps followed. Was she kicking the door? Mace cringed.
An off-duty subordinate passed him by with raised eyebrows. He gave the young man a nod, then ran a hand through his hair. This was utter madness. A raging captive was locked in his quarters, and he was going to leave her there. On her own.
And he’d spent a large chunk of his saved creds to keep her safe—enough for the processor to never want for anything in his life ever again if he kept her lineage buried.
Mace closed his eyes. Out of anyone he could have taken on Elara Five, he had to steal away a member of the CORE’s ruling class. He might have been able to convince himself he’d kept her because she would have died, but now he’d put her in more danger. The processor wouldn’t speak for fear of his personal wellbeing, but the only way to keep her safe, to keep her away from everyone else, had been to invoke the old laws. Everyone would think…stars above, what had he done?
He rubbed a hand over his face. She had to be scared shitless. I should have left her to die. It would have been the merciful thing to do.
He’d seen the dread in Nia’s eyes when they’d taken her blood. Mace didn’t need to worry she’d betray herself. She understood what could happen if her identity were revealed.
Nia.The name suited her, short and feisty.
When silence reigned on the other side of his door, he headed toward the lift. Once on, he hit the control to take him to the fifth level of the atrium and training, his favorite place on Orion. When not on missions for Cache or taking shifts in the command center, it was where he spent most of his time. The door slid open, and he walked close to the railing, eyes alighting on the birds Nia had seemed so enthralled with, the same birds he hadn’t paid much attention to until now.
The entrance to training opened into a wide corridor, doors on either side leading to lockers, showers, and barracks. Beyond was the matted sparring arena, rivaling the atrium in size. Mace stopped for a quick steam shower. It almost made him feel normal.
Alone in the change room, he ran his fingers over his ribs. She had done a good job healing him. The scar was minimal, his ink missing in one large section, faded in others. He would need to get it reworked someday.
With a towel slung low on his hips, he crossed to the lockers and found a new uniform in his assigned cabinet. The familiar weight of the material settled on his shoulders. Boots tied and fresh gun strapped to his leg, Mace left training, nodding to the warriors and tyros milling around in the common area. He headed to the command center in Section A and didn’t dread his upcoming confrontation with Cache as much as his next one with Nia when he returned to his quarters.
Stepping off the lift on deck one, he went through the security checkpoint, a tunnel-scanner recording his biometrics, then strode into the brain stem of Orion. Three stories tall, the spherical space buzzed with activity. Each level held science stations, tech posts, and warriors on security duty.
Commodore Cache was at the center of it all, her black hair bound tight in a tail. Her posture tense, she stood next to the main holotable, a frown wrinkling her brow. The uniform style she’d chosen covered her like a second skin, one gun strapped to her thigh like his. The techie in front of her spoke quickly, his gaze averted. Whatever he said wasn’t pleasing her. Grey stood nearby, his eyebrows raised at the exchange.
When the techie noticed Mace walking over to them, he let out a long breath, probably assuming Cache would direct her attention elsewhere.
And that she did. Her eyes flicked to Mace, narrowing, before returning to the techie. “See it never happens again.” She jerked her chin to the tech terminals. “Report to Mouse for your new assignment. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir,” the techie muttered, then scurried away.
She turned away from the holotable. “Commander.” Her emerald eyes might be hard, but there was relief there too.
“Commodore.” Hands clasped behind his back, he faced the woman he’d known since they were tyros. Grey stepped to the side, the third point of the triangle.
“Report.”
His chest squeezed. This was one report he didn’t want to give. “Your plan to attack the weapons armada was solid, but I believe the CORE obtained inside information.”
She twitched. “Explain.”
“We boarded the disabled ship, one venting air. Instead of freighter crew, we were met with two squads of defenders. Our CORE uniforms provided some confusion, but not enough.”
Those last moments played through his head. It hadn’t been his regular team. Cache had wanted the younger warriors to gain experience on what was supposed to be an easy mission. Instead, they all died.
“They fought bravely,” Mace said, his throat tight. “To the bitter end.” And he would tell each of their families the same thing as soon as this meeting was over.
If he hadn’t known her so well, he would have missed the regret shuttering her features. “I’d thought you were dead until the signal flare.”
Mace blinked. A signal flare. Those moments after the ambush were disjointed in his mind. He must have sent in out of self-preservation instinct on the way to Elara Five.
“How did you survive?” she murmured.
“Honestly, sir. I’m not really sure.”
“Elaborate.”
He shook his head. “The defenders must have thought me dead with the others, but when clean up personnel dealt with bodies and my heart was still beating, they sent me to medical instead of reclamation because of the CORE uniform.”
It still seemed too unbelievable to accept. The look on Cache’s face said as much.
“I woke up in the middle of surgery,” he added. And there was Nia, frozen in shock, with him only seeing one chance for survival.
“So you took her captive.”
Tension raced down Mace’s spine. “Yes, sir.” But if he’d known about her lineage, he would have left her to die. If her bloodline was discovered, it would have been the kinder choice.
Cache’s mouth upturned for a brief second, like she resisted the urge to poke fun at him. He’d always been outspoken about captive rights, the barbarism of an indentured class propelling their economy, and wanted to abolish the system altogether.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t sent Foley and the Bellicose after you?”
Mace met Grey’s eyes before he returned his attention to her. “That was Foley’s strike?” He had suspected as much. Foley, the commander who headed security, never had much finesse.
“He was following orders.”
“You ordered him to destroy a medical station?” Mace understood she’d given no such order, knew Foley had embraced his sadistic side.
Cache’s eyes flashed. “Watch it.”
He heard the challenge and chose to ignore it, had no desire to overthrow her position and take on all the bullshit that went with it.
“You would have been better off sending Grey.” His attempt to appease made her eyes flash again.
But Grey cut in, diffusing the tension. “That’s what I said.”
Cache took a breath, glancing between them. “I couldn’t risk losing both of you on a retrieval mission, so I sent Foley.”
He shared a glance with his friend. Good to know Cache thinks Foley expendable. Especially when they knew the commander earned his position here through his connections with Admiral Ricker, a man who shared his sadistic side.
Mace changed the subject. “What’s on the docket, Commodore?”
Cache turned to the holotable, accessing three-dimensional images of ships, data running along the glossy surface. “They’ve stopped everything in Sector Five since your mission. We can’t find any trace of them, but,” she paused, swiping her hand across the table, “we’ve received some good information about possible gun running in Sector Four, here.”
She magnified a small section of space on the edge of CORE territory. “We’re concentrating our efforts at this location since the new manufacturing plants won’t be operational for another month. We’re waiting to hear from our contact.”
“What’s this?” he asked, gesturing to a red beacon on the other side of the map.
Cache enlarged the area, her expression turning stony. “We were tracking a CORE civilian vessel heading to Sector Ten. None of our warnings were heeded. They’ve past the point of no return now. Short of locking weapons, there wasn’t anything we could do.”
Mace shook his head. He didn’t understand why anyone one would choose to go to Sector Ten voluntarily. Once a vessel went into the man-made nebula controlled by Calypsons, it never returned, basically amounting in suicide—or some sort of twisted religious pilgrimage where no one on the outside understood the end result.
Cache met his eyes. “Return to your regular duty roster tomorrow.” When he opened his mouth to say he was fine now, she added, “That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dismissed by her nod, both he and Grey strode to the exit, then through the security checkpoint.
“I have some families to speak to,” Mace said when they stopped in front of the lift.
Grey nodded, slapping the control to call it to them. “Right beside you.”
Nia’s locket lay cool in her palm. Her heart beat a fast pace in her throat. It was time to turn the tracker on.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she glanced around the Mace’s quarters, pleased with the carnage she’d wrought. Destroying the potted plant hadn’t been enough. She’d grabbed anything she could get her hands on. After she’d eaten as much as she could from the refrigeration unit—too much because she’d gotten sick immediately after—she’d demolished the rest, hoping he wouldn’t have any food rations for the next month and would starve to death. As a precaution, she’d taken a shard of the pot to use as a weapon and it lay beside her hip.
A tiny voice in her head poked at her. He won’t hurt you. He kept you from being ransomed.
Ignoring that voice, she ran her thumb over the etched vines decorating the locket. She needed to turn it on but hesitated. As far as she could tell, there weren’t any recording devices in Mace’s quarters. But what if there were? What would happen to her if they found out what she held? Once activated, would those enforcers pound on her door? Would they think twice about shooting her, or kill her with the same swiftness as the medical officer who’d resisted?
But if she didn’t turn it on, then she’d have no chance of escape. Orion was too heavily fortified for her to get free on her own, their security measures too tight.
Would Calvin be looking for her? She and the administrator for Elara Five had a brief, uninspired relationship. The only way she’d enjoyed being with him was when she took enhancers. When she’d realized he’d only been using her for her connections, she’d ended it. But he’d never let go of his entitlement to her time. She’d hated him for continually stepping into her business, but if he sent people after her now, she wouldn’t complain.
Maybe Calvin couldn’t. Maybe he had his hands full putting Elara Five back together. If he’s still alive. Nausea rose in her throat when she thought of how many must have died in the attack.
Once her parents were informed she’d been taken, they would stop at nothing to find her. They had the resources and influence to move fleets of ships. Did they already know? Probably. News traveled fast when connected to the grid.
Nia wiggled the naked fingers of her left hand, looking at the tiny ports where her PALM was supposed to connect. Would the Tellusians remove those too? Most likely. They’d already rendered her ocular implant useless.
She clenched her hand into a fist, then forced herself to relax and clicked the locket open. The overhead lights glinted against the gold of the empty ovals. With a deep breath, she pressed her right thumb to the left side. The metal warmed beneath her skin and adrenaline pumped through her blood.
In the other oval, a white line hovered across the middle. It fluctuated in the rhythm of her heart, like the stats of a med bed. There. If she stayed alive, she’d be rescued. She allowed the locket to fall to her chest, then flopped on the bed. Crisscrossed overhead beams filled her view.
Turning on the tracker lifted a suffocating load from her mind, but a resulting weariness settled into every limb. So blasted tired.
Under no circumstances would she allow herself to fall asleep, to be vulnerable. She needed to protect herself. If she fell asleep…her mind had conjured a thousand horrific scenarios.
Blink. She kicked off her CORE-issue boots and rolled on her side to stare at the door. These blankets are too soft. If she closed her eyes, she would still be able to hear when he returned. Just for a moment.