Chapter 16
Mace watched the tyros grapple, giving pointers when someone did something truly asinine, but couldn’t stop glancing at his vambrace every other minute to check the time. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he made himself stop.
“Distracted?” Grey asked, jogging past him with one of the tyros.
Mace didn’t bother answering. Grey was already halfway across the arena by the time he’d thought of a suitable response. That last pass had marked the second time he and the student had been around.
“Parry, stop dancing and hit your opponent,” Mace ordered.
The tyro straightened and received a shot to the head for it. Mace shrugged. He’d sort of deserved it.
“Keep low,” Mace added. Though flat on his back, Parry couldn’t get any lower.
His eyes might be on his students, but his mind remained in Nia’s medical bay. He couldn’t get her face out of his head. She’d challenged him like a fierce mouse. To see her embrace her own authority, to act like a Tellusian…it did something to him he couldn’t explain.
“I feel as if your mind is elsewhere,” Grey said as he jogged by again, the tyro trying to keep up. Earlier, Grey had barked something about stamina to the kid.
Mace glanced at his vambrace again. Nia’s green light remained in the med bay. Elec gave him regular updates. He needn’t have the desire to return and make sure she’d eaten.
He shouldn’t be thinking of her at all.
“Is there a worry on your thoughts?” Grey asked, jogging by once more, this time the tyro lagging behind a few meters.
Mace shook his head, tracking his friend’s movements as he circled the perimeter of the sparring area, timing Grey’s pace.
“Good hit, Parry,” Mace barked. “Now don’t get cocky.”
The boy got cocky, and his opponent laid him out on the mat with a punch to the gut. She stood above him, smile wide. “Don’t get cocky either,” he said to her as she helped Parry off the mats.
Mace stuck out his foot.
Whatever Grey had been about to say, garbled into a whoosh of air and a half laugh as he tumbled, tucked, and somersaulted to his feet.
“Took you long enough,” Grey said, rolling his shoulders like he was working out a kink.
Mace shook his head at his friend. “Back at it!” he yelled to the sparring tyros who’d gotten distracted by their instructor’s almost-inelegant fall. The tyro who’d been running with Grey kept going. Smart. The boy hadn’t been dismissed yet.
“Want to talk about it?” Grey asked standing beside him, duplicating Mace’s crossed-arm posture.
Mace lifted his eyebrows at him. Was he a therapist now? Shaking his head, Mace remained silent.
After a few minutes of watching the tyros, he glanced at his vambrace. “Nia’s shift is almost over.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?” Mace looked at him. “What does ‘Ah’ mean?”
“Just ‘Ah.’ Nothing else.”
Eyes narrowed at his friend, Mace refused to fall into whatever verbal trap his friend wanted to lay, and instead backed away with a tilt of his head, leaving the tyros in Grey’s capable hands. If he hurried to Nia’s medical bay a bit faster than was warranted, he wouldn’t dwell on it.
Dismissing Elec, he leaned against the bulkhead, nodding to Sorley when the man acknowledged him. Nia stood beside the med bed furthest away from the door, tending a small child, probably no older than two. The child was watching the scanner with a leery eye, but Nia had turned it into a game, hiding it, then making it talk.
The little girl giggled. For someone who’d resisted family medicine like it was plague-ridden, Nia appeared to be a natural with kids.
“I’m Mrs. Scanner.” She pitched her voice high as she opened and closed the device. “I’m going to make a funny beeping noise. Beep boo beep.” Somewhere in there the scanner actually beeped, taking the girls stats. “Bye, bye,” the scanner said before Nia placed it on the work table.
“Bye, bye,” the girl said, waving at it.
Mace pressed his fingers to his sternum, a sudden tightness there. Was he developing a gastrointestinal reflux condition?
After Nia gave instructions to the girl’s father, the pair left with the girl saying “beep boo beep” over and over again.
Then Nia noticed him standing there. She straightened, face flushing pink. “Is it that time already?”
“Yeah.”
With a slight nod, she smoothed the front of her white jacket, took a glance around at the last two medics on duty, then walked towards him. Once she’d hung her medical jacket on an available hook, he pressed the control on his vambrace to bind her hands.
An awkward silence descended between them on the return trip to his quarters. Nia kept casting him glances, like she wanted to say something, then decided better of it. He waited while she sorted through her thoughts.
On the lift, halfway between the atrium level to his quarters, the lights changed, pulsing yellow. Battle readiness whipped through him. As soon as the lift door opened, he took Nia’s upper arm in a firm grip and ushered her toward his quarters at a near jog.
“What’s going on?” she asked over the noise of the alarm.
“Proximity alert.” The door to his quarters opened. He disengaged her bonds and was already jogging back towards the lift before the door closed.
The ride to the command center was too slow. Mace checked for updates on his vambrace on the way. When he finally stepped into the command center, every cell of his body was ready for the fight to come. Commodore Cache stood at the holotable, half of the commanders also present, everyone with their eyes glued to the three-dimensional image hovering above the table.
“A Guardian,” Cache said as he joined her. “They’re scanning.”
A collective hush descended as they waited to see what the Guardian would do. It had been a long while since a warship had entered the area. Too large to traverse the minefield without blowing itself up, it could only rely on scans to gain information within the field.
The CORE themselves set up numerous fields just like this one as a way to corral Tellusians in certain sectors. Centuries ago, while the CORE remained unaware, the Tellusians gradually claimed this field for themselves, one mine at a time—the perfect place to shroud the existence of their deep-space station on the edge of CORE space.
The Guardian’s scans would only show the minefield, nothing more. Orion’s faceted shielding had kept this location secure for a hundred years.
But a wary feeling infused Mace’s body, his instincts flaring. Something was off. “My recommendation would be to prep the station for relocation, sir,” he said, voice low under the hush of the quiet.
“It would flag our position. We wait,” Cache said, eyes never leaving the image.
More commanders joined the group, the tension climbing with each passing second. Mace wanted to suggest again they power up—it took a long time to get a beast like this moving—but Cache didn’t need the reminder. She knew her options.
The Guardian remained outside the field for thirty minutes, scanning, adjusting trajectory, then scanning again. Eventually, it moved off at a slow pace.
Everyone released a collective breath.
“No need for drastic measures,” Cache said, straightening, her tone confident.
“You were right,” he agreed. If they’d initiated propulsion, they would have exposed themselves.
She tipped her head, acknowledging the statement, but her eyes spoke other words, how she could have easily been in the wrong. Neither of them admitted their weaknesses aloud, content to leave them unspoken due to their long friendship.
With a tap of her fingers on the holotable, the proximity alert lifted, the lights returning to normal. Most of the commanders scattered.
“I want to follow, sir.” He wouldn’t rest easy until the ship was well out of the sector.
She pursed her lips. “You know what I’m going to say.”
“That I’m being paranoid.”
Cache stared at him, waiting for him to justify the request that could signal their position as much as powering their engines would have.
“Paranoia has kept us both alive,” he said.
Cache turned to the image of the Guardian, bracing her hands against the table. “Assemble your team, follow, and appease your paranoia.” She touched the tabletop, replacing the image with another sector further out. “And while you’re out and about, I’ll get you to do some reconnaissance here.” She pointed. “We’ve had some new activity and need to find out more.” Cache glanced at her vambrace. “It’s not a long journey. I’ll expect your return in nine hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mace, this is reconnaissance mission, not a raid. Even if you find something juicy, you leave it be. Understood?”
“Of course, sir.”
The lift of her eyebrows told him she didn’t believe his quick agreement. He just smiled.
The black of space stretched before them, endless, interrupted only by the smudge of gray the freighter created with its presence.
“You know, it would be fairly easy to force an airlock and take their cargo,” Grey said from beside him. “Whatever the cargo might be.”
Mace analyzed the data streaming across the main terminal of the Cetan, their stealth vessel, as they traveled concealed in the freighter’s energy wake. They’d trailed the Guardian until it had finished its scans and left the sector, and now followed this anomaly in the middle of nowhere.
“I agree,” Spiro said from behind him. Mace always included him on missions because of his aptitude with jamming signals and scans. “This juicy peach is waiting to be plucked.”
Mace turned at Spiro’s words and regarded the man whose dark glasses concealed his expression and contrasted with his copper skin. Spiro went on, “Send Betel in the Griffin for the forced airlock, and we’ll swoop in behind. Easy.” Eager for any chance to kill defenders after what had happened to him as a POW, his suggestion didn’t come as a surprise to Mace.
Beside Spiro, Betel grunted his agreement. A man of few words, he sat with his arms crossed over his chest. The scar over Betel’s left eyebrow contrasted with the umber tone of his skin. Out of all of them, Betel flew the Griffin housed within Cetan the best. He was also unstoppable at tactical and couldn’t seem to miss a target.
Mace cocked his head at his team before turning back to the controls. “I have two thoughts.”
“Please, do tell,” Grey said, using his most pompous tone.
Mace lifted an eyebrow. “One, if we take this ship, we lose any hope of finding out where it’s going and what it’s doing here.” He turned to Spiro. “Speaking of which, have you figured out what it’s carrying?” Mace asked.
“This peach is brimming with fighters. Not sure if they’re Marauders or Condors but there are at least thirty of them.”
Grey let out a low whistle.
A truly tempting raid. Not only for the hardware the fighters would provide but for the dent it would put in the CORE’s inventory.
“What was your second thought on the subject?” Grey asked, swiveling in his seat.
“This juicy peach stinks of ambush,” Mace said, scowling at the freighter through the viewer.
“Stars above, I could really use a peach,” Spiro murmured. “Haven’t had one in weeks.”
Mace knew he wasn’t talking about fruit, and ignored him to say, “When was the last time we found an unescorted freighter traveling this slow?” He looked at each of them.
“Sometimes fruit is just fruit,” Spiro grumbled.
“And sometimes it has a grenade in it,” Grey replied.
Spiro’s eyebrows rose over his glasses. “What sort of peaches have you been partaking in?”
Mace continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “If we knew for sure this was the only freighter traveling this route, I wouldn’t hesitate to raid it. But blowing our cover now means risking a bigger, future score.” He’d follow Cache’s lead when it came to acting hastily.
The three others remained silent. With no further disagreement, Mace turned to the controls. “Spiro, tag it.”
The digital marker would allow Cache to send a fleet of Cetans to see what was going on.
Mace reduced their speed until the freighter disappeared from sight, the Cetan’s heat signature concealed in the other ship’s energy wake. When it was safe, he turned the ship around and headed for home.
A two-hour flight and they’d be back at Orion.
For the first time in a long time, the thought of returning home not only contented him, but he was becoming downright buoyant—all because of a certain curly-haired doctor.
What the hell is wrong with me?