Chapter 22
After the kiss with Mace, Nia rarely saw him. He’d quit escorting her to and from family medicine, instead giving the job to Elec. At least she wasn’t required to be bound in the corridors anymore.
Even though she rarely saw him, she couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. When they’d kissed, she’d been lost, drowning in sensation. She hadn’t cared where she was, who he was, what he’d done…she’d wanted to lose herself completely and forget everything else.
The desire hadn’t really left her.
She still wanted him.
And hated herself for it.
The days blurred together one after the other. She might have been surrounded by people in the med bay but had never felt so alone. She felt like she lived in a delicate glass ball, and the orb lay in the palm of Mace’s hand—he could crush it, and her, at any moment.
By the time she’d earned another day off, she felt like she was going mad.
“It’s six hours, same as before,” Elec said to her as she stepped off the lift on the ground level of the atrium.
Nodding, she walked parallel to the vendors’ shops, skirting all the activity at its center. She only wanted to spend time in the arboretum and didn’t check if Elec followed. Her pace slowed when she reached an empty clearing enclosed with sycamores, different than the spot where she’d spent her day off the first time. Her emotions had been too confusing over the past week for her to want to see the tree where Mace had sat and remember the things he’d shared about himself.
With an exhausted exhale, she flopped onto her back on the grass, spread her arms wide, and breathed her tension away. The moist air cleansed her, a healing balm. Some of the larger mines were visible through the bands of lights crossing the dome above. Birds tweeted around her. The stream babbled to her left. She could hear others roaming the space, voices speaking to one another. A laugh barked from a distance away.
She didn’t care if all six of her hours were spent in this exact position. Even if she’d been lonely, this type of alone was different. The rustling leaves soothed her. She could almost believe she was on Jupiter One where she was raised.
“Can I join you?”
Nia lifted her head at the feminine voice. Dee stood nearby, her black hair piled on top of her head, and her cream and black dress a swirling mass of pattern clinging to every curve.
“Depends if this is an accidental meeting or if someone sent you,” Nia said with her eyes narrowed.
A smile flashed across Dee’s face, outlined eyes crinkling. “You’re a smart one.” Without waiting for an invitation, the other woman sat beside her.
Nia let her head fall back on the grass. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“It wasn’t really a question, though, was it?”
Opening one eye, Nia turned her head to stare at the woman who had her face upturned to absorb the lights far above.
“Are you here to spy on me?”
Dee’s eyebrows lifted. “Spy? No. But someone might have thought you could use some company.”
Nia’s gaze swung to Elec where he stood on the other side of the clearing trying, and failing, to blend in amongst the tree trunks.
Dee snorted. “It definitely wasn’t him.”
Shaking her head, Nia resumed her previous position. She didn’t care if Mace was worried about her. He didn’t have a right to be after abandoning her for the past week. “I don’t need a pity visit.”
“I’m not here out of pity. Just concern.”
“Nothing to be concerned about,” Nia retorted, her words clipped.
“All right.” Dee shifted her position, her clothing rustling in the quiet. “Consider me unconcerned.”
Nia didn’t need to open her eyes again to know Dee had laid beside her. With an irritated huff of breath, she tried to ignore the woman and reclaim her earlier calm.
Irritation made it difficult, and she opened her eyes to glare above. One yellow leaf descended toward her, slowly flitting this way and that, until it landed on her stomach. Leaning on her elbow, Nia grabbed the stem and twirled it between her fingers. “Where do your dead go?” The image of those three tortured people rekindled in her mind.
“What?” Dee jolted up, her bangs flopping forward over her outlined eyes.
Nia stared at the leaf, pressing her finger to the pointiest tip. “On my station, everything is connected, and when someone dies, they go to reclamation to become part of the bio-matter on the station.”
“Oh.” Dee laid down again, brushing her bangs out of her face. “That’s how it works here too. Nothing wasted.”
“Nothing wasted,” Nia repeated, a mantra of the CORE too, everything used again and again. The reclamation chutes were only the beginning of the process.
Had those bodies in the theater been reclaimed yet? Were they being fed into this eco-system as nutrients for the plants in the arboretum? Or were they still hanging there, only bones now, as a message from the Commodore?
If I die here, I’ll become a sycamore. But if the tracker in her locket were discovered, they would make sure to torture her first.
Mace won’t allow it.
How could she be so sure? He hadn’t condemned the torture and death of those three individuals. And he might say he wanted only to protect her, but he didn’t know about the tracker.
Sitting up fully, Nia stared in the general direction of Elec’s half-concealed spot, and asked, “How long have you known him?”
“I only met Elec last week.”
Nia turned her head, giving the other woman an unimpressed stare. Dee only smiled, then sat up too. “I’ve known Mace for over a decade. My husband was on his team when we married.” Her voice was heavy with grief when she added, “Lowe died right before our son was born.” A sad smile quivered on her lips.
“I’m sorry,” Nia said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s okay.” Dee bumped Nia’s shoulder lightly with her own. “It was a long time ago, and I always knew it could happen. Came with being the wife of a warrior.”
Of course Nia knew Tellusian warriors died all the time. So did CORE defenders. She saw it on the newsreels constantly, treated the wounded who survived long enough to make it to Elara Five. CORE ships were destroyed. So were Tellusian ones.
This war between their people was millennia in the making. And what point did it serve?
What would happen to me if Mace dies?
The question made her stomach twist in painful knots. It should have been out of worry that the truth of her lineage would be used against her if he wasn’t standing in the way, but she felt sick at the thought of Mace dying—no matter how many times she’d had homicidal thoughts about him since abducting her.
When Dee spoke again, her tone changed into a pained sort of wistfulness. “Mace was the one who told me Lowe had died in battle.”
Nia turned her head. Flat on the ground, Dee had an arm thrown over her forehead, her eyes closed. “I was eight months pregnant. If I’d had a gun right then, I would’ve shot Mace, and he probably wouldn’t have stopped me. Blamed himself for Lowe’s death. Probably still does. They were like brothers.”
Nia’s hands clenched into the grass near her hips.
A rough chuckle escaped Dee before she turned her head to meet Nia’s eyes. “Mace was the one in the delivery room with me. He was scared out of his wits, but he stayed in there for me, for Lowe. He helped establish my shop, everything. I’m not sure where we would have ended up if it weren’t for him.”
Nia’s throat constricted, trying to picture Mace in the delivery room. He would have been there to support both friends, Dee and the man he’d called brother. There would have been grief too, a child born fatherless.
The stories on both sides of this war rang with the same sadness.
“So, yeah. If Mace asks me for a favor, I’m going to do it.” She turned her head to face the overhead once more, then rubbed the tattoo on the back of her hand absently. “Many of us owe him our lives.”
Nia rolled to her feet, unable to listen to more of Mace’s attributes. She was already messed up in the head about him, she didn’t need someone else to add to it. Without looking behind her, she headed for the atrium’s common area, grateful when Dee didn’t follow.
Grey had stopped making jokes about him being on edge days ago. Mace understood why. It wasn’t funny anymore.
Usually, he had unending patience when it came to the tyros, now every little fuck up enraged him.
Each night, he slept in the barracks because he couldn’t think around Nia. Hell, even when he wasn’t around her, he couldn’t seem to think. It was becoming impossible to remember when his duty shifts in the command center started.
He knew he was a mess but couldn’t seem to fix it. No amount of training, or fights, or how much he bruised and bloodied his knuckles could get his head on straight. He knew it, everyone around him knew it, and they treated him like a plasma grenade about to go off.
It was Nia’s day off today, and ten times he’d stopped himself from searching her out. He mustn’t. Because then he’d do something stupid like kiss her again. If that happened, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop.
His only consolation was sending Dee in his place. At least she wouldn’t be alone. Elec gave him regular updates, told him about her deteriorating mood, but Mace knew if he interfered, it would make things worse.
He ran a hand over his face, but it did nothing to clear the haze from his brain. “Freya,” he barked. “Don’t turn your back on your opponent.”
The girl’s cheeks reddened, and the reaction made him think of Nia. Stars above, he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. Fuck.
Just when he was going to shout at Freya again, the lights in the arena changed and flashed, an alarm blaring. Another proximity alert. Mace whipped his gazed to Grey across from him.
“Battle stations!” Mace yelled as he and Grey ran toward the exit at the same time.
Yellow lights pulsed through the corridor. With Grey at his side, they jogged to the nearest lift, and Mace hit the control panel. He tapped on his vambrace, ordering Elec to make sure Nia got to his quarters safely.
As soon as they stepped into the command center, the proximity alarm stopped. They strode to the holotable where Cache stood with Sheefra and Gallagher.
“Commodore?” he asked, gesturing to the holo feed with his chin.
“Two shuttles in the field,” she said, her attention on the images. “They’ve broken off and are heading out of the mines.”
Mace frowned. Shuttles this far out, even long-range ones, were extremely unusual. “Let me see the replay, sir.”
Cache’s eyes narrowed, but she complied, retrieving the images of the shuttles weaving through the mines on the outer edge of the field.
Mace’s instincts kicked in. “Those aren’t shuttles.”
Her fingers tightened on the edge of the table while Grey leaned in for a closer look.
“Look at the way they’re moving,” Mace continued. “Shuttles don’t maneuver like that. Those are fighters. Condors would be my best guess, using faceted shielding to disguise their signatures like us.” He met Grey’s brown eyes, then Cache’s green ones. “They’re here for us.”
A glint of worry passed over her features before her expression hardened. “No. I’ll not allow it. They’re shuttles.”
“Cache. No. First, the Guardian, then the power outage, now this. We need to prepare for the worst. We need to prep Orion for flight.”
Grey crossed his arms, seemingly undecided on the subject.
Her gaze flickered. “I don”t think I’m the one unable to think straight.”
There was a warning in her words, and her threat to take Nia away hung between them.
“Cache,” he gritted between clenched teeth.
She spun on her heel and walked away.
“Dammit Cache!” He hit the holotable with his fist, but she didn’t react and kept walking.
The commanders on the other side of the table gave him a range of expressions from confused to worried. Mace ran a hand over his face.
“You okay?” Grey asked, concern etched in his brow.
“Yeah. Great. Fantastic,” Mace replied, trying to get a grip on his emotions.
Why did it feel like everything was spinning out of control? First, he couldn’t concentrate on anything but the woman in his quarters. Now, Cache ignored a blatant threat. Nothing in his life made sense anymore.
Two urges warred within him—the one to make sure Nia wasn’t freaking out right now, and the other to stop Cache from following through on her threats.
“I need to finish our training session,” he muttered, because both of those choices would be the biggest mistakes of his life.
But it didn’t stop the relief he felt when he noted Elec’s communique telling him Nia was safely ensconced in his quarters.