Chapter 31
Ever since Mace had heard her scream in agony when he’d arrived on this deck, he’d been shaking. The need to kill every last person on this ship dictated his every action.
He pulled Nia to the side at a junction. One more corridor to go, but it was blocked by defenders.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Nia pull at the nodes on her head with one hand, her mouth covered with the other. Her eyes held a shimmer, like she’d drank too much alcohol.
“You aren’t going to start spurting blood out your head when you yank those off, are you?” he asked, frowning at her.
Her hand dropped, eyes widening comically. “God, I hope not. I should have asked how to get them off. They’re not like the cortical nodes I’ve used before. I wouldn’t want the nanos to take permanent residence in my brain. How would I ever keep my secrets, then? That would be horrible. And I see the way you’re looking at me right now. I’m supposed to be quiet. Okay, how’s this? My voice is really quiet right now. Pretty good, right?” She finished on a whisper.
Shaking his head, he returned his attention to the corridor. His stomach fell. He was going to have to leave her again. A fire fight would bring more defenders, and right now they had the advantage of his jammer. He took his secondary weapon from his left thigh and handed it to her.
“Take this and shoot anyone who comes from that direction.” He jerked his chin the way they’d come.
Her hand dropped from her mouth. “Mace, I can’t. I’m a doctor not a warrior.”
He touched the panel on the side. “It’s set to stun.”
“Okay. I can do that.” She held the weapon aloft, face flushing.
Mace returned his attention to the threat ahead. The first corridor was clear. He sprinted, then stopped at the junction. He waited. Footsteps. Just about there. Mace lunged, incapacitating the first with a slice to his femoral artery before turning to the second. The third farther along only startled him slightly. He slit the second’s throat and threw the blood coated knife at the third, hitting the sweet spot.
The first wasn’t dead and making too much noise. Mace took a knife out of his boot and slit his throat. All without getting a shot off.
And they’d changed to teams of three. Good to know.
He hurried to retrieve Nia. Once he turned the corner, he pushed the barrel of the gun out of his face.
“You keep that, but don’t shoot me.”
“Okay.”
He grabbed her hand, and they jogged down the corridor. She tsked when they stepped over the dead.
“I really wish you wouldn’t kill all these people.”
He shot her a look, hoping to keep her quiet. She frowned at him and said, “Why don’t you stun them all?”
Fed up, he grabbed her by the shoulders and met her at eye level. “Because if I let them live, they’ll be the ones to kill me in battle tomorrow. Understand?” He used the same firm teaching voice he used with his tyros.
When she shook her head, he knew he failed. He sighed. “Just keep quiet.”
She nodded.
They kept going, her hand in his until they reached the launch bay. Mace set Nia with her back against the bulkhead near the door.
“Watch in both directions. Shoot anyone you see. We have no friends here.”
He didn’t wait for her response but sprinted inside. The internal security of a Guardian was laughable. They were arrogant, assumed their warship wouldn’t be breached. No security protocols on the doors except for a PALM swipe, and he’d confiscated one off the first defender he’d killed in the brig.
The launch bay contained one security detail and a handful of maintenance workers. Mace made short work of the defenders and incapacitated the rest. No need to keep quiet now. They were almost out.
Once he was sure the bay was cleared of threats, he jogged to retrieve Nia. She stood staring down the corridor, her face beyond pale.
“I shot a doctor,” she said, her words faint.
A crumpled mass of black lay slumped at the end of the corridor. He took the gun from her. “And they’ll be fine when they wake. Let’s go.”
“Where are we?” she asked as they hurried toward a Condor.
“This is where they launch their fighters.”
“Truly? I should probably learn more about ships. I never found it a deficiency in my education until I met you. I had no idea there were—”
She stopped talking when he shot her another look. They stopped at the bottom of the Condor, its ladder already extended.
“Up you go.” He ripped the stolen PALM off his hand and dropped it on the deck. He had no use for it now.
Nia climbed ahead of him, then stopped abruptly at the top. “It’s a one-seater. We’re going to have to find another one.” She almost sat on his face in her haste.
“They’re all one-seaters. Get in,” he said, giving her bottom a push.
She yelped, then climbed over the edge, bracing her feet against the edges of the seat.
“Stay like that until I can slide in with you.” Mace climbed over the edge, stowing his guns behind the seat. He pressed his body against hers, his arm across her middle. They slid in the seat together, her floral scent wrapping around him. He almost groaned aloud.
Ignoring his body’s response to her proximity, he read the control panel over her head and powered up the fighter. The canopy closed above them, and he initiated the shielding and viewer.
“This isn’t going to work,” Nia said quietly, resting her hands on the tops of his thighs.
“Why?” Mace asked, distracted as he berated himself for not grabbing helmet clips from one of the dead to interface with Condor’s systems.
“I’m getting turned on sitting like this,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
His arms gave her an involuntary squeeze. Another body part of his body sprang to attention at her words. “One thing at time,” he said, voice hoarse.
The entrance to the bay overflowed with defenders, their weapons fire bouncing off the Condor’s shielding. Mace put them in a hover, setting it in line with one of the launch tubes. The shots from the defenders rocked the ship.
“Hold on.”
Nia’s fingernails bit into his thighs, doing nothing to ease the hard-on she’d created with her confession. He initiated maximum thrust, the tube increasing their acceleration. As they were about to breach the tube, he dropped a live missile.
Flames followed them out, licking upward around them until they shot into space, the vacuum extinguishing the explosion.
“What was that?” she asked, turning to try and see through the canopy’s viewer.
“A gift.”
She sagged against him. He was momentarily surprised she didn’t give him hell for killing more people.
He banked and Orion came into view. He swallowed at the sight of his home, where he was born and raised. He didn’t know if there was anyone left on the station to fight, but the battle in the minefield was lost. A Guardian sat docked to the outside of the station, its lighter coloring contrasting with the black that comprised Orion’s design. Nothing had ever looked so wrong.
In front of him, Nia’s shoulders shuddered, but he didn’t have any time to console her. Marauders were on their tail. Mace headed into the densest part of the minefield on the other side of Orion. Without control of the mines, it was absolute insanity to escape in this direction, but they had no other options.
Nia’s fingernails dug in deeper as he weaved them in and out of the mines, trying to outmaneuver the fighters behind them. He banked close to a huge mine. Her scream pierced his eardrums. The Marauder didn’t recover fast enough, exploding behind them.
Two more to go.
He checked the rear feed, then reversed propulsion. The two ships shot ahead of them. He fired, accelerating at the same time. The one on the left exploded. They flew through the debris field a second later. Nia yelped as their shields sizzled, gripping his thighs tighter. He fired and nicked the second fighter on its wing. Good enough.
Mace weaved out of danger, toward the corridor they’d created in the mines, leaving the damaged Marauder to its fate bouncing around a minefield. As soon as they were clear, he engaged maximum thrust, aiming out of the sector.
Nia didn’t relax in front of him, and the farther they flew from Orion, the more her breaths shortened, until she was almost hyperventilating. His arms tightened around her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, even though it was stupid question. So much had gone wrong.
“I need to destroy this necklace. It’s a tracker, Mace, and it’s my fault Orion was attacked. I killed all those people.” Her last words left her on a ragged sob, her body shuddering in front of him.
Her confession brought on a rush of cold over his skin. A tracker? How had it passed the scans? The proximity alerts, the power outage. All had happened after Nia had arrived. Had she somehow been the cause of it?
If her tracker started it all, then he was the one responsible for losing Orion. If he hadn’t taken her from Elara Five, then none of this would have happened.
Logic intervened. A tracker that size wouldn’t have broken through Orion’s shields.
But his brain kept itching with possibilities, and made him ask, “Why were you in the engine core yesterday?”
She sniffed. “What?”
“Why did Foley find you in the engine core? Why did you choose to go there?”
She turned slightly. “After we fucked—” He twitched at the way she said it with her accent. “I didn’t know what to do with myself. I stepped on a lift and didn’t tell it where to go. It moved on its own, took me there. Then I decided to watch it because it’s beautiful.”
The tension in his chest eased at her admission. She hadn’t been there for sabotage.
“It was more than fucking,” he murmured against her hair.
After a moment, she nodded. “Yeah.” Then her hands flew to her neck. “Take it.” She struggled with the clasp. “Destroy it.”
Putting the ship on autopilot, he brushed her hair away from her nape and took the clasp in hand. A flick of his thumb, and it opened. “The reclamation unit is on your right.”
She took it and shoved it inside the small compartment like it was diseased. Her nape still exposed, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward and pressing his lips against the warmth of her skin. Her scent filled his head.
She stiffened, then relaxed against him.
“Let’s get those nodes off you too,” he murmured against her skin.
Turning a bit, she met his gaze, her eyes still shiny with tears. “There should be a recall button somewhere.”
He took her chin in his fingers, tilting her head. He found the small switch near the top and pressed it.
She gasped.
“Are you okay?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. It tingled.” She turned the other way so he could see her left side, and he did the same with the other. She gasped again.
“Get rid of these too, in case there’s a tag on them.”
With shaky hands, she shoved them in the reclamation chamber with the necklace, then hit the “deactivate and disassemble” button. A hum, then silence.
She sniffed again. “I feel like shit,” she murmured, swaying in front of him. “Those things drained everything out of me.” She sniffed again. The next one turned into a sob.
Realizing she was about to lose it completely, Mace adjusted their trajectory and wrapped both arms around her. His body armor got in the way. While he unclipped the sections and fumbled them over his head, her crying intensified. Shoving the weight of the pieces behind the chair, he pulled her close.
She resisted a moment, then turned her face into him, cheek pressed against his chest. Her whole body melted as the next sob escaped her lips. Fingers clenched into his uniform. Her curls tickled his chin, giving him a dose of her sweet scent.
Tears dripped onto his chest.
“You weren’t responsible for Orion,” Mace murmured against her hair. “It was an inside job, four engine cores blown at the same time.” But she kept crying. He held her tighter.
The whole time on Orion, she’d had a tracker blaring her position and she hadn’t said a thing. Of course she hadn’t. She was CORE. At every turn she’d told him she wanted to go home. She’d never hid that.
His chest cracked at the thought of letting her go.
But when they arrived at their next location, there might be the opportunity to give her what she wanted, get her home in the safest way possible—as a civilian, and smuggle her to family who would have the power and influence to protect her. Hopefully Lexi would be able to help.
Would he be strong enough to go through with it?
Did he have a choice?
This thing between them…he couldn’t think straight when he was around her, made problematic choices. But the bigger question of trust pressed down on him. Would she have told him about the tracker if those nodes hadn’t been attached to her head?
Because if she hadn’t, with the place they were going next, he didn’t know if he would have been able to forgive her if she’d brought the CORE to them.