Chapter 34
The door to their temporary quarters shut, blocking Mace’s view of Nia sleeping on the narrow bed, naked except for the thin, CORE-issue blanket covering her body.
He stood there a moment, staring at the blank beige of the door, his body tense and his mind racing. There was a large part of him that wanted to say fuck you to the universe, to steal Nia away from both the CORE and Tellusians, to screw responsibility. For it just to be the two of them, together, where politics and lineage didn’t matter.
But common sense intruded. Where would they go? They were still too far away from anything Tellusian to use the Condor for the journey. The outpost’s shuttle would have even less range. There was no place in CORE territory that would be safe for him, and no place in Tellusian territory that would be safe for her after what she’d confessed. And traveling to Calypson territory…they might as well commit suicide if that were their only option.
With the weight of everything pressing down on him like a thousand asteroids, he’d held Nia for as long as he could, for as long as he thought he could get away with, before his sister would pound on their door demanding answers.
Swallowing, he turned away, and started down the ramp. On the lab level, Lexi stood at a terminal, one arm braced above her head, her black hair swooped over her shoulder. She lifted her head when he neared. Eyes narrowing, she straightened, then strode to meet him at the bottom of the ramp.
He spoke before she could. “I need to get Nia to a safe CORE location as quickly as possible.”
The laugh Lexi released was tinged with hysteria. “Are you out of your ever-loving mind? We don’t have the time or resources to coordinate a soft re-entry for her, not with the maintenance crew arriving in thirty hours.”
Panic squeezed his chest. He needed to get Nia to safety. With her possible participation in Orion’s seizure, unintentional or not, she wouldn’t be safe in the Tellusian fleet.
He settled his hands on her shoulders. “It needs to be done.”
“That may be so, but not from here.” She shrugged off his hands and took a step back. “You’ve got to know it’s a mistake to let her go. She’s seen this place, met us, she’ll sell us all out.”
“She won’t.”
“She might not want to, but they’ll get her to talk whether she loves you or not.”
His heart lurched in his chest, and he swallowed. “That’s why I need her to get to her family first.”
Lexi shook her head. “I can’t believe you put us in this situation.” She didn’t raise her voice, but it sounded like she wanted to.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Explain,” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
Mace paced in front of her. “We didn’t make the first rendezvous to receive the coordinates for the second. The Condor we stole wasn’t fully charged. If I hadn’t come here, then we’d be adrift right now, at the mercy of anyone who came upon us.”
Her expression softened, arms dropping to her sides. “Why didn’t you make the rendezvous?” She jerked her head toward a sitting area next to the lab.
They walked side by side. “We were picked up by a Guardian.”
Her head whipped to him on a sharp inhale, the color leached from her face. “A Guardian? How did you escape?”
They settled across from each other on a U-shaped sofa. “I overpowered the four guards they sent with me to the brig. They’d thought I’d been stunned. Then I found Nia in a lab.” He shook his head, a hard lump growing in his throat. “I heard her screams across the whole deck. They’d been torturing her mentally.” He hung his head. “She won’t talk about it.”
Lexi’s hand covered his. “I’m sorry she went through that, but it doesn’t change the fact that having you here, especially her, is extremely dangerous.”
He couldn’t deny it, but if there’d been an alternative, he would have taken it. “I need to make contact with the fleet as soon as possible and couldn’t do it from a Condor.”
But Lexi was already shaking her head. “It’s too risky. I wasn’t going to deliver my latest report until we took leave in two weeks’ time. Anything sent from here can be retraced. I can’t jeopardize our position like that. Not now.”
Her gaze moved over his shoulder, and Mace turned to see Justice walking toward them. Something about the man put him on edge—and it wasn’t because it was clear he and Lexi had some sort of relationship.
“How was Orion taken?” Lexi asked, recalling his attention when Justice sat beside her.
“It was an inside job,” Mace said after a moment. “Well-planned with multiple people working together or they would never have been able to pull it off.” Nia’s confession came back to him, and he wondered again if she’d played a unintentional role. “All four engine cores were blown, power diverted, shields disabled—” He shook his head in disbelief. Saying it aloud highlighted how enormous the undertaking. How many traitors would it have taken to co-ordinate? Too many. “And two Guardians waiting to swoop in. They detonated a massive portion of the minefield to get through. We’ll have no foothold in the sector going forward.”
The nauseated expressions on the pairs’ faces matched the feeling inside Mace’s stomach. He and Lexi had been born and raised on Orion—and now their home was in the hands of the CORE.
Mace cleared his throat. “What would you have sent in the next data stream?”
The question snapped Lexi from wherever her mind had gone, and she cast a quick glance at Justice. “They have us working on something huge. Big enough they’re being cautious, not allowing us see the whole picture. I was going to send you our new research and experiments. Maybe your experts could piece it together with other data you’ve attained.”
“Is it bio-weapon related?”
Lexi perked up. “How did you know?”
“Because of what we recently found on a smuggler’s ship.” He described the weapon Cache had shown her commanders.
Brow furrowing, Lexi turned to Justice. “It could be connected.”
Justice rubbed the goatee at his chin, leaning back in his chair. “Possibly. I’d always thought we were working on something larger than a hand-held gun, a weapon built for a ship’s systems, but anything is possible when we’ve been kept in the dark about so much of this project.”
“What more can you tell me about it?” Mace asked.
“It’s genetic-based,” Lexi explained. “We’re isolating markers differentiating between races.”
A cold sensation washed over him. “The payload would be able to somehow tell the difference between a CORE soldier and a Tellusian warrior? Kill one and not the other?”
Lexi scowled. “In short, yes. But there are more similarities between us than the CORE would want us to believe. It could also focus on the differences between someone CORE and someone Calypson. That’s why I was going to send the information sooner than our usual check-in date.”
“I can take it with me and save you the trouble.”
She let out a short laugh, but she wasn’t smiling. “Don’t think this absolves you of your transgressions.”
“What transgressions?” The question was reflexive, defiant in the face of his older sister’s censure.
Lexi’s eyes darkened to the point where if she’d been holding a gun, Mace was sure she would’ve shot him. “What transgressions?” she repeated through a clenched jaw. “Mace. What the hell is wrong with you? If mom were alive she’d put a knife to your throat herself. You took a captive. You fucked a captive. You brought your captive here and fucked her again, when you know you shouldn’t even trust her. Please tell me what part of that wasn’t a problem!”
Mace clenched his teeth, battling the discomfiture her words created. He didn’t ask how she’d known he and Nia been intimate before arriving here. His sister knew him too well.
On a slow exhale, Lexi’s eyes flicked to the level above, her expression shuttering.
Unease swirling in his chest, Mace turned to see Nia there, her hands so tight on the railing her knuckles were white and realized Lexi had shouted everything in Common.
Nia’s heart beat a wounded rhythm in her chest, her cheeks burning like lava. She knew she wasn’t welcome here, but to hear those things shouted about her made her wish the deck would swallow her whole. Her fingers ached where she gripped the railing.
Mace stood, and still Nia couldn’t move. Behind him, Lexi glared at her brother with her arms crossed over her chest.
Straightening her spine, Nia pushed away from the railing. She wouldn’t hide. She wouldn’t cower. If it had been up to her, she would have remained on Elara Five, the station unharmed from Tellusian attack, and she would have known none of this life.
The thought panged something strange in her chest. If she’d remained on Elara Five, she would be doing the same thing each day, every day. Wake up. Work. Stimulants. Superficial relationships. Sleeping aids. Repeat.
Even though she’d seen and experienced horrific things over the past month, she’d never felt so alive.
Her eyes followed Mace as he walked up the ramp to her. He was the one who breathed the most life into her. Whether she wanted to attack him or devour him, he was the one person who set flame to the buried spark in her chest.
Stopping in front of her, he took her hand. “She’s angry with me, not you.”
Nia shook her head. Her feelings weren’t important, and Lexi was right. No one here should trust her. Look at what she had spilled as soon as those nanos had taken residence.
He tugged on her fingers. “Let’s get you something to eat.”
When her stomach answered with a growl, his eyes crinkled into a smile. He led her down the ramp, past where Justice and Lexi sat, to the dispensary beyond.
“Veggie pasta number three isn’t bad,” Lexi said over her shoulder, words clipped.
Nia cast her a glance, and the other woman’s glare softened into a resigned expression.
Mace ordered two servings and took them to the nearby table. While they ate, Nia couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between the other couple.
“We can hide them until the maintenance crew leaves,” Justice said, his tone rational.
“You know it won’t work. The crew always scans. They’ll be found within ten minutes. And how would we hide the fighter?”
“The Condor won’t make it to Saturn or another Tellusian settlement on one charge,” Justice countered.
There was a beat of silence, then Lexi asked, “What do you suggest?”
“We can send Mace’s message through the new encryption program. I know we haven’t tested it yet,” Justice added quickly, “but we don’t have a lot of other options. This way, at least they’ll have a heading.”
Nia flicked her gaze to Mace, who was listening as intently as she. Swallowing his mouthful of food, he turned to meet his sister’s eyes.
Lexi squinted at him. “You can make your long-distance communique. We have an encryption we’ll bounce through about fifty hubs before it reaches your destination, hopefully keeping us in the clear.”
“That sounds like it’ll take time.”
“It’s a downside, but safer.” Slapping her thighs, she stood. “Which means we should do it now, or you won’t receive a response before we need to throw you out.” Her lips pressed together, she led the way to a terminal on the far side of the lab, Mace following.
Nia watched for a moment, then focused on the man still sitting on the couch. Justice stared at her…strangely, his face expressionless, but his eyes full of calculation. A shiver of apprehension raced down her spine.
“It sounds like you’ve had quite a journey,” he said after a time.
She cleared her throat. “You could say that.” Not wanting to talk more, she stared at her meal and tried to finish.
But after the Tellusian food she’d eaten, it tasted like bio-matter in her mouth.