Chapter 39
She was returning home. The truth should have been exhilarating, but the sick feeling in Nia’s stomach hadn’t dissipated since she’d woke.
Mace’s quarters were empty. He’d left without saying goodbye. Her heart cracked and wouldn’t stop throbbing in pain. He’d told her everything he needed to say last night. He’d said he loved her.
When the sob passed her lips, she pressed them tight together. I’m not going to cry.
She’d already dressed in the generic civilian uniform she’d received from the processor. An alien sensation infused her as she stared at her reflection in the digital mirror she’d found in one of the wall compartments. The garment was mostly gray but had blue trim, the same blue worn by warriors and technical personnel.
On a weary sigh, she took the palette she’d been given, and sat on the bed with her spine pressed against the bulkhead, knees bent. Ship updates scrolled across the top, but none that told her where Mace was or what he was doing.
At the bottom of the screen were Tellusian newsreels. Most were about what happened on Orion, the death toll, the missing persons, if there was hope of the station being returned to Tellusian control. It all made her heart beat an uncomfortable rhythm in her chest.
A while later, a message appeared on the screen: Your registered transport leaves in thirty minutes. Confirm your seat.
Below the “confirm” icon was a “delay ticket” option. Below the delay icon was a list of four other transports. Nia’s fingers hovered over the screen. Mace had told her to get on the first transport. But the next one wasn’t much of a wait, only thirty minutes.
The thought of leaving now, of stepping on a transport and never seeing Mace again…she swallowed against the lump in her throat. Maybe he would come back here one more time.
She pressed the “delay” icon, choosing the next transport, and hadn’t moved from her spot when its reminder appeared on her screen thirty minutes later.
She pressed the delay icon again.
It wasn’t until there was only one transport remaining that she finally left Mace’s quarters.
Throughout the entire planning session, Mace felt Cache’s knife-like gaze cut through him. The schematic of Orion lay between them, but the distance might as well have been a crater. With her every movement, she restrained herself from doing him physical harm, and probably would have attacked if they’d been alone—because she’d have to answer for Justice’s death as much as him.
Six other infiltration team members surrounded the briefing room holotable. Grey, Betel, and Spiro stood to his left, the three techies on the right. Taking non-warriors on this mission tripled the chance of failure, but he understood they needed them if they were to unlock Orion’s systems. He didn’t have to like it.
Mouse had been on an op before, but the other two were green. Mouse had earned his name because of his huge eyes. They almost gave him the look of someone of lower intelligence. Until you had a conversation with the guy—his brain operated at a level not attained by the average population.
Newton specialized in hardware. Mace had never worked with him before but knew him from the bridge. He had short curly black hair and his Adam’s apple bobbed every other minute when he swallowed.
Callista was the last of the tech team, a software genius new to Orion. He’d heard her name a few times since she’d arrived, all compliments. Her honey brown hair was tied at her neck, and she kept her head bent.
When Cache’s gaze flicked to him, her eyes narrowed. He met her stare straight on, unapologetic. Anything else would show weakness, and he couldn’t afford that right now.
Because Nia was never far from his thoughts. She should already be gone. His stomach squeezed, and he resisted the urge to make sure she’d taken her transport. He didn’t want to leave a trail to her now she was safe. With Foley’s resources, Mace had even more reason to keep his distance—no matter how much it pained him to do so.
Cache broke his gaze, leaning forward to brace her hands on the surface of the holotable. He focused on what the techie, Callista, was saying. This wasn’t the time for him and Cache to be unaligned. The only thing he should be focused on right now was liberating Orion from the CORE.
They solidified the plan, then went over it again. They changed the plan, then scrapped the plan and started over again.
“Commander.” Cache’s biting voice made him lift his head. She’d obviously asked him something and his mind had drifted.
The mission. He had to concentrate on the mission. If he let anything else distract him, they’d all get killed.
Heart aching with each step, Nia followed the map of the Phalanx on her palette to the transport hangar. The farther she traveled the corridor, the more people she encountered.
She kept telling herself she wasn’t safe here to make her feet move.
Following a crowd, she stepped into the hangar. Tension crept from her shoulders to her ears. The place was packed from bulkhead to bulkhead.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to wait for the last transport. It wasn’t possible to take a step and not bump into someone. Nia hugged her palette to her chest, trying to stay out of the way as she searched for the correct ship. The mass of bodies moved at a crawl’s pace.
“What’s the hold up?” A voice asked from behind her, speaking Common. She turned slightly to see a portly man wearing a dark green suit, his pale skin reddening in agitation.
“There are medical crews readying to go to Orion,” said a woman wearing a feathered, yellow hat, the matching striped dress hard to look at for too long. “I think it’s just a matter of waiting for them to be organized, then the line will move again.”
Nia continued on, reading the hull numbers on the ships, searching for hers, then paused when a group of doctors clad in their white jackets walked toward her. She scanned their faces, wondering if she knew any from the time she’d spent on Orion. When her eyes rested on someone familiar, her heart leaped. But confusion quickly set in.
How did she know that man? He wasn’t from her med bay, but she definitely recognized him from somewhere. The group passed by, and his gaze landed on her, eyes widening almost imperceptibly in recognition before his placid expression returned.
Nia stopped, her heart beginning to race with perplexing dread. How did she know him? He’d recognized her too, but acted like he hadn’t. Her mind ran through every medical officer she’d met but drew a blank. She didn’t know him from her life before, did she? From Elara Five or the Diligence? Or even Medical Academy?
Then, it clicked. The day in the engine core, when Commander Foley had threatened her. She’d seen a man doing maintenance in the engine core when she’d looked over the side. That man. In the wake of the events, she hadn’t thought of him again.
But he’d been wearing a maintenance uniform. And he’d been alone.
Mace had told it was an inside job, that they’d blown the engine cores at the same time. When those mind moles were inside her head, he’d asked her why Foley had found her there that day.
Swallowing, Nia turned, looking over her shoulder at the group of doctors. The man had stopped too, the rest of the medical crew continuing past him. He stared at her with a cold, detached expression on his face. It reminded her of the way Justice had stared at her.
Her heart pounded a warning in her head, drowning out all the other noise in the hangar. When he took a step in her direction, Nia spun around, her breath catching in her throat.
He was a traitor. An agent. She’d been the only one to see him in the engine core. Her feet moved quickly, winding in and out of the people as fast as possible. He’d kill to keep her information quiet. She could scream, shout for help, but Mace’s warnings hung heavy in her mind.
Nia darted to the side, through a line waiting for a transport. People grumbled as she pushed her way through, trying to flee from the man who’d been responsible for the deaths of so many.
And he’s returning to Orion as a medical officer.
She needed to tell Mace. He was the only one who would know what she was talking about, the only safe person on this ship. Was he still on board?
Her palette tight in her fingers, she lifted it to contact him, but stepped the wrong way. A woman moving her arm smacked it out her hand. Nia’s chest lurched as it flew into the air.
The woman said something in Tellusian, her tone apologetic. Waving her comment aside, Nia turned, searching for where it had fallen. Her eyes landed on the man pursuing her. He was way too close, only a few meters away. Her palette lay at his feet. He bent to snatch it, his eyes never leaving her.
Spinning around, Nia left all pretense of being polite behind, and charged through the crowd, her only intent to get away from this man who looked like he could hurt her without feeling an ounce of remorse. Bodies jostled; people unknowingly stepped in her way. She squeezed between them, bumping and pushing. Someone shouted something behind her, but she didn’t stop, didn’t turn around, her momentum focused on escape.
Her heart pounded as she neared an exit. The crowd thinned, and her stomach lurched. It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the safety of numbers, but she couldn’t stop now. Her feet wouldn’t let her. The door slid open as she neared, and she stumbled into a deserted corridor.
With no clue as to where it led, she took off at a run, the gray bulkheads whizzing by her. Nausea rising, she chanced a glance over her shoulder when she neared a corner. The man paused outside the door to the hangar, hands empty of her palette. Nia tripped, then righted herself, turning to sprint.
Why was there no one around? This was a Destroyer, shouldn’t it be full of people? Maybe it was because all the civilians had left already, taking earlier transports like rational, sane people, while she and the rest of the last-minute-idiots scrambled.
There had to be another way to contact Mace. If nothing else, she’d return to his quarters and wait for him—as long as she could lose the man following her.
Not looking behind her, she turned another corner, then another, getting more and more disoriented.
When a stitch stabbed her side, she stopped and bent over, gasping for breath. Had she lost him? The corridor behind her was empty, a lift nearby. If she went to another deck, it would be harder to follow. Hopefully, she could find other people. Someone might tell her how to get in touch with Mace without her palette.
The hairs on her neck stood on end. Nia straightened. The man stepped into sight ahead of her at the other end of the corridor. Panic squeezed her throat. She stumbled, and turned to run, passing the lift and trying to retrace her random route. Could she find her way back to the hangar and onto her transport? Maybe find her palette wherever he left it? Getting off this ship seemed the best way to escape the traitor following her, but she needed her palette to make her connections.
She’d taken two turns by the time she realized she’d gone a different route and was thoroughly lost. A narrow corridor caught her eye.
With one last glance over her shoulder, she escaped through it, the metal corner scraping into shoulder as she made the quick turn. A hum pulled her forward. She tripped into a vast space. A more compact version of Orion’s energy core towered in front of her, the helix narrower, the rotation faster.
Scrambling, Nia followed the railing around, looking for a place to hide. She needed the man to stop pursuing her, then she could find her way back to the hangar and her palette.
The agent stepped in front of her. Nia screamed, stumbling back. Spinning around, she searched frantically for the nearest escape, a corridor like the one she’d come through. A hand gripped her nape with such strength, her body jerked in the opposite direction. She reached, trying to break free, but his fingers dug into the sides of her throat so tightly it felt like he seared holes into her skin. Her limbs thrashed as he shook her, brain rattling in her head. She couldn’t breathe. The railing of the engine core slammed into her stomach. Stars dotted her vision.
She might have heard someone shout from far away, but she wasn’t sure. A sense of weightlessness consumed her as her body was forced over the railing. Then she was falling, falling, falling…Thwack. Her side hit something hard, her breath leaving her body. Her hand reached, trying to stop her descent. Thwack. She hit something else, a flash of light blinding her. Another solid object slammed into her ribs.
Splash.Everything stopped.