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Authors: Lyn Gala

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Tom looked down the ramp where Da’shay was still stroking
the crate and then over to Eli. Eli gave a shrug. “Let her be,” he suggested.
Tom nodded. It wasn’t as if he actually cared, anyway.

For someone who knew how to put an engine together and take
it apart while the thing was still flying, Becca was not exactly impressive
trying to drive it. She swung the ship around and one wing dipped, nearly hitting
the ground again before the lateral thrusters fired and the
Kratos
edged
closer, her side lining up against the
Reseda
.

“Eli,” Ramsay said, his voice tight.

“On it,” Eli agreed. He opened a comm. channel. “Becca, we
don’t mind walking. Feel free to park it right there.”

“I can put it down next to you,” Becca said. The ship crept
closer to them, the broadside showing off the huge scorch mark where they’d
taken fire. Becca must have been working hard because about half the scorch was
gone and three new plates shone brightly against the dull metal of the rest of
the hull.

“Becca,” Eli warned. Technically, Becca outranked him. She
was an officer, but she was a young officer and smart enough to listen to the
experienced soldiers. That’s how Tom had stayed alive all these years—he knew
whose orders to follow and when to drop a grenade into someone’s hovercraft to
keep them off the battlefront.

“Putting her down now,” Becca said cheerfully as the ship
settled toward the ground.

“All the little whispers tick and tick,” Da’shay said loudly
from the bottom of the ramp. They ignored her.

“Venting engines now,” Becca said, and with a pop and a huge
sigh, the
Kratos
dumped steam out of her vents, sending clouds of hot
dust into the air. As the cloud reached them, fogging the porthole Ramsay was
standing at, a huge explosion hit the ship and Tom found himself flying through
the air as the entire
Reseda
rose onto her side and then crashed down.
His back hit the bulkhead and then Tom was out cold.

Chapter Two

 

Tom woke in medbay, but not the
Kratos
’ medbay. That
was a tiny room barely bigger than the bunk in the middle. This was a huge room
with light coming in through the ceiling and full-sized beds lined up against
the wall.

“Ah, Tom Frieden. It’s nice to see you responding to the
stimi. How are you feeling?” A doctor or nurse with his white coat came over to
hover over Tom and make him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t like people standing
over him and he frowned up at the man to show just how unhappy he was.

“Like horse shit,” Tom answered honestly. The staff member
had been reaching out to poke and prod at Tom, but that made him pause for a
second. “What the hell hit me?” Tom demanded. His throat felt raw and
scratched, so he guessed he’d been out for a while and they’d either had the
machines feeding him or breathing for him. It wasn’t a pleasant thought either
way.

“Well, we received limited information, but you appear to
have been in an explosion.” The man smiled as he jabbed Tom in the kidneys. Tom
stared at the idiot. He’d pretty much figured that one out on his own.

“No shit, genius. What kind of explosion? How’s the rest of
the crew?”

The guy kept poking at Tom and then recording something on
his little handheld.

“Nice to know you’re thinking about us,” Ramsay said. Tom
looked up to find the captain lying two beds over. “Eli is out already. He only
had a broken bone and Becca was safe in the
Kratos
. We got the worst of
it, and I don’t mind saying I am too damn old to be getting blown up, but no
one’s dead. Well, no one except the men we killed.”

Tom sighed and leaned back, relieved at that. Fact was that
Becca wasn’t much of a pilot, but she was someone who made Tom think of the
girls back home—all sweetness until some storm ripped through and then you got
to see how strong they were. His worst fear had been that the
Kratos
had
gone up, taking Becca with it.

“Turns out the crate was booby trapped. When the heat from
the engines hit it, the whole shipment blew sky high.”

“Da’shay?” Tom wasn’t a fan, but he didn’t like the thought
of her blowing up without any warning.

“You know
genta
.” Ramsay shrugged and then he gave a
hiss of pain that suggested he had more injuries than Tom could see. “She said
that the heat was a new experience.”

Tom sat up, ignoring the unhappy squawk the doctor gave and
the even more unhappy flare of pain in his hip. He grabbed at his leg and
groaned in pain before he could get his words out. “She knew. That fucking
daughter of a pox-sick cow knew.”

“What? Tom, calm down,” Ramsay said, his voice dark with
warning.

“Tick tock, isn’t that was she was saying right before we
all just about got blown to pieces? Tick tock?” Tom demanded. He might have
gotten out of bed so he could stalk over to Ramsay’s bed to make his point
better, but his hip felt as if it were on fire from the inside.

“Corporal!” Ramsay barked out. He wasn’t a big man, not like
Tom, and he was actually kind of average looking and starting to look like a
curly haired grandfather, but when Ramsay got mad, he had a terrifying ‘do not
fuck with me’ expression. He glared at Tom now, daring him to push this any
farther, and Tom pressed his lips into a thin line, struggling to pull back
before he went too far. He respected Ramsay enough to not say all things he was
thinking right now.

“Sir,” Tom said more carefully, “I’d like to point out that
Da’shay was saying something about whispers and ticking before the bomb went
off. It might be, sir, that she knew there was a bomb in there.” He felt as if
he were going to explode with emotion, but he reined it all back in.

“That had occurred to me,” Ramsay agreed. “Tom, let the
doctor tend you. I need you healthy and on your feet, not lame and hobbling
around on crutches.”

“And Da’shay?”

“She’s already walking around fine,” Ramsay said, and Tom
frowned, wondering if the man had misunderstood him or if he was being too damn
stubborn to discuss this.
Genta
, full-
genta
or the half-breeds
that wandered in and out of Corps space, were pretty damn hard to kill; they
tended to engineer their bodies to take all sorts of damage without breaking
down, but if Da’shay was going to take up with explosives, he would put a
bullet in her brain stem. “I know that look.” Ramsay sounded unforgiving.

“I ain’t saying anything.”

“You’re thinking it loud enough. Tom Frieden, you couldn’t
lie if you tried, and I’m telling you right now. Let this go.”

“But Cap…”

“You’ve known me six years, Tom. Six years we’ve had each
other’s backs, right?”

Tom didn’t answer, but that was true enough.

“I’m telling you—drop this. Da’shay didn’t set that bomb,
and if you go after her, you’re going to go stirring a whole hornet’s nest of
trouble. Drop it. I’m more interested in whoever set that bomb.”

“Oh I’m interested in returning that favor too,” Tom
complained before turning his attention back to the hands picking at him. “Stop
fussing over me.” He shoved at the white-coated man before he settled back into
bed. When the machine beeped and released painkiller into his system, Tom
sighed happily and let himself sag. It felt good to not hurt for a while.

“Captain?” A new voice asked. “I heard you were awake, sir.”
Tom cracked his eyes open and watched as Eli walked in. He smiled at the nurse
and she smiled back, blinded by that charming grin of his. Tom could
practically smell her disappointment as Eli focused on the captain. That one
was wet in the pants.

“They woke both of us this morning.” Ramsay gestured over
toward Tom, but the painkillers made Tom too tired to do much other than blink
his already half-closed eyes.

“Sir, he doesn’t look all that awake.”

“Not one minute ago, he was ranting about Da’shay. I think
he pissed off the doc.” Ramsay looked almost amused.

A white coat walked past Tom’s bed. “I think it’s best to
avoid letting him upset himself. The sedatives will wear off in a few hours,”
the doctor told Ramsay.

“Why do I think you’re off duty in a couple of hours?”
Ramsay grinned.

“I very well may be,” the doctor agreed. “If he’s going to
rip out all that work on his hip, I don’t want to be here to listen to the
surgeon ranting about our post-surgical care. Now how is your shoulder?”

“Hurts like hell, doc. I’ve had bullet wounds that didn’t
sting this much and I really am getting too old to bounce back from this kind
of damage.” Tom would have commented, but his tongue was too big for his mouth.
Ramsay was older than most active officers and he showed every year with his
white hair and leathery skin. However, he wasn’t too old. The man could still
shoot and fight with any twenty-year-old and he often had to in order to get
his arrest.

The doctor nodded. “Joint pain always hurts worse than
muscle damage. I’ll leave instructions that you can have painkillers as needed.
Now unless there’s anything else…?”

“Nope,” Ramsay said. The doctor left, and Tom was surprised
that the nurse left with him. He figured she’d hang around and try to corral
Eli into dinner. The man certainly didn’t look as if he’d been blown up with
the rest of them. Damn sergeant looked as though he was ready for a magazine cover.
Tom’s eyes drifted shut since there wasn’t anything interesting going on.

“Do you think Da’shay knew, sir?” Eli asked.

“No way of telling with that
genta
. I will say this,
if that crate had gone up when it was inside the
Kratos
, we all would
have been floating in space without suits.”

“It does look like a trap.”

Tom had almost drifted to sleep, but Ramsay’s tense tone as
he replied made Tom not only wake up, but reach for a gun he didn’t have.
“Something’s not right, Eli. If this was a trap, why was Smyth was refusing to
sell? Seems like if he was trying to get a bomb on the
Kratos
, he would
have offered us a better deal.”

“Command thinks that maybe our cover held, sir. They believe
that Captain Smyth was trying to get you to walk away from the deal so he could
sell the crate to an undercover team.”

“Idiots,” Tom mumbled from his bed. Both of them ignored
him.

“Any particular target?”

“The
Prydwen
. Captain Liang got a message saying
Smyth had merchandise.” The room went silent for a while and Tom had to struggle
to focus on his shifting thoughts.

Tom had never served with Liang, but he was another of those
captains who insisted that everything be pretty. Tom had been drinking buddies
with the engineer from the
Prydwen
when they were both in for repairs
after a really bad set-to with a fleet of slavers they’d cornered in Omega
sector. Liang was also one of those captains who did more arresting than
undercover work because he ended up on the news-vids standing next to
confiscated goods more often than most captains. Probably because he was a
pretty man. Tom didn’t figure any of them on the
Kratos
rated as pretty.
Well, Eli would, but he hadn’t really been on the ship long enough to count.
Tom was a rough man, Becca was cute as hell and Ramsay had a distinguished sort
of presence, but none of them was handsome the way Liang was.

“Things are getting more serious if they’re moving from
smuggling to terrorism,” Ramsay said, his voice slow and thoughtful. That was a
tone that usually meant he was thinking on ways to kill someone, and Tom
smiled. Hell yeah…if he was going to get blown up, he wanted revenge on whoever
had given Smyth that damn bomb. He thought about Da’shay lying on the crate,
her long fingers stroking the wood. Might be that he wanted revenge on several
people.

“Sir, terrorism means targeting civilians. I think this
makes them cold-blooded murderers.”

Ramsay’s snort made it clear that he didn’t agree.

“I’m with the captain on that,” Tom said blearily. He forced
one eye open, and Eli was undulating back and forth as he stood by the
captain’s bed. Either that or Tom was overmedicated.

“If they wanted to kill cops, they could have called Liang
or us and asked for a meet and then had snipers take us out,” Ramsay pointed
out. “Bomb seems like overkill.”

“Wouldn’t happen,” Tom interrupted. He stuck his tongue out
as he tried to get the awkward thing to work right. When he opened his eyes,
both Eli and Ramsay were looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Took those
two out at five thousand meters,” Tom explained with a smile. He was the best,
and if another sniper tried taking out his crew, they’d be buried before they
figured out how wrong they were. “Ain’t a sniper who can outthink me.” Tom knew
he wasn’t particularly bright, but he knew how to sling a gun and he knew it
better than anyone. He wouldn’t let the captain walk into a meet that was
vulnerable to sniper fire, not unless he was there on the high ground making
sure he was the only sniper.

A warm hand patted Tom, but his eyes were too heavy to open,
so he wasn’t sure who it was. Damn sedative.

Ramsay cleared his throat. “Putting a bomb on a ship is
playing off every spacer’s greatest fear. Having your ship blow up under you
without any chance to fight back…that’s terror. They’re trying to terrorize the
entire Corps into backing off and letting them have all the Omega colonies. As
more immigrants move in and expect Corps protection, they’re worried about
losing influence, even over the slave colonies.”

“Could be, sir,” Eli agreed. “Command wants to debrief you.
They implied we had a mission, but they weren’t willing to debrief me.”

“Eli, you’ve got to finish that training so we can get you
officer status. I’m sick of them playing these political games with rank.”

“Yes sir,” Eli agreed. “However, I got the impression they
want us to go in deeper.”

“Deeper?” Ramsay sounded suspicious, and he should. The
Omega colonies had voted to reject government protection, making them havens
for slavers and smugglers. The Corps had no authority there at all. They went
in that far and they’d be on their own.

“We were negotiating in good faith when the cargo exploded.
If we were truly smugglers, we would go running straight to Smyth’s contacts
demanding restitution for a disaster of that size.”

“And you’re just guessing on all this?”

“Sir, you know I never guess until I have good reason to
believe I’m right. I’m not a gambling man.”

“Sure you are. You signed up with me.” Ramsay sounded amused
at that. Tom pried one eye open again and sucked in a fast breath. The huge
eyes staring at him were so dark that the brown nearly blended with the pupil,
giving the impression of something inhuman sitting next to his bed, her blue
hands resting on his arm. Tom opened his mouth, struggling to curse and demand
that she get away from him, but the energy seemed to drain from him and sleep
clung to him like cobwebs that he couldn’t shake loose. His eyes fell shut
before he could figure out if Da’shay had broken into the men’s ward or if he
was having a particularly bad reaction to the sedative.

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