Quantum (5 page)

Chapter Four

Tocarra

Zander bent to add another log to the fire and tried damn hard to pretend he wasn’t watching Lieutenant Marshal Petros as she crossed the clearing back toward the crumpled shuttle.

Now what’s she up to?
The lieutenant paused a few meters away from the wreck, and even from where he sat Zander could see her squaring her shoulders. She clearly didn’t
want
to go back into the ship—and who could blame her? Though the wreck wouldn’t shift far from where it’d landed, it was unstable, and going back in risked further injury. So what could be so important that she’d decided to force herself inside?

In the few short hours he’d spent with the woman, he’d come to see she had an iron will and no-nonsense attitude. Yet these qualities were underscored by a quick, if not cutting, sense of humor. She wouldn’t be one to take things lying down, and in a situation like this, it was exactly what he needed in an admiral’s assistant.

While eating his beef medley MRE—which had been bad, but he’d eaten worse—he’d replayed the day’s events in his mind. An attempted knifing followed by a shuttle crash…two near-fatal situations in one day.

He’d never considered himself a paranoid son of a bitch, but important essentials missing from the survival gear, too? Anyone would start thinking someone was out to get them. The only problem was, he couldn’t come up with a single reason why or an obvious culprit.

He’d considered running the facts by the lieutenant, seeing what her thoughts on the matter were. But although they’d formed a decent working relationship in the last few hours, he didn’t actually know one damn thing about her, apart from what had been in her personnel files. For all he knew, she could be the one trying to off him.

His conscience gave a vicious kick to his logic at the notion. Part of him didn’t want to believe the worst of her. But she’d turned up just in time for things to take a turn toward dangerously bizarre. Added to the fact that she’d transferred from UAFA
back
to the IPC—which was a career move no one in the history of anyone ever actually made—it all looked suspicious.

The Universal Armed Forces Agency paid better, didn’t keep their soldiers pressed under a thumb of strict military regimes, and gave their agents more personal freedom. So it made no sense anyone would leave all that to return to the, by comparison, archaic IPC. And though UAFA were supposed to be a privately owned, autonomous military with allegiance to those with the most money, he’d heard rumors that they were responsible for orchestrating more than a few “accidents” to remove certain people and manipulate governments to their advantage.

While he didn’t consider himself an important political pawn, the half-baked idea that Petros was still working for UAFA and had actually come here to remove him from somebody else’s equation surfaced momentarily in his mind.

But even if Petros was a UAFA agent sent to kill him, after the first two attempts were made to look like a robbery and a shuttle crash, doing something like simply stabbing him in the chest seemed rather redundant. No, if his suspicions about her proved correct, she’d no doubt stab him in the back.

What a damned mess. He had no proof, and he also had no evidence that Petros was anything other than a career soldier who, rather unusually, hadn’t liked working for UAFA. He hadn’t made it to the rank of captain admiral at the comparatively young age of thirty-five by jumping to conclusions. The best thing he could do for the time being was watch and wait for someone to show their hand.

He shifted his attention to Jaren, who’d fallen into a doze. Maybe sleep was the best kindness he could offer the kid right now, but he worried that the drowsiness was indicative of something more serious going on, so he’d been waking him up at regular intervals to check his responsiveness.

“I’ll keep an eye on him, sir,” Nazari offered as he gently pressed his fingers into Jaren’s wrist to check his pulse. His heartbeat seemed regular, if not a little slow. But since he wasn’t a doctor, he had no idea what that meant.

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

He stood and stretched, catching sight of the lieutenant as she clambered up the side of the shuttle and into the dark, gaping hole. Whatever she was after, his sense of duty to the people serving under him wouldn’t let him leave her to do it on her own, no matter his uncertainties.

Stopping at the pile of bags, he dug out a flashlight and shrugged out of his stiff dress jacket. He tugged his tie loose and attacked the first few studs on his shirt as he approached the shuttle before pausing to roll up his sleeves. Not much better, but practical.
What I wouldn’t do for a battle dress uniform right about now.
Being stuck in this damn clown suit grated on his temper.

He turned on the flashlight and made his way into the darkened ship. Some of the lights that had been flickering before had since died, casting the interior in the hellish red glow of a few emergency illuminations still working. Swinging the flashlight in an arc, he didn’t see the lieutenant, so he took a couple of steps farther inside.

“Petros?”

“Over here.” The muffled reply came from the direction of the flight console.

He picked his way over and found her kneeling between the two seats they’d been sitting on during the flight, sorting through wires in the bottom of the captain’s console.

She glanced up as he stopped next to her.

“Oh, good. I could do with some light.” The lieutenant pointed at the opened recess of the console.

He crouched down and positioned the flashlight where she’d indicated. “What are you doing?”

Petros picked a couple of wires free and dropped them aside then tackled a couple of others. “I figured if I can get the console display free, I might be able to rig it to a personal comm, find a signal, and send a message to the
Swift Brion
. Failing that, we should be able to use it to navigate out of the woods to the nearest city.”

Hell, he’d been too busy mulling over the possibility of someone trying to kill him to consider doing something like that. Brilliant. The shuttle consoles had an independent power source. Though it wouldn’t last forever, it should be enough to help them.

“You’re a handy person to have around, Petros. I mean, between your primitive medical skills and jury-rigging a destroyed shuttle…are there any other odd talents you’d like to share?”

She looked up long enough to send him an exasperated glare. “If I think of any, sir, you’ll be the first to know.”

He grinned, but she didn’t see it since she’d ducked her head into the console. Sliding down from his crouch, he found a more comfortable position with his back against the bottom of the copilot’s chair.

Somewhere outside the shuttle, birds were trilling a louder chorus now that the sun had started dropping and the temperature began cooling off. If not for the fact he’d been stranded with injured people in the middle of the wilderness, somewhere like this would have been the perfect place to get away and relax.

Petros stood, catching his attention. “Can I borrow that knife of yours?”

He eyed her for a moment, a low rumble of warning in the back of his mind like distant thunder, reviving his earlier suspicions of her.

“Sure.” He pulled the blade from the sheath in his belt and handed it over. If she noticed his momentary hesitation, she wasn’t giving any hint of it.

Using the weapon as a lever, she got the display screen free of the console.

“Okay, let’s get out of here. Again.” The lieutenant handed the knife back to him as she stepped over his stretched-out legs.

Outside, they returned to sit by the fire, where Jaren was still sleeping and Nazari snacked on MRE crackers. As he sat down, Petros paused to check on Jaren. A frown creased her brow when she straightened and came to sit closer to the fire.

“His breathing is too shallow. I’m worried if we don’t get rescued in the next few hours…” The lieutenant glanced upward, as if a ship would appear any second now.

He automatically laid a hand on her arm. “We can’t do anything more for him. Let’s just concentrate on what we
can
do.”

Truthfully, he was trying not to dwell on Jaren’s condition. He’d promised Mikel to watch out for his kid brother and had thought getting him assigned under his command on the
Swift Brion
would be the best solution. Instead, Jaren was lying seriously injured, miles from any help with no prospect of an immediate rescue. If he didn’t make it—

His guts clenched at a sensory memory of holding Mikel’s hand while the life had slipped from his body. He’d had to leave Mikel where he’d fallen, and the death of his buddy had lit a blaze of furious determination within him. He’d vowed to get out of that crumbling hell, the IPC drones leveling the city despite having friendlies on the ground. And he’d done it. Not a single other man in his unit had even sustained an injury. Later, they’d given him awards, fast-tracked promotions, and people still talked about it. But none of that could change the fact that he’d left Mikel behind.

No.
He wouldn’t do the same with Jaren.

The lieutenant had bowed her head, touching the display screen and bringing it to life. While he helped himself to some of Nazari’s crackers, Petros took her commpad and attached it to the screen via one of the few wires she’d left hanging off it.

She blew out a long breath. “Okay, this thing is giving me GPS data, and we’ll definitely be able to use it to hike out if we have to. But it looks like the
Swift Brion
is out of range, and the display isn’t sensing any other ships in the immediate vicinity. I’ve got a signal, but it’s weak. No one is going to pick up the distress beacon unless they come within our immediate vicinity.”

Strange.
No rescue team had come looking for them. Or if they had, they weren’t close enough to hail on the short range of the limited signal, whatever in the hell could be causing that. His gaze was drawn to Jaren, the weight of the kid’s fate settling like a mantle of rock on his shoulders.

“What are our options, Lieutenant?”

She sighed and scrolled through several screens of data. “I can set a program to continually search for any ships coming into range and give us an immediate warning. There’s no point sending out any transmission. No ship is going to hear it, and it’s not strong enough to reach the nearest city. It’ll just waste what little power we have.”

“All right. So my earlier suggestion is still the best way to go. We’ll give it tonight, see if that thing detects any ships in the area, and in the morning we’ll consider hiking out.”

She held up the display for him to see. A map showed two dots—one where they’d crashed and one representing the nearest civilization. “According to this, it’ll take about two days to hike out.”

He nodded, since he’d guessed as much. With two injured soldiers, it might be even longer. Trepidation dug into him with ice-cold claws of impotence. Depending on the extent of Jaren’s injury, there was every chance he didn’t even have two days. Somehow, he had to find a way to get Mikel’s kid brother out sooner rather than later.

The lieutenant spent a few more minutes working on the display, then set it aside. “Well, that’s about all we can do for the night.”

The shadows around their makeshift campsite were getting longer, so he gathered the packs and pulled out things they’d need after it got dark—extra flashlights, special paper-thin thermal blankets, plastic tarps in case of rain, even though the sky was clear, plus extra food and water.

Jaren stirred as he tucked one of the thermal blankets around him.

“Thanks, sir.” He reached up with one hand and wrapped his fingers into the material.

“Feeling any better?” The words were thick along the back of his throat.

Jaren nodded, though the slow movement wasn’t all that convincing. “I’m a bit sore, but I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will. Mikel always used to tell me you were one tough little bastard.”

Jaren laughed, but it turned into a cough. “I’m sure he said that and more. Used to annoy the crap out of him, following him around everywhere.”

“I hear that’s what younger brothers are good at.” He double-checked the blanket was secure. “Try to get as much rest as you can.”

Because if they decided to start hiking out tomorrow, the kid was going to need his energy.

He returned to his spot near the fire, adding a few more logs. The sun had gone down, and a violet twilight had set in. Birdsong gave way to insect chatter, creating a constant background noise. It’d been a long while since he’d been forced to sleep out anywhere, and the cooling air, with the star-dotted night sky above, brought back sharp memories of his years at war, especially those long months on Minnea without supplies.

He glanced over at Petros to distract himself before he could fall into the black hole of PTSD-worthy memories. She reached up to pull her ponytail free, letting her shiny black hair fall around her shoulders, the length of it almost reaching the middle of her back. In the glow of the firelight, her skin appeared smooth and flawless, her slate-gray eyes reflecting the flickering glow of the flames. He became suspended, mesmerized as she slowly twisted her hair into a long plait and then resecured it.

He’d been trying not to notice since she’d first turned to look at him at the Tocarra spaceport, but the woman was damned beautiful. And yes, he respected her intelligence and admired her sense of humor. However, too many suspicions about this situation, and her potential involvement, weighed like a string of meteorites around his neck.

His suspicions about her aside, she’d been assigned as his admiral’s assistant. There wasn’t another person on his entire ship he’d have a closer working relationship with. And now that he’d admitted he found her attractive in too many ways to count, he had to move past it, let it go, and not allow it to become an issue.

Muddying the waters of their association with any type of personal feelings would be bad for all concerned. Yeah, he’d been attracted to a female crew member once or twice before. But his career and professionalism always kept him detached, and he could do it again this time. Especially if he kept in mind she might not be who she appeared.