Quantum (7 page)

Chapter Six

Tocarra

Three hours until dawn, and his watch had come to an end.

Zander pushed himself up from where he’d been leaning against a tree for the past few hours and stretched. Jezus, his body hurt all over. Bruises and aches from the crash he hadn’t noticed before had settled into his bones along with the night’s cold.

When Petros had taken first watch, he hadn’t slept a wink. Instead, he’d spent her allocated hours worrying about Jaren and asking himself again and again if it was crazy to think she had anything to do with this unplanned camping trip.

The questions kept stacking up, but he had no proof, which frustrated him even more. Maybe it was an illogical leap to be suspicious Petros had turned up at the same time everything started going haywire. But now he had the added coincidence of her rigging up her comm to the ship’s control panel, only to have a missile find them not even a few hours later.

Could she have called in the missile because he’d survived the crash? But why sit around and wait for it, then warn them at the last minute? She could have just as easily slipped away and left Nazari, Jaren, and him to burn.

If he kicked the paranoia and made himself think logically, it didn’t make sense that she’d ordered the missile strike. She’d seemed just as surprised as he was. Still, his gut told him there was something more to her, and he couldn’t ignore that.

Soreness making his gait uneven, Zander crossed the short open space and checked on Jaren. He still couldn’t bring the young officer around. Had he fallen into a coma or something? He’d thought the kid might have internal injuries, but maybe he’d hit his head as well.

With a heavy sigh, he went to rouse Nazari but found her already awake, eyes open and staring at the sky.

“Did you get any sleep, Sergeant?” he asked as she sat up.

Nazari stood, her movements stiff. “A bit, sir. The pain in my ankle made it a little hard. But I guess my internal clock knew my turn at watch was coming up. I’ve been wide-awake for about fifteen minutes now.”

He nodded downward, indicating the leg she was clearly favoring. “How do you think you’ll go once we start hiking?”

She glanced down, frustration crossing her features, but edged with determination. “I won’t lie, sir, it’s going to hurt, but I won’t slow us down.”

“I respect that, Sergeant. But while it might only be a sprain, that doesn’t mean you won’t do yourself more damage if you’re not smart.”

She crossed her arms, glancing across to where Jaren slept, then returned her gaze to him. “If you don’t mind me speaking freely, sir, my sprained ankle is the least of our worries. When we set out in a few hours, we’ve got to take the terrain hard and fast.”

The unspoken sentiment being they wanted to give Jaren a chance to get out of this wilderness alive.

“Three hours until sunrise, Nazari. If Petros and I aren’t awake by the time the sun is coming up, wake us. I want to start out as soon as there’s the slightest bit of light.”

“Yes, sir.” Nazari nodded and made her way over to a tree on the perimeter of the small clearing, using the trunk to lower herself again as she kept her injured leg immobilized.

Zander grabbed a spare thermal blanket. Rubbing the back of his neck where a tight ache had taken hold, he moved over to where Lieutenant Marshal Petros lay curled on her side near the large rock. He stepped over her and stretched out in the space between her and the boulder, flicking the thin, reflective sheet over himself.

He settled on his back, getting as comfortable as he could on the hard, cold ground. The old sleeping habits he’d developed as a soldier years ago didn’t fail him, and he fell right into a combat nap.

Except what only seemed like five minutes later, a shaft of light cut across his eyes. As his mind kicked the last of the sleep haze, he went to shield his face with his arm, but it was pinned. That last detail shot an acute dose of adrenaline into his system, instinct telling him another person held down his arm. He rolled to put his attacker underneath him, trapping the person in place.

The beam of light cut across him again through the violet-gray light of predawn, and he looked down to see Petros staring up at him with wide eyes.
Hell.
She hadn’t been trying to restrain him, but while they’d been asleep, he’d ended up against her with his arm beneath her shoulder. Her gaze shifted past him, and an almost-noiseless hum registered—more like a vibration in the air.

A ship hovered above them, the light that had woken him sweeping in a search pattern across the ground, between the trees. Nazari crouched at the base of a tree fifty feet away, where she’d sat down for her watch earlier. Jaren still lay in the shelter of the huge rock as he’d been left the night before. Squinting, Zander could just see the rise and fall of the younger man’s chest.

Logically, he wanted to assume a rescue shuttle had found them, but after the last twenty-four hours, he wasn’t taking any chances. As the ship hovered closer, the light cutting back toward them, he clamped his hands on Petros and kicked them into a roll, wedging them into the seam where the huge rock met the ground, ending with her on top of him. The boulder blocked Jaren, Petros, and him from direct view of the ship.

“You don’t think they’re here to rescue us?” Petros asked in a low voice.

“Since we got a missile instead of a recovery team, no, I’m not taking any chances.” With a bit of maneuvering—including shifting his hips upward in a way he shouldn’t have been thinking about with a possible traitor perched on top of him and a searchlight sweeping nearby—he pulled his comm out of his pocket. A quick check of the screen revealed he hadn’t missed any calls. If that ship had come from the
Swift Brion
, they’d have constantly pinged his comm to find him once they came within range.

The lack of communication hardened his suspicions the craft wasn’t here to help.

Nazari still crouched at the bottom of the tree. The ship was coming around, and if she didn’t move, they’d see her on the next sweep. They might, anyway. Their boulder—if it was metium-laced or had other heavy metals in the rock—would interfere with scans and protect Jaren, Petros, and him from pretty much anything. But Nazari didn’t stand a chance. If she moved, it might activate motion sensors. If she stayed put, the ship would find her.

Zander clenched his jaw, frustration and futile impotence burning through him. He had to make a call. One that was going to put Nazari in danger either way. Retreating to the boulder would give her the best chance. But the risk in getting here was huge. Not to mention her injured ankle would slow her. But sitting behind the piss-poor cover of the tree would guarantee her getting caught.

He thumbed his comm, and she murmured a response into hers.

“Nazari, I’m ordering you to make a run on our position. Next time the light cuts toward the outer side of the boulder, go for it as fast as you can.”

“Yes, sir.” She ducked her head, and even from here he could see her shoulders tighten.

He lowered his comm, heart straining in his chest like his ribs were contracting around the organ, restricting the blood flow. Nazari shifted positions, ready to launch into a run at a moment’s notice, still favoring her injured leg.

Christ.
He couldn’t just sit here and watch her, knowing how immense the danger was.

“I’m going out to get her.”

He started to slide Petros off him, but she clamped her hands onto his biceps and locked her knees on either side of his hips, keeping him in place.

“You can’t. I won’t let you.”

He tore his gaze from Nazari to look up at Petros.

“You won’t
let
me?” His fingers contracted where they’d inadvertently landed on her hips when he’d rolled them earlier. “I’m your commanding officer, Lieutenant Marshal. So unless you want an official reprimand for indecorous action endangering another soldier’s life, get the hell off me right now.”

Instead of obeying the command, she planted herself more firmly, fingers digging into his upper arms with surprising strength as she leaned down toward him.

“And what exactly would you call an admiral’s assistant allowing her commanding officer to run into certain danger? I’m sorry, sir. I understand you want to help the sergeant, but you can’t without putting yourself in danger, and you know IPC protocol, probably better than I do. As a captain admiral, you cannot put yourself at risk.”

Damn it to hell. She was right. It was one thing he’d never gotten used to since becoming a captain admiral—that there were those who held his life to be more valuable than the people in the chain of command beneath him. He clenched his jaw, fighting down the instinctive urge to remove Petros against her will and go out for Nazari.

“I can’t leave her out there alone.”

Petros nodded, lessening her hold on him a little. “Then I’ll go. If I don’t make it, when you get out of this godforsaken wilderness, contact Rian Sherron and tell him what happened.”

What the—?
Rian Sherron?
She started to climb off him, but he surged up to grab her shoulders. “Wait—”

The ripping sound of gunfire had both of them ducking against the rock face. Halfway across the clearing, Nazari went down, blasts from the ship’s automatic nucleon guns tearing up the earth and leaf litter around her.

“
No, goddamn it!
” He smashed a fist into the ground, the ache of the impact echoing through his wrist up into his arm.

There was no way she could have survived the sustained pounding of ammo. That much firepower at short range would have torn her to shreds. He’d seen it time and again during the early years he’d spent on the ground in the Assimilation Wars.

Petros didn’t say anything but pressed closer to him, covering him as debris and a few ricocheted blasts came their way. With a quick maneuver, he reversed their positions, putting her in the safer shelter between his body and the boulder. Of course she resisted, but he didn’t budge, using his strength and body mass to keep her in place.

“Sir—”

“Shut it. I’ve already lost enough people since yesterday. I’d rather die myself than watch anyone else get cut down.”

Her slate-gray eyes caught his, too much understanding in her gaze as she stared up at him.

The sun had started casting soft golden shafts of light through the forest, the low hum of the ship like a giant angry, discordant insect in the otherwise still dawn.

“I’m sorry.” She murmured the words almost too quietly to hear.

Sorry that he had to inform two families about the death of their loved ones when he got back to the
Swift Brion
? Or sorry because she had something to do with it? Or at least knew more than she was saying? Either way, the apology cut deeper than it had any right to.

“Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

Unless they were. In which case, she was going to wish she’d never met him. He tore his gaze away from her but then found himself looking at the bloody remains of Nazari. So instead, he closed his eyes, lowered his head, and hoped to hell the ship would give up its search sooner rather than later.

…

The ship didn’t leave until three hours had passed. For the first hour, they stayed exactly as they were—Mae with the smooth, cold rock at her back and Graydon pressed along the length of her front, the warmth of his muscles a blunt contrast to the boulder behind her.

She’d willed herself to not notice him since she’d first found him a step behind her at the spaceport coffee kiosk. And since she’d been subjected to the full body-on-body contact dawn wake-up, she’d tried—
damn it
, she’d tried—not to be aware of him.

But no matter how she steeled her thoughts or made herself think of something else, her mind kept coming back to a few simple facts. He was a man. A gorgeous, hot, sexy man. A man without one soft spot on his entire body.

Except there was a chance Zander Graydon wasn’t a
man
at all. Talk about conflicted.

So the hour she’d spent wedged between him and the boulder had been all kinds of uncomfortable. Partly because of her position and the fact that a smaller rock or something was digging into her hip, but mostly because having Graydon all over her was a kind of torture she’d never experienced before.

She couldn’t trust him. But her body—the uncontrollable physical response from having a visually attractive muscled man up close and personal—that sensation she had no way of fully controlling.

After the first hour the ship moved off, and Graydon soundlessly sat up, motioning for her to get upright but stay quiet. After he’d checked the still unconscious Jaren, they’d sat shoulder to shoulder and silent for another two hours until the ship finally left the area.

Graydon pushed to his feet, jaw clenched and expression stoic as he went to stand over Nazari.

Mae stood as well, grimacing at her stiff legs, but stayed near the boulder, giving Graydon a moment alone with the sergeant. She didn’t know how familiar they’d been with each other, but if Nazari had been on the captain admiral’s crew for any length of time, he would be feeling the loss. Especially on the heels of the other AS officer’s death.

He bowed his head and scrubbed a hand over his short hair, stance rigid and fierce. In that second, he seemed to be nothing but a commanding officer coming to grips with the death of his people. Her heart skipped a slow beat, and she really questioned if Rian’s information had been anywhere near correct. By all accounts, the Reidar were sociopathic, so unless this was some big act for her benefit, Graydon might actually be human.

Maybe Rian had only gotten it half right, and they’d just been subjected to the Reidar’s multiple attempts to kill and replace him.

This was too big to figure out on her own. The best thing she could do was keep Graydon at arm’s length and let Rian solve the problem.

Graydon moved all of a sudden. He spun and stalked back toward her, his expression furious. It wasn’t until the last second that she guessed his intent, but by then it was too late. He corralled her against the boulder, capturing her wrists and pinning them either side of her head, trapping her with his body weight.