Chaos Reigning, page 17
“You can’t take out a battalion.”
“No, I can’t. I’m better suited to stealth. But I can gather up our forces and hit the backup location. It’s possible the attackers don’t know about it, or if they do, that it’s only lightly defended.”
“You’ve made up your mind.”
I smiled grimly. “I have. I don’t expect you or Aoife to accompany me. You’re welcome to stay here in the von Hasenberg building until the gates come back up.” I paused and considered it. “Actually, with all of the other attacks, that might not be safe. I’ll book you into whichever hotel you prefer.”
“Why not let the rebels take over? Bow out gracefully while you can?”
“Because I don’t think they are rebels, not really. I think it’s a few lower houses and the Syndicate. And while I know the current government has problems that Father and the others are reluctant to solve, the Syndicate will be far, far worse. If they get a foothold, they’ll rule the universe even more ruthlessly than the Royal Consortium. And the lower houses working with them are idiots not to see that.”
We were interrupted when my console lit up with warnings. An unknown ship was targeting us. The automatic defense prevented them from getting a lock, but they were closing the distance. I pulled up the information Chaos had gathered.
We were being hunted by an unflagged destroyer.
“Fuck!” My hands flew over the console. I dropped us into deep stealth to cut all signals from the ship and then ramped the engines to full power to give us maneuverability. I pressed the ship’s internal intercom button. “Secure yourselves. It’s about to get bumpy.” I followed my own advice and clipped in to the restraints in my chair.
Alex dropped into the navigation and tactical console and clipped in. He tapped on the console then scowled. “Give me access to the weapons’ systems.”
I unlocked his console but warned, “There’s a destroyer on our ass. Don’t get us in a firefight unless there is no other option. I’m running stealth.”
I pulled up the list of nearby destinations. Chaos could jump up to three thousand light years without the help of a gate, but all of the big occupied planets and stations were farther away than that. Dammit. I needed supplies before I jumped to Earth.
More warnings flashed on my console and the ship shuddered as the shield deflected a blast. A blast from in front of us. A second destroyer had joined the fight. And while their systems couldn’t lock on to us, their manual targeting seemed to be working just fine.
Chaos trembled as Alex fired on the destroyer behind us, but their shields deflected the shot. I could not take on two destroyers and win.
“We’re jumping local,” I said. “Keep them off of us until I find a destination.”
I frantically searched the jump list again for the most promising option and found a small station at the very edge of Chaos’s capability. This ship had the best internals in the ’verse. If the destroyers wanted to follow us, they would have to jump twice. By the time they waited out their FTL cooldown for the second jump, we’d be long gone.
I locked in the course and slapped the jump confirmation button just as the shield took another glancing hit.
The engine noise ramped up, then fell silent as my stomach dropped and we jumped. The view changed. There was no longer a pretty planet below us, just a vast expanse of empty space. In the far distance, lights from the space station flickered like a distant star.
“Where are we?”
“S2BAP8. A small station outside the destroyer’s jump radius. I’m going to take us in. We’ll wait out the FTL cooldown on the station.”
Alex nodded in acknowledgment.
Still in stealth, Chaos wasn’t transmitting any registration data. I hastily swapped the registration to backup data that showed the ship was registered to one of the many shell companies I owned. It would not be traceable back to me, or to House von Hasenberg.
Now to see if my gamble had paid off, I brought the ship out of stealth and requested a berth. I received provisional clearance to land in bay twelve, assuming I paid a truly staggering amount of credits.
I paid.
I approved the automated flight path and Chaos headed for our home for the next six hours while the FTL cooled down. The mandatory wait gave me a convenient deadline for getting supplies and backup—if this tiny station even had any to offer.
I wasn’t holding my breath.
Chapter Seventeen
Station Two of Beta Andromedae Primus Eight—or S2BAP8—was not much to look at. The planet it was named after, BAP Eight, had originally been terraformed for use as a farming planet. Then as synthesizers took over most food production, the planet had fallen out of favor. A few hundred thousand hearty souls still lived on-planet, eking out a living by trading with the station and travelers headed deeper into Andromedae space.
Needless to say, the traffic wasn’t exactly thick.
The station had a dozen levels and a listed resident population of a little over three thousand. Built in a starfish configuration around a central core, landing bay twelve was at the end of one of the arms. The bay was secured by both an atmospheric shield and a heavy blast door, so leaving would not be a quick process.
Alex had been strangely silent since the jump, but as Chaos settled in the landing bay, I snuck a glance at him. I’d been too caught up before, but now I realized that he’d changed his shirt. “Did you get bandaged while you were in the medbay?”
He nodded. “Cira patched me up with some regeneration gel after I took care of her leg. The injury is going to put her out of commission for a day or two, even with the regen gel.”
I didn’t have time to wait for her to heal. I needed to strike while everything was still in flux, but at the rate I was losing allies, I’d be storming Earth alone. Hopefully S2BAP8 had a whole bunch of hungry mercs willing to risk life and limb for a shot at an astronomical reward—and who wouldn’t stab me in the back at the first opportunity.
Alex glanced at me. “You’re planning to enter the station?”
“Yes, but not until a decent hour. I’m going to grab a few hours of sleep, then go in search of supplies and people. I’ll pay the fare for you and Aoife to get back to Andromeda Prime. I don’t have the hard credits on me for what Bianca owes you, but if my bank account isn’t frozen, I can initiate the transfer. This far from a gate and with communication down, it’ll take a couple of weeks to go through, but I can give you enough hard credits to cover the gap.”
Alex didn’t contradict me and I felt a tiny stab of disappointment. Of course he wouldn’t want to go to Earth. I was on a fool’s errand and I’d be lucky if I could persuade anyone to accompany me. Ying might also change her mind, now that the gates were down and turning back wasn’t an option.
“I’m going to talk to Aoife, then hit the rack. Don’t leave the ship without me.” At my raised eyebrow, he softened his tone. “Please.”
“Before you do that, would you mind bringing me the papers from your bag? And whatever Aoife managed to grab from the office?”
He nodded and left the flight deck.
I fished out the credit and data chips I’d stolen from House James. There were three hard credit chips and one data chip. I used my com to check the amount on the credit chips. I blinked and checked again, but the total came back the same. There was a shocking amount of money on these three chips.
Like instantly become a lower house kind of money.
Hard credit chips were not tied to bank accounts. Like the paper currency of old, if a credit chip was lost, the money was gone. If this money had come from House James, I’d just bankrupted them. I could pay off Alex and Aoife no matter how much Bianca had promised them.
I could hire an army of mercenaries.
Why would any House keep such a ridiculous amount of money on hard credit chips? The only answer I could think of was for untraceable bribes. But a payment this big would buy a small, sparsely inhabited planet in an out-of-the-way part of the ’verse.
Or pay off the Syndicate after they took out three High Houses.
Nothing I’d learned about House James led me to believe that they had this kind of ready capital. No, this was blood money paid for by multiple Houses. But how many were involved?
The data chip might shed some light, but it was more dangerous than credit chips. I needed a secondary com that I could put in quarantine mode. I unclipped from my seat and headed down the short hall to my quarters.
My suite took up the entire starboard side of the ship from the flight deck to the cargo bay. The door opened to a tiny sitting room that connected to a small study on the right and a bedroom on the left. The bedroom had an en suite bathroom. The sitting room was a bright orange and the furniture was as colorful as in the rest of my public spaces.
My bedroom was a more subdued pale yellow that reminded me of sunshine even in the depths of space. I swiped my identity chip over a plain piece of wall paneling and the panel slid aside to reveal my personal armory.
Filled with weapons and supplies, the secret closet was shielded from all but the most sensitive scanners. I grabbed the com I needed, then locked the credit chips in the hidden, built-in safe. I couldn’t carry that much money on me into the station or I’d be begging for trouble. I closed the panel and it automatically locked.
The com I’d grabbed, like all of my coms, was a von Hasenberg specialty, which meant it had features not found in standard off-the-shelf devices. A quarantine mode was one of those features. It shut down all external communication and turned on processing protection. Inserted data chips would be read and the data placed in safe storage where no executables were allowed to run.
I didn’t know if the data chip was protected by a virus, but if I was hiding a secret Syndicate contract for toppling the three High Houses, I’d include one. Plus, it was better to be safe than sorry.
I inserted the chip and waited for the data to be copied. Once it was done, I crossed my fingers and opened the files, but after delivering a fortune in credits, the universe was not feeling particularly generous any longer—the data was encrypted.
The com had chips designed to crack encryption, but it would take a while. If I was very lucky, the time would be measured in hours. If not, it could be days or months. For now, I would have to move forward with the information I already had.
A KNOCK ON THE SUITE DOOR PULLED ME AWAY FROM the com. I dropped it on the desk in my study to let it continue working, then opened the door. Alex stood on the other side, holding a stack of paper with a gold necklace on top. I stepped back so he could enter, and he blinked as the sitting room wall color assaulted his eyes.
“Ao—”
I shushed him before he could finish the name, then picked up the necklace. It was as beautiful as it was fake. It didn’t seem to be old enough to have sentimental value, so the only reason to lock it in a safe was to ensure anyone who broke in would steal it.
I used my com to scan the necklace and paperwork for bugs and trackers. Both scans came back positive on the necklace. I couldn’t remotely disable them with my com, which meant they were high-level tech, so I smashed the necklace under my heel until the scan came back negative, then put the pieces in a signal-proof pouch.
Once I was done, Alex broke his silence. “How did you know?”
“I can spot fake jewelry at thirty paces. I should’ve scanned it before we left, but things were a little dicey.”
“Will they follow us here?”
“Eventually, but they would’ve done that before. If a ship jumps back to Andromeda Prime and relays the signal, then they might get here faster than if they were choosing destinations at random, but we’ll be long gone either way.”
Direct FTL communication was expensive and finicky, so stations far from the gates like S2BAP8 relied on passing ships and com drones to relay messages. Even now their news cache would be updating with information from Chaos. I’d considered locking down the ship’s communications, but I wanted the mercs I hired to know what they were signing up for. It would cost me more, but hopefully it meant I would get a crew who meant business.
Alex handed me the stack of papers. “Are you going to go through those before you sleep?”
I stepped into the office and dumped the paper on my desk with the com. “No. I probably should, but if I do, I’ll be asleep and I still need to talk to Ying.”
Alex had followed me silently, moving with a quiet grace that belied his size. He was tall and broad and muscled, but he moved like an athlete or dancer—or a very deadly soldier. He leaned against the office doorway, seemingly harmless.
“How do you do that?” I asked with a frown.
“Do what?”
I waved a hand at him, trying to encompass everything. “Blend into the background. Be inconspicuous. Look harmless.”
A lazy grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “What makes you think I’m not?”
“Please. I’ve seen you shoot.” And I’d fought him, very briefly, hand to hand. He was far from harmless.
He straightened, and once again his presence felt heavy in the room. “You do it, too,” he said. He stalked toward me until he was less than an arm’s length away. “When you’re playing nice with others, you go all soft and helpless. It’s a mask and a form of manipulation, but it’s all about body language.”
I liked the language his body was speaking right now. It took all of my willpower stop myself from licking my lips and staring at his mouth.
He lifted an arm and barely touched my shirt where I’d been shot. “Did you bandage your shoulder?”
In truth, with all the drama, I’d forgotten about it. A glance showed a small nick in my shirt where the bolt had grazed me, but my shoulder wasn’t bothering me. My nanos had already taken care of it. “It was barely a scratch. It’s already healed.”
“May I check it? Please?” His voice was whisper-soft temptation.
“It’s fine,” I grumbled, but I pulled my shirt over my head. Alex’s eyes dropped to my chest before he blinked and focused on my shoulder. I had on a plain sports bra that held everything firmly in place and was not the least bit enticing. Too bad.
Alex’s hands were gentle on my skin as he cupped my shoulder and brushed away flecks of dried blood. The blaster bolt had sliced a path through the top of my left shoulder about the width of one of his fingers and a millimeter deep. The wound was pink and shiny as my natural healing and nanos raced to repair the skin.
While he inspected the wound, his thumb traced back and forth over my clavicle, so lightly that I wasn’t sure he knew he was doing it. It was a motion meant to soothe, but all it did was make me more aware of him. I held perfectly still, afraid that movement would snap him back to reality and I wasn’t ready for this moment to end.
I closed my eyes against the urge to sway into him. It had been so long since someone had gathered me close and offered me comfort for no other reason than that I needed it. I had so many superficial acquaintances, but so few true friends.
He touched my jaw, tilting my face up to his. “Are you okay?”
A look proved that he was closer than he had been. I could see the flecks of black and gold in his brown eyes and the dark stubble shadowing his jaw.
And still his thumb caressed my collarbone.
He was going to leave for Andromeda Prime in the morning. This might be my last chance to see if our kiss was a fluke. I needed to know. For science.
Decision made, I lifted my hand to his chest. His muscles were firm under my fingers. I glanced up at him from under my lashes. “May I kiss you?”
“Please.” The demand sounded like it was ripped from him, his voice deep and delicious.
I ran my hand up his chest and around the back of his neck, into the soft strands of his dark hair. I took my time. There was no rush and I wanted to savor this moment. If things went poorly on Earth, this could be my last kiss ever.
I pushed the thought aside and focused on Alex.
I closed the distance between us, until my chest brushed against his. Once again I bemoaned my bra selection, but based on the heat in his eyes, he wasn’t complaining. I stretched up and brushed my mouth against his, once, twice. Tingles shivered down my spine, tightening my nipples and causing heat to pool low. And I’d barely started.
The first kiss was not a fluke.
I licked into his mouth and he met me with a low groan. The hot slide of his tongue against mine threatened to send me up in flames. His hands clamped around my hips and he pulled me close, until I could feel the heat of him through my remaining clothes. I wrapped my other hand over his shoulder and tried to pull him even closer. In different circumstances, I would’ve climbed him like a tree. Instead, I settled for devouring his mouth.
He backed me into the desk, then wedged a thick thigh between my own. My moan ended in a gasp as he pressed exactly where I wanted him. His hands flexed and he rocked me against him in delicious little movements.
I broke the kiss to suck in a deep breath. Alex’s eyes were dark with desire. I wasn’t the only one feeling the heat between us. One-night stands were not usually my jam, for a host of reasons I had trouble remembering right now.
His lips brushed against the corner of my mouth, my jaw, and the spot on my neck that made me arch and moan. I snuck a hand under the hem of his shirt and ran my fingers across the rippling muscles of his abs. He made a low sound of pleasure and tugged me closer, so that I was practically riding his thigh.
I lifted the hem of his shirt and he pulled it off, exposing hard-packed abs and a solid chest. I ran both hands up over his nipples, causing him to hiss out a breath.
He hooked a finger under the edge of my bra. “Take this off.”
I grinned at him. “I will, as long as you understand that there’s no sexy way to get out of a sports bra.”
“Can I help?” His voice was velvety soft, but his eyes were on fire.
“Please.” I lifted my arms. “Straight over my head.”
