Nightchaser

by Amanda Bouchet

  “Then I’ll go,” Jax announced.

  Jax hated zero G. And he could barely cram himself into a space suit.

  “I’ve been outside a lot more often than you have. I’ll be faster and more efficient.” I winced. Stitches sucked. “Really, Jax, this is just a scratch. Fiona’s hurting me more than the bullet did.”

  Fiona half looked up, giving me the hairy eyeball.

  “There’s about a hundred percent chance those bounty hunters are on our tail right now,” I said. “We’ll lose them with a short-range jump to Flyhole that won’t take much power. Then Jax—you squeeze us into some supply line or other, like we’ve been there all along. I’ll go out and sweep for bugs and then get new stickers up, hopefully before the hunters can locate us again with any precision.”

  The hunters or Shade. There was no forgetting he was one of them.

  A sharp ache lanced my chest. I scowled. I wanted to pummel him.

  “I don’t have those coordinates set,” Miko said.

  “Then do it,” I told her, my whole body clenching from another prick. We needed to be anonymous again—now.

  I glanced down. How big is this scratch? Crap. Six stitches so far.

  Fiona tugged, knotted, cut. “Done.”

  Thank the Powers. I blew out a breath.

  I sucked one in again when she slapped on a bandage with her full hand, pressing hard. She was punishing me for scaring the shit out of her and putting us all in danger.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to everyone.

  It was Jaxon who finally spoke. “He had us all fooled, Tess.”

  I nodded, pretending that a lump wasn’t rising in my throat again, nearly choking me, and that my eyes weren’t burning hot. I blinked a few times. I wasn’t going to cry over that jackass. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

  “Get us to Flyhole.” The order came out gruffly, but it was the best I could do without breaking down. “I’m going to suit up.”

  “Careful of your stitches,” Fiona warned. “Need help?”

  It was complicated to suit up alone, but I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone looking at my body right now. This body had betrayed me, led me down the wrong path. I could still feel Shade all over me, inside me. Smell him on my skin.

  I shuddered, sickened on too many levels to sort it all out. Trusting Shade had been one of the stupidest things I’d ever done, and my willful blindness had put the people I loved in danger. I’d ignored the risk to them, and to myself, because I’d wanted him. It was as simple and as terrible as that.

  I hated my body right now. I hadn’t deserved the lash marks on my back when they’d happened. Now, I felt like I’d earned them, and they were the only part of me that I could stand.

  I shook my head, finally answering Fiona. I sounded almost normal when I spoke, probably surprising us all. “I’ll change on my own. But thanks, Fi. Thanks for everything.”

  She smiled. “I love shooting things up.”

  I smiled weakly in return. Yeah, she did.

  “Thanks, everyone.” I glanced down, hiding the damn sheen that was blurring my vision again. “Thanks for having my back.”

  Without looking at me, Jax grumbled something and just kept steering us up and toward the Dark.

  No one else answered. We didn’t need to thank each other, but I still did.

  “He fixed the ship.” Miko looked over from where she sat with her old, beat-up coordinates book, looking pensive when she should have been punching in numbers as if the hand she still had depended on it—which it probably did. “Shade, I mean. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  I shrugged, not answering. I didn’t understand anything he’d done.

  “Shit. I almost forgot. Check your tablet,” Miko said. “A message came through last night from Starway 8.”

  Dread plowed into me. Time was dangerously tight with the hunters after us, but I needed to look now in case the message told us we had to figure out a way to avoid a quarantine blockade around Sector 8.

  I reached for the tablet and woke it up, quickly accessing my messages. This one was from Surral.

  Things are worse. Unless you’re absolutely certain you can help, do not risk yourselves. No military quarantine yet, but it could happen at any time.

  Tess, I’m sorry. Coltin is sick.

  I grabbed the edge of my console to steady myself and swallowed hard. I would lay down my life to protect Starway 8 and everyone in it, but I recognized that my deepest attachment to the orphanage could be drawn in the portraits of four faces: Mareeka, Surral, Gabe, and Coltin.

  I had no idea what had happened to Gabe, or whether he was even alive. I would not lose Coltin.

  I left the bridge, my heart a tight, aching knot, and turned right, rubbing my chest as I headed for the spacewalk gear in the utility room at the end of the corridor.

  My mind whirred, even though I wanted to shut it off. Shade. Hunters. Coltin. Shade. I couldn’t stop myself; my thoughts kept jumping back to the man I’d believed I could trust.

  What had he been doing? With me? With the ship? Why?

  The Endeavor did work. The starboard door closed and locked. We were flying. Shade didn’t appear to have sabotaged anything. And the fact that he was surely tracking us right now hardly mattered, considering I was the idiot who’d told him exactly where we were going next.

  I slammed my palm into the cold metal wall beside me, punishing myself for my stupidity. The sharp pain in my hand only helped for a second before hurt and betrayal and fear came roaring back.

  Our choices stank. Actually, we had none. We were going to Starway 8. The kids there needed us. Coltin needed me, and I would go to him, even if it meant falling into a trap.

  But that didn’t mean we had to make things easy for those bounty hunters—or for Bridgebane, if he was behind all this. First, I had to get rid of any tracking devices before that pair of hunters found us again and shot to kill. Then, we’d head straight to Starway 8.

  As for Shade, I’d worry about him when he showed up, set on a live capture and looking to get the most out of his prize.

  I growled so loudly it hurt my throat. He’d already gotten more than enough from me, parts of myself I should never have given up.

  I threw open the door with every bit of the violence I wanted to unleash and stalked toward the spacewalk gear.

  I had no doubt that Shade would come. He didn’t strike me as the type of man who gave up, and I was worth a lot. Sooner or later, he’d find me—along with a swift kick in the balls.

  Chapter 22

  Zero G didn’t bother me, but I hated the space suit. It was hot and heavy and confining, a mass of bulk around me, some of it hard, some of it flexible, but all of it necessary, right down to the thick, movement-impairing gloves and the titanium-soled, integrated boots. It felt like a coffin to me every time I put it on, only it was encasing me alive instead of dead. The damn thing was my nemesis—or one of them.

  My own breathing echoed back to me, loud in the confines of my helmet, a constant reminder that I had limited air and time and that even with a forty-five-pound suit on me, I was about to be weightless, and that one cut through the tether could leave me floating off into the Dark. The suit didn’t have any integrated propulsion, no handy button to set off mini thrusters or little joystick to steer me around. We didn’t have the money for that, only for the basic, standard suit. I would have to crawl all over my ship with a rope clipped to my waist. If I drifted away, I’d have to reel myself in from the void of space.

  Fun times. The last twenty-four hours had been great.

  My heart clenched, and heat blasted through me, followed by a quick shot of cold. I’d actually thought the last day had been pretty freaking fantastic—before.

  “Fuck you, Shade Ganavan,” I muttered as I pressed my gloved index finger down on the seven-digit code t
o the air lock control. A palm swipe would have been easier, but that would have required undressing, so…no.

  “What’s that?” Jax asked.

  “Nothing, partner,” I answered into the com.

  The inner safety entrance to the Endeavor was already sealed up behind me, and I kept my arm firmly hooked around the handle next to the new starboard door. The moment it opened, space claimed the air between the two doors. The powerful pull sucked at me, and I held on, waiting for equilibrium to settle over the entrance once more.

  Calm came quickly, along with silence. The slight magnetism in the soles of my boots kept me anchored. It wasn’t enough to make it hard to pick up my feet or move around. It just kept me close to the ship and allowed me to do what I needed to do without having to constantly worry about floating off.

  Looking out the wide-open door, the same combination of sensations as usual shivered through me: a chill, a thrill. Spacewalking was cool. It was also terrifying.

  I’d already checked twice, and so had Jaxon before he’d sealed me out of the main part of the ship, but I gave the tether another hearty tug before I let myself drift out, keeping a hand on the hull to guide me.

  Carefully, I started combing the Endeavor for bugs. We didn’t have the tech for anything other than a manual sweep with the electronic wand in my hand, and it didn’t immediately pick up anything of note. The device had a fifteen-foot radius, so I didn’t have to touch every single part of the ship, but it was slow going to be methodical and thorough.

  “Jax, when are you going to squeeze us into that supply line?” I asked. I wanted us to get lost in the other ships around Flyhole as fast as possible.

  “Don’t like moving when you’re out there,” he grumbled.

  “I’m holding on tight,” I assured him.

  Jax bullied his way into a line of ships waiting for water renewal, but instead of just cursing us and then shrugging and going with it like ninety-nine percent of people would have, the captain behind us started flashing what-the-fuck? lights from the midsize cruiser’s bridge.

  Great—that would really help us blend in.

  I turned and glared, wishing the asshole would knock it off. The point of cutting into a line had been to make it look like we’d been here for a while, instead of like we’d just arrived in a panic to sweep for bugs.

  The other ship kept going berserk on the Endeavor’s rear end, so I told Jax about the flasher and asked him to try to communicate enough with the cruiser to make the aggravated captain shut the hell up.

  We were in breach of unwritten rules, but as soon as I finished, they’d get their spot in line back, and all would be right in the world of Flyhole extortion.

  Who in their right mind would buy water at Flyhole when Albion 5 was just a hop away? There were at least thirty ships in this line, and they’d all pay twice as much here as they would on any inhabited rock.

  Whatever. Money wasn’t an issue for everyone, and their loss was our gain. If those hunters got here before I was done, at least we wouldn’t be sticking out like criminals on the run. We looked a lot like everyone else here. Out in deep space, with nothing else around, a tracked ship was impossible not to spot in an instant. Here at Flyhole, you had to weed through the crowd to be sure you had the right one.

  My skin buzzed with nervous energy as I crawled along the hull, meticulously moving the wand back and forth. I reached the stickers on the starboard side without getting a single hit for bugs. Since eliminating possible trackers was the priority, I left the numbers up for now and moved to portside. Two minutes later, my wand beeped through the earpiece I had in my helmet, its little flashes and alarms getting more frantic and insistent as I moved left and down.

  “There you are,” I murmured, finally spotting the tracking bug. It was the exact same dark gray as the Endeavor and blended in almost perfectly.

  “I’ve got a live one,” I said, informing the crew of my find.

  “Try to destroy it,” Jax said. “If that doesn’t work, toss it hard.”

  I took hold of the device and detached the transmitting bug with a sharp twist. It was a discreet, sophisticated little thing. I never would have seen it if the wand hadn’t led me to the right place. It was probably Shade’s, considering how well it matched the ship.

  Envisioning Shade’s deceitful face, I hauled off and smashed the bug against the side of the ship.

  The result was thoroughly unsatisfactory. It didn’t get out any of my anger or hurt, and in space, with a big, bulky space suit on, I didn’t move well enough for a really hard hit. The intact tracker kept transmitting, and my wand kept up its frenzied beeps.

  Sourly, I informed Jax that smashing it hadn’t worked.

  “Then throw it the fuck away, Tess.”

  Sound advice, as usual. Too bad I hadn’t listened to him about Shade.

  A sharp ache sliced through me. It was hot-cold, twisting and tight, and hurt more than I wanted to admit.

  Shoving aside the awful feeling, I turned, anchored myself against the side of the Endeavor, and then sent the bug soaring off into the Dark. It would go forever—and hopefully lead that lying shit away from us.

  With that device on its way to somewhere else, I kept going, continuing my methodical search. I found another bug just as a ship materialized on the outskirts of our side of Flyhole, punching into perception after a jump.

  A bad feeling burrowed through me the second I saw it, and my heart started to thud. It was small, made for speed and maneuverability. It couldn’t possibly house more than two.

  Two bounty hunters, if I had to guess.

  I ripped the new bug off and sent it flying away without really moving, not wanting to draw attention to myself. It was possible that whoever was in that small cruiser wouldn’t see me out here. My suit was a similar color to the Endeavor, and we blended in with the other cargo ships hovering around the spacedock. It would take effort—and time—to pick us out from the rest, especially if it was that craft’s signal that I’d just sent spiraling off.

  If it was Shade in that ship, though, he’d recognize the Endeavor in a heartbeat. He’d worked on her all week.

  And what about more bugs? I still had a quarter of the ship to cover, and I couldn’t stop until the job was done. There was no easy fix from inside, like hitting the ship with a hull-wide electrical charge. Trackers were always insulated, specifically to guard against just that. This was all me, all now, and there was no way I was drawing what could turn out to be a horde of bounty hunters to Starway 8. It was already bad enough that Shade, the apparent top dog of the whole money-grubbing gang, knew exactly where I was heading next.

  If he chose to, Shade could steer Bridgebane straight to the orphanage. The Dark Watch general might go there anyway. A disgusted voice inside me was telling me there was a chance that infecting kids in a place he could easily guess I cared about was his plan B—if his hunters failed to bring me in.

  My stomach in knots, I continued searching for tracking devices, speeding up as much as I could.

  The clock was ticking now more than ever. The kids were in bad shape and getting worse. There wasn’t enough time to find the Fold and recruit someone else to take the shots to Starway 8. That could take days—and cost lives. Cost Coltin’s life. Our best bet now was to get in and out of the orphanage before Shade or Bridgebane caught up.

  “Talk to me, Tess.” Fiona’s voice came through the com, efficient and a little clipped. “Your heart rate just jumped.”

  “Small ship. Portside. And a bit behind.” They likely couldn’t see it from the bridge, and there were so many blobs on the radar here that it would be almost impossible to pick out a little one like that. “I don’t like the way it looks.”

  “There’s too much activity on the monitors to find it,” Jax said. “Foe?”

  “Who’s not a foe, Jax?”

  “I’m
not your enemy, Tess. Save it for the asshole you just left.”

  I tried not to leap down his throat again. “I’m not done yet.”

  “Forget the stickers. Get back inside. We’ll jump,” Jax said.

  “There might still be bugs.”

  The small cruiser moved closer, breathing down my neck.

  Jax must have gotten a lock on it once it entered our space, because he started to sound even more urgent. “Let’s go, Tess. We’ll jump halfway to 8 and finish there.”

  “That’s a useless waste of power.” Draining the Endeavor’s energy resources with an extra jump now when we might need the juice a lot more later was a hard no in my mind.

  Jax wasn’t done arguing. “The jump isn’t useless if it saves your life!”

  “Now who’s the one snapping?” I asked.

  In my earpiece, there was a deep growl followed by a crash, and I wondered what Jax had just thrown and smashed. He usually controlled his emotions, but sometimes he just…broke.

  Guilt clamped down inside me. “I’m almost done, Jax.”

  “Hurry,” he ground out.

  Only my free hand and the slight magnetism in my boots kept me attached to the Endeavor. I pushed off, making bigger leaps so that I could cover the rest of the hull faster. The tether hung under the belly of the ship. Too visible from up close, it snaked back toward the open door I’d exited.

  I took stock of my position as I swung the wand a little frantically now. Under was currently the long way home. The shorter distance would be to go up and over the top and hope the tether didn’t catch on anything that stuck out. The portside door wasn’t an option; it didn’t have an air lock.

  I stretched my arm as far as I could and flew along the hull, sweeping the wand back and forth. When did the ship get so big?

  When you decided to add the hulking lab attachment onto the back of it that started this whole mess. Way to go, Tess.