Close Proximity - An Aeon14 Space Opera Adventure (Perilous Alliance)
Page 17
“You talking about our escape, or was I too hard on Grayson? What happened between you guys tonight, anyway?” Kylie shook her head. “You know what, never mind. It doesn’t matter, but I don’t think we can trust him.”
“You said we’d never get through this if we didn’t trust him. Now, look where we are,” Winter said as he sauntered into the galley. He flipped a chair around and sat in it backward, leaning his arms across the back.
Kylie supposed she deserved that. “You think I haven’t gotten my licks tonight? Go right ahead and have your piece of me, Winter.”
Roger sighed and sat down. “Haven’t we been through enough today?”
Winter tapped the table with his index finger. “He’s been manipulating us and this entire situation ever since we stepped aboard the Titan-1. He let me take his gun when he could’ve stopped me. I saw what he could do tonight firsthand.”
“I’m in no mood to defend Grayson, but no one made you reach for his gun. No one made you try to shoot your way off that ship. It was a no-win situation.”
“You served with him. You knew he had military-grade nano.”
“He’s military, a colonel for starssakes,” Kylie said. “It goes without saying. Once you reach the level he is, it’s understood.”
“Maybe for a space force dropout like you.”
“Whoa!” Rogers lifted his arms up. “Time out, guys. Time out!”
But Kylie couldn’t hear him. “If I’m so despicable, why are you on this ship anyway, Winter? Lately, you never agree to anything we do. You sulk in the cargo hold by yourself. You’re only a member of this crew when it suits you.”
“If that’s how you feel, why don’t you throw me off?”
“Maybe I will the first chance I get.”
Rogers stood up and made the universal time-out signal with his hand. “Would you both please retreat to your corners and let us do something constructive, like work on saving Nadine? Who cares who knew what when? At this point, it doesn’t matter. We can’t take any of it back. All we can do is work the problem we have.”
Kylie took a deep breath and crossed her arms. She paced backward. “Okay, okay. You’re right.”
“Damn right I am,” Rogers said. “We all have to work together. We have the same goal. So let’s pull it together and remember we’re part of the same crew.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Kylie rubbed her face, still feeling a little hot under the collar. “Winter…”
“Yeah,” Winter’s voice was clipped and he didn’t look up at her. “Me too. Let’s just not, okay?”
For an apology, it kind of sucked, but Kylie wasn’t going to belabor the point. She took a moment to compose herself.
“Let’s go over your meeting with Maverick,” Rogers said, always able to get out of her what was important. “What happened?”
“The bounty hunter said other groups are searching for Lana. He was sent by someone with a lot of money to retrieve her. There was a gun fight. He shot Maverick when Maverick said he had no idea who Lana was and I was going to be next. Except…”
“Nadine leaped in to save you,” Rogers whispered. “Her heart is always in the right place. Her mind, however….”
“Why would anyone want a general’s daughter if there wasn’t something the SA is keeping from us?” Winter asked.
“Maybe she got in trouble. Maybe she stole,” Rogers said. “Maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe they want to use her for leverage,” Winter said. “Can’t we ask her that when we find her?”
“We gotta get Nadine back,” Rogers said. “We owe her that much.”
Yes, yes, they did. Which meant they still had to go after Lana, even if Kylie didn’t want to do the SA’s dirty work for them.
“But all you know is that Harken is doing something out in the disk. Disk’s a big place. Could hunt for years out there,” Winter said.
“Actually,” Kylie took a deep breath. “The information Maverick sent me had some specifics,” Kylie said as she shared the information.
It had the floor plan, how many people were employed there, and a few security system specs, but not everything.
Winter swore under his breath. “Looks like a high-tech research facility…fronted by a brothel of all things. This place isn’t going to be easy to get into. And getting someone out?”
“First things first,” Kylie took a sip of her bitter, lukewarm coffee. “The bounty hunter who has Nadine wants this intel. To get Nadine back, we need to give it to him.”
Rogers rubbed his eyes. “You think that’s a good idea? What happens to that girl if we pass this information on?”
“What happens to Nadine if we don’t?” Winter asked.
Both their points were valid, and Kylie’s thoughts swirled in both directions. She had to focus and couldn’t argue with herself about what needed to happen. As far as she was concerned, only one thing mattered.
“I’ll contact him, arrange a meeting. We make a copy of the schematics, and maybe we can…rescue Lana when our new friend goes there to get her. I don’t know yet, but I do know we have to ensure Nadine’s release. That comes before we do anything else.”
Rogers and Winter exchanged a glance. “Grayson won’t go for this. He has an AI. We’ll be lucky if the SSF stays off our backs long enough to even get Nadine back.”
Kylie nodded. “You’re going to have to leave that to me, but first things first…I arrange a meeting at a neutral location with this bounty hunter. If you two are on board, Winter I need you to go over the engines and make sure they’re okay after our rapid warmup. I mean everything. And Rogers…get your ass to the bridge and stay on standby.”
“Can I have some of that bad coffee first?” Winter asked with a smile playing at the edges of his mouth.
“Are you serious?” Rogers asked. “I can smell it from here, it’s probably toxic.”
Kylie just smirked. “Go.”
The men hurried from the galley and Kylie sunk into a seat and stared at her gloved hand, suddenly realizing she was still wearing the Trylodyne armor. She flexed her fingers and stared off into the distance. What if she was making the wrong choice? What if the SSF and Grayson were both trustworthy? Kylie didn’t know if she was making the right call, but it was the only call. If Nadine was on the Dauntless, then it would be different, but such as it was, all the decisions were made for Kylie.
She hated not having a choice.
A message hit the ship and somehow routed past the main comm system straight to her. She had a sinking suspicion that it was her new friend. Abilities like that would go along with his general mystique. She accepted the message, and the bounty hunter’s smooth baritone entered her mind.
Thank goodness, Kylie sighed with relief.
The man sighed, and a second later, Kylie’s HUD showed a visual and she felt herself transported into a virtual space. She saw a small room, maybe a medbay of some sort. In a bed, Nadine rested, her eyes closed.
“Nadine?” Kylie’s chest tightened just to say her name out loud. When Nadine’s eyes fluttered open, Kylie felt an emotional high.
Nadine was close to tears. “Kylie? Don’t…whatever Jason wants, don’t do it.”
Jason. So…the bounty hunter had a name, and Nadine managed to get it from him. She was always working the mission; Kylie respected that about her.
“But you’re all right? He upheld his end of the bargain?”
“I’m fine, Kylie. I’m fine.” Nadine’s voice was rich with grief. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to happen.”
“You’re going to be fine, Nadine. Just let me worry about it, okay?”
Jason cut the virtual feed.
/> Kylie let out a long breath but the anxiety held firm.
Kylie sucked in a sharp breath.
The situation kept getting worse instead of better. Still, Kylie didn’t think that handing over the data carte blanche was a good idea. So, she blanked out a few details, such as the installation’s coordinates, environmental conditions, and the like, but left in the details about security and the structure itself.
She passed it over and forced herself to take calm breaths while she waited.
Jason gave a sigh over the connection.
He wouldn’t dare. Maybe if she gave him the information that she removed.
She stopped talking because the conversation had been terminated. There was nothing else she could say. Nothing Kylie could do. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Actually, a rock would’ve been more comfortable than where she was. Still, she had bought more time. Time she could maybe use to get Lana, and figure out how to save both women. If she could save them both…
Lana. Nadine. Whose life would she trade for another?
She considered the lack of lag in the communication. His ship was nearby, within a light-second—less than three hundred thousand kilometers, maybe even within weapon’s range. And he could breach her ship’s security.
They were nothing but pawns to this man.
Kylie picked herself up from the chair. She poured another mug of coffee and then made another for Grayson. Not much of a peace offering, but it was a start. She walked slowly out of the galley and turned down the hall toward Grayson’s quarters.
When she slid the door open, Grayson’s lack of surprise caught her off guard. Bent forward, he rested his chin in his hand and barely glanced over at her.
“I wondered when you’d come.”
She hated when he said stuff like that. He knew her so well, did he? Kylie handed him the fresh mug of coffee. “Two cream. One sugar. Extra hot, just the way you like it.” She slid onto the cot beside him as he slurped his coffee, still just as annoying as it had been through the course of their marriage.
“You had to know,” Grayson licked his lips, “if I wanted out, I would’ve just opened the door.”
“But you wouldn’t have had anywhere to go.”
“Any comradery I had developed with your crew is most likely gone.” Grayson blinked his eyes. “I would just like to thank you for that.”
“Rogers defended you. That might please you.”
“Well…that’s unexpected.”
“But we get Nadine back. Nothing else happens until that happens,” Kylie said. “Rogers seems to think we can trust you. Is he right?”
Grayson’s eyes met hers and never wavered. A fierce passion raged in them. “Yes.”
Kylie struggled with his answer because she didn’t know if he was ever that good a liar. If he was telling the truth, that meant Samuel wasn’t just keeping her in the dark—he had kept Grayson in the dark, too, and that was dangerous.
“Then we work together. Get Nadine back. Find Lana.”
“I guess you really do love her, don’t you?” Grayson’s voice hushed, and for the first time, Kylie thought his feelings might be hurt. Even when she announced she was leaving him, had he ever shown anything other than stoic pride?
“I’m not sure I realized how much until all this started. If that’s hard for you…well, I’m sorry, Gray,” Kylie murmured.
He laughed. “This is all hard for me. Being here. Being down on that planet. Being with you when you can’t look at me or trust me. Nothing about this is fun or easy, but…”
“You have a mission.” Kylie nodded. “And I promise we’ll get back to that. I don’t want to let down the general any more than you do.”
“Jerrod says our course has changed. Want to tell me where we’re headed?”
Not particularly. “Can you promise me you won’t report into the SSF until after we get Nadine back? Tell them whatever you want after that, but I won’t have you do anything until my crew is whole again. If you can’t promise…”
“You’ll what? Space me?” Grayson smirked. “I’ll play along. I think it’s in my best interests to do so, but if you betray the mission, Kylie…It’ll be your crew who won’t live to regret it. Not me.”
Kylie could appreciate that. She stood and headed for the door. “I won’t force you to stay in here. You can move around the ship.”
“For now, I think I’ll stay.” Grayson took another sip of his coffee. “If it’s all the same to you.”
It was. Kylie left him there, feeling more cold and hollow than she could ever remember feeling before. But she got him to play along, and for now, that was all that mattered. It didn’t matter that a part of her heart still trusted him—even as the rest of her screamed to stop.
Grayson was military. It ended there—plain and simple.
Unfortunately for her, nothing was easy. Nothing was simple. Not even her feelings for Grayson and where his loyalties lay.
* * * * *
“What are you going to do?” Rogers asked Kylie.
Kylie sat with him and Winter in the galley. The pot of coffee had long gone cold. She told them about the conversation with Jason and the impasse she was at. To save Nadine, they had to sacrifice Lana to the bounty hunter. That would put them at the top of the SSF’s most wanted list. It would match their position on the GFF’s. Another option was to forget Nadine and hit Harken’s facility, get Lana, and turn her over to the SA—which wasn’t going to happen. Not while Kylie was still breathing.
The only real option was to get Lana, and somehow take out Jason when he traded for Nadine.
They had talked about it for hours, distilled the information, considered it from every angle. “We have no choice but to go in and scout out the facility like Jason wants us to.”
“A facility that Maverick considers top secret? That Harken has a run of? You know how well she’ll have that place locked down?” Winter asked.
“We do have the blueprints; we know it’s fronted by a brothel. Given Harken’s proclivities, it’s a fitting cover for a top-secret lab. That means there’s a way in, something we can leverage,” Kylie replied.
“If it was easy,” Rogers said with an even, level stare, “Mister Bigshot Bounty Hunter would do it himself.”
“It’s for Nadine; we don’t have a choice.”
Winter folded his h
ands and cast a steady glare out at Kylie. “I owe it to her just as much as the next person, but she wouldn’t want us to commit suicide.”
No, she wouldn’t, but was that what Kylie was doing? She was wrapped up in so much drama over Nadine’s kidnapping, she couldn’t see straight.
“One person going in will have better luck than the four of us.”
Kylie cocked her head back with surprise at the sound of Grayson’s voice. She didn’t think he’d ever leave his room. Despite their sickening worry about Nadine, the crew was just starting to gel again, and now he was going to mess up their dynamic.
“One person?” Winter was incredulous. “There will be tech, surveillance, armed guards.”
“All hard, but not impossible for the right person with an AI. Someone with training.” Grayson sat next to Kylie and stared deep into her eyes. She knew what he was saying, but an AI? It went against everything she held dear. Everything she believed.
“I don’t trust AI,” Kylie said bluntly.
“You either get an AI, Kylie, or you send me in. If you go in without AI support, you won’t be coming back from that mission. You barely came back from Jericho as it was. If you hadn’t lucked out and found that Mark safehouse, you’d be dead.”
“You think if I had AI that would’ve gone differently? That Nadine…she might be with us?” Kylie asked.
Rogers and Winter sat up straight, pulling hands and elbows off the table as though it were electrified. Kylie saw them share a look, one that should have made her quell her roiling emotions—one that presaged Grayson’s answer.
He didn’t pull any punches. “Yes. One hundred percent. Absolutely.”
How dare he. “You’ve wanted to get an AI in my head for years! It ruined us, and now you’ll say anything to get it done. Is that it?”
Grayson shook his head, his tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. He gazed away with disgust. Kylie could see it in his eyes. “What’s ruined everything is your distrust for technology, and of AI. Your parents might have raised you as part of that cult—”