by JC Hay
Then again, she was interested in a lot more than kissing. She took a deep breath, not sure how to propose what she’d been thinking and still sound like the casual, no-strings-attached fling that he seemed to prefer. "Of course, while we are on this ship, we’re undercover. Neither one of us has any official rank."
“Undercover.” Grenville smirked, and she couldn’t believe she’d been so forward about it. "So, you’re suggesting that what happens on the ore hauler, stays on the ore hauler?"
"It would have to, right? This isn’t the sort of thing that could continue once we got back to the Cry. Like you said, the Forces made our decision for us."
Tension entered his shoulders and his jaw, the amber of his eyes darkening as he stared at her. She couldn’t help but think he was disappointed with what he found, until he moved, and the look shifted from hard into predatory. “I’m good with that if you are.”
He crossed the space between them in two steps, hands skimming over her hips. His nose brushed along hers, his voice whisper soft, and so close the air of it caressed her lips. “Tell me again this is what you want.”
“I want this.” It was a lie. She wanted so much more than this, but if this was all they could have, it’s what she would take. Her arms circled his shoulders, pulling him across the last hairsbreadth of space so she could taste his kiss again.
Hands grabbed her backside, lifting her slightly and highlighting the differences in their heights. She broke the kiss to speak while his mouth trailed fire down the skin of her neck. She wanted to burn everywhere. He was a star, and she was caught in his inescapable gravity.
“You know our heights would matter less if we were lying down.” She gasped as his teeth grazed the skin where her neck and shoulder met.
He looked up with a smug grin. “Lead the way.”
GRENVILLE LAY ON HIS side in the narrow rack and listened to the soft sounds of Imee’s breath. Though he’d always considered her beautiful, in the cabin’s soft light she was glorious—skin glowing with golden notes that turned her sienna skin into bronze. She looked like an idol, and he was more than happy to worship.
The sheets had pooled around their waists, showing off the wiry cut of her biceps. Pilots didn’t have the same physical exam requirements as rangers, but wrestling a ship around still required plenty of strength in addition to knowledge and skill. She looked more than capable of both. Her hair had flattened against her head slightly, damp with sweat from their exertions, and that combined with the satisfied smile on her face made him want to wake her up in any number of delicious ways.
But he didn’t.
Carefully he eased himself from Imee’s rack to the floor. A pair of night-black eyes blinked at him from beneath the bed, and Djehuti’s scorn scraped across the edge of his brain. He glared back and whispered, “Don’t you start.”
Clothes were scattered along the short distance between the door and the mattress, and he sorted through the piles until he found his boxers and slid them on. After stepping into his coveralls, he perched on the end of her rack to tug on his socks and boots. Each discarded piece of clothing set off another memory of her—the delicious curve of a breast, the soft gasp of her pleasure, her focused expression as she rode him. And underneath each of them, a single sentence played across the back of his mind on endless loop.
This can’t continue once we go back to the Cry.
If that was how she wanted it, how she needed him to be, he’d have to live with it. Have to let it be enough.
If they were on the Hunting Cry, he could at least go to the gym and punch his frustrations into the heavy bag until his hands ached and his brain turned off. He tugged on one of his socks before Djehuti slipped out from underneath the rack to nuzzle his hand. As it always did, the contact soothed Grenville’s anxieties, pushed away some of the bitterness that he spent too much time trying to keep at bay. He dug his fingers into the wolf’s coat, brushing against the fur and scattering bright rainbows as the quick motion disrupted the animals lensing effect.
He exhaled and tried to count his blessings. Every second with Imee had exceeded his most explicit fantasies. Together they had a unity of sensual purpose he’d never experienced with the other women who’d shared his bed. And the humor; they’d trusted each other enough to be comfortable. To be their real selves and laugh when the inevitable ridiculousness of sex in low gravity took its toll. That kind of openness felt precious and rare. He could count the number of times...
He shied away from the joke. Knowing what they’d found wasn’t going to last, that to her he was the same good-time Grenville everyone else saw, hurt worse than getting shot.
The rack shifted as she rolled over to watch him. “What are you doing?”
He forced a smile and looked back to her. She’d tucked an arm behind her head, one breast jutting above the covers. The dark skin of her areola pebbled and tightened as he watched, and it stirred his hunger anew. He let his eyes trail back up to her face. “Someone should make certain we don’t slam into any more debris. Or overshoot our target zone.”
She slid her omnidevice out of the pouch that hung from her rack. “I slaved all the ship’s sensors to my omni. It would let us know if there were something we needed to worry about.”
He raised an eyebrow and smiled, unable to keep the teasing hint out of his voice. “Why, Imee Lewis, did you think you might not be making it back up to your beloved bridge right away?”
“It wasn’t a sure thing,” she replied. “But I may have been hedging a bet.”
“That’s probably the first time someone thought I wasn’t a sure thing.” The words tumbled out before he could stop them, and despite the light tone, there was no missing the bitterness underneath them.
Her fingers brushed over his hand. “You’re not sorry?”
“No!” As though he could be. As though she’d understand he didn’t regret that it had happened, but that it couldn’t keep happening forever. “I just need to stretch my legs. I’m... I’ve got too much nervous energy.” It wasn’t entirely a lie.
“There are better ways to work that off.” She smiled and flipped back the sheets, revealing the rest of her amazing, delicious body. He’d spent hours trying to memorize every inch of her, and damn if he wasn’t ready to lie back down and start all over. Narrow mattress be damned. He settled for leaning down and placing a kiss on the plane of her stomach, tasting her salty skin still brushed with the smell of their combined sweat. “God, but I’d love to. But Djehuti really needs to get his run in.”
It was a lame excuse, and even if she’d considered buying it, his wolf was quick to huff displeasure at being made a scapegoat. Djehuti padded out the cabin door and across the hall.
“If I was that wolf, I’d be pissing in your rack about now.” Imee was still smiling, but her words were tired, the frustration she fought against obvious in the set of her jaw and the tension in her fist as she covered herself with the sheet once more.
“If he did that, then we’d have to share a bunk for the rest of the trip.”
“Until five minutes ago, I was okay with that as an option.” She flopped onto her back.
He tugged on one boot but winced at the way it pinched his foot. His profanity was as creative as it was sudden.
She slapped her hand onto the mattress. “Now what?”
He stared at his foot, then pulled at the uncomfortable shoe, but it refused to budge. “I put on one of your boots by mistake.”
The musical peal of her laughter almost made his discomfort worthwhile. The sound was whisper-edged, natural and unguarded. He could spend a lifetime learning how best to make her laugh. He had less than two weeks.
“It’s not funny! You have some tiny-ass feet. I’m losing feeling in my toes.”
“I don’t know, I’d love to see you report that to the infirmary. ‘I put on the wrong boot and—’”
“They look very similar, you know.” Which given that they were the same standard-issue boot, in different size
s, made sense. Not that he cared; he was more refreshed by the opportunity to change topics from his own nagging worries. “And you were distracting me.”
She rolled her eyes, her grin undeterred as she leaned forward to help him pry the boot off. “I just got those boots broken in. If you stretched them out and I have to get a new pair, you’re buying them.”
“I can probably cover that.” The PX covered two pairs a year, but even beyond that, the discount made them extremely affordable. The boot came free, and he wiggled his toes until the feeling came back.
She flopped back to stare at the ceiling tiles. “I notice that you’re still leaving though.”
From the tone in her voice, Grenville couldn’t decide if she was talking about now or the future. In either case, they both had to understand the answer was yes. He tied up the correct boots, stood, and zipped up his coveralls. “Don’t worry, it’s a small ship.”
Nine
After the collision, having to affect repairs, and the time to carefully reset a new course for the rings, they needed almost thirty extra hours to reach Kronus’s Roche limit. Imee tried not to look at it as an omen, but reaching the point where external and internal forces combined to tear moons apart and shatter them into dust was a frighteningly accurate description of where things with Grenville had been headed for the last day. She adjusted the pitch of the belt miner and brought the ship in above the gas giant’s rings.
If she was honest, calling it a ring system was perhaps a little grandiose. Three thin bands, cleverly named alpha, beta, and gamma, circled the giant planet but were nearly invisible against Kronus’s striped surface. Castulus, a tiny shepherd moon barely ninety kilometers in diameter, orbited within the wide gamma ring, the wake of its passing carving a rippled gap in the ice and dust. She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her chest, her desire that Grenville be on the bridge to share in the turbulent beauty of the scene in front of them.
Turbulent and dangerous. The sort of maelstrom you only entered with a very good reason. She sighed. “I’m just full of shitty metaphors today, hm?”
Djehuti, in the copilot’s seat, lifted his head and rested it on the chair’s arm. The deep black of the wolf’s eyes watched her with a clever understanding that wiped out any self-consciousness she might have felt about talking to an animal and left her smirking.
“Yeah, I know. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to the Cry.” She confirmed that the wolf was clipped into the harness, then buckled herself in. Once the ship stopped, gravity would be miniscule, and Grenville had made it clear that Djehuti didn’t enjoy floating around if he could avoid it. Another deep breath to steel herself, and she opened the comms. "We’re about five minutes out from touchdown on Castulus. You all suited up?"
She resisted the urge to vent him into space regardless of his answer; if for no other reason, it would have crippled his wolf, and she refused to visit any suffering onto the animal. And certainly not for something that was Grenville’s fault. That said, she could have sworn Djehuti looked at her with the sort of pity that said he’d understand why she was tempted.
It wasn’t as though Grenville had been actively avoiding her, though he often found an excuse to be somewhere else in the ship whenever their conversations turned too intimate. When they were able to share space without talking, he found any excuse he could to brush against her or touch her. It would have been thrilling if he weren’t as emotionally distant from her as the Three Systems were from Old Earth.
His voice was bright and cheerful when he called back, a contrast to the cloud it roiled in her. "Cargo bay locks in place, ready to cycle when we land."
She needed to corner him and hash it out, like adults, but for now, they had to concentrate on doing the job at hand. Imee reached over and ruffled between the wolf's ears, amazed at how her fingers scattered into color as they disrupted his fur’s complex arrangement of lenses. "Hold on to your tail, buddy."
She skimmed in close to the moon’s cracked and pitted surface, looking for a place to land, when she crested a rise and spotted the shiny metal of new construction. A broad antenna, top-of-the-line military hardware, glittered from one of the craters. She triggered the intercom. “Grenville, you’re not going to believe this, but the outpost Triptych has up here looks brand new and cutting edge. Someone with money is clearly backing them.”
“That doesn’t seem like good news.”
“No, it does not. It looks automated though. No place for anyone to berth.” For the hundredth time, she wished MilInt had bothered to upgrade the ore hauler’s sensors. At least then she could confirm they were alone.
“We should be glad that something’s going according to plan. Bring us in, and we can get out of here before anyone shows up.”
Imee initiated the landing process, curving in low to the moon before settling to the ground with a gentle bump. As soon as they were down, she flipped the switch to anchor in, and the sound of heavy drills reverberated through the ship as the landing gear augered anchors deep into the surface. It’d slow their escape, but it kept the tiny ship locked in place on the broken, unstable surface of the moon. The indicator light flashed green, and she reopened the comm to cargo. “We’re down and attached. Cargo bay is set to manual and ready to open.” She flipped the additional switches that transferred control of the airlock to Grenville.
Readouts on the control indicated that the bay had started its opening sequence, and she turned to manually check the cockpit’s hatch for the dozenth time. Locked tight, no risk of venting the life-giving atmosphere away from her and Djehuti.
A few minutes later, she spotted Grenville on the ship’s runabout, towing the equipment out toward the comms station. Imee adjusted her headset. “I think you had the easier job. You just get to drive. I had to use actual skill to get us here.”
“You didn’t see what your ‘skilled flying’ gave me to work with in the cargo bay.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. At least they could still banter. Maybe there was still a chance for them. Her blood warmed, and her own smile spread in response. “You know, you’re easier to talk to when there’s a vacuum between us.”
He laughed and tapped the side of his helmet. “Well, I’m a captive audience for starters.”
She nodded and broadened the range on the ship’s sensors. The ring, with all its ice and dust, created a blind spot that reflected back most of her readings. It would be too easy for someone to slip up on them undetected, and Triptych would not be happy to discover the TJF poking around in their backyard. “Space around the moon looks clear, for now. That could change in a heartbeat, so be prepared.” She took a deep breath. “So why are you pulling away?”
His shoulders slumped as he paused in offloading equipment from the hauler. “You said it was just for the trip. What exactly do you think I’m pulling away from?”
The words cut, took her back to wondering if he’d wanted something more. The warmth in her blood fluttered briefly, trying to grow into wings before she crushed it. “It’s not like the Forces are going to let us continue on once we get back to the constellation.”
“Stranger things have happened. Certainly more disruptive ones.”
“Oh yes, because the rules are always different for you Rangers. GroPos that bunk like officers. Privileges for hair and uniform that other members of the Forces dream of, all because you can bond with an umbra wolf.” She heard the bitterness creep into her voice but couldn’t keep it at bay.
“And there it is. Screw the enlisted-officer gap. Your issue is that I’m a ranger. And you Zoomies just can’t handle that someone else gets to be special.”
To her right, Djehuti huffed and, she could swear, rolled his eyes. Probably an illusion generated by the invisibility that blurred the animal’s features otherwise. “I’m not the one sleeping my way through half the constellation.”
He stiffened, then went back to setting up the listening post, and she ground her teeth in silence, curs
ing her own anger.
Once he started to put the external housing in place, hiding the machinery against the moon’s rocky surface, she reached out. “That was uncalled for. Even Djehuti thinks I overstepped.”
“I doubt that,” he replied. “He likes to see me taken down a peg or two. It helps keep the balance in our relationship.”
She eyed the blur that curled in the chair next to her, but he gave no sign of hearing the discussion, or caring if he did. “Still, I’m sorry.”
He started to answer, and she cut him off with a quick “Wait.” A tiny blip on her sensors mirrored a bright dot in her visual distance. Another ship, moving in their direction. She tapped the link twice to get Grenville’s attention. “Incoming. Fifteen minutes out. Get closed up and get back here.”
There weren’t a lot of ships dumb enough to come into the rings, but with the comms station in front of her she had a good idea who would take the risk, and that wasn’t going to end well if they were out of cover. She just had to hope Triptych wouldn’t risk hitting their outpost by opening fire.
GRENVILLE CROUCHED behind a rocky outcrop in the shadow of the ore hauler and watched the Triptych ship cruise in for a landing.
The moon’s small size made the whole experience surreal. The curvature was so sharp that the horizon was barely a half-click away. Seeing a ship that was so close and yet partially obscured by the curve was disorienting to say the least.
Triptych’s cruiser was bigger than the ore hauler he and Imee had arrived in, but not by much. What it lacked in size, it made up in weapons and the garish triform skull that was Triptych’s semi-official calling card. It was unlikely that they’d shown up expecting trouble, but with the armament they had showing, he had to be prepared. Ideally, Triptych would be focused on his and Imee’s ship and not him hiding in the shadows.
