He kissed back and they kept that up until finally she pushed back, looked into his wonderful green eyes, and smiled.
“We have work to do and sleep to get,” she said.
“How about sleep first and work second?” he asked. “Give our people time to analyze what we sent them.”
She was feeling just about as tired and washed out as she had felt in a very long time.
And satisfied.
Totally and completely satisfied.
“That sounds perfect,” she said.
Then she kissed him long and hard again and it took them another five minutes to get out of the shower.
She knew without a doubt that if she didn’t stop kissing him, neither of them were going to get any sleep.
But she didn’t want to stop.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE WONDERFUL SMELL of bacon and toast woke her. She glanced at the clock and realized she had slept almost six hours, a long time for her. She seldom slept more than five hours, and could go for weeks on three or four hours per night.
She looked around, stretching her completely naked body under the wonderful sheets, reveling in how the satin sheets felt both smooth and soft against her skin. Red’s bedroom suite was designed with his tastes in mind, and yet she loved it. More than she cared to admit.
She was totally comfortable in this room.
Soft indirect lighting ringed the ceiling and the walls were a tan color decorated with different forms of realistic art from the two sectors. She recognized a few of the artists. Chances were the paintings and illustrations and photos all over this ship were all originals.
A long dresser ran down one entire wall with a large mirror over it and the other wall was filled with a huge bed, so big that Red could sleep sideways in it and not touch either side.
They had crawled in after their long shower last night. She had kissed him only once, then turned over and he had curled up against her back.
She had felt safe in his arms.
Safe for the first time in her memory.
She knew for a fact she wasn’t going to even think of depending on that, but for one night it had been wonderful.
There was a soft-looking white robe across the foot of the bed, more than likely for her. She put it on, surprised that it didn’t drag on the floor and almost fit her.
She found a new sonic-style toothbrush unopened on the bathroom counter and facial soap, plus a comb and brush for her short hair.
After a few short minutes, she padded barefoot down the soft carpet of the main hallway to the wonderful smell of breakfast in the ship’s galley.
Red stood there, also in a long white cloth robe, his back to her, working at the stove.
Even though she had come in silently on bare feet, he somehow knew she was there.
“Almost ready,” he said, turning to smile at her with that wonderful smile of his. And it reached his eyes, lighting up his entire face. He was actually happy to see her and have her in his ship. That felt good.
“Thanks,” she said. “And good morning.”
She hadn’t realized how hungry she actually was. That wonderful fish dinner last night had been a long time before and now the smells of bacon were making her stomach remind her it needed some food.
“It is a good morning,” he said, smiling. Then he pointed to a table and chairs against one wall that was already set with what looked like real silverware and cloth napkins. She liked how Red lived, sparing no expense.
“How rich are you, really?” she asked, sitting down at the table and picking up the silver fork and studying it for a moment. Then she looked at the original art on the wall over the table.
He actually shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, never added it all up. But put it this way, building this ship, furnishing it with everything including the original art, didn’t even slightly dent the petty cash reserves.”
She whistled. “That’s rich.”
He laughed. “And more just keeps flowing in from investments, land holdings on a dozen planets in both sectors, and Innocence Inc.”
“Poor, poor pity you,” she said, laughing.
He smiled at her over his shoulder as he worked at the stove. “It’s a burden, but someone’s got to carry it.”
He then dished up part of what he was cooking, walked over, and put a fantastic-smelling plate of bacon, eggs, and toast in front of her. Then kissed her long and softly before turning back to the stove.
A moment later he put a small plate of hash browns beside the other plate and a glass of fruit juice of some sort that was a pale pink color.
“Wow, a rich man who can really cook.” She just stared at the food for a moment, not knowing where to start she was so hungry.
“If you like good food as much as I do, and travel as much as I do, you learn.”
He moved over to a hidden door in one wall near the table and opened it, showing her a pantry that seemed to go on forever. Just inside the door was a file cabinet.
He pointed to it before shutting the pantry door. “That’s full of recipes I have gathered from both sectors and hundreds and hundreds of cultures. So far I haven’t tried them all, but I plan to given time.”
She just couldn’t believe this guy. There had to be something wrong with him. More than likely she would find it before long. She wanted to stand and go kiss him, but instead her hunger forced her to dig into the food.
The eggs were perfect, with just a touch of a pepper-like spice she didn’t recognize. The toast was a sweet bread that if she wasn’t careful she could eat a loaf of. The hash browns were light and fluffy and spiced with similar spices to the eggs.
She was almost halfway done with her meal before he sat down across from her with his plates and juice.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling at him. “I should have waited for you, but this smelled so good and I was so damned hungry for some reason.”
“Eat,” he said, laughing. “In this kitchen there is no standing on protocol.”
Then he dug into his food as she watched for an instant, before going back to eating as well.
He almost caught up to her by the time she had finished and sat back, sipping on the sweet fruit juice that seemed like a cross between orange and grapefruit. Again it was a juice she had never tasted before, but wouldn’t mind tasting again.
“Any chance you looked at any of the information yet?” she asked.
He shook his head and finished his toast before answering. “I wanted to wait for you. Two sets of eyes on this stuff are going to be better than one set.”
That surprised her. More than likely, in his position, she would have already taken a preliminary look at everything from Sector Force that they got from the ship.
She smiled. “Thanks. I agree.”
“Let’s get dressed first,” he said, picking up his plate and heading back to the counter with it. “Then we can head up to the control room with the big screens to look at everything.”
She stared at his back and his legs showing under his white robe. If she saw him naked again, she flat didn’t know what she might do.
“How about I get dressed first,” she said, “then wait for you here in the kitchen.”
He turned and smiled at her. “Why’s that?”
“You damn well know why,” she said, smiling back. “I see you naked again and I’m not going to be able to control myself.”
“How about I just flash you,” he said, laughing and reaching for the edges of his white robe.
“Not looking, not looking!” she shouted and sprinted from the galley, his wonderful laugh following her down the wide hallway toward the bedroom.
But luckily, he didn’t follow her as well and she managed to get back into her clothes and back to the galley in less than five minutes.
He already had the dishes washing and the table wiped off.
He kissed her lightly as he went past and she sat down at the table again. He had left the remains of her juice and she sipped on it
and thought about everything that had happened in the last day.
From Carson’s death to the wonderful dinner with Red. She remembered the fantastic sex, the attack in the lobby, the attacker’s ship, and the strange occurrence in the lobby of the entire attack gone as if it hadn’t happened.
She smiled, remembering the sex last night in the shower and the wonderful night’s sleep with her feeling safe for the first time in years. An amazing day, one she would have never expected when she had arrived here.
In fact, it had been a day she had never expected period.
“Ready,” he said from down the hall. She met him and joined him in stride heading for the control room.
She realized at that moment that she felt whole striding beside him. Even though she was much shorter than he was, they seemed to just fit walking side-by-side. Her faster natural strides kept up with his long pacing strides.
She pushed the thought away quickly and forced herself to think of what was ahead. They needed to find out who had killed Carson and why and if there really was a fleet of ships headed this direction.
When they reached the control room, Red pointed to one station. “You should be able to contact Sector Force from there and download everything they have.”
He sat down at the station beside her and his fingers flew over the controls, clearly doing the same with the information coming in from Innocence Inc.
The Sector Force researchers had put a summary of all the material at the front, so she scanned that first.
The attacker’s ship had no identifiable markings leading it to any one system or group. But it had clearly been constructed in this sector and had many parts from different systems in the surrounding area of the Bodie Station and Resort.
In other words, it had been built in this neighborhood of stars somewhere.
There was a list of backgrounds of the eight dead crewmen, all mercenaries from nearby planets and other nearby sector systems.
Then she got to the heading about how the attackers were greeted on the station at their arrival and that she should use extreme caution on the station.
“Red,” she said, tapping him. “I think you need to look at this.”
She clicked on the section and a security camera from the attacker’s ship came up. Red leaned in beside her to watch as on the screen it showed someone who seemed to be in charge of the ship greet someone at the door of the ship after docking. The time stamp was only a few hours before she had arrived.
“Oh, damn,” Red said as the image of the greeter became clear. It was Chief of Security Lovell.
“We both had a sense that was going to be the case last night,” she said, shaking her head. “I sure didn’t want it to be. I like him.”
“I know,” Red said, “but now I wonder just how deep this plot is through the entire station and hotel.”
“More than likely very deep,” she said, watching as Chief Lovell shook the attacker’s hand and then left, “we are stuck right in the middle of a very nasty beehive.”
She froze the image on Chief Lovell’s face. “I suggest we shake the entire thing.”
“And kill him in the process,” Red said, staring at the face of a man who he felt was at least partially responsible for his best friend’s death.
“Exactly,” Mattie said. “And slowly if we get the chance. Give him a little time to suffer and maybe do a little talking.”
“I like how you think,” Red said, touching her arm lightly before pushing back to his station to keep searching the data.
With one more glance at the image of Chief Lovell, she cleared his face from her screen and went back to work as well.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RED WENT THROUGH all the data his people had decoded and analyzed from the attacker’s ship and found nothing new. The ship was built in this sector, close to the station, and crewed by mercenaries. A couple had been ex-military from a system close by. Others were just lower-level hires.
As he and Mattie had proven, not a one of them had been a match in the slightest for them.
That puzzled him as well. If the person in charge of all this knew that he was here and that the top Sector Force agent was arriving, why send lowlifes up against him and Mattie. It made no sense and seemed to be a waste of manpower.
However, they had succeeded in killing Carson, but that seemed more like a stray shot than something planned.
Unless this was a distraction. But from what and why?
Or a plant.
Would the man after the Sector Force be willing to kill eight of his own men just to plant some information.
Red suddenly had an idea. Beside him Mattie was deep into studying the information sent to her by Sector Force researchers, so Red pulled up all the information that he could find on Chief Lovell and his force here on Bodie Station.
What he found surprised him.
Chief Lovell had been Special Forces for a small regional protection league that guarded five different planets. He had retired to Bodie Station and taken the job as Chief of Security. Since his arrival two years before, crime had dropped and he had stopped a couple of plots to take over control of the station.
He had on his force a dozen other Special Forces operators, all very deadly, and a few hundred others like the men he had assigned to follow them around yesterday.
This station and resort was heavily armed to defend an attack coming at it from space, had powerful screens, and seemed, to Red’s point of view, very defensible from just about any kind of attack.
“I think we’re being set up,” he said.
Mattie glanced over at him with a puzzled look on her beautiful face.
He indicated she should read the information on his screen. She scooted over against him and did, slowly nodding.
“Sure seems that way, doesn’t it” she said, a frown covering her beautiful face. “We are being set up. Someone wants the Chief and his main force out of the way and basically is trying to trick us into doing it.”
She went back to her board and sent off the vid of the chief meeting the ship with the instructions to check it for tampering of any sort.
Red did the same with the vid to his people.
Then they turned to comparing notes on the targets, rich targets with military backgrounds that had gotten away from the Sector Force at one point or another. He had to admit, even though he loved working alone, at the moment it felt great working with Mattie.
Maybe a little too good.
He pushed that thought away and tucked it down with all the other things he was going to need to deal with once this was all over.
Red had his list of those who had tried to hire Innocence Inc. for protection from the Sector Force and who they had turned down.
The clients with military background.
The list of targets that had gotten away from the Sector Force was very small. And only one was from this area of the sector with the military background to stage any kind of attack or takeover of any system.
General Jarvis, one of the worst mass murderers in the last hundred years.
And Jarvis had tried to hire his company at one point as well before he vanished. Red’s company had turned him down instantly, even though he had offered a large fortune. No amount of money would make Red defend such a human.
The General had been a former dictator of a planet not far from the Bodie Station. He had wiped out over three hundred thousand lives trying to hold onto power before Sector Force stepped in to take him out of commission.
He was extremely rich and even more ruthless.
He had vanished completely and no one at Sector Force had been able to trace him, although the warrant for him still stood. Dead or alive.
For Red, that answered the question as to why a person would go after the Sector Force. Sector Force was the only sectors-wide group that could harm Jarvis, and would the moment he surfaced.
Jarvis had to destroy Sector Force in this sector of the galaxy to insure his own safety.
Red nodded. “And since he vanished he has been preparing for an attack to take back power and more systems, thus the rumor of the fleet of ships.”
“Which is why he needed to destroy Sector Force,” Mattie said, nodding to herself, “so he could come back and take command of his new little empire. He knew we wouldn’t let him otherwise.”
“Exactly,” Red said.
At that moment both Sector Force and his people got back to them with the same information. They don’t know how they had missed it, but the vid of the Chief had been constructed by an expert and planted on the ship. It hadn’t actually happened.
Red smiled at the information. “Looks like we need the Chief on our side, because whatever attack is coming, my guess is that it is headed right for this station.”
Mattie agreed and a moment later they had sent an invite for the Chief to come to Red’s ship. They had something to show him that wasn’t going to make him very happy. Red had no doubt about that.
From what Red had read of Chief Lovell, he would hate getting set up more than anything else.
And he wouldn’t much like the idea of an attack coming at his treasured space station either.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MATTIE WATCHED as Red greeted Chief Lovell with respect at the hatch to Red’s ship and then led Lovell in. She was glad they weren’t going to have to kill the Chief. From what she had read about him before he got here, he and his team, at least the core part of his team, would make a great addition to any coming fight. And at this point she was glad she and Red had a little help.
But what she was more worried about was General Jarvis’s plan to go after Sector Force. She needed to figure out what the plan was and stop it. But she had no idea how she was going to do that.
Both she and Red had sent for top operatives to head this direction. The Sector Force had four major agents that could be here in three days and Innocence Inc. only had two operatives worth calling in that weren’t on another assignment. It would take them three to four days as well in travel time.
Smith's Monthly #5 Page 15
