Rebels and Lovers

by Linnea Sinclair

  “I just tried a reinstall.” Devin’s voice was too calm, too emotionless, and he didn’t move his gaze from the Rada’s display. “It’s not taking.”

  Her gut clenched. “Backups—”

  “I made two copies. Working with the second now.” He moved another section of code on the display.

  Two copies. Good idea, in case the first backup was somehow corrupted or viewed as an illegal program and attacked by the security system. She remembered her father and her uncle talking about that. She searched her memory for more, for anything that might help.

  Anything to keep from thinking about the ship coming toward them as they drifted, helpless. “Are you coming in on the maintenance or command authorization?”

  “Maintenance. It’s usually allocated as a residual power draw for systems-failure situations. I found its back door. A legitimate one. But it refuses to accept the initialization command.”

  Barty pushed his microcomp closer to Devin’s Rada as he scooted toward the edge of his seat. “Let me look.”

  Kaidee rested her hand on the back of Devin’s chair and watched Barty copy data, searching for answers. She suspected with fair certainty he had several files of Imperial code hacks at his disposal.

  Devin was glancing back and forth between the suspended display and the DRECU. “That’s a possibility,” he said, pointing to the DRECU’s screen. Then his fingers were moving blocks of data on his display, and his conversation with Barty was reduced to snippets of jargon that made only the barest sense to her.

  She checked the time stamp in the lower left corner of the Rada. Eleven minutes had passed since her ship went dead in the lanes. The ship pursuing them was now eleven minutes closer, or more if it had continued to gain speed. And if it had, it could be a mere two or three hours before they felt the impact of a tow field or the hard jolt of grappling clamps.

  She took a quick mental tally of the weapons on board—L7s and Carvers. It was a pitiful list if they were to defend themselves against pirates. Futile if the ship behind them was Imperial, with ImpSec assassins. But then, she’d never considered she’d have to do either. She was a legit hauler who worked legit contracts. Even Kiler had agreed to that and, after his death, she’d been doubly cautious.

  Until she saw Trip Guthrie—alone and definitely out of place—on Dock Five. She stared at the sealed hatchlock at the far end of the bridge and fought the urge to throw herself at the thick metal doors and pound her head against them. How could doing the right thing—the morally right thing—bring her so much damned trouble? No good deed goes unpunished echoed annoyingly in her mind.

  Barty, on her right, coughed twice. The third time his cough was more strained, drier.

  “You okay?” She didn’t like the sound of that. In the dim lighting, he was a slightly paler shade of green than Devin.

  He nodded. “Just a little dryness.”

  “Would water help?” Enviro should be on in the corridor and her quarters, and she had a few bottles of water in her galley cabinet. She stepped back toward her chair.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  He did sound raspy. Kaidee checked the small enviro emergency panel. Deck 1 was secure. She was reaching for the blast door release when she caught herself and shook her head. Idiot. The rest of the ship was on manual. “Give me a minute to get the doors open. Trip, can you help?”

  “Sure, Captain Makaiden.”

  The emergency-access panel was to the right of the hatchway. She slid the cover up, then showed Trip where the handle and crank were. Behind her, Barty coughed again.

  Definitely not good. But then, emergency enviro usually did a piss-poor job of filtering.

  Trip put his weight on the crank and, as the doors creaked slowly open, she could hear Devin talking softly to Barty but couldn’t make out the content of their conversation. More computer tech talk? Or was Devin as worried as she was about the older man?

  “There’s one more blast door mid-corridor and then the door to my quarters,” she told Trip as he rose, a tall shape in the dimness. He followed her, their boot steps sounding eerily hollow in the silent ship. “Same thing,” she said, guiding his hand to the crank behind the open access panel.

  “If Barty needs sick bay, can we get him there?” he asked as he worked the crank.

  “Not unless your uncle can get ship’s power back on.” She caught his worried tone clearly. “I have a small med-kit in my lav, though.” She shoved the blast door into the bulkhead slot as Trip grunted, somewhere down by her knees. She reached down blindly and found his shoulder. “Halfway’s enough. Come on.”

  They repeated the procedure at her doorway. “Wait here,” she told Trip. “I know my way around. I don’t want you falling over a chair.”

  She slipped quickly past the chair and low table and headed for the dining alcove along her main room’s outer bulkhead. She kept one hand out before her and felt the edge of one of the dining chairs. The slurp-and-snack—useless right now—was on her left. A small cabinet with mugs, a few dishes, and assorted condiments and nonperishables was below it. Her fingers found its recessed outlines. She slid the door open, then groped the interior, past the cardboard box of sweetener packets and another that held sealed packages of a dried-fruit-and-nut snack. The latter she often stuffed in her pockets when she knew she’d be waiting in line at some dockmaster’s or customs official’s office. It could take two hours to get a five-second signature of approval on a manifest. Those little snack packages not only helped pass the time but often helped her make friends with other captains in line.

  If Devin couldn’t get ship’s power back up, those snack packets and the bottles of water—she finally found them—might be all they had to live on. Until the air ran out.

  Ever the optimist, Kaid.

  She moved through the darkness back to the open doorway and Trip, catching the dim pinpoints of the emergency lights on her right leading to her lav and her bedroom. “Take this back to Barty,” she said, handing him a bottle. “I have a handbeam in my nightstand. I’ll meet you back on the bridge. Unless you want to wait—”

  “I’ll get this to Barty.”

  “Don’t forget those blast doors are only halfway open,” she called as his boot steps thumped quickly away.

  “Not to worry, Captain!”

  If only … Shaking her head at her own dismal thoughts, she headed back into her cabin, one arm out, fingertips skimming the walls, eyes straining to see the small dots of light on the decking.

  Her bedroom was small, the edge of the bed easy to find. She sat on it, then rolled on one hip toward her nightstand, trying unsuccessfully not to think about how it felt to be rolling around on this same bed in Devin’s arms. That wasn’t going to happen again. She wasn’t going to let that happen again. And not just because of the lovely Tavia waiting for him back home. But because he was going back home, to Garno or Sylvadae, and she didn’t belong in either place.

  She pulled out the handbeam and—after scraping her knuckles against the inside of the drawer—the spare power pack and was swinging around to stand when the hard thudding of boots against the decking sounded from the corridor.

  “Makaiden?”

  It was Devin. Hope rose. Maybe he’d gotten through that code-laden back door and her ship’s primaries were already reinstalling. That would mean they’d lost twenty, thirty minutes at most. Maybe, just maybe, they could make it to Lufty’s beacon before the other ship tagged them with an ident sweep. Maybe, just maybe, someone at Lufty’s could help, send a ship to do an intercept.

  “Here!” She flicked on the handbeam and had gotten as far as her bedroom door when Devin’s tall shadowy form reached her.

  His hand closed firmly around her arm. But there was a tremor in his voice when he spoke. “Barty collapsed again. Trip said you have a med-kit in here. We need it now.”

  Kaidee, kneeling next to Barty’s quiet form on the decking in front of the communications console, angled the small medical analyzer’s scr
een so Devin and Trip could see it. “The infection in his lungs is back. He really needs to be in sick bay. Best I can do is … Here, hold this.” She shoved the medalyzer into Devin’s open hand, then rummaged in the kit by her knees for an inhaler. “Trip, give me some light.”

  Trip pointed the handbeam at the open med-kit. Kaidee spotted the palm-sized triangular unit slotted into the side of the kit and grabbed it. She fitted it over Barty’s nose and mouth, then tapped it on. His eyelids fluttered slightly, but he didn’t rise to consciousness. And his breathing, even with the inhaler, was labored.

  Her own chest felt heavy. Damn it, she should never have listened to Kiler and agreed to move the sick bay to Deck 2, behind the galley. But he’d been insistent on having a cargo area near the bridge, and it never occurred to her she’d be facing a total lockout of her own ship. In a normal power failure, emergency systems would power sick bay.

  Trouble was, tampering with a ship’s primaries didn’t trigger a normal power failure. It triggered a catastrophic one. Which meant that even if sick bay was where it belonged, on Deck 1, there would be no power to run its medical units.

  Devin held the analyzer unit down by the side of the inhaler and frowned at the data on the screen. “How long will this breathe for him?”

  “At current output?” She studied the screen, her heart sinking. “A little more than two hours. It’s only meant to be a temporary measure, just enough to get the patient to sick bay or the closest hospital.”

  “But …” Trip said, then fell silent.

  “But two hours wouldn’t get us to Lufty’s, even if we had full sublights,” Kaidee finished softly for him. “I know, Trip. I know.”

  “Isn’t there a way? Can’t we just open the blast doors to Deck Two?” Trip moved the beam of light from Barty to the corridor, then back again. “The air will flow down there.”

  “Aside from the fact that the air ducts seal in a total lockout, the air we’re breathing here is all the air we have. You open up Deck Two, you’re splitting an already limited volume. Plus, even if we had air, there’s no power to run sick bay.” A short sigh of frustration escaped her lips. “I’m sorry.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  Kaidee rose. “We can make him more comfortable. You have the handbeam. Go pull the cushions from my couch. You’ll find a spare blanket in the closet near the lav. Bring them back here.” It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “Would he be better off on the couch or the bed in your cabin?”

  Kaidee shook her head. “Someone would have to stay with him. That would split us up. If we get boarded, I want all of us together here on the bridge. You understand?”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.” Trip nodded, then headed doggedly down the corridor for her quarters. Gone was the bright-eyed young man who’d found her diversionary tactics on Dock Five to be so “apex!” Trip was maturing, and it clearly wasn’t a pleasant lesson.

  Kaidee took the few steps to the pilot’s chair and, crossing her arms, leaned them against the chair’s high back. Weariness and frustration washed over her. Then strong arms encircled her waist, drawing her back.

  “Devin. Don’t.” She didn’t sound terribly convincing, but she was too tired to care.

  A masculine sigh, half growl, half rumble, filled her ear. Warmth cascaded down her neck. Her heart sped up, which only added to her frustration. To be betrayed by her own body. How slagging annoying.

  He turned her in his arms until she faced him in the darkness of the bridge. “Maybe you don’t need this. But I do.” He clasped her against him, one hand threading up into her hair. His lips brushed the side of her face and came to rest against her left ear.

  And that was all. This was not, she realized as she melted into his warmth, a sexual encounter. It was one of comfort, a touching of two souls amid desperation and disaster. Devin just held her, and she remembered the guilt he must feel—the changes to the ship’s ident program were all his doing—and that Barty was his friend. Had been his friend for decades.

  She hugged him, stroking the strong planes of his back. “We’ll get through this somehow,” she whispered. She didn’t believe that, but she had to say it because, in saying it, she had a better chance of believing.

  At the sound of Trip’s approaching boot steps, she pulled away from him.

  Devin sighed. “I have a few more things to try with that program yet. Get Barty as comfortable as you can.”

  She knew Devin slid into his seat, because the chair at the comm console had a distinct squeak and because his face was again a silhouette limned in green. He took his glasses off, rubbed them on his shirtfront, then put them back on and tapped a databox, moving it to the right. Then he reached for Barty’s DRECU, swiveling it toward him.

  “Lucky he left this on,” Devin said, as Trip put the stack of cushions on the decking, the light from the handbeam brightening the bridge slightly. “There’s no way I could access it. I don’t know his codes.”

  Kaidee took the blanket from Trip. “If that’s an Imperial ship out there, we should probably destroy Barty’s microcomp before they board us. The less they know about him, about us, the better.”

  “Will they get here before his inhaler runs out?” Trip asked.

  “If it is a Fleet ship, there’s a chance,” she said. The real question, though, was would the Empire restore him to health so they could sentence him to death? Likely, in Kaidee’s opinion, but she wouldn’t voice that. Devin probably already knew. Trip, at his age and for all his impending maturity, didn’t need to know. ImpSec was rarely kind to those who left its ranks. And Barty didn’t have the Guthrie name to protect him, though she knew Devin would try every avenue. But too many things pointed to the Empire’s involvement in the attacks on Trip on Dock Five. Kaidee held no belief that an appearance of an Imperial ship—if that’s what was out there—equaled rescue.

  “Let’s put the cushions against the bulkhead, in the corner over there.” She guided the handbeam Trip held toward the rear of the bridge. “That will help steady him.”

  The three of them moved Barty carefully, then Kaidee showed Trip how to monitor Barty on the small medical analyzer and check his inhaler. The unit would assist his breathing for another hour and forty-five minutes.

  “You have EVA suits on this deck?” Devin asked, kneeling next to her.

  She pointed to a locker in the opposite corner, even though Devin probably couldn’t see her fully. “Two. But the breathing apparatus is different.”

  “I might be able to rig something using one.”

  “Get those primaries installed and we won’t need it.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Devin said, but as he pushed himself to his feet, he leaned forward and brushed the side of her face with a kiss.

  She shook her head slightly, as if by so doing she could shake off the emotions that rose every time he came close to her. She wished she didn’t like him—genuinely like him—so much. It would make it far easier to push him away or ignore him.

  She turned back to Barty, tucking the blanket around his hips a bit more snugly, because it was something to do and she felt useless. Then she pushed herself to her feet. “I have some supplies in my quarters we might need. Trip, stay with Barty. I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”

  Kaidee reclaimed her handbeam and made several trips, bringing the rest of the bottled water, the snack packets, and her bed pillows, then heading back down the corridor for her cold-weather gear and extra blanket. Ship’s temperature was already dropping.

  If they had to, they could conserve their air supply and heat by shutting down the rest of Deck 1, staying confined to the bridge and the small lav adjacent to it. It might buy them another half hour or so, stretching their five-hour limit to a bit more.

  If it comes to that, why bother? She didn’t know. Tears pricked her eyes—unusual for her. She wasn’t the soggy sort. But she was and always had been a fighter. A survivor. Maybe in that extra half hour—if it came to that—th
ey’d think of something. Devin would work one more miracle.

  But Barty might be dead by then.

  All because she’d decided to rescue Trip Guthrie. And because she hadn’t had the sense to walk away from Devin. You own this ship now? Fine; you fly it. That would have stopped the whole thing right there. They’d still be on Dock Five, where she had friends, options, resources.

  But what if Devin had hired another pilot? Dock Five’s brimming with them. Then he’d be gone, maybe in the same circumstances, and he’d be dying. And you’d never know what really happened. Just like with your father. Just like with Kiler.

  Was she destined to be the death curse for the men she loved? She stripped the blanket off her bed, folding it carefully for no reason other than it felt better to be doing something.

  You don’t love Devin.

  Yeah, I do.

  Idiot.

  No argument there.

  She pulled her heavy coat and a thick sweater from her closet, folding them neatly and placing them on top of the blanket. Neither would fit Trip, Devin, or Barty. And the ship would get colder, the air less breathable. She had some towels, could maybe even use her bedsheets as a buffer against the cold, but when it all came down to it, did it really matter? An extra ten minutes before they froze to death or ran out of air?

  She dropped the handbeam on her bed and sucked in a harsh breath. She would not cry. She would not collapse. She would not give in to the fear gnawing at her like a mad, ravenous crigblarg, insatiable, unrelenting …

  Boot steps behind her. She recognized them, knew them by heart already, knew the way Trip loped and the way Devin strode. This was Devin. She did not want him here right now, not with tears streaming down her face and her breath coming in hard hiccups.

  She scrubbed hurriedly at her face but it was too late, because he was saying her name and, when his arm slid around her waist, she realized she was trembling. And wanted nothing more than to be held by him forever.

  “Hush, Kaidee, hush.” He nestled her face against his shoulder and rested his head against hers.