by Aileen Erin
There. One more stupid plan to throw into the mix. Although I had to admit, mine was the least stupid of all of them.
“No.” Lorne’s gaze grew darker. “There’s absolutely no way I’ll let you go to Telnon alone. You’re unprepared and as good as Roan is as your assistant, you don’t have an advisor with you to guide you through the process of dealing with our allies, which you’d need. Especially when they’re already pitted against us.”
I stood up straight. He couldn’t tell me what I could and couldn’t do. “I can handle it.”
“No,” my father and Lorne said at the same time.
I wanted to scream at them that they were frustrating, but that wouldn’t do any good. I recognized the steely looks that both of them were giving me, probably because I was giving them a similar look back.
Where did that leave us? From where I was standing, we’d decided on exactly nothing.
“I got it, Am!” Roan was staring at his tablet.
“What?” Lorne was confused, but I knew what that meant.
I turned to Roan. “You were able to decode the message?”
“Babe. It’s like you don’t even know me anymore.” He didn’t take his eyes from his tablet, but his grin was full of pride. “You bet your ass I decoded it.”
“What message?” Lorne asked. “Who sent it?”
“One more second. I need to go to this address and put in a password and…there we go. Moving it on-screen now.”
As soon as the image hit the screen, I couldn’t breathe.
I covered my mouth. “Holy shit!” Holy fucking shit. My cheeks were wet and I knew I was crying and I didn’t care.
Chapter Twenty-One
AMIHANNA
“Holy shit.” The conference room was quiet except for my ragged words.
I could feel my father and Lorne staring at me. I knew they’d be able to see what I was seeing on my end and were one hundred percent confused, but Roan was right there with me.
“Hey, babe.” Haden’s gray-green eyes looked down at me. His hair was shorter than when I’d seen him last, and he looked bigger—more muscular. He looked alive, happy, and damned good. “It’s nice to see you, too.” He smiled at me.
I never thought I’d be so happy to see my ex. He’d been clingy and too much and I couldn’t commit to him even though I had no good reason to reject him, but now I knew why.
Lorne was it for me. He was everything, and even when I couldn’t consciously remember him, some part of me had. Some part of me remembered and held me back from getting romantically close to anyone else. Because Lorne was it for me.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t care about Haden. He was good, kind, fun. He’d been what I needed for a very brief second. And right now, Haden was my line to the Crew. If he was okay, that meant everyone was probably okay, too. And that made me very, very happy.
The fear for them that had been taking bites out of my soul, slowly consuming me with worry that I might never see my second family again… It’d been a lot. Especially the last little while. Scanning all that footage with Roan for that interview with Himani brought so much back.
My mother was right. The Crew had given me a reason to live when I’d been ready to give up on life. It’d been too hard to keep going alone, but then Jorge found us. And then I met Roan. And everything changed.
Jorge always said I did too much for the Crew, but he didn’t get it. I would’ve given up without them. I would’ve died. “We’ve been trying to contact you guys forever. How’s it going? How is everyone? Where—”
“Take a breath, babe. We’re all good. Most everyone is accounted for. There are a few newbies that turned on us, but the rest—we’re safe as we can be.”
My heart, my breath, every thought in my head stopped for a second as I held on to the hope that he’d just thrown at me with everything I had. “Please. The truth. How is it?”
Haden’s smiled started to slip, slowly falling and that hope slipped through my hands, too.
I roughly wiped at the tears that had been slowly dripping down my face. “You’ve never been so hard to track down. We’ve been trying everything for weeks. What’s really going on? No bullshit.”
“We met up with your guys Declan and Ahiga.”
Lorne’s sudden sharp breath told me that he’d been as worried as I’d been.
“We came back to ABQ, showed them our way around the city for a bit, but then—”
“Are they with you?” I had to talk to them.
“Not anymore.” The way he said it made everything in me stop. There was too much left unsaid. Too much warning in his tone.
“Tell me,” I said, and I hoped he’d tell me fast.
“Everything was going great. We’ve been able to get some great intel on movement of the SpaceTech fleet, where the lucole went, and what they’re doing with it—which is nothing good. I don’t know how much I should trust this line—”
“It’s secure,” my father said.
Haden looked past me for a second. “No disrespect, but I can’t afford to take any chances.” He sighed, and the last of his smile disappeared. “Declan and a few of his guys went to go grab some of their people out of one of the colonies a couple weeks ago. Santiago and some of the others went with them. Ahiga stayed with the rest of us to hold down the fort. Declan, Santiago, and the others were supposed to check in with us at 0732 ABQ time every day.” He swallowed, and I knew something bad was coming. “We haven’t heard from them in nine days. We don’t know anything for sure, but…”
But it wasn’t great. Nine days.
I tried to think of what could’ve gone wrong, but there were just too many possibilities. It could’ve been that coms to the colony were being disrupted. Or they were deep in hiding somewhere and couldn’t find a safe line to send a com link to Haden. Or it could’ve been that they’d been captured, or worse—they were dead.
“Can I talk to Ahiga or Jorge?” Either of them would know more because Haden wasn’t giving me enough. There was too much between us, and I wasn’t sure if he was really afraid of the security on the line or if this was some passive-aggressive bullshit because I’d broken up with him.
“No. I—”
No? He didn’t get to say no. “Get Ahiga on the line. Now.”
“Babe.” He leaned closer to the camera, and he was wearing that patient look. I knew it well. It was the one he always gave me when he’d been trying to get me to date him. “It’s not because I don’t want him to talk to you. Ahiga and Jorge left two days ago to find Declan. Ahiga got a message and they took off. They convinced a small unit to go with them. I’m the most senior member of the Crew right now.”
I wiped a hand down my face. “Shit.”
Haden was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t a fighter. Not like Jorge or Ahiga. It seemed mean and awful of me to think, but he wasn’t smart enough to lead them. He wasn’t strong enough to stand against the pressure of fighting against SpaceTech. He’d cave eventually. If he was the only one in charge, then the days of the Crew were limited.
And now I had a really bad feeling about this. A seriously awful feeling.
As much as I hated the idea of Santiago getting captured—he was too funny and sweet and just awesome to die like that—the thought of Jorge getting captured was worse. He’d worked hard to unite different resistance crews and groups all over Earth. All that knowledge could be twisted against those freedom groups if Jorge was tortured for information.
And then there was Ahiga. He was Declan’s inside man, coordinating the resistance inside SpaceTech. If they found out what Ahiga knew, then there would be a hunt for traitors throughout the ranks of SpaceTech.
And if Declan were captured, that was truly the worst case scenario. Not only would it hurt Lorne, but so many Aunare secrets were at stake. So many Earther secrets.
I didn’t even have words for how bad that would be.
No matter what had happened or who SpaceTech had captured, I had t
o assume that the Crew was in trouble. Because there was no way that Declan and Ahiga could keep all their secrets when they were being tortured. Both of them had too many secrets. Too many high-profile secrets. Giving up the Crew would be the least destructive and it would give SpaceTech an enemy to find and destroy. Giving up the Crew would be a distraction to give the Aunare and his SpaceTech spies a chance to regroup. It was the least bad of the worst-case scenarios. And if the Crew were found, then we’d know that it wouldn’t be long before the rest of our secrets were owned by SpaceTech.
What the hell was I going to do now? Because Haden didn’t seem as worried as he should’ve been.
He should’ve been terrified, and he’d started this call with a smile. If he really understood what was going on, he’d be running for his life.
No wonder it didn’t work out with Haden. The guy was an idiot.
Roan touched my shoulder. He knew. He got it.
There was a quiet haze in my brain as I tried to force myself to think about what to do next, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t think.
“How’s the city?” Roan asked, giving me time, but my brain felt like it was weightless and floating through space.
“Shit. As usual. But things are buzzing here. Ever since your new guy made the declaration of war and check this out—” He aimed the camera outside the window.
The building across the way had a digital painting of me projected on it. Below it said “Maité Martinez is Amihanna di Aetes. Survivors together.”
Seeing my face, my names, my motto on the buildings was enough to jolt me. “Did you put that there?”
“No way, babe. I’m not risking my life to put up graffiti. Even if it’s graffiti of you. I can’t afford the risk.”
Fair. Getting caught for something like that would be stupid. There was too much at risk. The network that Jorge had been building between cities to band together against SpaceTech was too precious.
Haden grinned, and it was the grin that got me to go out with him. The charming one. The one that made his clover green eyes glitter. “It’s amazing. We don’t know who’s doing it, but they’re all over the place. Not just in the ABQ either. Some are projections, some are hacked into digital billboards, and some are just a small bit of printed material slapped to the side of a building or a bit of sloppy painting, but no matter how sloppy, we can always tell who it is. It’s not just the Crew that are shouting for you to come back. It’s every resistance group all over Earth. Two colonies revolted. They’ve gone dark. We’re not sure what’s happening on any of the other colonies—we never trust what the news is saying and we can’t get a link on our insiders there—but you’re our rallying cry, babe. Declan helped, too. Whatever he was doing here, he got SpaceTech scared. Which gave us the window to start revolting, and that’s just what we’re doing.”
I turned to Roan, and he stepped closer to me, gripping my hand. I saw in his eyes the same thing I felt in my soul.
We had to go back.
There was no more debating it. We had to go back. Soon.
“Is there any chance that you’ll come home? Because we all saw what you did. We saw you on top of that ship blowing everything up. We saw you in that mall thing last week. I always knew you were bad ass, but fuck it. You were majorly holding things back. The whole damned time.”
I licked my lips trying to find a way not to fully commit even when I wanted to with every bit of my being.
My father might have doubts, but I knew that I could make a difference if I went back. I wasn’t doing anything here but sitting in meetings and training. And while the training was fun, it didn’t mean anything unless I actually did something with that training.
But I couldn’t make a promise to Haden. Not yet. Not until I talked to Lorne.
“But you know what, babe?” Haden said.
“What?”
“Now I know why you couldn’t really give me a chance. I didn’t stand a chance against that guy.”
My eyes darted to Lorne, who gave me a sly grin. I knew he probably wasn’t happy that I was taking a second to talk to my ex in the middle of all this chaos, but my past mattered. And the people from my past that had helped me live? They mattered more than I could say.
“How’s SpaceTech doing?” Roan changed the subject and I was glad for it. “What’s the feeling out there on the street?”
“Who knows really?” Haden shook his head. “Word is that SpaceTech’s freaking. Lotta big guys came in a few days ago. We’re swarming with them. They’ve got special patches on the right leg of their pants, and they’re carrying some special guns. The casing that holds the bullets is clear. Inside is a gray dust.”
“Lucole.” If the guns were meant for the Aunare, why were they carrying them on Earth?
Because they thought we were coming back to Earth to fight.
“Yeah. We haven’t been able to get our hands on any of it, but that’s what the word is. They know our connection to Amihanna, and they’re looking for us. So far, we’re managing to stay ahead of them. But if you come here, they’re armed to take you down. They’re hoping you come here, and I have to say I want you here, but also, maybe don’t come yet. Maybe give us a second to revolt.”
Shit. This was exactly what I didn’t want. “Are you safe right now?” For the first time I tried to see where Haden was, but I didn’t recognize his surroundings. There was no one with him, when there should’ve been.
“Eh. I’m as safe as I can be. A few of us are holed up together, but I wanted to take the call alone in case the signal got tracked. Calling deep space was too dangerous to do with everyone else. But the Crew is scattered around the city in different hiding spots. We move around a bunch. None of us staying in one spot for too long and never all of us in one place. There are too many of us now, and crowds draw too much attention.”
“Shit.” If they were moving around a bunch, staying in small groups, then that meant that SpaceTech was on to them. If they got caught, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to help them.
But I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop myself from trying.
“We’re hanging though. We definitely feel like we’re in a pressure cooker and there’s some fear going on with what the Aunare—what your people—will do when they catch up with us.”
I couldn’t ignore the hint of hurt in his voice. “Look. I know I lied—”
“Stop. I knew. I think we all knew. Some of us tried to reason away some of what you did, but deep down we knew. No way some little girl beats a grown man in a fight. And when I saw your tattoo, I knew what it meant.”
I felt a frequency shift and glanced at Lorne again. His skin brightened for a moment before he tamped it down.
Lorne knew exactly where my tattoo was—just beside my hipbone, low enough that the only way Haden could’ve seen it was if I hadn’t been wearing any clothes. Which meant Haden had been with me intimately. We hadn’t crossed those lines—and Lorne knew that—but from the way Lorne’s eyes were closed, I knew he was fighting against his feelings.
I wanted to ease his mind, but I’d have to do it later.
“Where are you staying?” I asked Haden.
Haden shook his head. “I won’t tell you that. Telling you a location wouldn’t do any good anyway because we’re changing where we are on the regular, but if you come here and can’t find me in any of the usual spots, send word. Now that I know you’re looking for me, I’ll be sure to check for any messages from you.”
“Got it.”
There was a siren, and Haden looked out of the window.
“Shit. Must’ve found the signal.” He looked at the cam. “Gotta run.”
My heart started to race and I wished I could jump through that screen to help. “Stay safe.”
“Doing my best.”
The line went dead, and I gripped Roan’s hand tighter. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked him.
“Always. We’re always on the same page.”
“What?” My father asked
. “What?”
Roan gave my hand a squeeze before letting go. “If they’re using her as their rallying cry, how much more could we do if we were there on the ground with them? I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again now. She can have that planet revolting against SpaceTech in no time.”
“She can’t go back right now,” Lorne said before I could process any of what Haden had said. “For so many reasons.”
“I know.” Because I did know. I understood all the reasons I shouldn’t go back.
I was the future queen.
I had a duty. A destiny. A future with the Aunare.
But what good was ruling if I couldn’t save the people I loved?
I closed my eyes. Now more than ever, my gut was screaming at me to go back to Earth.
God. I never thought it would come to that.
I never thought that I’d ever want to go back.
But now I knew I had to.
Now or later, I knew I’d end up there.
“Well, that was interesting,” Lorne said.
“And informative,” I said. “It’s good that the Earthers are revolting. Knowing that SpaceTech has lucole on the ground—specifically the same weapon that Officer Hill shot at me just days ago—means that they’re expecting us to go there.”
I glanced at Roan. I knew he wanted to head there now. I knew he wanted to head straight to Earth and join the fight. I knew because I wanted it, too. I wanted it so bad.
But I couldn’t.
That wasn’t my mission. As much as I wanted it to be. Because now I knew what my mission was.
Take down SpaceTech.
I needed to do whatever was going to help that mission the most.
