Games of Command

by Linnea Sinclair

  Um, No, No, Bad Captain! for sure.

  But when she thought of her pink T-shirt, she thought of the Regalia. And when she thought of the Regalia, she thought of Tank. Where was he? More than that, was he safe?

  She followed Kel-Paten around a pile of fallen trees. She’d learned to move quickly and carefully at night on Lethant. But Kel-Paten could quite literally see in the dark. His guidance was infallible.

  He slowed and, with a hand on her shoulder once more, pushed her into a crouch, coming down close alongside her. Their thighs touched, and she could feel his breath on her temple when he spoke.

  “One guard on the tarmac. Male humanoid. Armed.”

  She brought up her binocs. At this distance, she could see the greenish outline of the Mystic Traveler and, beyond that and off to the right, the green glow of floodlights marking corners of the outpost’s larger buildings. The guard, however, was little more than a dark cipher. But then, she wasn’t Kel-Paten.

  “Just one?” She panned, found nothing else, and let the binocs fall on their strap. “Sloppy. Or a trap.”

  “Agreed.” He was still scanning the ship and its surroundings. Suddenly, he tensed, his body going rigid beside her.

  She tensed too, not knowing what he’d seen. It didn’t matter. If he didn’t like it, she’d like it less. She put her hand on the pistol on her utility belt but didn’t pull it.

  Kel-Paten nodded so slightly she felt it more than saw it.

  “Good news, Sebastian,” he whispered in her ear. “We’re not in Dreehalla. And we’re not lost.”

  She leaned into him, a small bubble of hope in her heart. “We’re not?”

  “There’s also bad news. The guard by the ship is carrying a Zonn-X Seven.”

  A Zonn-X? “That’s a Triad weapon!”

  “Not Triad,” he corrected her firmly. “PsyServ. Disrupts brain-wave functions.”

  Triad. PsyServ. Same thing, to her. But not to him, she remembered.

  “This is a PsyServ facility?”

  “I think that’s a possibility.”

  “But what would they be doing with the Traveler?” She’d heard a couple of versions of how Rej Andgarran stole the ship from Serafino years ago and then disappeared. Was he so afraid of Serafino’s ire that he went as far off the charts as he could? She almost asked Kel-Paten but then realized that would be admitting to knowledge she wasn’t supposed to have. “And why not confront us directly at the shuttle? They had to know we landed.”

  A slight nod again. “I would very much like answers to those questions.”

  She recognized something in his tone, something that said he’d already formed an opinion. She had heard it often enough in their discussions in his office. She dropped forward on her knees and swiveled to face him. “You’re still thinking Serafino’s in on this?”

  “Prove to me he isn’t.”

  “We’re alive. He knows we’re out here. If he wanted us dead we’d already be dead. Plus, Eden would have sensed something from him if he was setting a trap.” But Eden did say Jace was blocking her ever since they found the planet. Gods, she didn’t like this at all. She wished she could see what Kel-Paten saw. Just because the guard had a Zonn—“Is the guard in uniform?”

  “Freighter grays,” Kel-Paten said.

  “Could be anybody, then. Possession of a Zonn doesn’t mean you’re a PsyServ agent. I could name you five sources right now where you could pick one up if you were willing to pay the asking price.”

  “A merc stronghold. We could be dealing with Gund’jalar or Zanorian. All the more reason I’d suspect Serafino had a hand in this.”

  Sass held herself very still. Two people she did not want to discuss with Kel-Paten were Gund’jalar and Zanorian. But she couldn’t prove this wasn’t one of Gund’jalar’s cells without admitting she had been in touch with the Rebashee merc as recently as yesterday. He knew she was on the Vax. Had this been one of Gund’jalar’s cells, then a rescue team would have been outside the Galaxus before she’d even pulled herself off the cockpit floor. “Cryloc Syndicate?” she countered, hoping to distract him from his options. The Syndicate was on the lunatic fringe. They hated the Triad over some centuries-old incident that no one could even remember.

  They bounced hypotheses back and forth—quietly—for the next ten minutes, Kel-Paten intently watching the guard and the ship. The admiral would not make a move until he was relatively sure who they were up against. Pulling a raid on a PsyServ facility required different tactics than taking on a Rebashee mercenary cell.

  She knew that. She knew exactly how Gund’jalar ran his cells. And this was not any kind of operation Gund’jalar would run. But she couldn’t tell him that without telling him how she knew.

  Yet the more he focused on Gund’jalar as the answer, the greater the risk they’d be caught off guard by whoever was really running the outpost.

  She sucked in a breath. “Gund’jalar’s people would never leave a ship so lightly guarded.” A ship was an asset. A valuable, expensive one to a mercenary operation. You don’t squander your assets, she could almost hear Gund’jalar telling her. “PsyServ is different. They’re not military. They have an open-ended budget.”

  “All the more reason I think this is a Rebashee merc outfit,” Kel-Paten argued, shifting forward in his crouch. “PsyServ doesn’t have their own ships, let alone an attack squadron. Their evaluators travel on fleet pinnaces.”

  Damn him. He was wrong. “Kel-Paten.”

  He looked down at her, the glow in his eyes barely visible. “Sebastian.”

  “This is not a Rebashee operation. You go in there expecting merc responses and you’re going to get killed. And then not only we will not get to sooner, we’ll never get to later either.” She pinned him with a hard knowing stare, as much as she could in the darkness. She needed him distracted from the Gund’jalar topic, and if it took a hint of sex to do it, so be it. The fact that her words had to be low, almost whispered, only added to the effect. “We go with the PsyServ model. We rescue Eden, Serafino, and the furzels, commandeer the ship. We do that, and sooner could well be on that ship. I’ll bet it has one hell of a well-equipped captain’s cabin. Silk sheets and all.”

  “Tasha—” Kel-Paten’s voice rasped.

  “You want to hear my ideas for later? A suite, at one of the casino hotels on Glitterkiln. Three, four days. We might even have time for a hand or two of Starfield. On the last day. Maybe.”

  Sometime during her whispered recitation, Kel-Paten’s hand had come to rest on her shoulder. After a teasing offer like that, Dag Zanorian would have had her flat on her back, mouth hard on hers, one hand either up her shirt or finding its way down her pants, while the other would still be on the trigger of his laser rifle, in case the enemy rudely interrupted.

  Kel-Paten just gently traced the line of her jaw with his thumb.

  Damned emo-inhibitors! He probably had them at full power.

  “Tasha,” he repeated. “I’ve been to Glitterkiln. The suites in Tygaris are better.”

  She grinned in the darkness. Gotcha. “And that wouldn’t happen to be because they’re Triad owned and operated?”

  “Of course.” He was back to watching the ship and the guard. But there was a hint of a smile on Kel-Paten’s lips.

  “We’ll go with the modified diversion plan,” he said. “Draw the guard past the perimeter, take him out just after his next checkin. That’s in twenty minutes, from what I’ve seen. That will give us fifteen to secure the ship, bring weapons online. Then we prime the engines, engage the transbeam. The furzels will be easy to find and retrieve. But pinning down Fynn and Serafino’s biosignatures among all the other humanoids will take some work.”

  Actually, it wouldn’t. She had them in the data she’d copied from Kel-Paten’s personal files. Eden’s records were appended to her own. And she’d snagged Serafino’s file while looking for implant data. It all resided in the small datadrive now secured in her backpack.

  One more thi
ng she couldn’t tell him. She had to find a way to sneak them into the ship’s database or transfer the data to her handheld. It would take only a few seconds.

  “If the ship has sufficient fuel,” he was saying, “we should be back in orbit in under two hours, depending on their pursuit capabilities. From there we use the charts on board, which we have to assume would be current to this sector, to get back. If the ship’s low on fuel, we stay in heavy air but make a workable landing this time and go into full defensive mode.”

  “Aye, sir. Got it.”

  He turned to her, his mouth suddenly a thin line. “Fair warning: if Serafino is allied with the enemy, I will kill him.”

  “But—”

  He held up one hand. “It will be my call. It has to be.” He hesitated. His tone softened. “You mean the world to me, Tasha. I respect your opinion more than you know. But Serafino is a known problem in the Triad—an immoral mercenary, possibly with ties to Gund’jalar, who still challenges our ownership of the Danvaral sector. The fact that Serafino may have uncovered some suspicious activities doesn’t absolve him of his crimes or his past associations. He is the enemy until he proves himself otherwise.”

  Or his past associations. And what about hers? She would no longer mean the world to him if he found out.

  She nodded in the darkness, her voice strained. “Aye, sir. Got it.”

  He was silent. She didn’t dare look at him but shrugged off her backpack and knelt stiffly, hands on her thighs, trying not to succumb to exhaustion. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept or ate, but their push through the forest and their discussions—flirtatious and otherwise—kept those issues at bay. Now, with plans decided, her adrenaline dropped and her energy flagged.

  His arm slipped lightly over her shoulder. She let out a sigh she didn’t know she was holding in, and he pulled her more closely against him. He was warm. She was chilled from the cold night air and her knees hurt.

  “I will try very hard not to kill him,” he said softly.

  “I know, Branden.”

  “Come here.” He scooted backward on the ground a few feet, then leaned against the wide trunk of a tree, drawing her with him, nestling her between his legs. Her back was against his chest. He wrapped his left arm around her waist, holding her more tightly. She angled her head against his shoulder, skewing her cap. His warmth seeped into her.

  “This is against regulations while on field surveillance,” she whispered.

  “Screw regulations.”

  “If someone sneaks up—”

  “I will hear them or see them. Take a ten-minute nap. You need it.”

  Funny, she thought as her eyes closed. If there was a spare ten minutes with Zanorian, he’d undo his pants and demand a quickie. Kel-Paten gave her warmth and comfort and asked for nothing.

  Branden Kel-Paten felt the tension ebb from her body, felt her muscles loosen. Her breathing slowed.

  In contrast, every inch of him crackled with awareness. He didn’t lie to her: he would know of anyone coming before they could be considered a threat. He had his ’cybe senses at max, listening, scanning, sensing.

  But not just his surroundings. He was scanning, sensing, recording Tasha Sebastian. Memorizing the feel of her in his arms, the warmth of her on his chest. The fine tickle of wisps of her hair against his neck as they escaped from under her dark cap.

  The scent of her.

  The guard resumed his plodding path around the tarmac. One part of Kel-Paten’s mind worked out angles of attack, noted escape routes, blind corners. The other knew she draped her arm over his, curling her fingers around his hand. It was such a small thing, but it made his heart stutter.

  Because it was deliberate. She wanted to touch him. He knew she wasn’t asleep—not really. She’d learned, as most Fleet officers did in boot camp and then later in field training, to snatch a furzel-nap to recharge. You couldn’t survive long missions without it.

  Being ’cybe, he didn’t need to do that. He always stood guard, like now. Except guard duty was never so pleasant before.

  He’d wake her simply by saying her name, in four minutes. She’d come fully alert, ready to conquer the galaxy, he thought with a smile.

  Why not? She’d already captured his heart.

  Tasha woke at the eight-minute mark. She had an uncanny ability to sense the progression of time when she was forced to nap on the run. Kel-Paten said to take ten. She’d set her internal clock for eight because she honestly wasn’t one hundred percent sure what they were going to come up against at the outpost.

  And she’d be damned if she was going to die without kissing him one more time.

  It could only be a short kiss, she knew that. But she’d make sure he knew it held the promise of much more. Because she had come to the most amazing, incredible realization during her eight-minute nap.

  She loved that annoying, pompous, overbearing, biocybernetic bastard.

  She opened her eyes. “Hey, flyboy,” she whispered.

  He glanced quickly down at her, slightly startled. Good.

  “Kiss me. That’s an order.” She wrapped her arm around his neck as she tilted her face up to meet his and put everything she felt into the kiss.

  He responded with a groan, clasping her tightly against him, his mouth hot on hers.

  This was dangerous, she knew it was dangerous. But it was only two minutes—and it felt so damned good.

  She laid her palm against his jaw as she slowly, reluctantly broke the kiss, pulling back. He leaned forward, his breath still mingling with hers. He whispered her name, his voice thick with emotion.

  The ground beneath them dropped away. She clung to him, panic cresting. They were free-falling, speeding into a black abyss, searing cold raking her skin, sucking the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even think.

  Then…nothing. Quiet. No searing cold. She stumbled, realized she was standing, and locked her knees. Closed environment. Warehouse. No, hangar. People. Two ships. Skimmers—short-haulers used to run between stations or rafts and a world. Her mind tallied the scene quickly, impersonally. No overt threat. Still, her heart pounded. She drew in a large gulp of air. She could feel Kel-Paten behind her, saw his arm in the edge of her vision.

  She wanted to turn and look at him, but a tall figure—blond male humanoid—moved away from the closest skimmer’s rampway. Others—two—walked toward her from a servocart on the far left. Her vision was clearing. Details sharpened.

  “Tasha…” Kel-Paten’s voice was low.

  “I’m okay. You?”

  “No damage.”

  “Behind us?”

  “Bulkhead. Three feet four inches.”

  No threat from behind then, but not much room to run.

  “Any idea where we—” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. She knew where they were. Raft 84. What worried her more was the man walking toward her.

  Dag Zanorian hooked his hand through the strap of the laser rifle crossing his back as he strode up to her. His legs were encased in his usual dark leather pants, his gray shirt nondescript but—as usual—form-fitting. His blond hair was about as long as Serafino’s, but he wore it loose to his shoulders. He came closer and his mouth quirked in a smile she remembered well. “Sass. Took you long enough.”

  Zanorian? Shit. What was going on?

  “And you got him. Damn, bitch, but you are good.” The rifle flipped forward and didn’t point at her but higher over her shoulder, at Kel-Paten.

  Her hand reached for her laser pistol. It wasn’t there. Damn! She must have lost it in the forest or…in transit. Whatever that was.

  It didn’t matter. She knew trouble when she saw it. “Back off, Dag.”

  “Possessive are we, little girl?” Zanorian chuckled. “I know it’s your mission. Just having some fun with the Tin Soldier.”

  “Zanorian.” Kel-Paten’s tone was flat, but that didn’t bother her as much as the fact that something was wrong here. Very wrong. S
he wasn’t on any mission with Dag. She hadn’t seen him in over five years.

  Two others approached. Humans. She recognized them immediately: the taller, dusky-skinned woman—black-haired, muscular—was her friend Angel Kel-Moro. The shorter, slim man, also carrying a laser rifle, was Jonn Drund. And then she knew what was wrong. Angel was on Panperra, waiting for Serafino. And Jonn Drund had died on Lethant the first month she was there.

  Gund’jalar—keeping an eye on her because Ace had asked him to—had killed him.

  She looked back at Dag. He had only one scar on his cheek, not two. And Angel’s left wrist was bare of her lover’s commitment tattoo.

  Gods. What in hell was going on?

  “Never thought you’d see this day, eh, Tin Soldier? Captured by a rim runner.” Zanorian still trained his rifle on Kel-Paten. Drund raised his weapon as well. “Though my Lady Sass was always more than a mere rim runner.”

  “Lady Sass.” It wasn’t a question. And it wasn’t Zanorian’s voice that said her name. It was Kel-Paten’s. And she didn’t like the way he said it, not at all.

  “Good catch, Sass!” Angel stepped over, tugged on her arm, pulling her forward.

  Sass tugged back. “Wait. Damn it, Dag, put the rifle away. Angel—”

  “Time for a beer.” Angel grabbed her wrist this time. “Hey, c’mon. You earned it. We’ll go back to the Windblade and let Dag do the dirty work for once.”

  “Let go!” She wrenched free of Angel, not missing the confused, hurt look on her friend’s face. And promptly stumbled sideways into Dag.

  He grabbed her, spun her around, and planted a kiss on her mouth. “You are such a fine little bitch.” She jerked back. He slapped her on the rump. “Go with Angel. I’ll meet you on the Blade after Jonn and I secure the Tin Soldier here for Gund’jalar.”

  She didn’t think; she just grabbed his rifle with one hand, lunged forward, and planted a knee to his groin. She thrust the weapon up as he arched toward her. It slammed into his face. Blood spurted as Angel grabbed her from behind.

  “You crazy, Sass?” the woman shouted.

  A fist slammed against Sass’s face. Zanorian or Drund, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. She had to get a rifle and she had to get Kel-Paten, and they had to get out of here.