Not without her.
Dimly, he was aware of moving and his brain switching off. He reacted, or at least his body did, as he’d been trained to. As nearly a decade on the frontline had taught him to. The chatter-chatter of a firefight surrounded him as they made contact with the enemy.
Hatred and agony surged through him. His lips twisted bitterly as he lifted his rifle and picked his targets. With lethal precision, he cut the enemy down, feeling nothing as bodies hit the deck. He felt nothing but pain. No empathy, no joy, no concern for his own safety.
There was just pain, and nothingness. Killing.
The ultimate warrior, he was the product of generations of breeding for war. He’d wanted to follow in his parent’s footsteps and become the legendary warrior his father was… He’d wanted to have people talk about him with the same awe.
He’d done it, molded a bunch of clan-less warriors into the most respected mercenary unit in the galaxy. He’d carved himself a reputation from the bodies of his enemies and written his name in their blood right there in Sargosian history.
He was Roz, born to warriors and disowned man. The Wildcat no one could tame.
Right now, he’d have traded all of that for just five more minutes with the woman he loved. Hell, he’d have settled for seconds…just long enough to see her one last time, to hear her laugh, or hold her in his arms.
His rifle stopped firing. He pulled the trigger again, but the click-click-click of an empty power cell greeted his ears. Swiping a hand down, he discovered all his power cells were gone.
“Incoming. Close quarters,” Jei’s voice bellowed, lost somewhere in the smoke and fire to his left.
Roz grinned as he drew the heavy combat knife from across his back. For an instant, he saw her face in his mind, tears streaming down her cheeks and pain in her eyes as she reached for him. Needed him. And he hadn’t been there.
“Don’t worry, baby. I’m on my way.”
The fight was bloody and brutal. After generations of trench warfare, the Wildcats excelled at close quarters combat. And none were better than the Ninth Twelfth Wildcats and their blond leader. Madness and cold fury seeped into his very bones. He moved, cutting down the enemy left and right. Anyone who strayed into his path was fair game. They stood no chance. He felt no fear, or remorse as his blade flashed in the sunlight, until it was coated scarlet with blood to match the layer over his skin.
Then there were no more enemies, but there was also no pain. Roz stood in the center of a pile of bodies, chest heaving. There was no pain, as long as he focused on the killing, there was no more pain.
“Boss?” Jei ventured, stepping into his line of sight with his hands carefully raised. “It’s done. It’s over.”
Roz turned toward him and felt nothing.
“It’ll only be over when I’m dead.”
Chapter Eight
“Oxygen levels down to five percent. Critical level. At this rate, remaining oxygen will be depleted in three hours.”
Exhaustion beat at her. She had shut down all non-essential systems on her fighter to conserve power for the life support system. Her wild jump had managed to get her away from the remaining pirates, but had dropped her in the arse-end of beyond. Without a navigation reference, she had no idea where she’d ended up, or what direction to head in, to hit a space lane. With zero fuel, she couldn’t afford to wander. Even half a click might put her too far in the wrong direction. That’s if anyone were even looking for her.
Fierce pride filled her. She had done her duty. She’d covered the evacuation of the escape pods, but had lost her entire squadron in the process. Her own fighter had taken damage during the battle, but she was still limping on, bless her.
The Tipton had to be a total loss. The last time Summer had seen her, the big ship was breaking apart from multiple breaches in the hull. Even if she could raise the alarm, by this time, there would be nothing worth going back for.
The light on the control console blinked, so her distress beacon was still broadcasting. Not that it mattered this far out. Her fighter wasn’t capable of long-range jumps, so she had to be in Fleet space still. In truth, she hadn’t cared where she would end up…just as long as she didn’t become a plaything to a scurvy bunch of space pirates.
She needed to face reality. No one was coming. The crushing ache in her chest brought a fresh round of silent tears. Taking the photo of her brothers off the side of the console, she stared at each of their beloved faces. They’d never know what happened to her. She’d be reported missing in action, or assumed killed. Roz would never know what happened to her.
After taking a wild chance at survival, it had come down to this. She’d gambled and lost. She wouldn’t see him again. She would die alone, young and at the prime of her life. There would be no life with Roz. No home. No children. No growing old together.
She reached over and silenced the computer’s warning system. The sound of the voice was like an ice pick to her brain. Closing her eyes, she drifted off to sleep one more time. Maybe it won’t be that bad if I just die in my sleep…
* * *
"Com' on, sweetheart, no dying on me now. You just got here and it would be real rude."
Summer frowned in her sleep. She’d been floating away when she’d gotten one of those nasty jolts that’d made her feel as if she’d fallen several feet. The kind of jolt that brought her almost back to consciousness. That, and the sound of a deep, slightly roughened male voice.
That’s not my bird’s voice…
Struggling up through several layers of fog, she opened her eyes. Blinking for the space of a few heartbeats, she stared up at an unfamiliar face hovering above her. The Eagle classes were single seaters…
She’d died and gone to heaven. And dayum the angels were hot! Abruptly, her body registered the availability of fresh oxygen, and she dragged it in for what seemed like the first time in days.
As she gulped air, several things hit her at once. She wasn’t dead. The guy above her wasn’t an angel but a real, live person. She’d been rescued. Someone had actually found her!
She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness had her slumping against the deck plating. Reaching up, she grabbed onto her rescuer’s heavily tattooed forearm. The need to touch another living soul, to assure herself she was alive, raged through her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of being rude on a first date…”
Oh dear, she was delirious. She was getting cheeky with someone trying to help her. Still, she always fell back on her sense of humor, even in life or death situations.
He chuckled.
"Down, until your body readjusts. You ran seriously short on oxygen there." He pressed her back down with a large hand on her shoulder.
He reached into the med kit by his knee. Standard Fleet issue. She let out a sigh of relief, a breath she didn’t realize she held. For a moment, she’d been scared he was just another pirate. Pulling a medical scanner free, he ran it over her and looked at the results.
"Okay, looking good," he announced with a smile, putting the scanner away. "How are you feeling?"
She stared at him as if he had asked her to start singing the “Battle Hymn of The Republic,” out of the blue. With a small shake of her head, she considered her reply. Of course, staring at him was no hardship.
He was gorgeous, with full lips that just begged for attention, and his eyes…they were almost the same color as Roz’s. She had to have a nasty concussion. There couldn’t be another explanation for her to be checking him out so much. This was not her Sargosian.
“I feel like shit, but considering the alternative, I’ll have to rephrase my answer to ‘I’ve never been better.’ How’s that work for you?” She widened her eyes and gave him a weak smile.
Unfortunately, when she opened her eyes so much, it pulled the skin near her temple. The one she’d smashed against the canopy. Groaning at the pain, she brought her hand up to try and feel how bad the damage was.
“Do I look like Frankens
tein?”
He grinned a little, his hands disappearing into the med kit again and re-emerging with cleansing wipes and a new dressing. With a gentleness she wouldn’t have believed from his size, he cleaned her up.
“You’re down a couple of bolts and stitches, but you’ll pass in a fancy dress parade. Wanna tell me what happened?”
Stoically, she tried not to flinch as he wiped away the blood from the bruised area. It took a few moments to gather herself. Images came back to her in violent flashes, so startling, she flinched and swayed.
The ship, the fighters…all gone.
“Hey, you okay?”
He put a large tattooed hand on her shoulder to steady her, maybe even calm her. She wanted to reach up and hold that hand so badly her fingers twitched. Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus.
“I’m with….was with the UFS Tipton. Acting commander of the fighter squadron after the real one got himself dead a while back. Bandits…space pirates…attacked us for over the past week, perhaps a little more. This last time, they had backup in the form of a Cutlass class destroyer. An older one, if I had to make a guess, and heavily modified.”
Her voice was hushed but strong. His expression was patient but wary. As though he suspected what was coming was bad. He had no idea.
“They were firing on the Tipton…everything was going wrong. The shields failed. The weapons were unresponsive. Everything had gone to shit. The fighters scrambled to cover the evacuation. I sent escorts for the shuttles, but kept the majority of the fighters with me to give them cover and take out the enemy.”
He nodded as he dropped the wipes into a waste bag and taped the small dressing into place. Finally, he looked down at her and smiled again. A killer smile that would have any red-blooded female on her knees in a hot second, she thought absently.
But she wanted another’s smile.
She didn’t feel the slightest stirring of interest for this man. She covered her face as a fresh wave of longing hit her. Since she’d flown away from the base, from Roz, it was one she couldn’t get rid of. Back on her ship, they were so busy keeping the bandits at bay she’d barely had time to breathe. Even so, she still thought of her angel with such frequency it should have alarmed her.
She was in love with a man she had known all of three days, and they hadn’t spent much of that time talking.
Forcing her thoughts back to the present, she dropped her hand and looked at the man in front of her. Holding his gaze, she finished telling him what happened. “I’m not sure how many of the evac shuttles and pods made it away, but we did everything we could. The Tipton took some massive hits and broke apart. She’s a total loss. Anyone left aboard is dead. I had ten fighters with me. They’re…they’re all dead. Every last one of them.”
She felt her control slipping, her body shaking. The more she tried to stop it, the harder she shook. She did not want to cry in front of this warrior, or show weakness of any sort in his presence, but her emotions overruled her head. Tears spilled over her lashes, leaving wet trails down her cheeks. Taking a shuddering breath, she shrugged in a helpless gesture.
“I’m all that’s left. I meant to take the big ship out after the last one of my squadron was killed, but…” she hiccupped, a quick, violent hitching of her breath as her control slipped another notch.
She’d intended to go out in a blaze of glory. Well, in a big fiery explosion would be closer to the truth. There would have been no glory whatsoever.
She couldn’t leave him. Nothing mattered anymore except getting back to Roz. Her angel had saved her.
“I couldn’t do it. In the end, I just couldn’t take out the command ship. I wanted to live too badly. So, at the last second, I altered course and made a blind jump to light speed.”
The big hand on her shoulder gave a reassuring squeeze. As gestures of comfort went, it was tiny, but at the moment, it meant the world to her.
“I’m glad you did.” His voice was quiet but firm. “Without you, we wouldn’t have known what happened to the Tipton. Now we do, and we can go back and kick arse.”
She nodded. “Kicking ass sounds good to me. Just put me back in something fast with plenty of firepower.”
Reaching up, she pulled his hand off of her shoulder so she could shake his hand and introduce herself.
“Summer King, and I’m very pleased to meet you. You’re now on my top ten list of favorite people for saving me. Hell, I might have to give you a big kiss for that even,” she teased. Her natural good humor re-emerged now that she knew she was going to live.
“Saarday Vann. Pleased to meet you, Summer.”
He grinned and folded her hand in his, virtually swallowing it up. He used it to haul her to her feet, his gaze carefully assessing as she wobbled a little. His grin grew wider when she managed to stand on her own two feet.
“I’d take you up on that kiss…but my fiancée would separate me from certain…ahh, appendages if she found out.”
Laughing at the idea of this large man being worried about his fiancée finding out about a kiss reminded her of how her oldest brother had been, back when he’d fallen in love. Back then, the woman he’d ended up marrying had had him wrapped around her little finger. Hell, she still did, all these years and two kids later. Leaning up, she planted a loud, smooching kiss on his stubble-roughened cheek anyway.
“Good grief, Vann. I only meant a thank you kiss. What is it? You’re so good looking you can’t keep the women off you?”
Shoving him lightly on his shoulder, she giggled as she headed for the front of the shuttle.
“Besides…” she looked back before sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, “…you’re not my type. While I’m crazy about the tattoos, and you’ve almost got the same colored eyes, my guy is blond. So that leaves you out of the running.”
“Yeah, well, guy’s gotta watch himself in case he gets taken advantage of.” He winked as he slid into the pilot’s seat. She had a feeling this rough-looking man was all talk and charm, but far more reserved when it came to his feelings.
Looking out the front of the shuttle, all she could see were stars stretching out to the great beyond. She didn’t know where he was, but Roz was out there. The ache returned, settling in the middle of her chest again, and making it hard for her to breathe.
Unzipping the flight suit down to her waist, she wiggled her way out of the arms and peeled the upper half of the uniform off. Shoving it down to where she could tie the empty arms around her waist, now, she at least felt cooler and less confined.
Her head dropped as she stared down at her shirt. She’d swiped it from the floor the morning she’d left the Wildcat ship. The shirt Roz had worn the first time she had seen him.
Unbidden, tears sprang to her eyes. Trying to blink them away, she watched as the diamond drops of liquid fell on the logo displayed across her breasts: “Wildcats do it better.”
God, she missed him. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wished more than anything they could be around him, instead of herself at that moment. Pulling herself together, she finally leaned back and wiped at her eyes. Feeling as if she were being watched, she turned her head to find Saarday looking at her strangely.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
His eyes dropped to her breasts, but she knew he wasn’t eyeing her up. His gaze was too focused, too intent on the writing on her shirt.
“Where did you get that?”
He looked back at the console for a moment, his large hands moving lightly across the display as he adjusted settings. Suddenly, Summer realized she didn’t know anything about him. She had been too relieved to be alive to ask anything about her rescuer. He was Fleet, this was a Fleet shuttle, and that had been all she’d cared about.
Shit. He might be Fleet, but he was also a Sargosian male. One in top condition by the looks of it. Just because she had spent time with Roz’s men didn’t mean that all of them would behave the same way. She had a feeling how they treated her was more the exceptio
n than the rule.
She’d seen how fast they could move. If he wanted to do something to her, there wouldn’t be anything she could do to stop him.
Deep breath, chica. Calm yourself. Just answer the man’s question before you let that wild imagination run away with you.
Real casual-like, she pulled her legs up so she could tuck her legs closer to her. Crossing them slightly on the chair underneath her, her hand crept within inches of the knife in her boot. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she kept her breathing as normal as possible.
“From a guy I spent my leave time with.”
She kept her gaze locked on his deep, green-gold eyes. Staring at him like this made her jumpy, but no way was she going to look away first, or give any other indication he scared the crap out of her.
“Why do you ask?”
He chuckled, amusement flooding his handsome face. “No need to get jumpy or pull that knife. Yes, I did clock that.”
He tapped his own leg, the fabric of his uniform pants pulling slightly over something there. A knife of his own by the looks of it. He flicked a gesture at the t-shirt. “Used to be my old unit before I went Fleet. That’s all.”
Several emotions flooded her at once—relief that he seemed to mean her no harm, embarrassment over how nervous she had become around him…so much so she had thought of going for her knife even. Finally, so profound it made her gasp, a flare of hope. If he had been a Wildcat, he may know how she could find Roz.
She’d tried to reach him after she’d gotten back to the Tipton, but his unit had shipped out. They were off-the-grid, probably on a mission. Part of her had panicked at not being able to reach him. Then, she’d slapped herself for being silly.
Silly or not, something had driven her to find the ship’s tattoo artist. He’d “ooohed” and “aahhhed” over the display of art on the small of her back, even seemed jealous he hadn’t created the design. Still, he’d been more than happy to set his needles to work on her skin, turning the drawing into something permanent. She’d picked beautiful colors to accent the designs, but had left all of the Sargosian script black. His name made the center piece of the entire design, everything else flowing from the dramatic curls and loops.
Taming the Wildcat (Sargosian Chronicles) Page 7
