Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3)

by Donna S. Frelick

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Gabriel stared him down. “Do you have any idea how unpopular you are with Rescue? You walk into that office and everyone in the place will have a finger on a comm to ConSys Intel or city police to pick you up.”

  Sam wanted to laugh, but the look on Gabriel’s face stopped him cold. “Why? I bring them boatloads of lucky ones on a regular basis.” Granted, he never actually delivered them in person. Chen usually managed it, he never asked how. The Shadowhawk came and went in Spacedock with impunity thanks to liberal bribes, and he just kept his own, wanted head down.

  “You’re a loose cannon, Captain, that’s why. They can’t control you.” Gabriel shook his head. “Just like this little operation you mucked up. Think your girlfriend was unhappy about her detour? Imagine how her bosses felt. Now you want to waltz in there and demand they do something to pull her out of a place they had so much trouble getting her into? Yeah, that’ll go over like a pair of gravity boots.”

  Sam’s jaw set. “They may not like me. They may not want to see me. They may even throw my ass in jail. But by gods and starshine I will get them to warn Rayna about what those Thranes are going to do at Kinz. If Daniel gets the message, he’ll get it to Ray. So they will send that message to Daniel before they haul my ass out of that office—and you’re going to see that they do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The whistle blew and, with a groan, Rayna heaved the last crate into place on the mule and stepped back. She wasn’t sure how much longer the bosses would keep them here in the loading docks; she refused to consider how much longer her body could tolerate the heavy loads and unending abuse. Until the pounding initiation of time on the lines was over she couldn’t begin her real work of moving the likeliest survivors to the outside, of sabotaging the Kinz operation in the smallest, least detectable ways. She’d schooled herself to be patient in dozens of other jobs like this one, but her patience was running thin.

  After the long shift, Lainie was done talking. The girl’s shoulders slumped as she shuffled into the line. There were dark circles under her eyes now, too—she didn’t sleep well. Rayna heard her reliving her childhood in her nightmares.

  You’ll be the first one out. I promise, little sister.

  Rayna lined up behind Lainie as the shift prepared to file out of the loading area. The lines of workers lurched forward toward the exits, and her mind turned inward again, wandering aimlessly until it latched on to something warm and solid—Sam. Where would he be now? She hadn’t thought to ask him where he’d be headed next. Did pirates even have destinations—or did they just go where their whims took them? So many things she’d never asked him.

  A gap had opened in the line between herself and Lainie up ahead, and just as they passed the end of a conveyor, a woman turned and bumped into the girl. The woman was big—tall, athletic, Thrane!—but Lainie pushed her off, not giving an inch. The Thrane grinned, backed up and held up both hands in a show of surrender, then turned quickly back to her work.

  The guards had ignored or missed the encounter. Rayna tried hard for a look at the woman’s face, but she’d turned so that was impossible. The line moved on; Rayna was forced to give up and rush to join the others.

  Just past the active conveyors, in the dark canyons of the storage platforms, Lainie abruptly peeled off to the right of the line and disappeared into the shadows. The guards took no notice.

  What the hell? Rayna had no time to think; she had no idea why the girl would do such a thing. But there was no way in hell she was leaving her to her own devices. She waited a few more steps, then ducked into the dark passageway between the two ceiling-high scaffolds that held the packed crates she spent her days moving off the line. She ran down the aisle, peering through the open platforms for a glimpse of Lainie. There! Walking in no great hurry toward the end of the line of platforms a few aisles over.

  She got to the end of her passage and turned right, catching the girl as she got to the end of her aisle. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Lainie said nothing. She frowned, and sat down.

  “That’s a good girl.” The voice came out of the dark behind Rayna.

  She turned, just in time to deflect the blow that would have smashed the back of her skull. The Thrane wielded a piece of plasteel as long as her forearm—some part of a lase rifle filched from one of the crates?—and Rayna’s shoulder where she’d taken the strike burned deep into the muscle. She grabbed at the hand that held the weapon and punched at the Thrane’s throat, but the woman was too strong; she found herself flying through the air to land with a bone-jarring crash on her back.

  Before she could roll to her feet, hands caught her and held her down. She struggled, but without effect. Two hulking Thrane males grinned down at her and would not let her up. Males? How can they be males? And where the hell did they come from?

  “Let her go. It’s me you want.”

  Sam emerged from the shadows not three meters away. Another Thrane held a shiv to his throat.

  “What? No!” Rayna fought to get up. “What in Portal’s Hell are you doing here?”

  “I came back for you.” His voice was flat; his expression was blank. What had they done to him? He looked at the Thrane woman. “Let her go, Zetana. Fair trade—me for her.”

  Now he knows her name? “No! What is wrong with you?” The hands holding her slammed her back to the floor.

  He turned his blank stare on Rayna. “I love you.”

  Zetana laughed. “How sweet. And such a lovely offer! But I don’t need you, Captain. I need your ship.” She gestured to the man holding the shiv, who pulled a comm out of his pocket and held it to Sam’s mouth. “Call your XO and order him to prepare for boarding. Tell your crew not to resist.”

  Sam’s jaw clenched, the only sign that there was anything left of him inside.

  “Do it, or I will kill her.”

  A cold blade appeared against Rayna’s throat. She felt the trickle of warm blood run down her throat before she felt the sting where the sharp edge had nicked her.

  Sam opened his mouth to speak.

  “Sam Murphy, so help me. If you do this, I will never forgive you.” Or myself.

  But he did it anyway. He called the Shadowhawk and ordered his crew to stand down. And then he looked at her with nothing in his eyes and said, “I had to. I love you more than anything.”

  Zetana smiled, a smile as wicked and cold as the vast, black vacuum of space. Then she stepped up, took the shiv from her man, and swiped it across the right side of Sam’s throat. Blood sprayed onto her hand and arm as Sam, his face a mask of shock, dropped onto the floor.

  Rayna heard someone screaming. It couldn’t be her, because she didn’t believe this. She refused to believe this. This could not be her Sam, dead on the floor with his throat ripped out. Her Sam was safe and warm and alive all the way to his eyes, somewhere on the other side of this sector of space.

  And suddenly she knew: she was not being held down by two male Thranes, because the males in this prison were housed in a separate wing and worked in a different section of the factory floor. This fight was just between her and a Thrane woman named Zetana, who, like all her kind, could manipulate the minds of her enemies.

  Just as Zetana turned from Sam’s “body” to come in for the kill, Rayna jumped up from her prone position on the floor, slapped at her left arm to put her own shiv in her right hand and stepped in. She thrust the shiv deep into the Thrane’s abdomen and jerked upward, opening a fatal gash. Blood slicked the knife as Zetana folded over the wound. Rayna pulled out the shiv and struck again, this time at the carotid. When she stepped back, the bigger woman crumpled to the floor in a bloody heap.

  “Holy shit!” Lainie scrambled to her feet, eyes wide. “Who the hell is that?”

  “This is half of the team I’ve been waiting for.” Rayna glanced at the shiv in her hand, then reluctantly dropped it on the floor. Her bloody jumpsuit was another matter. No way she’d be able to hide that.<
br />
  But it didn’t look like she’d even have a chance; someone was coming up the aisle, with a lightcell and a squawking comm—a guard, and probably not alone.

  “Don’t move! Stay right where you are!”

  Oh, thank God! “Neko?”

  “Shut up!” His whisper was urgent as he found them. “Portal’s balls! What the fuck did you do?”

  “Nothing I didn’t ask you to take care of before it came to this.”

  Neko scowled at her. “How was I supposed to figure out which of five Thrane bitches was the spy?”

  “Well, now we know.” Rayna couldn’t repress a shudder. “She lured us back here to take me out.”

  He looked over his shoulder as the comm at his waist issued a string of garbled sounds. “The others will be here any minute. I’m taking you into custody—for your own protection. Strip off that jumpsuit.”

  When Lainie stared at him, he growled back at her. “Even I can’t explain that much blood.”

  Neko took the bloody clothing, wrapped it into a tight ball and stuffed it inside his uniform. Then he escorted his two charges out through the darkest part of the warehouse section, his ear to the comm to avoid his fellow guards, who were still searching for the source of the screaming someone had reported earlier. When he got to the corridor, he parked the two women in a storage closet.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” the guard told them. “Don’t move. Don’t talk. Don’t even breathe.”

  They waited in the dark while the scene of Rayna’s encounter with the Thrane assassin replayed over and over again in her mind. Every detail had seemed so real—the weight of hands on her, holding her down; the color of Sam’s skin; the dark scruff of beard along his jaw, as if he hadn’t shaved today; the way his chest had risen and fallen with his breath—too fast, like hers; and his blood, deep red and . . . everywhere. The power of that illusion held her still; she was shaking so hard she thought her bones might break.

  Lainie watched her. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “C’mon.” Lainie pushed her gently on the shoulder. “A big, tough Rescue agent like you?”

  Rayna inhaled an uneven breath and let it go. “Yeah. Right. You’re right. Just don’t like all that mess, you know?”

  “Yeah, I got you. Lase weapons are much cleaner.” The kid was looking at her like she understood it was more than that, but she didn’t call her out.

  “Have to say I was glad to have the shiv, though.” Rayna forced a laugh and rubbed her arms to cover the shaking. “Damn, it’s cold in here.”

  “Ray, I’m sorry. It was my fault you ended up alone with that woman.” The girl sat on the floor, her gaze directed between her hands to her feet, struggling for words. “It was strange. I thought I was back on the ship.” She glanced up, laughed a little. “I was headed to the galley for chow.”

  Rayna huddled down on the floor beside her. “Some Thranes are powerful enough to project illusions without touch. That bitch had me thinking I was fighting her and two males. She even threw Sam into the mix.”

  Lainie gawked. “Cap? How . . .?”

  “She tried to use what was in my mind against me.” Rayna smiled. “Guess he was on my mind.”

  Lainie grinned. “But it didn’t work, huh?”

  “No. Something you said broke the illusion.”

  “Something I said?”

  Sam Murphy would never have let his love make him weak. His love for her would have only made him stronger.

  “Yeah. I do pay attention sometimes.”

  Half an hour later, Neko came back and threw a clean jumpsuit in her direction. “Here, put this on quick. The boss is going crazy trying to figure out what went on. I put you on report for some minor infraction, so I’m gonna lock you up ’til this blows over.” He pointed at Lainie. “You, I gotta get back to the barracks ASAP.”

  “What? No! Put me on report, too!” Lainie was frantic, panic in her eyes. She grabbed Neko’s arm.

  “Hey! Calm down!” Neko put her off. “Trust me, you don’t want to go where she’s going. It ain’t no fun and games. But it’s only for a day or two, until I can plant this on some sucker.” He held up something wrapped in a bloody handkerchief.

  Rayna grinned. “You picked up the shiv!”

  “Somebody’s gotta do the thinking around here.”

  Lainie turned away from the guard and spoke in a whisper. “Ray, let me go with you. I don’t trust myself not to kill somebody while you’re gone.”

  “He’s taking me to Solitary. You’d go crazy in there. And, besides, I need your eyes and ears on the outside.”

  “I need to know where you are, at least.”

  Rayna looked at Neko for agreement. Heaving a big sigh, he waved them in front of him.

  He led them quickly down the corridors away from the factory and the barracks. At the end of a poorly-lit hallway stood a tritanium door protected by its own electronic security check. Neko put his thumb to the scanner and was allowed entry with his prisoners. On the other side, six cells lined the corridor, three on each side, with a tiny reinforced amberglas window in each door. All appeared to be empty at the moment; the cellblock was as quiet as death.

  “Perai. You have to stay here?” Lainie’s whisper echoed in the void.

  Neko unlocked the first cell and ushered Rayna in. Inside was a cot, a toilet and sink, and nothing else. She knew the lights would go out when Neko left, depriving her of any kind of stimulation.

  “Neko, it’s even more imperative that you find the male half of this couple,” she said before the guard could leave. “Now that his bondmate is dead, he’ll be out for revenge. Whatever he’s here to do, he’ll do fast. Do you have that information I asked you for?”

  The guard pulled his comm from his breast pocket. He tapped a few times, then passed the device to her.

  He pointed. “Those are the new men who came in with the last shipment. There were four male Thranes. Do you see him?”

  She recognized him right away. “That’s him. The one who looks like a mediamix star.”

  “Really? You think so?” Neko frowned at the image.

  Lainie leaned in. “Oh, yeah. How can such an evil sonofabitch look so fine?”

  Neko humphed. “I still don’t think I can convince my boss he’s a threat without some kind of evidence. Maybe I could frame him for his mate’s murder?”

  Rayna heart dropped into her stomach. “No! He’ll kill you, Neko. Stay away from him. Just talk to your boss; explain that this man is a spy for the Minertsan government. That should be enough to have him searched and isolated, at least. Then we can both take him on.”

  Neko appeared to consider it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Rayna sat on her cot and prepared to wait out her sentence. “Whatever you do, do it fast. I have a feeling we don’t have much time.”

  Rexus Kor awoke from a black hell of tortured dreams into a world of pain. At first he didn’t recognize his surroundings—blank walls of some faint color, punctuated with electronic monitors and harsh lighting panels; a sharp, metallic smell of blood and disinfectant; the beep and murmur of equipment.

  The infirmary.

  His senses were dulled, muffled, as if he were wrapped in cloth, but the drugs they had given him did nothing to blunt his awareness of the hole in his being, as deep and wide as any canyon on his mountainous home of Thrane.

  Zetana.

  For the first time in more than a hundred circuits, he called out to her and she did not answer. She was gone, departed forever from this plane. Taken from him, murdered, ripping his soul in two. From his place at the machine on the factory floor he’d monitored every step, every word. His Zetana’s performance had been flawless, her mind perfectly focused on the illusion she’d created to entrap the bitch and her little shadow. It had worked—he had seen it! The young one had led the agent into the stacks; she had sat down quietly without protest. The agent had responded just as planned, behaving as if her lover,
the captain, was there betraying her, as if she herself was being held down by two strong men.

  But then it had all fallen apart. The cursed pultafa sprang to her feet and thrust a knife . . . He’d collapsed into screaming pain at the moment of his k’taama’s death. When people came to his aid, he fought them, raging and cursing, blind to his surroundings. Guards came to subdue him, he didn’t remember how many. He only remembered he wanted to kill them; he wished they would kill him.

  Zetana!

  Rex writhed in agony on the hospital cot, sending the monitors into a frenzy of alarms, and noticed for the first time that he was shackled to the bed at his wrists and ankles. He cursed and fought until he felt a sting on the inside of his wrist where the cuffs he was wearing clamped down tight.

  Just as the sedative began to take effect, he understood: he would have to hide his grief from the world. He would have to lie to explain his sudden “seizure” on the factory floor as the knife had slashed into his bondmate’s body and her life’s blood had spilled out over her murderer’s hands. He would blame his violent spasms of rage on a relapse of Vargellan fever. The symptoms matched, and a prison infirmary would be unlikely to have the tests to confirm the diagnosis. He would be “fine” after a day or two of rest. He could return to work.

  And he would plant this cursed place with enough explosive to blow it to Portal’s Hell in less time than it would take for his sweet Zetana’s soul to find its way to the Blessed Lands. Then he could join her there forever.

  But first, he would find the shalssiti vlitz who had killed his k’taama and make her scream for hours until she died. This he vowed on the bond of his heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “You realize this is a fundamentally bad idea.” Gabriel scanned the street before he glanced at his companion for confirmation of his opinion. “You’ll either wind up in custody or shot in the back trying to escape capture.”

  Sam grinned at him as they crossed to the other side of the nearly-empty sidestreet. “Actually, I believe Rescue will be just as anxious to save the life of their agent as I am. That should give me a pass, don’t you think?”