In Service

by Mima

  IN SERVICE

  Mima

  www.loose-id.com

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  In Service

  Mima

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924

  Carson City NV 89701-1215

  www.loose-id.com

  Copyright © September 2008 by Mima

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-59632-773-3

  Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

  Printed in the United States of America

  Editor: Vanessa Lillie

  Cover Artist: Anne Cain

  Dedication

  To my Dad

  An example of the integrity found in all my heroes

  You always told me I could do anything

  Chapter One

  The emergency lights flashed midnight-aqua, midnight-aqua. After a battle, Shon

  always regained color first. As usual, today he’d come out of Fury into a world of silent chaos. Sound would come later, along with pain. Please let me not have turned on my own.

  Please. The same old prayer because he could never remember. His gut twisted. Had he maimed any of his team this time? It was always a mental test to put together what had happened from the moment he lost himself in his…gift.

  The current scene arrived like a lightning strike to his consciousness. A quick scan of the room showed situation critical, no hostiles present. Or rather, none alive. The shattered carapaces of two stalker bugs and half a sucker lay scattered around his team. The disk of light that was the bastards’ jump gate, a particle transport, rippled as it did after a recent use.

  Kor, his youngest soldier, was planted right in front of it, defiant and too fragile without his armor.

  Shon wracked his memory, retracing. Remember what had come before… He and Vel

  had been laughing over some foolish political story from court. Then the alarm had blared .

  The spirit-damned bugs weren't supposed to be here. He'd run from their apartment, pausing only to grab a weapon and his torso armor. Grady had been on duty guarding the bug's jump gate. Vel had phazed in a direct line through the station walls toward his lover. With a gift like Vel's, nothing could separate him from Grady. He went molecular and passed right through absolutely anything. Kor's psychic gift had reached out and mentally knocked. Shon had let him into his head.

  Instantly, the four-man team had connected into a seamless fighting machine as each warrior became aware of the other through Kor's gift. Vel, a mental static in midphaze. Kor, hauling ass from the far side of the station, unarmed, dressing on the run. And then Grady had taken a hit. Grady, burning with pain, struggling to hold his position. Grady down on one knee, the only thing between starving bugs pouring out the gate and the small space station.

  That was the last coherent thought Shon had before Fury had splintered his brain away. There was nothing but a black shadow in his head to tell him he’d lost time. Now Kor was double fisted with a standard laser pump in one hand and Grady’s monster ion bolt in the other. His lips were moving and the taut cords in his throat indicated shouting. Shon managed to read one word from his lips: medic. Kor dripped bug guts, a vivid purple on the pale skin of his bare back. The glowing green oval gate he now guarded framed his wide shoulders perfectly. The collusion of the blue emergency lights, the purple gore, and the absinthe gate was kind of pretty.

  No, there weren’t any hostiles anymore. But having taken in the prior scene in a moment, he still judged the situation critical based on the two men on the floor. His team.

  His men. Shon looked down. Red. Black-red, violet-red across a silver floor. Grady’s immense body leaning over Vel. One of Vel’s legs bouncing in a flopping movement Shon recognized as shock. A muscle’s spasm of disconnected nerves. Shon fell to his knees opposite Grady, choking to get his voice back and help, but he was still trapped in a temporary deaf-mute state. Sound would return soon, and with it, his voice.

  Glancing across at Grady’s furious, focused face, he caught a glimpse of white bone through the flaps of skin and muscle hanging amid the tattered half of his body armor. Grady was going to crash soon. Looking at the red mess that was Vel, Shon tried to assess. When he saw the wounds, he was able to take a clear breath. It hadn’t been him. Once more he’d avoided shredding his own men in Fury. Yet another lucky roll of the dice. It looked like Vel had taken two pincer strikes in his torso and shoulder, and narrowly missed a carotid strike with a proboscis. Shit.

  Grady was on the torso and neck, so Shon took the shoulder. He ripped open his torso armor one-handed and got a fistful of shirt. He grabbed and ripped and stuffed the fabric into Vel. He’d just finished with a third handful when he sensed movement. He leaped and spun in midair, landing low and battle ready. It was the human combat team, swarming in, finally, dressed to the nines in full armor, right down to face plates. They stank of fear.

  Still, a med tech trotted in after the team, secured the corridor, and took over on Vel.

  Shon moved back. Bits of sound were coming back by now, tinny and distorted.

  “-- fucking survive, you mother-fucking bastard! Hear me Vel! You have no right --”

  “-- evidence of three hostiles, team leader! Repeat! Do we decontaminate or do we collect?”

  “-- shut the fuck up, Grady, and let the men work! Get your ass down on the ground before your stupid shit-for-brains falls down!”

  At the same time the last of Kor’s words became clear, pain exploded through his right leg. He glanced down. Red didn’t show up on black fatigues very well. Fatigues? Ah, yes.

  He’d only taken the time to grab his torso armor. Shon finally heard the low, pulsing drone of the alert siren that kicked in whenever the gates went live. The sound settled into his wound.

  Shon went to Grady, wrestling him back from Vel, getting up in his face. “Grady! He’s alive! Focus!”

  Grady stopped shouting long enough to focus on Shon, those incredible blue eyes

  melding with the flashing lights.

  “Do you have him?” Shon shouted over the siren.

  He saw the terror flash across Grady’s face and knew it was bad. Ah, shit. No. Not that.

  He grabbed the neck of Grady’s armor in his fist and shook it. He barely moved the larger man, but Grady focused on him again. Shon’s throat burned as he screamed over the voices of the men, the constant siren.

  “You keep him! Hold tight! He’s yours now! Focus!”

  Grady’s face got that icy, vicious battle look Shon loved to see. He nodded once at Shon, a thin purple trickle of viscera dripping off his clenched jaw. Shon turned on the human team leader.

  “Turn that fucking siren off now! Collect anything bigger than your hand, decon

  anything else!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Shon turned back to Grady, who was practically vibrating with rage as he sta
red down at Vel’s field-patched body being loaded onto a mag mover. He worked on opening Grady’s armor seam.

  “Your goal is to hold him. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir! He’s not going a fucking inch, sir!”

  “Make sure, Grady, ’cause when you go under that bond has to be like iron.”

  Grady’s eyes seemed to disappear every time the aqua flashed across the room. Shon glimpsed his steady stare as the darker blue pulsed. “I’m ready, Shon.”

  Grady lowered himself down into the muck on the floor, knocking a bug leg out of the way. He nodded to Kor. “My gun looks good on you, kid.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Grady.” Kor’s standard reply to most comments.

  Shon cut the armor from around the wound area with a heat knife, trying to pick out strips of muscle from the armor so they could be reattached. By the time Grady passed out, the damn alarm was off. The white lights on full were almost another sort of attack.

  Eventually, the humans took Grady and Vel away. They fussed at him but he snarled and they fell back.

  “Are you going to be able to stand duty?” he asked Kor.

  The younger man never took his eyes off the gate. “I’m certainly not going to be sitting on my ass.”

  “Thanks, Kor. Is your armor in your room or the lock up? I’ll get it for you.”

  “My room.”

  It wasn’t supposed to be, but Shon didn’t say anything. When he turned to go, Kor’s low voice stopped him.

  “There were sixteen, Shon. A full quad. What’s with that shit? This station barely has enough life to feed them all, let alone gorge.”

  Shon looked around the room at the men scooping parts into little glass boxes. It was unusual to have this many leftovers. Most times, the bugs took their dead with them.

  “You must have taken at least six before Vel fell, and then Grady went offline, and I thought we were all dead, but I managed to get a few. Grady and Vel had taken a couple before you got here. It was some righteous carnage, Shon. Fucking brilliant, until Vel fell.

  You are a thing of beauty when you get your crazy on.”

  Shon didn’t feel beautiful. He felt old. He turned to go to their rooms, but Kor’s voice stopped him again. When he looked over his shoulder, Kor’s eyes were still glued to the gate, weapons at the ready.

  “Shon, we won’t lose them. It isn’t gonna happen.”

  He forgot sometimes how young Kor was. Still, he triple-timed it back to their apartment, gritting his teeth through the pain in his thigh. He collected Kor’s gear, and sprinted back. Once Kor was suited up and armed with his own weapons, he knew the soldier would have a fighting chance. The decon was done, the floor sparkly clean and reeking of solvents.

  Shaking, he followed the humans to the hangar and oversaw the containment of the bug parts. Every piece of their enemy, the Veylon, would be analyzed. Barely standing, he went to sick bay. Grady was still in surgery, expected to recover, and Vel was in a coma from blood loss. They were still assessing whether or not he'd live if they took him to surgery, and he needed surgery to live.

  All Shon could do was say, “No matter the risk. You get him in surgery. He has to live.”

  The humans didn't know that Grady and Vel were lifemated. They didn't know that if Vel went, Grady would go, too. Shon staggered to their rooms, sick with despair. He’d sworn he’d never lose another team member after Rik. He wouldn’t consider the pain of losing two.

  Anya and Bea waited at the door. They took good care of him, giving him a field patch on a really spectacular, textbook cross-slice on his thigh. As they finished washing him down, he looked at them. The women were his team’s servers, trained to transfer energy to them, the Luo. They were both beautiful, both professional. He ached to lay them down and drink. It burned in his spine and his core and his throat. But he couldn’t. Grady would need everything they had.

  “Shon, we know Vel and Grady are hurt. We got it through the station news.” Bea’s mouth trembled. She’d been with them for four months, quite awhile by his team’s server record.

  “We’re all alive, Bea. Everything else is manageable. Kor just has superficial wounds.”

  “All right. When will we get Vel and Grady back from sick bay?”

  He looked at Anya. She’d been with them for two months. She hadn’t performed well in her first month, when they were on missions, but he’d known the R & R was coming up and wanted to give her more consideration because she was stronger than several of the servers they’d had recently. R & R. What a joke.

  “Vel won’t be coming back soon. I hope Grady will return to us tomorrow.” If he woke up. If his bond with his lifemate didn’t drag him into a coma as well. “Grady’s bad. I’m assigning both of you to him.”

  The two women looked at each other, then looked down. His throat swelled. Spirit damn him to eternal pain. He could order soldiers till the stars went dark, but he hated it when his servers had to take risks. Grady was going to come back drinking for two. It was extremely probable he’d crash both women. The crash would leave them shells in terms of energy, possibly never able to serve again.

  “You should let one of us work with you tonight,” Bea protested. She was never very good at tactics. She was much too soft-hearted for an active team.

  “No. I need you to be at full strength.”

  “But we could heal you, and we’ll still --”

  “He said no, Bea.” Anya turned to Shon, blinking enormous brown eyes. “I should take him first,” she said. “But when is Trina’s replacement coming?”

  Good question. She’d been gone two days. He should have been notified by now. Well, wasn’t that an interesting revelation? His team down one server, and a highly improbable bug attack hits on Grady’s duty. Spirit-down-a-hole, this was the Duke’s doing. That son of a bitch. That traitorous, bug-sucking, weasel-fucked --

  “Sir! Shon, Sir! Please, don’t!” Anya’s fear scent jolted him more than her chatter.

  She was out of her chair and turned toward the door, about to run. A flare of interest sharpened his eyesight before he managed to bring it under control.

  “Anya, how many times have I told you? Don’t run from me when I get like that. It just makes it worse.” A quick glance showed Bea curled into an inhumanly small ball in her chair. Her fear scent was only slightly less.

  He sighed. “Thanks for the help, ladies. Get some sleep. Grady will need you soon.”

  Before the door had closed, he was already reaching for the com. He was going to go out of the chain-of-command for this. He needed three new servers, and he needed them yesterday. He also needed an investigator at the High Post who didn’t have any ties to the Council. His leg throbbed and burned. He’d do anything he could to get his men a new server within twelve hours, and then he’d settle in for a long, bitter hunt. The Duke was going to pay.

  * * * * *

  Malla held the cold vid plate in her hand. The luxurious office of the headmistress faded as she focused on her first assignment portfolio.

  Team Epsilon 983 specialized in extractions. The four-man Elite team was on an easy backwater watch for a month of R & R, their first in five years. The gate had been dormant for twenty years. They’d been stationed there for two weeks with three servers, when one of their servers petitioned for a lifemate and was granted leave by the team and by High Post.

  Forty-four hours after she left, the incursion occurred, wounding three of the team. One of them had since gone into a coma. Within twelve hours of the incursion, one of the servers had crashed and been recalled to her base at Rialto. That was two days ago.

  The team’s emergency request for three new servers had been given two days’ scrutiny at two other server training bases before landing here. There was a blinking red thumb reader in the corner of the screen, telling her that sensitive information was embedded further into the report. If she pressed her thumb there, she was under oath to never speak of what she saw.

  Malla looked up. Headmistress
was at her window, which was currently displaying a massage class. A lovely cottage garden had been pictured when Malla entered.

  “Well? Shall you continue?”

  Malla licked her lips. She was eight months from graduation. It was very early to be offered a placement, and these men really couldn’t wait. Headmistress was in effect asking if Malla was willing to leave school early. She must think she was ready.

  Servers were desperately needed across the worlds. Luo teams weren’t effective

  without them, limiting their mobility to short range efforts off of large carrier ship bases. The war was in a holding pattern, and had been for the last year. All the bittersweet gains they’d made in the recent years were teetering on the brink. Yet volunteers for servers had trickled away after a few high-profile team disasters. Luo were volatile, and their missions were dangerous. What did people think? It was going to be nothing but great sex?

  Malla turned her attention to her headmistress’s question. Should she continue? Alarm bells went off in her head. The bugs were unpredictable. That’s why all known bug gates were guarded, no matter how old. But the coincidence of a bug incursion on a twenty-year dormant gate just after an Elite team had lost one of their servers seemed suspicious. The team had some sort of restricted file. They should have had priority service and been restaffed within a day. But now they were down two servers, and had wounded to heal.

  Their file was shuffled from school to school like steaming fresh poo. Malla reviewed their basic team makeup.

  Grady. 42. Communications specialist, distance aggression specialist.

  Shon. 36. Team leader. Body aggression specialist, tactics specialist.

  Vel. 34. Medical specialist, vehicle specialist.

  Kor. 25. Systems specialist, navigation specialist.