by E. A. James
“What exactly did he say?” Thor asked.
“It wasn’t so much what he said,” she replied. “It was how he said it. He has a way of making you believe him, of making you want to trust him, everything he says and does. That’s what he’s doing now. He’s so passionate about what he believes in. It seems so pure and genuine when he explains it. It’s so simple to fall into his trap, to let him into your head.”
“Well, he certainly got into yours. I suppose that’s just another reason for me to despise him.”
“I think you have enough reasons to despise him,” Kira replied, pushing herself up onto her elbow and lifting her hand to his face. She ran her fingers back through his hair, letting her eyes fix onto his.
“Yes, well, my personal beef with Grimm isn’t something that can be figured out or worked through. It’s permanent. What he did to me is permanent. It’s sewn into my genetics.”
“It’s horrible what he did, but like I’ve always said, it doesn’t have to define you.”
“Easier said than done I’m afraid,” Thor replied. “But who or what he made me—it will always be the only thing anyone sees when they discover what I can do, the only thing anyone thinks about when they find out what I really am.”
“What you really are?” Kira asked, pulling back from him slightly. “What you are is a fighter, a kind person, an obstinate asshole, at times,” she added with a flirtatious smile, “and the man I love.”
He shifted his gaze away from her, his eyes darting around the room as he searched his thoughts.
“Thor,” she urged, pulling his attention back to her, “for what it’s worth, I met you after the experiment, and I fell in love with who you are now. You can’t spend your whole life a slave to the past.”
He pushed himself up and pressed his lips to hers. It was a slow, tender kiss, filled with more feeling than words could express. And, he didn’t try to put his feelings into words. When he pulled back from her, he simply wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her down onto his chest.
That night, she did sleep, right next to him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Look who decided to get off his ass!” Bron exclaimed as Kira and Thor made their way into the common area together the next morning.
Even though Thor was still recovering and needed to save his energy, he insisted on getting out of the medical bay the next morning. They would be entering Earth Orbit soon, and he wanted to be at least mobile when that happened.
“Well, since your fat ass was too lazy to visit me, I figured I’d have to come to you,” Thor replied quickly.
“Ah, I can feel the love,” Kira commented, helping Thor over to the couch.
They slumped down together. Thor left his arm draped around her shoulders, and despite the awkward feeling that instinctively threatened to form in her stomach at being so open with their relationship, she settled in next to him, letting the feeling of being close to him push all concerns aside, where she intended to keep them.
“Do we have a plan for what we’ll do when we get to Earth?” Dario asked, walking over to the sitting area, followed by Alaria.
“Find Artanis,” Kira replied.
“Hopefully we find him before the bounty hunters find us,” Thor added.
Dario took the open seat across from Kira and Thor and next to Bron. Alaria lowered herself to the ground, between Dario and Bron with the effortless grace that always accompanied everything she did. The instant she relaxed back, she opened her arms, ready to embrace Zola, who had come running spryly into the room.
The cat didn't run to Alaria, however. She leaped swiftly up into Dario's arms and meowed loudly as her communicator implant began to chirp.
“Thane!” Dario exclaimed, pushing back the cat’s fur to release the implant from its hiding spot. “I haven’t heard from him since we got to the Arbiter. I’ve sent messages, but he never replied. I was worried. I hope he’s okay.”
With each exclamation, Dario’s voice got slightly higher. His hands shook as he pushed himself up and set the transmitter down on the table in the center of them.
Thor tensed up slightly as they waited for the transmission to begin. Kira, too, felt a nervous twinge in her stomach. Messages from Thane rarely filled anyone else with as much excitement as they did Dario. They were usually filled with bad news or pieces of information that left a hollow feeling sitting in the pit of everyone’s stomach.
Dario clasped his hands together tightly, impatiently waiting for the message to begin. Bron and Alaria leaned forward, and Thor took Kira’s hand in his.
The instant the image of the attractive young man spilled out of the device, the message began.
“Dario,” Thane spoke quickly and in hushed tones, “I apologize for not responding sooner. Things here have been chaotic. Grimm is going non-stop. He’s working us all like dogs. He’s planning something, something bigger than he’s ever planned before. He seems in high spirits lately, which is not a good thing. He’s confident, Dario. He’s very confident.”
The man in the hologram paced back and forth a few times, running his hands through his hair as he collected himself to continue.
"He's planning large-scale assaults throughout the galaxy. I don't know when, or where, but I know they're going to happen. His forces consist of mostly Terran soldiers that defected from the TAF—Arcanum among them. He also has a small group of Arkadians working with him, and collections of bounty hunters and mercenaries. He's been biding his time, expanding his force, developing his weaponry. He won't divulge what he's planning exactly. The closer it gets, the more secretive he becomes. I will send more when I can. I’m sorry I haven’t sent more useful intel, he’s intentionally shutting out non-essential personnel. I miss you, Dario, dearly. Please, be safe."
And with that, the message ended. Thane’s image was sucked back into the device, and the familiar silence that followed his transmissions hung in the air.
"Large-scale assaults?" Bron asked. "What does that mean?"
“It means that what he’s been doing so far is nothing,” Thor replied. “The attacks on the mining colonies, the attempts to thin out the Alliance forces, they were just precursors.”
“They were a distraction,” Kira agreed, finally piecing together a question that had been burning in the back of her mind since they left the first mining colony.
“A distraction, from what?” Dario asked. “If they were to distract from the fact that he’s organizing a wide-spread coup, they didn’t do the job. We all always knew that there was the risk that he was planning something more.”
“They were a distraction from what he was doing to prepare for that something more,” Kira explained. Everyone focused their attention on her. “Grimm, unfortunately, is a very intelligent man. He never does anything without reason. All of the attacks on the outlying territories, yes, they pulled forces away from the Alliance. But, they did something else, as well. They exhausted the TAF. They masked Grimm’s real target—the mining colonies. If we hadn’t shown up, no one would have been sent from the Alliance to figure out what was going on there. Because everyone assumed he continued to stage attacks as false flags.”
“When, in reality, the mining colonies were his target all along. He wanted the Divarium,” Dario concluded.
“Exactly,” Kira said with a firm nod. “If he had started his campaign there, every fleet in the Alliance would have been sent to stop him. But, he didn’t. He knew better. He planned it this way all along, and it was easy for him.”
“Well, shit,” Bron muttered, slumping back in his chair.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Kira spoke, letting the confidence of her position as Captain work its way back into her tone. “Our mission remains the same—find Artanis and share with him the information we have obtained, clear our names and hunt Grimm down before more lives are lost.”
Everyone agreed, and a feeling of purpose once again finding its way into the air. Still, there was something troubl
ing hanging around them. A silence filled the room.
That silence, however, was short-lived.
“Hell yes!” Vinnie exclaimed running into the room.
He didn’t even notice the worry on the faces of everyone around him. His smile didn’t falter as he ran up to them, spinning around and stretching his arms out. Everyone looked in the direction he came from, the direction he was indicating, and waited.
“Ship’s overall condition can be classified as terrible,” a robotic voice announced.
Before anyone could speak, the maintenance bot Vinnie had been working on rolled around the corner and into the room.
“That thing is bizarrely perceptive,” Kira quipped, shooting a smile over her shoulder at Bron.
“First priority, abandon ship,” the bot said as it rolled past the group and continued on to the kitchen.
Kira couldn’t help but laugh, as did Thor and Dario. Even Bron joined in once Alaria was unable to contain her high-pitched giggle any longer.
“Did you program it to do that?” Alaria asked, watching as the bot turned the corner and disappeared from sight. “To talk like that?”
“No,” Vinnie replied. “I guess the previous engineer did. I’ll try to fix it. I was just so excited I got the damned thing working I wanted to share it with all of you!”
“Well, we definitely needed the laugh,” Dario said.
“And, I think we’re going to need a lot more in the future,” Bron added. “Leave it as is, for now. I may lose my patience with it eventually and smash it for bruising my ego.”
“Oh, don’t let it get to you,” Alaria said, turning around to look up at Bron. “I think your ship is great.”
In a swift, graceful movement, Alaria pushed herself up off the ground and leaned in to place a quick, delicate kiss on Bron’s cheek. His eyes went wide and a smile crossed his lips. Everyone in the room watched in shock as the dark shade of Bron’s cheeks became even darker.
Kira couldn’t keep the smile from her lips as she observed the large, Bandurian man melt into a grinning schoolboy. Alaria giggled and spun around to face everyone.
“Well, we should probably focus on getting ready for arrival, don’t you think?” she asked, her smile wider than it had ever been before and her cheeks a bright shade of red.
“Sure,” Kira said, pushing herself up, “that’s what we’re all focused on right now.”
Everyone laughed as Kira and Thor left the common area, heading toward the flight deck together. Still, the smile would not fall from her face. Dario was right. Relationships, in any capacity, were the only thing that made everything they were doing worth it. Moments like the one they just shared, laughter, love, companionship—that was what would push her forward and keep her focused.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Walking into the flight deck, Kira and Thor took their usual spots, side-by-side, at the forefront of the action.
“It’s good to have you back up here,” Kira said as she grabbed hold of the controls in front of her.
“It’s good to be back,” Thor replied, sliding down into the co-pilot’s seat to her right. “I’d rather be here, clinging to the armrests out of sheer terror, than lying in a hospital bed, clinging to life.”
“Sheer terror?” Kira asked, feigning surprise. “Come on, now. It’s not like we’ve gotten into any situation that was that bad.”
“Yeah, you try sitting over here and seeing it from my perspective sometime and tell me that,” Thor replied.
“Let you fly? That would be something terrifying.”
“I thought you liked adventure.”
“I like breathing more.”
“You just like being in control,” he replied.
Kira took the ship out of warp, letting it drift into Earth Orbit. “What gave it away?” she asked, turning to shoot him a cocky smile.
As she turned her attention back to the viewscreen, though, something caught her eye and caused her pulse to begin to accelerate.
“Damn it,” she said, pressing down on the intercom button. “We’ve got company.”
“Already?” Alaria asked as Thor wondered the same thing.
“It’s a TAF patrol,” Kira said, checking the screen in front of her to confirm her suspicion. “They must have picked us up coming out of warp,” she reminded herself and her crew at the same time.
She reached down for the controls, ready to throw the ship into high-speed when an unfamiliar voice came over the intercom.
“Curio,” the TAF patrolman said, “we’re under orders to escort you to the TFS Victory. Please disengage your weapons array and assume formation.”
“Like hell we will,” Kira muttered under her breath.
“Admiral Artanis has been awaiting your return,” the voice continued.
“Artanis?” Kira asked, now opening the communication channel so her utterances could be heard by the patrol ship.
“Yes, he asked to have you brought to him the moment you returned to Earth.”
“Perfect,” Kira agreed, switching off the intercom before any more external calls could be picked up. She disengaged their weapons array and fell in behind the patrol vessel as they made their way to Artanis.
“That explains how they found us so quickly,” Thor mentioned. “If Artanis was looking for us, the Curio would have been a priority.”
“We’ll see soon enough, I suppose,” Kira replied, sitting back in her seat and piloting the Curio just behind the TAF patrol.
Arriving at the TFS Victory was an odd feeling. Kira had left that ship a respected combat pilot for the Terran Alliance Forces. She was returning as a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head and knowledge of her former Commander's descent into madness.
It came as no surprise to her that she and her crew were escorted into one of those damned rooms with no windows. The rooms she had been in a million times before, debriefing after missions, and usually getting scolded for some reckless act.
As she walked in, the sight of Artanis sitting at the heavy metal table in the center of the room made her feel like she had stepped back in time—to a time when things were simple, a time when getting a swift talking to was the worst thing she had to worry about.
Artanis sat upright like he always did. His lips were pursed and in his hands was a tablet, just like always.
“Captain Winter,” Artanis began in the same authoritative voice he used so well, “Commander Rockhold, Dr. Marner.”
The way he was speaking made Kira’s stomach turn to knots. It was so official, so dry. But, when the faint hint of a smile crossed his lips, she felt herself relax almost instantly.
“Your recent efforts to show your support for the Alliance have not gone unnoticed. It is because of that, and a little because of my insistence, that I am glad to announce that your bounties have been removed. Your names are clear.”
“Really?” Kira asked, reaching out and grabbing hold of Thor’s wrist.
“Indeed,” Artanis replied, the smile now fully spreading across his face.
“Yes!” Kira and Thor exclaimed in unison.
The entire group shared a moment of celebration. One they knew would be over quickly. The instant the excitement died down, Artanis cleared his throat, pulling everyone’s attention back to him.
“The two survivors you sent from the mining colony told me about the events that transpired. Is it true that Arkadians were raiding the colonies?”
“It is,” Kira said, stepping forward. “Their Warlord’s name was Mordecai. We did the best we could, sir. But we were unable to stop his men before they finished with the third colony.”
“We’ll need to make sure we keep tabs on this Mordecai,” Artanis said, reaching for his tablet and making a quick note. “In addition,” he added, not looking up at them, “I would like to ask you, Captain Winter and crew, to join me in an unofficial capacity in the endeavor to bring down Grimm.”
“Unofficial? Last time someone asked me to do something unofficial, I ended
up with a bounty on my head and what feels like an entire galaxy out to get me,” Kira replied.
Artanis smiled to himself and leaned back in his chair. “This is for your own safety, Kira. Grimm will be looking for you—all of you. If he didn’t know you were still a threat to him before, he does now, considering your presence at the mining colonies. Once he sees that the bounties have been lifted, the Alliance will be the first place he checks. It’s best if we keep your involvement in the operation off the books.”
Kira considered what he said. She turned to face her crew. They were ragged and tired, but the spark of purpose was still in their eyes.
