Quantum

by Jess Anastasi

  “They’re space fertilizer.” Rian pushed to his feet. “Let’s hope there aren’t too many more of the scum bastards.” Zander nodded and glanced back to ensure the rest of the men were ready to move. He put his shoulder to Rian’s and kept his weapon up as they continued deeper into the ship.

  As expected, they met with the same resistance at the next blast point, but this time the bunkered soldiers opened fire as soon as they saw him coming.

  Zander shut his mind down, going into automatic battle mode. They fought their way through the final blast points with grim determination, taking casualties and causing them. He couldn’t stop to think about how many of his own men—some of whom he’d served with for years—were going down, or the fight would be over before they reached their target.

  Just outside the bridge, Zander paused and crouched by the intersection of two corridors to take a beat. He wiped his forearm over the sweat creeping down the side of his face.

  Rian knelt on one knee next to him, a streak of blood dripping down the side of his face. He didn’t have his Reidar stunner anymore, only his nucleon gun. “How many shots do you have left?”

  “Two.”

  “Good,” Rian puffed. “The rest of us are out.”

  Hell.

  Not what he wanted to hear. If fake-Zander wasn’t the only Reidar on the bridge, they’d have no way of telling. Truthfully, the number of the damn aliens they’d uncovered so far had freaked his shite out. Just how long had he been working and socializing with all those psychotic parasites? He shook his head, clearing the chilling thought—he couldn’t let himself dwell on the creep factor when they still had the big mama to take care of. The plan was to apprehend his fake self, not kill him. Rian wanted some powwow time with the alien, intending to get answers on the state of the Reidar invasion.

  “Well, let’s get this done,” he muttered, tightening his grip on the last powered-up Reidar stunner they had.

  Standing, he strode toward the bridge, Rian, Forster, and the rest of the men falling in behind. The double sliding doors to the bridge weren’t secured, and Zander almost expected to get taken out as they whooshed open in front of him.

  He led with his weapon, walking into absolute silence. In the middle of the bridge, on the low command platform, his Reidar self stood, staring at him over the short barrel of a nucleon gun.

  Jezus. He’d known this moment was coming, but facing off with himself… Holy christ, weird didn’t even begin to cover it.

  No one said a thing. But the tension in the room thickened by the moment.

  “I don’t know who you are, or how you look like me, but surrendering now is the only smart thing you can do at this point,” the Reidar said.

  A cold shiver rippled through him, because the thing sounded and talked exactly like him. But that was the point, wasn’t it? A perfect replacement so no one would notice until it was too late.

  “That’s funny, coming from you,” Rian said from just behind his left shoulder. “How about you surrender, and we might not turn your insides to slop like we did with your buddies back there.”

  A figured moved in from the right, shifting to stand in Zander’s line of fire. Colonel Captain McCarty, who was in charge of flying the Swift Brion, stared at him with obvious confusion and anger. Damn it, he’d been friends with McCarty for too many years to count.

  “I don’t know what the hell this is, but whoever you are, you need to put that weapon down.” McCarty had his hand on the grip of his gun but hadn’t drawn it from his holster.

  “Mack, don’t make me shoot you.” Zander steadied his Reidar stunner on the man.

  “I’ve got no qualms about it.” Rian’s words caused McCarty to draw his sidearm.

  Before they could open fire on each other, Zander used his second-to-last stunner shot, praying under his breath as the pulse hit the colonel captain.

  McCarty shook the zap off, not reacting in any other way. Zander took a moment to blow out a hard breath of relief.

  “He’s not Reidar, Rian.”

  “I can see that, but he’s still in our way.” Rian squeezed the trigger, and Zander’s heart skipped a rushed beat until he realized McCarty had been shot with a pulse pistol to knock him out.

  There were a few shocked murmurs as McCarty collapsed, but no one made a move. Of course, having the AF company at his back with their weapons ready probably convinced most of them that taking a stand against him wasn’t the smartest move if they wanted to leave the bridge alive.

  Before anyone could make another move, Zander lined up the Reidar and pulled the trigger.

  And absolutely nothing happened.

  He cursed as the light on the bottom of the Reidar stunner indicating charge flickered and died.

  “Rian, I’m out.” With a quick movement, Zander dropped the stunner and yanked out his nucleon gun.

  He went forward with measured steps, into the middle of the room and up onto the edge of the command platform, the Reidar watching him warily.

  “You’re surrounded and outnumbered—”

  “So I should just surrender?” the Reidar sneered. “Sorry, but obviously this universe only needs one Zander Graydon, which not only makes you a pain in my ass, but also a liability to my command.”

  “Enough with the chitchat,” Rian interjected. “If he won’t go quietly, then shut him the hell up already.”

  Yeah, he’d had about enough of listening to that crap himself. The bastard wouldn’t be laughing once he was bleeding on the deck and everyone saw his true face. Zander leveled his nucleon gun and squeezed off a single shot. Less than ten steps separated them; it should have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Except at the last second, the Reidar twisted out of the way with superhuman speed, and the pulse of energy streaked past him.

  Rian swore from behind him as the Reidar straightened, brought up his own nucleon gun, and let off a shot. The blast clipped Zander’s gun hand, and he lost his weapon, but the slight burn didn’t slow him down. He charged forward, going in low and taking the Reidar down with a tackle to the midsection. A second shot from the Reidar went wild, blasting into one of the upper bulkheads.

  Zander pinned his weight on top of the bastard, catching the alien’s wrist and smashing its arm down until it dropped the nucleon gun. With a feral snarl, the thing flipped them, the motion propelling them off the far edge of the platform, out of sight from most of the bridge. Zander landed flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him as the Reidar came down on top and levered a forearm against his throat.

  Struggling for air, Zander got one hand under the thing’s wrist, trying to lessen the pressure. With his other hand, he groped for the metium knife Rian had given him earlier. Slipping it free, he brought it up and around to stab into the Reidar’s shoulder. It flinched, and Zander took the opportunity to shove upward, partly dislodging the creature.

  He sucked in a ragged breath, darkness dotting the edges of his vision, as he scrabbled to his feet. The Reidar lunged for him, but he vaulted back onto the platform with a roll, leaving him with a height advantage. He kicked out at the thing’s head, but it grabbed his ankle and wrenched, twisting him off balance. While he was trying to recover from that, the Reidar leaped onto the platform and advanced on him.

  In a blind swing, he struck out with the knife again, but the Reidar caught his hand before the knife could make contact.

  “Rian,” the Reidar panted. “Shoot the bastard while I’ve got him down.”

  Sheer panic swamped Zander, and he yanked at the knife as he glanced over at Rian, who’d moved closer to them, his nucleon gun trained on where they were straining against each other.

  “Wait,” he rasped, his throat raw from the son of a bitch trying to choke him. “It’s a trick, Rian, he’s trying to confuse you.”

  Rian glanced between the two of them, his expression grim, and cold shock blasted through Zander as he realized Rian had no idea which of them to trust.

  It was his last thought as his best frie
nd pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mae tucked her drained Reidar stunner away and surveyed the growing crowd in the storage area. They’d cleared just under thirty personnel, as Rian had instructed, and now those people were helping with crowd control, keeping an eye on the milling crew.

  Only one person had reacted to the Reidar stunner, and he was now tied up in a far corner, looking pissed and glaring at the two men keeping guard on him. The stunner had knocked him out for a moment, but he hadn’t changed into a Reidar’s true form. So either he was an alien who was somehow resisting the energy pulse when others hadn’t been able to, or he was human and for some unfortunate reason, the stunner had actually worked on him. Either way, she’d erred on the side of caution and kept him trussed up until she could talk with Rian and Zander about what to do with him.

  Lucie and Lianna had reported that their Reidar stunners were empty and had taken up a post near the doors. Mae paced the line of soldiers standing at attention along the bulkhead, her gaze roving over the crowd. Icy apprehension prickled along the back of her neck. There could be any number of Reidar hiding among the gathered crew, and they had no way of knowing until they got back to the Ebony Winter so Chase could charge the power packs of the stunners again.

  The comm linked to the Ebony Winter’s systems Rian had given her—the only comms working since Tannin had started his hack on the Swift Brion—pinged, and she touched it to connect. Was it all over? She’d been keeping busy and not letting herself think about what Zander was facing deeper in the ship without her.

  “What’s the sit rep?” She paused in her pacing.

  “Mae.” Rian’s voice held a grim tone, and her heart skipped a beat. “Do any of you still have shots left on your stunners?”

  “No.” The chill increased until it felt like there were icicles slicing through her veins. “We used them all to clear as many military personnel as we could, just like you ordered. What’s going on?”

  “We have a situation.”

  Mae started toward the secured door of the storage. Whatever was happening, she wasn’t waiting around here any longer, pacing a hole in the deck.

  “What’s going on?” she repeated as she sent the soldier standing by the lock a hard look. He turned to let her through without a word.

  “Nothing I can’t handle. Stay where you are. It’ll all be over soon.” Rian cut the transmission before she could reply to his cryptic statement. Heart pounding, she broke into a run, sprinting through the deserted ship.

  As she got deeper, she came to the blast doors, finding the remnants of multiple battles, including dead bodies littering the passageways, both human and Reidar. Her breath got shorter as the evidence of the fight Zander had faced got messier and bloodier.

  By the time she reached the passage leading to the bridge, she was half convinced she’d find Zander’s body among those left in the wake of the incursion. But what she encountered on the bridge was almost worse.

  There were two Zanders. One was laid out on the floor, hands bound behind his back, unconscious or dead, she couldn’t tell. The other was on his knees in front of Rian, who had a nucleon gun aimed at his head.

  “Rian, wait!” She skidded to a stop next to Rian, clamping her hand on his forearm.

  “I thought I told you to stay where you were.” He didn’t take his eyes off the Zander kneeling in front of him.

  “Mae, thank god,” Zander muttered. “Please tell Rian he’s being a frecking idiot and if he doesn’t stop aiming that thing at my head, we’re going to have a serious problem.”

  Mae focused on Rian’s features, his expression set like stone and his eyes glittering with malice.

  “Rian, let’s tie them both up for a few hours until Chase can get the stunners recharged. We can easily work out with a couple of energy pulses which is the real Zander.” She tried for a calm tone, but tension had tightened her voice.

  “And give the bastard a chance to escape? No, thanks.”

  Mae tightened her hold on Rian’s arm, frustration washing through her like mercury. “How do you know that’s not really Zander?”

  Rian flicked a glance at the other Zander laying a few steps behind the kneeling Zander. “When have you ever seen a Reidar get knocked unconscious unless it had a dozen bullets in its chest?”

  Incredulous anger bloomed from the frustration. “That’s how you decided?”

  Zander’s expression hardened. “Rian, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever—”

  “Fine,” Rian cut in. “Want to prove you’re the right Zander? Tell me how we got here.”

  Confusion crossed Zander’s face, and Mae’s heart skipped a beat. “How we got here? What sort of question is—”

  “Wrong answer.”

  Rian’s shoulders tensed, but with a sharp yell, Mae shoved his arm, sending the shot wild, hitting a nearby console. Before Rian recovered his balance, the unconscious twin came up with a knife in his fist. And she knew, without a doubt, that the Reidar were finally about to succeed in killing Zander.

  She let go of Rian as the armed Reidar lunged and sank the knife into Zander’s back.

  “No!” She scrambled forward, catching Zander against her as he slumped forward.

  The Reidar pushed to his feet, bloody knife in hand. A nucleon shot rang out and Mae ducked, covering Zander as fire from Rian’s gun streaked over her head, hitting the Reidar in the chest and propelling it backward. The damn thing stayed on its feet, though, until the nucleon gun clicked empty.

  The Reidar finally tipped backward, the knife clattering out of its hand as it hit the deck.

  Mae straightened from her protective crouch as Rian came down next to her.

  “Somebody get the goddamn medics!” Rian yelled over his shoulder.

  “Zander?” Warm, sticky wetness had soaked her thigh and her arm where she’d braced against Zander’s back. Her heart was beating too fast, almost making her dizzy.

  “Mae.” His voice was raspy, but as he reached out to grab her hand, his grip was firm. “I’m sorry about everything, about how we left things. You changed my world, you know that, right? Everything I thought I knew changed when I met you.”

  She shook her head, throat closing tight over her airway. “No, don’t say it, Zander, please. You’re going to be fine—”

  He let go of her fingers to wrap his hand around the back of her neck, his gaze fervent as he stared at her.

  “I love you.”

  The short words impacted her like a hit to the chest. She wanted to reply, but she could hardly breathe, let alone talk.

  “No matter what happened between us, I need you to know that I love you.” His grasp on her loosened, and he coughed, the sound wet and bubbling. Blood stained his lips and trickled from the side of his mouth as his eyes slid closed.

  “Zander. Zander!” She tightened her grip on him as he slumped in her hold, and the whole universe came crashing down on top of her. Tears came hard and fast, stinging her eyes then spilling down her cheeks. She clutched him closer because she couldn’t let him go.

  She couldn’t lose him, not after everything they’d survived together.

  “Mae, move back and let the medics do their thing.” Rian clamped a hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her away.

  The instinct to fight reared up, fed by the fear that if she let Zander go, it would be the end. He’d be dead and she’d never get to see him, get to touch him or love him ever again. But Zander had once accused her of being too practical, and now didn’t prove to be the exception, even when everything was going to hell. She shoved her emotions away into a deep, dark compartment as she gently lowered Zander to lie flat on the deck, letting the ship’s doctors swarm, checking and pulling and working on him as Rian helped her to her feet.

  She leaned against him, not quite able to hold herself up, as if when she’d shoved down the emotions, she’d locked away her energy as well.

  “Get the stretcher over here,” one of the doctors o
rdered. “If we don’t move him now, he’ll be dead before we can reach the MED.”

  The hover stretcher appeared, and the doctors wasted no time getting Zander on. As they ferried him out of the bridge, Rian grabbed one of them before they could all disappear.

  “What’s his condition?”

  Thank god for Rian, or she simply would have followed them all up to the medical emergency deck without a clue of what was happening and spent who knew how long in an agonizing wait for news.

  “The knife nicked one of his arteries and punctured his lung, causing it to collapse. The arterial bleed would have been bad enough, but the collapsed lung is putting extra pressure on his heart. We haven’t got much time to work with.”

  “When you say not much time—” She found her voice but couldn’t manage to finish the question.

  “We’re talking minutes to get him into the ship’s automated R and R unit. I’m sorry, but I need to get up there.”

  Rian nodded, his expression grim as he let the doctor go.

  A deep freeze settled into her soul, and she crossed her arms against the chill radiating from the depths of her body. They might not even get him to the MED before—

  She gulped a breath, her chest spasming with the need to sob. But she wouldn’t break down, not now, not here.

  “He’ll be fine, Mae. Zander’s a fighter. I’ve seen him come back from the line before.” From Rian’s tone, it sounded as though he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

  She shot him a hard look, then tramped off the bridge.

  Rian and his damn impulsiveness. Things wouldn’t have come to this if he’d listened to reason. But when it came to the Reidar, it was like his sensible side switched off, leaving him reckless and bloodthirsty. If Zander didn’t make it, she didn’t know how she’d ever be able to look at Rian again without hating him.