“A generation?” Tess’s cutting laugh chilled the whole front section of the cruiser. “It doesn’t matter if it’s been ten generations. That’s their home, and they want it back. You of all people should understand fighting for something you’ve lost.”
My lower jaw jutted out. Yeah, I got that. Got it in spades, in fact.
“And where do you think most of that new generation’s ended up?” she asked. “Wait—” She leaned forward to inspect the console, found the button that closed the door between the front and back portions of the cruiser, and pushed it. In my side monitor, I saw Sanaa Mwende throw the newly sealed divider between us and her a dirty look.
Tess glanced over her shoulder to make sure she’d closed us off from Mwende. “A lot of them are in the Fold, working to further the rebellion. Or they’re part of crews, running missions for the rebel leaders. Or they’re Nightchasers, like us. Don’t picture the DT Mooncampers like a bunch of lazy birds waiting with open beaks for us to fly by and drop food down their throats.”
I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, nodding. I was more curious by the minute to see Mooncamp 1 for myself. “Since we’ve got a moment without the lieutenant listening in, what are we going to do with her?”
“Lock her up,” Tess said.
“The brig?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “No need for that. I can reprogram the door to Miko and Shiori’s room so that it only opens from the outside.”
“She won’t like it. Or go quietly,” I added.
Tess smiled at me, a glint in her eyes I hadn’t seen since our hike in the jungle. “I’m counting on Merrick to overpower her.”
“Now there’s a confrontation I’d like to see. I doubt Mwende’s a graceful loser.”
Tess grinned. “She’s going to hate it. I can’t wait.”
Mwende banged on the door between us.
Tess laughed. “Honestly, though, she’s growing on me.”
“She’s very direct.”
“Understatement,” Tess said heartily. She reached forward and opened the door panel again.
Mwende poked her head into the front. “Are we establishing orbit or actually going down there?” she asked with a scowl.
“Sorry, Sanaa.” Tess glanced at me, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she smiled. “Okay. Let’s find the Endeavor.”
“Can you make contact with Mooncamp 1?” I asked my copilot. Tess would know what frequency to look for.
She reached for the com unit. “You think they’re here already?”
I angled us toward the moon hovering at the edge of our clear panel. “We know they escaped Korabon. That was the hardest part. Their only goal after that was to stay under the radar, recharge, and get here.”
“Yeah. No reason to think they’d run into trouble.” She fiddled with the dials and then said in surprise, “This is brand new. The only history in here is the reservation service on Reaginine.”
“I took out my old com after finding you on Starway 8 and installed this one when we were in the”—shit, Mwende was listening—“you know where.” The Fold was one hell of a place. I’d had no idea of the extent and organization of rebel operations until Tess had taken me to their secret hideaway. And by secret, I meant an alternate dimension or something. Wherever the Fold was, it wasn’t here exactly.
“Where’s the old one?” she asked.
“Garbage compacted and floated, somewhere in the Outer Zones.” Once Tess had taken me aboard the Endeavor, there’d been no way I was attracting unwanted company from a contact list that was a mile long and short on integrity.
“Smart. Although compacting and floating might have been overkill,” she teased as she sent the new device on a search for nearby open channels. Several popped up immediately, but she waited for the list to expand, half her face lit in blue from the control panel and the other half in shadow. She was so intent and beautiful that my heart pulsed with a quick spasm.
“Do you have any contacts here?” I asked.
“Several. This is one of our places. Kind of like home.” She smiled at me.
I smiled back, but the idea of home knotted in my chest, tying an ache into it.
“Got it!” DT MOONCAMP 1—OPEN CHANNEL scrolled across the small square screen in green block letters. Tess selected the frequency. “Mooncamp 1, this is…” She looked at me in question.
“Queen Bee.”
She grinned at the name I’d just given my cruiser. I shrugged, a smile tugging at my lips. I’d never bothered to name my transportation before, but Star Cruiser Model R16 seemed too boring now that Tess was on board. She loved Starway 8, and everyone knew the orphanage was famous for its rare apiary and honey making.
“…the Queen Bee, requesting information.”
“Mooncamp 1, here,” a male voice answered within seconds. “How can we help you, Queen Bee?”
“This is Captain Tess Bailey coming in to meet the Endeavor. Is she around here somewhere?”
A faint note of tension underscored Tess’s words. With each second that ticked by, my gut tightened.
“The Endeavor’s in hangar 9, Captain Bailey. She has quite the load for us. We’re grateful.”
Relief and joy blazed across Tess’s expression, so brilliant it put the stars to shame. “Happy to help our DT friends. We’ll be there in a moment. Our transportation is a small personal star cruiser. Model…”—she checked the badge above the passenger-side window panel—“R16. There are three of us on it.”
“Copy that. I’ve already got you on our scanner. You know your way in. Welcome back, Captain Bailey.” The line went silent.
“See? They’re fine.” I reached over and squeezed Tess’s leg. “Nothing to worry about.”
Smiling, she turned off the com unit. “You got them out, thanks to those incendio charges and this ship’s firepower.”
“Merrick’s kitchen-door stunt helped.” The moon got bigger as Demeter Terre slid out of view behind us. “And I have things to make up for. Things I’m sorry about.”
Tess sat back stiffly, staring out the window. “Is that why you’re here, Shade? Guilt?”
“There’s guilt,” I admitted, worried about the sudden change in her posture. “Shouldn’t there be?”
“I guess so. But it shouldn’t dictate”—she looked around, as if searching for the right words out in space somewhere—“life decisions.”
“And what should?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged.
I was pretty sure she did know.
“What you care about?” she finally suggested.
I stared at her. So this was what a bullet to the heart felt like. It fucking hurt. “If I didn’t care, starshine, I wouldn’t be here. And guilt wouldn’t be an issue.”
She nodded without looking at me.
“I am sorry, Tess. I’m sorry for deceiving you. For putting you in danger. For leading you to believe I wasn’t a threat to you and your crew.”
“You weren’t, though.” She frowned suddenly.
“Oh, I could’ve been.” And just the idea of it made me sick. “But I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. And to them. I promise you that.”
I wanted to say more, something more powerful, but I wasn’t about to spill my guts with Mwende in the back, listening. If we’d been alone, I’d have let the cruiser float in low orbit while I showed Tess exactly how much I cared about her and we experimented with how tangled up two people could get in small spaces. As it was, the lieutenant impatiently drummed her fingers against the back of my seat, annoying the shit out of me.
Putting a lid on my frustration, I reached for the navigation controls. “How about some directions to this Mooncamp of yours, Captain Bailey?”
Leaping on the change of subject, Tess rattled off a set of coordinates she’d probably memorized
a long time ago. I programmed them into my system, grateful to have something useful to do with my hands. It helped dilute the awkwardness.
“That’ll bring us to the hangars,” Tess said as I put us on autopilot. “It’s where visiting cargo ships come in, but the food will be distributed to different storehouses.”
“And how does that happen?” I asked. We started to rattle. The star cruiser’s sleek design offset a lot of the bumps and jolts of atmospheric entry, but it wasn’t perfect or silent.
Tess gripped her armrests and spoke louder. “They’ll send a big crew with hover crates and some transport vessels to help us. Probably tomorrow—the time to organize a distribution map. Jax will have given them our inventory, and the head food coordinator—Raz Romo—will decide where things need to go, depending on how current supplies look in each depot and around the six Mooncamps.”
“Eggs in different baskets?”
She nodded. “You got it.”
The cruiser settled as we dropped in altitude. There was nothing in sight besides endless rolling tundra. I punched up the power to get us to our coordinates faster. Soon, a sprawling community of low, boxlike structures set out in a grid pattern appeared on the horizon. Mooncamp 1 was a refugee city, through and through. Gray. Metallic. Flat. A few scraggly trees. I had no clue where their water supply was coming from. Underground, maybe. Nothing looked permanent. No edifice appeared higher than four or five stories, and a strong wind or the thumping gust from a low-flying cargo cruiser’s engine could probably blow the roofs off half these buildings.
A chill crept down my arms and back, raising gooseflesh. This place looked miserable and downtrodden, but for some reason, I got a wholly different impression. Resist was practically written in blood-red letters down every single dust-blown alley and mixed into the rust staining the corrugated rooftops.
“No one’s planning on staying here, are they?” The DT refugees weren’t turning the moon into a home. They hadn’t accepted their new reality. They weren’t working with it as best they could. They were waiting.
“The air on Demeter Terre will eventually clean itself out. Then they’ll go back and start over.”
Which could happen a lot faster if Reena Ahern found the right combination of chemicals to counteract the poisons.
“The Outer Zones will have their breadbasket back,” Tess said. “It’s just a question of when now.”
And wouldn’t that be galvanizing? The two Sectors most known for resisting imperial rule repopulating? Maybe even thriving again? Posing a threat to the Overseer? We weren’t in the middle of a long and bloody war anymore. In fact, Simon Novalight loved to brag about the “peace” he’d created for us, the prosperity we shared thanks to him. Would the galaxy really stand for another massacre? I wasn’t so sure—and maybe the Overseer wouldn’t be sure, either. Maybe it would finally be his turn to tread carefully. A man couldn’t both brag of peace and kill indiscriminately.
I looked over at Tess. “Let’s get her.”
Her blue eyes ignited with the kind of fire that led whole worlds to victory. She knew I meant Reena Ahern.
As we closed in on the hangars and slowed, I reached over and gripped her hand. “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, a startled lilt in her voice.
“For giving me a second chance.” I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. It was more than just a second chance for us, though. I could live with myself again, and that was the greatest gift anyone had ever given me.
Chapter 9
TESS
I jumped out of the cruiser the second Shade finished powering down. The big starboard door of the Endeavor was open, airing out the ship. The crew must have heard us coming, and Jax, Fiona, and Merrick all vaulted out to meet us.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Seeing everyone safe and sound was like a punch to the gut, too visceral for anything other than pain, even if my brain was sending me all happy signals. The sight of Jax—intact, smiling, there like he should be—kind of crossed my wires. All I felt was zap, zap, zap inside me, a heart that faltered, and lungs that wouldn’t fill with oxygen. I ran to him.
Jax sprinted and met me halfway across the private hangar. I launched myself at him, and he caught me in a hug that crushed me in more ways than one. I crushed him back just as fiercely.
“Thank the Powers,” he choked out. “You’re safe.”
I squeezed him with all my might, shaking from the effort. No, just shaking. I buried my face in his shoulder. I knew they’d made it off Korabon and away from the Dark Watch, but Jax hadn’t been sure of the same thing of me, had he?
“I’m fine, partner,” I whispered, although I didn’t really sound it. I had a terrible time letting go of him. We didn’t hug often, but we weren’t usually separated, either. My shuddering breath told me I wasn’t okay yet. Jax stepped back to get a better look at me. He touched my cheek, and I nearly lost it.
Jax abruptly turned from me, sucking down a huge breath. My eyes smarted, and I swallowed. Fiona moved in and linked arms with me. Our hips bumped, which was the closest we’d ever come to hugging. That was fine with me. I knew she loved me.
Smiling broadly, Merrick joined us halfway to Shade’s cruiser. “Welcome back, Captain.”
“Thanks, Big Guy.” I grinned, immensely glad to have the rebel super soldier as our newest crewmember. He came with experience, strength that wasn’t just physical, and a good head on his shoulders, not to mention an even temperament that had kept me steady more than once already. “You fix my kitchen door yet?”
He chuckled, the sound as rich and deep as unexplored corners of the galaxy. “I’m working on it.”
Feet hit the gritty floor of the hangar behind me. I turned, and Merrick’s gaze lifted, lighting on Shade and Sanaa Mwende as they exited the cruiser. I nodded in their direction.
“Do you recognize her?” I asked.
Merrick shook his head. He wasn’t totally bald anymore after having shaved off the shaggy hair and neglected beard he’d gained during his months in captivity. His clean-shaven jaw cut a hard, precise line now, but a short layer of thick black hair covered his scalp again. “Never seen her before,” he said.
Neither had Shade, despite his various dealings with Bridgebane, which meant that Sanaa either wasn’t always with the Dark Watch general, or she knew how to keep a watchful distance.
Fiona hung back with me while Jax and Merrick went to help Shade with the fresh food I’d taken from the resort refrigerator. Sanaa offered a hand as well, surprising me.
“I brought you strawberries,” I said.
Fiona’s whole face slackened, melting into something practically orgasmic. “Tess. My hero. Seriously, that’ll be the most pleasure I’ve had that wasn’t self-induced in five years and counting. I could kiss you right now.”
My mouth twitched. “Shade might object.”
She shook her head, the dark ends of her ponytail dancing across her shoulders. “Are you kidding? In my experience, men are hot for women kissing.”
“But neither you nor I are hot for women,” I pointed out.
“Well, there is that,” she agreed. “Speaking of men, Jax is always a nervous wreck when you’re out of his sight, but this time, he was about two nail bites away from a total breakdown.”
I looked over at Jax, my heart pinching. He was a part of my skeleton, helping to hold me upright and together. I had other bones, though. Starway 8 and Mareeka and Surral. Shade. Fiona. Coltin. I hoped Shiori, and even Merrick now.
“I wish he’d let someone else in enough to…” I trailed off, not sure what I really wanted to say. It wasn’t a burden to me to be Jax’s anchor, but if something happened to me, it would be like the DT massacre—all his eggs in one basket.
Except he already loved other people and had a family that loved him back. He just wouldn’t admit it, especially his at
tachment to Fiona, because admitting it made it real enough to break him if something terrible happened, like it had to Miko and Shiori.
“It’s his dead wife he wants, even seven years later.” Fiona’s moss-green eyes deadened like her tone. Hearing her sound so dejected jarred a frown from me. She was a fighter, through and through.
“I don’t believe that for a second. He wants you. He’s just too scared of losing the people he loves again to admit he loves anyone.”
She sighed. “We all know he loves you.”
“It’s different. I’m like his sister.” The sister he’d lost also, along with his wife and children. The Dark Watch had only spared him to torture him with loss, grief, and prison. “But that’s not what he needs. He’s a man in his prime. He needs a partner.”
Fiona snorted softly. “Try telling him that.”
“Maybe I will.” Maybe I should have a long time ago, instead of indulging him in his need to pine for things that were gone forever.
I watched the man in question walk back toward us with a set of coolers in his hands. Big, sturdy, strong, fucked-up Jax. He was everyone else’s rock, even though he was a landslide waiting to happen.
What would be less destructive in the end? Setting him off and clearing the terrain? Or trying to shore him up and keep the dam from breaking?
“I guess there are no secrets between us.” Fiona dragged her eyes from Jax to look at me again.
If only that were true. Six bags of A1 blood in Bridgebane’s hands right now proved otherwise. But she was talking about her feelings for Jax—a subject we’d broached aloud exactly once: right now. “He saved your life. He ran through an actual hail of bullets for you—a total stranger to him at the time. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?”
“It was actually after. Or maybe it started then. I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “I must like the tortured, unattainable type.”
I squeezed our linked arms and bumped her hip again. The others were almost within earshot, so I lowered my voice. “I think you like the kind, capable, desperately-needs-you type.”
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