by Lilly Cain
His gaze met hers. Whatever he’d been doing before, he was waiting for her now to continue, to say something more about her desire for him. She wished she’d been more lyrical, more seductive. But she was warrior clan. They didn’t practice the seductive arts—when you wanted sex with a bunkmate, you reached out and laid hands on his L’inar. But for the first time in her life she wished for the gentler words. The soft gray of his eyes seemed darker now, more intent. The power of his focus wrung sensation from her damaged nerves and sent a tremor up her spine.
“You want to have sex with me.” He spoke first, taking away her chance to forget her request. His voice had deepened, and she resonated with it.
“Yes. You are attractive, and you elicit a response from my L’inar. It could be a…a form of therapy, one we could both enjoy.”
“Therapy.”
“Yes, like your karate.”
“You’re comparing the heat we experienced to karate.” His voice sounded harsh, perhaps somewhat strangled.
“Is that a problem? Is there an issue with your culture? I enjoyed our coupling. I thought it might be beneficial to try it again.”
He turned away to look out the vid screen into the filtered view of space.
Sarina’s L’inar flattened. He seemed perplexed by her request. It made sense for them to have sex, and it would be, from the taste she’d had earlier, delicious. The man was deeply sexual, at least according to the inventive fantasies he’d broadcast in their first few days on board the Osprey. Even if she didn’t have a way with words he must be intrigued with her request. Unless he found you wanting. You are making an idiot of yourself.
“Apparently you’ve put some thought into this.”
Sarina opened her mouth to reply, to tell him to forget what she’d said earlier, but a flare of light across the filtered vid screen caught her attention.
John leaned close to the screen. “Laser fire!”
“Medship Five, we are under attack.” The voice of the first Inarrii escort pilot called though the communication link.
Sarina scrambled to take in the tactical layout of their position. The human starship Osprey was behind them now; the Medship and its two escorts had just passed the Earth’s moon on route to the Inarrii Mars base. The attackers were moving in on a tangent coming from a pocket of space littered with debris. They must have laid in wait, biding their time until the right target approached.
“Terran Purity. They’re terrorists.” John’s voice held a bite of anger.
She glanced over at him. His hands were fisted. There was nothing he could do—the Inarrii fighters would hold off the attackers or not. Sarina eyed the level of silent fireplay going on in the space field nearest them. The Inarrii were outpowered. The aging human ships had clearly been rigged with advanced Ravener weapons. She flicked her fingers over the minimal weapons layout of the Medship. Medical shuttles didn’t come heavily armed; they were meant for maneuverability. She hoped there was some kind of laser—they were going to need it.
“Medship, you had better run for it!” The warning was punctuated with bright bursts of laser fire. The escorts were holding the Raveners off but they weren’t going to last. Already their shields were partially down and the Raveners were closing in. Huge laser cannons had been added to the salvaged wrecks of the terrorist ships. The strategist in Sarina wondered if that had been the Gathan’s adaptation, or a human idea. Both races had aggressive tendencies, but the Gathan, a cold, blue-skinned race, had newly joined the Ravener side. With those evil pirates it was join or be devoured. They were the ones powering the attacks, not the humans. The humans probably didn’t even know they’d paired up with a group that would, in the end, destroy Earth.
“Tel sho ahoi, Medship Five SOS.” Sarina sent a distress signal to both Inarrii and human channels. “We are under attack.” Light flared across the screen in a blinding glare. “Tel sho ahoi sho amnetii. Ship down—we have lost our escort.” Her fingers danced over the glowing controls, and she sent of a volley of shots toward the attackers. Her small lasers bounced ineffectively against the fighter’s shielding.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” John began to fumble with the securing straps on his chair.
“Absolutely.” Sarina powered the engines to a higher level, forcing the emergency batteries to spike.
The shuttle pulled away from the firefight and the last escort fighter followed, breaking off from the smaller attackers.
“Medship Five, I have taken substantial damage.” The Inarrii fighter pilot called in, his Inarrii words heavily accented with an emotion and a level of determination she knew too well. Still, she had to offer a way out.
“Pull around to flank us, sho’tet. We will outrun them.”
“I am unable to obey. It has been an honor. Please pass word of my death to my clan. They should reap a good bit of honor credit. Tel sahiir denay.”
“Tel sahiir denay.” Sarina grit her teeth as the Inarrii limped back toward the terrorist ships. If she lived though the attack, she would have to find out his full name and clan affiliation, and that of their other escort.
“What’s happening?” John’s voice, low and serious sounded beside her.
“The sho’tet go to give their lives now so we can escape. They fight to the death.”
“They could try to escape—”
“They die honorably.”
“You sound like you envy them.”
Sarina didn’t respond. The fighter dropped back even farther and once again began to fire at the following attack ships. The Inarrii sho’tet was ending his life and giving them a chance to escape. It was a positive death. After her injury and drop in status, she could only hope for the same.
Chapter Five
Sarina spiked the emergency power again and checked tactical. They were going to have to change strategy—there wasn’t much choice. She turned to face her charge. John stared back at her. Tension creased the skin between his eyes as she spoke.
“We cannot out-fire them, and our support is about to be wiped out. No one can reach us from the Osprey or the Horneu in time, and we can only outrun them for another few minutes. Then we are going to run out of power. As I see it, we only have one choice.”
“We make ourselves invisible,” John stated.
He was too calm. Her own heart was pounding, and he was jumping to the same conclusion that her years of experience knew was their only hope. “Yes. We head for the dark side of your moon, disappear in a crater.”
His eyes searched hers. He had something to say but he was hesitating.
She opened her m’ittar but he remained tightly shut against her.
“I understand there was an Inarrii surveillance base somewhere on the moon,” he offered. “Can we use it?” He looked away from her for a second. When he glanced back his jaw was clenched. “I read some reports that I had no legitimate access to. But I did read them. Can we use the base?”
“Yes.” She put the plan in motion. It didn’t matter how he knew; they needed a way out of this disaster and his idea was a good one, something she hadn’t even thought of.
Firing another blast of power to the engines, she made a sharp turn back toward the earth’s moon. In the corner of the vid screen the flashing shots of laser fire continued. They had minutes to find a location before the terrorists would be on them again. John stayed silent as she set the comp to finding the location. Again and again her gaze leaped back to the battle on the edge of her screen. The sho’tet had been damn good. But the Inarrii pilot was dying.
“There—in that series of craters.” Sarina spoke to herself as much as to John. His eyes were locked on the screen, his attention on the space battle. As she toggled the controls toward her choice of hiding places, an explosion pulled her attention back to the final act of her Inarrii escort. He’d reached the point w
here he could not fight and he’d flown directly into one of the terrorist attackers, removing one more of the terrorists from the chase. She bit back an oath as tears welled in her eyes. There was no time to regret an honorable sacrifice; they needed to use the time he had given them to hide.
Sliding the controls to force the shuttle into a sideways spin, Sarina shot the craft down toward the moon’s surface. Flying into the crater was tricky, but that was the point. Despite the growing darkness she did not ignite the shuttle’s landing lights. Instead, she relied on the craft’s external sensors to relay the dimensions of the crater to her through the vid. At the last instant before they would have hit the bottom, she stopped the descent, flicked off the ship’s shields and moved forward along the wall of the crater.
Her L’inar rippled. If they didn’t find the hidden entrance soon, they were dead.
“Ken stasht,” she swore under her breath. “There you are.” A thin break in the wall, at least according to the ship’s sensors, appeared along the edge of the crater. They moved forward slowly, following the break until it widened into a tunnel. Sarina edged the shuttle inside until it was as deep within the rock walls. She tapped the glowing control panel before her and put out the landing gear. Then she shut down everything except minimal life support.
* * *
For almost a minute, they sat in the near darkness. Only a tiny emergency light emitted a pale green glow from under the control panel.
“What the hell just happened?” John broke into the silence. Their Inarrii escort had just consigned himself to death. He knew it, but he didn’t know why. It was something he would do himself, if duty called for it. But Sarina sounded almost envious of the man.
“We’ll sit here and hope they pass us by. With no power running, as long as we stay silent they shouldn’t be able to detect us through the rock.” She fingered one of the long knives strapped to the side of her forearm. “The sho’tet are literally that—flying blades. He wasn’t going to make it with us and might have even slowed us down. He went back to buy us time, and his clan, his family, will earn a level of honor and credit by his actions that would equal an entire lifetime of fighting.”
“You sound as though you think he was lucky.”
“He was. He could have been wounded and lost his ability to bring honor to his clan. What good is it to live like that?” She pulled off the straps securing her to the command chair. He could barely make her out in the shadows, although she seemed to have no difficulty with the darkness. During the battle, with the vid screen filtered and the flat control panels glowing, he’d been reminded that she truly was an alien. She’d been seeing things he couldn’t. Intel reported a different level of visual acuity in the Inarrii, and she’d just confirmed it.
How much more different was their race than he’d thought? Their sense of duty and honor were deeply ingrained, and he couldn’t help respecting that. And she was fantastic—cool as ice under fire. She’d kick ass as an agent. She was fucking beautiful.
“So, you enjoyed our coupling.” He kept his voice low, quiet even to his own ears. Even an Inarrii would have to listen closely to hear him, to focus on what he was saying.
She jerked slightly in her chair. He couldn’t see it, but he heard the whisper of her uniform moving in her surprise. It reminded him that he wore nothing but the pettan the medtech had given him. He could feel his cock stiffen slightly as he remembered what Sarina had looked like in a pettan on board the Osprey. He imagined she could see him now, with her Inarrii vision. Like a cat, she could see his every movement in the small amount of available light.
“I did. It was…powerful.”
“And if I wanted to take you now, hard and fast in the darkness, would that be the therapy you’re looking for?”
She sucked in a breath. Perhaps he had gone too far. But the danger of the moment was like a sexual drug. They could do nothing but wait while their enemies searched for them. Adrenaline pounded in his veins. He’d been helpless to aid in their escape, and there was no way to contact Starforce now while they maintained a power-down silence. Any outgoing message might be enough to tip off the terrorists or the Raveners to their location. He needed to do something.
Her earlier request rang in his ears. Delivered in such a matter-of-fact manner, so calmly and coolly, he longed to heat her up, to bring her to the level of passion he’d glimpsed during their first embrace.
He’d give her some therapy that would make her bells ring. The thought made him smile. Could she see his expression in the dim light?
“I think that’s exactly the therapy I am looking for. Inarrii make poor liars, John Bennings. I mean it when I say I want you, but this is not the time.” He could hear the frustration in her voice. “The Raveners have pinpointed you as a target. We nearly lost our lives—and two Inarrii warriors did die. Can you honestly say they are not looking for you specifically now? That they are not trying to find and kill you, a midlevel paper-pusher who should be of no importance to them?”
She was angry. And she was right. It wasn’t the time. He pulled off his safety harness and stood. He would have paced the room but the dim light made it hard to see where it would be safe to burn off his frustration. Her use of his cover name bit at him. Two men had just died because of his cover. But the truth was that many more would die if the Treaty was not completed. He needed to go over the reports Davis had streamed him. Hell, he needed to get back to his assignment and find out what the fuck was going on. How in God’s name had they tagged him? He gripped the edge of his seat and fought the urge to smash his fist against it.
“I’m sure the attack was simply convenient for Terran Purity. We were the last set of ships to leave the Osprey. They probably thought we weren’t going to expect another attack at that point, and they would have gone after any Inarrii craft. Hitting a medtech ship is a terrorist tactic. They need to appear ruthless and unpredictable, but really they are using the same strategy that human terrorists have been exercising for centuries.”
She stood and turned to face him. He could see the outlines of her body, but little else. “You seem to know a lot about this sort of warfare. And you knew about our surveillance base here. It isn’t in use any longer, and while it isn’t a secret between our governments, I doubt very many are aware of its existence. How did you know about it?”
He could feel the presence of her mind pressing lightly against his, questioning. She wasn’t forcing her mind into his thoughts—from his intel reports that would have major moral repercussions for her people—but she was testing the water all the same. He pushed back, rejecting her inquiry. Somehow, he could almost taste her surprise at the action. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he had just done, but he felt a sagging relief when she pulled back. He didn’t want to lie to her. She was doing her job, and doing it damn well, trying to protect him. But his duty came first.
“I’m curious. Maybe a little too curious, but that’s all. I like to study battle strategy.” He made a dismissive gesture, trying to put as much sincerity as he could bear into his tone. Lying was getting harder. He was putting what he could of the truth into his cover, even talking about the accident he’d had in the first year of the military, but it was starting to really rub at him. She didn’t deserve it. “I’m sure that once they make a sweep of the area, the terrorists will pass us by and move on to an easier target. I am, after all, just a paper-pusher.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue. When had keeping his cover ever been this hard?
“And if they don’t leave?” Her voice told him she didn’t believe they would, didn’t believe him.
“I have every faith you will do everything you can to protect us.” He thought fast. “But maybe we should move into the base itself. If they do discover us, it will give us some room to maneuver. They probably can’t get deep enough into the tunnel to fire at us with those salvaged ships, so they’d have to come in here. If t
hey’re still looking for us.”
Sarina didn’t respond. If he were in her position, he wouldn’t buy it either. There were cracks in his cover, and they were getting bigger. There were too many coincidences—the attacks on him, his knowledge of the base. And he didn’t exactly fit the idea of a quiet lawyer either, or at least what she probably imagined as one. The way she’d latched on to the old human phrase “paper-pusher” said a lot.
She was smart, a fantastic strategist, and he couldn’t wait to kiss her again. He wanted her, almost as much as he wanted one of the terrorists in his hands. He had questions for them. Terran Purity was definitely targeting him, and must have some way to track him. Having two objectives at once was a dangerous game. But if he could get Sarina to agree to move into the base, there was a chance he could achieve both goals.
He stepped closer to her, reached out to lightly touch the skin on her neck. When she didn’t move to stop him, his mouth watered. The lines of her L’inar under the edge of her hair raised in thin ridges against the skin of his fingertips, and the muscles of her neck and shoulders were tight with tension.
* * *
He wanted her again. It was the one thing that slipped past his mental shields, his sexual desire. The feeling stroked her senses, pulled at her until she longed for more than his light touch. She needed his fingers in her hair, his lips on hers. In the quiet of the darkened ship she wondered how much he could see of her. Could he see the yearning in her eyes? She could see him plainly—the slight strain in his chest muscles, the way his pulse throbbed in his neck, the rise in the material of his pettan.
Perhaps they would have time. Who knew how much Ravener technology had been transferred to the Terran purity ships? There was a chance the terrorists wouldn’t be able to sense them inside the shelter of the rock tunnel. She and John could be alone for hours, with nothing to do but wait. The thought was intoxicating. She knew better than to hope for something her own people seemed unable to give her any longer. But she did wish he could begin again what they had started on board the Osprey. He almost seemed insulted that she viewed their sex as a therapy, but he obviously didn’t understand the full importance of sexual completion to the Inarrii. He offered her something her own people couldn’t—an unbiased view of their intimacy. He didn’t see the flaws within her. He saw her as beautiful, desirable.
