Cover Fire (Valiant Knox)

by Anastasi, Jess

  The ghastly image tightened her jaw. “Wonderful, thanks for the visual.”

  “I know, how about we distract ourselves from our looming demise? Tell me your name. And not your operational name, though I’m sure it’s something appropriate like Tatiana Kickass or whatever.”

  She shouldn’t find his irreverent teasing of her profession funny, but the guy was just too charming for his own good, and she couldn’t quite contain the smile tugging at her lips.

  “My operational name for this mission is Mary Goodman.”

  He made a face, features twisting into disappointed aversion. “Mary? That’s not very glamorous.”

  She shrugged. “Where I’m going is not exactly glamorous.”

  The rattling of the shuttle became harder as they got deeper into the upper atmospheric burn, but he didn’t appear all that concerned. She tried to take a leaf out of his book and relax back into her seat, but her shoulders had locked up with rigid tension. Surely if they really were in danger, the sub-lieutenant would at least look a little worried?

  “Okay then, Mary-contrary, I’m still waiting to hear your real name here.”

  “And you’ll be waiting a good long time.”

  At last they cleared the entry and the shuttle evened out, going back to the loud rumble.

  “The least two people can do when they’re on a stupidly dangerous mission is be on a first-name basis. So, call me Seb.”

  He sat back, taking a second to shoot her a smooth smile.

  Oh yeah, charm was just leeching out of this guy’s pores. If she were a different kind of girl, that grin might have had the power to make her heart beat a little faster.

  “Of course, and feel free to call me Mary.”

  Seb shook his head. “You’re a hard one to crack. But, never mind, I’ll grow on you and wear you down before we get to the drop-off point.”

  “Since we’re only six minutes out from the coordinates, I find that hard to believe.”

  He glanced at his screen, lips forming a crooked grin. “You can read navigational data, huh? So I guess that’s the end of my plan to take the long way there.”

  A red light flashed in the corner of the screen, and Seb stiffened, leaning forward to tap the icon.

  “I can also read emergency warnings. What’s the problem?”

  His lips pressed together. “The aft thrusters have gone off-line.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Alarm flared in the pit of her stomach as Seb reached back without missing a beat and raked the safety straps over his chest.

  “It means I have little to no steering capabilities, which is going to make landing a bitch. Actually, it’ll make doing pretty much anything a bitch.”

  Never mind acting calm and collected. She double-checked her harness, and then hooked her hands into the straps across her chest as her breathing quickened.

  “Commander Yang assured me that despite appearances, this ship was mechanically sound.”

  Seb’s face tightened with grim determination. “And it probably was, but that doesn’t mean something hasn’t shaken loose in the meantime, or was damaged when we entered the planet’s atmosphere. I’m pretty sure this ship is older than my father and nowhere near as tough as that old bastard.”

  Sheesh, the guy had a way with words. Even with the ship apparently falling apart around them, he could still make a joke. It’d been charming up to now, but this situation called for that legendary fighter pilot she’d read about, not a smooth-talking ladies’ man.

  “Don’t you take anything seriously?”

  “This is my serious face, can’t you tell?” Hands moving more swiftly over the controls, he didn’t take his eyes off the screen in front of him. “We’re about three minutes out from the coordinates. Exactly how close did you want to get?”

  She glanced at the landscape of fields and forest beyond the viewport. “I thought you said we couldn’t land.”

  Seb shook his head. “Never mind the landing, just tell me how accurate your drop-off is meant to be. Will it be detrimental if you don’t come down there exactly?”

  “The landing point is just that. I’ll be moving on elsewhere once we part ways. Why?”

  “Because, depending on what I see when we get to the coordinates, I’ll be looking for the best place to make what I like to refer to as a drop-and-slide landing.”

  Thank God they could still land. Her tense shoulders lowered a fraction. “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  Seb cut her a smile that was almost maniacal, a definite spark of danger glinting in his gaze. “I know, right? So, most other people would technically label it as crashing. But, whatever, they don’t call me a cowboy for nothing. I’ll ride this bronco down one way or another.”

  “Oh, God.” A shot of fear-laced adrenaline surged through her, making her stomach churn.

  “That’s good, getting into your role as a devoted CSS groupie already?”

  She sent him a dark glare, coming up with half a dozen ways to tell him to get lost, but her stomach had taken up residence in her throat and talking had become impossible. Instead, she concentrated on breathing in and out slowly, trying to steady her racing heartbeat as they got closer to the ground, the ship skimming the tops of trees.

  “Damn it, as if we’re not screwed enough,” Seb muttered, a different warning flashing on the screen in front of him.

  “Now what?” Actually, why the hell had she asked that? She didn’t want to know. Crash landing was bad enough, without adding whatever problem was making the cowboy fighter pilot mutter an inventive string of curses.

  “We got pinged by an air surveillance tower. They’re scrambling ships to intercept us.”

  “But if you can’t steer this thing, how are we going to avoid them?”

  “Won’t have to.”

  Why didn’t she like that sound of that? “What do you mean we won’t have to?”

  “This ship will be on the ground by the time any other vessel gets here. All they’re going to find is a wreck,” the words said as though their imminent high-speed impact with the ground was no big deal.

  “Preferably without our dead bodies mangles inside,” she muttered, grip on the armrests making her knuckles ache.

  “Give me some credit. I wouldn’t be much of a pilot if I regularly killed my passengers, would I?”

  Damn him. The crazy sonuvabitch was actually enjoying this, while her stomach was churning harder and harder, threatening to spill into downright sick territory.

  “Okay, the coordinates are just up ahead, so if I find somewhere with enough open space, that’s going to be our landing zone.”

  She nodded, not that it made any difference. He wasn’t looking at her and she got the feeling he hadn’t expected an answer to his comment.

  “We’re in luck. There’s farmland up ahead, open fields with enough space to set this puppy down. Even better, its dead ahead, so I won’t have to change course without the benefit of the aft thrusters.”

  Just as he’d predicted, the trees cut out, widening to green fields of grain and grazing animals. The control screen showed they were nearing the coordinates precisely. Not that she cared about logistics any longer. The only worry spinning through her mind was getting on the ground in one piece.

  The ship dropped even lower, scattering a herd of cows.

  A tug at her midsection brought her attention down to find Seb yanking her harness tighter. He glanced up at her when he was done, and for the first time, he looked deadly serious, his gaze hard and jaw clenched.

  “Trust me, okay?” The intensity of his dark-amber eyes caught the air in her chest. “Brace for impact.”

  Jenna didn’t get a chance to agree with him or ask him to maybe just fly them back up to the safety of the Valiant Knox.

  The ship got lower, and then all sound cut out, the engine going dead. Like he’d called it, they dropped the remaining yards to the ground like a stone and bounced into a rough skid.

  Seb wasn�
�t working the controls any longer, instead he held on to his chair in much the same way she did, strapped in for a ride that seemed like it would never end. And then it did, with a sudden jolt that whipped her forward against the straps of her safety harness.

  For a long second, she couldn’t find her breath. But before panic set in, her galloping heart kicked her lungs back into gear and she blew out the breath she’d apparently been holding.

  She glanced up, the viewport splattered with dirt and clumps of grass, blocking out the sunlight.

  “Hell, I’m getting too old for these rough landings.”

  Jenna looked over at Seb, who was already unbuckling himself from his harness, craning his neck this way and that, presumably to stretch out the muscles. Her own neck felt stiff and sore.

  “You all right?” He gave her a once-over. At her nod, he sat forward and tapped the control screen. It lit up, flashing with all sorts of warnings and alerts.

  After all that, the damn thing still worked?

  “We’ve got a few minutes to find some cover before the CSS patrol flies over, but this bucket of junkyard scraps won’t be going anywhere without some serious intervention.”

  With unsteady hands, she reached down and unclipped her harness. “How will you get back to the Knox?”

  Seb cursed under his breath and slapped his palm down on the control screen.

  “I could try to fix it, I suppose, but it’d be easier to procure another ship.”

  She eyed him as she pushed out of her seat. Was that a joke, or did he actually plan on stealing a ship? Like it would be that simple.

  “We’re in the middle of CSS held territory and you’re wearing a United Earth Force uniform. You don’t think people might notice that?”

  Seb stood and shrugged out of his flight jacket. “This isn’t the first time I’ve gone down behind enemy lines, Mary-contrary, so don’t go getting your underwear all bunched up on my account. You go off on your super-secret business and don’t give me a second thought.”

  Maybe he’d been down behind enemy lines before, but not this far—not with miles and miles, plus an unknown number of enemy patrols, between him and safety. “Come on, we’d better put as much distance between us and this ship as we can before the patrol arrives.”

  “We?” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Don’t you have a meeting to make or something?”

  “Yes, but I’m not going anywhere until we’re both clear of that patrol, so that means we’re sticking together for a little while longer. You got me down here in one piece, the least I can do is make sure you’re not captured by the enemy five minutes later.”

  He shrugged as if he didn’t really care what she did. “If you think it’s necessary.”

  Seb took out his electromag pulse gun and fired a single round into the control panel and making the last few lights that had been working go dark. She must have had a confused look on her face, because when he stepped out from the pilot’s chair, re-holstering his gun, he simply said “insurance policy,” as he brushed by her.

  At the back of the ship, the hatchway lifted, sending a shower of dirt to the floor at their boots, then a shaft of sunlight lightened the interior, bringing a swirl of damp earth and fresh, field-scented air.

  The two of them jumped down from the ship, and Jenna turned back to take one last look at their shuttle. Surprisingly, apart from the generous coating of dark-brown earth where they’d gouged their landing into the field, it didn’t look that much worse than when they’d boarded.

  “I am so not fixing this flying junk heap. It’s an embarrassment to technology,” Seb muttered.

  She shaded her eyes against the sun as she turned to look back at him. “We have to find somewhere to duck the patrol, preferably with high ground.”

  “Sure thing, Tatiana Kickass. Lead the way.”

  She huffed, though it was hard to be truly irritated with someone who looked like he did, sending her a crooked, teasing grin. Especially when he was the same person who had just saved her life by managing to crash-land the shuttle and keep them in one piece. Now she kind of felt like she owed him.

  “My name is Jenna. But don’t ever tell anyone I said so.”

  That seemed to give him pause, as though he hadn’t truly expected she’d give up the information so easily. “Your real name is Jenna?”

  She nodded. “Why? Don’t you think it suits me?”

  His gaze roamed over her face, and despite the appearance-altering tech and makeup she’d applied before meeting him earlier, she got the weird sense he could see under every single layer she’d covered her real self in. It gave her a strange thrill and ripple of apprehension in the same breath.

  “I don’t know. I’ll tell you next time we meet.”

  A tingle ran up her arms and shot right into the middle of her chest. There wouldn’t be a next time. Even if she needed to employ another fighter pilot on a mission in the future, her handler would ensure it wasn’t Sub-Lieutenant Sebastian Rayne. Apart from her handler and a few fellow CI agents, she never dealt with the same people twice, a necessary isolation when it came to her job.

  Hardening her resolve she stepped back, because she was supposed to be navigating through enemy territory alone and come out alive with the required information on the other side. She might end up stuck with Seb a little longer than the simple drop-off they’d planned for, but it was basic professional courtesy—making sure he got free of the coming patrol before they went their separate ways.

  “Enough chitchat. Let’s find somewhere to hole up until the patrol is gone, then we’ll split up as planned.” Even as she said the words, a low hum rumbled in the distance from ships closing in.

  His smile turned knowing, as if he could read her mind and knew she was effectively giving him his marching orders.

  “Whatever you say, Jenna.”

  She was not shivering at the intimate, teasing tone when he’d said her name. No way. It was just from the cool breeze.

  She turned and pulled her half-size datapad out of her pocket to check her position. Higher ground was going to be hard to find, considering the flat fields, farmland, and forest as far as the eye could see. But there was a river through the tree line, and worst-case scenario, they could wade through the water so anyone pursuing them would lose their tracks.

  “This way,” she shot over her shoulder, raking a quick critical gaze over the sub-lieutenant. “And do something about those FP patches.”

  Not waiting for him to reply, she set off at a jog toward the tree line, scanning for any movement that wasn’t the local wildlife or farm animals. Even if he didn’t happen to have his uniform on, the man would stick out like a hundred-mile-wide crater on a moon. The people of Ilari were mostly poor and living hard, which was easy to see in their faces. He was too clean cut, too well put together, his manner all confident and military. She’d have to ditch him as soon as she could, or risk blowing her cover.

  An unfamiliar pang tightened her stomach. What was that…guilt? That she was going to leave him in dangerous territory? He’d known the risks when he’d taken the mission; she didn’t have the time or clearance to help him.

  And when was the last time she’d wasted feelings on anyone? People were either a commodity or a liability; that was what her handler, Stanton, always told her. She’d lived successfully by that rule for years.

  Weirdly enough, she couldn’t seem to fit Sebastian Rayne into either of those categories.

  Chapter Three

  Seb pushed off from the side of the piece-of-crap shuttle as Jenna jogged away, not bothering to check if he was following. She probably didn’t give a damn either way.

  Although this wasn’t how things had meant to play out—he should have been dodging that air patrol in the POS shuttle and heading back to the Knox by now—going with her to avoid the incoming enemy was his best bet. Not like he had anything better to do. The ship wasn’t going anywhere without a pimped-out overhaul, and it wasn’t like he could call in a rescue pa
rty to the ass-end of Ilari where announcing he was with United Earth Force was akin to insulting one’s mother.

  With a heavy sigh, he leaned down to rip the UEF patches off his flight pants, but damned if they still didn’t look like target practice for the CS Soldiers. Right, well they’d have to go as soon as he could find something to change them for.

  “Thanks for nearly killing me, rust bucket.”

  He thumped a fist on the side of the shuttle and then set off at a fast jog to catch up with the agent, who apparently could have run marathons in her spare time. Her smooth, long legged gait was impressive. By the time he caught up with her, he was puffing, but she was barely breathing fast.

  They went over a wooden fence and a few steps later, entered the dappled light of the forest. Another fifty or so feet in, a river cut through the trees, gabbling nosily over rocks. But the sound was drowned out by the rumble of ships streaking overhead. As they reached the riverbank and Jenna was about to plunge into the shallow water, something high in his peripheral vision caught his attention, and he grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

  “Look.” He pointed upward, where the worn wooden walls of a tree house was just visible through a tangle of vines.

  “Good catch. Let’s hope its stable.” She switched directions, not pausing as she reached the thick base of the tree trunk and vaulted onto a head-high branch like a damned circus acrobat. The ease and natural, graceful twist of her body had been almost hypnotizing.

  He stopped at the bottom, planting his hands on his hips and snatching in a few quick breaths as she nimbly clambered upward, giving him an interesting view of her trim legs and ass. Not that he was taking notice. When she reached the outer platform, she tested the boards carefully with her weight, not releasing the nearby branch until she’d given the planks a few good stamps.

  “Looks sturdy. But step carefully when you come up.” She ducked her head and disappeared inside.

  “Right. When I come up,” he muttered, taking another second to get some oxygen back and trying to work out exactly how he was going to climb without breaking his fool neck.