Without donning their clothes, they sprawled together on the bed, wrapped in each other and pressed skin to skin. Kaiden only left twice to retrieve refills from the Robo-Bartender and start up a movie on the holovision.
Nothing could have been more perfect. Another day lay before them with infinite possibilities, the promise of returning home to the Jemison, and a mission well done.
Chapter Fifteen
Queen Catherine and her guard assembled in one of Command Intelligence’s many safe houses on Paradiso, a small home at the edge of a gated community in Cataluña. She owned hundreds of them under dozens of names, maintained by phantom business and personal accounts. Each provided a safe, temporary haven for the many agents serving under the crown.
Beyond the living room window, a light summer rain misted the air and laid a slick blanket of moisture over the grass and lawn fixtures. This condo would never be used again, at least, not by their agents. It would be scrubbed from the hidden registry, donated to a worthwhile cause, and forgotten.
Nisrine’s news must have been both urgent and dire for the operative to request an emergency face-to-face meeting. As Catherine stood beside her entourage of armed men and women, her imagination wandered.
What could have frightened Nisrine too deeply to be shared over their secured communication network?
At five minutes past their scheduled meeting time, Catherine began to frown. Nisrine’s tardiness—an unusual and rare occurrence over the course of the woman’s career—sent a shiver down her spine.
The queen had a touch of the gift. Although it had rarely manifested since she reached middle age, she felt the occasional stir and flutter of ESP guiding her hand.
“Something’s wrong,” she finally said to the Royal Guard standing on her left.
Lieutenant Abraham glanced at his holowatch. “We’ll give your contact five minutes longer, my queen. You’re right. Something about this stinks.”
Of the current six members of the Royal Guard, he’d served beside her for the longest. While her psychic ability was inherited, a gene passed down the royal family line, Abraham’s had been battle honed by seventeen years of experience in the Royal Navy.
Seymore jerked her head to the right and stared, gaze fixed on the wall. “Movement outside,” she said. Her cybernetic eyes dilated and refocused. “They’re here.”
“Finally.” She breathed out a sigh of relief, but the apprehension lingered.
A shot rang out and Sergeant Everly crumpled to the floor amid a pile of shattered glass. The top of his skull had been taken off by the precise shot.
“Get behind me,” Abraham ordered. He placed himself between the queen and the balcony before spitting orders into the communication channel. “Serova, we’ve got a shot fired. Everly is down. I need you and Kilgore in here pronto.”
“Of course, sir,” Serova responded.
“Seymore, what’s our visual outside? Montague, make sure our exit is clear.”
Seymore drew her gun and scanned the walls again with her enhanced cybereyes. “I don’t see anyone. Strange. Visual to the external cam feed has been suspended, too.”
“What do you mean suspended?”
“The feed has been deactivated,” Seymore replied. “I can’t access it.”
“Montague, what’s our exit looking like?” Silence. “Montague, report!”
A sick sensation rolled through Catherine’s gut. “They’re inside, Lieutenant. Montague is dead.”
Abraham swore under his breath. “Seymore, I want you with me to sweep the apartment. Serova, stay here with the queen and be ready to haul ass on my word.”
The minutes dragged by and stretched into a deafening silence. Her pounding pulse echoed in her ears and a cold shiver trickled down her spine. The sense of dread heightened when she heard movement behind her.
Catherine turned to find a gun trained on her, the muzzle aimed at her chest.
“Serova, what are you doing?”
A bead of sweat trickled down the man’s pale brow. “I’m sorry it came to this, my Queen. I really am. This isn’t personal, but the offer was too good.”
But he hesitated, and hesitation was all she needed. One split-second when the man’s gaze darted toward the window provided her an opening. Catherine twisted into a roundhouse kick, striking Serova’s wrist a nanosecond before he pulled the trigger. The shot went wide.
The moment she lunged forward to disable the guard, he blocked and swung at her shoulder. She weaved to the right and slammed a palm heel strike to his chin, rocketing his head up and back. He stumbled away from her as she dove for the handgun.
Serova retaliated with a kick toward her unprotected face. Tears blurred her vision and hot blood poured down from her nose, but her fingers closed around the cool metal. She rolled to her back and fired three shots without caring where they struck her attacker, as long as they hit him somewhere, though the likelihood of the shots penetrating his armor was low.
One bullet ricocheted off the tough plating protecting his chest, the second missed, and the third hit his bare throat above the collar of his military-issued battlesuit. His eyes widened, and he made a wet sound—a cry and gurgle mingled as one—while grasping his throat in a futile attempt to stop the arterial spurt. Catherine shot him again and the traitor collapsed to the floor.
Breathing hard and fast to fight through the pain, she pulled herself to her feet and headed for the door. Gunfire rang out from the single bedroom to the left and she heard a pained grunt. Seymore’s body lay sprawled across the narrow hallway. Her armor had been sliced open and smoke curled up from the burned material.
“Queen, run!” Abraham’s warning accompanied another exchange of bullets.
“I’ve never run from anything in my life.”
Then the hot punch of a bullet slammed into her shoulder, less than a centimeter from the edge of her protective vest. A second clipped the queen in the right hip. She stumbled back and landed on the floor as blood spread across the protective, protofiber jacket designed to inhibit shots from the most sophisticated modern rounds.
In the last seconds of her darkening awareness, Catherine saw the vague silhouette of a shimmering, inviso-cloaked figure moving above her.
“Doesn’t look very secure sitting on the edge of a damned village,” Kaiden commented as they descended in the two-seater stealth craft. They’d left the main vessel orbiting the planet on auto-pilot.
“It’s meant to be inconspicuous, not a fortress.”
“Yeah, well…”
It didn’t set right with him, intentional or not. He set the craft down beyond the gate without disengaging the stealth mode and exited with her into darkness, the area unlit by any street lamps.
They approached a two-story condo, with the upper level as their destination. As they traveled the stairs, Kaiden noticed a plastic logo in the lower corner of a window. Premises monitored by Digiview Security Systems.
They’d been deactivated. No surprise, considering the sensitive nature of the mission.
An obvious thumbprint scanner beside the door served as a decoy against theft and thievery. Nisrine ran her gloved hand over the top of the rail to activate the hidden touchpad, only to jerk her fingers from it. “Something’s happened.”
Must have been her talent of psychometry, her ability to read emotions and sensations by touching inanimate objects. Two years ago, Nisrine had used her powers to help Kaiden by pulling images from an object implanted in his body by his captors.
He only knew because Gareth and Xander both had praised her often and well for supplying the final piece of the puzzle.
“The security feed is down. I don’t have a visual inside the flat,” Kaiden said.
The distinct sound of a gunshot thundered through the door. Nisrine jabbed in her access code and kicked the door open, pulling her gun in the same movement. They swept inside together, greeted by bodies on the floor.
“The queen!” Nisrine started toward the fallen woman but
Kaiden grabbed her and yanked her back.
Biofeedback from Kaiden’s echolocation told him they weren’t alone, the fine hairs on his forearms and nape raised. He felt a chill. “There’s someone here,” he said. He viewed the room in infrared, but the thermal vision picked up nothing. Unconvinced, Kaiden tried again, and before his eyes the room flashed in a series of colors on varying spectrums as he sought the disturbance in the room. A very still but breathing disturbance in the shape of a man.
Kaiden spun left with his handgun drawn and pulled the trigger, but the man—at least, he thought it was a man—swayed to the side. The bullet shattered glass instead, then Kaiden’s target sprinted through the opening and leapt over the side of the balcony.
“I’m pursuing.” Without waiting for Nisrine’s response, Kaiden burst forward and leapt to the ground below. He tucked into a roll, sprang onto his feet, and took off after the quick-moving silhouette.
They raced through darkened rear gardens and pounded over stone walkways. The assassin took Kaiden on a chase across the town as concerned citizens turned on their lights and leaned out of balconies for a look. In the distance, police sirens screamed their approach. Help was coming.
No matter how fast he ran, the assassin remained steps ahead of him. The chase came to an abrupt end in the town square where the perpetrator leapt onto a hoverbike. Kaiden fired his gun, but the shot ricocheted off an invisible field. As he swapped weapons, the man on the bike zipped away into the air.
“Fuck.”
The sirens stopped as he circled back around toward the house to relay news of the suspect’s escape to Nisrine. Through the lush flora and thick trees, he saw Royal Military Police swarming over the lawn, spilling from a vehicle in trained formation.
Once they assumed their positions, a chilling announcement echoed across the midnight sky.
“Nisrine Shahid and Kaiden Lockhart, we have the premises surrounded. Lay down your arms and exit the building with your hands in view.”
With Kaiden in pursuit of the unseen assailant, Nisrine focused all her attention on their fallen monarch. Catherine lay still on the floor, her chest rising and falling in slow, shallow breaths. Nisrine crouched over her and made a quick wound assessment, her mind flying through the supplies she needed. Every safe house provided an ample cache of medical supplies along with other essential items for agents to use.
“Don’t you dare die on me, Your Majesty,” she whispered, before hurrying to the nearby bathroom. She yanked open cabinet doors until she found what she needed.
“Nisrine Shahid and Kaiden Lockhart, we have the premises surrounded. Lay down your arms and exit the building with your hands in view.”
She froze, medkit in hand. “What the…” No one should have known they were there, but she wasn’t leaving the building while her queen bled out on the floor.
After crossing the room in a dash, she returned to Catherine’s side. Nisrine assembled an injector meant to sterilize and seal wounds, then angled the tip into the queen’s most threatening injury. The woman moaned but didn’t awaken.
Before she could attend the rest, the door slammed open and three armed soldiers stormed in. They opened fire without warning, forcing her to abandon the queen and seek cover.
Rolling to the side into the bedroom, she nearly stumbled across another body sprawled across the blood-soaked carpet. Abraham’s lifeless eyes stared up at her.
Nisrine kicked the reinforced door shut behind her and slapped her hand over a conveniently placed panic button. A soldier collided with the heavy steel, grunted, and shouted for help. Two deadbolts had slammed into place to provide extra, albeit temporary, security. They passed from the wall into the door.
“Kaiden, don’t return. Royal Military Police are here and have the building surrounded. They think we did it,” she relayed across their private comm channel. Nisrine risked a glance through the window. Surrounded. At any moment, they’d take down one of the walls with cutting tools to reach her.
“Too late,” Kaiden replied. “I’m hiding on the outskirts of the lawn and eavesdropping. We need to get you out of there. Is there a way for you to exit?”
Nisrine drew in a few deep, calming breaths. “There’s three hidden points of exit. I can evac through the roof if you can create a distraction on the east lawn.”
“’Course I can.”
“Give me thirty seconds.”
Using the dresser as a ladder, Nisrine popped open an overhead ceiling tile. Dust rained down over her head as she pulled herself up and found a precarious perch on the latticework of support beams. After sliding the lightweight tile back into place, she made a careful path across the cramped space. Luminescent paint outlined the escape hatch to the roof. Below, she heard the response team with their torch, sizzling a door of their own making into the wall.
“Wait a second,” Kaiden said.
“What?” she whispered. “I’m two feet from the access.”
The sound of the torch abruptly stopped, the piece of wall crashed.
“Just a second,” Kaiden assured her. Seconds later, the men stampeded from the condo and rushed outside, abandoning the building. “Go and be quick.”
Heart pounding, she crossed the last tile and pushed her thumb against the blinking panel beside the hatch. It flashed green and the locks disengaged. Cool, flower-scented air rushed down into the musty crawlspace. Keeping low, she pulled herself onto the roof and darted to the edge. True to his word, not a soul lingered on the east lawn. She dropped down into the hedges and followed them to the neighboring lot.
“Over here.”
Kaiden gestured from his hiding spot between two hovercraft parked in the drive. When she approached, the booted foot of an unconscious MP came into view, the rest of him concealed behind the spacecraft he’d been guarding. Another guy was sprawled in the bushes, also alive, and likely to awaken with one hell of a headache judging from his bloody face.
“They’ve locked down all registered vehicles within a five-mile radius,” Kaiden said. His voice reached her through the earpiece, and she noticed his lips hadn’t moved.
The next five minutes passed with excruciating slowness as they snuck their way through the development to the boundary wall. Kaiden boosted her up first then followed with a single bound that brought him over the wall. They found their stealth craft undisturbed, exactly as they’d left it. Kaiden took the pilot’s chair and Nisrine squeezed into the seat behind him designed for a rear gunner. She strapped in as emergency sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer. She prayed it was medical help for the queen.
Kaiden turned to look at her, his features grim. “I know why this thing’s only a prototype. Although it’s stealthed, it emits a burst of energy when it takes off. If they’re worth their shit, they’ll see us the moment we leave the ground.”
“We don’t have a choice. Let’s take our chances.”
“You okay on the guns?”
Nisrine wiped her palms against her pants. It didn’t help, they were so sweaty, still stained with the queen’s blood.
“Nissie?”
“I’m good.” She pulled up the targeting holodisplay and brought the weapons system online. “Let’s get out of here.”
Once Kaiden activated the thrusters, the craft floated from the ground and hovered in place. “Gonna patch their communication channel into our sound system. Better to know what the hell they’re doing.”
A second of feedback proceeded, “Over there! Sensors are picking up movement!”
Shit. Nisrine had hoped to make a speedy getaway, but that would have been too convenient, and if she’d learned anything about their recent struggles, it was that they’d left convenience behind on the Jemison. She didn’t want to open fire on those men down below who were only doing their jobs.
But she also didn’t want to die.
“We’ve got two men down. Requesting immediate backup assistance.”
Bullets peppered the shielded hull and forced Nisrine’s han
d. With no other alternative, she activated the offensive weapon system and returned fire with a precise shot from the rear missile launcher to cover their escape. Kaiden pulled back on the shuttle’s yoke, tilted the nose toward the sky, and exploded forward beyond the range of their rifles and harmless handguns.
Several Paradisian British Army ships lit and raised from the ground.
“They’re pursuing us. They must have gotten a lock on the shuttle’s energy signature!” Nisrine cried.
Missiles streaked toward them from one of the pursuing space vessels, though Kaiden rolled through the sky and evaded most of the shots. One struck the starboard hull and shook the entire craft, doing minimal damage to its shields while also throwing their stealth systems offline.
“Lucky fucking shot.”
Answering the call for reinforcements, more fighter ships joined their pursuers from the nearby base. Nisrine answered their deluge of gunfire with shots from the craft’s rear guns, though their shields weren’t designed to take focused, prolonged attacks.
“Shield battery at forty-five percent, Kaiden. I can’t keep this many off us.”
“I can shake them.” He flipped the fuel switch, feeding power to the engine. Once he rolled the accelerator bar forward and removed the speed inhibitor, the spacecraft became a two-person bullet rocketing toward the clouds above. Within seconds, they had left Paradiso’s atmosphere.
“Nothing on our ship,” Kaiden reported. “They don’t know it’s ours. Yet.”
“Let’s hope they don’t figure it out. We don’t have the time or funds for another overhaul.”
Once they pulled into the cargo bay of their ship and exited the stealthcraft, Nisrine rushed for the cockpit and entered coordinates, bringing them into a system departure trajectory timed to match two other ships leaving orbit.
“Queen Catherine is in critical condition.” He appeared behind her, offering a glass of whiskey.
She tilted the contents into her mouth without care and her eyes watered as the amber liquid burned down her throat. She’d needed it, though. Needed the bracing heat and reminder that she was alive. Without word, she held out her glass for a refill.
Kaiden (The Nova Force Book 2) Page 17
