“Drop the rifle, Captain.” Her words brushed against my ear and delivered a heady dose of fucked-up lust at entirely the wrong time. She probably knew it too. “Drop the fuckin’ gun, Cale, or I’ll shoot you in the back with one of your own guns.”
“My guns?”
“I cleared them out before fleet could strip Starscream of anything valuable.” She slipped her left hand around my waist from behind and slid it way too close to my junk for comfort. “I can appreciate a good weapon.”
She pulled me against her and taught me exactly what it felt like to have a dagger pressed deep against my cock, because sure, that was a whole heap of fun. A gun in my back and a knife on my junk. That pretty much qualified me as screwed.
“Maybe we can continue this conversation back in my cabin?”
The dagger dug in, hot shards of pain sparked through my balls. I winced.
“Drop the gun or I’ll castrate you, Captain.”
I dropped the gun.
Ade tossed me a salute and hobbled forward, leaning away from her bad leg. “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
With her closer, the drug-induced opaque glaze of her eyes was obvious. Fran must have given her something to bring her back around, deciding to enlist the help of the only other person on the ship who hated me as much as she did.
This was a really bad day to be me. “The two of you getting your dominance on? I gotta say, this is really doin’ it for me right now.”
Ade’s backhand carried the same weight as a fucking sledgehammer. If I hadn’t been leaning back against Fran, she’d have knocked me on my ass. Fire washed up the right side of my face and the metallic taste of blood bloomed in my mouth.
“Oh, honey. You can hit harder than that.”
And she did. This time my eyes watered. I spat blood and laughed. Ade could beat me all she wanted; I’d been raised under fists. This shit was practically nostalgic.
“Ade,” Fran said, “he’s bating you so you’ll screw up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fran, for fuck’s sake. You spoil all my fun.”
Ugly fury twisted Ade’s expression. She pointed a trembling finger at my face. “You, Caleb Shepperd, are a dead man.”
Stuck between these two, I didn’t doubt it. Where was the synth when I needed her?
“As lovely as this threesome is, we have ships inbound. Probably Cande ships, so you fine ladies need to sort your shit out and decide what you want to do with the freighter. Seeing as, y’know, Fran’s a fleet commander and still on their payroll.”
Ade’s eyes flashed. “A commander?”
It had been a guess, but judging by the way Fran had tensed against me, I’d hit the truth.
“I reckon she’s had a few pirates in her sights over the years. Maybe even had something to do with the massacre of your crew? Did she not mention her fleet service record?” The gun in my back dug in hard enough to make me grimace. “Seein’ as you don’t much like fleet, Ade, I’m surprised you’re letting her order you around. You’ve never struck me as a fleet lackey.”
Fran’s dagger point jabbed low into my thigh. “Shut it, Cale.”
But the damage was done.
Ade gave Fran the same cutthroat glare she’d been giving me.
“Tell me the flightdash master code so I can get this heap of junk moving and tug the freighter to my depot,” Ade demanded.
Junk?! “Hey, Starscream’s not—”
Fran turned the dagger in, nearly castrating me. I shut up.
“I’m not telling you the code, Ade,” my second purred, so confident she was better than all of us. “Nobody gets to know the code but me, and the only way this ship is moving again is with me behind the controls.”
My wrist comms bleated. It’d probably be #1001 telling me Ade was missing from the med bay, or maybe my brother about to tell us that the Candes were boarding—none of which could help me out of my predicament.
“The freighter is going to my people, Commander Francisca,” Ade hissed.
“This freighter belongs to fleet. It’s not going anywhere with pirates, or smugglers, or the Fenrir Nine.”
“Ladies.” I swallowed. “I get you have issues, but we’re on borrowed time. If you could just let me go while you discuss—”
Ade picked up my rifle. She moved awkwardly around the pain in her thigh and aimed loosely at my abdomen. “I’ll shoot through him to hit you, bitch.”
Fran dragged me backward.
My wrist comms bleated again. This is taking too long. Someone needs to fuck up.
“Ade, you might want to flick it to high impact. If you shoot me on that setting, the bullet’ll likely stop at me.”
She looked down to adjust the setting.
I jerked my head back, connecting hard with Fran’s nose, and at the same time twisted in her grip, knocking her dagger-wielding hand away. She already knew she was beat but that didn’t stop her from fighting. I forced her gun arm high. The gun went off close to my ear—the bitch had fucking fired even after everything we’d been through—and I punched her hard in the gut. She crumpled into me with a whooshed exhale and whipped her arm around as though trying to drag me down with her.
A dull impact numbed my lower back and a warm wetness spread down my thigh. We scuffled up close and dirty. I gripped the gun and twisted it out of her blood-slicked fingers, then went to push her away when my legs nearly buckled under me. What the fu—
Ade’s cool fingers threaded into my hair, and she hauled me backward. If she had a dagger, she’d cut my throat in the next move. I didn’t think; there wasn’t time. I reacted, aiming the pistol under my arm, and fired. The crack of gunfire rang out like a death knell through the hold. Ade’s grip vanished. I heard her body crumple and knew—just fuckin’ knew—she wasn’t ever getting back up. A glance proved it—blood and bone. My gut heaved, rolling my insides halfway up my throat. I staggered, needing to look away but unable to. The underarm angle I’d fired from had arched the bullet high. It had punched through Ade’s chin and blasted out the back of her skull, raining bits of her insides against the bulkhead.
“Fuck …” Strength bled from my legs. Cool nausea washed over me, threatening to double me over so I could hurl my guts all over Starscream’s floor.
I killed her. I killed Ade. The blood, the bits of bone and other shit, that was Ade.
My focus blurred, and I almost dropped. If I fell, I wouldn’t get back up.
“Cale …”
I turned the pistol on Fran with a trembling aim. “Drop the dagger. Get up off the floor, get to the bridge, and let me back into my ship’s controls.”
My vision fogged. I shook my head to clear it while my heart thudded fast and heavy.
Fran looked past me and paled. She stared, expression slack. “Oh by-the-nine, the Candes will want blood.” I can’t think about this. I can’t face it.
“Move!” My shout boomed through Starscream’s hold, and finally Fran looked at me and saw a killer. She climbed to her feet and held out the bloodied dagger.
I followed her out of the hold, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other to keep the dark from swallowing me.
* * *
“They’re requesting to speak with Ade Cande,” my brother said while Fran, white as a sheet with a swollen lip and a bloody nose, gingerly sat in her flight chair. I must have looked like shit, because Bren stayed quiet when I leaned heavily on the back of Fran’s chair and pressed the pistol against her neck.
“Undo whatever the fuck you did to lock me out.” My voice broke, and I didn’t give a fuck. I was either about to pass out, throw up, or die. Considering the amount of blood soaking into my pirate getup, death was as likely as the other options. The punch I’d felt in my back hadn’t been a punch at all, but Fran sticking me with her dagger. The fuckin’ irony.
A crazy smile tugged at my lips. Laugh or cry—I could go either way, maybe both. I was having a hard time focusing and concentrating and would rather have lain down for a whi
le. Guilt churned in my gut, washing hot shivers beneath my skin. I couldn’t shake the image of bits of Ade’s once pretty head painting the fucking walls in the hold.
“You er … you might wanna sit down before you fall down,” Bren suggested.
I’d wedged my arms over Fran’s chair and probably couldn’t move if I’d wanted to. “I’m fine.”
I watched Fran’s trembling hands undo the lockout procedure. She was afraid for her life, and so she fucking should be.
“Where’s Ade? We need to placate the Candes. They’re not the most patient—”
“Bren …” I tried to swallow and failed to get past the knot in my throat. “She’s not coming.”
I hadn’t meant to kill her. Sure, she was nuts, but so was I.
Fuck. I bowed my head. I couldn’t lose it. Not yet. Don’t think. Don’t think about her crazy-ass smile, or how she tasted, or the way she only wanted to do right for the people on that rock she called home. She had it coming. This was her fault, not mine.
My gut heaved. I squeezed my eyes closed and swallowed the bile. Wouldn’t it be grand to have a machine mind so I could separate all the shit and file it away for later? To switch off the parts of me that felt? Jesus, I envied #1001 her ability to not feel.
“Cale, I-I’m sorry.” Fran. Fucking Fran.
My lips twisted around a snarl and a smile. I opened my eyes to find Fran’s sorry expression begging me not to kill her.
“Are we done?” I asked, surprised at how steady my voice sounded.
“Yes. You have control.”
“Bren, I need to be sitting there.…”
Bren left my flight chair and watched restlessly as I eased my battered, blood-soaked body into the seat. I kept the pistol in my lap, trained on Fran, and detached Starscream from the freighter, boosting us back away from the bulk of the ship. The black of endless space yawned over the horizon of the freighter and just beyond, the three horseshoe-shaped Cande ships waited. I reached under my flight chair and flicked the switch to turn Starscream from a harmless tug to a beast with enough firepower to wipe the floor with those three little unprepared Cande vessels. Starscream’s engines growled low. I targeted one of the three ships—didn’t matter which—picked up the external comms unit, and tucked it in my ear.
“This is Captain Caleb Shepperd of the Starscream Independent tug, number six-zero-six, in the process of procuring a shiny fleet freighter. Ade can’t come to the comms right now, so please leave a message and she’ll get right back to you.”
I sounded okay, as if everything was normal, but it wasn’t. Everything was so far from normal that I wasn’t even sure this was real. This day was happening to someone else, it had to be, because I didn’t feel a fucking thing.
“Captain Shepperd, this is Turner Candelario, Ade’s brother. You have something of a reputation, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with my sister.”
I muted my comms. “Her brother. Of course it’s her fucking brother.…”
I closed my eyes. This wouldn’t go well. Whatever I said wouldn’t change the fact that this man’s sister was lying dead in my cargo hold. The Candes would come for me. They’d hunt me and wouldn’t stop until I was dead. Telling them it had been an accident wouldn’t matter. I lifted my eyes and found Fran carefully watching me.
“Can we outrun them?”
“Yes,” she replied grimly.
I opened the comms and wet my lips. “Turner, I currently have Starscream’s entire arsenal of ordinance targeting one of your ships. I don’t want this”—I skewed a glance at Fran, who sat as pale and quiet as I’d ever seen her—“but you need to withdraw.”
“Shepperd, where’s Ade?”
He sounded like the kind of guy I didn’t want to fuck with, like someone who’d hold a grudge and would take the death of his sister pretty damn personally.
“She’s high.” I winced as my voice caught. Hopefully he’d think it was interference. “We had a wild time after we took the freighter. You know what it’s like. I tried to wake her when we saw you were incoming.”
I fired one of Starscream’s missiles and watched it blast apart next to the Cande vessels. “A warning shot, Turner. Back off, so we don’t have to make it personal.
“You’re a lying bastard, Captain Shepperd, and you’re about to make the last mistake of your wretched little life.”
“They’re firing, Captain.” Fran reached up and dragged the obs screen closer to her. “But not at us.”
“At the freighter?”
“At something on the freighter—Shit. The cargo I ditched. The explosives!”
Fran grabbed the controls and reversed all engines just as the blast erupted outside our obs window. The explosion rolled over the freighter. Broiling fire spewed through the vessel, devouring it whole. A blast filled Starscream’s bridge with the kind of blinding light that would burn through your retinas.
I deployed the blast shield just as the wave hit. “Hang on.”
The shockwave slammed into Starscream, jolting through the ship and throwing everything sideways. Metal groaned and complained in a god-awful cacophony. Starscream was tearing herself apart at the seams. If she lost integrity, we wouldn’t know it; it’d be over in a blink. It’d sure solve a few of my problems.
Fran rode the wave, then punched Starscream away from the worst of it and kept right on sailing into the black.
“No tails,” she announced once we’d blasted deep into the system. “I’ve deployed the buoys. Should be enough to fool them and get us away.”
I sat in silence, numb and empty. My freighter, my ticket back in with the Nine, was gone. I’d killed a woman. My second had stabbed me, and I was fairly certain if I didn’t stop myself from bleeding out, nobody else would bother. When had it gone so wrong?
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered.
It was #1001’s voice that found me. “Captain, you’ve lost a great deal of blood. You’re also going into psychological and hypovolemic shock.”
Her words … so fucking precise. So empty.
I stared, eyes half closed, at the flightdash. I should have been angry, furious even, but I wasn’t. I didn’t feel a thing. Maybe I could just close my eyes and nothing would matter again. I stopped fighting the darkness and welcomed it instead. It was easier this way.
Chapter Sixteen: #1001
The strong smell of antiseptic tickled my nose as I entered Caleb’s cabin. Brendan was sitting forward in a chair, elbows on his knee and his hands clasped together. I wondered whether he’d been praying and whether I should leave.
“It’s all right,” he said. “He’s still sleeping. He’ll be out for a while yet.”
I darted my gaze to Caleb asleep on his bed. His even breathing and resting heart rate confirmed he was out. If he was dreaming, his face showed no signs of it. Asleep, he looked younger, almost like the Fleet Captain Caleb Shepperd in the photo pinned to the message board.
“Fran has asked to visit him.”
Bren bowed his head and slowly brushed his hands together.
“That’s not going to happen.” When he looked up, his expression had hardened. Even his warm smile seemed cooler. “She’s not coming anywhere near him. She can stay in the hold with the corpse for all I care.”
“Perhaps we should wake him? Adelina Candelario’s body needs to be dealt with. Every moment we hide in this debris field is another moment fleet and the Candelarios will have to find us.”
“He’s been through enough.” He stood and met my gaze, eye-to-eye. “Let him rest. I get the impression he doesn’t sleep much.”
“You’d do well to adhere to your own advice, Commander.”
He smiled. “Perhaps, but I’m no commander, not anymore.”
He touched my shoulder as he passed me. Just a friendly touch. He probably wasn’t aware he’d done so, but I found myself seeking out the data, and with it the sensations of the weight of his hand and the gentle squeeze of his fingers. It had been a throwaway gestur
e, but it had a quieting effect on me.
“I know I can trust you,” he said, half out the door, “because Caleb is an asset. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
The commander dipped his chin in a tight nod and then left the cabin, closing the door behind him.
I sat in the commander’s chair and watched Caleb sleep. Caleb Shepperd was more than an asset to me. What I felt for the captain didn’t stem from protocols and programming, but from the nowhere spaces among my components, from the ghost in my machine, and I owned it. This odd desire to touch, to feel—I clutched it close, perhaps afraid it might one day dissolve into the datastream and no longer mean anything. When I looked at Caleb, what I felt—the good, the bad, the fear—was real.
Caleb’s left arm lay draped over his chest, while his right rested at his side. With his face turned toward me, I could see precisely where his shallow smiles had cut lines into his cheeks. I trailed my gaze lower, over the musculature of his shoulder and his chest, where the blanket didn’t cover him, and down his arm.
I reached out and touched the backs of his, gently brushing my fingertips across his warm skin. There had been a time when he’d held my hand in his, and he’d squeezed it tightly as if the gesture had meant something. His touch had meant something to the me before. I shuffled forward, to the edge of the seat, and closed his hand in mine. This touch was different from the one I remembered. My synthetic skin absorbed the feel of him and translated it into data, but it was data I cherished and rolled around my processes the way someone might savor a fine wine. I took pleasure in it.
“I thought I’d killed you,” I said.
His chest rose and fell, but otherwise, he continued to sleep. He couldn’t hear me.
“And it hurt. It hurt in places where it doesn’t make any sense for a synthetic to feel pain.” I spoke softly, quietly, almost whispering. I wasn’t sure I really wanted him to hear the words, but I needed to speak them. “I was wrong to hurt you, to blame you. You didn’t kill me. He—”
The truth lodged in my throat and wouldn’t move. I’d find a way to tell him, but not yet.
Girl From Above Escape (The 1000 Revolution Book 2) Page 15
