“Yeah,” Paige said. “He came in for a cube order yesterday. He looked really happy to see me. I’m sure we’ll match up soon.”
Helice leaned toward Paige, her dull-brown hair hanging in her pinched face. “And if he wants to pair with you… would you go to the Meso?”
Paige batted her lashes and smiled. “Who knows? I have so much to consider now. I’m not sure I can leave here.”
“But didn’t Kali say that a girl on the Meso disappeared because of Tadeo?” Helice asked in a hushed tone. “And that they never found her body?”
“That’s only one of the rumors,” Kali said, a smug look on her face. “But even if it isn’t true, I still wouldn’t bother. Everyone knows he doesn’t like women. I heard he likes—”
“Ugh! Stop talking,” Paige said. “It’s just a rumor. When he asks me to match, I’m saying yes. Then I’ll find out for myself. And maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll tell you guys what it’s like to match up with the heir to the Meso.”
Sudden irritation surged through Zephyr, and she laughed, loudly. She hated Tadeo, but she hated Paige more. All three girls turned around, finally seeing her.
“I can’t imagine why you’d think he’d want to match with you,” Zephyr said hotly. “I mean… Tadeo and I have been matching up for a while now. You’re so not his type.”
Paige’s face twisted into a jealous pout, and Zephyr smirked as she headed for the outgoing message table. Getting to Paige ought make her feel better—but it only made her feel worse.
“This one goes to the Vancouver,” she said, handing the comm cube to Henry. “What’s going on with this crowd?”
“People have asked if we’re shutting down comms.” Henry dropped the cube in with the other outgoing messages. “But Mali would have told me if we were. We’re not. Everyone coming in is saying it.”
Zephyr sighed and glanced longingly toward the doors. “Who’s next?”
Henry gestured to check the list on his handheld. “Paige Narula,” he called out.
Zephyr bit back a laugh. Of course. That would be her luck. “Can I take the next person instead?”
“If you have issues with her, work them out.” Henry pointed in the direction of the crowd. “I don’t have enough techs as it is. You’re taking her.”
Zephyr grabbed a blank cube and turned, bumping right into Paige. “I’m your witness,” Zephyr said.
She pushed past Paige and led the way back to cubic eight. Maybe she’d delete whatever Paige recorded and pretend it was a glitch. A glitch for the biggest glitch on the ship.
They entered the recording cubic, and Zephyr pushed the new cube into her handheld and sat down, folding her hands before her.
Paige sat across from her, an ugly expression on her face. “You’re such a liar. But you’re a Kerrigan, so I guess I should expect that.”
“Wow. Insulting a future captain. You sure you’ve got enough brain cells to be a tech?”
“Tadeo would never match with you.”
“Well, since you’re so close to Tadeo now, why don’t you just ask him yourself?”
Paige blinked her large blue eyes and sniffed. “I’d like to record my message now.”
Zephyr activated the vidrelay and leaned back in her chair.
Paige sat up straight, and her entire face changed, shifting from bitter to bright in an instant. “Name: Paige Narula. Message for: Gerry Monahan, of the Dubai. Hey Gerry, I got your last message,” she said, her voice cheery. “I’m glad things are going well. I’m sure you heard what happened here with our hull.”
Paige was skirting around the edge of what was allowed in a comm, mentioning the hull breach like that. Too bad it wasn’t enough for Zephyr to report her. She’d have to give specifics, and she obviously knew better than to do that.
“I have such great news,” Paige continued, “Mali told me yesterday I’ve been chosen to be the next head archivist!”
Zephyr grunted in pain, as if Mali had just come into the cubic and kicked her. Had she really moved on that quickly? She couldn’t even wait one day after Era died to find her replacement? Paige darted a glance at Zephyr and seemed pleased by the expression on her face.
“There was another girl in the running for head archivist,” Paige said. “Unfortunately, the job was too much for her. She was an airlocker,” Paige said, with a heavy air of judgment. “It’s the talk of the ship. But I’m sure she had other reasons for wanting to end it. She was all alone. No real friends.”
Zephyr pressed her arms to the table, and her vision tinted red. This glitch was asking to be punched right now.
Paige smiled again into the vidrelay. “I’ll be busy training, so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a while. I hope you’re trying to get another term over here. Once I’m head archivist, I’ll make sure they approve your transfer. When you come back, you’ll be working with me again. And I know exactly how I’m going to clear out a spot for you.” Paige’s gaze flicked to Zephyr, then back to the vidrelay. “You won’t be stuck on the waiting list. Talk to you soon!”
Paige jumped up from her seat, and Zephyr turned off the relay. Heat coursed through every limb of her body, and lights seemed to dance before her eyes. She gripped the handheld tightly to stop herself from throwing it at Paige.
“You better go drop that in outgoing.” Paige’s eyes glinted nastily in the light of the lume bar. “I’m working the case second shift, so I’ll know if you don’t put it in there. Unless, of course, Mali’s ready to start training me today.”
Zephyr kept her lips pressed tightly together as Paige walked out. Then she tore off her eyepiece and dropped it to the table. It wasn’t fair. How could the fleet lose someone as sweet and loyal as Era, yet the colonist who least deserved to live got rewarded?
She ripped her personal holo gear from where she’d hidden it in her suit. She always carried it with her everywhere, so glitches like Paige couldn’t steal it from her bunk.
It was against the rules to have outside tech in the Repository, but the rule was stupid, and Zephyr had made it a policy a long time ago to only follow rules she agreed with. If only she’d had the foresight to disobey the curfew regulation, too.
She set up her handheld and pushed Paige’s message cube into the slot. Her breath came in quick gasps, and she tried to slow it down as she put on her own eyepiece and opened up Paige’s message on her handheld. No one would be able to prove she accessed it, because her handheld and eyepiece were unregistered, untraceable.
She watched the message again, slicing angrily through the air with her finger, deleting chunks of speech and moving others. With grim satisfaction, she moved the segments around until the thick feeling in her windpipe vanished and she could breathe again. After a few minutes of work, she played Paige’s new message.
“Hey, Gerry, I got your last message,” Paige said. “I’m all alone. I have no real friends. I sure hope you’re trying to get another term over here. You’ll be stuck working with me again. I’m going to be waiting for you! If you don’t come back to me, I’ll be an airlocker.”
She took out Paige’s message cube and shoved her handheld and eyepiece back into her suit. So what if it was immature? Maybe she was giving in to caretaker sector mentality, but Paige deserved worse. Far, far worse.
As Zephyr brought Paige’s new message to Henry, she felt Helice, Paige, and Kali all staring at her. She glanced across the room as she walked, and her pulse quickened. Tadeo was exiting a cubic on the other side of the Repository.
Who cares, Zephyr? You hate him. And he deserves to be hated.
Zephyr dropped Paige’s message into Henry’s hand. “Dubai,” she said.
Paige walked by her at that moment and sidestepped, shoving Zephyr into the table.
“Oops. Sorry,” Paige said quietly, too low for anyone but Zephyr to hear. “I’ve got to go talk to Tadeo. If he’s matching up with you, he must be desperate.” She started to walk away.
Rage bolted through Zephyr,
and she shoved Paige hard in the back. Paige stumbled and whirled around, a shocked look on her face.
“Don’t touch me again,” Zephyr said in a low growl.
Paige’s shock faded, and her eyes crinkled in amusement. “You know, at least Era could take a hint,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Go airlock yourself.”
Zephyr let out a guttural scream and lunged at Paige, tackling her to the hard tiles. Paige tried to twist away, but Zephyr had her pinned to the floor.
She swung at Paige’s face, and as her fist connected with bone, something cracked beneath her knuckles. Blood gushed from Paige’s nose, but Zephyr kept going, pummeling her face, her nose, her cheeks, slamming her head into the tiles again and again. Paige took a few weak swings back, but Zephyr blocked them all.
Shouts rose around them, and Paige managed to wrap a hand around Zephyr’s long hair. She pulled, ripping a chunk out, but Zephyr didn’t even feel the pain. She squeezed Paige’s arm until Paige gasped in pain, and her fist relented, opening to let the clump of red-blonde hair drift to the floor. Zephyr tore a chunk of hair from Paige’s head in retribution, then punched her again.
Blood spread across her knuckles, and she didn’t know and didn’t care if any of it was her own. There was only black rage and nothing else.
Paige’s face was obscured by slick red when someone grabbed Zephyr from behind and dragged her to her feet. She tried to push the person off as Paige escaped, sliding her broken body across the red-splattered tiles.
“Let me go,” Zephyr yelled, flailing her arms, kicking her legs in Paige’s direction. Then she saw the navy cloth, the silver infinity symbols printed on the sleeves of the man who held her.
He pinned her arms against her body so tightly she cried out.
“Stop it, Zephyr.”
Tadeo.
Tadeo pinned Zephyr’s arms tight against her ribs, and she went rigid in his grasp. She turned her head to look at him, revealing the spray of blood arcing across her fair cheek. He met her light blue eyes, and his shoulders tightened even as his body warmed against the feel of hers.
“Let go of me,” Zephyr said through gritted teeth.
Tadeo broke eye contact. A crowd had gathered around the bloodied girl and Zephyr, and they stood, silent, waiting to see what he would do. He hadn’t seen it all, but everyone else here had. And from the looks of it, Zephyr was at fault. He’d have to take her to the brig for this.
The head archivist and a medic who had been waiting to record a message showed up with a medkit.
“Everyone…” Mali said. “Everyone back to your seats. We’re handling this.”
The crowd reluctantly moved back toward the waiting area, but they remained quiet, watching and listening. A few halfs trailed behind, staying close to the scene.
Mali and the medic knelt beside the injured girl and began tending her bloodied face, wiping it clean. They murmured to her in low voices, and she spoke back, tears coursing down her cheeks.
Zephyr tried to shake Tadeo off again, but he kept his grip on her. Her skin must have been warm, heated beneath her black tech suit. He shifted, not wanting to be this close to her, not enjoying the sensation she awoke in him.
“Assaulting another colonist is twenty-four hours in the brig. Minimum.” He spoke low, in her ear, but his voice came out strained. He cleared his throat.
“What?” Zephyr spoke loudly, and all eyes went to her and Tadeo. “I didn’t do—”
“Stop. Talking.”
Zephyr slammed her mouth shut, and Tadeo pulled cuffs from his belt and connected them around her wrists.
“Stay put.” He released Zephyr and strode over to the girl she’d attacked. Her nose looked broken, and one of her eyes was swollen shut, but he recognized her. It was the girl who had waved at him earlier.
He sent a glare back at Zephyr, and the glare she had waiting for him was equal in its intensity. Zephyr was a captain’s daughter. It was her responsibility to set a good example for the rest of the fleet. Not attack those from the levels beneath her. After all the kak that had just been dropped on him from his mother and everything with the terrorists and the explosives—he didn’t need this right now.
He looked back at the injured girl. “Your information?”
She sniffed and pushed her tangled brown hair out of her face. “Paige Narula,” she said in a pinched voice, “Age 16, singles sector. I’m a tech apprentice in the Repository.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Zephyr just snapped. I used to work with the girl who airlocked herself. Era. We were good friends. I’m just as sad about this as Zephyr is—”
“Lying glitch,” Zephyr said.
Paige winced away from Zephyr and grabbed Tadeo’s sleeve. She offered him a small smile and tried to wipe the remaining blood off her cheek with her other hand, spreading it further.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Raines,” she said, her voice weak. “You saved me. If you hadn’t pulled her off of me… I don’t know what she would’ve done to me.”
Mali lifted a handheld and an eyepiece off the floor. The casing was crushed, and a crack ran through it, so a bundle of exposed wires hung out. Zephyr gasped.
“Who checked this gear out?” Mali asked. “This isn’t one of ours. It shouldn’t be in here.”
“It’s mine,” Zephyr said, her voice shaking. “Give those back.”
Mali frowned and handed Tadeo the broken handheld and eyepiece. “I assume Zephyr will be spending plenty of time in the brig?”
Tadeo ground his teeth and pocketed the evidence. Then he turned back to Zephyr. “Why did you attack her?”
“She said…” Zephyr pressed her lips together and tried to move her arms, but the cuffs kept them locked behind her back. “Does it really matter what she said? Just let me go. I won’t punch her again. Even if she does deserve it.”
Tadeo scanned the crowd and stopped at the halfs who had stayed nearby. Tadeo focused on a frightened, narrow-faced girl. “What’s your name?”
“My name’s Helice.” The name came out in a whisper.
“What happened here?”
Helice looked at Paige, and her shoulders sunk lower. “Zephyr attacked Paige. Paige didn’t do anything.”
Murmurs of agreement came from the benches, and the blonde beside Helice nodded vigorously.
Tadeo sighed and turned back to Zephyr. She set her jaw and stared at the broken handheld in his grasp, her expression hard, her eyes like pale blue sparks. When was the last time he’d thrown a girl in the brig? His eyes ran down Zephyr’s body. She looked so… feminine. Delicate, not at all like she could deliver the kind of damage Paige’s face had taken.
Enough of this. He was wasting precious time. Tadeo blew out a breath. “Okay. Medic, get Paige up to medlevel to get checked. Zephyr’s heading to the brig.”
Paige gave Tadeo another grateful smile, and Tadeo gave her a slight nod. He grabbed Zephyr harshly, his muscles tense, and steered her out the doors and into the stairwell.
As a future captain, she was an embarrassment to the fleet, tearing up a tech’s face like this—in public, no less. Zephyr arched her neck to try to look at him. “I can walk to the brig myself. You don’t have to push.”
Tadeo kept his hand on her back and guided her up the near-empty stairwell. “You’re a future captain.”
“So are you.”
“Well, act like one,” Tadeo said gruffly. “You’re supposed to set a good example.”
“You think you set a good example?”
“I’m a Paragon guard.”
“Oh, right,” Zephyr let out a broken laugh. “Well, at least the deka captains don’t need pulseguns to keep their colonists in line.”
“Oh—they don’t? This fleet would be safer if there were guards like me on every ship.”
“The deka captains have their Enforcers. They don’t want you on their ships.”
“The Kyoto wanted us.”
“The Kyoto captain couldn’t exact
ly give his permission.”
Tadeo ground his teeth. “Because rioters airlocked him. See? You just proved my point. The ships need us. There has not been a single event on the Kyoto since we sent guards over there. A good leader keeps his colonists in line.”
Zephyr raised her brows. “Okay, wise leader. Train me. Which leadership method works better for you? Pointing your pulsegun at colonists or threatening to airlock them?”
Tadeo felt the color drain from his face, and his throat thickened. He took a moment before responding. “Either one works,” he said, tightening his hold on Zephyr’s arms. “Of course, you could always just beat all the colonists who don’t agree with you.”
Zephyr went rigid and pulled away to try to face him. “Is it true what they say about you? That you made a girl disappear on the Meso? Or were you just such a horrible person that she did whatever she could to get away from you?”
Nausea hit Tadeo full force. He took a few quick breaths, balling his hands into fists, and met her angry gaze. “Careful, Zephyr. You don’t know anything.”
“And you don’t know me.” She stared him down. “And to think we were matching up. Thanks for showing me who you really are. Guess I dodged a meteor on that one.”
He held her gaze, his jaw clenched tight, but all he could think of was Era. Zephyr’s friend. A traitor. Pregnant and naked in the airlock. Tadeo broke eye contact first. “Walk.”
Zephyr tossed her head and kept walking up the stairs, her hips moving back and forth, her head held high. Heat flared within him again.
Woe to the London. They were screwed if Zephyr was to be their future captain. He’d made a mistake ever saying he’d match up with her. During the few hours they’d spent together, she’d been polite, boring even, her personality as plain as unsalted quin. Obviously she’d been hiding her true nature. This girl was trouble. And he did not have time for more trouble right now.
Fractured Era: Legacy Code Bundle (Books 1-3) (Fractured Era Series) Page 29
