“I have a choice?” Zosha asked, because she was still processing the fact that this could work, that she could be free. Under the table, Rick grabbed her hand and squeezed.
“It’s more that we don’t have a choice in letting you have a choice,” Annie said. “You’re the one with the notebook, and this would work best if you were the one presenting this all to Sylas. This doesn’t exactly hinge on you being on board, but it would help a hell of a lot if you were.”
Zosha considered that for a moment, then stood slowly. “I think I need a moment. I’ll be right back.”
She walked out of the kitchen, her feet carrying her back to the cockpit. She sat in Rick’s chair, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around herself. Breathe in, breathe out.
“Europa, Ganymede, Io, Callisto, Amalthea, Ananke,” she muttered. “Pasiphae, Carme, Thebe, Metis, Adrastea…”
She’d gotten to Hegemone before Rick walked in.
“I’ll be honest, I thought you’d be a little happier about this,” he said.
“I can’t let myself be,” she said without looking at him. “I can’t do this.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You’ve already come so far on your own.”
“I already told you, I wasn’t alone,” she told him, refusing to let her voice break. “And you mean I’ve already run so far. That’s all I’m good for, you know. Grabbing something I think I can get a decent price for later and then hightailing. And it works, because I’ve always been faster than whoever’s chasing me. But making a stand? I can’t do that. I mean, look at me. I’m all bluster and bluff to cover up the fact that I’m a wreck who can’t even control her own life.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “You should have just let Hyde airlock me.”
“Hey, look at me,” Rick said, kneeling down next to her. After a moment, she complied. “You can do this, and you won’t be alone. You’ll have five bear shifters backing you up. I mean, we took out Strathmore. This is going to be easy.”
Zosha nodded, trying to let herself be reassured. There was still one stubborn little worry that refused to dissipate.
“And then what?” she asked. “I already told you, I don’t want to take sides. I can’t live like that, knowing there might be a target on my back because of who I work for. I’d go insane. The only thing I can think of is to leave Lytos for good, but where would I go?”
Even on the run, she’d always imagined that one day, the dust would settle and she would be able to return to her asteroid. She hated living there, with the stink and the violence and the feeling that she’d never be anything more than she was, but the thought of never getting to live there again was surprisingly painful.
“You’d go anywhere you wanted,” Rick answered. “I mean, you lived your whole life on that hellhole. If you can survive Lytos, you can survive anywhere.”
This was a lie; being able to survive on Lytos meant that Zosha could survive on Lytos, or places like it. It meant she could sleep with one eye open, always on guard. It meant her fight-or-flight response, firmly weighted on the side of flight, had a hair trigger that had saved her life more than once but would never let her feel at home anywhere properly civilized. Rick knew it as well as Zosha did, but it was better than no reassurance at all and she allowed him to lead her back to the kitchen.
Hyde and Dominic looked unimpressed by her reentrance, but she ignored both them and Custer’s smirk in favor of addressing the captain and Annie.
“I’m in,” she told them. “I think you’re crazy for wanting to do this, but I’m in.”
Annie smiled. “Glad to have you on board.”
The next hour passed in a frenzy of planning that consisted mostly of Annie convincing the others they could just shift from the get-go and kill anyone who tried to get in their way and picking Zosha’s brain for information. Once she had drilled everyone’s script into their minds to her satisfaction, she declared the meeting disbanded and told the crew members to return to their duties and Zosha to rest up.
Zosha had the alarming thought that if Annie and Spinner ever met each other, they would either kill each other or take over the galaxy.
The captain and Rick shared a long look that ended in the captain walking to the cockpit and Rick walking Zosha back to his room.
“He’ll fly us in. At warp 8, it should take twelve hours,” Rick told her as he keyed in the passcode to his room.
“Three and a half weeks of switching ships and hopping city to city and asteroid to dwarf planet to space station to get away from Lytos,” she told him, “and twelve hours to get back. It doesn’t seem right.”
“That shouldn’t be new,” he responded. “Annie was right, though. You only got about an hour and a half of sleep in the cockpit, you really should lay back down.”
Zosha couldn’t think of anything else to do, so she fell back on the mattress.
“How are you feeling?” Rick asked her, shoving the papers on his desk into stacks.
“I think I’m actually so terrified I can’t even feel it anymore,” she answered. “You?”
“Eh. A little itchy from anticipation. Concerned about little Rahm’s defenses. Happy that your shit is getting figured out.”
“So is yours,” Zosha pointed out. Rick walked over and sat beside her, leaning back on the headrest.
“Happy about that too,” he said and put one hand gently on the crown of her head. She relaxed as he began running his fingers through her hair again. “Now, get some sleep.”
She closed her eyes, certain she wouldn’t be able to get a wink of sleep, and woke up eleven and a half hours later to Custer yelling over the intercom for Rick to get his ass in gear.
Rick moaned from where he’d passed out beside her and propped himself up on his elbows. They locked eyes and he gave her a crooked grin.
“Let’s go finish a war, shall we?” he said, and for the first time Zosha really, truly felt like this might just work out.
They gathered in the cargo bay. Dominic and Annie were staying behind. Rick and Zosha were splitting away from Captain Ingram, Hyde, and Custer to avoid drawing too much attention and then meeting back up at a rendezvous point after forty minutes. From there on, it was all a matter of getting into Sylas Rahm’s compound.
Rick and Zosha headed out first. She took him down to her favorite sweetbread vendor and they trailed around the marketplace, waiting for the appointed time.
Zosha remembered Spinner haggling with a tech vendor for the only decent monitor in the shop when they were barely in their twenties, his eyes narrow and lips thinned with impatience, and suddenly she missed him so much it hurt. She didn’t want to walk into what might be her death without saying goodbye to him.
She tugged on Rick’s sleeve and told him she’d be right back, then dashed into the nearest bathroom and pulled out her comm. She didn’t think she had time to call him, on the off chance he picked up, and she didn’t want to tell him face to face that, despite all his help, she could still very well be about to get herself killed. The habit to run away was, apparently, not something that could be kicked all at once.
She racked her mind for what to say, aware that Rick was waiting outside, and ended up sending a simple about to do something stupid with the Rahm brothers, watch out for the kickback, and thank you for everything. It didn’t scratch the surface of what she owed him or what she wanted to say to him, but it was better than letting her best, oldest, and only friend find out what she’d done through one of his contacts.
She walked back to Rick, and they killed fifteen minutes wandering before they changed course to meet the others.
Sylas Rahm’s base of operations was underground, which wasn’t unusual. Once the population had grown too much for the surface alone, mining shafts from before the asteroid had been converted for civilization were stabilized and turned into housing. Sylas’ compound was several of these tunnels connected and reinforced. They weren’t getting in without permission, regardless of what
the shifter thought, so as soon as they reached the entrance she squared her shoulders and walked up to a guard.
“Hello. I need to talk to Sylas Rahm. Unfortunately, it’s important,” she said, trying not to feel like a child putting on an act.
The guard snorted. “I’m sure. Why don’t you come back later?”
“Look,” Zosha said, “can you at least tell me someone I can talk to that’ll pass on a message to him?”
“Can’t, actually,” the guard said. “Go waste someone else’s time.”
“Look,” Zosha said, patience running thin. “This is something that can help your boss and stop me from getting killed, so if you could please just tell me who I can talk to I’ll leave you alone. If not, you’re going to have to deal with me for a while.”
“Look, sweetheart,” the guard said, and shoved her backwards hard. Two things happened at once. The first was that Rick, snarling, stepped forward to catch her. The second was the almost as soon as Zosha stumbled back, a bullet hit the guard’s shoulder. The six of them stared dumbly at the blood splattering the ground for a second, then everything was screaming and motion. Rick spun to face the direction the bullet had come from, drawing his blaster and keeping Zosha behind him. Custer and Captain Ingram followed suit. Zosha squinted through the fleeing shoppers, trying to see the shooter. Behind her, she could hear the guard yelling into his comm.
Fear shot through her as she saw men in black full body armor pushing through the crowd. There weren’t as many as she’d feared, but more than enough to put a bullet in her head.
“I think they saw us,” Custer said, cackling.
“Not now,” the captain said, voice hard.
The black-suited mercenaries advanced steadily, and Zosha and the shifters dove for cover. Most of the stalls were wood or a plastic material, and a blaster bolt tore a hole straight through the side of one, narrowly missing Zosha’s head. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Rick jerked her close, putting himself between her and the mercenaries.
“Shifting!” the captain shouted, then tossed his blaster to the side and stood in the middle of the hail of bullets.
It happened in less than five seconds. His skin rippled, then exploded outwards, fur covering the expanding form. A snapping sound and a slick, organic noise could be heard over the report of the blasters and in the time it took to blink a giant, dark-furred bear stood where the captain had been. Zosha stared.
The bear shook itself off, then lunged for the attackers, who, understandably disoriented, scattered.
“Hey!” a voice behind them yelled. Zosha turned to see two new guards hauling their bleeding comrade into the compound, about five others in identical uniforms streaming out from behind them, energy shields flickering to life around them. They began firing at the mercs, who were forced to scatter.
“Go,” Rick commanded.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Zosha protested.
“And I don’t want to see you get shot. We came here geared up to fight. You didn’t.”
“But…” Zosha started, then swallowed around the lump in her throat. She didn’t want to be responsible for his death. She didn’t think she could live with herself.
Rick hesitated, then leaned in and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. It took her a second to realize what was happening, but once she did she grabbed his shoulder in an attempt to pull him closer. They broke apart breathing heavily.
“I will come back safe,” he promised her. “I want to see that through.”
Zosha tried to say something in return and found that she her throat had tightened and she couldn’t speak. Instead, she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and dashed towards the door.
As soon as she was inside, one of the new guards hit the button to close the door. She turned to see that Rick had stood up, skin rippling the way the captain’s had.
“Wait!” Zosha yelled. “The bears are on our side!”
The last thing she saw before the doors closed completely was Rick erupting into his bear form, back to her. She sent a silent prayer to whatever might be listening for him to come through this safely.
“That was the weirdest fucking thing I’ve seen since I started working here,” one of the new guards, a tall blond man, said.
“He’s new,” the other one told Zosha, hauling his injured friend up and looping an arm under his shoulder. “Alright, I’m going to get Davison to medical. Take her to the boss.”
“On it,” the blond said. He gripped Zosha’s arm lightly and began to walk deeper into the compound.
Zosha let herself be led away. Something in her heart wrenched painfully at leaving Rick behind and she told herself he’d be fine. He had to be.
The guard stopped in front of a door and knocked on it three times.
“Come in,” a voice said from inside.
They went in.
Sylas Rahm had grey streaking his temples and cold blue eyes. He sat back in a large padded chair behind his desk, calmer than Zosha thought anyone who had people trying to shoot up his compound had any right to be. The light from the holoscreen on his desk lit him up, making his angles more severe.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding at the guard, who nodded back and then walked out, closing the door.
“So,” Sylas said lazily. “Tell me what all this is about.”
“It started with me picking the wrong pocket,” Zosha started, steeling herself. She told him about Lan Doro’s first barely avoided attack and all the running that followed. She told about sneaking through Dalos XI and onto the Breakwater. About being found. She only left out knowing Spinner, out of habit, and the truth about the Breakwater crew’s genetics.
“…and there’s four of mine still outside,” she said, winding down. “And seeing as they can’t do much business for you if they’re dead, I think it would be best if you tried to keep them alive. Sir.”
Sylas contemplated her, eyes running over her as though she were a passably interesting problem to be solved. “You know, he said you could be a bit pushy. I see he wasn’t wrong.”
Before Zosha could ask who told him that, a very familiar voice sounded from the holoscreen.
“I am never wrong,” Spinner said, sounding as though he had a very large headache. “Hello, Zosha. Next time could you please try to give me more than fifteen minutes of a heads up before you get yourself shot at?”
“Did you pick a side?” Zosha demanded, ignoring his question. “You’ve never picked a side before.”
“You never got this close to being assassinated before,” Spinner responded. “Besides, do you have any idea how hard it’s been to get decent information from Lytos recently? It was time to put an end to this silly spat.”
Sylas raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“Also, I—oh. That’s interesting.”
“What is it?” Sylas asked.
“Well, good news, I think your friends survived,” Spinner said. “Of course, I can’t be completely sure that those are, in fact, your friends. Zosha, do you have something you’d like to tell us?”
“Ah, that,” Zosha said as the door behind her opened to reveal two of Sylas’ guards, one of the black-clad mercs looking somewhat traumatized and handcuffed, and four bears.
Zosha felt something warm rush through her veins as she saw them, looking roughed up but alive. She all but flung herself at Rick, wrapping her arms around his wide neck.
“I am so happy to see you,” she whispered into his fur. He made a deep noise in the back of his throat and pressed his nose against her neck, which she chose to interpret as reciprocation.
KIKO (MC Bear Mates Book 3) Page 88
