by Layla Nash
Rowan followed him and let her thoughts stray back to Mrax and the others. After everything Yraz promised, she started to think she could actually work there, at least for a little while. She knew for certain that she’d never find a lab or technology like the Dablonians had at any of the rebel bases or even back with the Alliance. The only thing missing would be... well, would be her friends, such as they were.
She’d miss Jess, and finding out what a girl’s night actually was. She hadn’t seen any female Dablonians—or even knew if there was such a thing—but she was pretty sure they wouldn’t have the same kind of girl’s night as the Earthers apparently had. And part of her would miss Mrax and finding out what was between them. What more might be between them.
And after finding out how amazing sex could be with him... she wanted more of that, too.
She followed Yraz into a small dining room already stocked with every Earther delicacy she’d missed over the past few years, and figured the least she could do was hear the Dablonians out. Maybe she could get one of those tablets with all the information on it, sabotage a few things in their lab, and get back to the boneyard before anyone missed her. Then she’d show them for real that her crazy ideas weren’t that crazy. She just had to get out of the Dablonian clutches eventually.
Chapter 33
Mrax
Mrax took over the surface runner after he and Trazzak rigged up one of the advanced weapons they’d just purchased from the Dablonians. He cruised around enough to see that the Dablonians had increased the security around their headquarters, including roaming patrols on the surface as well as in the air. When the surface runner approached, the defensive pods reacted and shields raised over the entire building. Mrax knew he’d never get close enough to rescue Rowan with the surface runner and the weapons it carried, and returned to the boneyard where Trazzak and Jess prepared their own way to get close to the company.
Mrax wanted to take the Dablonians on alone, so that at least Trazzak and Jess could call in the Galaxos and the rest of the rebellion, just in case something went wrong. And he wanted the Dablonians all to himself, so he could kill them all with his bare hands for threatening his mate.
And he needed to tell Rowan she was his mate and he was sorry... and he didn’t want too many witnesses to his humility.
He parked the surface runner and killed the engines, reminded of Rowan’s cheerful deal with that creep Yraz for the crazy new engine, and swung himself out to stride toward the cabin. “They’re prepared for us. Security everywhere and no way to get close with the runner or another ship.”
“So we go on foot,” Jess said. With a hard expression, she prepared a complicated blaster. The Earther checked her communications device and fired up some kind of egg-shaped metal item he’d never seen before. It crackled and then the disembodied voice of Vaant and his mate filled the air around them. Jess didn’t hesitate to fill them in, then scowled at Mrax like he’d handed Rowan to the Dablonians himself. “We’re going in to get her back tonight. Get the Galaxos here as soon as possible. There are half a dozen ships ready for the rebellion, including the transporter in the outskirts. Just…destroy the Dablonians as thoroughly as possible.”
“Damn it, Jessalyn,” Isla said. “You were supposed to take it easy. It was supposed to be easy.”
“Shit happens,” Trazzak said. It was one of the phrases he’d picked up from the Earthers that Mrax still didn’t understand. At least the warrior went on without pause. “We cannot wait. There is no telling what the Dablonians will do in order to keep her. The longer they have her, the more they will be able to keep her from us. They will be prepared, and from what we saw… even the full fleet of the rebellion would not be able to breach those walls.”
Vaant took a deep breath. “If you wait, we will have —”
“She’s my mate,” Mrax said. He didn’t care who knew it. He wanted to shout it to the world, to the whole universe. “She’s my mate and I will not let them have her another moment. I will not endanger her, not for anything in the universe.”
Silence was the only response from Jess’s odd communicator. She watched him for a long time, then nodded. “We go for her as soon as night falls. We can go in under the cover of darkness. Trazzak and I will create a distraction at the front of the compound and draw as much security to us as possible.”
“What are we doing?” Trazzak asked, irritation turning his scales orange-red. “I think you mean that you’re going to be here or in a fighter, as far away from the Dablonians as possible. He won’t risk his mate, and I sure as hell won’t risk mine.”
Jess’s eyes narrowed and her voice barely edged out between clenched teeth. “We will discuss this in a moment. As far as the Galaxos is concerned, we are all involved in rescuing Rowan.”
“But—” Isla started.
“No,” Mrax said. Vaant started growling about him cutting off the captain’s mate, but Mrax didn’t like wasting time. They needed to plan and prepare for a hell of a fight to get Rowan back. “We will get her back tonight or I will die trying. The sooner you get here, the more likely you will be to help us.”
Vaant grumbled but finally said, “We are on our way. Three other rebel ships are in the vicinity and are headed your way. They will intercept any Dablonian ships in the vicinity and assist in distracting their defenses. Be careful.”
Mrax took a deep breath and nodded to himself. Jess closed up her strange communicator and put it away, then faced off with Trazzak. “We cannot afford to have me hang around here like a dutiful little mate. This will take all of us. And besides, there is literally nothing you can say or do to keep me from helping my friend. Don’t even try.”
Trazzak opened his mouth but silenced when Jess poked him in the chest and drove him back a step. “She saved my life, and more than once. She risked hers to help us—my crew, your crew. All of us. I am not leaving her there.”
“What if she wants to be there?” Trazzak asked. Mrax growled, but the other warrior didn’t look away from his mate. “What if she walked away on her own, Jess, because of what happened?”
Mrax stiffened. “Are you saying this is my fault?” He knew that it was, but he hated the other warrior even suggesting it.
Both Jess and Trazzak fixed him with dark looks. Mrax ground his teeth until his scales flared crimson. “That is between us. I will fix what I have broken. She did not leave on her own, and we are wasting time.”
He strode back to the cabin to retrieve some of his medical supplies and a different set of much darker clothes. Mrax ignored the sound of the couple arguing over what Jess would do, and by the time he was ready to set out, the suns had disappeared behind the horizon with only a flew flares of golden-green light remaining of twilight, and Trazzak had apparently lost the discussion. They split up to two different low-profile hunter-fighter craft that could fly low enough to perhaps get closer to the company without alerting their radar, and didn’t say anything to Mrax as everyone set on their own paths. It was bad luck to say goodbye.
Mrax silenced his communicator so he wouldn’t hear the bickering between the Earther and her mate, and focused instead on moving as fast as he could through the darkness to where the Dablonians held his mate captive.
Chapter 34
Rowan
Rowan reveled in the Earther cuisine they served her; it tasted familiar enough she could almost believe it was real instead of a generated copy. She was almost finished when Yraz brought a tablet and modeling disk out to set up on the table. The disk projected an image of a blaster with a laser attachment, and her eyebrows rose, a fork of turkey forgotten in her hand.
The Dablonian smiled, displaying his pointy teeth, and tapped on the tablet until the blaster rotated and the external casing disappeared from the model floating over the table. Yraz murmured, “We have a small problem with the bridge. We’re using a third-generation quantum jump, yet it does not seem to create the power we need for the laser as well as the ions. Perhaps you could take a look?”
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“I really should...” The thought trailed off as Rowan leaned forward and squinted at the projection. She’d never seen anything like it—although she’d thought that a lot since meeting the Xaravians. They had so many things to fix and advance. She absently took the tablet from Yraz and began scrolling and manipulating the projection so she could examine the internal mechanisms that combined the ions and lasers. “Do you have an actual prototype or just the model?”
“We can create the prototype easily,” he said. “Although it will take several hours to generate. It would be ready by the morning.”
Rowan shook her head and handed the tablet back with more than a little regret. “That’s too bad. Maybe I can come back tomorrow to look at it.”
“Or you could stay,” he said. “We have very comfortable quarters near your lab, if you’d like to rest a bit. We could perhaps push the development team to prepare the prototype in an hour or a little over.”
“I should go,” Rowan said. “My friends will undoubtedly be worried.”
Yraz didn’t blink. “I sent a team to that rusty graveyard to let them know you’d joined us, and found them unconcerned. They worked on a few of the ships but otherwise did not appear agitated. Perhaps they have not noticed your absence?”
Her heart sank. She didn’t want to believe him, but the part of her that had gone unobserved in the Fleet thought it was a possibility. Mrax should have looked, though. And Jess. Jess would not just let Rowan disappear. Maybe she wanted to give Rowan time to cool down and regain her composure, which was why they didn’t look. But someone must have cared.
She took a deep breath and smiled with as much sincerity as she could muster. “Thank you for checking, but I’d rather speak with them directly. Can you prepare a runner to take me back?”
“That might be difficult.” Yraz shook his head and managed to look rather mournful. “The security system has a few glitches and right now the defensive shields will not lower. I will request the team work faster so that you can return to your... friends. Perhaps you would not mind returning to your lab while we work on adjusting the shields?”
Rowan wondered why he said “perhaps” so much, and then why they’d raised defensive shields in the first place. With each additional excuse, the likelihood that the Dablonians would let her leave disappeared. She pushed down panic—and a little irritation that maybe Mrax had been right just a tiny bit—and forced another smile. “Sure. I could probably find something in the lab to work on.”
“Excellent.”
Yraz rose from the table as more servants swarmed in to provide her with coffee or espresso or something equally rare and delicious, and Rowan sipped it to keep the fear at bay. A little more caffeine usually helped her think through sticky problems. This might have been the stickiest she faced in a long time. The Dablonian took her on a circuitous route back to the enormous lab he kept calling hers, and Rowan wondered if he wanted to confuse her sense of direction. There was no other reason to have taken so many halls and tunnels and turns when the dining room was two lefts and a right away from the main lab.
Yraz placed the tablet and disk on one of the empty work benches and reprojected the blaster into the air so she could examine it. “I will leave you to your work. Please use this comms link if you should need anything. Anything at all.”
She fiddled with the tablet and pretended to be just a distracted engineer and not someone plotting an escape. “Just let me know when you’ve fixed the shields. I can take a look at those, too, if your team can’t get them working.”
The Dablonian bowed from the waist and backed toward the door. “Of course. I would not want to distract you with such a mundane task. Please enjoy these projects.”
And then he was gone.
Rowan pretended to work on the blaster even as her mind raced to figure out how to escape or at least get a message to Jess. Rowan had looked at the various comms devices that Jess carried, and figured she might be able to create something to send a burst message to the same frequency the attaché used. Rowan had peeked at some of Jess’s whiz-bang advanced stuff when she wasn’t looking, and came up with a long list of questions to ask the other woman. The only Alliance organization that had stuff that fancy was the Information Bureau. Still, that had to keep for another day. The numbers to the most advanced comms unit flashed through her mind and she hummed under her breath to keep them at the surface of her thoughts.
It didn’t take much to break through the various locks and encryption on the tablet. Rowan scrolled through the enormous amount of data and schematics, far more than had been on the first tablet they gave her, and found something that looked like it could communicate across the entire universe. It was so creative that she grew engrossed in the schematics and various bug reports, and when she finally looked up and rubbed her eyes, an hour had passed.
Rowan muttered under her breath and adjusted her position so her legs would wake up and get their circulation back. She didn’t have time for distractions.
Which included when Yraz reappeared and hovered just out of sight behind her. Rowan pretended to be fully engrossed in the tablet, playing with it and the modeling puck, and the Dablonian retreated without saying a word. She knew he was just there with more excuses for her not being able to leave. And she didn’t have time for that.
She searched the lab under the guise of pulling out various spare parts and putting them on a spare lab bench, and managed to generate some smoke and chemical fogs to conceal more of her movements. She hadn’t found any observation devices to monitor the lab and her activities but had no doubts the Dablonians fiercely guarded their research, even from their own employees. How else would they know when she finished her coffee to bring her a new mug, along with a plate full of delicate desserts and sweets?
The servants tried to air out the smoke but Rowan pretended not to notice the increasingly dense fog that collected from her knees down. The Dablonians chattered to each other in a language she couldn’t hope to understand. One finally gestured for her to leave but Rowan only smiled and ignored the request. The smoke only looked dangerous, but she’d used it often enough in the Fleet to clear out labs so she could work in peace while the males fled elsewhere.
She vented some of the smoke so she wouldn’t get dragged out against her will in the name of the Dablonians protecting their new acquisition. By then, of course, she’d found the comms device she needed and sent a burst to the frequency she knew Jess used. Maybe it would be enough. Rowan didn’t want to rely on that one signal getting through, particularly since the Dablonians had shields again physical incursions and could easily have shields to dampen outgoing emissions. She needed a backup plan that didn’t rely on anyone else. She had to stand on her own, and she damn well could. No one was there to tell her something was too dangerous; for a brief moment, she even missed poor Adhz as he shadowed her like a worried sheepdog.
A smile slowly curved her lips. She finally had the resources to make any kind of weapon or escape mechanism she wanted with limits, no external logic imposed on her by the risk-averse. The universe wasn’t ready for Rowan un-leashed, that was for damn sure.
Chapter 35
Mrax
Mrax couldn’t wait for the suns to set. Every moment passed in an eternity. Jess paced and tried to contact the Galaxos again, but something had gone wrong with her communicator and apparently she couldn’t establish a connection. Trazzak kept working on attaching the weapons, some kind of cannon, to the fighter they’d arrived in originally—though his handiwork looked about as professional and complete as if a sandsnake took up embroidering. Mrax couldn’t focus on anything except searching the sky for a hint that Rowan returned.
He tried to help Trazzak but eventually growled and retreated to continue pacing instead. Mrax packed and repacked the bag he’d take with him with weapons and medical supplies, rearranging it to try to find a better way. He didn’t know what he’d need to save Rowan. He wanted to take everything.
And
part of him kept returning to the chaotic, agonizing few days before he ended up in the Alliance prison. He and his team had prepared to break Xaravian females out of a slave-trading holding cell. They didn’t realize the Alliance ran it until it was too late and the Fleet marines surrounded them. It had been a trap, an ambush meant to destroy an entire Xaravian warrior clan, and instead of killing them like honorable soldiers, the Alliance took them prisoner.
Mrax snarled as the memories overtook him and suddenly he was back there in the dark and damp. It felt like he’d never see the suns of Xarav again. He’d never breathe free air. His shoulder ached, every part of him ached with pain of their torture. Those fucking information officers tied them down and yanked out their scales, burned their spikes... Did everything just to hurt them. They didn’t even ask questions. They just wanted to cause pain.
Trazzak growled and suddenly grabbed Mrax’s shoulders. “Get ahold of yourself, warrior.”
“Release me,” Mrax said. His self-control snapped and he threw Trazzak out of his way, the warrior crashing into a rusted-out shell of a fuel pod.
Mrax looked for something else to break, someone else to hurt, as the boneyard blurred into the prison once more. He lurched after Trazzak, seeing only the enemy, and drew his knife to inflict some pain of his own.
Someone whistled and Mrax turned, eyes narrowed to see through the red haze on his vision, and he confronted one of those Earther information officers. Even if she flew with the Xaravians and stood against the Alliance, she was always and forever an information officer. They never stopped being what they were. He ground his teeth until his jaw ached and sparks filled his vision. She could have even been one of the masked cowards who took his scales so many years earlier. He growled and advanced at her, wanting to even the score for all the wrongs her people had done to his, and ignored the roar of the warrior he’d thrown aside. Mrax’s vision narrowed down to the Earther and his nerves twitched as he realized she didn’t look frightened.
