by Lolita Lopez
“Their government is garbage,” Cipher said as he initialed another box.
“Was,” Raze corrected. “Election results were in this morning.”
Cipher glanced up from the tablet. “I take it Ella’s outreach worked?”
Raze smiled. “Every candidate she supported and canvassed for won their races. It’s a brand-new day down there.”
“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Venom insisted. “The people in power are not going to be happy about losing it.”
“No,” Raze agreed. Then, soberly, he said, “That’s why they brought in Rage and his crew.”
Cipher exchanged a knowing look with Venom. Rage and his small band of specialists everyone called the Mad Lads had a reputation for suppressing rebellion and forcing the governments of planets they planned to annex to accept the terms offered to them. Rage was a hard man, much like the Vicious and Terror who had graduated from his same year at the academy. Rage would get Calyx under control—or the planet would never be the same again.
“Did you get your quarters assignment yet?” Raze asked, changing the subject to one less tense.
“That’s where I’m headed after this.” Cipher swiped to the next page.
Venom leaned back and scratched his shaved head. “There are two units open on our floor. They’re way down at the end of the hall, but Brook would have Dizzy and Ella nearby.”
“Naya, too,” Raze added. “She might get along well with Naya. They had the same hardscrabble upbringing.”
It was an option Cipher hadn’t considered. “I’ll ask Menace if they want to meet her.”
“Let me talk to Ella. She loves throwing parties. I bet I could convince her to host dinner for the two of you. Let Brook meet new people in an organic way, you know?”
Cipher nodded. “That sounds nice.”
“Great.”
All three of their watches started to vibrate, and they groaned in unison. Raze answered the alert by tapping his shoulder mic. “SRU Alpha Command.”
“Raze, Orion here. Bring Venom and Cipher to SFHQ.”
The admiral’s stern voice had them all exchanging worried glances. Orion and Shadow Force had a history, especially after Terror’s stunt with Menace’s mate. If he was calling the three senior officers of SRU down there, it wasn’t good.
“Copy that, sir.” Raze gave them a look. “You heard the admiral.”
“SRU B Team,” Venom called his crew as he stood and exited the office. “Mal, you’re up as team…”
As Venom handled his crew, Raze issued orders to the A squad. Cipher locked the tablet and placed it on the desk before following Raze out of the office and joining up with Venom. They traversed the ship to the Shadow Force unit and cleared security to find Pierce waiting for them.
He led them into the logistics room where Torment, Vicious, Orion and a tired-looking Risk stood around the large table in the center. Savage, the operative that had been sent to take Terror’s place while he had been missing, leaned over a holographic image, his head close together with Keen, the best detective the academy had ever produced. In a corner, arms crossed and dark eyes narrowed, Grim, the deadliest assassin in Shadow Force history, and his protégé Lethal watched silently.
“Raze,” Orion greeted gruffly and extended his hand. He nodded at Cipher and Venom before gesturing to the table. “We have a problem.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” Keen interjected in his gravelly voice.
“When your mate sent her intel and recon,” Savage addressed Cipher, “we focused mostly on the information that would help us rescue Terror. We set aside everything else until we had him in our hands.”
“And?” Ciphered stepped up to the table where the image of a canister had been amplified and digitally enhanced.
“She captured these images and video of Splinter forces moving crates filled with these canisters. They aren’t marked, but she said something in her report that caught my attention,” Savage continued.
Torment swiped his fingers through the air over the table and tossed a video file to the screen on the opposite wall. Brook’s face appeared, her skin smudged with grime from the mine and her hair still damp from the filthy water in the broken pipes. The file began to play, and Cipher smiled at the sound of her voice.
“There was something strange about that room with the canisters. It smelled wrong—like a barn, like hay—and I felt woozy going over the grate there.”
Cipher’s gaze instantly snapped to Torment. “Nerve gas?”
Torment nodded. “A shipment of canisters from the Factory that were on their way to incineration were hijacked.”
“Splinters?” Raze asked.
“An independent outfit of arms dealers,” Keen clarified.
“They’ve been on Shadow Force’s wider radar for a while now,” Savage added. “They don’t operate in this sector so they aren’t a running concern for us. When they arranged to sell their cargo to a cell here, that changed.”
“When?” Cipher asked.
“7 weeks ago,” Keen answered and inclined his head toward Grim.
The assassin was rarely seen aboard the Valiant even though it was his home base. When he was seen, Grim was usually staring stonily from some shadowy corner. There were rumors that he was born mute or had lost his tongue in an early mission gone bad. Cipher didn’t believe either one. He thought Grim just didn’t have much to say.
Without uncrossing his arms or moving away from the wall, Grim growled, “Our man on the inside alerted us to the deal. We were able to intercept the two ships outside the Gamma-6 moon base. We recovered most of the stolen cargo, but the Splinters managed to offload seven crates before we arrived.” His gaze settled on Cipher. “Your mate found them down in that mine.”
“If she smelled hay, that’s got to be NA-4,” Cipher reasoned. “It’s deadly, but we have antidotes.”
“Not enough,” Risk stated as he rubbed his jaw. “Not nearly enough.”
“How fast can we get the amount we need?” Orion asked.
“I don’t know that we can,” Risk admitted. “After the public campaigns against bio weapons, they phased out those older gases. Whatever antidote we have in central stockpile is all we have. Gathering up the antidote in circulation will be a logistical nightmare.”
“The antidote isn’t our problem,” Grim insisted. “There was a mistake at the factory when they were loading up the old gas to be destroyed. A canister of NA-9X made it into the crates. It wasn’t in the recovered canisters.”
Fear rippled down Cipher’s spine. He met Risk’s shocked gaze. The doc looked ready to puke as he exclaimed, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He glanced around the room. “You guys didn’t think to lead with that part of the story? The part where our enemies have a canister of the deadliest gas our scientists ever created? A colorless, odorless killing machine with no antidote?”
From the grave looks on Vicious and Orion’s faces, they hadn’t been apprised of that fact either. Vicious finally asked, “How deadly is it?”
“A drop would kill everyone in this room,” Risk explained. “Worse than that, it sticks around. Literally. The residue clings to anything it touches. It’s just as deadly administered through the skin as through the nose.”
“So anyone who touches a victim or tries to render aid will also die,” Vicious muttered.
“Not just die,” Risk said insistently. “They will suffer a horrible, agonizing death. You come in contact with NA-9X? You choke. You bleed out of your eyes and mouth. You lose control of your bowels and bladder. Your stomach will violently erupt. You seize and drown in your own blood and mucus and vomit.”
The room went silent as every man imagined such an end.
“That’s why they never made the gas in any useable quantity,” Savage said. “The scientist who discovered it did so on accident and killed his entire lab. The war council had the R&D sector try to replicate the discovery. They killed more than seven hundred workers a
t that lab when the gas was made and escaped the vapor locks. They finally managed it on the third try, but Shadow Force decided it was too dangerous and ordered them to seal away the small quantity they had.”
“Then it’s no mistake the canister was in the crates marked for destruction,” Orion decided. “Somebody on the inside wanted that gas to get to the Splinters.”
“Well,” Vicious sighed, “now they have it. We have to figure out what they plan to do with it.”
“I would take it home to Prime,” Torment said. “Use it to make a statement.”
“Using it on a ship filled with families is a statement,” Orion grumbled. “Do we have any way of detecting the NA-9X?”
Cipher felt all eyes on him. Realizing they expected him to come up with a solution on the fly, he suggested the first thing that came to mind. “We have sensors on the probes for dirty bombs. NA-9X isn’t one on the list of compounds it recognizes, but if we can get the chemical signature, I can manually add it to the program. If we can get more sensors programmed, we can work with the ship’s environmental crew to place them throughout the ship for early detection.”
Orion turned to Vicious. “I’m ordering a stop to all incoming cargo and transport ships. Nothing gets close to this ship without a thorough search. That goes for luggage and personal items, too.”
“We’ll need an emergency action plan,” Vicious replied. “We can modify the shelter in place and abandon ship drills?”
Orion agreed with that idea and added, “Let’s prioritize mates and offspring and figure out a way to shut down ventilation in the family areas to protect them in the event of a gas attack.”
Vicious nodded and looked to Raze. “You need to get the SRU teams ready to deal with a gas attack. Whatever equipment you need, I’ll make sure you get.”
“On it, sir,” Raze promised.
“Cipher, Risk, you stay here and work with Shadow Force,” Orion ordered. “I want preliminary plans on my desk from Shadow Force, SRU and Medical by the end of shift today. Understood?”
After a round of nods and yes sirs, Orion, Vicious, Raze and Venom left. Risk rubbed his tired eyes and sighed before dropping down in the first available chair. “We should get Reckless over here and read him in on the situation.”
Torment scoffed. “Not a fucking chance that Orion gives that asshole clearance to board his ship.”
“Who is Reckless?” Keen hadn’t been on the Valiant long enough to learn all the names of the personnel serving on this ship and the others in the fleet.
“He’s the head of pulmonology on the Mercy,” Risk explained. “He’s one of the few guys in the medical corps who has first-hand experience with mass casualty gas deaths.” He made a face. “He was fresh out of med school and stationed at the R&D lab working on NA-9X. The experience was so bad he asked to be sent to the front lines.” He scratched the back of his head and sighed again. “Reckless is an irritating asshole, but he’s an expert.”
“Does he have clearance?” Keen asked.
Torment groaned and rubbed his face as Savage pointedly ignored him and confirmed the doctor did.
“Then let’s get him over here,” Keen urged. “Pierce?”
Pierce, who had been quietly watching from his guard positioning the door hesitated. He shared a glance with Torment as if to question the wisdom of bringing Reckless aboard the ship.
Savage noticed it and growled, “Do we need to review the chain of command?”
“No, sir,” Pierce said. “I’ll be back with Reckless.”
Glad that Raze had fostered a much more cooperative and friendly environment within SRU, Cipher moved to a console and logged into the air traffic control data for the day Brook had been in the mine. He scanned the data starting from that day to this one and then went back a week before her trip into the mine. “There are no unauthorized ships coming into or out of the planet’s airspace.”
“Anything from the colonies? Something we might have rubber stamped through traffic control without boarding and checking?” Torment moved to the console and leaned down to read the air traffic reports.
“The usual cargo transports from the colonies,” Cipher said, scrolling through the logs. “Everything going out the last forty-eight hours went through The City departure vector. Those are all scanned and logged.” He pointed to the manifest scans attached to each ship’s log. “Everything was tagged and scanned clean.”
“What’s that entry?” Torment indicated red stripe.
“Looks like it’s the cargo ship from the skyport that crashed,” Cipher replied. He checked the manifest. “It was all building supplies. They were destroyed when they hit the atmosphere.”
“This is our medical ship?” Torment gestured to the next line.
“Yes. It took all survivors to the Mercy.”
“If the gas is still on the planet,” Torment said, straightening up, “we might be able to intercept and retrieve it.”
“It would be a hell of a lot safer to attempt a retrieval in the wide-open spaces down there than in the tight quarters of a ship,” Grim commented.
“Do we have anyone still inside the cell on Calyx?” Keen asked, his focus moving to Savage who shook his head.
“Devious was our last link to the cell on the planet,” Savage answered.
“Maybe not,” Torment chimed in, snapping his fingers. “Devious had assets on the ground. If we can find them, we might be able to work them.”
“What about the Splinter shithead we captured?” Grim asked. “Has he said anything yet?”
“He’s a bit tied up at the moment,” Torment replied impassively. Everyone in the room knew exactly what that meant. “He may be more willing to talk when I visit him later.”
“Who was Devious’s handler?” Keen asked.
“Terror,” Savage said and grimaced. “He’s not exactly in a cooperative mood at the moment.”
“That’s a fucking understatement,” Risk grumbled from his seat. “He took a swing at the general and threw a rolling cart through a window. I seriously considered having Venom come down to the infirmary to shoot him with a tranquilizer.”
“So, asking Terror is out,” Keen muttered. “He kept files, right?”
Torment shook his head and interjected his opinion. “His files are all in code, and he never put down the names of assets. Ever. If he knows the names of the assets, they’re up here.” He tapped his temple. “And you’re going to have to ask nicely to get them.”
Cipher stayed quiet and kept his gaze on the screen in front of him. He wanted absolutely no part of dealing with Terror or trying to find lost assets. Technically, he was on modified duty while Brook was in the hospital. He fully intended to keep his ass right here on the ship, safe with his new mate. After all this time waiting for the right one, he had no desire to risk his life hunting down assets who didn’t want to be found.
“Here,” Torment said, suddenly appearing next to him. He placed four plump, firm oranges on the desk. “For your mate.”
Cipher had heard the story about the muckraker down in The City sending Torment a box of the expensive fruit along with photo evidence of Terror. For Torment to share such a personal gift with Brook was a statement that Cipher understood loud and clear. Torment approved of her and considered her someone worth protecting.
“Thank you, Tor.”
“She needs all the calories and vitamins she can get,” Torment gruffly replied, downplaying his concern.
Thinking of Brook and the way she had been so embarrassed about not having anything to give him, he asked, “Do you think I could ask Danny for a favor?”
“You can ask, but it won’t be cheap. He charges inflated prices when he deals with personal favors.”
“I wanted to get Brook’s belongings from her cabin. She only had a backpack with her. When I was at the cabin, I saw all of the important things her father and mother had left behind. I’d like her to have them.”
Torment’s brow arched. “I never took you f
or a romantic.”
“Yeah, well, let’s try not to spread that around,” he grumbled. “Pierce already busted my balls.”
Torment laughed and then turned his attention back to the computer screen. “Let’s get a look at the ventilation systems.”
Cipher pulled up the ship schematics and began studying the ventilation, heating and cooling systems. Like most ships of this class, they were extensive and difficult to reach, some of the points so narrow only robotic probes could reach them. It was going to be a headache to access and place sensors, but it would have to be done to keep everyone on the ship safe.
But especially my mate.
Mate.
I have a mate.
Mine.
She’s all mine.
He had fought, bled and suffered to earn the right to a mate and the privilege of passing on his superior genes to a new generation. Brook represented his future, and he was determined to make that future with her a bright and happy one.
Chapter Eight
After hours of boredom and loneliness, the door to her hospital room finally opened. When Cipher stepped inside, holding a duffel bag in one hand and a gift bag in the other, Brook sat up so quickly she yanked her nasal cannula right off her face and out of the box supplying her oxygen. “Ow!”
“Brook!” Cipher snorted with amusement and quickly crossed the room to plug the tubes back into their ports. He tucked the lines behind her ears and back into her nose. “Careful, sweetheart.”
“Sorry, sir.” Feeling suddenly bashful, she glanced down at her hands. “I’m just excited to see you. Other than Chance and Stinger coming in here to check up on me, I haven’t had much interaction.”
“I’m sorry for being gone the whole day and most of the evening.” He brushed his fingers down her cheek before leaning down to kiss her. It was a gentle, chaste kiss that left her wanting more, so much more. “I was called in for work, and it took longer than anticipated.”
She studied his face and noticed the tight line of his jaw. “Something bad happened?”
He seemed a bit surprised she had read him so easily. “Not yet, but it might.”
