Fatal Extraction

by Evangeline Rain

  “Yes, that Hayashi. I’ll tell you more when we’re inside.” She gestured for everyone to move to the yurt. “What happened after we were separated?” she asked Daxon as they were walking.

  “Nothing. We were kept in separate PCUs. The next thing I knew, I was dropped off at a space port, alone, given a chip with a crazy amount of credits and told to leave Panderon immediately. I didn’t know what was happening, so I went to our usual place at Liberty and waited. I waited for a day before Asan arrived. Took us a couple of days for all of us to get together. We waited for you, but you didn’t show up, so we thought you might be still be held there. We were planning to sneak back to Panderon to check on you when we got your message.”

  “What?” Nirvana asked, feeling confused. “I thought you called Ching to look for me?”

  “Ching?” Daxon frowned. “Why would we call Ching?”

  “He claimed that you called him to look for me. That’s when he asked you about Zane…” she broke off when she realized she’d been had. This meant that Ching had seen through her cover story a couple of days ago, called her bluff by lying to her that he had asked her crew about Zane, but still played along with her story.

  Why didn’t he call her out? Oh no, did he just pretend to accept Zane because he knew they weren’t really together?

  Was he lying about being interested in Eryn then? Worse still, was Eryn being led on blindly because Ching needed to use her as a cover too?

  Oh damn it all to hell! This fuckery just keeps getting worse.

  Chapter 24

  They entered the yurt, and Nirvana beckoned them to the living area.

  “Zane, could you bring over the pitcher of water and all the cups and glasses you can find?” she asked. Then, she quickly sat down and brought her crew up to speed about what had happened.

  Zane went to the kitchenette, placed all the cups and glasses in a basket, and carried them over with the pitcher of herbed water she’d steeped earlier. He was about to serve the water when Daxon stopped him. “We’ll help ourselves,” he muttered and gestured for Zane to sit beside him.

  Nirvana was talking about Dein’s threat when he came over. She muttered a quick thanks and continued to talk with an agitated tone. Clearly, she didn’t like being manipulated.

  Zane’s stomach churned as he looked down at the bandages she had wrapped over his blistered palms this morning. All these precious moments with her would end the moment he came clean with her about the things he’d done. He thought he could buy himself more time with her, but it seemed that time has run out for them.

  He tried to discreetly blow out a series of short breaths to gain control of his growing anxiety and stole glimpses of the crew to distract himself.

  “Nirvana’s Harem” was quite an apt description for her crew. It was as if she deliberately picked a variety of hunks to whet her appetite.

  Daxon was the best looking of the lot. He had a babyface but his hair and bristles were peppered with grey, making it nearly impossible to tell his actual age. He exuded a very laid-back demeanor, but Zane could feel his watchful cerulean eyes appraising him while he thought Zane wasn’t looking.

  Next to Daxon was Leviathan, Levi to the crew. He was a stark contrast from Daxon—all muscles, swirling with menacing-looking tattoos that ran all the way up to his neck. He had unkempt brown hair and russet eyes with an intense gaze that could make people very uncomfortable. He’d been openly scowling at Zane since the moment he’d stepped out of Marian.

  The only other crew member who looked like he could take Levi in a fight was Alden. Alden was not big like Levi, but he was tall with a sculpted body. He had short ginger hair revealing a high forehead marked with lines. Judging from the scars on his hands, face and neck, he was probably the muscle for the crew, not Levi.

  Asan had the least roguish demeanor. He was the only one who shook hands with Zane and introduced himself politely. His jet black hair was combed neatly, and the combination of his prominent cheekbones, deep-set eyes and subtle chin made him look like an educated gentleman.

  Ramsey had to be the youngest of the lot. His thin frame, fair skin and lack of facial hair made him look like he’d just entered puberty. He was typing away on his device while Nirvana was talking, clearly uninterested in whatever was going on.

  Helfer, the oldest of her crew, leaned over to look at what was distracting Ramsey. His hair was an even mix of grey and light brown, and there was a certain jadedness in his grey eyes that made him look worldly.

  “Sorry, Zane, but you don’t seem like Nirvana’s type,” Daxon laughed.

  Zane’s attention jolted back to the conversation.

  “I wouldn’t buy your bullshit either.” Daxon shook his head. The rest of the men echoed his sentiments and looked at Zane, making him feel very awkward at the sudden attention.

  Nirvana sighed. “In my defense, I was really tired. We’d just came off from our last job with…” Daxon stopped her and her gaze darted to Zane. “Oh sorry. Client confidentiality. As I was saying, I’d been awake for more than thirty hours by then and I was exhausted. I did the best I could. I’ll talk to Ching later.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I accepted this job without discussing it with any of you, so I understand if you don’t wish to be part of it.”

  Dead silence filled the room as Nirvana waited for a response.

  “No pressure,” she added. “Just so you know, the odds are probably only fifty-fifty.” She poured herself a glass of water and drank.

  “Captain,” Ramsey said, not looking up from his device. “We’ve done jobs with worse odds, and we’ve screwed up those with high success rates before. What makes this one so different?”

  “Him.” Daxon angled his head at Zane.

  Nirvana carefully put down her glass on the coffee table and bit her cheek.

  “I haven’t introduced myself to your crew,” Zane said.

  She looked at him, slightly surprised.

  He took a deep breath to summon his courage and started before he could change his mind.

  “I’m the youngest of Chorax Hayashi’s five sons. No daughters. We’re from three different mothers. Last year my mother and one of my father’s generals, Uhlendi Lang, began an affair, and she got pregnant. It shouldn’t have been possible because of her age and because my father had forced her to undergo sterilization after she had me. He blamed it on my mother’s genes that I was born the smallest amongst all my brothers, so she was banned from having any more babies after me.”

  “You didn’t tell me about the baby,” said Nirvana, frowning at him.

  “I thought it wasn’t relevant then,” he said. “But I think it is now. This pregnancy was a miracle to my mother, so I can understand why she refused to have an abortion. It’s also when I realized Lang was genuinely in love with her, because he was seeking ways to elope with her even when she wasn’t sure who the father of the child was. I am—was—the chief security officer for Asago. Without my help, they would’ve failed miserably.

  “So, here’s the thing. Before I left, I knew my father was planning something, but I didn’t have anything solid. I made up the whole invasion story and used my position as his son and security chief to negotiate with Kerimar Dein in exchange for new identities for my mother, Lang, and my unborn sister.

  “This is my mission,” he said, looking at Nirvana solemnly. “I am willing to risk my life for my mother and my sister. All you have to do is help me find a way to get into Asago or support me from the outside. But, I want to go in alone. There’s no reason why any of you should risk your life for this.”

  The air was thick with tension as all eyes were on Nirvana. She chewed on her knuckle and pondered for a while. Then, she shook her head. “You can’t do it yourself. You’re too inexperienced—”

  “I don’t want anyone going into that stronghold,” he said, gripping the edge of the table. “Come up with a plan that takes my inexperience into consideration.”

  “Look, Zane. I ex
plained to you before. The success rate of this mission with you alone—”

  “Stop!” he snapped. She wasn’t listening to him. Time to bite the bullet. “I’ve gotten you into enough trouble. You don’t have to go any further for me. I dragged you into this.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking confused.

  “I’ve followed your exploits over the years,” he said. “You were the only one who could bypass all the security measures to enter Chikara undetected, even after I became chief. I gave my father the excuse that I was studying your methods of operation, and to find out where the lapses in my security were when he found out I kept letting you go. I told him I wanted to make sure you had no room for escape when I caught you.”

  Zane dared a glance at Nirvana and he could see that she was trying to suppress her storm of emotions with a calm façade. Here comes the death blow.

  “I set up the Proetium cells job and taught Kojiwa how to contact you. I bugged your ship while you were loading the cargo so I could pick up all the transmissions on Marian.”

  “What? But I run scans every time! I swear I did!” Ramsey exclaimed frantically.

  “You scanned for foreign objects, not software.”

  “There’s always one of us in the cockpit. How did you manage to install any software—”

  “Rams!” Nirvana interjected. Glaring at Zane, she said coldly, “Please continue.”

  “I know your last job was for Saal, and you were heading to his private port in Panderon to complete the transaction. I told Dein I needed you to help me break into Chikara and exactly where and when you’d be coming out from warp speed.”

  There it was. Secret’s out. Now that they knew he was the main culprit, he was pretty sure no one would want to join him in this fatal mission.

  “I hope you see it now.” He looked at Nirvana, putting in every effort to be as callous as possible. “That I am not too different from my father, and I’m not worth any of you risking your lives. All you have to do is come up with a plan to get me in, wait for me to transmit the data to you, then return to Dein with it. You don’t have to enter the stronghold at all, and you don’t need to get me out.”

  Daxon blew out a breath and started rubbing the bristles around mouth. Nirvana was staring intently at the pitcher of water, trying to process the information he had just dumped on her. It crushed him how much he was hurting her, especially after last night. But he couldn’t let this go on. There were just too many lives at stake, hers especially. He could live with this heartbreak if it meant keeping her alive.

  “I need a moment.” She stood up and walked to the door. Before she left, she turned around and warned her crew, “Nobody touches him.”

  Then, she ran out.

  Chapter 25

  Nirvana’s head pounded, and her vision blurred as she dashed towards the river. Her chest was getting too tight for her comfort, and she wanted to scream her lungs out to relieve that lump in her throat.

  She didn’t want to frighten the villagers, so she ran as hard as she could instead. She didn’t stop until she reached the sandy bank of the river where she collapsed and dug her hands into the sand to let the coolness of the damp sand calm her. Her chest hurt with so much rage and confusion that she had to keep taking in deep breaths to ease the pain.

  For the first time since her father died, Nirvana felt tears in her eyes.

  This had to be heartbreak, because the only other time she felt like someone was trying to wrench a piece of her heart out of her chest was when Kraken exploded with her father in it. She couldn’t understand how it was possible to feel this way towards a man she hardly knew. She thought she’d kept her head on the whole time, even when they were having sex. She was supposed to be in control of the whole situation. How did it turn out like this?

  He made her feel like a queen and like a fool she’d been convinced he’d been in love with her since he was nine. The way he looked at her in admiration when she talked about her work in Chikara made her feel very clever and good about herself. He boosted her ego, only to deflate it totally by telling her he was the security chief who let her get away with it, because he wanted to make use of her to do his bidding.

  That manipulative asshole! All the vulnerability and insecurity were just a facade to make her lower her guard. To add salt to the wound, the man causing her emotional turmoil was the son of Chorax Hayashi.

  But what could he possibly hope to achieve by confessing everything now? He could have kept up with his act until the end instead of risking her wrath. Was he saying all this to spite her so that she would not put herself in danger’s way for this mission?

  Despite trying to think the worst of Zane, her heart was still not convinced. She didn’t understand why she was trying to find excuses for him. She should dump him right now and hightail her way out of this situation. Her crew was safe from Dein, and they had four million to split amongst themselves. She could find someone to try to remove that pill she had taken, but if she failed, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t care less about her own death.

  The smell of burning marijuana wafted to her nose and broke her out of her thoughts.

  Daxon puffed a couple of smoke circles into the air and grinned at her.

  “Give.” She reached over to pull the metal cigarette out of his mouth, took a long puff and sighed in relief. The feeling of euphoria hit her immediately and numbed that gnawing ache in her chest. The muscles she didn’t realize she was clenching relaxed almost immediately. She was about to take another puff when Daxon pried it out of her fingers.

  “Ah ah, one puff will do. To make you less angry so that you can think straight.” He capped the cigarette with a lid and slipped it into his pocket. “You’re in love, Captain.”

  “That’s impossible! I’ve only known him for four days,” she retorted defensively. “I’m hurt because I was beginning to trust him, and I’m angry with myself for being so careless with my trust.”

  “You trusted him even though you’ve only known him for four days. You are the most guarded woman I’ve ever come across. It took you more than a year to even warm up to me, let alone trust me.”

  Nirvana wanted very much to deny it, but she couldn’t.

  “Have you slept with him yet?”

  She looked away in embarrassment.

  “You never sleep with crew or clients.”

  “I know.” She buried her face in her hands. “It’s a terrible lapse in judgment.”

  “No. My point is, you’ve always been a level-headed person. We only turn into fools when we’re in love.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she groaned into her hands.

  Daxon patted on her back. “If it makes you feel any better, he just confessed to all of us he’s madly in love with you. He’s so gone for you that he risked jeopardizing his mission so that you wouldn’t risk your life for him.”

  “And you trust what he said?” She looked up at him, feeling a little taken aback.

  He shrugged. “It’s not exactly smart of him to confess everything back there when he could have just continued to lie and get everyone else to do his dirty work for him.”

  Yeah, she thought so too.

  “I mean, you must admit that he is very clever. His entire scheme is so well-crafted and would have been seamlessly executed if not for the fact that he botched it by falling in love.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Like I said, we’re all fools when we’re in love.”

  “Says the man who’s never been in love.”

  “You assume.” He wagged his finger. “I’ve never said that I’ve never been in love.”

  What? Had her co-captain, the man-whore who could charm the pants off any woman between eighteen and eighty, who told her before that women are for enjoyment, not commitment, just admitted to having been in love?

  “The mastermind of the mutiny was the love of my life,” he continued. “I was going to propose to her on her birthday, but she threw me out of my ship instead.”r />
  Nirvana’s mouth fell open.

  “But let’s not make this about me.” He stood up and swept the stray pebbles off his pants.

  Nirvana realized Zane was standing some distance away with the rest of her crew, looking like he was going to explode from anxiety. She met his gaze and the look of pain in his eyes brought the dull ache back to her chest. She quickly looked away and toward the river instead.

  Daxon reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll go stay at the lodge and leave you two to sort it out.”

  “I’ll call,” she said gratefully.

  He gestured to the rest of the crew and headed towards Marian.

  “Just say the word and we’ll thump the dipshit,” Levi announced loudly when he walked past Nirvana.

  She smiled at him.

  The rest walked over and bade her farewell before making their way back to the ship.

  Helfer was the last to leave. He walked over to Zane, said a few things to him and patted his cheek. Then he saluted Nirvana and walked to the ship.

  Nirvana watched until Marian disappeared into the sky. She kept staring into the distance until she heard the sound of pebbles crunching beside her. Panicking, she quickly turned and waded into the river. Her heart was pounding for some reason. It wasn’t as if she was afraid of Zane. She could take him easily in a fight. But she wasn’t ready to confront him.

  Her head was an emotional mess, so she flopped into the river, closed her eyes and let the cold water lift her. The flow was sluggish today, so she could stay afloat without having to move her limbs much. She centered her thoughts on the feel of the cool water caressing her skin and the sensation of every strand of hair fanning out with the movement of the flow.

  Water always calmed her. It was the reason why she’d built her yurt so close to the river. She didn’t get the luxury of baths or long showers during space travel, so she would indulge in them when she was at home in her yurt.

  She could hear her own breathing with her ears under water. It was so peaceful. She thought about what Daxon said about being in love and found it ridiculous. How could she be in love with someone she hardly knew? Was she attracted to Zane? Definitely. Could it just be for the sex? Highly possible, especially with the shiatsu magic he did with his fingers. But love?