Chain Reaction (4 page)

Right now, all his energy was focused on tracking the power signature. “It’s getting stronger. Still too far away to calculate its exact position, but we
are
headed in the right direction.”

“Distance?”

He shook his head. “Unknown. Could be a matter of a few days, at least.”

Terrific.
Nervous energy hummed along her body. She didn’t realize that she was tapping her hand against the controls until Calder placed his hand over hers. His touch came as a surprise, the feel of his large, warm hand covering her sending a visceral jolt through her.

“Throttle down, Jur,” he murmured, “or you’ll burn your engines out too soon.”

“Tough for me to sit still if I’m not on patrol or in combat. Bad habit.”

He raised his brows. “Stainless Jur doesn’t have any bad habits.”

Damn, it was starting already. Soon he would discover she was not the paragon everyone imagined her to be, and then he’d be another man looking at her in angry disappointment.

“Stainless Jur has none.” She tugged her hand free. “
I
have plenty.”

He shifted back, his expression distant, and then he returned his focus to the tracking screen.

They flew on in tense wordlessness. He did not look at her with veneration. He did not look at her at all.

Celene knew silence. She’d flown enough patrols to grow used to it. Chatter between ships had to be kept to a minimum in case the frequencies were monitored. A Wraith usually held a lone pilot, but it could also be configured to accommodate a gunner. Even when her ship contained herself and another, they talked infrequently, for security purposes. It was an easy silence.

So she understood long stretches of utter quiet, when it was only her, her Wraith and the deep, jeweled infinity of space.

This
silence, however, between her and Calder… Nothing familiar or comfortable about it. It pulled tightly until she thought she might crack from the strain.

“Tell me what you know about Marek.”

The illumination from the display traced the contours of his face. His high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose and fullness of his mouth. Again she felt a strange flicker of memory, a far-flung sun glinting across light years of distance.

“He had almost two decades with the 8
^th
Wing. Career. Or so I thought.” Though his voice had been toneless before, now it held a sonic blade’s bite. “There were discussions, ongoing debates. If we had a shift together, we’d talk of circuitry arrangements, the best way to make ships faster, more responsive. The whole time he sat drinking
kahve
in the mess, listening to stories about sweethearts on homeworlds, he was plotting. Planning.” His tone hardened with self-recrimination. “None of us in Engineering knew.”

“Nobody blames you.”

His mouth curved, sardonic. “The fact that you immediately try to absolve me causes me to believe that I do actually shoulder some responsibility.”

“I don’t shoot down every PRAXIS ship I face. I try, but sometimes even my best effort is not always enough.”

She waited, wondering what he might make of this admission of imperfection. Denial, perhaps. It often went that way, when the fissures in the cation armor began to show.

He stared at her. Then, slowly, nodded.

She didn’t know who was more surprised: her, from his acceptance, or him, for offering it.

“But Marek did keep himself aloof.” He returned to the subject as if eager to put the strange, tenuous moment behind them both. “Didn’t take criticism well. Whenever review came around, he’d be sullen for solar weeks. If he thought he wasn’t getting enough recognition, he’d get angry.”

“Violent?”

Calder shook his head. “He never kept up with his PT. If he wanted to hurt someone, he’d find another way to do it.”

“So he might not be a threat.”

“Physically? No. But Marek knows his tech. Wherever he is, he’ll have systems in place. And the leash will be off.”

“Leash?”

He stared out through the front-facing window as planetary systems slid past, and it surprised her now, how such a lean man could fill the cockpit with his presence. Rather than growing less aware of him as time passed, she had somehow developed a new sensitivity to him. She had seen him in combat, so that now, with each shift of his body, she had a precise knowledge of his muscles, and how he moved.

“Marek pushed for making the weaponry more aggressive, stronger.”

“We need all the firepower strength we can get.”

“Not the way he wanted it. It had elements of…cruelty. Not fast, quick enemy deaths, but a drawing out of their suffering. He wanted their ships to burn around them, giving them time to die slowly, smell their own charred flesh.”

Celene cursed. “Someone had to suspect that we had a monster in our ranks.”

“When called before a panel, he retracted. Said he was only joking. But, Lieutenant,” he said, turning to face her, “there was no jest. I didn’t know Marek well, but I knew that he wasn’t prone to jokes.”

“Then we’ll need a strategy to face him.”

His brows raised. “Word on base is that the best pilots rely on intuition, not strategy.”

She shook her head. “As a Wraith pilot, I’ve faced so many battles, I can’t count them anymore. Some arrive with no warning. I might be on patrol, or escorting a ship of refugees to their new homeworld, and then PRAXIS is there, in small force or large. Always deadly. Years of training and experience taught me to react without thought, to trust instinct and my squad mates not merely to survive, but to prevail.”

She gazed at the tracking screen, and its faint flicker showing her the way to find a traitor. “But sometimes, when I’m fortunate, I get a chance to formulate a strategy beforehand. I’m not so faultless that I won’t grab any advantage.”

Calder studied her for a moment. “Wherever Marek’s situated himself,” he finally said, “he will be well guarded. Count on very tight security protocols. And cutting-edge tech.”

She allowed herself a smile. “Good thing I’ve got the NerdWorks’s best as my partner.”

They had been following the tracking signal for three solar days when the com shrilled to life. Nils manned the controls as Celene slept in the single bunk in the sleeping chamber at the rear of the ship. The Phantom came equipped with autopilot, but the safer option meant having a live human at the controls, and he needed to keep readjusting the tracking device.

Now alone in the cockpit, he started when a man’s voice crackled through the line. It came in faintly, pops and hisses cutting into words.

“Any ship within range—can you hear me? This is a distress call. Anyone?”

“Reading you,” Nils said into the com. “Identify yourself.”

“Akash Gabela, Galactic Registry number 473-Beta-Rho-229.”

Nils ran the name and registry number through the ship’s database.

“Who is he?”

He glanced over his shoulder to see Celene coming into the cockpit, strapping on her plasma pistol. As always, he needed to hide his reaction to her. It didn’t matter how many times they changed shifts, seeing her made his pulse accelerate, his breathing quicken. She might have been asleep moments ago, but her silver eyes were alert now as she stood beside him and scanned the readout.

“Smuggler, pilot for hire.” Nils focused on the information scrolling on the display rather than Celene’s hand braced on the back of his seat. “He has a few outstanding subpoenas for trafficking black market goods.”

“Untrustworthy.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Not an upstanding citizen, no.”

“Hello?” Gabela’s voice came fainter now. “Unknown pilot, you still there? Situation critical on this end.”

“What
is
your situation?” Nils asked.

“Ran into a debris storm. Took out propulsion systems, life support on emergency power. I’ve got maybe four solar hours left. You going to help, or what?”

Nils clicked off his end of the com. “His ship’s a standard hauler. I could get him up and running in less than a solar hour.”

Tension resonated through Celene’s posture. She balanced on the balls of her feet as if ready to fight. “Could be another ambush.”

He remembered the debriefing report he had read. She had been on patrol when she responded to another distress signal. And went straight into a trap that nearly cost the 8
^th
Wing a Black Wraith, as well as Celene’s freedom. Easy to see why she would be wary of making the same mistake twice.

These past few days had taught him well: Celene Jur had
earned
her reputation. Nothing had been given to her.

“Mara Skiren used to be a smuggler,” he said now. “She would know him.”

Celene nodded. “Let’s get her on the line.” They would be breaking com silence, but 8
^th
Wing never ignored a distress call.

Quickly, Nils patched them through an encrypted line to base. “Trouble already?” Ensign Skiren asked.

“Akash Gabela’s giving us a distress signal,” Nils said. “Says he’s drifting and solar hours away from life support failure.”

“Can we trust him?” Celene asked.

“Gabela’s a terrible
geluk
player,” Mara said, “and he’ll drink all your Lulani rum the second your back is turned. But he doesn’t run bait and switch. If he says he’s in trouble, he’s in trouble. Besides,” she added, “that grizzled bastard knows the darker sectors of the galaxy. He could give you some valuable intel.”

“Then you vouch for him?” Nils asked.

Ensign Skiren’s laugh was rueful. “As much as one former scum can vouch for another.” A deeper, masculine voice sounded behind her, and her response was another husky chuckle. “Oh, you get off on having a shady lover. What? Going to give me a spanking?”

“I don’t think she’s speaking to us,” said Nils, dry.

“Save the dirty talk for later,” Celene said into the com. “If you say that Gabela’s trustworthy—
reasonably
trustworthy—we’ve got to help him out.”

“Tell that son of a dirtroach that he still owes me for that case of Lulani rum,” answered Skiren. “And stay safe.”

After signing out, Nils cut the com line. He glanced at Celene, seeing the wariness that tightened her mouth, the nervous energy that made her tap her fingers against the control panel.

“There’s a difference between what happened last time and this,” he noted.

She raised one neatly arched black brow.

“This time,” he said, “you aren’t alone.”

“By the ten demon lords, I never thought you’d get here.” Akash Gabela trundled toward Nils and Celene as they stood in his loading bay. After responding to Gabela’s signal, their ships had linked, and, with plasma pistols ready just in case, they had come aboard.

“We didn’t know if we could trust you,” Celene answered.

Gabela wheezed a laugh. He had the short stature and green skin of a Dejanian, and he hobbled around on a
sherica
-powered artificial limb. It wasn’t the newest in tech, hissing a little with each step, but the smuggler seemed unbothered by it.

“You’re 8
^th
Wing.” Gabela shuffled closer. “So I know I can trust you. Bunch of galactic do-gooders.”

“If you want PRAXIS running the galaxy,” Nils said, “controlling every aspect of your life, and death, by all means, we’ll gladly step aside. I hear the PRAXIS prison barges are particularly brutal.”

“Fine, fine.” Despite the smuggler’s grumbling, his skin paled. “We going to stand here all day, using up the last of my oxygen, or we going to fix my damn ship?”

“We’re fixing your damn ship,” Celene answered. “Take us to the damage.”

Nils was already striding down the passageway toward the systems room. “I know the way.”

“Want some tools?” Gabela shouted after him. “Mine couldn’t do shit to fix the damage, but you might have better luck with ’em.”

“Brought my own.” He hefted the satchel slung over his shoulder.

Celene was at his side, her long legs matching his stride. “You studied the ship’s schematics before we linked.”

He shook his head. “Haulers usually follow the same configuration. I take what knowledge I already have and extrapolate the rest.” He glanced over when he heard her low laugh.

“Most people are either attractive or smart. Seldom both.”

He almost stumbled. “You think I’m attractive too?”

“Assuming I already consider you smart.”

“That’s a given.”

They reached the door to the systems room. The control panel wouldn’t respond to his fingers on the keypad, so he had to pry the heavy door open. Celene provided assistance, tugging on the thick metal until it opened with a groan.

Inside the systems room, the atmospheric temperature soared, a symptom of the failing life support. Torn wires and ripped-out panels lay on the floor, and a huge gouge ran the length of the external bulkhead. The blackness of space showed through the gouge. Fortunately, the ship had enough power left to generate an electrical shield over the tear, or else everything would have been sucked out into the void.

“Let’s get to work.” Celene bent to study one of the damaged panels.

He rummaged through his tools until he found the sonic welder he needed, then began his repairs on the life support systems. Gabela had spoken the truth. Only a handful of power remained, and soon the hauler ship would be dead—including anyone who was on it.

The heat in the chamber made it feel like a small sun. But the flush in his cheeks came more from what Celene had said moments earlier. These past two solar days had been extremely strange. His awe of her hadn’t lasted more than a few solar hours, for it had become clear to him that, despite her reputation as an utterly untouchable hero, she was no different from any other sentient being in the galaxy.

She left her used
kahve
cups in the galley without cleaning them, and her clothes were thrown all over the small sleeping chamber in the back of the Phantom. When hungry, she had little patience for anyone and anything, including herself. She liked to eat Qivani sugarcakes, but she only allowed herself half of one, saving the other in a heat-pouch for later. She knew a surprising amount of racy Uilan poems, but she was the one who looked surprised when he joined her in reciting the last stanzas.

And she was lonely.

“Stabilized life support,” he said over his shoulder. “We don’t need to worry about running out of oxygen.”

“Good work, Calder. Now toss me the sonic cutter.”

He smiled to himself, knowing he could not expect excessive praise for doing his job. “We’ve been sharing a tiny Phantom for days now. You can call me Nils.”

“Fine. Nils, toss me the sonic cutter.”

He lobbed the tool across the small chamber. She caught it with a quick grab, her reflexes precise, then flashed him a smile before returning to her work.

Getting back to his own labors, his mind processed both what circuitry needed repairing, as well as the more complex systems that comprised Celene. Over the past three solar days, with time to fill, they’d had many conversations: about life before joining the 8
^th
Wing, what life meant after joining. She’d recounted dangerous missions, and, at her urging, he’d talked of some particularly difficult engineering challenges. She asked enough questions to let him know that she was actually interested, and it eventually occurred to him that she knew very few people outside of the Black Wraith Squad. Not by choice, but circumstance.

He joined two ruptured circuits. It was far easier to connect wires than people.

A woman with her reputation, idolized by many, possessed elevated status within the 8
^th
Wing. But it also isolated her. She mentioned only a handful of friends. Never a lover. No one truly close to her. Not even Commander Frayne, though it was clear that they did have a friendship.

“Did you ever think about becoming a pilot?” she asked Nils now. “Maybe even Black Wraith. You’ve got the sharpness for it.”

“Gods, no. I’m happiest elbows-deep in a ship’s guidance systems, not a ship’s cockpit. Recruiting?”

She shrugged. “I always need a good man—the squad needs people, I mean.”

“NerdWorks, through and through.” He watched her as she deftly spliced power cables. “Perhaps you should consider joining Engineering.”

She chuckled. “Pilot, through and through. Flying is what I do, what my parents did and their parents. And it’s damn satisfying to blow PRAXIS out of the sky. Besides,” she added, “I’m too much of an egotist to work behind the scenes.”

“So you
do
like the attention.”

“A little.” She shot him a glance. “Am I not supposed to admit that?”

“Engineering isn’t all grunt work and crawling through service tubes. We take our share of the bows.”

“Even you.”

He pointed to the numerous patches on his sleeve. “When they gave me these commendations, I had to stand in front of the whole Engineering Corps on base and listen as my superior read a speech about me and my contributions to the 8
^th
Wing. And I stood there trying not to grin, though gods knew I wanted to.”

She smiled. “I won’t feel so badly next time I polish my medals.”

“You should never feel badly about what you’ve achieved.”

“Believe me, I don’t.” She turned back to her work, half-burying her next words. “It’s other people who have a problem with it.”

Was that the cost of prestige? He had his own reputation in Engineering, but no one outside of NerdWorks ever came up to him and slapped him on the back, congratulated him for his incredibly innovative plasma-conversion processor. No one whispered about him in awed tones as he walked down the corridors of the base. No one expected him to be better than everyone else—except himself. He always held himself to a high standard.

Not Celene. She was Stainless Jur. Flawless. Except she wasn’t. But rather than disappoint him, it made Nils appreciate what she had accomplished that much more.

Could he even say that to her? And would she want him to?

Yes, Lieutenant Celene Jur was far more complicated than the most arcane computer system. But if he had to choose between simplistic and complex, he would choose complex, every time.

The work in the systems room was not difficult, not for him, in any case. Though he had stabilized the life support, the climate controls required more repairs, keeping the temperature at a blistering level. Soon, he soaked through his uniform. Celene had already peeled off the top of her uniform, so that she wore her tank top and uniform pants. He couldn’t help but stare as sweat gleamed on the sleek muscles of her arms and in the valley between her breasts.

“Analyzing my systems?” She turned, putting her hands on her hips. Seeming to dare him to look at her.

He would have blushed if he wasn’t already overheated. “I might be a fellow 8
^th
Wing officer and I might be NerdWorks, I’m also a man with perfectly good vision.” He turned away to adjust the torque on a valve. “The only way I
wouldn’t
notice you was if I had already crossed to the Starfields of Eternal Bliss.”

“You want an inspection? Go ahead.”

He studiously avoided glancing at her.

“Come on,” she chided. “Consider it a research and discovery mission.”

“Mission accepted.” He turned back to face her. And swallowed hard.

She stood with arms wide, her chin tilted up, daring him to look. And he did, because once he caught a glimpse of her he couldn’t look away. Her dark hair had come loose from its sleek ponytail and damp tendrils clung to her neck and her bare shoulders. Back in SimCom she had also worn a tank top and uniform pants, but he’d been too busy fighting for a place on this mission to truly see the tight, lean wonder of her body. His gaze followed the lines of her collarbones to the hollow of her throat, and lower.

Gods, he couldn’t believe he was staring at Lieutenant Celene Jur’s breasts, but by the Ten Hells, how could he not? For such a slim woman, her breasts were surprisingly full. His hands were the perfect size to cup them, feeling their silky weight as he lowered his mouth to hers…

“Thorough inspection.” Her voice cut through his thoughts, and his gaze snapped back to hers. He expected to see anger or amusement on her face. Instead her dark, wide pupils nearly eclipsed the silver of her irises, and her breaths came shallowly.