Daahn Rising (14 page)

“He is... and he’s not.”

Pira glared at him. “Now you’re talking nonsense.”

“No, I’m not. Duncan can be very human, as human as we are. Until the moment someone endangers Zondra or his children. At that point, all bets are off, and he is more Xxan than human, a creature of instinct protecting his mate. I mistakenly trusted that military discipline would prevent any threat to her aboard ship. I was wrong about that.”

Silence fell again. “He turned Reynolds’s face into ground meat. I have no choice but to press for manslaughter at least.”

“If you separate them, you kill Zondra... and the baby. If Evan outlives them, he’ll kill every one of your men he comes in contact with. Even if he dies first, you kill them all.”

Pira stared at Zondra. He swallowed hard, and his color dipped.

Matthew continued, using everything he had in a single barrage. “If Zondra dies because of the actions of the military in response to this very natural and instinctual Xxanian reflex, Daahn will sever all agreements and treaties.” He let that sink in.

By the expression of pure panic, he could tell Pira was putting the rest of the chain of events together. If Daahn severed all agreements and treaties, it would mean war between the Xxan and crossbred Xxan on Earth and the humans.

Only
these
were Xxanian warriors with intimate knowledge of the planet and the inner workings of the government. They were soldiers who had built safety dens and armed themselves out of instinct. They were trusted allies with clearances to sensitive areas and information. They were acclimated Xxan who could fight in any weather, unlike the first wave that had invaded Earth, warriors who had shivered in the cold and had come bearing flawed intelligence reports half a century earlier.

“Oh, fucking hell,” Pira croaked.

“That about sums it up. I’m sure there is a better option than that.”

Pira stared at the wall, moving his feet aimlessly. “I’ve...” He cleared his throat. “I need to talk to the judge advocate about this situation.”

“Absolutely.” And the judge advocate would talk to the brass. The brass would talk to Interagency Command. IAC would probably get the world government on the line —

“If we do this, Duncan can never come back. You know that, don’t you?”

His heart stuttered at that. “What are you saying?” Daahn wouldn’t stand for his
gran-vvaash
being exiled from her home and nest any more than he’d accept her death.

“He’s out, MacNair. Duncan is not stable enough to live and work in this environment. It would be criminally negligent of me to allow his wife to stay with him... and equally wrong to separate them.”

Matthew grumbled a Xxanian curse he’d learned in his early days fighting with Daahn. “Do it. If it’s the best we have, do it.”

****

Evan stared at the ceiling of the cell, flat on his back on the rack, his fingers hooked behind his head. In some sick irony, he had twenty times the space he’d had in berthing, though only a third of what he’d had in the stateroom he’d shared with Zondra.

Maybe I should have killed Reynolds off years ago.

He didn’t laugh at that. It seemed all the joy had bled out of his life when the corpsman had led Zondra into the pressure tunnel the day before.

Where is she?
Was she in Med Call? With MacNair? With her family? In another cell? Not knowing that was worse than watching her walk away.

Worse still was not knowing how she was. Evan was tortured by the possibility that she was badly injured. He hadn’t had the time to examine her closely. What if the blood she’d tracked in hadn’t been from her foot? What if she’d lost the baby? Would they tell him if she had? He doubted it. They were stupid, but not stupid enough to send him into another killing rage.

The urge to pace the floor was strong. The urge to test his abused fists against the bulkheads was stronger. Evan tried his best to ignore those urges and to focus on something else... anything else, but there was nothing else in existence to think about.

And I really don’t want to break my knuckles this time. They are still healing from the last assault.

The bruising and cracked bones had been treated; the latter would be healed completely in a matter of days. The corpsmen had shot sideways glances at him. They’d whispered between themselves, opining that they’d expected that level of damage from a Xxanian warrior fresh from the battle he’d had with Reynolds. A human should have broken his hands.

He grumbled a curse at the true torture of that visit. The corpsmen had claimed they hadn’t seen Zondra and had no clue what her condition was. They were probably lying, hiding something from him.

I can’t know that.
He pushed it away as a useless concern, when he had so many pressing ones.

What will happen to Zondra and our son?
Could a crossbred Xxanian child live without its mother? Evan wasn’t sure about that. Xenobiology wasn’t his field. If it didn’t involve turning wrenches and hooking up wires, it wasn’t his specialty.

He’d heard the guards postulating on his punishment at change of shift. Apparently the rumor mill had settled on a good old-fashioned firing squad. The thought of what that would do to Zondra had stolen what little remained of his appetite. If he could just turn back the clock a day —

What? What would I do? Talk to him? Hold him off long enough for the Marines to arrest him instead of me?

Hell, no! I’d kill him again. I’d choke the life out of him, snap his neck, air lock him and evacuate to vacuum, throw him in the pressure tunnel and increase to crush depth, throw him into the closest turbine...
The possibilities for killing Reynolds in engineering were endless, and every one of them sounded appealing.

The door latch clicked, and Evan prepared to turn away yet another tray of food.

It wasn’t food. MacNair strode in, scowling at him. “I thought I told you not to kill anyone.”

The door closed and latched again.

“Let some asshole try to rape your wife, MacNair. Let him beat her up, try to destroy everything you both own, try to kill you to rape her, and —”

“You’re preaching to the choir. If Reynolds wasn’t dead already, I’d go do it myself. I’d knock out the guards and break into his cell to do it, and I’d present his cock and balls to you and Zondra as proof that the asshole was gone.”

Evan forced his muscles to relax at the show of solidarity. “Where is she? How... is she? And the baby. How is the baby?”

“In Med Call and healing well. She’s sedated. And she is... as well as can be expected, given what happened to her.”

He tensed at what MacNair hadn’t said.

“The baby is fine,” he hastened to add.

“Any word on what they intend to do with me?” His stomach clenched. He’d willingly spend the rest of his life in an isolation cell like this one if he didn’t die and take his family with him.

MacNair sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face, abruptly looking twice the age he had moments before.

Evan levered up to sitting, staring at him. “That bad?”

“The good news is you didn’t just kill your mate and son.”

His body reacted to that as if it had been a threat. Evan tried to talk his rampaging heart rate and tensed muscles to a relaxed state, but this was a definite snafu.
Situation normal, all fucked up.
“Life in prison then. I guess that’s the best I could have hoped for.”

MacNair ambled to the sink and leaned against it, smiling weakly. “Even if they did that, it would kill Zondra unless she lived in that cell with you.”

Words escaped Evan. Forcing them was a major test of willpower. “What are they going to do with me? They aren’t going to lock Zondra up, are they?” How would he live with consigning her to that fate? How would a Xxanian deal with prolonged captivity? And their son... He couldn’t raise his son in a jail cell.

“To save your family, you’re going to lose your career. No complaints. No appeals. You walk out of here and never come back. At twelve years in, that means you lose your retirement and benefits. It’s all gone, Evan, but it was the best I could do.”

His heart sank. After everything MacNair and Zondra had done to make mating and his career work, Evan had screwed it up. He nodded. “Dishonorable discharge. I understand.”

“No. Medical.”

“What?” He couldn’t have heard that right.

“Medical. Other than Honorable. The fact that mating has irrevocably changed you has been deemed a medical condition that adversely affects your job performance and makes you a danger to self and crew. You are no longer fit to serve in the military.”

There was no answer Evan could formulate to that.

“You’re out, Evan. You can’t come back, but a medical discharge allows you to keep your clearance and get a job on the outside.”

“I’ll need it.”

“Yes. You will. Now... are you ready to get out of here?”

Evan scrambled to pull his grippers on. He hesitated, running a hand over his bare chest.

MacNair laughed heartily.

“They took my clothes as evidence, and they only gave me pants. I didn’t think to ask for another shirt.” He hadn’t asked for anything.
How Xxanian of me.

“Where we’re going, you won’t need one.”

Evan stared at him, working at that comment without hope of understanding it. “Where are we going?”

“To collect Zondra. After that, we’re going where she’ll be safe.” He crossed the room to the door.

“Good enough for me.” Safety was imperative. Anything else was secondary.

MacNair knocked, waited for the click of the lock, and pushed through the door. Evan followed in his wake, goose bumps rising as a complement of four Marines fell in around him.

Med Call had never felt so far. To make it worse, word spread in the usual shipboard fashion that Evan was being moved. Sailors and Marines appeared in doorways and corridors. A few offered nods that might have meant support or might have meant they believed he was being taken to an appropriate punishment. Others sneered or whispered.

“Why isn’t that convict cuffed?” someone from the crowd called out.

Evan didn’t look for the person who’d said it. He kept walking. This was his life now. It was time to get used to it.

He stepped into Med Call with a sigh of relief and followed MacNair to the isolation alcove where Zondra lay unconscious.

“Drugged?” he asked. He’d never seen Zondra so unaware, even when asleep.

MacNair nodded.

Evan pulled the blanket back, stopping cold at the sight of her in a different
S’suuhhea
than the one she’d been attacked in.

As if MacNair had been taking a stroll through his mind, he offered an explanation. “I changed her. I wouldn’t let anyone else.”

Her godfather. MacNair doesn’t have sexual feelings for her.
“Thank you.”

Evan lifted her arms and crossed them over her softening abdomen. A discoloration on her wrist caught his attention, and he examined it. Realization came slowly. The sons of bitches had tied her down. He snapped a look at MacNair, forcing his muscles to relax at the warning look the admiral shot him in return.

Keep it corked. Get her the hell out of here.
Evan couldn’t do her any good locked in the brig.

He lifted her and turned to follow MacNair. To his surprise, there were a dozen Marines in Med Call. Now that Evan was paying attention to them, he noticed they were all in body armor. Realization that they expected a fight to get out chilled him.

“Maybe it would be best to have you take Zondra out, and I’ll come out separately.” It was unlikely that someone would fire on Zondra and MacNair — much less likely than someone attacking Evan.

“One move,” MacNair ordered. “It gives anyone who wants to fight less time to organize.”

Evan turned to argue with him and gaped at the old man suiting up in body armor of his own.

“If I can fight Xxanian warriors without armor, I can certainly fight humans with it.” As if punctuating the point, MacNair tightened his leg armor down and stood to secure the chest plate.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Evan protested.

“Actually... yes. It is.” There was a hint of a smile on his face.

Evan shifted Zondra closer to his chest. “It would make me feel better if Zondra had body armor.” He didn’t request it for himself. Trying to carry Zondra while they were both armored would be worse than one set of armor, and he sure as hell wasn’t taking armor for himself if Zondra didn’t have it.

“Unfortunately there isn’t any small enough to fit her on board. I checked.”

Much as Evan hated to admit it, loose-fitting armor with large gaps would be worse than none. It would bog them down with weight without protecting her. “This is crazy, MacNair. If anyone does attack, they’ll be coming for me. I can’t be holding Zondra when —”

“We’ll be protecting you both. Just duck if I tell you to and let us do the fighting.”

Apparently there was no arguing with him. Evan gave up and tossed a couple of choice curses his way. The Marine guards gaped at him, understandably stunned by the audacity of talking to the fleet admiral that way.

MacNair laughed heartily. “Not much different than what Daahn said to me more than four decades ago. The elder is going to love having you as an addition to his nest.”

Evan’s heart stuttered.
Daahn’s nest?
“We’re going to —”

“Yes. Just do me a favor and repeat that litany to Daahn the first time he pisses you off.” He reached for the helmet a Marine was handing off to him.

That made little sense. “You’re not setting me up for the kill, are you?”

“And kill Zondra with you? Not a chance.”

His cheeks heated. “Sorry, MacNair. I know you wouldn’t.”

“Might as well make it Mac from now on.” With that, his helmet went on and the darkened visor down. He drew a stun stick smoothly and glanced their way.

Evan managed a stiff smile. “All right, Mac. Let’s get my mate and son the hell off this ship.”

A nod was the only reply.

The corridors weren’t made for more than two men abreast. That left a space to either side of Evan that only the Marine guards’ weapons filled. It would have been more comforting to be shoulder to shoulder with armor, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and any protection was better than none.