Damage Control (Valiant Knox) (28 page)

Before she could answer, he caught her mouth in a consuming kiss, one that soothed the last few ragged edges of his heart.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

L
eigh grimaced as he settled back against the gurney, hardly getting his head down before Ace whipped out a pair of scissors and started cutting away the bandage Mia had secured on his wound, followed by the sleeve of his jacket and shirt.

As Ace examined the injury, murmuring something to a nearby nurse, Leigh glanced down to see Mia hovering near the curtain and from the look on her face, he guessed she wanted to be near him, but didn’t feel like she belonged. Plus the habit of hiding their relationship had no doubt become ingrained.

One of the nurses tried to shuffle her out, and he pulled away from Ace.

“Alpha, you need fluids and this wound needs repairing—” Ace began in an overpatient tone.

“Not unless Mia stays.”

Ace hardly spared a glance for the nurse facing off in front of Mia. “Let her stay if it means Alpha will keep still and let me microlaser his damn shoulder.”

Mia stepped around the nurse and came over, a wary expression on her face. But when he reached out and took her hand, some of the tension left her. He brought her fingers to his lips, and she reached up with her other hand to smooth her fingers through his short hair, expression gorgeously intimate, telling him without words everything she was feeling.

Like the first day he’d met her, after he’d carried her out of the damaged shuttle and taken her to the deck triage, when she’d opened her eyes and looked at him, his heart went into a free fall, but this time he didn’t fight the exhilarating sensation. Instead, he let it wash through him and thanked whatever higher powers ran the universe these days that he’d met her and they’d survived the CSS and Robinson to make it back to the safety of the
Knox
.

“So I guess the rumors are true.” Ace poked a needle in his shoulder, and he grimaced before shooting a glare at his buddy.

The sub-doctor didn’t look the least bit repentant about stabbing him without warning. “It’ll go numb in a second and then you won’t feel a thing. As for your brain and whatever damage made you annihilate your career, well, that I can’t do anything about.”

“I didn’t
annihilate
my career. I just made a different choice.” He tightened his hold on Mia and cast her a short look to see how she was taking Ace’s comments, however her expression wasn’t giving anything away as she focused on where Ace had started applying the microlaser to repair the tissue.

They were probably going to face more than a few comments over their relationship in the coming days and weeks.

The curtain shifted, and he looked up to see Commander Yang and Bren standing at the end of his bed.

“Alpha, glad to see you made it back on deck in one piece. Mostly.”

He sent his CO a respectful nod, since he couldn’t salute while Ace was patching up his arm.

“We need to debrief. In private.” Yang cast a look from Ace to Mia, and might as well have said
get lost
.

“Yes, sir.” Ace smoothed a healing gel over the work the microlaser had done and then stood. “For what it’s worth, Alpha, I recommend you stay overnight for observation. But since I know you so well, I’ll tell you to at least stay in that bed for a few hours and let the fluids and the gel do their thing. Come on, Recruit Wolfe, let’s check you out.”

Mia dropped his hand and glanced down at herself. “The blood isn’t mine. I think most of it is Leigh’s and some is probably—” Some of the color she’d regained since they’d returned to the ship drained from her face, and Leigh reached out to grab her arm, worried she might topple over.

“Don’t think about it. You did what you had to, and you didn’t kill him, I did. Don’t let it haunt you, Mia, or he wins anyway.”

She nodded and started to step away, but he tugged her closer to the bed again, reaching up to pull her down to kiss her too briefly and too innocently, but considering their audience, it was probably brash of him to even do that much. She sighed against his lips, the sensation rippling through him on a low shudder. God, he wanted to get her alone for even just five minutes to reaffirm they were both really okay and soothe the last echoes of panic that he might have lost her. But duty had to come first.

He let her go, and when she straightened, a flush of color had spread across her cheeks. She avoided Commander Yang’s gaze but sent Leigh a smile filled with the promise of
later
as she let Ace lead her from the triage cubicle.

Bren stepped out of the curtain for a moment, and when she returned, she sent Yang a nod before falling into parade stance with her hands clasped behind her back.

“The immediate area is secure, sir.”

“Thanks, CAFF.”

Leigh resisted the urge to wince. No doubt Yang had purposefully addressed Bren that way to remind of him his demoted status. He reached over and tabbed at the remote to raise the head of the gurney. There were some conversations a man shouldn’t take lying down, and he got the feeling this was going to be one of them.

“So, Alpha, Stanton is rather unimpressed that you failed to bring the other traitor back alive for questioning,” Yang started once he was upright. “Personally, I’m happy to commend you for a job well done. I have no doubt that Robinson got what he deserved.”

While he agreed with the sentiment, it didn’t lessen the weight on his conscience that he’d taken a life, even if the guy had been a scumbag traitor.

“I don’t understand how someone like Robinson was CSS. He was an Ackerly graduate. You said yourself that his father is an admiral.” He hadn’t thought much about it until he’d arrived back at the ship and started trying to put all the pieces together into a picture that made sense.

Yang nodded, his expression grim. “The admiral has been suspended, pending an investigation into the entire family. I’ve just come from a linkup with Stanton. Intel came to light that the CSS may have been recruiting certain personality types straight out of the academies. However, the source of the intel was questionable and at the time it seemed utterly ridiculous. Now, however—”

“It’s an appalling reality.” Leigh clenched a fist against his thigh. To think CI or Stanton might have had information that could have stopped all this before it started and hadn’t acted on it… But there was no use going down that road. It only led to pointless anger.

“Stanton said he’d put a specialized team onto it, whatever that means. Seems to be his answer for everything at the moment.”

“And the rest of the recruits?” How could he trust anyone he brought into the squadron now, knowing the CSS might have already gotten to them before they even arrived in the Brannon system?

“We’ve got extra screening in place, but that’s not your concern anymore.”

Right, because he’d handed his CAFF insignia over to Bren and been kicked out of the FP squadron. Yang might as well have slapped him with that one. Hell, what if they were about to bust him down to Ilari? Despite constantly reassuring Mia that everything would work out fine, for the first time, the notion that it might not stabbed into him like razor-sharp icicles.

He swallowed down the words crowding up his throat; they would probably make him sound like he was begging and he’d already decided he would face the consequences of all the choices he’d made. The least he could do was take it with dignity, and by the hard expression on Yang’s face, the man had already made up his mind and wouldn’t be swayed, no matter what anyone said.

“Protocol dictates I should not only strip you of rank, but remove you from the FP squadron and send you to the ground.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.” His voice came out rough as the resolution to take this without a fight wavered for a moment, his stomach dropping as though he’d done a high-altitude triple barrel roll in his jet. If he wasn’t flying anymore, it would leave a huge hole in his life, one he didn’t know how he would ever fill.

“However.” Yang drew the word out and a small spark of hope kindled within him. “Dependable pilots are apparently difficult to find, and the number of people on board this ship I actually trust are even harder to find. Plus, with this war at a tipping point, it would be insane to waste a pilot of your skills on the ground. Therefore, the decision has been made that you will retain your position on the squadron, but you’ll be starting at the bottom again with the new recruits who graduate this current class. That being said, I can’t have you and Mia flying together. I’m sorry, I know it’s unfair, but Mia won’t be continuing with the program. It’s the price to be paid. We need you on the squadron more than we need a green pilot.”

The news probably wasn’t that surprising when he thought about it. And it didn’t hit all that hard, considering Mia had already told him she didn’t want to be a fighter pilot. What did leave him cold was the idea of Mia being the one who ended up on the ground.

“Sir, I understand all of your reasons for not having the two of us in the FP squadron together. And while I know you’ve probably already made a decision in terms of where Mia will be going, I’m asking you to do me a favor and keep her on board the
Knox
, get her a position with the deck maintenance crew or in aeronautical engineering. You know what she’s capable of, what she did for us. We wouldn’t have uncovered Lawler without her. If you can’t afford to waste my skills, then you definitely can’t afford to waste hers. I know it’s asking a lot, since we both know you don’t owe me a damn thing.”

Despite the fact he’d been determined not to beg for his own fate, apparently Mia’s outcome was a totally different matter. He’d lay open a vein if it meant keeping her safe, keeping her on board the
Knox,
and maybe making some kind of future with her.

Yang stepped forward and clasped him on his good shoulder for a long moment.

“That’s not entirely true, Alpha. You’ve worked your ass off since the first day you stepped foot on the deck of the
Valiant Knox
, going above and beyond to protect both the people on board and the pilots you flew with. I’m not making any promises because my influence isn’t what it used to be, but I’ll see what I can do to keep her on board. “

He reached up and gripped Yang’s forearm, finding it a little hard to breathe through the emotion surging through him. “Thank you, sir.”

Yang nodded and stepped back from the gurney. “Now get that rest Ace ordered. I need you in fighting form and back on deck ASAP.”

As Yang stepped toward the curtain where Bren still stood waiting and silent throughout the conversation, the last conversation he’d had with his CO surfaced in his mind about the lieutenant coming to review Yang’s command. Is that what the commander had meant when he said he didn’t have as much influence these days?

“Sir, what about your situation?”

His question brought Yang up short, and the commander glanced back over his shoulder.

“I called in just about every damn marker anyone in the upper echelons of the UEF owed me and managed to get a stay of execution, that’s all.” Yang sent him a short, grim smile. “They’re reviewing the decision to review my command. If that’s not the best example of the UEF’s bureaucratic BS, I don’t know what is.”

“What does it mean in the long run?”

“It means I’m on the clock and time is running out. Eventually the review will go ahead. The revelation that we’ve got traitors in our ranks has rattled some cages, and the sentiment is that the
Knox
may no longer be a secure asset.”

“And just what do the men upstairs think the answer to that might be?” Even as he asked the question, he got the cold sense that he already knew the answer.

“Best-case scenario, I’m removed from command and the new CO they bring in strips down and restructures the entire crew. Worst case scenario, they pull the
Knox
out for redeployment in a noncombative system.”

“Either way, we’re screwed.” He swore under his breath. Didn’t seem like much point in worrying about where he or Mia would end up once this review went ahead because in the end, the UEF brass were going to mess with the entire ship. Frustration blustered through him as if he were standing in the hot slipstream of a jet.

“They can’t do that. We’ve been holding this line for years. We’ve lost good men and sweated blood for the cause. If they do this, all they’ll achieve is giving the CSS one more advantage, because whoever they bring in won’t know the fight the way we do—”

“You don’t need to tell me any of that, Leigh. I’m living it every second,” Yang replied quietly.

His aggravation was doused by his chagrin at forgetting, even for a second, that Yang had recently been a CSS POW.

“My apologies, sir.”

Yang held up a hand. “You’re not the one in the wrong, here, but that’s not something I can say outside this room without shoving myself off the crumbling precipice I’m standing on. We’ve got time, Alpha, and I intend to use the full capabilities of this ship and its crew to put a serious dent in the CSS efforts and prove we’re not compromised.”

“Then I’m with you, sir, one hundred percent.” He lifted his arm and gave a crisp salute, despite the aching pull in his shoulder where the gel was healing his flesh.

Yang returned the salute. “Now get some rest, Alpha, and I’ll see what I can do for Wolfe.”

As Yang walked around the curtain, he caught his XO’s gaze. No, not his XO anymore, his
CO
. Damn, that was going to take some getting used to. Bren took a couple of steps closer to his bed.

“Congratulations, by the way.” He sent Bren a smug grin. “How’s being the CAFF working out for you so far?”

“After losing four recruits on a training flight and then engaging the CSS in a heavy-atmo fight so you could rescue your girlfriend? Just peachy.”

“Don’t let all that power go to your head.” His grin widened as he repeated the words Bren had often spoken to him.

But apparently the new CAFF didn’t see the funny side of it. “Screw you, Alpha. I never wanted this, and you knew it. You could have handed the pins on to Seb.”

“You outrank Seb. And you really want a cowboy like that running the squadron?” He affected an exaggerated shudder. “We’d be reduced to playing beer pong to work out the shift schedule and he’d have us flying missions with no other objective besides poking the hornet’s nest.”