Factor (3 page)

“So, what drove you to come and break into my home?”

Sarnvil’s deep, soft voice said, “Your scent. You left a clear line from my quarters to your tunnel. Why were you at the base?”

She twisted her lips as she poured the tea. “I was retrieving something that Cyber left for me.”

She could almost feel him frowning. “A gift?”

Jianne shook her head and reached for her teacup. “No, a program to detect someone trying to hack my signal. The last assignment they had showed traces of someone trying to tamper with the feed.”

She had their attention now. Sarnvil asked, “They have infiltrated the Guardian signal?”

Jianne sipped at her tea. “Not that signal,
my
signal.” She raised her finger and tapped her right eyebrow. “They were watching me.”

Herkikel scowled. “I don’t understand.”

Gelor chuckled. “She has a cybernetic eye. That is how she can be such an efficient dispatcher. You saw her stats before we arrived. She had increased the efficiency rate and decreased the injuries by over fifty percent. She can only manage that if she has eyes on each situation.”

Vhorlon looked away shyly. “Thanks for the advice on the last assignment. I almost went the wrong way.”

She smiled brightly at him and said, “Thanks, it was nice that you listened. Few Guardians would take my advice before they had any experience with me. It was gratifying that you followed my suggestion on the first meeting.”

They both grinned, because her suggestion had been issued at the top of her lungs, and he had offered her a few options for what she could do with her advice. He had listened though, and as a result, the swell had not swept him or any of the others over the side of the ship while they were engaging in the rescue.

Sarnvil sat back with the small teacup cradled in his hands. “How did you find your way onto Cadar?”

She blinked. “That is a long story.”

Herkikel chuckled. “We are not going anywhere unless our dispatcher sends us, and I am assuming that you are monitoring current events, so go ahead.”

Vhorlon smiled sweetly. “We are tired of our own origin stories. It will do us good to listen to someone else.”

Jianne looked them all in the eye, except Cowl. “Well, Cadar is quiet right now, so here goes. It all started…”

Chapter Four

“Back on Terra, the request for Volunteers had just gone out, and I was in the hospital with a broken leg. To my shock, my sister dragged the Volunteer Coordinator into the hospital and introduced us.” Jianne smiled as her mind went back to the surprise on the man’s face.

She had been banged up, bruised and had a black eye to go along with the broken leg.

Herkikel frowned. “You were injured?”

“That is how my talent worked at the time. I stepped into harm’s way and took the little pain so that others would not be injured or killed. Even I didn’t think it was a talent. It seemed like some messed-up instinct that I couldn’t understand. Fortunately, my sister kept track of what I did and what the result was. We went through a list of my injuries from the last three years, and each item was met with her explaining how my actions had altered the course of disaster.

“After twenty minutes, the Volunteer Coordinator made a call and a healer was there within the hour, knitting my bones and removing some of the damage that the scars had caused. I was offered a contract, and I signed it without reading it.” Jianne slurped at her tea, lost in her memories.

“A few months later, I was off into the Alliance for basic training, and I spent some time with a Citadel tutor before the job offer in the Nyal Imperium raised its head. I was doing paperwork for the Nyal version of the enforcers when I got into a fistfight with a Yinshin. She charged me with attacking her, and I ended up in Janial.”

Gelor finally appeared shocked. “You were in prison?”

“Yes, I was in Janial for three months, keeping to myself and staying out of the way until there was a riot in my pod and a young Cadar woman was being attacked by something a lot bigger and sharper than she was. That is how I lost my eye, it was clawed out.”

Vhorlon was leaning forward. “What happened next?”

“Well, I spent two days in the Janial infirmary before the young woman’s father paid my legal expenses and had me taken to a medical station for the best care that money could provide. She was the governor’s daughter, and she and two friends had been charged with lewd behaviour while on an alien world during the Cadar equivalent of spring break. The governor had been very happy that I helped his daughter survive, and he offered me citizenship here on Cadar.”

“Once here, I needed a job, and my ability to find the key to situations had the Cadar government very quietly building me this little apartment and setting me up with all the information feeds I could want. I was introduced to my first Guardians as Dispatch, and when they left a few weeks later, I had ironed the bugs out of my behaviour that would cause any problems.”

Gelor smiled, “And now, here you are with one of the highest safety ratings for any dispatcher in the imperium. You have to be doing something right.”

Jianne filled their cups again, and she sat back with her own tea. “I like to think so, but my success depends on your success, so don’t screw up.”

They looked at her in shock, and to her amusement, it was Herkikel that laughed first, drawing the rest of them into laughter.

She gave them a quick tour of her home before yawning dramatically and sending them on their way.

Cowl was the last one to leave, and he made sure that the others had preceded him down the tunnel before he turned to her. “Thank you for your gracious hospitality.”

To her shock, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek before he turned and left.

Jianne blinked rapidly as Sarnvil’s broad back disappeared around the curve of the tunnel. He kissed her. She knew that he had a face in those shadows, his nose had brushed her cheekbone when his lips had caressed her skin, but why the hell had he kissed her?

* * * *

Sarnvil licked his lips and fought the shudder that ran through him at just the smallest taste of her skin. If Jianne wasn’t his mate, she was as close as he was going to get in his lifetime. Walking away from her and back to the Guardian base was the hardest thing he had ever done.

Every instinct in his brain and body was screaming at him to return to Jianne and take her before another one of his kind found her, but he had not yet determined if she could stand to look at him and that one thing cooled his pulse slightly.

She was here, he could take his time, and his body would just have to wait.

* * * *

Jianne waited until they were back in their base, and then, she scrambled the code. She had done her duty as hostess, and now, fun time was over. She didn’t enjoy uninvited guests.

With the Guardians tucked back into their base, she brought up the monitors and checked to make sure that they had closed the trap door. “Well, that was fun.”

She exhaled heavily and checked the news feeds and police lines of Cadar. It was all clear, so she cleaned up the tea tray and washed the cups. With her domestic chores completed, she went to her room and taped her right eye open while she settled in for one of the three naps she took daily. If anything registered on her implant, she would wake and get to work.

It was a strange life, but she was used to it. In two days, Yassi Norg would come for her quarterly visit, and Jianne would enjoy some female company. Yassi was going to be married in a few weeks, and this was their last chance to gossip together as single women.

Yassi’s father, the governor of Cadar, had reluctantly given his daughter authorization to visit Jianne after her surgery. He had been as shocked as Jianne when the two became fast friends.

Yassi took it upon herself to bring Jianne the newest in Guardian fashion and instructive vids on how to use the new toys. Jianne’s private armoury had not been part of the tour she offered to the Guardians.

She settled in to sleep and watch over Cadar with the memory of Cowl’s kiss still tingling on her cheek. She was going to have to look up his species in the morning. If he was compatible with her, she was going to be in real trouble.

Two hours later, she was jerked out of sleep as her mind replayed what her eye had recorded. An incoming shuttle was breaking into the iridium reserve. She pulled on her headset and said, “Commander Cowl, we have a situation.”

There was silence for a moment until a hoarse voice spoke. “Understood, Dispatch. Get the others up, and we will be on our way as quickly as we can.”

Jianne ran through the arduous task of yelling at Flare, speaking evenly to Roil and repeating herself to Twist until he was finally making sense.

It was not the first time she had rousted a Guardian team from bed, and she didn’t expect it to be the last.

She had their wake-up beverages prepped by their kitchen, and they grabbed them on way to their shuttle.

The information she had was sent to their shuttle along with the few identified aliens who were burrowing their way into the iridium reserve.

“Thank you for the information, Dispatch. Do you have any pointers for halting the invasion?”

She looked at all the angles that were available to her. To her surprise, there was a man built along the same lines as Cowl. The male entered the reserve through a hole that his friends had dug, and he flicked the hood back to expose his face. The guards of the repository froze in place, perfect targets for the men who arrived behind the bewitching one.

“Guardians, be aware that there is an invader with the same skill set as Cowl inside the repository. He is tall, has dark silver eyes and mahogany skin.” She didn’t mention that his skin glowed, and he qualified as stunning in her estimation. Something told her Cowl wouldn’t appreciate the descriptor.

Cowl growled. “What is he doing?”

“Freezing the guards in place by showing his face so that his cohorts can shoot them.”

She used her monitor to capture an image of the man’s face, but she didn’t want to show it to Cowl if he was going to be affected by it.

“He is one of mine. Thank you for the heads up. Is there anything else?”

Jianne frowned as she looked for the factor that would end the conflict. There wasn’t one. “I am sorry, but on this one, I can’t see anything that would wrap it up. It is almost as if this was some kind of exercise.”

She rubbed the back of her neck in confusion.

“Understood, Dispatch. Tell us what you can when information comes up.” There was tension in his tone, but Cowl was all business.

Jianne nodded. “Understood. Active scanning for intel, Dispatch standing by.”

She settled in to scan what she could, but this was not the kind of heist she had ever seen before. The invaders seemed more interested in appearing on her scanners than they were at obtaining any of the reserve. Jianne’s eyes widened as she scrolled through the bases’ security feeds. There were two shuttles landing and no one home. Oh hell.

“Boys, when you finish up in the city, I just want you to know that there are intruders here at the base. I am gearing up in case they come looking for me, but so far, they are testing the waters for countermeasures.”

Lockdown was triggered with a few keystrokes, and the base was sealed from exterior invasion. “I have locked down the base.”

While she spoke, she kept her cyber eye on the intruders as they slowly exited their ships. She got up, went to the wall and popped the door to her secret stash.

The armour was as light as it could be and still be effective. The vambraces each concealed a blaster while the wide blade carried a repulsion field in it. She returned to her monitors and stood battle ready in case anyone made it through.

She could really use a cup of coffee right about now.

Chapter Five

The explosion rocked her even in the depths of the heavy stone. She had watched them lay the explosives at each door, and when the blast came, it still caught her by surprise.

She checked on the Guardians. They had subdued the interlopers and placed them into peacekeeper custody with little effort. All the action was currently going on at the Guardian base.

The hypnotic man was not with those captured, and it did not take much of a stretch of the imagination to think that he was on his way to the base while she watched his cohorts breaking into the stronghold.

Jianne blinked and focussed on the men surging through the broken doors of the base. They didn’t touch any of the accoutrements. They searched room by room for something or someone.

Even though she was a distance away, Jianne held her breath as they rushed through the hall that held the trapdoor. She watched them search through every room, under every bed. When one of them spotted the camera in the ceiling, she flinched. He called out in a strange language, and in the dining room, one of their cohorts pulled some wires.

Jianne flinched, knowing that they were going to track her signal. Unable to do anything else, she cut all links with the internal computers, monitors and cameras. Her personal defenses were on a separate frequency, so she focussed her tunnel cameras and the exterior monitors so that she felt reasonably aware of her surroundings.

Her scanners were down to basics that would not leave much of a footprint, and she could see the shuttle returning to the base. The problem was that they were still twenty minutes out.

It was going to be the longest twenty minutes of her life.

Ten minutes later, she saw figures in her tunnel, and her skin crawled. They looked like the Guardians, but they moved wrong. She crept into her kitchen and pressed her back to the counter. She lifted the blade as thuds on the door told her they were getting closer, and when she heard more of the strange language, she primed the firing mechanism.

The first one to round the corner looked like a flickering version of Roil. She watched him grin and come toward her before she blasted him back into the fake Flare.