gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (20 page)

“You’d better.” Miala gave Lira a mock-fierce glare. “I hate unsolved mysteries.”

After that there was nothing left to do. She went to Rast then, glad she could have him walk next to her as they left the house. They picked their way across what was left of the yard and went to the
Chinook
. The door stood open, awaiting their return.

At the bottom of the gangplank, Rast paused and stared down at her. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied. “Let’s get out of here.”

And as they entered the ship, she wondered if she would ever stand on Gaia’s surface again.

Although she piloted the ship with the same effortless grace she’d always shown while working its controls, Rast could tell she was upset. Funny how her small expressions, the slightest furrow of her brow, the way she looked away from him out the viewscreen, the hard line of her jaw, were as clear to him now as if she had just written the words “I am pissed off” across her forehead with glowing ink.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Not really. I just want to get us out of this godforsaken system.”

So he waited as she brought them around the night side of the planet, past its sole stony moon, and out toward the farther reaches of the Gaian system where the gas giants reigned. Her mouth tightened as they passed the largest planet, and he recalled that it was on one of that planet’s moons where she had grown up, where she had sought refuge after being discharged from the GDF.

Apparently that refuge hadn’t been a very effective one.

“And now?” he inquired softly, once they were very nearly to the open space where it would be safe for them to make the subspace jump.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Straight on to Eridani?”

He’d thought of that, but no point in diving straight into the fire. “Probably not wise. We need to analyze the data Miala gave us first, then plan from there. If forces in the Eridani government are somehow behind all this, it would not do to march in with guns blazing. The Eridani mind is subtle.” He grimaced, thinking of how often the soft-voiced Eridanis got their way at the negotiating table. “I will admit that I am not the best-suited for this sort of confrontation. I was trained for action, not stealth.”

A wry smile twisted her full lips. “You and me both, Rast. I’m not saying I’m the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ type, but I’m — I
was
— a ship’s captain, not a diplomat or a spy. Right now, I’ll plot us a course for the dead space around the Charybdis Shoals. No one should disturb us there while we try to figure out what to do next.” She returned her attention to the instruments before her, fingers flying as she programmed in the necessary coordinates.

That made sense. What they needed was some breathing room. And he thought then that one of the things he loved about her was her ability to look at herself dispassionately, with very little self-deception or puffery. She knew who she was, what she was good at.

That thought led to some quite delectable things that she was very good at, and he smiled.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s not so much that I’m amused,” he told her, reaching down and taking her by the hand, raising her from her seat so he could pull her against him. “I was recalling a pleasant memory.”

That line between her brows smoothed itself away, and she stared up at him, one eyebrow raised. A faint sweet scent drifted from her hair, and his loins tightened, heat rushing through him at the memory of those silken locks brushing against his cheeks, his chest.

“Which memory is that?” she inquired, but he could tell from a certain gleam in her eyes that she knew very well what he had been thinking about.

“The one we’re about to make,” he replied, and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up, taking her back to the cabin, even as the the autopilot took them into subspace, away from Gaia’s sensors. Away from everything.

He worried for a second or two that she might protest, but instead she burrowed herself into his neck, that lovely mouth of hers doing some astonishing things to his throat. A smack of his hand against the control to open the door, and then they were inside. He set her down gently, but only so he could pull off her jacket, then draw her open-collared shirt over her head. The curious garment Gaian women wore to support their breasts was still in the way, but she helped him with that, reaching behind her to undo its clasp, tossing it onto the cabin’s sole chair. Then her breasts were bared to him, those wonders of smooth pale flesh, tipped with rosy-dark nipples.

It was too much for him to wait any longer, and he bent to take one into his mouth, to suckle her as she gasped and arched her back into him. She was not so far lost in the moment that she couldn’t reach down and undo the belt he wore, which dropped to the metal floor with a thud, holstered pulse pistol and all. Her fingers worked hastily on the closures of his trousers, but even so she was still in control, deftly pulling them down, taking him into her hand, moving up and down his shaft.

His turn to gasp then, and with a growl he pushed her down on the bed, needing to taste her and feel her, to reassure himself that they were alive, that she was his. Her hand slipped away from him, but he ignored that for the moment, driven only by the desire to bury his face between her legs, to touch his tongue to the delicate nub there. She cried out as he licked her, but then he felt her shifting beneath him, moving so she could take him into her mouth as well, her lips closing around him, tongue gliding over the sensitive flesh at his tip.

All the blood in his body seemed to be drawn there, to the pulsing core of his being. He knew she could make him come so easily, but he didn’t want that — not yet, anyway. So he turned his focus to pleasuring her, to circling that delectable little knot of flesh with his tongue, using quick, feathery movements, the way he knew she liked it. Her moans reverberated along the length of his shaft, and he felt it then, felt her spasm against him, tasted the flood of her juices, that nectar he desired more than anything.

And as she lay there, breasts rising and falling with her jagged breaths, he took her by her tiny waist, turned her over so he could run his hands over the smooth white flesh of her lovely backside, then pushed into her wetness and womanliness from there, hearing the sharp intake of her breath as he took her, pounded into her, felt her move with his rhythm, all the need and heat and desire in his body swirling down, down, to the sensation of her flesh tight against his, fitting better than any woman ever had and ever would.

He came then, a groan tearing itself from his throat, guttural and harsh. She clenched around him, pulsing, her own orgasm coming a second or two after his, her body still rocking with his, drawing every drop from him, until at last he pulled out and fell onto his side, still gasping, and she nuzzled up against him, her face buried in his flesh, her mouth showering kisses into his chest, his stomach.

In that moment he knew he loved her, loved her with a searing intensity that surprised even him. Women there had been before, but never one like this.

He wouldn’t allow himself to reflect on the irony of finding the true mate of his heart among the enemies of his people. Instead, he only held her close, held her as her soft little rain of kisses died away, and she slept in his arms, quiet, trusting, her hair a spill of dark silk across her shoulders, caressing the curve of her breasts.

Dream well, heart of my heart. For I will be here to make sure you come to no harm.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Charybdis Shoals lay approximately ten thousand light-years away from the Gaian system, and since navigating the area was tricky — odd gravitational fluxes, clouds of gas, constantly morphing asteroid fields — most starships stayed far, far away. No planets here, nothing of any interest…unless you were looking for a quiet, dark corner to plot your next move.

Rast still slept in the cabin, tangled up in Gared Tomas’s ridiculously expensive sheets, but Lira had wakened a few hours after they’d made love and quietly slid out of bed, making her way for the cockpit. No reason the ship’s automated functions couldn’t handle the drop out of subspace on their own, but because the Shoals could be treacherous, she wanted to make sure she was there at the moment of realspace arrival, just in case.

The
Chinook
didn’t even shiver as the swirling colors of non-orthogonal space dropped away, and unfamiliar constellations formed around them. Through the viewscreen Lira saw ribbons of pale gas in shades of violet and blue, but they were strangely beautiful, and did not present any immediate threat. A quick scan of the instruments told her the region’s problematic asteroid fields were millions of miles away. The course that had brought them here had deposited the ship in a backwater of the Shoals, a place where they could linger unmolested for some time, if necessary.

So she and Rast were safe…for now, at least. Why, then, did she feel so uneasy?

Well, the sensation could have something to do with having just uncovered what could be a vast, galaxy-wide conspiracy…but somehow Lira knew that wasn’t the real problem. No, that was just a little closer to home…sleeping in the cabin down the hall, in point of fact.

Lying to herself was useless. No, she’d always prided herself on looking at things straight, even if she didn’t always like what she saw. And what she saw now was a man who should have been her enemy, and somehow had become the exact opposite.

Lover? Yes. He coaxed reactions from her body that she’d never experienced with anyone else. It would be easy enough to say that’s all it was — just a physical reaction. Chemistry. But that was a lie. Oh, not that they didn’t set off sparks between them hot enough to start a forest fire. There was far more to it than that, though.

Hard to admit it, but she actually liked him, liked his sense of humor and the sound of his voice and his gentle patience with Jerem. And somehow all those qualities made the whole situation that much more difficult, because it was a lot easier to dismiss a relationship based purely on sex than one that involved respect, even admiration. Long ago she’d given up on believing she’d ever meet someone who made her feel this way. She’d convinced herself that it was all right, because all she really cared about was being captain of a ship in the GDF, making a difference. Love and romance, kindred spirits, all that? It was for someone else, not Lira Jannholm. A fling here and there, to burn off the biological back-pressure when necessary, but the notion of love,
real
love, was something she’d dismissed years ago.

What a mess.

She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, trying to stave off the headache that threatened to build there. Not enough sleep, especially after the insanity of the firefight at the Thorn homestead and their precipitous flight away from Gaia. What she needed to do was focus, to figure out their next move. She and Rast couldn’t float out here forever, although at the moment the illusion of tranquility was more than a little seductive.

Somehow they’d have to try to track down whoever it was on Eridani that had suborned Admiral sen Trannick, find out why he’d been paid off in the first place. She had no idea how, though. As she’d told Rast, she was a pilot and a captain, not a spy or a hacker.

A hacker…

No use trying to get Miala Thorn’s help — her ex-merc of a husband had made it pretty clear that Lira and Rast would get a few warning shots across their bow if they attempted any further contact. However, she couldn’t overlook Jackson Wyler as a resource. Maybe now that they knew the root of the treachery had its source on Eridani, he could do a little more to help them. After all, he traded in information…and the revelation that the Eridanis were apparently behind the plot could be worth a good deal.

Another thing Jackson could help them with was new identities. She’d scrubbed the
Chinook
pretty well, and so far they’d more or less stayed off the grid, but if their search for the truth involved any sort of contact with the Gaian or Eridani governments, she’d have to make sure their records were flawless. Probably they’d need to get retinal realignment and fingerprint transplants, too, just to be safe.

So she opened a subspace channel to New Chicago, to the comm coordinates Jackson had given her, and sent him a ping. She had to hope it wasn’t too ungodly an hour in Michende — not that Jackson had ever paid all that much attention to diurnal patterns. He worked when the mood struck him, and if that was at 0400, then so be it. Just another reason he quit the Academy; he had never been able to maintain anything resembling a normal schedule.

Less than a minute went by before her ping was answered by a request to open a secure channel. She did so, entering the code Jackson sent her, and a second or two later his voice came over the comm unit. No video. Maybe he had been asleep.

“Miss me already?” he inquired.

Her mouth tightened. Just for once she’d like it if he took something seriously. “Sorry to disappoint you, Jackson, but actually I could use some more assistance.”

“Really? Am I going to have to send you a bill?”

“I doubt it. I have some information I think you might be interested in.”

“So my contact on Gaia worked out.”

“More or less,” Lira said, choosing her words with care, reminding herself that Jackson knew nothing of Miala Thorn’s identity, save that she was located on Gaia. “But before we go any further, Rast and I are going to need some new documentation — ”

“No problem,” Jackson cut in, sounding almost gleeful. “I know a guy on Miris Prime whose work is so beautiful it would make you weep.”

“I hope weeping won’t be necessary, but thank you.” She hesitated, not sure how many requests he’d be willing to handle at once. Still, they couldn’t function properly if they had to keep looking over their shoulder at all times, wondering who or what was going to jump them next. “Also, while we were on Gaia, we were attacked by a group of Bathshevan mercenaries — ”

“And lived to tell the tale?”

“Yes,” she said, her tone curt. No way she could explain that the only reason they’d survived their encounter was because Eryk Thorn had been there to provide defense. “They didn’t get the drop on us, luckily. However, it would really help if we knew who had hired them.”