Quantum (3 page)

What the hell did that mean? It would be easy to assume Captain Admiral Graydon had been the intended target. But nothing was what it seemed any longer.

According to Rian, everything wrong in his life, and pretty much everything wrong with the universe, could be traced to the Reidar. Only a handful of people knew the Reidar existed. Most who learned the truth ended up dead, with Rian being the exception. However, it was more luck and divine providence that Rian was still alive—he’d nearly been killed more times than any person she knew. Which was why—despite the risk to her own career—she hadn’t been able to tell him no to this little arrangement. Truthfully, she’d been seriously considering it time to cut out of UAFA once she’d discovered the agent in charge of her division had actually been an alien body double.

Besides, saying no to Rian had been a longtime problem of hers.

Rian and she had clicked instantly when they’d met on her first posting, with her fresh out of military college. He’d soon worked out he could convince her to do pretty much anything with a smile and an irreverent gleam in his gaze. And of course there’d been that one night—

Since then he’d become more like family, and they’d made sure they’d seen each other whenever they could. Until Rian had gone missing, presumed KIA. It had come on the heels of her parents becoming casualties of the war on her home planet, forcing her to lock down and become totally self-reliant. It was either that or cave from the double-tap loss.

Two years later she’d found him, broken and maniacal, doing the dirty work of an infamous illegal trader. To this day, she still couldn’t say if it had been a blessing or a curse that she’d been the one to bring him back…what was left of the man, anyway.

If she was going to take a leaf out of his playbook, she could just as easily presume, with a good dose of paranoia, that the shuttle crash had been meant for her, that somehow the Reidar had worked out what she was up to and wanted her out of the equation before she found evidence of their existence. A chill rippled down her spine, and she stole a sideways look at Graydon, who’d grabbed another pack to search, looking pissed about the missing supplies.

Forcing the suspicions out of her mind, she returned to her own search. By the bottom of the second medical pack Mae hadn’t found the scanner, and the lack of several other essentials worried her. It seemed someone had stripped the important medical supplies out of these bags, the same way they’d apparently taken the emergency transponders.

Maybe the why and how of the crash weren’t apparent yet, but the intended outcome was more than obvious—no survivors.

The captain admiral abandoned the survival packs and joined in on searching the medical supplies.

“There are so many things missing from these packs, it’s bordering on ridiculous.” He threw down the bag he’d been holding and stood, shooting a brief glance at Nazari and Jaren. While Nazari watched with a pensive expression, Jaren seemed to be in pain but trying to hide it.

“Give me inventory on what we have, Petros.” The captain admiral’s voice had a tight quality to it that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Okay. Without any type of scanner, we’ve got no way of diagnosing injuries. Plus, we’ve got no multifunction remedial device, so we can’t repair any wounds.”

He shot her a flat look. “I thought I asked for what we
do
have.”

She pulled some bandages out of the medical pack and a small kit containing a needle and thread for repairing clothes from the survival bag. She held them up, but the admiral stared at her blankly.

“You ever stitched anything before?” She tossed him the bandages and dug out more.

“
Stitches?
Jezus, Lieutenant, that’s barbaric.”

She shrugged and ripped open a pack of gauze. “Once upon a time, people didn’t have MRDs. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a few barbaric stitches than bleed to death before the rescue team arrives.”

He sighed and opened the sewing kit. “What about the other two?”

She glanced over at where Nazari and the AS officer talked quietly, though the conversation seemed pretty one-sided, with the sergeant trying to coax a few words out of the young man.

“They’ll be fine for a few minutes. My priority right now is you.” She looked back to find him sending her a half grin.

“I’m your priority, huh?”

Clearly he found that amusing, except he had no idea that her reasons for being concerned about his welfare weren’t anything like he thought. To keep up this charade, however, she had to make sure she treated him like he would expect of an admiral’s assistant. While she might be unsure of his human status, she couldn’t let the possibility he might be an alien make her skittish, despite the chills crawling under her skin at the thought of it. Outwardly, however, she’d keep herself cool and collected, and most importantly, straitlaced IPC professional right down the line.

“It’s in my job description,
sir
.” Her fake job, anyway. “Would you like me to recite the terms and conditions for you?”

He made a face. “You memorized the terms and conditions of your position? Hell, Petros, you need to lighten up a bit. And no, I don’t want to hear them…unless you think I need to be knocked out for these stitches you plan on inflicting on me.”

“You’re a big tough admiral—I’m sure you won’t feel a thing.” She shuffled forward and took out a sanitized wipe, cleaning away as much of the blood from around the wound along his hairline as she could. Even as she wiped, new blood welled and dripped along the side of his face.

The gash could hint at a more serious injury, but without the medical scanner, she had no way of knowing whether the abrasion was superficial or not. He didn’t seem to be displaying signs of concussion or anything more concerning.

Rian had told her Reidar were more resilient than humans, and his injury seemed to hardly bother him. If he was human, a severe head trauma should have knocked him unconscious or resulted in other complications. Was this a hint she should be taking note of?

When she’d met up with Rian, he’d told her that Graydon had taken a hit from a pulse rifle that should have put him down. Some veterans had become fairly immune to the stun effects of pulse fire. So, had Graydon simply become one of those soldiers who couldn’t be knocked out by a pulse, or was his lack of reaction due to being not quite human?
Damn it.
All this guessing and analyzing was aggravating.

“Are you ready?” She put the unhelpful churn of thoughts out of her mind and did a quick sanitize of the needles and thread, then turned to study the jagged edges of the wound.

Graydon clenched his jaw and stared off into the distance, which she took as his affirmative. The first stitch was the hardest. To his credit, after an initial grimace, the admiral stayed still while she pulled the wound back together and closed it up with eight stitches. The results weren’t pretty, but they were practical.

She wiped over the area again to clean it, easier now that there wasn’t fresh blood spilling out, and then stuck a piece of gauze over the patch, secured by a square of waterproof sealant.

“All done.” She sat back and released a sigh of relief, not realizing how shallowly she’d been breathing the whole time she’d tended him. Partly because sliding a needle in and out of someone’s skin wasn’t exactly pleasant, but also because sitting and leaning so close to him was totally unsettling.

“Okay, Lieutenant, your turn. Roll up that sleeve, let’s take a look at the damage.”

Mae glanced down at her left hand, streaked with blood that had also soaked down the sleeve of her uniform. A throbbing started up in her forearm, closely followed by a burning ache spreading through the limb. She sucked in a breath and clenched her right fist, riding the wave of pain and hoping it’d fade fast.

“Didn’t hurt until you thought about it, huh?” Graydon shot her a small smile as he gently took her left wrist and set her hand against his leg, just above his knee. Beneath her palm, warmth radiated through the material of his pants, while his thigh muscles were solid like sun-heated stone.

The admiral unbuttoned his dress jacket and flipped it aside to pull a knife from his belt. Tugging at the collar of his shirt, he shot her an exasperated look.

“Just for once, I’d love to be wearing something comfortable when I get myself into this type of situation.”

With a smooth movement, he slid the knife into the sleeve of her flight jacket and sliced up to her elbow, revealing the cut along her forearm.

“So, crashing in the middle of the wilderness with next to no supplies is a regular thing for you? Someone should have told me that before I took this job.” She swallowed as he started dabbing away the blood with disinfectant, sending prickly stings up her arm.

He glanced up, his toffee gaze catching hers. “Would you have turned it down, then?”

Not on my life.
There were too many reason why taking this fake job was important, beyond the two of them sitting here right now. “I would have at least asked for a better wage.”

He shot her a brief grin then returned his attention to her arm.

“Doesn’t look too deep.” He bent his head, swapping the disinfectant wipe for a piece of gauze. “I may not have to return the favor of stitching you up after all.”

He grabbed a few more pieces of gauze and covered the wound then secured the dressing by wrapping a long length of bandage firmly around her entire forearm.

When he’d finished, he lifted her hand off his knee and squeezed her fingers. For a second he held onto her, staring at her with an intent expression. In the muted light cast by the sun, dappled through the surrounding forest, his brown eyes, rimmed in those dark lashes, had an almost golden hue to them. Her heart skipped a slow beat.

And in the aftermath of the giddy moment, she wanted to slap some sense into herself. It was so not the time to be noticing things like how gorgeous his eyes were. There was every possibility the guy wasn’t human.

Post-adrenaline reaction.
Some uncalled-for auto response to all the stimulant pumping through her body. That’s what she’d blame it on.

But Graydon was still holding her hand, studying her as though he expected something.

“You’re doing great, Petros. Just keep that in mind, okay? I can categorically say you’re the best admiral’s assistant I’ve ever had.”

Her heart still thumped weirdly, so she pulled her hand back and rubbed her palm against her thigh to stop all the tingling going on in her fingers.

“Did you nearly get any of your other assistants killed?”

He shrugged. “Maybe one other. But he didn’t cope anywhere near as well as you. We may have some more challenges before we’re clear. But if we keep our heads, we’ll come out fine.”

And in order to keep her head, she needed to stay detached from the man in front of her. They were in a potentially life-threatening situation. Near-death experiences tended to create bonds between people who otherwise might never have connected. It should have been easy to keep in mind that there was a huge gulf of deceit between them—her being here under totally fabricated orders that would see her thrown in military prison or sent to Erebus if the truth came out.

And only if she were lucky. If Zander Graydon really was an alien and he found out she was suspicious of him, she could only imagine the kind of torture and certain death that might result. But as her obviously imbecilic hormones had proven a moment ago, his gorgeous eyes and a charming smile were nearly enough to distract her.

If Rian’s suspicions turned out to be correct, then anything the admiral did or said wasn’t real, anyway. An alien playing a role, trying to fool them all. That possibility alone should keep her well and truly detached and analyzing everything the man said.

“Yes, sir. We should check on the others.” She stood and gathered the two medical packs.

Graydon took one from her, and they went over to Nazari and the AS officer. While she turned her attention to Jaren, the admiral checked Nazari’s ankle.

The admiral had Nazari’s foot and lower calf bandaged up in no time, saying he believed it was badly sprained but not broken. As for Jaren, while his shoulder seemed superficially injured, she couldn’t find any other obvious wounds. Yet his slowness to respond worried her. She suspected he had some kind of internal injury, but what or where, she couldn’t tell.

Graydon stood by with his arms crossed and expression drawn while she finished checking on the younger man. After she’d finished, he crouched down to have a quiet conversation with the officer. She couldn’t hear much, but whatever words Graydon spoke seemed to help.

While it was expected that a commander should care about the people serving under him, Graydon’s worry seemed to stem from a more personal level in the way he gripped Jaren on the shoulder and murmured a few encouraging words.

While she packed away the medical supplies, the admiral collected some wood and dug a shallow pit. After he’d stacked the sticks, he pulled a piece of string from somewhere and sat down, setting up some kind of odd-looking contraption with bark and the twine wrapped around a twig.

“What in the fiery pits of Erebus are you doing?” She moved to stand next to him as he bent his head and twirled the stick.

“The spark matches are also missing. It’s going to be dark soon. If we want a fire, this is how it’s going to happen.”

As she dropped to sit on a short, fat log he’d dragged over, the ruined sleeve of her jacket flapped, so she shrugged out of it and balled it up. The evening breeze chased over her bare arms, leaving a trail of goose pimples. Damn, why had she decided to put a short-sleeved shirt on this morning? No doubt it would get cold as evening turned into night, and her torn, bloodied flight jacket wouldn’t do her much good.

“But how is that going to make a fire?” Even as she asked the question, a small spiral of smoke curled up from where the stick rubbed against the bark.

“Friction. When I served on Minnea during the Assimilation Wars, we got cut off from the supply runners for eight months. One of the guys in the unit was this ancient history buff, and once we ran out of spark matches, he showed us how to do it the old-fashioned way. You think it’s tough going with the supplies we’ve got? Try surviving on
nothing
. We literally had to catch our food if we wanted to eat.”