Sadie's Mate (3 page)

“I
can meet you in my offices in twenty. I’m dealing with a crisis already and
can’t manage any sooner. Do you need directions to it?” he asked. A voice
called out to him, and she heard him let out a growl. “Damn it,” he muttered.
“Make it thirty minutes at the earliest. The console has a map of the ship.
It’s right off the command deck, though, with access from the corridor. I’ll
see you there, doc.”

She
heard him cut the connection and sighed.
Great.
Just.
Great.

Chapter Three

Sadie
sat in Bracken’s office with the packet that was
for her eyes only
in her lap and waited, not so patiently. She
looked once more at the timepiece and saw that it was now forty-five minutes
since she spoke to him last. She needed him to hurry. The power supply for the
facial film wasn’t one that was everlasting and it was also bloody damn well
hot. Five more minutes, that was all she was giving him until she left and let
him come to find her.

The
door from the command deck slid open to reveal utter chaos, then slid shut to
silence the noise. “Apologies for the delay,” he said. He moved to the desk and
practically fell into the chair behind it. Rubbing his hands over his face, he
leaned forward to prop his arms on the desktop. “What’s going on, Sadie?”

“You
and your friend
Fintan
have been playing loose with
the rules. Since he wed the
Imarian
woman, the
marshal’s
office have
placed spies on his ship.” She
passed the package over to him. “They want to bring you all down. They’re
trying to find who all is with you. I never once thought to ensure that his
destroyer was protected as well. Sure I’ve hidden the telemetry on his ship
when I could, but I didn’t think about scouring it clean the way that I did
yours.”

Bracken
waved off her concern as he looked over the pieces of the package she’d been
left. Reaching out, he pressed a button. “Draven, get
Fintan
for me, please,” he said,
then
released the button.
“They really are starting to get desperate,” he muttered, shaking his head
slowly.

She
shrugged and leaned back once more. If he wasn’t concerned, why should she be?
It was likely time she stopped protecting him as much as she did. “If you have
nothing else to say, I should go back to my quarters. It’s been a very long and
trying day.” Especially since she had been shoved onto the one ship in the
universe she didn’t want to be. Not because she hated Bracken, but because she
cared far too much for him.

“Don’t
move,” he said sharply. A beep sounded, and the screen to her left lit up.

“Bracken,
what’s going…oh,
hello.
”

“
Fintan
, meet Doctor Sadie Monterey, friend of the family.
Mainly the sisters but we’re forgiving her for her horrid taste in friends.
Sadie, meet General
Fintan
Daykin. The marshal’s
office is stepping things up,
Fintan
. They’re into
planting evidence now, and moles.”

“I
know. I caught two just this morning who are now crammed into an escape pod
with three others that will be jettisoned sometime in the next hour. I’m
sweeping through the crew, looking for the others they thought they could slip
past me.”

“Good.
I already have Draven looking into our crew as well. They actually think we
don’t know each and every member by name and face.”

“Well
the offices are being run by an egotistical ass who wants to make a mark by
wiping out the
Imarians
once and for all.”

Bracken
shot her a look and snorted. “They’re not above getting rid of those that could
discover their plans, either. Where are you at?”

Fintan
leaned to the side
with a frown.
“About a day out from your position.
Why?”

“Because
we’ve been sabotaged and I’m pretty damn sure they have a plan to ignite this
war, and we’re the fucking suckers about to be splattered across the galaxy.”

“I’ll
get Markus to encourage the engine room to run in the red for a while. Keep me
apprised of the situation.
And Bracken.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t
get dead.”

“Copy
that, General. See you soon.” The screen went black as Bracken turned his chair
to face her once more.

“So
you’ve known what’s been happening for a while now I take it?” she asked as she
leaned back, tapping her finger to the arm of the chair in her telltale nervous
fashion. “What I don’t get, though, is why assure that I’m on board? I’m the
one who designed the AI’s and without me they will all go dormant. There’s a
kill switch that’s encoded with my DNA, so making me dead is a good way to kill
all of the
Craegin
destroyers, so why?”

He
lifted a brow and stared at her. “Come on, Sadie. Think about it. They have a
whole new line of destroyers that are ready to be put into place if not for the
fact we’re not at war and don’t need that many out here.
All
with a different AI system to run them.
Kill all of us off with a fake
Imarian
fleet, and they can roll out their new ships with
commanders in place who do as they are told and don’t bother to think for themselves.”

She
shook her head and leaned forward. “You really don’t know me as well as you
think you do.” Everyone was certain that the new, top-of-the-line destroyers
were all clearly based upon a new design, but she was a chameleon. She could
change her looks at whim and did so often so that she could ensure Bracken was
safe. She hid the true self that she was, the scarred woman that men only
wanted for a title and money.
No, Sadie was no
one’s fool. Not now, not ever. “Why do you think you know me as well as you do?
Yes, I’ve been friends with your sisters for as long as I can recall but you
don’t really know me. No one does.” No one had ever truly tried to know her.
Sure she had been sought after, but they didn’t want her just the prestige of
being her husband.

“You
may have put in the initial systems, but they were all changed out on the sly a
year ago,” he said quietly. Digging into his desk, he tossed a file onto the
top near her. “We’ve been suspicious for a couple of years now, but the instant
they did that we all started to cover our asses. We have enough dirt on several
politicians to bury them for centuries. But we don’t yet have the one key
piece.
The why of it all.
You’re as expendable as the
rest of us, Sadie. Why do you think you were forced onto this ship with us?
Especially if we’re such threats to the current government.
You could have kept watch from
Craegin
remotely. You
have access to everything here. Why put you on this ship now?”

“Don’t
know.” Oh she knew all right but she wasn’t saying. “Well since you have
absolutely everything figured out you really don’t need me now, do you? You can
assign one of the tramps to take me back or drop me at one of the moon bases.”
It pissed her off that someone was putting her shit out there. It bothered her
even more that Bracken felt he knew more about her and what was happening in
her life than she did.
A lot.

“And
leave you unprotected? Hardly,” he said, adding on a snort for good measure,
she was sure. Bloody irritating was what it actually was. He looked ready to
say something else to her when another beep sounded. Snarling a heap of swear
words under his breath, he hit the button.
“Yeah?
What?
When?” he asked.
Then he let loose with another
string of curses, some used in a rather creative manner. “Get us there as quick
as you can.
Alert
Fintan
that we’re
diverting.
Son of a bitch,” he complained as he got to his feet. When he
reached her side he tugged on the shoulder of her shirt lightly. “Come on, doc.
You’re going to want to see the evidence for yourself.”

“If
you say so,” Sadie said as she rose to her feet and adjusted her suit. It was
clear by the rigidness of her stance that she hated being led around on a
string, but what was worse was she would do anything for this man. She was
Craegin
through and through; she was passionate, but she
was also submissive if the right man ever came along. He never had, however,
not since the right man stood before her and never once looked at her as if he
wanted anything to do with her at all.

He
put a hand on the small of her back as they stepped onto the command deck. The
volume was intense on the deck, though it lowered for a moment as Bracken
entered. Several nods came their way before everyone returned to their work.

She
moved so that she had her back to the wall and simply surveyed the controlled
chaos that was happening on the command deck.

Bracken
went over to his first officer. She watched as he listened to the man. It was
his expression she noticed the most, what she could see of it, that was. He
started frowning, but slowly it melted off until she could practically feel the
rage wanting to let loose. Bracken took the data pad the man passed him and
came slowly toward her as he viewed what was on it.

“So,
what’s happening?” she asked, shifting to better see the data pad and so that
no one could possibly get behind her. She had been there before and now there
were very few people she allowed at her back. “What has you looking so angry?”

“You
watch and tell me what you see.” He passed over the data pad and moved so his
back was to the wall at her side. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes. In
a brief flash she saw how tired he was before he masked it all under a neutral
look.

Sadie
took the data pad and watched the horror unfold and gasped. “Holy mother,” she
whispered, then touched the pad, increasing the size of the screen and
replaying what was in it. “Wait.” She squeezed in closer and shook her head.
“The
Imarian
insignias are wrong. Look.” She turned
to him. “They’re trying to make this look like
Imarian
,
but they screwed up the insignia.” She had studied the insignias at great
detail, mostly so that she could write a script into the coding of the AI’s
that would recognize anything to do with an
Imarian
ship.

“I
know. It’s begun,” he muttered. Someone called to him, and he gave a nod.
Pressing his hand to his ear, he let out a sigh. “I’m guessing you’ve seen the
footage so far? Yeah, we saw that here too. Better let our friend know the next
step is likely already underway for the retribution. Right, let me know when
you hear something. Sorry,” he said, looking to her again. “We’ll be pairing up
from here out.
Fintan’s
going to be riding not far
from us for the next while, and all those who are against our government’s
tactics have been warned to do the same. It’ll stretch us a little, but the
hope is that we can keep one another safe with the tactic since command won’t
be expecting two ships when they start to try picking us off.”

“You
need to make sure the hidden codes inside of your communications panels are
disabled. Each ship is built with a minimum of fifteen hidden codes to report
back to command. I need for you to take me to engineering first, communications
and then the armory. I’ll do what I can to help you. When the general’s ship is
in range I’ll go to his ship and do the same.”

He
stared at her long enough to make her mildly uncomfortable. “Thank you, Sadie,”
he said in a low, intimate tone. Reaching out, he took the data pad from her
fingers to pass off to a junior officer. “Let’s get going. We need to do this
quickly because I have a feeling we’re going to need every damn advantage we
can get.”

“Yes,
you are.” She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. Going through her mind
was everything she needed to do. “And if they are using the new class of ships
there is a kill switch that I hid inside of them. They don’t know about it. Not
even the people on my team know about the kill codes. It’s something that I put
into place with everything I’ve designed for the last fifteen years.” She had
been a child prodigy, able to create programs for ships for as long as she
could recall. It had been the one and only way to escape the machinations of
her mother to try to get her sold off, married off, whatever.

“Let’s
keep that as a last resort. I’m not putting you in any more danger than you
already are, Sadie. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to keep you here and
safe. Putting you on a moon base is just begging for an assassin to take you
out when you’re not looking. Not even you can watch your back every moment of
every day, no matter how much you would wish otherwise.”

“I’ve
learned a lot over the years. I’ve learned how to protect myself and hide in
plain sight.” She’d been doing it for the last six years, since she had been
attacked and permanently disfigured. “Your sisters have the gift of being able
to go about in the world without a care. I’m not. I never have been.” She was
one of the original families’ descendants, one of the few
Craegin
that still had diluted
Imarian
blood in her veins,
her family having intermarried far more often than not over the generations.
Not something she was proud of and likely why her father had been as crazy as
he was. “I don’t need a moon base for the kill switch. I just need to be within
range and an amplifier dish.”

“If
I had a bloody opinion on those females I’d lock them up in a dungeon and keep
them from wreaking havoc on the world. Unfortunately only my father sides with
me. Mother doesn’t see it as an issue.” He put his hand on her back as they
walked through the corridors at a quick pace. In the lift he keyed in their
destination before turning to look at her. “Once you’ve done this we need to
have a talk.
Frank, open, no more hiding.
You up for it?”