Supernova (24 page)

Lily
. Oh, gods.
Rian didn’t reply to the Nym
captain, but addressed the bridge directly. “Cut the comm link. Fire the
torpedo.”

A
torpedo was launched at the Nym ship, rocking the
Defiant
and
undoubtedly tossing a few unprepared crew into their consoles. The torpedo
smoothly glided in the starfield towards the Nym ship. Under Rian and Kostin’s
skilled hands, the
Defiant
withdrew as the weapon sailed to prevent any
debris from ricocheting back to her hull.

The Nym
ship exploded, pieces already floating out to the reaches of space. Rian
checked the sensors and was relieved to see that the debris was real and the
enemy hadn’t faked its destruction.

Kostin
watched Rian do the scan. “Sir, we all saw the ship get hit.”

“If this
were any other ship, I would believe my own eyes. This is the Nym, Commander.”

“Noted.
Apologies, Captain.” Kostin silenced the alarms, and data flowed into Rian’s
console screen. He felt some tension ebb from his body. Everything indicated
that the
Defiant
had just blown up a Nym ship.

“Incoming
from
Bishop’s Pride
,” Kostin reported. The viewport’s image switched
from the wreckage to the
Pride
’s bridge. Senior Captain Ursuline Jena
was seated at the helm, her short white-blond hair awry and her tawny face
flushed with rage.

“What
the hell is going on?” she shouted.

“Nym
interference,” Rian replied automatically.

“I got
that, Marska. I mean, what the hell just happened? All we saw was an explosion.”

“Standard
procedure, Captain. A Nym ship is to be fired upon if it refuses to leave.”

“Where
the fuck did it come from? We’re scanning for an energy trace and nothing’s
shown up.” Captain Jena was well-known for her formidable reputation and
profanity-laden tirades, and Rian had an idea he was about to be eviscerated
when she spied the comm traces. “You opened a godsdamned comm link with them?
Are you fucking crazy?”

“They
hailed us. We responded. I’ll be detailing that to Fleet right away.”

“Who
talks to the Nym? You blow the fuckers up!”

The
initial feelings of shock and terror had given way, and Rian was nearly giddy
with relief. He tried to keep a smile off his face and failed. “Look around
you, Captain. I did blow them up, and I even did a scan to check for other
ships.”

“Don’t
get smart with me.”

She had
relaxed a little and was now just pissed off rather than infuriated. Rian
noticed now that she too was out of uniform, wearing a light blue tracksuit,
its fabric printed with—were those
daisies
? That definitely didn’t fit
the image of the captain known for forcibly removing a meddling admiral from
her bridge single-handedly. He grinned in spite of himself.

Jena
caught it and glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that, Marska. I was in the
gym when I got your SOS.” She sighed and leaned back in the captain’s chair. “All
right. I’m going to send in my report and alert Fleet again that those fuckers
are breaching our space. We need more than patrol ships out here for the time
being.”

Rian
agreed. “I’m going to my office to file a report as soon as I sign off.”

“I’m
retiring in a few years. All I wanted was a nice, quiet assignment where I
could fine freighter captains with illegal weapons,” she groused. “Instead I
get the Nym.”

Jena was
gearing up for one of her epic tirades, and Rian sympathized with everyone in
earshot. Not enough to listen to it, though, and he interrupted with his
thanks. “I’ll stay in touch, Captain,” he promised, and they signed off.

He gave
the overnight crew orders to alert him for any more activity and headed for his
office to file his reports to Fleet. He had anticipated being up late, but not
in the vicinity of the bridge. The lightheaded, almost carefree euphoria he had
felt after saving his ship evaporated, and a familiar ball of dread formed in
the pit of his stomach. He knew what the Nym were looking for, and so would the
admirals.

He found
Lily in his office, crouched on her knees and peering out the viewport. She
didn’t turn at the sound of the door cycling open.

“Lily,”
he said softly.

She
screamed and toppled over, landing on her ass. “Shit!” she exclaimed. Her face
was reddened from weeping, her expression wide-eyed and panicked.

He
helped her up and held her to him. She was shaking like a leaf, and he felt her
heart beating frantically against his chest. He guided her to his chair and she
sank into it and gripped his hands for dear life. He perched on the desk,
facing her.

“Did you
blow up that ship?” she asked.

He
nodded slowly. “I issued the order.”

“Tell
me,” she urged him hoarsely.

“That
was a Nym ship,” he began, and hesitated. How much should he tell a civilian?

Everything.

Chapter 14

Lily
returned to her cabin with reluctance and more than a little fear despite Rian’s
assurance that nothing could hurt her. He had told her quickly what transpired
on the bridge before apologetically turning to his office computer to file a
report with Fleet. He promised to see her when he could, whenever that would
be, and tell her more.

It was
now four-thirty in the morning, and she had given up on seeing him for the rest
of the day, but she wasn’t disappointed. She would have been concerned if he
hadn’t
spent the night in contact with Fleet. Seeing that torpedo launch
into the Nym’s ship had served as a terrifying reminder of the danger she was
in.

She felt
like an idiot. She had prided herself on adjusting to her new home and making a
life for herself, knowing the chances of getting back to Earth in 2017 were
next to none—and she had conveniently shelved the whole reason she was here in
the back of her mind. The Commonwealth Space Fleet was determined to protect
her, and she had lulled herself into a false sense of security. She had
believed everyone who said that the Nym couldn’t get to her again. And what
defenses did she have? She could fire a laser weapon, and that was it.

Taz had
dropped by at 0500 hours, shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep. He had
been roused from his bed by the red alert sirens and arrived at his station in communications
right after the Nym were fired upon. He was pissed off to have missed out on
the action. He came by with breakfast from the mess for both of them, but Lily
didn’t feel like eating.

“You
could’ve given me some warning,” she complained when she let him in her cabin.
She threw a sweater over her pajamas.

“Relax.
I’ve seen women in less,” he replied cavalierly. He rummaged around her
kitchenette and found a couple of forks for the fruit salad he brought, and
produced some coffee from the replicator. They sat down at the tiny dinette
table clipped to the floor. “I wish I’d been there earlier. I sleep like a
rock. The alarms were going for about ten minutes before I woke up.” Most
soldiers slept lightly after going through training. His ability to sleep
deeply at any time was one more thing that drove his commanding officers nuts,
he explained. “But it’s getting better. A year ago I would’ve slept through the
whole thing. Have you heard from the captain?” he asked her around a mouthful
of fruit.

She shook
her head.

He
swallowed and avoided her eyes. “I should tell you something,” he said. “Promise
you won’t get mad or worry.”

“If it’s
about the Nym, I promise I will get mad or worry.”

“It’s
not the Nym,” he assured her. “Um, I have to send in all comm logs and traceable
movements to Fleet. I did it right before I came here.”

Lily
nodded, wondering where this was going.

“Fleet
isn’t taking any chances with the Nym and everything, and they’re checking
everyone’s movements.” He was trying to hint at something.

Lily
finally understood. When they reviewed Rian’s movements and communications,
they were going to draw some accurate conclusions. “Oh, no,” she breathed.

“You
were wearing your badge in his cabin last night,” said Taz.

“Is he
going to be fired?”

“I
assume you mean disciplined,” Taz clarified. “Probably not. Fleet doesn’t care
if crew has personal relationships as long as it doesn’t interfere with their
duties. And you’re a Commons civilian, which is usually even less of an issue.”

“But I’m
not just a Commons civilian,” Lily pointed out.

“Right.
They may take whatever’s between you and the captain into consideration when
they evaluate his performance as acting captain. They could find some
technicality to slap him back down to commander and stick him on a station as
an executive officer or a first officer on another ship. Also, remember this is
Rian Marska we’re talking about.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just worrying you
unnecessarily. If this were about you and any other captain, they’d be getting
ideas.”

“A
captaincy is what he’s always wanted,” Lily said quietly.

Taz held
up his hands, as though in defense. “Look, I’m just telling you what all of
that is going to look like to Fleet. You and the captain are going to have to
come up with your own explanation. I’m guessing he was boring you with Fleet
history lessons.”

“Huh,”
Lily mused.

“Well,
the crew talks a little, and Lieutenant Steg thinks something more is going on,
but Rian has his reputation to uphold as Captain Stick-Up-My-Ass, so the word
is he’s teaching you everything to know about patrol ships.”

“Um,”
said Lily pathetically.

“You
must be pretty bored by now.”

“No.”

Taz eyed
her fruit salad. She pushed the bowl across the table to him and he dug in.

Lily
burst into tears. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “He wants a
captaincy and I’m ruining it for him,” she sobbed.

Taz put
down his fork and calmly regarded her. “How can you ruin it for him? It’s not
like you can sabotage his career. You still look for buttons in the lift.” Realization
dawned on his face. “Oh my gods. He
hasn’t
been giving you history
lessons.”

Lily
shook her head.

“So you
and the captain...”

Lily
nodded. Taz’s eyes widened.

“Damn.
So he isn’t a really high-tech cyborg after all.”

“Taz,
please
.”

“No
wonder he’s been less of an ass lately.”

“Shut
up, this is serious.”

“Lily,
you haven’t ruined his career,” he tried to assure her. “Fleet really won’t
make that big of a deal out of whatever you and the captain have going. Like I
said, they know him well enough so that idea is furthest from their minds. If
he loses out on a permanent captaincy, it’ll be because he did something they
didn’t like. And he has. The whole ship knows it, even though he was right
about a lot of things. We all would have died if he tried to run away from that
star going nova with the shields down.”

“But I
want him to do what he wants,” she protested.

Taz
threw up his hands. “Oh, for gods’ sakes!” he snapped. Lily flinched. “You got
kidnapped by the Nym and dropped off almost a thousand years out of your time,
and by some miracle you’re not losing your mind. You meet Rian Marska, who if I’m
going to be honest here, didn’t seem to know what to do with a woman if she
cornered him in his cabin and took off her clothes, and I know that actually
happened on his birthday when he was a lieutenant and his friends in
engineering hired a stripper for him. So he meets you and for the first time in
his career he finds a distraction that as far as I can tell hasn’t affected his
leadership—except he’s less of a micromanaging know-it-all.” He took a long
swallow of coffee. “Turns out Marska is actually human after all.”

“Anything
else?” Lily asked acidly. She sipped her coffee.

“Yeah.
You’re in love with him.”

Lily
throat constricted and she spit out some coffee back in the mug.

“Well,
that’s just charming.” Taz made a face.

“How the
hell would you know that?” she demanded.

“Is
spitting an acceptable thing to do in public on Earth? Because here it’s
considered disgusting.”

“No, I
mean about your thinking I’m in love with him.” She rolled her eyes. “How do
you
know?”

“Three
reasons. Well, one of them is a theory, anyway.” Lily waved her hand, urging
him to get on with it. “First, you want what’s best for him. You want him to
succeed.”

“Of
course I do!”

“Second,
I told you I’m from Vu’saar, remember?” She nodded. “I may be a half-assed
empath, but I can still pick up strong emotions. It’s like an aura.”

Lily was
confused. “How can you see that?”

“I’m not
completely defective. Lots of inferior Vu’saarns can sense when someone’s
broadcasting emotions, and you’re yelling loud and clear.” He leaned back and
crossed his arms over his chest, a satisfied grin on his face.