Atrophy (33 page)

Zahli rushed over and stopped him from grabbing a nucleon rifle. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re what they want. And if you go alone, how do we know that guy won’t kill Agent Petros anyway?”

Rian snatched the gun from under her grasp and flicked the strap over his shoulder, slinging it around to his back.

“What choice do we have? I’m not bringing Ella, and I’m sure as hell not going to fly off and let him kill Mae.”

“We’ll go.” Tannin stood from the co-pilot’s chair. “Zahli and me. We’ll cover up, walk out, and let you launch. By the time he realizes it’s not really you and Ella, it’ll be too late.”

Rian’s brow lowered. “You expect me to entrust the welfare of my sister and one of my oldest friends to you?”

“I lived on Erebus for twelve years. The first couple were spent with the general prison population, and I learned a trick or two. Trust me. I
will
protect them.”

Zahli’s heart leaped into overtime at the utter determination and resolve burning in Tannin’s gaze. He and Rian stared each other down until Rian shrugged the rifle off and handed it over to Tannin.

“Your life won’t be worth living if you let anything happen to either of them.”

Tannin took the gun and looked at her, something hot and eternal blazing in the depths of his eyes. Her heart stuttered to a halt and her breath caught.

“Been there, done that. Don’t want to repeat the tour.”

She couldn’t imagine what Tannin had felt when he’d thought her dead. She’d barely had time to think about it, but she saw a shadow of heartbreak in his expression, just like that moment in Rian’s car when Tannin had uttered
I thought you were dead
. There was no sentiment he could have expressed with words alone to encompass even a little of the fierce passion she saw on his face.
Love
didn’t quite cover it.

If she didn’t feel the same way, his emotional confession would have scared the frecking stars out of her.

Rian gave her a gentle push. “Zahli, see if Ella has something of hers you can put over your head, then get down to the cargo hold ASAP.”

A trickle of apprehension ran along her spine as she hurried to Ella’s quarters. For half a second she considered asking the priestess to help them, but then immediately dismissed the idea. She’d already done more than enough when they’d escaped that locked room. Not to mention the fact she’d brought Rian back from the dead.

On crew level, Ella already had a sapphire-colored, flowing type of garment laid out. Zahli thanked her, not dwelling on
how
Ella had known what she needed, and continued down to the cargo bay.

Taking a deep breath, she strove for calm and composure. There wasn’t anyone in the universe she trusted more than Tannin.

She didn’t want to know about the
tricks
he’d learned, living in hell all those years, but she had faith in him. Plus she had a few skills of her own. Rian had made damn sure of that.

Boot steps thumped on the stairs. Tannin joined her, armed like he was heading into a one-man war. He wore one of Rian’s jackets and a pair of sunglasses, with the collar of his shirt turned up around his jaw. He looked dangerous and deadly.

And oh, so frecking sexy
.

“Ready to launch it?” He strode passed her and slapped at the hatchway control panel.

Well, at least he seemed to have Rian’s swaggering bravado down.

She joined him along the frame of the atmospheric doors, tugging the material of Ella’s robe over her lighter hair and complexion. “Do you have a plan?”

He grinned, grabbing a handful of robe at her collarbone and yanking her against him for a quick, intense kiss. “Come back a hero. An
alive
hero.”

She frowned, annoyance at his audacity threading through her. “You’ve been spending too much time with my brother.”

“Don’t I know it.” He took out a nucleon gun and checked the power pack as the ramp finished lowering. The weapon made a solid
chink
noise as he shoved the energy chamber home again. “Let’s get this over with.”

She let him stay a step ahead of her as they left the ship, their feet barely off the hatch before it started lifting once again. Light prickles of trepidation skimmed beneath her skin. Unlike Tannin, she didn’t want to come back a hero. She just wanted to stay alive. And keep everyone she loved that way, too.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
annin put himself into his best Rian-type stance, feet braced wide, ready for a fight. Zahli stood behind his left shoulder, swathed from head to toe in the soft, voluminous sapphire robe. The
Imojenna’s
heavy-atmosphere engines roared above them and the ship lifted off the ground in an elegant movement, giving him a direct line of sight to where the UAFA soldier stood with Agent Petros.

The soldier moved forward, dragging a resisting Mae with him. Tannin took a few cautious steps, knowing the game would be up any second now and he’d only have a moment to act. The UAFA soldier might not have any weapons, but he could snap Agent Petros’s neck in an infinitesimal fraction of time.

As he’d expected, the soldier hesitated and then stopped altogether, anger and realization distorting his features. “You’re not—”

Tannin fired the nucleon gun as Petros twisted and dropped out of the way. The blast glanced off the agent’s shoulder and sent him stumbling. Mae wrenched all the way out of the man’s grasp and sprinted toward them. When she got clear, Tannin fired again, dead center of the agent’s chest. The guy staggered, but didn’t fall and just kept on coming.
What a surprise
. The lead UAFA agent on their case wasn’t quite human.

Tannin tossed the nucleon gun to Petros and swung the rifle around, flicking it to automatic fire and letting rip. It took a few seconds of tearing shots, peppered at the agent’s torso and head, but at last he teetered back a few steps then collapsed like a stone to the hangar floor.

The silence after the rupturing noise of the rifle rang a high pitched whine in his ears. No one moved and he kept the gun up, because he could almost believe the agent would get up and make another run on them.

“You killed my commanding officer.” Mae stepped into his line of sight, holstering the nucleon gun as she started back toward the unmoving agent.

He didn’t take his eyes off the crumpled form, ready to fire again at the slightest twitch.

“Just be careful.”

Zahli caught up with him and together they moved closer to the fallen soldier.

Mae forced out a half laugh, half scoff. “What? You think he’s going to get up after being pounded by automatic rifle fire? Which was total overkill by the way.”

“I don’t think it was.” Not when the bastard refused to go down and stay down.

Reaching the body first, Mae went to crouch down next to it, but halfway through the motion, jumped back a step. “Oh my god! That’s not Agent Cabell.”

“No, it’s not,” Zahli answered, staying well back.

Mae ran a hand over her long ponytail, tugging on the end.

“Is that one of those things Rian keeps going on about?” She backed away from it, not waiting for an answer. “What am I supposed to report to my superiors? That an
alien
took over the operation and you guys killed it?”

A rumbling overhead stopped Tannin from answering. The
Imojenna
dropped back to land in a different docking bay, a couple of ships over.

He turned and took Zahli’s hand, leading her away from the dead Reidar, toward their ship. “Does this mean your brother doesn’t trust me after all?”

“It means we don’t have to take public transfer to Auberon.
If
that’s where Rian still wants to go.” She pushed off the material covering her head and stepped out of the flowing garment, making him think about stripping her out of the rest of her clothes.

In the very near future.

He laced their fingers together, holding her hand tighter. He could tell by the slight tilt of her lips that her thoughts had gone in the same direction as his.

By the time they crossed the hangar, the hatchway had already lowered and Rian sauntered down the ramp to meet them, with everyone else behind him.

“Agent Cabell wasn’t really Agent Cabell,” he told Rian, handing the nucleon rifle back.

“Not surprised.” Rian also took the jacket after he shrugged out of it, with Callan taking the weapon belt. All that stuff weighed a ton.

Tannin looked up the ramp, where at least four people stood between him and Zahli’s quarters. On a scale of one to ten, how enraged would Rian be if he hauled Zahli over his shoulder and carried her up to her cabin?

Mae stopped beside him, glaring at Rian. “What am I supposed to do now, Rian?” She sounded more than a little pissed. Of course, shock could do that to a person.

Rian shrugged. “About what? Nothing’s changed. Agent Cabell has probably been a Reidar for months and you never noticed.”

Mae crossed her arms. “How am I supposed to go on working for UAFA when I’ll be looking at all my superiors and fellow officers, wondering which of them might really be a
shape-shifting alien
?”

“Then don’t. Go back to the IPC. I told you I had a favor to ask you anyway. But we’ve got reason to believe the Reidar have infiltrated every government, military, and major private corporation in the galaxy. Or if they haven’t yet, they soon will.”

Mae’s shoulders tightened up. “Then who am I supposed to trust?”

Rian shook his head. “No one.”

“What about you?”

Rian laughed. “You know you can’t trust me. Why even ask?”

She sighed. “That’s really helpful. And what am I supposed to report when the other agents wake up and find you all gone?”

Tannin glanced back at the body. They should probably do something about it before people started returning to the hangar, although it was already melting into goo. “Tell them Agent Cabell took us to Erebus on his own.”

Rian nodded. “We’ll get rid of his uniform. No one will ever know otherwise.”

Mae cocked her hip, irritation evident. “You really think anyone will believe that? And what happens when you don’t arrive at Erebus?”

“Most UAFA agents are total droids. They’ll believe what you tell them. I don’t know how you can stand working for them.” Rian made a face.

Mae deflated a little. “Yeah, well I don’t know how a career-military guy like you can
not
work for anyone.”

Rian’s bearing turned somber. “I’m not that man any longer.”

Rian might not be fighting for any specific organization these days, but what he
was
fighting for was a whole lot more important.

Which reminded him of those few desolate weeks when he’d thought he’d lost Zahli forever.

Her fingers were warm and slender in his, awareness of her soft palm against his zinging all the way up his arm. Tannin looked down to find her gazing up at him. He thought he’d learned a lot about life from living on Erebus, but he hadn’t really known anything. Not until he’d met Zahli.

His hands slid from her fingers, up her arm, drawing her closer. Her clothes were still damp from the dash through the rain earlier, as were his, but in the midst of all the chaos, he hadn’t noticed. Until now, anyway. Hadn’t he planned a steaming, hot shower for them both?

Rian and Mae were still talking, but he didn’t care anymore. Hell, they could have been plotting his return to Erebus and he wouldn’t have noticed, not when his imagination had already sped him on to the moment he could get Zahli naked and flush against him.

She shook her head. “I can see what you’re thinking, and I feel it’d be better for all concerned if you kept a lid on it. At least until we can talk to Rian and lay down some ground rules.”

Tannin grinned, knowing he was looking for trouble, but unable to help it. Zahli made him reckless. “Telling me what
not
to do is always the best way to guarantee I do exactly the opposite.”

Before she could come up with any more too-damn-reasonable sounding arguments, he pulled her to him. He caught her mouth, groaning at the sensation of her lips beneath his and her body limber against him. They might have been standing outside the ship in front of the entire crew, but he had no way to control the bright, hot flash of desperate yearning that surged through him. Zahli pressed closer to him, one arm around his shoulders, while her fingers threaded into the hair at the base of his neck, sending a lush shudder all the way to his toes.

His heart thundered in his chest, urging him onward to oblivion, but he pulled back a little. “Zahli, I owe you something.”

She smiled, arching gently against him. “Your life? Your very existence outside of Erebus?”

His laugh came out a bit breathless, since her breasts were pressed against his chest and her hips cradled the hardening length of him, a little awkward considering their not-so-private location.

“Yes, all that. But I meant, when you were leaving from Tetsu,
god
, it was like tearing my heart out. No, what came after tore my heart out. When you left, you know what I wanted to tell you.”

A mischievous gleam lit her dark blue eyes. “That I’m the best lover you’ve ever had?”

He frowned at her. “You really make a guy work for it when he’s trying to tell you that he loves you and wants to spend the rest of his life with you.”

She shrugged, but some of the playfulness left her expression, softening her gaze into something breathtaking. “Do I? I wouldn’t know. No guy has ever tried to tell me that before.”

He leaned down and kissed her hard, but too briefly for his liking. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. One day we’re going to get married and have lots of chubby babies. I love you, Zahli. And instead of telling you, how about I show you?”

Bending his knees a little, he grabbed her just below her damn sexy ass and lifted. With a laugh, she wrapped her legs around his waist and wound an arm around his shoulders, her other hand coming to rest against his jaw as she kissed him again.

“You’re going to get us in big trouble,” she said between kisses.

“I don’t care.” He nipped at her collarbone, tasting the delicious warmth of her skin as he started walking them toward the ramp. “Screw Rian. He’s just going to have to learn to live with me being his brother-in-law.”

Rian glared as they passed him. “What was that, Everette?”

“I said,
screw you, Rian
.”

Rian yanked out a pulse pistol. “You and I need to have words, scumrat. How about we start by you putting my sister down so I can shoot you in the balls?”

“I’m not putting your sister down, not until I find a bed. And when Zahli and I come out, then we can have words. About getting married. See you in a couple of days.”

Rian swore under his breath, loud enough for him to hear of course. But Rian’s bluster didn’t scare him, not when he had Zahli in his arms and a future to look forward to. One he’d never dreamed possible.

“Tannin?” Zahli leaned back to look him in the eye as they made her room. “I love you, too… But I’m just wondering, when you say ‘lots of chubby babies,’ exactly how may do you mean?”

He knew his smile was wicked as he dropped her on the bed and came down on top of her. “Let’s start making some and see where we end up.”

She helped him wiggle out of clothes until they were both naked. “No plan sounds like a good plan to me.”

He pressed against her, warm naked skin to skin, a feeling of home stealing through him. “As long as I’m a free man and I’ve got you, nothing else matters.”