Moonstruck (12 page)

He wanted more. Yet, he mustn’t forget he had a job to do, and that had to come first. He was second-in-command of this ship. The responsibility and all that entailed needed to be forefront in his mind.

“Water—off,” he told the water-bot and grabbed a towel, scrubbing it over his chilled flesh. The water temperature had been brisk, to say the least.

The PCD he’d left on his bed was beeping, and had been for some time, he suspected. He recognized the distinctive chime—two short pips and a longer tone. It was an urgent message from the bridge.

His heart lurched. Something had happened to Brit. She was in the sick bay in grave condition because instead of staying last night to make sure she was well, he’d taken himself and his disappointed cock back to his bedroom to sulk. He never should have left her. He should have seen her first with his own eyes and made sure everything was okay. He grabbed his PCD, hooking it on his ear. “Rorkken,” he said.

“Warleader, this is Lieutenant Berkko, first-shift watch officer. Admiral Bandar requests that you report to the bridge immediately.”

So, she was recovered and back to work. He shrugged on his uniform and boots, wasting no time trekking through the corridors to the bridge.

There he found her peering at a navigational holo-vis. Her hands were clasped lightly behind her back. Her posture was impeccable. He tried not to gape at the curve of her back, or the swell of her sweet bottom. It mattered not if her breasts were covered with war medals or red silk; he found it equally difficult to ignore her body. If they were somewhere private now, he’d…
Gods be.
He thanked the heavens that his uniform jacket extended below the belt line.

“Attempt contact on all channels,” she ordered the comm officer.

“Yes, Admiral.”

“And, Hadley—” she turned to her assistant “—call up the past year’s history on anomalies in the W-285 sector and transfer it to my data-vis.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Lieutenant Keyren wore a perfect uniform and shadowed eyes. She hadn’t been drinking last night like some of her cohorts, but it appeared she hadn’t gotten much sleep, either.

Finn nodded at her and halted, hands on his hips as he turned to her superior. “Good morn, Admiral.”

At the sound of his voice, Brit glanced over at him, barely acknowledging him, barely civil. Cold anger frosted her gaze. He’d expected some awkwardness, aye, perhaps a quick, private smile, but not this. The admiral was freepin’ furo, as the space-hands liked to say.
Furious,
he’d translate to an officer. Not explosive fury; hers was frigid and still, like a polar morning after a storm front had passed, just as he’d expect.

She’d taken cover behind her Stone-Heart facade.

She’d taken cover
from him.

Finn didn’t react. No spurned-lover sullenness from him. He knew better. His body language would appear as unaffected as hers was to the casual observer. Aye, he’d not give the crew anything to gossip about. He had too much respect for Brit to do anything less.

In her usual clipped, elegant tone, she told Finn, “It appears contact has been lost with the Cupezikan outpost. As ordered by Triad Alliance Command, we’re to aid and assist as necessary in getting their deep-space comm back online.”

He followed her eyes to a blinking light depicting the settlement on the holo-vis. He rubbed his chin, trying to remember what he knew of the region. He got his bearings quickly. W-285 sector straddled the border between Coalition and Hordish territory, a line considered arbitrary during the war.

Star-Major Yarew joined them. “Population—seventeen adult males. They’ve had comm outages before. Historical data shows sporadic instances of signal disruption when the system passes through its asteroid belt. Cupezikan is a science outpost.”

It was a long way to come to study science, Finn thought. “What do they research—asteroids?”

“Sea life. In reality, though, not much. It’s quite obviously a land grab under the guise of research.”

“Aye.” Finn was familiar with the practice of land grabbing. To maintain presence and continuously push the boundaries of the border, the Coalition had offered land and often employment to those civilians too naive or maybe too desperate to realize all the dangers of living so close to Hordish territory. Or perhaps to the settlers the risks were worth the reward of land and freedom. Most of the land-grabbers were force-evacuated or destroyed during the warlord’s last offensive, but peace had brought the settlers back, apparently, including these seventeen men under the pretext of scientific study.

“It matters not why they are there, or how they got there. If the cessation of regular communications is enough to generate a go-see order, then we shall go see,” Brit said, sounding vaguely annoyed at having to respond to such a lowly directive. “It is not as if we have any other pressing, relevant business.” She tugged on the hem of her uniform jacket as if it wasn’t already immaculate. “Set course for Cupezikan. Ninety percent full acceleration.”

A pair of former Coalition pilots on duty responded. There were no wormholes through space to speed up their journey. It would be more than a ship-day before they got there.

Everyone on the bridge went immediately to work on matters relating to their first official mission. No one complained about how mundane a mission it was, helping an outpost with a tech issue. They were soldiers glad to have something to prepare for.

“Warleader.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“We’ll need a standard expeditionary crew to go down to the settlement tomorrow. Gather one.”

“Aye-aye, Admiral.” Brit fairly crackled with suppressed anger, most of it cloaked behind her chilly professionalism. She was all business. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to change after last night, but he’d expected something a hair warmer than this.

She’s freepin’ furo with you.
Aye. How could sex that good make someone so angry? Or ill, for that matter? Before the day was over, he’d have his answers. For now he’d do her bidding. She was, after all, his commander, and he’d vowed to serve her. He’d give his life to fulfill that pledge.

He walked to a comm panel to assemble his team and sat down. The smart chair sank almost to the floor before rising to the height he’d programmed. Blast the damned thing! “Do that again, and out the airlock you go,” he muttered. Was it his imagination, or did the chair give an extra jolt?

Only a few amused glances veered in his direction. He altered the settings—again. No matter what he adjusted, the so-called smart chairs did something else.

Not so different from Brit Bandar, eh?

Wary, he took his hand off the controls. The chair seemed to be holding steady now—that was, behaving like a normal chair, and he got down to business.

A peacetime minimum expedition team consisted of a shuttle craft, a pilot, a mechanic, an observer-liaison and a leader. That was a little too minimum for him. He’d throw on a couple of guards. He drummed his fingers on the console as he pondered who would make up his team. Automatically, he thought of Rakkelle to fly the shuttle. He changed his mind before he rang her quarters. He’d use the Earthling Tango instead this time, and her the next. Both pilots were well-trained in shuttle operations, but he aimed to put together a balanced team. With him along as leader, and Bolivarr as one of the guards, he needed to pick outside his own people to ensure a balanced team.

Within minutes, he’d spoken to Tango and Ensign Odin, a Coalition mechanic, a small, quiet woman who was rumored to be a genius with machinery. Next, he roused Bolivarr and another Earthling, Commander “Dice” Rothberg, formerly a type of soldier known as a SEAL. Both would provide the protection he didn’t want to go planet-side without.

A familiar, almost irresistible scent drew his attention from the data-vis.

“Admiral,” he said, turning. Brit stood behind him observing over his shoulder with Lieutenant Keyren in her shadow, as always.

“Warleader,” Brit said. Her slightly husky voice did something to him. He wanted to snatch her hands and tug her arms around his shoulders. He wanted to drag her onto his lap and kiss her until she sighed and begged him to peel off her clothes. Begged him to be inside her, just as she had last night.

Growing warm, he ran a finger around his collar. The chair bobbed suspiciously as he shifted his weight to hide any possibly visible reaction to his thoughts. With interest, Brit scanned the data-vis for the names of the team so far. “Lieutenant Keyren will serve as observer-liaison,” she said.

“Me?” Hadley gasped. At Brit’s frown, she cleared her throat and seemed to get hold of herself. “Yes, ma’am!”

“You,” Finn said, crooking a finger at the fair-haired lieutenant. “Meet me and the others in briefing room three on deck four.”

“Yes, sir.” Crisply, she turned on her heel and hurried off the bridge. Finn shook his head. Tango, Rothberg, Odin, Bolivarr and now Keyren—it was the kind of motley crew he was used to, but on a much smaller scale.

“Lieutenant Keyren?” he queried Brit after the woman had gone. “I like her, but she acts inexperienced.”

“She is. I’m to blame. I never wanted to try her out on a combat mission, and that’s all there was on the
Vengeance.
”

“I can see why. She’s your assistant. An admin specialist.”

“And I was a gunnery ensign for my first assignment. What were you when you first got on the pirate ship?”

“A deckhand,” he admitted. “I moved up.”

“And so will Hadley. She’s a Royal Galactic Military Academy graduate—with honors—with a specialty in political leadership. She has the ability to command a ship of her own someday, but she has a long way to go before she gets there and won’t get any closer following me around all day. As for you, Warleader, I need to see you in my office. There are other things that need to be addressed.” As cold as ever, Brit walked off the bridge.

Other things.
Here it comes, he thought. The brush-off.

He followed as Brit led the way, her hands clasped behind her back in her classic admiral’s stride. She sat at her desk, but he stood, avoiding the smart chair on his side. It didn’t matter that he’d updated the program only a few moments ago with his apparent preferences, the blasted things somehow continued to defy him.

“Door, close,” she commanded the room-bot. “Sit,” she commanded him.

“I’ll stand.”

She leaned back in her chair, her blue eyes glinting with cold fire. He had the feeling he was about to get his ass chewed. They were behind soundproof walls, although still in plain sight of the bridge. “Why didn’t you tell me about the bar fight?”

Blast it. He’d meant to.
After.
Then she had gotten sick, and there was no after. Finn scrubbed a hand over his face. “I forgot.”

“Conveniently. It might have spoiled the mood, hmm?”

“Damn right it might have. I happen to have liked that mood we were in. I didn’t want to see it spoiled. Did you?”

That damned dark brow lifted. She said nothing and waited for him to speak.

She’s hurt.
Of course! He was a fool not to have seen it before. It wounded her that he’d come to her quarters with secrets that might have affected the turnout of the evening. If he had to hazard a guess, she felt used. He’d withheld information in order to get something he wanted: her. “I take full blame for not informing you immediately. Yarew said he’d write it up. I knew you’d see the report when you came on duty. It was no secret.”

“They were your people, Rorkken. You said you’d take responsibility for them.”

“And I did. I took care of the situation.” He couldn’t believe they were back to arguing after being with each other so intimately. It was like last night had never happened. Not so. His aching cock and the charged atmosphere between them attested that something had indeed happened, and changed things between them whether she wanted to see it or not.

He’d be a professional, though; he’d not risk his job or his crew’s future to get back in her bed. He wanted her, gods he did, in and out of bed, but if he were forced to choose one or the other, it had to be his people. They were his responsibility, the reason he was here. By the heavens above, he hoped he was not forced to make that choice. “I spoke to the men. They won’t be doing it again.”

“I want sweef off my ship.”

“Now wait a minute, Admiral. That’s going too far.”

“Is it? It’s known galaxy-wide as a poison. It takes very little to make a person drunk. Overdosing causes irreversible brain damage.”

“And so does drinking too much of your pretty Kin-Kan wine. Anything abused is dangerous. Especially sweef,” he admitted. “My crew knows the dangers. It’s your people who don’t.” He dragged his hand over his face again, pacing away and then back. “What are we saying? They’re
our
people. Drakken, Coalition, Earthling.”

“Yours, mine, ours,” she said dismissively. “The ship’s club is a public-use crew recreational facility, not a Borderlands drinking hole. Some on this ship don’t seem to know the difference. Like the group of Drakken who drank too much last night and injured a Coalition officer without provocation.”

Finn stopped, flabbergasted, his hands hanging at his sides. “Is that what it says in the report?”

She slid the data-vis across the desk. By the time he scanned to the end, he was damn well pissed off. “The information here is inaccurate.”

“Star-Major Yarew is an intelligence officer, Warleader. A highly experienced one at that. We can trust his ability to construct and record an accurate summary of events.”

“Not in this case. The blame for what happened last night was shared. There was some tension between the Drakken and the Coalition groups in the bar. No surprise, right? Drinking sweef degenerated into a contest to see who could tolerate the most. Insults were thrown.” He decided to keep the actual accusations of murdering civilians private for fear she might agree. “The men reacted. And people were hurt.”

Brit tapped her light pen on the desk, a slight frown tugging on that luscious mouth. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say the discrepancies between his version of events and Yarew’s troubled her.