Moonstruck (21 page)

Finn nodded. “Admiral Bandar and the ship’s staff will want to hear what you told me just now. Understand? Once we’re aboard, I want you to pull those seven out of the crowd to be questioned.” They had valuable information, leading, he hoped, to the skullers.

“Admiral Bandar, as in
the
Admiral Bandar?”

“Aye. The one and only.”

“The legendary,” Hadley put in, proud.

“That’s going to cause quite a bit of excitement amongst my village, more so for the adults. For the children the chance to see a galaxy-class starship is a wonder all on its own.”

“You’ll all be there soon enough.” Finn rounded up Rothberg, Bolivarr and Keyren. “Let’s have a look at that ship.” They trudged off through the rain. “Admiral,” he called to the
Unity
on his PCD.

“Warleader.”

He steeled himself against the effect her voice had on him. He wanted this day to be over. He wanted to be in bed with her. With Brit, he was anything but a gods-be-damned pet. “News,” he said. “Apparently they’ve gained seven adults in the past few days. All of them fleeing a Drakken attack.” He dragged a hand over his face. His Triad expedition suit was light-years more comfortable than his old, scratchy, smelly Drakken sweater, but he’d rather be dry. Too many years spent huddled soaking wet and cold in a warehouse had left him despising wet weather. “I’m going to ID the ship. It was a hard landing—under ten slogs of mud the settlement leader says.” He yelled above the roar of Rakkelle’s shuttle lifting off. “Your first shipment of refugees is on the way. All the children are aboard.”

Brit made a soft noise of displeasure. “I’ll give the docking crew fair warning.”

Finn ended the call. “I don’t think the admiral sounds quite ready for little ones aboard.”

Lieutenant Keyren got a funny look on her face and glanced away, saying nothing. Finn wondered at that. He’d never stopped to ponder whether Brit enjoyed children as much as he did. He’d assumed she would, even though her career, like his, had prevented her from having any of her own. Was he wrong? For some damned reason, he pictured her as a mother. He pictured her with their child.

Rorkken, you sentimental fool,
he berated himself.

“Let’s get this mission wrapped up and our asses off this planet. With the
Unity
watchin’ over us, the danger of a surprise attack is nil, but an attack is still possible. We want to be on the bridge if that happens.”

True to the settlement leader’s word, the crashed ship sat buried in mud. It would take hours to dig the vessel out. Rothberg went down on one knee, scraping away muck. “I’m going to get us in.” He moved his gloved fingers along a seam and paused, withdrawing one hand to scratch his chest. “It feels like I’ve got a mosquito in my suit.”

“Mosquito? What’s that?” Hadley asked.

“A pesty Earth insect. They b-bite.” His hand moved faster now, up and down as if he were making a parody of scratching an itch. Then a deep, shuddering, guttural sound came out of his mouth.

“Gods be damned,” Finn growled, taking a running step toward the man. “He’s convulsing!”

R
OTHBERG SAGGED
to the mud. Finn caught the man and dragged him away from the ship. The Earthling’s body was stiff and jerking. It took all his weight to hold the man down. “Get me a med kit!”

Hadley ran to the shuttle. Finn pulled off his glove and wedged it between Rothberg’s teeth. Blood foamed around his lips. He’d bitten his tongue. His lids fluttered, revealing the whites of his eyes.

Bolivarr crouched next to them. “I know what this is. I know what to do.”

“Do it, then.”

Rothberg seemed to be in the throes of the worst agony imaginable. Bolivarr tore open the man’s uniform and hunted with his hands until he found a small red mark on his chest. He lowered his mouth to the tiny wound. Rothberg’s convulsions bucked him off. “Keep him down, Warleader.”

“Trying.” Finn struggled to get a better grip, leaning his whole weight on the strong Earth soldier while keeping the glove in place so Rothberg wouldn’t bite off his tongue.

Bolivarr’s cheeks moved in and out as he went back to sucking at the wound and pushing inward with his index fingers.

Hadley returned with the med kit. She searched for a mouth guard and took care of exchanging the glove for the guard. Suddenly, Bolivarr came up on his knees and spat something into his hand. It was a thin, bright blue cylinder.

“What, pray goddess, is that?” she asked.

“Booby trap.” Bolivarr worked spit in his mouth and again spat on the ground, repeating the action several times. “Poison,” he explained in staccato gasps. “Designed for timed release to make death the most prolonged and the most agonizing it can be.”

“Did you get it out in time?” Finn asked.

“It’s only a quarter gone. I don’t know.”

“Did
you
swallow any?” Hadley asked, a note of panic in her voice.

“I don’t think so.”

She murmured what sounded like a prayer.

Rothberg went limp. Swearing, Finn started resuscitation. “His color’s going blue,” Hadley said urgently. “Try the heart-starting patch.” She dug the item out of the medical kit, pressing it to the man’s chest.

It didn’t work.

“Come on, man. Come on.” He kept pumping the chest cavity and filling the man’s lungs with air until it was apparent the heart had stopped. He drove his hands through his dripping hair. “Damn shame…”

“Breathe,”
Bolivarr said, taking over.

“Bolivarr, he’s gone.” He covered Bolivarr’s shoulder with a gentle hand as the wraith worked to revive Rothberg. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“I should have checked for booby traps first.” He kept pumping, even after Rothberg’s color deepened to a darker blue. “I didn’t think this ship would be rigged. I didn’t think.”

Hadley’s heart twisted with Bolivarr’s pain. “It’s not your fault,” she said. Her voice seemed to break his frenzied, futile efforts. “He didn’t die because of you.”

Bolivarr sat back on his heels, his eyes utter desolation. “Wraith, taker of life…”

He thought that of himself? To feel that way would be awful. Aching with Bolivarr’s pain, aching from the loss of a friend, she pressed a hand over Rothberg’s heart. She thought of the time in the officer’s-club restaurant when he’d dressed up in costume to serve the Earth food. Doing it all for a friend. Goddess, Tango was going to take this hard. How were they going to break it to him?

Something jumped in Rothberg’s chest, under her palm. Hadley jumped back. He inhaled a shuddering, raspy breath and moaned.

Hadley grabbed Bolivarr’s arm. “Not taker of life,” she corrected. “
Giver.
He’s alive!”

T
ANGO SPRINTED
from the shuttle bay to the medical ward. “Fuck it! What happened to him?” he demanded, distraught as Rothberg was carried, unconscious on a smart-stretcher.

Hadley intercepted him. “Booby trap—a poisoned dart. Bolivarr saved him.”

Neither the wraith nor Tango acknowledged Bolivarr’s act. She wished it were different.
Wraith, taker of life.
Inside that composed exterior was a man struggling to make sense of who or what he was.

Swearing up a storm, most of it in a language she didn’t know, Tango tried to muscle his way into the exam room, dragging Hadley in his wake.

“If you care about the man,” Dr. Kell warned, “you’ll stay out of the way, Major.”

“You’d better take a look at Bolivarr, too, Dr. Kell,” she suggested. “He had the dart in his mouth.”

“I’m fine,” the wraith said, seeming to fade away even as she watched him, becoming quieter, more shadowlike. The man of emotion who’d thought he’d lost Rothberg had disappeared.

“Have him check you all the same,” she said.

Tango wouldn’t budge from the triage room door, where inside his friend lay prone on a table, surrounded by medical personnel. “Dice, wake up. Come on. This ain’t funny.” He stood, helpless, as Dr. Kell closed the door in his face.

“Dice!” He pounded once on the door before Hadley got him away.

She grabbed his arms. “Pray. That’s the best thing we can do for him right now.”

His brown eyes shimmered with held-back tears as he pulled her close, and almost off her feet. His whiskers scraped the side of her neck. “He can’t die. He can’t.”

“They’ll do everything they can for him. At least he’s alive. At least we’ve got that.” Hadley held him close. Warmth spread through her with the knowledge that she could comfort him, and that he’d sought her out for that comfort.

“Hey, Earthling Flyboy. Sorry about your friend. I know what it feels like, and it freepin’ sucks.” Rakkelle stood nearby with her pilot gloves clutched in one hand. She’d hooked her jaw-length black hair behind an ear decorated with jewelry and micro-tattoos. Black shadow smudged the rims of genuinely sympathetic eyes. She probably was well-versed in what it felt like to lose or almost lose a friend. Admittedly, she and the other Drakken had witnessed more death and destruction than Hadley ever had or, hopefully, ever would.

Tango looked up. “Thanks, Rocky.”

Bolivarr had faded once more into the background, a shadow. It made Hadley a bit uncomfortable that he watched her very public embrace. Good thing she’d left the mood ring stored in her quarters while gone on the mission. It would be a rainbow of colors if she were wearing it.

Tango tugged on her hand. “I’ll go crazy standing around waiting to hear something, baby girl. Let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t. I have to be at the debriefing with the ship’s senior officers.” For the first time in her life she cursed her duties.

“But I need you,” he said under his breath. She squeezed her eyes shut out of guilt. “I need you with me tonight. Baby, please. I can’t be alone.”

Her heart filled to overflowing at the rawness in his tone. “You won’t be. Not for long.”

“How long you gonna be?”

“I’ll try to get out as soon as I can.” There would be a lot to cover in the debriefing; she wasn’t too confident that what she’d promised Tango was true.

Tell him no. Tell him you can’t.

His lips brushed her ear. “I’ll be in my quarters.”

“All right.” That was that. Tango needed her, and she’d be there for him. She avoided looking at Rakkelle as she walked away. As far as she was concerned, the woman might have had him for one sweef-fueled bar-kiss. Hadley would have him for everything else. Now, and for a lifetime.

B
RIT ADDRESSED HER STAFF
in the conference room that still reeked from the seven unwashed refugee men that Yarew debriefed there and released only moments ago. “There was little of interest for us beyond tales of being frightened and chased by a Drakken cruiser. I’m disappointed but not surprised. This is what happens when you have civilians giving you data. To them all ships are either good or bad. Identifying characteristics like ship numbers and names are not of interest and thus not remembered and passed along.”

The seven did answer one question for them all, however: the attackers weren’t mere raiders. The Drakken Horde was back.

They would be stopped.

A sense of purpose filled her once more as she pushed back from the table. “Star-Major, have Triad intelligence send a team to Goddess Reach to excavate the crashed ship and recover data from its onboard computers.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Yarew was inputting the request as she uttered it.

“The data will give us what we need to track the attacking ship—if it wasn’t cloaked.” By then it might be too late for whomever the raiders targeted next. Silence around the table told her the others shared her feeling of dread and helplessness. She detested this part of the hunt most of all: having the quarry slip through her fingers, unable to stop them before they inflicted more pain and suffering. She made a fist on the table which, she saw in her next breath, Finn had noticed.

His eyes were shadowed, as were everyone else’s. She knew how exhausted she was only because she could see it in the faces of her crew. And in her lover’s.

She tried not to think about how, with one look in those observant, soft brown eyes of his, she wanted to fall into his embrace and lose the world. Every cell in her body ached for him, and the hours they’d have in bed later. Not so much for the sex, though she hungered for it, but for the way he held her so very close afterward. Sometimes she fell asleep pressing her lips to his warm skin. Would she ever be able to sleep alone again?

She steeled herself against the desire. Tender feelings for a Hordish man with the possibility of the Triad splitting apart in civil war were at minimum a distraction, and a black mark on her judgment as a commander on the other end of the scale. Neither was acceptable.

End it now.
Ah, but how? It had come down to him and war. Not too long ago the choice would have been an easy one to make. What in hells was she going to do? She didn’t want to give him up. She couldn’t continue the relationship with him if political tensions increased, either. To do so would be professional suicide.

Her PCD chimed. “Admiral, this is Dr. Kell.”

“Go,” she said, transferring the call to her data-vis so the others could hear.

“Commander Rothberg’s vital signs are stable. I’m keeping him in an induced coma until I can flush the poison from his system. It’s going to take some time due to cellular bonding.”

Poisons that gripped you by the throat on the molecular level, she thought darkly. Leave it to the Drakken to perfect such evil. Yes, but they’d done so using stolen Coalition technology. She hoped it could be used to counter the effects of the poison. The entire ship was pulling for Rothberg’s recovery.

Kell said, “I’m told Battle-Lieutenant Bolivarr removed the source of the poison before it emptied—at the risk of his own life. I’d say that saved his life.”

“He most certainly will be recognized for his efforts. Keep me advised, Doctor.”

“Yes, Admiral.” The call ended.

“Hadley, confirm that you already sent my request to headquarters for a Goddess Courage Medal for Bolivarr?”

“Yes.” The girl looked uncomfortable. “It was refused.”

“For what reason?”

“It just came back with a stamp—denied.”

The attacks were already having the predicted effect. She could picture the meeting under way on the Ring at that very moment, where she’d appeared virtually soon after reporting the evacuation of Goddess Reach. Everyone but the Goddess Herself had been there: Prime-Admiral Zaafran, Supreme Commander Neppal, Supreme-second Fair Cirrus, the new Prime Minister Belduin and an assortment of Earthlings she didn’t recognize. Only one elderly Drakken statesman was in attendance; like an old, neutered former attack hound, once a threat but rendered harmless now.

Zaafran had leaned forward at the meeting table, light-years distant on the Ring, and folded his hands on the glossy surface. “Keep up the good work,” he’d told her. “Until our force presence in the Borderlands is at acceptable levels, you’re our main defense.”

Brit kept her snort silent. The Triad’s best defense? With a green crew of mixed heritage, one-third of whom were on the “other” side, commanded by a woman who hunted Drakken by day and slept with one at night.

She rose, gathering her data-vis. “We’ll keep analyzing ion echoes. It’s not an exact science, unfortunately, but even a trace will give us something to track. Meanwhile, it’s been a long night. If there’s nothing else, this meeting is adjourned.”

When no one spoke up, she departed the room.

She walked onto the bridge as she had for each of the countless days over the past fifteen years since she’d taken command of a starship. Not once during any of those intervening years did she ever face the sight she did now.

Startled, horrified, she halted. Squealing, energetic children swarmed over the bridge. Several of them fought to climb onto her command smart chair. Berkko, the watch officer, laughed as he carried a joyful little boy on his shoulders…a little boy with dark, ruffled hair who looked all too much like Dellan. The sight hit her like a gut punch.

She gripped a console to keep her voice steady. “Lieutenant Berkko.” Her teeth were clamped together. “There are to be no children on the bridge at any time.”

The officer’s smile faded. “Yes, Admiral. They were so scared. Coming here really cheered them up….” His eyes widened at her rising fury. “Yes, Admiral.” He lifted the boy over his head. “Right away, Admiral.” He and some of the other Coalition officers herded the children off the bridge.

Outside, the misty planet of Goddess Reach filled the forward window. Brit stared at it, hands squeezed together behind her back, until she’d tamped down the urge to send the settlers back home
immediately.
“Warleader,” she snarled. “Get headquarters on the comm. Have them forward a location where we can offload the settlers. This warship is no place for them.”

“Aye, but this is a diplomatic vessel, too, is it not?” he quipped. “Prime-Admiral Zaafran thought so.”

Brit shook her head and stormed toward her office.

Baffled, Finn watched her go.

“The white box,” Lieutenant Keyren murmured.

He turned. “What white box?”