Saved by Venom: 3 (Grabbed) (28 page)

“It means I made a colossal mistake,” Thorn answered instead. “A few weeks ago, Jack tried to contact me. We hadn’t spoken since you were in the infirmary aboard my ship. When we parted, it was not on good terms.”

“Meaning?”

“He told me that I owed it to you to give you a better life but I didn’t know how to do that without hurting my wife so very much.” He gulped. “She had recently lost a child and I didn’t know how to tell her that I had a daughter down on the planet. I couldn’t reveal your existence without revealing everything about Lina and my earlier connections with Shadow Force.” He shook his head. “And then it was too late. You had been discharged to Jack and I convinced myself you were better off never knowing the truth.”

Dizzy’s stomach pitched. For a man who insisted she was created with love and not something he considered a mistake, he sure as hell had taken every opportunity to deny her very existence.

“Jack’s most recent messages to me were mishandled and jumbled. I thought he was trying to blackmail me into giving him money. What I realize now is that
he
was being blackmailed by someone who knew that I was your father. He needed money to pay them off and get the heat off you.”

“Selling my lottery number was just a smoke screen, wasn’t it? He wanted me off the planet. He wanted me to be safe.”

“Yes,” Thorn agreed. “Jack knew that if you were Grabbed our link would be discovered during the intake physical. He knew I would protect you.”

Dizzy kneaded her temples as the horror of it all hit her. “What were they blackmailing him to do?”

“Jack was making inquiries about hiring a transport ship for a cargo run between Calyx and a planet called Ryzina,” Torment explained. “It’s a planet inside Splinter territory. Our man on the inside doesn’t know the details but he confirms the transport arrangements were made. If we fail to recover the fuel rods before they’re moved to your planet, we must be able to intercept them before they reach Ryzina.”

“Well—what the hell do you want me to do?” Dizzy gawked at Torment. “I haven’t spoken to my dad in weeks.”

“Jack has gone off the grid,” Torment said. “No one can find him, not even Danny. After the wedding, he tried to touch base with Jack but he had vanished. The letter Terror passed to you reached him through four or five sets of hands. If Jack is still alive, he’s only going to reveal himself to you.”

“
No!
” Thorn’s voice echoed like a whip crack. “You are not sending my only child down there as bait.”

Torment turned that dead gaze of his to his superior officer. “With all due respect, General Thorn, you aren’t in Shadow Force anymore. This is a call
we
make.”

“Gentlemen!” Vicious stepped between the two men before things got any more heated. The admiral slid out a stealthy hand and carefully dragged her back behind him, tucking her out of the way in a protective maneuver.

Vicious pointed to the screen covering the far wall. “The SRU alpha team is preparing to breach and sweep the Splinter ship suspected of carrying the fuel rods. If the rods are there, my men will find them.” He glanced at her before fixing Torment with a glare. “And this is a call that Venom will make. This woman belongs to one of my men. I won’t allow another bride to be risked for one of your missions.”

Dizzy gulped nervously but remained hidden behind Orion. She thought of the story Venom had told her about Naya and Terror.
Please, not me too.

She stiffened at the unexpected sound of Venom’s voice hissing across the sound system. Stepping away from Orion, she glued her gaze to the screen as a live feed from the SRU mission played across it. Her heart stuttered when she realized he was leading the team into the enemy ship. Leaning against the table for support, Dizzy tried to breathe as she watched Venom and his team moving deeper and deeper into the ship.

When they started to trade fire with insurgents, Dizzy gasped. It was Thorn, her father, who put a settling hand on her shoulder. Lowering his voice, he commented, “I realize how frightening this is for you to see but this is a routine mission for Venom and his crew. He’s done this a hundred times or more.”

That didn’t make her feel any better. By the time they finished clearing the vessel, Dizzy was on the verge of vomiting from the stress of it. How Venom could handle this type of work day after day she would never understand. Watching him utilize his skills reminded her how incredibly deadly he could be—and emphasized the tender sweetness with which he had always treated her.

“Raze, report.” Vicious addressed the team via the communications link.

“Zero SRU wounded or killed in action. Seven combatants confirmed kills. Four combatants critically wounded and expected to perish. Thirteen combatants taken prisoner. The package is missing. Repeat, fuel rods are not among the cargo.”

“Where the hell are they?” Vicious wondered with frustration.

“Admiral?” A voice from below called to the sky fleet commander. “We have Commander Zephyr on the com.”

“Patch him through,” Orion ordered. “Commander?”

“Admiral, we have a problem.” Some sort of radio interference made his connection scratchy. “That ship I hit that started spiraling toward Calyx? I followed it into the atmosphere to ensure the safety of the civilians on the ground. It broke up during reentry but I witnessed seven pressurized pods pop off with chutes that deployed at survivable altitude. I’m picking up a huge and very red-hot G42 trail. The fuel rods are on the planet, Admiral. They’re in the pods.”

A flurry of activity erupted in the war room. She didn’t understand most of the lingo being bandied about but the tense tone of the conversations swirling around her told her it wasn’t good. The main screen switched from the live feed of Venom’s SRU team to an aerial view of the multiple pods Zephyr had followed onto the planet. He hovered above the smoking craters where the pods had impacted.

“Skyhawk 06 to
Valiant
—I am currently detecting a life-sign sensor on the ground.” Panic edged into Zephyr’s voice. “Can you confirm?”

“
Valiant
to Skyhawk 06,” a voice from down in the pit replied, “we detect the life sign. ID Number is A7131416.”

Vicious strode to the railing. “Repeat that.”

“ID Number is A7131416.”

The general’s rigid stance didn’t bode well. “It’s Terror. Is he alive?”

“Affirmative.”

“Is he moving?”

“Negative, sir.”

Looking absolutely stricken, Vicious spun toward Torment. “What the hell is Terror doing with those rods?”

“His job,” Torment answered matter-of-factly. “He hitched a ride on the
Night Bird
in the engineering division. There was enough Splinter chatter during the last month to put us on high alert. We hoped the SRU team and extra guard ships would be enough of a deterrent but Terror was tasked with protecting those rods in the event of an attack.”

“Did we shoot down our own man?” Thorn asked the question everyone was thinking. Now Dizzy understood the panic filling Zephyr’s voice. He had just fired upon and nearly killed one of their own.

“Skyhawk 06 to
Valiant
—I have company. Request immediate assistance. Repeat immediate assistance required.”

The aerial surveillance picked up an advancing column of heavy-duty trucks. Dizzy’s eyes widened when she noticed the surface-to-air missiles mounted in the beds of two of them. She had heard rumors about the arms dealers operating in The City but she had no idea they were bringing hardware like that to the planet.

Suddenly Orion and Vicious were shouting orders. Dizzy smartly got out of the way and melted into the background.

“Incoming!” Zephyr performed evasive maneuvers before firing on the convoy rushing toward the pods. He was badly outnumbered but refused to leave his position or leave Terror exposed.

Her gut clenched as she realized the sky corps pilots rushing to his aid were too far away. Zephyr was never going to abandon Terror, even if it meant certain death. Though he managed to take out four of the trucks, two missiles fired simultaneously outmaneuvered him. His aircraft was badly clipped and began to spin.

“Skyhawk 06 to
Valiant
, I’m hit. Repeat. I am hit.”

The calmness with which he described his situation shocked Dizzy. The pilot had shown more fear upon realizing that he had fired upon Terror than he did when faced with his the very real possibility he was about to die in a fiery crash.

“I’m going down. Skyhawk 06 is hit. I am going down.”

Horrified, Dizzy watched the aircraft spiral toward the ground. She flinched as the ship continued to take hits. The cover of the cockpit exploded as Zephyr ejected. She didn’t know how he would survive the fall through the debris field.

As the crippled aircraft slammed into the ground, the Splinters used the massive explosion to their advantage. The bright fireball lit up the night. Mostly hidden by the smoke and darkness, the Splinters gathered up the large pods and loaded them into trucks. Dizzy cupped a hand over her mouth at the sight of Terror’s lifeless body being dragged out of a crumpled life pod.

By the time the rescue squad of aircraft descended, the Splinters had raced away from the scene and disappeared into the heavily wooded area near the crash site. From Torment and Vicious’ frustrated shouts, she deduced the terrorists had disabled any sort of tracking on the pods and cut Terror’s ID chip out of his arm. Knocked unconscious by his sudden ejection, Zephyr was collected by another aircraft and reported to be in good condition.

“How could they have known to have their trucks in that vicinity?” Vicious asked the question Dizzy had been wondering. “How did they know the aircraft would go down there?”

“Zephyr dinged the aircraft after it had already locked on to its reentry trajectory,” Orion answered. “This was probably the landing site they had picked to transfer the rods to Calyx for safekeeping until the heat abated. They had to have realized the ships they’ve cobbled together would never outrun us. Stowing the rods on Calyx for a few weeks? That’s a better plan.”

“Knowing Terror,” Torment said, “he probably followed the fuel rods onto that ship and waited to make his move to secure the rods and kill the Splinter pilots after they had performed the trickiest part of the reentry procedure. Once they were locked into their landing location, the onboard navigation system would have attempted to bring them down as close as possible to the original landing site after they were hit.”

Thorn’s voice deepened to a deadly serious rasp. “I want the full might of our forces mobilized immediately. Our top priority is recovering those rods and our operative.”

While the men around her continued to talk battle strategy, Dizzy stared at the envelope she still clutched in her hand. She used her fingernail to tear the sealed edge and slipped her finger inside to rip it open. Instead of a letter as she had expected, there was only a torn postcard tucked inside.

“They could be taking those rods anywhere.” Vicious reached out to tap the touchscreen tabletop where the surface of Calyx was mapped out in quadrants.

“They have to know we can follow the radioactive trail. They’ll take them to a safe location,” Orion guessed.

“A building of some kind,” Thorn interjected. “Maybe even a warehouse that has been lined and retrofitted?”

Dizzy rubbed her thumb across the vintage postcard. The picture on the front was so faded she could barely make out the words and the image of the subway as it had been imagined and advertised during the government’s push for public support. She flipped over the card and read the simple message scrawled in her father’s handwriting.

I tried.

Her eyes closed as she experienced a surge of such soul-crushing sadness. Guilt soured her belly when she thought of the way she and her father had fought the last time she had seen him. He had been trying to save her life and she had treated him so abominably.

“They’ll take them underground.” Dizzy raised her voice to be heard over the din. “The rods are going underground.”

Torment strode toward her and snatched the postcard out of her hand. “Do you know where this is?”

She nodded. “The City started building a massive subway system, like, seventy years ago, but they ran out of money. There were all sorts of scandals surrounding the build and it was never completed. The tunnels are abandoned but they’re used by homeless people and street kids and for illegal dance parties.”

Torment showed the postcard to Vicious. “It’s the perfect place to hide a shipment of fuel rods until a transport ship can sneak them off the planet.”

“Do we even have specs of these?” Vicious took the card from Torment. “I can’t send my men in blind. There’s no telling what the Splinters could have waiting for the SRU.”

Dizzy refused to allow Venom to go into such a dangerous place without any intel. “I have a friend who knows the tunnels better than anyone. If you can get me to The City, I’ll take you to Hopper.”

“Hopper?” Orion repeated with a frown. “What kind of name is that?”

Dizzy shot him an
oh really
look. “It’s her nickname. No one knows the tunnels like her. That’s why they call her Hopper. You know? Like a rabbit in a warren?”

“You’re not going down there.” Thorn slashed his hand through the air.

Dizzy calmly stood. “It’s a little late for you to pop into my life and start thinking you can make decisions for me.”

“Actually he can,” Vicious cut in gently. “You’re his offspring, which means you’re one of us. Technically you weren’t eligible to be Grabbed. Venom had no right to claim you so your classification aboard this ship is—”

“Our laws say you belong to me,” Thorn interrupted. “I’m not risking your life. You could be walking into an ambush or worse. Those damn fuel rods may be leaking. You’re staying here where I can keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t care what your law says.” Dizzy ripped the postcard from Thorn’s hand. “My dad is missing. You know? The man who actually raised me. The man who taught me how to ride a bike and tie my shoes. The man who stayed up with me when I was sick and rocked me when I had nightmares.”