He smiled faintly to himself. Then he turned and headed down the concourse in the opposite direction.
This promised to be a very interesting mission.
CHAPTER 7
Fairchild stepped into the ship’s sprawling workout area and paused to look around the room. It was huge, bigger than most planetside gyms, and the tall floor-to-ceiling mirrors lining the walls only amplified the feeling of spaciousness. The center of the room had been left empty, and most of the equipment was clustered around the walls. There were free weights in one corner, machines in another, gymnastics equipment in the third, and finally a combat training area with a few heavy bags and cubbies filled with boxing gloves and wraps. The bags were swinging ever so slightly with the motion of the ship’s flight.
It had been determined beforehand that Fairchild and her team could not show up at Calyxia in a standard Guild-issue warbird. They were supposed to be wealthy socialites, after all. They needed to travel in style.
Hencethe Allura.
The ship was a luxury space yacht procured by the Guild specifically for this mission, and it was decked out to the nines. In addition to the oversized workout room, it also boasted a kitchen large enough to service a medium-sized restaurant, a formal dining room, an observation dome with a swimming pool where passengers could swim beneath the stars, an onboard spa, a rainroom shower, a wardrobe matrix, a zero-G relaxation chamber, the list went on and on.
All that, Fairchild thought,and only one goddamn bed.
She hadn’t outright balked at that detail during their initial tour of the ship, but Lennox must have seen the apprehension in her eyes.
“It will take you one week to reach Calyxia,” the woman had said. “I expect you to spend the majority of that timepracticing—and I don’t mean combat. Your performance in the briefing room was sufficient, but far from perfect. This bed is where the four of you will hone your skills.”
Fairchild hadn’t done any honing yet. They had only set out a few hours ago from Sector HQ. Reece was still at the helm, checking all the systems before they switched to autopilot. Dutton was with him. Nash was God knows where, but Fairchild wasn’t about to hunt the cocky bastard down.
She had come down here to the workout room to vent some of her nervous energy. There would be plenty of time later for theothertype of training.
Fairchild walked over to the corner of the workout room where the heavy bags were hanging and tossed her small gym bag on the floor. She paused for a moment and studied her reflection in the mirrored wall. She was dressed in a black sports bra and a matching pair of form-fitting shorts that extended halfway down her thighs. Her bare skin, formerly marked with numerous scars, was now flawless. Even the scar on her cheek, the one she had procured during that last doomed mission on Thule, was gone. Prior to departure, Guild surgeons had performed an expensive and painful laser restoration of her dermis to remove anything that might betray her true occupation.
In addition to her scar tissue, the surgeons had also erased the tattoo on her right shoulder, the insignia of her old team, Dane’s Devils. That removal had hurt worst of all.
Only temporary, Fairchild told herself.I’ll get it re-inked once the mission is over.
But she knew it wouldn’t be the same.
She knelt and unzipped her small gym bag. As she rummaged through its contents, something rattled inside. The sound sent a skitter up her spine. She found the object that had made the sound and held it up to the light.
It was a pill bottle, a small metal cylinder with a screw-on cap. When Fairchild gave it a shake, she could hear the capsules rattling inside. Lennox had given them to her earlier that day, just before departure.
Birth control pills.
But not the old, hormonal kind. These were fast-acting and short-lived. They used nanotechnology to get the job done. Each pill contained billions of medical-grade nanites which, once ingested, would target the reproductive organs, seeking out any present ovum and encapsulating it inside a molecular barrier matrix. After twenty-four hours, the matrix would collapse, and the inert nanites would be flushed from the body, with no effect on hormonal levels or long-term fertility.
As long as she took her medicine every day, there would be no risk of impregnation.
A fat drop of perspiration rolled down Fairchild’s chest and slithered between her breasts. God, she hadn’t even started her workout yet, and she was already sweating.
Fairchild placed the pills back into her gym bag and took out her wraps.
She wrapped both of her feet and ankles in a kickboxing style. Next, she did her hands and wrists. After that, she pulled on a pair of fingerless sparring gloves with minimal padding for her knuckles. Then she walked over to one of the heavy bags and got to work.
She started with a brief warmup to get the blood flowing. Jab. Cross. Hook. Push kick. Roundhouse kick. Straight knee. Spinning back kick. The leather-lined bag thumped with each impact. After a few minutes, when she was feeling warm and limber, she really started to unload.
Fairchild jabbed twice, then stepped in with a thudding push kick that rocked the heavy bag on its chain. Without pausing, she snapped off a switch kick, shin smacking leather like a gunshot, then she closed distance with a quick knee and a flurry of elbow strikes.
She pictured Victor Slayn’s face as she worked. She imagined his jaw dislocating under her knuckles, his orbital bone shattering under her foot. She broke his ribs, ruptured his organs, pounded his tanned face into a bloody wad of meat that was no longer recognizable as a human. Then she reset the image in her mind’s eye and wrecked it all over again. She kicked so hard the bag went slack on its chains. She did this for a long, long time.
At last, she paused to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding, her skin drenched in sweat. Her rage had lessened, but it was not extinguished completely. She could still feel an ember of it burning deep inside her chest. It was only a matter of time before it grew into another conflagration, a red inferno burning in the middle of a frozen snowscape.
She pushed the bag with her gloves to stop it swinging, and she pressed her forehead against the battered leather. She sighed.
“Impressive,” a voice said behind her.
