The Mithrakon, an extraordinarily rare species in the Zeta Quadrant, lifted his eyes from the screen to flick them my way before focusing back on the male in charge of the mission. They gleamed yellow, brown, and black in sharply striated layers around his narrow pupil. “I do not get much activity from inside the building itself. It’s impossible to tell if the scientists still live, but if the guards do, I’d estimate the odds are ninety percent in their favor.”
The Sineater nodded, a smirk spreading across his deep gray features, while the black layer of his symbiont writhed along his bare skull to settle in dangerous spikes. “This is now officially a rescue mission. Frederique shall be pleased, and so shall our credit accounts.” That made the rest of the crew—ready and awaiting orders—give eager affirmatives, some elbowing their buddies as they made crude remarks about what they’d be spending those credits on.
“Shall I blast us an opening with the shuttle through that little fence?” Aramon suggested, bouncing eagerly on the toes of his boots. “I promised Evie I’d replace the ‘bra’ I shredded last night,” he added, and he grinned at his twin, who stood like a silent wraith just behind his shoulder. Whatever Solear answered with was not for our ears, as he only ever spoke telepathically to his twin or mate.
“Don’t go spending your money just yet,” Mitnick interrupted the eager horde of mercenaries. He flicked his feathered crest back as he pointed at readings on his datapad we could not see. My fingers tightened around the not-Bex cannon in my grip, certain this was goingto be bad news. “There’s movement in the jungle, three klicks south. I suspect we’ll have natives incoming.”
The Sineater peered at what Mitnick was seeing on his screen. “I guess we’d better get a move on, ladies!” he barked. Yes, time for action, and this time, I was here to protect my friends. This was what I’d trained my ass off for, week after week. Grabbing the team assigned to me, we headed into the trees, and they fell confidently in behind me. They trusted me, did not question my strength or my health. If I still felt the occasional twinge in my chest muscles, it was so minor I told myself it was nothing to worry about.
The research facility was small and compact, surrounded by a temporary fence and gate that had been electrified and reinforced with a shield generator. We could only breach it if we took out that shield generator, but our sniper would take care of that in a moment. Saisir was young—only twenty—but he was an excellent marksmale, and cool under fire. I could not pick out where he and his team were, but his long Naga body and black scales made him the perfect climber for these tall trees.
It wouldn’t take long, but I was still eager to move, to take care ofourpart of the mission: the electric fence and gate. For that, Bex was perfect, and I much preferred being on the front lines, first to breach. No—my fingers tightened on the grip of the cannon, twitching against the trigger. Not Bex. This wasn’t my trusty laser cannon at all, and for a moment, a sweep of nerves crashed through me. I buried that feeling beneath the cold blade of protective rage, then breathed through numbing exercises that settled over my mind like a cool blanket.
The units that made up the building were all oblong boxes interlocked together and designed to be moved at a whim. A clever design for a temporary structure: reusable, stable, and secure. I sighted through the loose scope I’d kept in a pouch on my hip to get a better read on what was moving inside the fence: Kertinal soldiers, moving calmly, armed to the teeth, and wearing the standard uniform of the empire. “Something’s wrong with that picture,” I muttered, tapping the scope to the edge of my jaw as I considered what it was.
A’varon, standing right behind my shoulder and a Kertinal himself, recognized it instantly. “The one at the gate has a notch in his horn,” he said, a deep growl in his sub-harmonic voice. He reached up with black and silver fingers to touch one of his own spiraling horns, smooth and uncarved. “This has got to be a disguised mercenary team.”
He was right. I aimed my scope at the male he indicated and could make out a notch in the Kertinal’s horn. It was not your typical v-notch, but a wide slash in the keratin. “You sure that’s not just a scar?” I asked, but only to be certain. A’varon might struggle to follow rules, but he was a competent male I’d gladly have at my back.
It was Raukesh who answered, having joined my group for the breaching after his little scouting trip. “If it were a scar, he’d mask it with a band of metal. No, that’s a badly disguised notch. These are mercenaries.” I nodded grimly, aware that this could not mean good things for the scientists we were here to retrieve.
“Call it in,” I ordered, but I followed up the command with, “We’re breaching anyway. This doesn’t change the mission.” A’varon gave me a scowl as he struggledto handle the simple command, but Raukesh immediately reached for his comm. He was still talking to the Sineater when the laser shot came from the trees, whizzing over our heads and striking something inside the secure compound. Shouts went up, the shields went out, and that was our cue. “Let’s go,” I said, and I charged low through the underbrush, cannon cradled against my chest.
The pounding of footsteps behind me told me A’varon and Raukesh were on my heels, and when we came abreast of the gate, I raised not-Bex. I was numb—the rush of battle powerful—and felt nothing as I fired the weapon, not even worry that it wouldn’t go as expected. It did: the gate exploded, the guard beyond it thrown wide. We were through before the smoke could clear, and my team was not the only one.
Taking out the gate took the electricity off the wall, and the Sineater, the twins, Thatcher, and Flack climbed in from the back. Now the Kertinal mercenaries would have to deal with an attack from two sides. They never had a chance. Sweeping through the front door, I took out the first resistance we met with a punch to the face. A shout reached our ears then, it was high-pitched, full of fright, and definitely female.
Everything became a bit of a blur to me then, protective instincts surging beneath the cool control of my emotional conditioning. Hallway, blood smears, a Kertinal with an Aderian female in his arms. I barely registered either of them, because that scream had come from beyond the door behind them. I barreled past and suddenly found myself inside a lab, the scent of blood thick in the air.
That’s when I saw her. Something clicked inside my chest, the feeling so odd that I was certain, for a moment, that either the cannon or my metal ribs were malfunctioning. She was Aderian, like the scientists were supposed to be. Her eyes—huge and pure black—reflected my own image back to me like mirrors. I looked like a brute: scarred, gray, dangerous; all my jagged teeth displayed in a feral grin.
She was bleeding from a split lip, and her shoulder was crooked, bumpy in the way only a bad dislocation could look. She had to be in terrible pain, but she was standing upright, dead center in the room, her legs braced apart. Something about her shouted raw strength and defiance. As fragile and small as she was—wounded, bloody, clothes torn—she was the opposite of my sister. Bexlin had been so sweet and soft, so antithesis of everything Rummicaron; but this Aderian, who by definition was supposed to be soft and weak, appeared the opposite. I was entranced.
“Run, Danitalin, now!” a voice husked from somewhere, weak, growing weaker, and definitely male. Blood was pooling thick and dark along the floor beyond the second workbench. I did not secure the room, did not check the wounded male, who would die unless he received immediate medical aid. Instead, I rushed across the tile, my boots thudding heavily with each strike of my heel.
“You’re Danitalin Hiraza? We’re here to rescue you,” I said, catching the brave female by the waist. I would have thrown her over my shoulder and hauled her out of there the moment she nodded her confirmation. Perhaps I would not even have waited for confirmation, because I was dead set on saving thisfemale either way.
She jerked her head back, her hand slapping roughly against the armor that covered my chest. “Jeltom needs help,” she snapped. I jerked my chin, and could tell from the sounds behind me that Raukesh was rushing across the room to look at the wounded man. Her expression shifted, and her uncanny black eyes flicked to the work table, where a satchel lay half-shoved behind a microscope. “I need my samples.”
I grabbed the bag, then I grabbed her, throwing her over my shoulder just like I’d envisioned moments ago. She would get a face full of laser cannon, and it had to be tough on her dislocated shoulder, but speed was of the essence here. “Got the head one,” I called into my comm. “One down, two others accounted for. Securing payload.” The Sineater hissed an affirmative as I jogged from the compound, leaving my crew behind to clean up the rest of the mess and retrieve the others. I did not think the injured male was going to make it; he’d lost far too much blood.
The area inside the fence was empty, but I met resistance as I crashed through the gate a second time and began running back to the shuttles. Laser fire forced me to swerve and duck for cover, my precious load pinned across my shoulder. Saisir assured me he was laying down cover fire, but just to be sure, I took the circuitous route through the trees. My Aderian scientist was silent, but the compound behind us was not—it was all shouts and gunfire, and I tried not to let worry burst through the coolness of my Rummicaron numbness.
The clearing was coming into sight. I saw the glint of a silver artillery barrel and a patch of Brace’s blue fur. The Sineater was pulling back with the rest of the men, approaching our landing site in a large huddle. I did notknow if they had the injured male with them, but they were moving fast, so probably not. “Almost there,” I assured my burden. We weren’t being shot at, which I counted as a win, while the others definitely were.
Then chaos struck. Mitnick shouted, “Incoming!” just as something huge crashed through the trees between me and Brace. Two legs, a long, sinuous tail of thick black segments and a barb, and a massive, muscled upper body: it was one of Radin’s natives, and he’d come here to fight, swinging wide with a huge wooden club, practically the size of a full-grown tree. Brace fired, I swerved, and then the Sineater was yelling orders in my ear. “Secure the payload! Get out of here, Jaxin!”
So I did, spinning on my heel and ducking into the darkening jungle before the Radin giant could spot me.
Chapter 6
Danitalin
It was impossible to describe what it felt like to be touched by someone andnotbe overwhelmed by their feelings. After the harrowing last couple of days, I was so raw, so sensitive that this abrupt quietness came as a shock. I knew there were a lot of things going wrong all around me, and even my body was a mess, screaming in pain. And yet… I felt an odd sense of peace unfurl inside my chest.
This brute of a Rummicaron—huge, scarred, and armed to his many freaking teeth—had hauled me out of the research facility like I was some prize booty. Then we were in the jungle, and the calm he anchored me to seemed to spread until it engulfed me. Vaguely, I knew I could hear shooting going on, things exploding, people screaming. There was the thundering thud andthump of something huge… None of it made much of an impression; they were blurs of noise that barely existed at all inside the bubble of quietness I’d suddenly found myself in.
Why had I never considered how peaceful it could be for an empath to be surrounded by beings who didn’t feel? They should teach that to us in university, the ultimate restful vacation: visit one of the six dozen Rummicaron worlds and recharge those frayed empathy pathways with a dose of silence. Was it truly silent, though? I had always wondered that, because I simply couldn’t imagine existing without feeling.
