Ziame’s clawed feet hit ground that wasn’t quite solid, a pit trap opening up beneath him that I had no doubt would have killed a lesser man. He rolled, lightning-fast reflexes preventing a fatal plunge into the dark hole yawning beneath him. His tail lashed, tipped with sharp spikes, but the Shadow Unit soldier danced out of the way at the last moment. He would have succeeded in kicking Ziame when he was off balance, perhaps sending him into that hole after all—except he hadn’t counted on me.
Shouts went up, friendly fire brushed past my head, and then I collided with the male. Metal claws curled from my fingers, alloy sharp and strong enough to cut through nearly anything. They dug into his flesh, tore through armor not nearly as good as mine, and scraped bone.
A blast of fire went up to my left, where Ziame was, but I couldn’t pay attention to the Beast. Only the slippery shadow in my grip, the one I was trying to eviscerate. I had him, my strength equal to his, but the element of surprise had given me the upper hand. Our eyes met, and something that appeared to be relief flashed in his, like he was glad I was putting him out of his misery. Unfortunately, his will to survive was stronger. “Shoot him!” I shouted, and I could sense it when guns were aimed, readied—an instinctive knowledge that you were being eyed by death.
He smirked and slipped from the claws the UAR had crafted for me. Rolling along the ground, and despite the blood gushing from his sides, he broke into a run. I began to chase after him, but Ziame shouted, the fragile ground he clung to to keep from falling giving way. In that split moment, I had a choice: chase the soldier and kill him, or keep the massive Lacerten captain from plunging to his death. I knew what choice Ysa would want me to make, but I didn’t like it.
Swearing, I turned and dove, catching Ziame’s thick wrists and arresting his fall. On my belly, I had no leverage, and we began sliding anew almost immediately. With my head at the edge of the hole, I could see down its shaft just enough to catch the glint of sharp metal. Twisting, I managed to get a knee into the dirt, then my foot. It was theleft one, made of metal and synthetic joints and muscle. I felt it groan and creak, and more dirt began to give way.
My eyes met those of the gladiator known as the Beast, and I knew that if I did not let go, we’d both fall to our deaths. “Noooo,” I snarled. My hands had clawed through the thick scales along his forearms, but I did not release him. I found another reserve of strength, pushing nanobots to enhance my muscles and boost my power. My other leg caught on a tree root, and I hauled with a shout.
It was enough. Seconds later, others piled on, grabbing both Ziame and me and hauling us to safety across the crumbling dirt. We didn’t realize the extent of that trap until later, when Eoin dug his hands into the dirt and began pulling the metal to the surface with his special ability. Tunnels were dug, traps spread out through this part of the woods, more left untouched than ones that had been triggered. This pair had been busy for a while, like they’d been expecting us and planning accordingly.
I barely waited for Ziame to get back to his feet and ignored all the aching muscles in my body as I tried to give chase at long last. I knew, even before Fierce and his beast, as well as Tass, joined me, that it was pointless. Both of them were insanely good trackers, and neither could pick up the trail. Even when Tass, our plantist specialist, laid his ear to the ground and listened for the vibrations of footsteps, he found nothing.
We scoured the woods anyway, disabling traps as we found them. I wanted to keep going, because I felt like the other shoe could drop at any moment. We had to find this bastard, because if we didn’t, he’d come back to haunt us. This guy, he’d found an opponent worthy ofhis skills, and he’d test us again and again until either we were dead or he was. The captain recalled us when darkness began to fall, and it wasn’t until we approached the base and our ships that I began to understand what our prey had done.
“He’s on one of our ships,” I burst out, swearing roughly as my mind spun with the whys and hows. I knew exactly whatIwould have done to stowaway on one of our shuttles. Flack and the same group I’d been assigned to had joined us just outside the base, and I saw how the Sune’s sharp blue eyes focused on me.
“Why would he do that? There’s no place to hide…” But he did not seem to require an answer, because he raised his comm and began ordering a search of the shuttles anyway. There were some very inventive places he listed for the search, too, highlighting his past as a smuggler before he joined Asmoded’s crew.
When we walked into the base, I could tell immediately that they hadn’t found him. I started another search on my own anyway, redoing, against the protests of Aramon, who just wanted to fly back to his mate, the work they’d already done.
When I started a third search, Asmoded called a halt. “We’ll hold in space and let Ysa do a bio-scan with theVarakartoom’s sensors. But our males need more medical attention, we’ve got to take the risk.” He pointed at the row of stretchers waiting to be carried in. That included Aramon, who was complaining loudly about having to lie down and was kept on the stretcher mostly because Solear was literally sitting on top of him.
I counted in a hurry and realized that at least half our number wore bandages, and that two gladiators and fourmercenaries were injured enough to be carried off the battlefield. Not Ziame, and not Asmoded, though; they’d both bounced back after their encounters with the nasty traps the pair of spree killers had left for us. “Fine.” I cursed as I stalked onto the nearest shuttle, and then I did something I hadn’t in a long while. I parked my ass in the pilot’s seat. After all, we were down a few of the usual flyers, and I’d rather get out of here, if we were going anyway.
My fingers clenched around the yoke as I started the pre-flight checks. This was a mistake, and I had to warn Ysa to be ready. Thankfully, I could send a message with my comm hands-free, the processor implanted in my brain facilitating the link. “Get ready, my little engineer. We’re returning home, and we might be bringing another stowaway.”
Chapter 19
Ysathea
We got a call from Mitnick hours after they’d departed for the planet: they were coming back. It had been so long that I had actually napped for a while, stretched out in one of the jumpseats at the back of the bridge. The females with babies had come and gone, putting their young down for naps and later retreating as night fell. The ship had grown dim, but the rest of us had stayed on the bridge and waited. Never before had I been as anxious as I was now, with the guys out on missions.
Even though I’d adopted Ivo and Grunn as my little brothers and considered them part of my family, I was not nearly as worried about them as I was about Thatcher. That wasn’t because I was scared he’d get killed, though thatwasa real risk, of course. I was worried that his heart and mindwere in conflict. He thought he was just like that other guy, but I knew better, and I wanted him to come back to me and realize it too.
Harper had been sitting down for a while now, sprawled back with her hands on her belly and her eyes closed. An empty bowl of this “popcorn” sat on the console in front of her. Evie paced at the back of the room and kept sharing looks with Lyra. That was because Lyra had learned via her telepathic bond with her mate that Aramon had gotten hurt. Aramon had stubbornly denied it to Evie, though, but she was worrying anyway.
“Everyone is okay,” Harper murmured for the third time, aiming to soothe our normally unflappable Evie. “They’re departing now.” There was no news on whether they’d completed their mission successfully. No word on whether they’d caught or killed the two murderers we were here to stop. That message could mean so many things, but at least they weren’t warning us to go on alert or prep for prisoners.
Then my comm beeped with a message, and I glanced at the block of text that had arrived. A lot of it, but all of it in precise, succinct lines. Words that were to the point and far more enlightening than the vague things Harper had relayed from Mitnick. I jolted upright as I scanned through them. “They’re coming up all right,” I said, and all eyes snapped to me. “They killed the Pretorian, but the human is in the wind. Thatcher seems to think it’s hitching a ride to one of our ships. We need to prepare for another stowaway, and a far more impatient one than the last, though probably just as deadly.”
I rose, jogging to Harper’s side, and began working on the console usually manned by her mate. “I’mcalibrating the sensors,” I said. “Someone needs to get to the hangar bay and monitor the renewed containment protocols.” When I looked up, I discovered that the others present were staring a little helplessly back at me. Damn it, only Dravion knew how to work these, and he had gone down to the planet with the rest of the males. We were just a skeleton crew up here.
My eyes shot to Dani, an Aderian and a healer. She had knowledge, but she was a scientist, not a female of action. “I can go with you,” she said firmly, “and bring medical supplies for the wounded to assist Dravion.” I was very grateful when she seemed willing to take charge enough of the situation that I did not need to make a final call. Technically, next to Mandy, I was probably the one in charge here, since I was the Chief Engineer, but I wasn’t happy commanding these ladies about. They weren’t soldiers or mercenaries; they were “civilians,” as Ivo would call them.
“Harper, stay in touch. You’re going to watch the sensors,” Dani said. Shewasused to bossing people around as head scientist, and she had experience doing so. “Let’s go, Ysa. We’ll take care of our males.” Then the powerful empath leveled the pair mated to the Asrai twins with a look. “You better come too. I bet they’ll need you.”
That left Harper alone with Tass’s mate, Elyssa, on the bridge, but neither complained. Our little group trotted through the hallways in a hurry while I kept a close eye on further communications from either Harper or Thatcher. I’d sensed all kinds of frustration in the long explanation I’d gotten from my male, but it wasn’t quite enough to piece together a picture of what had transpired on the planet. I was surprised he’d sent me this much, because he’d been anything but talkative so far.
My comm beeped for Thatcher just as we reached the right hangar bay. “Scan first, enter when clear.” That was all it said, but I patched myself through to Harper right away to do as he said. Turns out I didn’t need to, but I leaped for a console anyway to keep track. Mitnick had taken charge from a distance, relieving Harper of her task and doing what I would have done otherwise. That left me to monitor the new protocols we’d put in place after that damn black goo entity had managed to infiltrate.
“How is it looking?” Evie asked, probably to distract herself from worrying over her mate even more. I gave her a thumbs-up, a gesture I’d learned from the humans to indicate all was well. Nothing was popping up at all, and a human, even one like Thatcher, could not slip onto a ship nearly as easily as a few drops of goo. I frowned at the readings, but they all held steady, indicating the right numbers, the right amount of people, with zero malfunctions.
Ten minutes later, all four of our shuttles had boarded the ship, and the hangar bay had finished pressurizing. The moment I gave them the go-ahead and opened the doors, Dani and the pair of human females were through the doorway. Dani hauled a surprisingly heavy load of medical supplies for such a small female. She dropped them the moment her mate, Jaxin, emerged from the first hatch and she leapt into his arms. Lyra and Evie disappeared into another shuttle, but I waited anxiously to see which one Thatcher would emerge from.
I saw him moments later. A grim-faced warrior in all black, his hair pulled back in a knot at the back of his head. Scowling, as was usual, but his expression did not lighten when he saw me. I wanted to go to him, butthe sight of Ivo being carried past on a stretcher briefly distracted me. My friend grinned, but it was to mask pain, waving with his thumbs because, like me, he’d picked up that human gesture. “Idiot,” I said, because he was definitely hurting. When I lifted my eyes back up, I discovered that Thatcher had been enlisted to carry the next stretcher to the med bay. On it: Aramon, which meant all hands on deck, because the Asrai was not a quiet patient, and Solear was being a tad too protective.
