“Find you?” Oren replied, lazing against the wall with his arms crossed.
T’arq nodded.
“I guessed it wasn’t you who activated the emergency beacon. You’re lucky to be alive. Both of you.” Came the gruff reply.
“How did we get here?” T’arq had no recollection of what had happened after he had shot at the Xakul with the plasma cannon, fully expecting to not survive.
“You were unconscious and had hooked your backpack on the underside of the Xakul ship.”
“Not on purpose.”
Oren chuckled. “I didn’t think so, not by the way it had pierced your backup oxygen tank.”
T’arq paled.
“Yes, exactly. And she,” he nodded at Krystal where she lay in the bed, “had clipped herself into the tether next to you.”
Amelia began moving about her patient, checking various equipment and recording readings that were alien to T’arq. He stared at Krystal’s peaceful form. In sleep, her face was relaxed, no worry lines between her brows or crinkling at the corner of her eyes when she laughed. She was peaceful. He reached across to take her hand in his, brushing his thumb across the back of her hand.
She mumbled in her sleep, and he smiled.
“She shouldn’t have been there.”
“No shit.”
T’arq shot the older warrior a sharp look. “No, you don’t understand. She didn’t want to come. I had to work to convince her. She was so scared.” His eyes roved over her face. He lent forward to brush his fingers lightly over her forehead, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I shouldn’t have made her do it.” He looked up at Oren. “The cloak? I don’t know how she did it, but it works! Or it did until a Xakul drone hit us with some kind of marker.” He sat back in his chair, twisting his hands in his lap. “We couldn’t escape them, and then they boarded the ship, so I sent her away. On a space walk by herself. It was that or be grabbed by those asshole cockroaches and I couldn’t let that happen.” He almost growled the last words. “When I knew she was far enough away that she would be safe, I blasted them with the plasma cannon.”
Oren chuckled and leaned against the wall; arms crossed against his broad chest. “You crazy bastard.”
T’arq’s face twisted as he watched Krystal’s chest rise and fall with her breath. “Too crazy for her. I almost got her killed.” He could barely believe they had both survived. “She deserves so much better,” he added quietly.
Amelia finished checking her patient. “T’arq? She was dangerously low on oxygen, the tank almost empty. She was unconscious when we reached you, and I’m not sure for how long.”
T’arq’s brow knitted. She should have had plenty of oxygen. He’d made sure her tanks were full. He looked away from Krystal to meet the doctor’s questioning gaze. “Is she going to recover?”
“I hope so, but we’ll know for sure when she wakes up. Are you planning on staying here with her?”
T’arq frowned. Where else would he go? “Of course.”
“I’ll bring you something to eat.”
He nodded his thanks, noticing the way she stood close to Oren and the possessive hand the intelligence operative had placed on her shoulder. “Thank you.” T’arq wondered just how much the two had shared. Did she know about the team? They could do with a doctor, with the number of scrapes they got into.
When Amelia had left the room, T’arq turned his gaze to Oren. “So, how much does she know?”
Oren shrugged. “Enough.”
T’arq’s gaze narrowed. Sometimes the former intelligence operative forgot he wasn’t working by himself anymore and made decisions without thinking about the impacts on others on the team.
He wondered how much Krystal knew. She wasn’t a member of the human Space Force, but then again, neither was her sister Laila, not anymore. He didn’t like keeping secrets, which was part of the reason that he didn’t get close to many people. There was only so much you could tell someone before you bordered on divulging critical information.
“There’s a problem,” T’arq admitted.
Oren leaned against the wall and lifted an eyebrow in question, his thumbs hooked in his pockets. “Apart from the Xakul drone seeing through the cloak?”
T’arq frowned. “We ran into a signal jammer. Bigger than anything I’ve seen before, and much more effective than the small-scale ones. We destroyed it, which brought Xakul fighters out into the open.” He rubbed a hand over his face, his stomach twisting at the thought of just how close he had come to losing Krystal. To them both dying.
“That seems a little foolhardy.” Oren sent a significant gaze in Krystal’s direction where she lay on the bed.
