“Hold on.”
Nia’s fingernails bit into his thighs, doing nothing to ease the hard-on she’d created with her confession. He initiated maximum thrust, the tube increasing their acceleration. As they were about to breach the tube, he dropped a live missile.
Flames followed them out, licking upward around them until they shot into space, the vacuum extinguishing the explosion.
“What was that?” she asked, turning to try and see through the canopy’s viewer.
“A gift.”
She sagged against him. He was momentarily surprised she didn’t give him hell for killing more people.
He banked andOrioncame into view. He swallowed at the sight of his home, where he was born and raised. He didn’t know if there was anyone left on the station to fight, but the battle in the minefield was lost. A Guardian sat docked to the outside of the station, its lighter coloring contrasting with the black that comprisedOrion’sdesign. Nothing had ever looked so wrong.
In front of him, Nia’s shoulders shuddered, but he didn’t have any time to console her. Marauders were on their tail. Mace headed into the densest part of the minefield on the other side ofOrion. Without control of the mines, it was absolute insanity to escape in this direction, but they had no other options.
Nia’s fingernails dug in deeper as he weaved them in and out of the mines, trying to outmaneuver the fighters behind them. He banked close to a huge mine. Her scream pierced his eardrums. The Marauder didn’t recover fast enough, exploding behind them.
Two more to go.
He checked the rear feed, then reversed propulsion. The two ships shot ahead of them. He fired, accelerating at the same time. The one on the left exploded. They flew through the debris field a second later. Nia yelped as their shields sizzled, gripping his thighs tighter. He fired and nicked the second fighter on its wing.Good enough.
Mace weaved out of danger, toward the corridor they’d created in the mines, leaving the damaged Marauder to its fate bouncing around a minefield. As soon as they were clear, he engaged maximum thrust, aiming out of the sector.
Nia didn’t relax in front of him, and the farther they flew fromOrion, the more her breaths shortened, until she was almost hyperventilating. His arms tightened around her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, even though it was stupid question. So much had gone wrong.
“I need to destroy this necklace. It’s a tracker, Mace, and it’s my faultOrionwas attacked. I killed all those people.” Her last words left her on a ragged sob, her body shuddering in front of him.
Her confession brought on a rush of cold over his skin. A tracker? How had it passed the scans? The proximity alerts, the power outage. All had happened after Nia had arrived. Had she somehow been the cause of it?
If her tracker started it all, thenhewas the one responsible for losingOrion. If he hadn’t taken her fromElara Five, then none of this would have happened.
Logic intervened. A tracker that size wouldn’t have broken throughOrion’sshields.
But his brain kept itching with possibilities, and made him ask, “Why were you in the engine core yesterday?”
She sniffed. “What?”
“Why did Foley find you in the engine core? Why did you choose to go there?”
She turned slightly. “After we fucked—” He twitched at the way she said it with her accent. “I didn’t know what to do with myself. I stepped on a lift and didn’t tell it where to go. It moved on its own, took me there. Then I decided to watch it because it’s beautiful.”
The tension in his chest eased at her admission. She hadn’t been there for sabotage.
“It was more than fucking,” he murmured against her hair.
After a moment, she nodded. “Yeah.” Then her hands flew to her neck. “Take it.” She struggled with the clasp. “Destroy it.”
Putting the ship on autopilot, he brushed her hair away from her nape and took the clasp in hand. A flick of his thumb, and it opened. “The reclamation unit is on your right.”
She took it and shoved it inside the small compartment like it was diseased. Her nape still exposed, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward and pressing his lips against the warmth of her skin. Her scent filled his head.
She stiffened, then relaxed against him.
“Let’s get those nodes off you too,” he murmured against her skin.
Turning a bit, she met his gaze, her eyes still shiny with tears. “There should be a recall button somewhere.”
