Damage Control (Valiant Knox) (4 page)

“God, what the hell am I doing here?” she muttered at the floor.

“They usually tell you that before you leave pre mil training.”

Her head shot up, and she swallowed a gasp when she saw Captain Alphin standing there.

“Hope you didn’t sleep through
that
class, Wolfe, or it’ll be like floating through space when your aft-thrusters have been blown to hell.”

She snapped to attention a little awkwardly, her breath catching in her throat.

Captain Alphin regarded her with a steady, cool stare, his expression unreadable. In the field they called him Alpha, the nickname he’d earned as a recruit. There’d been a class on him back at pre military school as one of the UEF’s best fighter pilots currently deployed.

Well, she could say firsthand the man lived up to expectations. His cool, gunmetal-blue gaze shot all the way down her spine into her toes. Just like when she’d first laid eyes on him at the deck triage, the back of her throat dried up as she took in the masculine angles of his face and the military, short-cut perfection of his coffee-black hair. With a quick breath, she turned her attention to her boots, her pulse skittering enough to make her jumpy.

When he’d come to see her in the ER medbay, he’d been like a different man. She got the feeling he didn’t let people see that side of himself very often. And it had taken until nearly the end of the conversation for her to realize he had no idea she’d been assigned to him.

The way he’d spoken to her, the depth of emotion in those gray-blue eyes…the feel of his large, rough hand gripping her fingers… She shivered, unable to help her sensory response. She’d already admired the man, because who didn’t? Except by the time he’d left her room, she’d started having very un-soldier-like feelings for him.
God
, could she be any stupider?

As if training wouldn’t be hard enough, getting starry-eyed over the CAFF would just add an extra layer of uncomfortable to the torment of the coming weeks. Okay, so he was freaking sexy as all hell. She’d have to be dead not to notice. And the side of him she’d seen this morning had opened up a crack in her heart.

There’d been rumors that every year at least one female cadet went crushing hard for him. And the story went that he never paid any of them the least bit of attention. If anything, they became more invisible to him.

Please don’t let me be the idiot who gets the hots for the CO…aka God.

She’d already started things off badly enough without becoming a soppy-spined female over his handsome face. And tall, muscled body.
And in that uniform
. She swallowed and cleared her throat, forcing her mind to go blank.

“Everything all right there, recruit?” Captain Alphin had moved to stand next to her while she’d been having her inner crisis and she hadn’t even noticed. She tipped her chin up and set her gaze straight ahead, putting him in her peripheral vision.

“Sir, everything is fine, sir.”

The few remaining recruits dispersed, leaving her standing alone with Captain Alphin.

Her legs had started trembling, muscles aching through every inch of her body. That rest Sub-Doctor Moore had recommended sounded better and better. But she couldn’t walk off on the CAFF without being dismissed or committing career suicide.

“Sir, was there something you wanted, sir?”

“I seem to remember ordering you to follow the doctor’s instructions, did I not, Wolfe?”

She locked her knees against her weakening muscles. “Sir, yes, sir.”

Captain Alphin moved to stand directly in front of her again, but she didn’t let herself focus on his face. She’d never seen that particular shade of gray-blue eyes before. One glance at him and she’d lose the small amount of nerve she was clinging on to.

“And did doctor’s orders include gossiping in the launch bay, Recruit?”

She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“Well, since you’re so determined not to rest, come with me.”

He waved his hand to indicate she should precede him, even though she had no idea where they were going. Well, there was only one main corridor leading from the launch bay.

She caught a few interested glances cast her way as the CAFF marched her through the ship. Everyone greeted Captain Alphin with deference, even the few superior officers they passed. Every now and then, he would murmur a direction to her and by the time they’d gone down several levels, she’d started feeling like a prisoner being paraded about before heading for the executioner’s chair.

The captain led her through the gym on squadron level, mostly deserted at this time of day, and continued into the locker room. Privacy on board a ship like this wasn’t exactly ideal. A few soldiers, both male and female, were in various states of undress in the locker room and no one seemed too concerned about it. Her cheeks heated, and she kept her gaze averted. One more thing she would need to get used to.

At the opposite end of the locker room, down past the showers, was a small laundry room. It was divided down the middle with a fat yellow line, one side for dirty, the other side for clean. The dirty side had an overflowing, wheeled container of soiled towels sitting next to a chute that went into the ship’s automated washing system. The clean side had another chute where the washed and dried items got spat out into another container.

Captain Alphin stopped and pointed at the dirty side. “Feed the towels in one at a time or the chute will get jammed. And let me tell you, the maintenance crew does not like crawling in there to fix it. In a few minutes the towels will come out on that side, and then they need to be folded and put away.”

He turned to look at her.

Laundry duty?

She’d pulled stinking laundry duty her second day here because she hadn’t followed the doctor’s orders? Technically she hadn’t even started training yet. She clenched her teeth over the tightness in her throat, because more than anything, she wished she had followed that advice instead of keeping her promise to see Penny off.

Except she got the feeling this might be more about what had happened between Captain Alphin and her in the ER. She’d seen his weak side and now he would do everything in his power to shove her away, make her fail, because they’d crossed a line. A very small infraction, but it had happened. If the truth came out, it would be bad for both of them. So she would suck it up and take whatever he threw at her.

“Sir, yes, sir.” She moved past him to the overflowing container and picked up a damp towel off the top. Really, she didn’t want to think about where it had been before it got here.

She fed it into the chute, waited a beat, and then followed it with another. Captain Alphin crossed his arms and watched her. She felt the weight of his stern regard all the way down to her toes. In a few moments, clean towels puffed out into the container on the other side. She went over and started folding, her back aching as she bent down to grab the cloths from the deep bottom of the container.

Captain Alphin nodded. “Very good, recruit. Carry on.”

He spun on his heel and strode out of the laundry room, leaving her alone with the slight
vrooming
sound of the chute. And just how long was she supposed to keep this up for? Until the container of dirty towels was empty? She glanced at the towering pile. How long would
that
take?

A female soldier ducked in and tossed a couple more on the heap, shooting her a sympathetic look. With a sigh, Mia got to feeding the chute, blanking her mind of everything but getting through the task one sopping towel at a time.

Chapter Four

L
eigh stepped out of the transit on alpha flight deck, glancing around to see the maintenance crew getting things back into order after the previous day’s chaos, while a few medicos packed up the last of the deck triage.

He spotted his intended target standing next to an armed personnel carrier, facing off with Lawler.

“Cam, were you really going to leave without saying good-bye?” He clapped the colonel on the back as he stopped next to him, but his buddy shot him an annoyed glare.

“Yes, I was trying to leave before you made it up here, but Lawler wouldn’t get out of my way.”

“Just following orders, sir.” Lawler shot Cam a bland smile, then gave a salute that had a definite edge of sarcasm to it.

“I already told Yang, I don’t need an escort to the ground. I got here by myself just fine yesterday.”

Leigh clasped his hands behind his back and shrugged one shoulder. “Like the sub-officer said, we’re just following orders.”

“When it suits you,” Cam muttered in resignation.

He grinned and sent Lawler a nod, who stepped aside from blocking the hatchway to the personnel carrier.

“Don’t consider us an escort, just pretend like we happen to be running a routine patrol on your exact trajectory. Either way, Lawler and I will be on your tail.”

“Still a stubborn hard-ass, Alpha?” Cam stepped through the hatchway and shot him an unimpressed look, though it didn’t have all that much heat to it. They’d known each other for too many years to really take offense at any small disagreements, especially since Cam knew full well that no one in the Brannon System had the balls to defy orders given by Commander Yang.

As the hatchway snapped closed on Cam’s form retreating to the shuttle’s controls, Leigh shared a quick grin with Lawler.

“Seems almost getting blown up should have given Cam a new perspective on life, not made him surlier.” Lawler stooped down to scoop up his flight helmet where it’d been on the deck next to his boots.

Though the comment had been said flippantly, it sobered Leigh’s light mood like flipping a switch. “Yeah, well I suppose if nearly all the other officers you’d worked with for the past ten or twelve years were killed in that blast, your life perspective would be pretty grim, too.”

The amusement faded from Lawler’s expression and he clenched his jaw. “Well, I guess we better make sure the damned CSS don’t try for any more intercepts. And if they do, then so help them God.”

Lawler turned on his heel and stalked over to his jet, pulled his helmet on, and then scaled the side.

Leigh went over to his own V-29, where his flight jacket and helmet had been left for him. In a matter of moments, he’d settled himself inside and taken up position on Cam’s six, while Lawler took point as they left the launch deck.

They took a wide slingshot around the
Valiant Knox
and settled into a direct trajectory to the secondary Ilari base, which had become the focal point of ground operations since the primary base had been bombed a few weeks ago. The second battleship that had joined the front last week,
Farr Zero,
was only just visible on the horizon between Ilari’s atmosphere and one of its three moons.

Since the attack the day before, all scheduled transport between the two battleships and the ground had been delayed while a permanent escort system could be arranged with the FP squadron. It was going to stretch their resources and put more strain on his already overworked pilots, but he knew not a single one of them would complain about it.

“Coming up on the edge of the safe zone in ten.” Lawler’s announcement through the radio brought him out of his thoughts, and he switched his sensors over to long range. “In four, three, two, one. And we’re out.”

“You picking anything up, Lawler?” His own scans weren’t showing much, but some of the CSS ships were so old, they were occasionally missed by UEF sensors.

“Four coming up off the ground. Could be a coincidence, not sure if they’re headed our way or not.”

Leigh waited for his jet’s computer to extrapolate a likely trajectory for the four ships appearing on his radar.

The readings scrolled across his screen, and he swore and tabbed his weapons live. “They’ll be on us as soon as we break higher atmosphere.”

“Yeah, I see it. Weapons are hot
.
”

“Cam, leave us to engage. Keep your shields up and make it into the range of the secondary base’s targeting system.”

“Copy that. If I’d wanted to shoot stuff from inside a ship, I wouldn’t have taken a ground posting.”

Leigh grinned as his ship hit the resistance of Ilari’s upper environment, his jet shuddering slightly as gravity and atmosphere changed. The engines made slight adjustments to keep him stable and at high speed.

By the time he broke through the burn, Lawler had already engaged the enemy.

One of the older CSS clunky, armed shuttles took a hit and spiraled out of control, leaving a corkscrew of black smoke as it plummeted toward the landmass below.

Leigh swung his jet out from behind Cam and swooped in close above the personnel carrier, destroying a blast of weapon’s fire that would have put a serious dent in Cam’s hull. The smoke hadn’t cleared, but he followed it up with a second round of fire, relying on his jet’s targeting system to lock onto the enemy ship.

A third enemy ship slipped around to his portside. An alarm beeped, warning him of a targeting lock on his position. He banked aggressively and cut back, putting him in a half loop. The streak of energy fire exploded out of the smoke and clipped his left wing, flipping him into a full spin.

“Alpha, are you hit?”

Leigh couldn’t answer as he fought the controls in the opposite direction to his jet’s barrel roll. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, his heart galloping against the inside of his ribs. His upper arms and chest burned from the exertion.

He pulled the jet up and got it stable in time to see a second enemy ship exploded, with the last two breaking off from pursuit. He forced a slow inhale as he glanced out at his damaged wing.

The jet shook forcefully from the hit, trying to buck his control. He gauged the remaining distance to the secondary base, considered ejecting for half a second. They were only minutes away, so he’d take the risk on sticking it out.

Landing was going to be a bitch.

“Any damage to report?” He asked into his comm, glancing out to see Lawler’s jet and Cam’s personnel carrier both appeared to be in one piece.

“We’re all good. But your wing looks like Swiss cheese,” Lawler replied.

“Yeah, the maintenance crew is going to be really impressed. That was some nice shooting, Lawler, I owe you one.”

“Thanks, Alpha, and I’d love to take full credit, but Cam shot down that second bastard.”

He gave a short laugh as the relief of getting through another battle mixed with the downhill side of his adrenaline high. “For someone who didn’t want to shoot at things from inside a ship, you’ve got killer aim, Colonel.”

“Or a whole lotta dumb luck,” Lawler interjected.

“I never said I couldn’t, just that I didn’t want to.” The deadpan tone of Cam’s voice came through loud and clear on the radio.

“Well if you ever get sick of being on the ground, I might be able to find a place for you in FP squadron.”

“Thanks, but no deal, Alpha. I like my boots planted firmly in the dirt.”

They were coming up to the secondary base, and ground control contacted them, interrupting the conversation. Leigh confirmed he’d taken damage, and they directed him to a specialized landing pad, while Lawler and Cam split off to the general launch bay.

Tightening his already hard grip on the controls, he slowed his decent, fighting the jet’s pull to portside, not quite able to lock into a level trajectory as he maneuvered over the emergency landing pad.

Clenching his jaw, he tipped the jet into the precise angle and lowered the thrusters, bringing himself down by gradual degrees. The closer he got to the ground, the more his jet shook, fighting to buck out of the slanted descent. By the time the landing clamps bumped into contact with the pads, his shoulders had seized up. He took a moment to drop his head against the back of the seat, forcing some of the tension out of his tight muscles.

Again, the CSS were on them, despite encoded launch times and trajectories.
Damn.
More and more, it pointed to a traitor in the FP ranks. He needed to get back to the
Knox
as soon as possible and talk with Bren.

When most of the aches had subsided, he hopped out of the jet, tugging his helmet off and wiping his forearm across his sweat dampened face. He paused to fill out the appropriate logs, then made his way from the emergency landing pad to find Lawler. If his sub-officer was feeling generous, they could both squash into Lawler’s jet for the flight back, otherwise he was going to be stuck on the ground for who knew how many hours until the transports resumed. Of course, if he’d been feeling particularly mean, he could simply commandeer Lawler’s jet and leave the sub-officer to cool his heels on the dirt for a few hours. He grinned as he walked through the base, imagining the look on Lawler’s face if he decided to leave the guy on the ground.

Being the CAFF wasn’t all bad.

L
eigh shoved a spoonful of rice into his mouth and tried to pretend he wasn’t looking for a certain golden-haired recruit. What the hell. Might as well give up the game and admit that, yes, he’d spent half the day since Lawler and he had gotten back to the
Valiant Knox
hoping to catch a glimpse of her when he wasn’t preparing for tomorrow’s class to start. But only so he could avoid her. Or work on totally alienating her.

He’d been sure he’d see her at midshift messdeck. All of the newbies tended to congregate in one area until they got to know the rest of the ship’s crew a little better. But he hadn’t seen any sign of her and had to assume she’d learned her lesson after folding towels and gone to rest.

Except now the evening crowd had started thinning, and he still hadn’t seen her. Okay, so she might have been resting, but she needed to make sure she ate something as well. The unforgiving training regime would start tomorrow and fasting the night before wouldn’t do her any good.

And why was that his concern
?
The faster she washed out, the quicker she became someone else’s responsibility
.
Except he
did
care. And he sure didn’t want to examine why that might be.

A couple of female recruits passed by his table, and like a damn mutt, his ears perked up at one of the newbies mentioning
Mia
, followed by
folding towels
. So they’d heard about it already, huh? Well, it would serve as a good lesson to them all. Follow orders, or pay the consequences. And he’d gone easy on her, because folding towels was one of the painless, nondisgusting duties.

He picked up his tray and trailed the recruits to where finished trays of food were discarded. Snatches of their conversation came to him and he paused, waiting for the pair to get on with dumping their leftover food. Except they’d gotten into some sort of disagreement.

“We should take something down to her. She hasn’t had lunch or anything,” the one with strawberry-blond hair said.

“They’ll let her eat when they want her to eat,” the dark-haired woman replied. “She’s the one who didn’t follow orders, and personally I don’t want to go attracting the wrong kind of attention from the CAFF like she has already. You think that’s going to make the next few weeks any easier for her?”

The words went on repeat in his head. Something about them—

Damn it to hell
. Was Mia—
Recruit Wolfe
still down in the godforsaken laundry folding towels? He’d told one of the other recruits—Benton?—to go and tell her she was relieved of laundry duty not even an hour after getting back from escorting Cam to the ground.

He brushed by the two women, who both went wide-eyed and scurried off when they saw him. He slammed his tray down on the pile and then stalked out of the messdeck, across to the common room. He found Benton playing cards with a couple of other recruits.

“Benton!” His pissed-off CAFF tone echoed across the large room, plunging it into silence.

The kid jumped about meter and then fell off his chair. At any other time, he might have found the guy’s scramble to get upright hilarious. Right now, with the way he was fuming, the stupid-ass fumbling just kicked his temper up a few more notches.

“Benton, did I or did I not order you to follow up on Recruit Wolfe?”

For a moment Benton stared at him blankly, but then he blanched, the color literally draining from his face.

“Sir, you did, sir. But Lieutenant Brenner asked me to do something else on my way there and I—” Benton gulped, snapping his mouth closed.

He leaned closer. “You what, recruit?”

“Sir, I forgot, sir.”

Leigh stared at him.
Forgot?
“You mean to tell me you can’t follow more than one order at a time, Benton?”

The kid swallowed again, keeping his lips compressed.

“Report to Lieutenant Brenner immediately. She’ll be able to help you with that memory problem.”

The guy needed to be reprimanded, but for the life of him, Leigh couldn’t think of anything except hauling ass down to the gym and saving Mia—Recruit Wolfe—from the pile of dirty towels. Had she really been folding them all day? Surely she would have eventually asked someone if she’d done enough. Except he already knew the answer to that.

Benton sent him a sloppy salute and lowered his head, then left the common room. Leigh cast a hard-ass glare over the recruits sitting nearby and they all suddenly made themselves look busy.

As he turned to head for the gym, Seb shot him a grin and a covert thumbs-up, while Lawler sent him a wise-guy half salute. Leigh shook his head as he passed, and the two guys shared a laugh before returning to the beer and poker game in front of them.

Leigh went down to the gym where the lights were low, the space empty. Occasionally he came down here at this time of night to run on the treadmill when no one else was around and tabbed up an image of an open road stretching in front of him on the vid screens instead of four ship walls.