Greenshift (22 page)

Ben whispered something to a
female trooper near him, then stooped down and held Mari’s hand with both of
his. “Did David teach you how to fly?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She smiled a
little.

“I can tell he taught you
how to land, too. This is just how his first flight ended.”

She and Hans both laughed.

“He must have gotten much
better at landings by the time I served under him on the
Protector
,”
Hans said.

“David was your
captain?” Mari asked.

“Yes. He was a good captain.
I respect him for how he handled his command. A lot of us do. He’s
missed.” Hans checked her pupil dilation with a small light.

Until now Mari hadn’t thought of
all the troopers who must know David, or know of him, because he was their
commanding officer. It made her proud. “He’s pretty great,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that
my entire life.” Ben smiled like she’d seen David do so many times.
“But I can tell you some stories from when we were kids that will make him
seem a little more human.”

“Like how you bit him and
left that scar.”

Ben laughed heartily. “I
forgot about that. I’m surprised he fessed up to it instead of saying it was a
battle scar.”

“He showed me his battle
scars, too.”

“I have no doubt he
did,” Ben said.

Hans cleared his throat and tried
to hide the smile on his face. “You’re good to go. Just some lacerations
and bruising, but you’re going to be sore and stiff for a while.”

“That just means David won’t
be showing you his scars any time soon,” Ben said.

“Uh,” Hans stood up and
shifted uncomfortably. “If you don’t need me here anymore, Sir, I’ll check
on the prisoner.”

Mari sobered, remembering the man
who had put her in this situation to begin with. “What’s going to happen
to Dale?”

Ben worked on the straps holding
Mari into the pilot’s chair. “He’ll be remanded into custody. The question
right now is whether into ours or the local contractors’ guild.”

She heard a groan from the other
side of the bridge as two troopers secured Dale on a stretcher.

Even after what he had done to
her, Mari felt sick knowing it was her actions which had broken Dale’s body.
Then she remembered Carlos as though a dam to her memory had burst. She choked
back a sob.

Ben maneuvered his body into her
sight line so she couldn’t see Dale as they removed him from the bridge. She
found his eyes and whispered, “I killed Carlos. I blew out the hydroponics
bay….” she choked on a sob. “And he was inside.”

Ben was silent as he unsnapped
the harness around her waist. He slid the shoulder straps down her bruised arms
and whispered back, “You didn’t kill anyone.”

She looked at him in shock.
“Did Carlos—”

“Carlos was the victim of an
unfortunate accident. In your attempt to escape you had no idea that there
would be a breach in the hydroponics bay. Let alone that Carlos would be inside
it when that happened.”

“But I—”

“Mari.” Ben touched a
hand under her chin and all she saw were David’s eyes, eyes she trusted.
“The record will show what happened in the hydroponics bay was an
accident. Dale shouldn’t have cut corners.” Ben tried to smile, but it
twisted into an angry set of his jaw with his next words. “And the son of
a bitch shouldn’t have abducted young women to sell to a psychopath. Carlos was
part of that. He chose his fate. Don’t ever doubt it.”

Ben’s conviction calmed Mari and
allowed her to remember the abuse she had endured at Carlos’ hands.

A female trooper with sculpted
cheekbones that Mari envied interrupted their conversation. “Lieutenant
Anlow, we got a call from the Embassy. We’re to turn over Zapona and his crew
to the contractors working Abigail Landing.”

Ben shot to his feet.
“Bullshit. This is a fleet issue. Who the hell gave this order?”

“Rainer Varden, the
Sovereign’s Head Contractor, and he claims that it’s not our jurisdiction
because the freighter has permission to cross planetary lines.”

“Dale Zapona was
transporting an abducted person against her will. That’s all the jurisdiction
we fucking need. Plus this guy is wanted for questioning in an Armadan matter.
Get Varden back on the comm. I want to talk to this idiot.”

“Are they going to let Dale
go?” Mari asked.

Ben stopped his ranting at the
sound of her small voice. He smiled David’s calming smile. “It will be
okay.” But just like his older brother, the anger burning behind Ben’s
eyes said something different.

She took a deep breath and attempted
to get out of the nav chair, but the angle was awkward.

Ben caught her as she tumbled
over. And before she could help herself she was hugging him tight and crying.

When worlds collide.

Seeing Ben escort Mari out of an
Armadan gunship was one of the most surreal sights David could have imagined. Even
with an oversized jacket in fleet blue draped over her shoulders and buckled up
black combat boots, Mari’s vibrancy contrasted sharply against the stolid grey
of the ship.

For this one single instant, here
on the only dock not cordoned off at Abigail Landing, David’s past and future
meshed as the sun drew pink rays along the clouds on its way over the horizon.
Under different circumstances he might have appreciated the whimsy. But there
was nothing light-hearted about how they had all come to this moment—at the
hands of some privileged asshole who was free to mess with other people’s lives
due to some kind of bullshit Embassy cover up.

When Ben first told David that Dale
would probably walk, that the contractors in charge of the investigation didn’t
even bother to take Mari’s statement, David hadn’t said a word. Ben said enough
for both of them, used every last filthy epithet he could dig up to describe
the injustice. Not that it made either of them feel any better.

David held back as the rest of
the
Bard
‘s passengers welcomed Mari home amidst the organized chaos of
fleet soldiers, medical teams, and contractors milling about. Mari had done a
pretty good job with the landing, only causing damage to one end of the narrow
dock. When Ben had first told him Mari crashed on purpose, David was stunned,
but he hadn’t been there, hadn’t gone through what she went through, so wouldn’t
judge how she handled it. She was alive. It was all that mattered to him.

Ben rubbed Mari’s shoulder and
stooped over to whisper in her ear before leaving her to Soli and Sean. David
could tell by the rigidity of Ben’s posture as he walked toward him that his
brother was still pissed by the bureaucratic slap in the face they had all
received.

Soli was the first to embrace Mari,
no doubt using the ship’s external cameras to record the event. David tried not
to feel harshly about what he considered an intrusion upon this private moment.
Soli had a duty to record events like this for the archives whether David liked
it or not.

When Sean gave Mari a big hug and
kissed her on the cheek, she laughed. David smiled. He could finally see their
interaction the way Sean saw it—as an older brother taking care of his little
sister. There was still a small part of David that kept a slight jealousy in
check, though, because Mari and Sean would always have a history that began
well before David ever met her.

“She’s a tough little
thing,” Ben said as he approached.

“Yeah,” David said.
“Don’t let the short skirt fool you.”

“I’m surprised you’re not
over there, ripping her out of that guy’s arms,” Ben said.

“You know I’m not the
jealous type.”

“Bull fucking shit.”

David threw an arm around Ben’s
shoulders and drew him into a quick hug. He gave his brother a kiss on top of
the head before letting him go. “Thank you. For bringing her back to
me.”

“Wish I could have brought
back a little justice, too.”

“They’re really not going to
charge Dale?”

Ben’s dark look said it all.
“He was remanded into contractor custody and will supposedly be questioned
during his recovery.”

“And Stavros?”

“Nothing implicating him,
short of Dale Zapona going on a live Media feed and telling the entire system
what that fucker’s been doing,” Ben said. “But even then, the Embassy
would find a way out for Stavros. Wish I would have questioned Dale before I
turned him over. I guarantee we’d have a confession and at least enough dirt on
Stavros to petition a fleet investigation.”

David hadn’t forgotten that
Stavros was not only responsible for Mari’s abduction, but also for the deaths
of several good troopers.

“Oh, you never know. Maybe
you’ll have a shot at Dale one day,” David said.

Ben said something in return, but
David’s attention drifted back to Mari, who was alone now that Sean and Soli
walked back onto the
Bard.
The warmth of her smile went straight through
his chest. He’d missed that feeling. Leaving Ben in mid-sentence, David covered
the distance to her in a few strides.

“Hi.” Her voice sounded
strained.

He pulled her into a gentle hug,
almost afraid that if he greeted her the way he wanted to, he’d break her. “Mari.”
Her name was all he could manage as emotion took his voice. He kept rubbing her
back and smoothing her hair as he fought for control. His hands actually shook,
like a man recovering from shock.

When she relaxed into his embrace
and said, “I missed you,” he let the relief flood through him.

He drew her face up to him and
kissed her like it was their first kiss all over again, only this time it meant
something much more. He could tell by the way she returned his intimacy that
she knew it, too.

When they finally pulled apart,
David stared into those gorgeous eyes for a moment, then said, “From now
on, when you leave this ship, I’m coming with you.”

She laughed at his joke, not
realizing that he mostly meant it.

“Sorry about tonight,”
Mari said.

She and David were nestled on one
of the plush mauve couches in the
Bard
‘s lounge and stared out the
windows at the lights of the Hub from their usual berth space. The scene was
calming. At least from inside the ship.

“I’m happy staying in.”
David nuzzled her in his lap.

She melted into his chest,
relaxing in his scent.

Everyone else, even Sean, had
gone out for the evening, but Mari wasn’t in the mood to leave this time. Right
now she just needed to look at the world from afar. And the glittering activity
of Shiraz Dock and Carrey Bay provided a pretty nice view.

“We’ll be back here in
another two weeks to get our new passenger anyway,” David said. “I
think she’s your age. And Sean’s already not happy about her coming on board so
that should be entertaining for a while.” David squeezed her knee
playfully.

“Yeah, that will be fun.”
Her voice didn’t portray much enthusiasm. Even a week after her abduction, the
memories still haunted her.

Her experience left her feeling
triumphant in many ways because she had survived. Not just survived—she’d taken
control out of her captors’ hands and made her escape, commanded the situation.
But it had left its scars.

David inadvertently reminded her
of the physical ones as he slid his fingertips over her arms where the mender
patches had healed her bruises. The darkness behind his eyes when he had first
seen the other Armadan’s fingerprints imbedded in her skin was chilling.

When she confessed how Carlos had
met his death, he assured her it wasn’t her fault, that no matter what, Carlos
deserved to die for his part in her abduction and the countless other women who
hadn’t gotten away. She believed David was right, but she still saw Carlos’
face every once in a while when she closed her eyes. David called it
post-traumatic stress and said he’d helped his soldiers deal with it before.
She suspected he’d had to deal with it himself as well, though he was still
rather close-lipped about his fleet time.

That didn’t bother her anymore. He’d
share everything when the time was right. Like he’d said, they had forever. She
interlaced her fingers with his, enjoying the warmth of his touch. A stirring
of desire passed through her body, the first since her return. They hadn’t been
intimate again yet, but David slept next to her every night because she asked
him to. It made her feel safe…well,
safer
.

She twisted in his arms to face
him. “I’m afraid Dale will come back.”

Not until this moment had she
spoken these words out loud, but the thought had consumed her, bringing on
panic attacks that she tried to hide from the others. David could always tell
when she was upset, though. And he was always there to comfort her. His gentle
affection never wavered.

“He’s not coming back.”

“But they let him go.”

He stroked her hair as though
considering his next words. “The charges may have been dropped, but I
promise you that Dale is
never
coming back. And I will always keep my promises
to you.”

The conviction in his eyes made
her believe it. She kissed him and it felt good. Now all they needed were
fireworks over the water.

Did he really think he’d get
away with what he did?

David cut the razor wire crowning
the wall outside of Dale’s estate.

“If this goes well,”
Ben said. “I’ll be incommunicado for a while.”

Ben didn’t need to say more. He
and his team disappeared on covert operations pretty often, once for an entire
year. But this time it would be personal. Ben would make sure Liu Stavros paid
for all the Armadan lives he took.

“Thanks for this, Ben.”

His brother slapped him on the
shoulder and grinned—Ben smiled more than any soldier David had ever known.