Shades of Treason (11 page)

“And the casualties from today…” His fingers brushed the grip of the gun holstered at his hip. “Hundreds, if not thousands have died. We’ve lost ships. We’ve lost a capsule. Ephron is burning.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“They showed up within twenty minutes of your escape.” His voice rose and echoed in the maintenance bay. Even though he’d likely never set foot in here before, he owned the place. Everything inside it, the broken birds, the tools, the equipment—Ash—was there because he allowed it to be.

She wet her dry lips. “When would I have had a chance to call them?”

His steps slowed. His aggression faded. Not completely. Really, not even a significant amount, but he still hadn’t drawn his gun.

And he still hadn’t commanded her.

“You timed your escape to coincide with the attack,” he said.

She laughed. It might have sounded a touch hysterical, but then, Rykus’s accusation was just as insane. “I’m good, Rip, but I’m not that good.”

It was the wrong thing to say. His demeanor changed. His expression, his stance, everything about him screamed that he was rage filled and ready to destroy.

Ash raised her crowbar even though it made a pitiful weapon against a gun.

“
Drop it,
” he commanded. The fury in his voice coursed through her veins.

Shit, shit, shit
. She had to break his spell, set him off, suggest they get naked and run bare-assed down the
Obsidian’s
central corridor, suggest
something
.

Her back hit a wall—she hadn’t realized she was retreating again—and she pressed against it, trying to contain the trembles running through her.

Only a few feet of space separated her from her fail-safe. She willed herself to swing the crowbar.

She dropped it to the floor instead. The instant it hit, he charged.

She tried to slip left. He anticipated the move and threw her to the ground.

She twisted to her back on the way down, threw her fist toward his face. Missed.

He caught her wrist, brought it across her chest to trap her beneath her own arm.

The weight of his body pressed her into the floor. She hooked her legs around his waist in a belated defensive guard, but he easily slipped out of it. Shifting his position, he bent her arm, angling it until her shoulder was close to popping out of socket.

She gritted her teeth against the pain and arched her back. Her free hand pounded on him, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t budge. He maintained the pressure on her shoulder as he unsnapped and flattened the comm-cuff she’d stolen.

He shoved it into her hand. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His gaze demanded she enter the cipher.

She shook beneath him, fighting the compulsion, fighting him. The latter was why her shoulder popped out of place.

Ash screamed.

She bit down on her lip, still shaking, still trying to resist.

“
Stop fighting
,” Rykus commanded. There was an odd tension in his voice, but it wasn’t enough, and Ash had no strength left to fight the loyalty training.

She looked into her fail-safe’s dark eyes. Eyes she feared. Eyes she respected. Eyes she had to obey. Her body convulsed once, and she felt herself break.

CHAPTER TEN

“PLEASE.” ASH’S VOICE was so raw, so striated with emotional pain, that Rykus wasn’t sure if the jolt he felt through his heart was her will breaking or his.

She had never uttered that word in his presence before. He was almost certain she’d never used it in her life. It wasn’t part of her vocabulary. It would have been seen as a weakness on her home planet, just as it would have been a weakness on Caruth.

But the word was a submission, complete and irrevocable. All her walls were down. She was pleading for his help.

She was pleading for his help, and he was hurting her.

He released the pressure on her arm.

A moment passed. Then another. Then Ash’s green eyes opened.

She stared at him.

He stared at her.

It felt as if he’d been sucked into another dimension, one where the loyalty training had flipped the axis of the universe. Instead of her being bound by his wishes, it was the other way around. She held his free will in her hands. He could feel it missing in the center of his chest. His heart beat within the hollow space, lost, unable to orient itself, but one command, one word from her, could make everything right again.

Her lips parted. No sound came out, though he waited for it, waited for some command he could carry out for her.

Is this what it felt like to be a loyalty-trained anomaly? He wasn’t in control. He wasn’t thinking reasonably. If he had been, he wouldn’t have been this aware of how her body fitted with his. He wouldn’t have been able to picture himself lowering his mouth to hers. He could almost taste her. He wanted to taste that beauty mark to the right of her lips.

He allowed himself one weakness. He drew his thumb over the small, dark spot. It was real. As real as the woman lying beneath him. He’d seen Ash naked once before. He’d tried not to focus on her body back then, but he wanted to focus on it now. He wanted to take his time surveying every inch of it.

And he wanted her beneath him, vulnerable to his touch, his presence. Ash was always in control of herself. He wanted to see her shatter…

She
had
shattered. She’d just given him control with one word.

The universe folded in on itself. When it flattened back out, he realized who he was, who she was, and what he’d been imagining. He realized how wrong his fantasy was.

Ash stopped trembling. Her head tilted slightly, and her eyes narrowed with a mix of wariness and confusion. Maybe a little stunned wonder.

He was certain his expression matched hers.

Her gaze darted to the hand that loosely held her wrist. She must have been waiting for it to tighten—
he
was waiting for it to—but his mind had lost control of his body.

He didn’t try to stop her when she smoothly and expertly flipped their positions. He didn’t try to stop her when she drew his gun and straddled him. And he didn’t try to stop her during those three odd, heavy beats of his heart when she sat there, beautiful and frozen and staring down at him.

They were still in the alternate dimension, the one where she possessed him. She’d slipped inside his soul and made it flare and flame and flicker.

Ash
, he wanted to say, but he’d lost control of his voice too. He watched her rise, watched her stumble away. He watched her run toward the flight deck, knowing if he didn’t stop her, this would be last time he’d ever see her.

He almost called her name then, but two spacers blocked her path.

Rykus couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. He wanted her to escape. He wanted her to remain within his reach.

Ash smashed her fist into the nearest man’s face. The second grabbed her arm, the arm connected to her dislocated shoulder.

She didn’t scream, didn’t cry out. She slammed her head into his.

Another man appeared, blocking her exit. The fury on his face said he knew who she was, what she had done. He helped one of his fallen comrades to his feet, then they both rushed Ash.

Rykus’s cadet did the smart thing. She ran.

He rose to his feet. It was like the air had turned to gel, and the thick, viscous liquid slowed his movements.

Ash escaped out the maintenance-bay door, the two spacers trailing in her wake.

His boots took him that direction.

He stepped into the corridor, saw Ash fighting her way past more men. He wanted to go the opposite direction, to extend the distance between him and his anomaly, but he needed more room than the
Obsidian
could provide. He needed galaxies between them. Maybe then he could process what had happened. Maybe then he would understand why he’d let Ash go. Maybe then he’d…

He braced a hand against the wall. The ship’s gravity had to be malfunctioning. The corridor spun around while Katie’s words spun through his head:
I always thought there was another woman.

Was Katie right? Was he in love with Ash? And if he was, what did that say about him? He’d grown up in a military family. Rules, regulations,
honor
, they were all in his blood. Hell, the Coalition had pinned a medal on him, branding him a war hero. He didn’t deserve the label, but he did his best to live up to it, always conducting himself with decency and integrity. He couldn’t allow one woman to tear his life apart. He couldn’t be in love with a traitor.

He squeezed his hands into fists.

It couldn’t be true.

He lifted his gaze to the end of the corridor, the one Ash had disappeared down.

He wouldn’t let it be true.

The stars in her stomach were warm and flickering and unfamiliar. Nerves rarely affected Ash. She didn’t focus on the what-ifs or the risks when she was on an op. She focused on her teammates and her mission. She should be in that same mind-set now. She shouldn’t be speculating about why her fail-safe had let her go.

That was the only explanation for her escape. Rykus had let her go.

Ash sidestepped a section of collapsed ceiling, then stepped into the ship’s central commons. Men and women hurried to their destinations. Some helped injured spacers. Others stared at their comm-cuffs, which were either fastened around their wrists or unlocked and flattened in their palms.

Ash kept her hands by her sides. Rykus’s gun, a modified Covar KX90 and an apparent exception to the Fleet’s shitty weapons mandate, was a comforting presence beneath her long shirttail. It had serious knockdown power, accuracy that couldn’t be beat, and a high-capacity, sixty-round expanding-ammunition magazine. That kind of firepower could buy a person a hell of a lot of time. It could have dropped every one of the unarmed spacers and soldiers who’d tried to stop her escape, and it would be a priceless asset once she reached Ephron’s surface. The trick was getting there without killing anyone.

She strode across the commons, her gait casual but not too casual. The Sariceans weren’t pelting the ship with torpedoes and plasma blasts anymore, but the crew was not relaxed. If they hadn’t been so off-balance from the attack, they would have noticed her ill-fitting uniform and the combat boots that were two sizes too big. Instead, the individuals who glanced her direction had sympathy in their eyes. They saw her smoke-tinged skin, her bruises, her haggard appearance. They didn’t see a traitor.

If she hadn’t been hurt, exhausted, and in desperate need of a booster, she might have laughed. Her injuries made a perfect disguise. Lucky her.

Ninety seconds after passing through the commons, Ash spotted the portside docking tubes. The nearest three were lit green, indicating small craft were attached. One more minute and she’d be out of there.

She reached the first sealed door, reached up to pry open the security pad, but her hand hung in the air.

Something wasn’t right.

Something pressed against her mind.

Something, or someone, was seconds away from exploding from a corridor behind her.

She drew the Covar as she spun toward the shadowy presence. A trio of spacers shouted and backed away, hands held up in submission.

They weren’t the threat. The threat was…

The telepath. She couldn’t see him, but she felt his quick approach.

Swiveling her aim to the left, she waited for the bastard to turn the corner.

A movement to her right set off her threat instinct. She launched a spin kick at a soldier’s head.

Her foot
should
have connected with his chin, but he caught her ankle and gave it a sharp and powerful thrust up. The move took her other leg out from underneath her. She went airborne, then slammed down on her back.

She rolled, barely escaping the booted heel aimed at her face.

A quick jump back to her feet and she lifted her gun, aimed at the overly confident soldier’s face—

And he disarmed her in a perfect execution of a Hraurkurian wrist chop.

He wasn’t just a soldier; he was an anomaly. Shit.

The only reason Ash’s gun didn’t end up in his possession was because she anticipated his grab. She knocked his hand away, threw an uppercut that missed, and dodged back.

Distance. It was the only way to survive.

Her legs were long. She was quick. She launched another kick, struck his collarbone, and followed up with a—

Her head snapped back then forward then back again, and belatedly she realized he was landing blows. How many, she didn’t know.

A rib cracked. Her vision blackened. She spit blood and tried to counter.

“You kill her and I’ll have you counting comets in Norelli Sector.”

The blur that was the anomaly glanced toward the man who’d spoken.

Ash didn’t think, she dove. So did her opponent, but she was a little closer, a little quicker, and a lot more desperate.

Her hand closed around the grip of the Covar. Twisting to her back, she fired.

The bullet struck the anomaly’s chest, hitting with enough force to make his diving body hover in the air a single second before it slammed into the deck.

Ash was already on her feet, already sprinting toward the telepath who’d inadvertently saved her life.