Chain Reaction

Chapter Three

Celene glared at the Phantom-class ship in the docking bay. Its lines were sleek, and she’d flown other Phantoms enough to know their engines packed a decent thrust. Calder and Kell were busy making last-minute adjustments to the systems, while she, Admiral Gamlyn and Mara had one last confab before setting off on the mission.

“Engineering has run a protocol,” the admiral said. “All the ship’s systems are working at peak ability. It’s armed with front and rear-facing guns. The shields are at one hundred percent. What seems to be the problem?”

“It’s not a bad ship.” Celene eyed the Phantom. “But it’s not my ship.”

“I know how you feel,” Mara said. “After I joined 8^th Wing, I couldn’t get rid of my old tow-ship. I still take the Arcadia out every few solar weeks. Kell says it’s a heap of junk, but I think he’s got some sentimental attachment to it.” The former scavenger’s eyes gleamed, and Celene could guess that Mara was reliving the early, combustible days of her relationship with Kell.

“It’s not just sentimentality.” Celene waved a hand toward the Phantom. “My Black Wraith has superior maneuverability, better weapons.”

The admiral answered, “Black Wraiths aren’t designed for deep space missions. The Phantom is. Further, if Marek’s disruptor is implemented against your Wraith, you and Lieutenant Calder would find yourselves alone and helpless.”

Exactly as Celene had been once before. She wouldn’t let anyone else in Black Wraith Squad feel that way. If that meant she’d have to fly a Phantom for this mission, she’d do it.

“All right.”

Admiral Gamlyn smiled, wry. “Delighted that my decision meets with your approval, Lieutenant.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

The admiral walked over to Calder and Kell, and the three of them began discussing the modifications, including the device Calder had installed to track Marek’s power signature.

“Hey, look at it this way,” said Mara. “Everyone knows you kick ass flying a Wraith. Now you get to show ’em what you’re really made of. Prove your skills as the best pilot in the 8^th Wing.” She paused. “Third best.”

Celene raised a brow. “Third?”

“Kell’s first. Then me.”

“When I get back from this mission, you and I are going to have a little competition. A few races, some obstacle courses. Then we’ll see who claims the title.”

“Deal.” Mara stuck out her hand, and Celene shook.

“Being a legend isn’t all free drinks and backslaps.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “Right. The naked idol worship is extremely inconvenient.”

“Try having a bad day when your lover thinks the Corvalian sun shines out your ass. Break a nail. Stub your toe. Or, hells, maybe you don’t want to talk about what an amazing pilot you are. Maybe you simply want to watch dumb comedy vids that night. When he looks at you like you just killed the Solstice Bird, then you and I can talk about the price of being the best.”

Mara stared at her. “Fuck. Celene, I—”

With a shake of her head, she refused any sympathy. “The cost of expecting the best of myself. If making sure the 8^th Wing can beat PRAXIS means I don’t have a date on shore leave—” she shrugged, “—that’s a damn small cost.”

Still, Mara’s gaze held far too much sympathy for her comfort. Mara planted her hands on her hips and directed her attention toward the Phantom.

“Nervous?”

“Hells, no. I just want to get this mission started.”

Mara nudged her shoulder. “Can’t wait to be alone with Calder? It’s a cozy little ship. Room for two. Close quarters.”

She snorted. “You’ve inhaled too much meteor dust, scavenger.”

“We watched you two in SimCom on the vid feed. I’d seen you in action, so I know you could fight. But Calder…” Mara lowered her voice. “Holy gods, that was unexpected. I didn’t know NerdWorks threw down like that.”

“Neither did I,” she admitted.

“He looked incredibly hot doing so.”

Her mouth curled. “Aren’t you Kell’s woman?”

“Kell’s my man. But just between us…” She leaned closer. “Calder’s pretty sexy. The moves on that guy. Not to mention his ass. Nova-level.”

“Didn’t notice. Too busy fighting off sentries.” Untrue. She had noticed, and in addition to being pretty damned impressed by Calder’s fighting skills, she hadn’t failed to appreciate that he had one fine body. She saw it now as he moved around the Phantom showing the admiral the modifications he had made to the ship.

He was leaner than Kell, but no less potent, his 8^th Wing uniform hugging wide shoulders and clinging to tight, muscled arms. He’d moved with power in SimCom, his legs long and strong. And, yes, Celene had seen his ass. Taut and sculpted, it was the kind of behind a woman fantasized about digging her nails into.

“Yeah, I can see how much you aren’t noticing,” Mara observed.

“So my eyesight works. Doesn’t matter. All I need is for him to track the power signature and stay out of my way when I take Marek down.” The best she could ever hope for with any man was a quick tumble and an even quicker retreat, before his inevitable disappointment when it was revealed that, yes, she had the same emotional needs as any living being. It would never go that far with Calder. Especially not on a mission.

She strode toward the Phantom. “We ready to go?”

Calder closed a side panel on the ship and dusted off his hands. She tried not to stare at his thighs as he wiped his palms on them. “I ran one final diagnostic protocol. We’re good.”

“All your gear’s aboard?”

The lieutenant crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve been on missions before, Lieutenant Jur.”

“Good. Because this mission is too important to risk on a nebula newbie’s inexperience.” She didn’t like the sharpness of her tone, but this mission was crucial. Nothing could be left to fate.

“No communication with base unless it’s an absolute emergency,” the admiral directed. “Stealth is essential—another reason why you need the Phantom. Since it can hold you both for longer journeys, there’s no need to compromise security by docking at any stations. It will be just you two on that ship, for as long as it takes.”

“Understood.” As Calder spoke, his gaze flicked over to Celene, and a flush darkened his cheeks.

She felt an answering heat in her own face. This was ridiculous. She’d been on long missions before, with other men, and felt nothing, only the need to complete the objective. This must be no different. She had to be Stainless Jur, invulnerable, an ace pilot—never a woman.

“We’ll depart as soon as the last protocols are run,” she said.

“I’ve run them all,” Calder answered. “We can leave immediately.”

“Good luck, Lieutenants.” The admiral gave them a salute, which they returned. “You’ve got the 8^th Wing depending on you.”

“I won’t fail, ma’am,” she said.

“We won’t,” Calder added.

She glared at Kell and Mara when they both smirked. But every mission was dangerous, this more so than any other, so she shook hands with her friends, knowing that there was always the possibility that this could be the last time she ever saw them.

Kell glanced over at Calder, who was speaking with the admiral. “You’ve got a good man in your corner. Don’t underestimate him.”

Coming from Kell, one of the toughest men she knew, those simple words carried tremendous weight.

“I won’t.”

“Fly strong.” Kell gave her shoulder a squeeze.

She smiled. “I will.”

“We’ll have that competition when you get back,” Mara said.

“Get ready to be humiliated.”

“Serve it up, Jur, because I’m hungry.” The two women grinned, bound by the need to be better than everyone else—especially each other.

“Shall we, Lieutenant?” Calder stood at the door to the Phantom. If he had any fear about the dangers they were about to face, he didn’t show it. He stood light on his toes, his hands loose at his sides, looking ready to put himself in the thick of danger.

She nodded and headed into the ship. Calder was not her first choice for a partner, but at least she could be glad that he wanted retribution just as much as she did.

“How many?”

Calder looked up from the tracking screen. He blinked at her, as if having forgotten that she sat beside him in the Phantom’s cockpit. For the past solar hour, they’d been flying without speaking except to adjust their course, moving through the vast darkness toward their objective.

“How many missions have you been on?” Celene asked.

“Ah.” He stared down at the tracking screen again and watched the faint pulse of light that indicated the power signature. They were still too far out to determine the actual distance away, but at least Calder had the skill to pick up even the thinnest trace. Still, he hesitated before speaking. “Three.”

She kept her hands on the controls, but gaped at him. “What?”

“I said—”

“I heard you.” She shook her head. “At least tell me they were combat missions.”

His gaze slid away. “Research and discovery.”

“Research.” She cursed. “They saddled me with a damned cub.”

When his gaze met hers again, it flared with anger. “Not a cub. I’m an officer. And I’ve already proven that I can handle myself.”

“In a controlled environment. We don’t know what we’re going to face at the end of this signal.” She tapped the tracking screen. “Whatever comes, I need an experienced fighter at my side, one who can handle anything thrown in his path.”

“I’ll carry my weight.” His voice was tight, his jaw hard. They held each other’s gaze, neither willing to budge. Finally she broke the stalemate, turning back to face the window.

“Yes, I’m being a hardass.” She stared out at the passing stars, the hundreds of worlds bound together in the galaxy. Some were allies, others weren’t, and everything she saw was threatened by PRAXIS. A very long time ago, the 8^th Wing had actually been part of PRAXIS, serving as part of its military force. But when the goals of PRAXIS turned from the betterment of the galaxy to its exploitation, the 8^th Wing had rebelled. It formed a resistance group, retaining its name as a show of defiance. That same spirit of disobedience and willingness to battle ran through every member of the 8^th Wing. Including, it seemed, the engineers.

“And you have shown that you can fight,” she continued. “But I need to make sure this mission is a success.” Not just for the sake of her reputation, but for the cause for which she fought.

“We all have something at stake.” Even though she had been raking him over the plasma coils, his voice held surprising gentleness. “Black Wraiths are the 8^th Wing’s best weapon. None of us can afford to lose them. The whole resistance is counting on us.”

She blew out a breath. “Oh, when you say it like that, I don’t know why I should be worried.”

His chuckle held low warmth. “No pressure.”

She couldn’t stop her answering smile, but when she glanced over at him, his laugh faded and he looked…stunned.

“What?”

He shook his head, and returned his attention back to the tracking screen.

“Calder, tell me.”

“This is strange,” he finally admitted. “Me, sitting here in a Phantom cockpit with the famous hero Lieutenant Celene Jur.”

Oh, gods, this again.

“No one can outfly you,” he continued, “or best you at shooting. They say you once took out six PRAXIS Wasps on your own.”

“Seven, actually. It would’ve been eight, but the fucker crashed his own ship into an asteroid as he tried to get away.”

He shook his head. “You’re legendary. Idolized. And here I am, your partner on a maximum-level priority mission.” His laugh was rueful. “Never thought that when I finally talked to you, it would be under these circumstances.”

“You thought about talking to me?”

He blushed again. Celene had never imagined she’d find a man who blushed attractive, preferring to keep company with men who were just as outspoken and brash as she, fellow hotshot pilots who bragged and liked to show off. Practically everyone in the Black Wraith Squad fit that description. A bunch of loud-mouthed swaggerers. Her included. They boasted to one another about being in command at all times, dominating any situation. At least among her fellow Black Wraith pilots, no one considered her to be a living legend. She was a friend, and they were her friends.

Which didn’t translate to satisfying romantic relationships. Kell was proof of that.

She now looked at Lieutenant Nils Calder. There was something endearing about his flushed cheeks, as if he couldn’t control his response—to her.

“Perhaps once or twice,” he muttered. “I can’t remember. It isn’t important.”

“Seems pretty important to me.”

“The tracking device needs further enhancement.” He surged to his feet and moved out of the cockpit, into the main body of the ship. Leaving her alone and bewildered at the controls.

Gods, did Calder have a crush on her? If he did, that might explain his blushes, his awkwardness when they came into close contact. She didn’t know whether to be amused, flattered or horrified. He wasn’t unattractive; far from it. And if he could solve complex engineering conundrums, imagine what he might do if he set his inventive mind toward seduction.

But it was another case of someone wanting Stainless Jur. Not Celene. She was just as fallible as any organic creature.

At some point on this mission, just like all the men with whom she had tried to get close, Calder was going to discover that the hero he venerated was only a woman.

By tacit agreement, neither of them spoke about their earlier conversation. When Calder returned to the cockpit, sliding his long body into the seat beside hers, she made sure not to stare at him—though it was something of a challenge. Something about the way in which he inhabited his physicality, as if learning and testing its limits, captivated her attention. He reminded her of a siyahwolf raised in captivity, finally released into the wild. What might he do, when he learned the full measure of his strength?

Right now, all his energy was focused on tracking the power signature. “It’s getting stronger. Still too far away to calculate its exact position, but we are headed in the right direction.”

“Distance?”

He shook his head. “Unknown. Could be a matter of a few days, at least.”

Terrific. Nervous energy hummed along her body. She didn’t realize that she was tapping her hand against the controls until Calder placed his hand over hers. His touch came as a surprise, the feel of his large, warm hand covering her sending a visceral jolt through her.

“Throttle down, Jur,” he murmured, “or you’ll burn your engines out too soon.”

“Tough for me to sit still if I’m not on patrol or in combat. Bad habit.”

He raised his brows. “Stainless Jur doesn’t have any bad habits.”

Damn, it was starting already. Soon he would discover she was not the paragon everyone imagined her to be, and then he’d be another man looking at her in angry disappointment.

“Stainless Jur has none.” She tugged her hand free. “I have plenty.”

He shifted back, his expression distant, and then he returned his focus to the tracking screen.

They flew on in tense wordlessness. He did not look at her with veneration. He did not look at her at all.

Celene knew silence. She’d flown enough patrols to grow used to it. Chatter between ships had to be kept to a minimum in case the frequencies were monitored. A Wraith usually held a lone pilot, but it could also be configured to accommodate a gunner. Even when her ship contained herself and another, they talked infrequently, for security purposes. It was an easy silence.

So she understood long stretches of utter quiet, when it was only her, her Wraith and the deep, jeweled infinity of space.

This silence, however, between her and Calder… Nothing familiar or comfortable about it. It pulled tightly until she thought she might crack from the strain.

“Tell me what you know about Marek.”

The illumination from the display traced the contours of his face. His high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose and fullness of his mouth. Again she felt a strange flicker of memory, a far-flung sun glinting across light years of distance.

“He had almost two decades with the 8^th Wing. Career. Or so I thought.” Though his voice had been toneless before, now it held a sonic blade’s bite. “There were discussions, ongoing debates. If we had a shift together, we’d talk of circuitry arrangements, the best way to make ships faster, more responsive. The whole time he sat drinking kahve in the mess, listening to stories about sweethearts on homeworlds, he was plotting. Planning.” His tone hardened with self-recrimination. “None of us in Engineering knew.”

“Nobody blames you.”

His mouth curved, sardonic. “The fact that you immediately try to absolve me causes me to believe that I do actually shoulder some responsibility.”

“I don’t shoot down every PRAXIS ship I face. I try, but sometimes even my best effort is not always enough.”

She waited, wondering what he might make of this admission of imperfection. Denial, perhaps. It often went that way, when the fissures in the cation armor began to show.

He stared at her. Then, slowly, nodded.

She didn’t know who was more surprised: her, from his acceptance, or him, for offering it.

“But Marek did keep himself aloof.” He returned to the subject as if eager to put the strange, tenuous moment behind them both. “Didn’t take criticism well. Whenever review came around, he’d be sullen for solar weeks. If he thought he wasn’t getting enough recognition, he’d get angry.”

“Violent?”

Calder shook his head. “He never kept up with his PT. If he wanted to hurt someone, he’d find another way to do it.”

“So he might not be a threat.”

“Physically? No. But Marek knows his tech. Wherever he is, he’ll have systems in place. And the leash will be off.”

“Leash?”

He stared out through the front-facing window as planetary systems slid past, and it surprised her now, how such a lean man could fill the cockpit with his presence. Rather than growing less aware of him as time passed, she had somehow developed a new sensitivity to him. She had seen him in combat, so that now, with each shift of his body, she had a precise knowledge of his muscles, and how he moved.

“Marek pushed for making the weaponry more aggressive, stronger.”

“We need all the firepower strength we can get.”

“Not the way he wanted it. It had elements of…cruelty. Not fast, quick enemy deaths, but a drawing out of their suffering. He wanted their ships to burn around them, giving them time to die slowly, smell their own charred flesh.”

Celene cursed. “Someone had to suspect that we had a monster in our ranks.”

“When called before a panel, he retracted. Said he was only joking. But, Lieutenant,” he said, turning to face her, “there was no jest. I didn’t know Marek well, but I knew that he wasn’t prone to jokes.”

“Then we’ll need a strategy to face him.”

His brows raised. “Word on base is that the best pilots rely on intuition, not strategy.”

She shook her head. “As a Wraith pilot, I’ve faced so many battles, I can’t count them anymore. Some arrive with no warning. I might be on patrol, or escorting a ship of refugees to their new homeworld, and then PRAXIS is there, in small force or large. Always deadly. Years of training and experience taught me to react without thought, to trust instinct and my squad mates not merely to survive, but to prevail.”

She gazed at the tracking screen, and its faint flicker showing her the way to find a traitor. “But sometimes, when I’m fortunate, I get a chance to formulate a strategy beforehand. I’m not so faultless that I won’t grab any advantage.”

Calder studied her for a moment. “Wherever Marek’s situated himself,” he finally said, “he will be well guarded. Count on very tight security protocols. And cutting-edge tech.”

She allowed herself a smile. “Good thing I’ve got the NerdWorks’s best as my partner.”