“Deploy Starseekers. Forward shields full!” There was no jump gate here – no known and charted jump gate – but even if there was, no ship in her patrol group had logged a corresponding energy surge that preceded a gate transit. The unknown bogie had, to all intents and purposes, appeared out of nowhere.
And that was not good news.
Kel-Paten’s frown told her he’d surmised that ugly fact, and likely more.
“We have ident on the bogie,” her tactical officer called out without turning from her sensor station.
“Fighter craft. Triad TZ-Four. Starseeker leader confirms configuration.”
“A Teaser? We’re being challenged by a godsdamned Teaser?” Teasers, like U-Cee Starseekers, were fast and efficient, yes. But a real threat only in fifteen-man squadrons that used the craft’s speed and agility to attack and withdraw in repetitive waves, wearing down a ship’s defensive shielding so the larger capital ships behind them could move in for the kill. A sole Teaser was little more than target practice for a ship like the Regalia. This meager effort couldn’t possibly be what Gund’jalar’s information alluded to, could it?
“TZ-Four, subclass Ada,” Kel-Paten said as the Regalia adjusted course. “No accompanying battle group detected.”
Yet.
“Where’s the rest of the squadron?”
“Sensors aren’t picking up anything right now, Captain,” Tactical told her.
“Kel-Paten?”
His frown deepened. “Negative.”
No battle group. No squadron. Just a lone Teaser on the edge of the Far Reaches . . .
“Scan for debris.” The small fighter had to have been part of an attack group launched by the Triad Faction against Rebashee patrols. But why was it heading insystem, not for the Triad border? Unless the yet-to-be-located attack group was aimed at the patrol ships currently under her command? Gund’jalar’s warning replayed in her mind. “Check all comm channels for distress signals, any kind of traffic. Scan the Teaser for life signs.”
The pilot could be unconscious, the ship following a now-useless course. The ship’s location could be a freak accident. Happenstance.
Except this freak accident was dumping a Teaser on her doorstep. And she was a firm disbeliever in happenstance.
However, espionage was something she was very familiar with.
“Your theories on using a vortex as a jumpgate,” she said quietly, because even though this was her ship, Kel-Paten’s work in that area was rightly deemed top secret. Especially as Kel-Paten had preliminary data that indicated a vortex’s energies might also hold the key to the destruction of the Ved.
“Already scanned for telltales. Negative,” he told her, equally as quietly.
That was good news and bad news. Good that the Faction hadn’t beaten them to the punch in harnessing a vortex’s power. Bad in that she still had no idea where the ship came from.
“No debris, no distress signals,” Rembert, her first officer, reported.
Also not good.
“ T he Hallmark and the Noble report negative on debris and signals,” Lieutenant Lucari at communications confirmed.
More not good. Sass was never happy when the not-goods ran in the plus column. “I don’t like—”
“Distress signal active on Triad comm NB757.” Kel-Paten’s announcement interrupted her complaint.
“Sending data to you now, Mr Rembert.”
Triad comm NB757?
Her first officer swiveled back to his station to start his data analysis. “Got it, Admiral. Thanks.”
“It’s a coded squadron channel,” Kel-Paten said before she could ask. “Short range. If the U-Cees even had it in their databases, it’s likely been deleted as old intel. I haven’t used it since I was a cadet.”
Try as she might, Sass couldn’t envision the dark-haired muscular man as a gangly twenty-year-old cadet.
“No life signs, Captain,” Rembert called out. “No ship response to our hails, not even on that channel.”
Something felt wrong, very wrong. Sass couldn’t pin it down, other than a gut feeling. There were too many unexplained variables: a ship out of nowhere broadcasting on an old frequency in very short range ...
“Tractor her in, Mr Rembert,” Kel-Paten called out.
Sass’s right hand shot up. “Belay that.” She turned. “I don’t like this. It’s not a rescue. No one’s alive aboard. Lock it in a tow if you want, but I don’t want to risk—”
“Ship’s breaking apart, Captain, Admiral!”
“Reel her in, Mr Rembert.” Kel-Paten looked down at her. “We’ve suspected for months now that the Faction is moving assets across the border into this sector. If this is an error on their part, then this could get us information we need. Now.”
“And if she’s rigged with a bomb?”
“Shuttle Bay Eleven,” Kel-Paten told Rembert. Then to Sass: “That will—”
“Okay. I don’t like it, but . . .” She tightened her lips. Bay Eleven was triple-plated for just such situations. Somehow that didn’t make her feel better.
“Got her! Eleven it is,” Rembert replied.
Sass nodded her confirmation. “Call back our Seekers, Mr Rembert.” She glanced over at Kel-Paten.
“You’d better be right about this ship’s threat potential.”
A small smile quirked Kel-Paten’s mouth as he spiked out, and his eyes shifted back to their normal pale-blue hue. “I always am.” He rose. “Let’s go see what our lucky find will reveal.”
CORRIDOR UPPER BRIDGE DECK
It took Branden Kel-Paten’s cybernetically enhanced mind all of three-point-six seconds to calculate the exact time it would take for the lift to travel from the upper level of the bridge to the lower shuttle docks on the Regalia and he knew – from that and from, well, experience – that that was exactly enough time to grab two decent kisses or one very excellent deep kiss from Captain Tasha Sebastian.
Never one to settle for anything less than perfection, he opted for the latter.
“Branden,” Sass began as the lift doors whooshed closed, “I think—”
“Thinking not required,” he rasped as he pulled her roughly against him and covered her already opening mouth – convenient, that – with his own. He took in her small oomph of breath and used that to let his tongue find hers. Then her hands splayed against his chest slid upward, curling around his neck, and Sass – his Sass, the woman he’d loved in secret for so very long – did her best to redefine his definition of an excellent kiss.
It had been seven months since his decades-old fantasies had become reality, but she still made his heart pound, made his hands tremble, made his body go electric in ways the cyber-surgeons who created him never imagined. They couldn’t have. They’d created him for war, for death, for ugliness. What he had with Sass surpassed all descriptions of beauty.
He still woke by her side every ship morning fearing her presence was all a dream – or another Ved-
induced hallucination like the one that had tortured them with bizarre alternate realities seven months before in McClellan’s Void.
“My, oh my,” she said, her voice breathy, when he broke their kiss one level before the shuttle decks.
“I haven’t seen you since breakfast.” That wasn’t totally true. He could “see” her anytime he wanted simply by spiking into the ship’s vid cams. But seeing her wasn’t the same as feeling the heat of her skin on his. He needed that. Desperately. “It’s almost dinner.”
“And if someone else boarded the lift?”
“Not possible.” Well, except for Tank, who could blink himself anywhere on the ship within seconds, and who had more than once shown up at some rather inopportune times. “I reprogrammed it before we left the bridge.”