Diffraction (Atrophy) Read online

  She clenched her fingers tighter where she held the edge of the stretcher. “I’ll do my best. But only if he stays here in the medbay.”

  Rian gave a single nod, then glanced toward the doors. “Tannin, get some cuffs.”

  The ship’s tech analyst disappeared along the passageway. The words to ask if restraints were really necessary tightened the back of Kira’s throat, but she swallowed them away. Getting Rian to allow the commando to remain up here instead of the makeshift cell was probably as big a concession as she was likely to get. In fact, she was a little surprised he’d even agreed to it.

  He returned his cool gaze to her. “If he tries anything, Callan will shoot him with a Reidar stunner.”

  And there was the punch line. Damn it, she’d promised the commando no one would do that again.

  She nodded and focused her attention on checking the crystal display, making sure the patient’s heart rate and breathing were still within a stable range. Tannin returned after a few silent moments, and she stepped back as the commando’s wrists were secured to either side of the cot. Rian glanced up at her as he removed the commando’s boots and then started strapping down the patient’s ankles. Some kind of contrition or concern must have shown in her expression, because his gaze hardened as he stared at her.

  “If you want him up here, Kira, then we’ve got to make sure he’s not going anywhere.” He gave the cuff around the commando’s ankle a final tug while Tannin secured the other foot.

  “After the hit he just took from that sedative, I doubt he’ll be able to even sit up by himself, let alone go on a murderous rampage,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, well he’s still an AF-one commando, and I can tell you from personal experience that they’re tough sons of bitches with no fear of getting themselves killed.”

  Kira frowned as she glanced at the unconscious man. What kind of person didn’t care whether or not he died? Okay, he’d seemed pretty serious about taking on zero atmosphere to escape the Imojenna, but part of her hadn’t really believed he’d do it.

  “I want to know as soon as he’s awake and ready to talk.” Rian sent her an implacable look, and she had to swallow a defeated sigh. He stepped away from the cot, pausing by Callan, who had finally holstered his gun and stood with his arms crossed in a defensive position. “He even twitches the wrong way, you shoot first and tell me second, got it?”

  Callan nodded with military precision. The captain cut her one last warning glance and then left the medbay.

  “Is there anything I can help you with?” Zahli asked from the opposite bulkhead, where she’d been standing during the commotion.

  This time, Kira did huff a long sigh. “No. I think Command Donnelly will probably need a few hours to sleep this off.”

  “Comm me if you need anything.” Zahli sent her a short smile then walked over to Tannin.

  Tannin dropped an arm over Zahli’s shoulders as they left. Her heart gave a pinch at Zahli’s calm and contented air, the same one she’d had since Tannin had come aboard and Rian had grudgingly consented not to kill the man with enough balls to touch his sister.

  Out of everyone on the ship, she was closest to Zahli, so she certainly didn’t begrudge her friend the happiness she’d found in these dark times. But still, in those moments when she caught the loving glances the two exchanged, it made a void ache in her soul for what she was missing, what she’d given up expecting from life after she’d left Capitol One Hospital on Jacolby in disgrace three years ago.

  Thinking about the past and the life she’d left behind never helped anything, although it did remind her to be grateful Rian had landed on Auberon within a day of her arriving on the ruthless, almost lawless planet where people went to hide or get lost. She wouldn’t have lasted two days if she hadn’t seen the ad he’d posted at the spaceport trade center where she’d been loitering for over twenty hours, too scared to leave the relative safety of the spaceport, but not knowing where else to go or what else to do.

  The first time she’d met Rian, when she’d gone to apply for the position of ship doctor, he’d frightened the heck out of her. He’d been ice cold, his eyes devoid of any emotion, weapons slung around his hips with deadly ease. He was the exact kind of person she’d been trying to avoid—one who she’d thought would kill her for looking at him the wrong way. She would have turned and run as fast and far as she could, if it hadn’t been for Zahli standing next to him, a warm and welcoming smile on her face. With limited options, she’d figured the captain couldn’t be too bad if Zahli was standing there looking at ease and relaxed, and when she’d found out the woman was actually Rian’s sister, it had abated her fears even further.

  Though there’d been some tough times, joining the crew of the Imojenna was the best thing that could have happened to her. Being on the ship under Rian was kind of like having a weird, dysfunctional family. Like her, the others didn’t discuss their pasts too often, but she got the feeling she wasn’t the only person who had no one else in the galaxy outside of the Imojenna’s bulkheads. And while she’d heard all kinds of conflicting rumors about Rian—from the reports of his actions that had made him a war hero and celebrity in the military, to his ruthless reputation of killing without prejudice—she’d come to see that even though he might be somewhat psychologically damaged from whatever had happened to him in those years he’d been missing, presumed dead, he was still mostly an honorable man who tried to do what was right.

  Putting the unhelpful retrospection aside, she sliced a glance at Callan and shifted around the cot before setting her hand in the middle of the commando’s chest. His breathing was even and heart pounded steadily beneath her palm. He no longer felt clammy or hot, though his shirt was damp. She checked the readouts on the crystal display and then went over to a nearby bench where she’d left her commpad.

  While the commando was sleeping, she wanted to check the files they’d stolen from the abandoned Reidar lab on Nadira. The idea that this soldier had been a victim of the alien experiments, like Rian, had taken root in her mind.

  Who knew how long the Reidar had been living among them, hiding in plain sight? For hundreds of years after the early technologists of Earth had mastered intergalactic travel and colonized space, people had searched for other intelligent life, but found only a handful of extinct remnants. Humans had thought they were alone, that the galaxy was theirs for the taking. And take it they had. Had these shape-shifting aliens been hiding among them the whole time, or had they come from somewhere else?

  She’d taken a quick look at the files not long after they’d left Nadira and ever since had been avoiding the research, complete with repulsive details of the experiments and torture the subjects had experienced. Some kind of breeding program. It was the antithesis to everything she stood for as a doctor, and no amount of medical training could harden her against the monstrosities recorded in those documents. It had sickened her, imagining what those poor people had gone through at the hands of the sociopathic aliens.

  But if she was going to help this man, and maybe even help Rian, she had to disconnect from the horror and search the facts for any clues that might aid her later, beginning with sensitivities to drugs.

  As she walked to the doorway, she speared Callan with her best doctor-means-business glare. “I’m going up to Rian’s office to download some files. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t get any ideas about killing him and making it look like an accident while I’m gone, because I’ll know.”

  Callan sent her a flat look. “Security on this ship comes down to me, and you know how seriously I take protecting the Imojenna and the crew. Besides, if I wanted to kill him, I wouldn’t bother making it look like an accident, Doc.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” she muttered as she strode out into the passageway. At least she could say the ship’s security specialist—or whatever title Callan used—remained constant in his liberal use of violence to solve his problems. That being said, he was almost overprotective when it came to
the crew that called the Imojenna home—especially Rian. Out of everyone, Callan’s dedication to their captain was second only to Zahli, Rian’s sister. Of course, it was comparable to Lianna’s loyalty. Kira had been waiting for the day the two of them would get into a who-bromanced-Rian-better argument.

  She took in a few calming breaths as she made her way up to Rian’s quarters, the familiar rush of a medical emergency gradually draining from her limbs. While working as the ship’s doctor onboard the Imojenna wasn’t as demanding or high-stress as her last position at a city ER on one of the Inter-Planetary Coalition’s central planets, her career now definitely had its exciting moments and medical challenges, complete with things she would have never seen if she’d remained a big-shot trauma surgeon.

  No, her life certainly hadn’t turned out like she’d dreamed back in med school, but at least she had a home of sorts and could still practice medicine. She was happy enough, as long as she didn’t think too closely about the threat of shape-shifting aliens who’d blow the Imojenna out of the stratosphere given half a chance to recapture Rian and the Arynian priestess, Ella. Their knowledge of the Reidar made them a target, but thus far, Rian had kept them a step ahead of the threat. Some days, though, she wondered just how much longer their luck would hold out.

  Chapter Four

  Rian managed to make it to the bridge without any other minor calamities, though it was only a matter of time before the next disaster on his damned ship. These days, he couldn’t go five minutes without needing to put out a fire.

  “Oh good, you’re back. I was just about to comm you,” Lianna, his navigator-slash-engineer, said as he dropped into the captain’s chair.

  “Of course you were,” he muttered. No doubt the next crisis was imminent. “What’s going on?”

  “Qaelan contacted the ship, wanting to speak with you.”

  He shifted in his seat and tapped his screen to life. They’d only just left his cousin and his smaller ship Ebony Winter still docked on the Swift Brion. Accessing the communications tab, he sent the comm-link to the viewport, then sat back in his seat as the image of Qaelan, along with Zander, flickered into sharp clarity. Zander was looking pretty good for a guy who’d almost been killed by his psycho Reidar twin a few short days ago. Thank christ they’d managed to stop at least him from being switched out by the aliens. But who knew how many other government and military officials were already lost?

  “Miss me already?” He clasped his hands behind his head, kicking one boot over his opposite knee.

  “And all the chaos you leave in your wake? Not a bit.” Zander shot him a grin, taking the edge off the bite.

  “So why the comm? Couldn’t go an hour without me?”

  “It’s about getting more of the stunner weapons made,” Qae answered, going straight to the point without any of his usual quips. “Which we’ve started calling razars, by the way.”

  “Razars?” Well, it was probably easier than calling them Reidar stunners. “Okay, I can live with that. What about them?”

  Qae frowned, crossing his arms. “That contact I said we could use for the components we need? UAFA took him down a few weeks back for illegal arms trading.”

  “Damn it,” he muttered. The Universal Armed Forces Agency were a galaxy-wide, privately owned military that contracted out to whoever could pay them the most. They operated with complete impunity granted by the IPC government and military, who governed the central planets and systems. UAFA had made up the ranks of the IPC military when the government had decided it was time to bring the outer independent planets under one ruling body. The resulting Assimilation Wars had spanned more than two decades—beginning before he was born. It’d been bloody, and very few independent planets had been spared. Only the most far-flung worlds hadn’t been touched by the battle, but at the end—after what he’d done to give the IPC their victory—even those outer worlds had agreed to come under IPC governance.

  So whoever had paid to have Qae’s contact taken out could have been the IPC, who often sourced out warrants, or it could just as easily have been a rival illegal arms trader wanting to get the guy out of the way. UAFA didn’t ask questions, they just took a person’s money and were relentless in carrying out their contracts.

  “So what’s Plan B?” he asked, causing Qae and Zander to share a quick look.

  “Actually, we were hoping you could tell us,” Zander replied. “Once the Swift Brion goes off the grid, since I’ll officially be AWOL and a traitor, it’s not like I can use any IPC military contacts to get what we need.”

  “In other words, you want to know if I have any contacts we could use.”

  Zander knew about the short time he’d spent working for a big-time, illicit trader out of a legendary illegal bazaar after escaping the Reidar, when things had still been hazy, his blood lust unchecked and control nonexistent. He’d left all of that behind when Mae Petros found him and kicked his ass back into the IPC military, but there were probably more than a few favors from those days he could call in. “Leave it with me. I’ll see what I turn up.”

  The end of his words were cut off as an alarm sounded. He glanced over at Lianna, who was frowning down at her console screen, a definite note of concern in her features.

  “What is it?” He straightened in his seat, hand landing on the butt of his right holstered pistol by habit alone.

  “Got a ping off an IPC transit policing ship. They scanned us, and as far as I know, the forged ident files are holding, but they’re coming in for visual.”

  For the millionth time, Rian cursed his recently bestowed status as an intergalactic terrorist—one more way the Reidar were trying to screw him. It meant they’d had to start using ident files forged by Callan to fly through the IPC central systems so they weren’t discovered and arrested on the outstanding warrant.

  “If they get visual, they’re going to realize we’re not a Cephas class mining transporter. Are we still far enough away to make a run for it?”

  Lianna cut him a worried look. “If we run, they’ll know we’ve got a reason to avoid them.”

  “Everything okay?” Zander asked through the comm call.

  Already reaching for his screen to cut the subspace linkup, he glanced up at his cousin and oldest friend on the viewport. “Just the usual. I’ll be in touch about those components.”

  Qae and Zander bade him good-bye, and he ended the transmission without answering.

  “What’s the closest place to go dirtside?” Even as he asked the question, he brought nav data up on his own screen, calculating the distance between the Imojenna and the IPC transit police.

  “There’s a quarry moon and beyond that, a resource trade planet, Braylon.”

  “Set a course for the moon. There’ll be too much IPC presence on Braylon.”

  Lianna got to work altering their course, putting them on a trajectory to the small moon. The IPC trans-cops immediately corrected to pursue them. Damn it, he’d been hoping if they realized their pretend mining transporter was heading for the quarry moon, they’d be less interested.

  Why they hell had they gotten so curious about his ship? And the bigger question had to be asked—was it just a transport of no-account IPC officers with nothing better to do, or was it a group of Reidar?

  It was going to be close, but they should hit the moon’s atmosphere just before the trans-cops got within visual range.

  “When we hit atmo, scramble the ident files and get us lost in the biggest spaceport you can find.”

  He stood, planning to tell the crew they were making an unexpected stop and then heading to his office to start working on which of his old Huata contacts he might be able to hit up for some components to make a whole bunch of Reidar-stunning guns.

  Chapter Five

  Varean tried to swallow, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth like Velcro sandpaper. He coughed, his lungs aching like he had a boulder sitting in the middle of his chest. His eyes felt sticky and his body chilled with the aftereffects
of sweating it up something fierce.

  That now-familiar no-nonsense voice was the only relief in his current purgatory, and he hung onto the slight lilt of it, forcing back the weird, reality-like dreams that kept getting stronger and more confusing. Even more unsettling, the foreign language he kept hearing in his head was beginning to make sense, words here and there breaking through the confusion with their meaning and intent. It had to be some kind of nightmare induced by all he’d experienced in the past few days, added to whatever that stunner had done to his brain cells.

  He lifted a heavy arm to wipe a hand over his face, but something tugged against his wrist, keeping it from going very far.

  “What the—?” His voice scratched out at not much more than a whisper, and he forced his eyes open to focus on the trapped hand. He was cuffed to a bed railing, and a tug at his other arm and legs told him he’d been tied down spread-eagled, with absolutely no slack to maneuver.

  A spike of apprehensive fury cleared some of the fog from his brain as the events came back in a dizzying rush, ending with damn Kira sticking him with a shot of something that had made him girl-drink drunk before smashing his lights out with all the finesse of a sledgehammer.

  “Command Donnelly? Just relax, you’re in the medbay. Please don’t fight the restraints. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

  The doc’s words washed through him, soothing the wildness with a power she shouldn’t have possessed over him. She sounded so concerned, but had all the bedside manner of a Shivani pit viper—pretty to look at and deceptively tranquil until they decided to attack, then the moron who got close enough never saw it coming.

  He rolled his head to the left and found her sitting on a stool, commpad in her lap and dark hair falling out of the pins. Despite her request, he yanked his arm against the cuffs, rattling the bed rail. That mutation of aggression within him had gained in size and strength while he’d been out of it, lending more credence to the idea of killing his way free, even though these people technically weren’t his enemy, despite the fact they’d kidnapped him.