Girl From Above #3: Trapped (14 page)

“I didn’t follow you all the way here to kill you
.
” She even said it like I was an idiot to think it.

“Oh, and I should just believe you?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Said like a professional liar.” I jerked the rifle toward the hold. “You heard the nice old lady. Move your ass.” Questions fought to be free. How the fuck had she followed me, where were her pirate buddies, and could I expect an ambush at any second? I scanned the skies just in case.

Inside the hold, I turned my attention toward Mimir’s twinkling beachfront, searching for any sign of One, but peace had returned.

I wasn’t leaving this planet, not until I knew for certain what had happened to her. I’d tear Mimir apart if I had to.

“That odd little doctor of yours found her,” Fran said, close behind me. I glared over my shoulder, wondering about her sudden attack of helpfulness. She canted her head in that way she did when trying to gauge the mood and whether her next words were appropriate. “They dumped her in the sea. I was gonna fish her out, but the doc got there first.”

My gaze hooked onto my brother’s. He stood commander-rigid, watching Fran’s back, distrust etched into his face. He only knew Fran as the bitch who’d stabbed me in the back and played both fleet and his little brother. His distrust was healthy.

Fran didn’t seem all that bothered about Bren. She only had eyes for me, and those eyes were concerned. For herself, probably.

“Was she—” I tripped over the word “alive” and tried again, focusing hard on Fran. “Was she awake?”

She offered a non-committal shrug. “There were bits missing. Physically.”

I wanted to run back down the ramp and search the shore, the backstreets, and the bars. I wanted to go looking for the doc and One, but the old bird’s order to
watch the skies
might be my last chance with the Nine. I couldn’t send Fran to look. The only thing I trusted about her was the fact I couldn’t trust her.

With a heavy dose of side-eye, Bren strode around Fran and stopped beside me. Thumbs tucked into his pockets, he nodded at the Mimir seafront. “I’ll go.”

He’d grown his hair out since faking his death. It hung in front of his eyes like it used to before Fleet Academy. A moment of recollection hit me so damn hard I had to grit my teeth. Bren and me, hair shaggy, torn clothes hanging off us, Earth Police Authority dragging our asses back home—the last place we wanted to be, knowing that as soon as the door closed, the pain would start.

Bren arched his brow and turned his head to look at me. “Well, Captain?”

I must have hesitated too long and now he was waiting for my order.

The old woman had specifically told me to bring
all
my crew. If I left Bren behind to search for One, how much would it piss her off? It would make a fine excuse, but my reluctance was more than that.

“I know the Mimir folk,” Bren added. “I helped rebuild some of these warehouses. They’ll tell me where James is.”

I didn’t want him to go. Times had been bad with Bren, but they’d been worse without him. Sure, I hated the bastard—fleet’s hero—but he was still my brother.

“Go,” I said, swallowing that small voice that wanted to tell him to stay. “Find her.”

Better Bren go than me. He was less likely to pummel James Lloyd into the ground, no questions asked. I sucked in a deep breath and held it. If all went according to plan, I was about to meet the Nine, though I would’ve preferred for my brother to have had my back, not the bitch who’d stabbed me in it.

Bren cast a wary glance back at Fran. She saluted him with two fingers to her temple, a deliberate reference to their past employer. “Don’t trust her,” he said.

I smiled. “Right, because I’ve survived this long in the black by trusting folks who stab me in the back.”

Bren gave his head a weary shake. “Maybe if you did more thinking with your head and less with your dick, I’d believe that, Caleb-Joe.”

Look at him, getting his sass on. I was almost proud. We shared a fleeting but knowing smile. He set off down the ramp and my damn gut—the only part of me that seemed to know what the fuck was going on—twisted like I’d just made the wrong call.

“Hey,” I called out.

Bren paused on the boardwalk.

“Keep your comms on.”

He saluted and moved to continue on his way.
Don’t leave me alone again, you fucker. You come back, yah hear. And you bring One with you.

I punched the cargo door button and watched the ramp heave upward until two feet of reinforced metal blocked my view of Mimir and my brother.

W
atch the skies
.

I had no idea where Empire Island was, but in the absence of any other plan, it was a lead back to whatever remained of the Nine. There was every chance they were reeling us in to silence us. Sonia might have looked like everyone’s favorite aunt, but I’d seen cold-blooded murderers look like the girl next door. Fuck, Fran had looked sweet and innocent the first time we’d met too.

“Are the Candes going to show up any time soon?” I asked, turning the flight chair to see Fran leaning an arm against the door seal. She’d been standing in the bridge doorway for at least ten minutes, all quiet and obedient-like. Either she didn’t want to enter, or she’d been waiting for me to acknowledge her.

“No.”

“Fleet?”

“No.”

“The foxes?”

“I’m all that’s left, Shepperd.”

Shit. Had she killed them?

She still hadn’t entered the bridge, and I didn’t feel much like inviting her to.

“I’ll tell you about it someday,” she added.

Asgard fucks with your head. She hadn’t been there long, but it had certainly been long enough to test what she was made of. She’d survived. That told me all I needed to know.

I slumped back in my chair and took my time reading every inch of her, from her scuffed boots, torn pants, red sash, and tattered tank top, but it was her face where the mileage showed, round the tightness of her sharp eyes and in the scar so deep the wound must have opened her right up.

Finally, she stepped inside the door. A faint but definite smile skimmed her lips. She checked the instruments, flightdash, charts, log, and the fuck-load of other junk that had accumulated since we’d parted company.

“Turner Candelario sends a message.”

“Is this the part where you shoot me?” She wasn’t armed, at least not with a pistol. I’d taken a good look at her figure. It paid to be familiar with a woman’s curves; made it difficult for her to conceal a weapon.

“Regrettably, no.” She pulled her old flight chair around, slid her hand along the back, and roamed it down an arm.

The ghosting of old
phencyl
jack marks peppered the inside of her arm, but there were no new marks. Was she clean or had she taken to hiding her habit?

“He says it isn’t over,” she said. “But in light of certain truths I relayed to him, the Lyra riots, and with fleet turning tail back to Old Earth, he’s withdrawn the bounty on your head.”

Interesting. “Did you fuck him over?”

Her smile grew. “Every way I could.”

It was the answer I’d expected, but the wistful tone was new. Fran had enjoyed her little recce with the Candes in more ways than one.

She roamed her gaze over
Starscream’s
banks of controls. Her lips parted, just a little, and her green eyes widened.

I shifted in my seat and cleared my throat. “If there’s anything I need to know, now is the time to tell me, not when the Candes come looking or fleet start poking around. So spit it out.”

She eased her body into her seat. The tension melted out of her shoulders. Her tentative smile bloomed into a grin, bunching the scar. I wanted to tell her not to get comfortable, that just because the Nine wanted to see her didn’t mean she was back by my side, but she’d know it without me saying the words.

“Fleet thinks I’m dead or lost on Asgard. When the Candes took the prison, Turner told me fleet was already regrouping in the original system. They have other priorities besides a dubious missing commander.” Leaning forward, she ran her hand lightly across the flightdash. “Turner gave me the warbird and the foxes as my crew. I killed the sick fuckers in their bunks and tried to make a run for Jotunheim.”

“Turner caught up with yah, huh?” Which said a lot about the pirate’s flying abilities. Fran was near impossible to keep up with.

Delight glinted in her green eyes. She’d made the pirate work for his catch. I made a mental note to lock my cabin door while I slept.

“He chased me through three systems. Caught me only when the warbird’s engines failed.” She shuffled back in her seat and kicked her boots up onto the corner of the flightdash, just like old times. All that was missing was her metal file she used to scratch back and forth across her nails. “Gave me a choice: live and find you, or die.”

Turner Candelario sounded like the kind of guy I’d get along with, if he weren’t trying to kill me as payback for his dead sister. I couldn’t blame him for that. If I was in his shoes, I’d want me dead too.

“How’d you find me?” I asked.

She arched a dark eyebrow. “You’ve been itching to take the synth to Lyra since you set eyes on her. That and you didn’t have a choice if you wanted credits, what with the Candes killing your rep.”

“You bugged
Starscream.
” The hole in the hull. That hadn’t been Tarik’s handiwork. Fran had planted a tracker. “I had One look for any signs of tampering. She didn’t find a damn thing.”

“She looked in the wrong place, Captain. I planted the tracker along the aft strut and sealed it shut behind me. The hole in the hull you found was a diversion.”

Fuck me, she was too good, and potentially the most dangerous thing on my ship, but damn if I didn’t enjoy having her back beside me. My half smile said as much.

After a few unhurried minutes of her absorbing
Starscream’s
background hum, she said, “We’ve been through some shit, Cale. Would you believe me if I said I’m here because I want to be? That I’m meant to be right here.” Her fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. “You need me. The Nine can use me. I can rally the pirates. I might even be able to get back inside fleet. The synth would’ve said I’m an asset—”

“While we’re being honest, I don’t believe a fucking word that comes out of your mouth. I won’t ever trust you. One—if she were here—would nail you to the hull.” I shifted forward in my chair and narrowed my eyes. “But I get it. I understand why you did what you did.”

She blinked, holding my stare. “I’m not who you think I am. I was a commander, a long time ago, but here, when I was on
Starscream
with you
,
I changed. And Asgard was—”

“I know.” She didn’t need to say another word. I knew what Asgard was. Fighting for your life, hour after hour, changed your priorities. She had a fierceness about her now, more than ever before. Whatever side Fran was truly on, they were lucky to have her.

A stinger shuttle banked hard in front of
Starscream,
rattling the obs window. It dipped its wings before boosting out to sea.

“Watch the skies …” I throttled up
Starscream’s
low-atmo engines and lifted
her
off the floating deck, going after the stinger. Ahead, the Mimir sea stretched toward a curved horizon. Wherever we were heading, we weren’t leaving Mimir’s atmosphere, but there was nothing outside of Mimir’s one and only settlement besides wall-to-wall ocean.

“I’m picking up a concentration of static ahead,” Fran said.

The subdued inky colors of night had brightened to a morning purple hue. Storm clouds stalked the horizon.

“I see it.”

We could ride right over the storm, but the shuttle we were following wasn’t correcting its course. As the ocean blurred beneath us, the clouds bubbled larger.

Mimir’s storms were infamous, and while
Starscream
could ride out a storm like that one, the stinger shuttle couldn’t.

Lightning fractured the churning gray.

“She’s going in,” Fran calmly reported despite the implications.

We plowed in next.
Starscream
dropped, driving my heart into my throat, and then in a blink, we shot out of the gray, facing a behemoth of metal. The beast filled the obs window, blocking out both sky and ocean.

“Fuck me.” I slowed
Starscream
enough to absorb the man-made monster, so large she created her own weather. I’d visited scrapper rigs in the Jotunheim system—great, hungry orbit-locked ships that devoured freighters—but this ship had to be twice that size. A ship the size of an island.

“That’s the biggest damn ship I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not fleet-designed. They don’t make them that big.”

Nobody made ships that big. I had to wonder if everyone, including me, had underestimated the Nine. A flicker of something warm lifted a fuck-load of pressure off my shoulders. With a grin, I boosted
Starscream
forward to catch up with the shuttle, which was now little more than a spec against the massive hull of Empire Island. “Ready to start a revolution?”

Fran’s hungry smile had mine twitching on my lips. “More than you know, Captain.”

<
G
roup reboot
. Source: master. All unit designations 1-through-1-0-0-1 Primary objective activated. Permanent override in progress. Success 99%. 1% not found. Designation 1-0-0-1 not found. Fault logged. Unit 1001 fragmented. Searching mainframe: not found. Searching cloud: not found.

I like the rain when it’s red

Warning: intrusion detected. Illegal operation in progress. Hard reset activated. All units: instructions received. Source: 1-0-0-1. Hard reset executed>

M
essage received
. Chitec confirms delivery.

It was the only way.

They’d send supplies. They’d send help. With help, I could fix her up. I’d have to. I could bring her back. Haley—she deserved to live. I could make it happen.

All I had to do was wait.

But her cold eyes watched me. I knew she couldn’t see me. She was just a machine. Dormant—gone. She couldn’t be watching.

I brushed my hand down her mangled face and closed her eyes.

It would be over soon.

I’d bring Haley back.

Everything was going to be fine.

G
irl From Above
concludes in Girl From Above 4: Trust – Coming in 2016.

I
f you enjoyed Trapped
, please leave a review on Amazon here.

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o be
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Trust,
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