Page 64 of Enthraller

Except, they had before, and who knew how long it took to shake something like that off. And as Ed said, thiswasthe place they’d done it. The place they’d met.

“Wren.” Ed pulled her out of the stream of pedestrians into a small laneway that ran between two buildings. Someone’s back gate opened out onto the lane and they had grown a climbing plant up it, its tiny yellow flowers releasing a sweet perfume into the air. His tone when he said her name was exasperated. “I am speaking for myself.”

She looked up at him, into eyes that were dark and steady.

She had the feeling he would carry her until he dropped. He had already proven he would throw himself in front of laz fire for her. Walk out on the line in a deep space debris field to grab her.

He had her back.

She didn’t know of anything sexier than that. Although his broad-shouldered, long-legged frame and blunt, stark features really did it for her, too.

“Then I guess we aren’t pretending,” she said, and found herself pressed up against the sweet-smelling flowers, being kissed.

She softened in his hold, pressing closer, sliding her hands up his shoulders and behind his head to hold him in place. When she drew back slightly, she felt breathless.

“Aren’t we running for our lives?” she asked.

“Sweetheart.” He kissed her again, a quick nip of her lips. “We’ve been running for our lives since we met.”

Well. That was actually true.

She went back in for more, but the sound of someone in the courtyard behind them brought them to their senses and they slipped back into the walkway, joining the pedestrians headed for the heart of the city.

“Are we going to see Hyt?” she asked.

“Yes, but we’re taking the back door again.”

That made sense.

If no one knew where they were, no one could shoot at them from space.

25

Defense Headquarters was wild.

Wren guessed someone shooting at an SF runner at the hover port from space, while two battleships looked on, would do that.

They were in the secret passageway in the Gate, and the offices that had been empty before were now in use. All except Velda Shanïha’s. That lay in darkness, so she was obviously not in the building, not just elsewhere in a meeting or out for lunch.

She glanced over at Ed, who was watching a senior administrator in her office, talking on a screen to General Baccal and a battleship captain, who stood respectfully behind him and to his left.

“This makes us look like a joke,” the administrator was saying.

“We are aware of the blow to our reputation,” General Baccal said, voice stiff. He angled his head to the captain standing behind him. “Captain Goa can tell you how this happened, and why neither she nor Captain Rendra could do anything about the attack.”

Captain Goa stepped forward, shoulders rigid. “The ship is similar to one we’ve seen footage of a few times. At the Cepidisaster, over Parn during the bombings, and as recently as over Fynian a few months ago. It matches the description of a couple of ships that are a collaboration between the executives of the old Core Companies that ruled the breakaway planets of Garmen and Lassa, and the Caruso. They’re amazingly fast, they can pinch to the black quicker, and they have a powerful laz cannon. But they also have some tech that makes them incredibly hard to spot. They used the freighter line to hide as they shot numerous times at the freighters our teams were inspecting, destroying one completely, then they went quiet for an hour. They then took numerous shots at the observatory station, went back into hiding among the freighter line again, and then finally took a shot at the prisoners an SF team had brought down to the hover port from the obs station, moved extremely quickly to a second point, fired one more time, and then they fled. They got some distance and pinched to the black. It happened in less than two minutes.”

The administrator frowned. “Who did they fire on the final time?”

General Baccal shook his head. “We’re looking into that right this minute. Somewhere to the north, between Nanganya and Demeter. We’ll send through what we have as quickly as possible.”

“Not another hover port?” the administrator asked.

Baccal shook his head. “The middle of the mountains. Perhaps they were shooting at a hover, as that’s the approach most pilots take to come in to the Demeter hub, but we don’t know yet what happened.”

“And this ship that managed to sneak past the best battleships we have, it’s a collaboration between the Core Companies and the Caruso?” The administrator sounded tired. “When was this first noted?”

“When Arkhor took Garmen back under the auspices of the Verdant String Coalition, followed shortly by Bodivas doing the same for the second breakaway planet run by the Cores, Lassa.” The general answered. “Both Arkhor and Bodivas saw the ship or ships, and one was also spotted a few months earlier than that, when a ship matching its description destroyed the ruins on Cepi.”

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