I opened my mouth. Closed it. My heart hurt. My mind blanked. Gabe on the Endeavor?
“I…” I have no idea what to answer. “I’d have to talk to my crew first. And we’re leaving in about”—I glanced at my watch—“ten hours.”
“Sure.” The word left his lips easily enough, but his face told a different story. I’d always hated disappointing Gabe. Having spent eleven years as close companions, it had definitely happened. The hatchet in my chest twisted, the ache intensifying until I could barely breathe and wanted to blurt out something stupid just to make him feel better.
I didn’t.
Gabe took a step away from me. “I’ll help finish with this haul you brought in. Gotta make the trip back to Mooncamp 3 with the stuff anyway. I’ll come back later.”
I nodded, aware of how stiff the quick jerks of my chin must look to everyone around us. Gabe kept his smile, but he knew things weren’t what he’d hoped and wanted. He knew something was different when he looked at Shade, still wary, tense, and not far from me, and then back at me again. His hazel eyes changed, questioning.
“Don’t leave before I come back, okay?” The smile he’d tried hard to maintain faded. “You know, if you might want me to go with you.”
I nodded again, a flood of tears thickening my throat and battering the backs of my eyelids. My breath hitched, and I moved without thinking, launching myself at him. Everything had changed, but I was so happy to see him. Gabe was alive. I’d given up, especially recently. I’d buried him in my mind since I didn’t have a body.
I gripped him hard, aware of how different he felt. The lanky teenager was gone. My arms barely circled this man’s torso, and his arms felt twice as thick when they came around me, folding me into him. “Thank the Powers you’re all right, Gabe. I can’t believe it.”
He cupped the back of my head and gently rocked me. His other arm stayed wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me so close that we touched from top to bottom. I closed my eyes against his neck, just like I used to. The scent of industrial soap, metal, and icy wind filled my nostrils. He didn’t smell at all like I remembered.
“I love you, Tess,” he said. “No matter what.”
“I love you, too.” I squeezed my eyes shut and held him, my heart breaking into pieces that fell straight into the dark swirling void losing him seven years ago had left.
Chapter 14
SHADE
She’d let him come. Gabe was on board the Endeavor. Ex-boyfriend Gabe. Companion of her youth Gabe. First love—and lover—Gabe.
Over the course of the day, I’d ground my teeth so much they hurt. The resulting headache was crawling up the back of my scalp now. I couldn’t relax for the life of me and wasn’t sure I wanted to. It didn’t help that Tess wavered between jumpy as hell and completely shell-shocked. She didn’t flee my touch, but she didn’t reciprocate it much, either. I backed off, giving her the space she needed. For the first time since we made up, she intentionally closed herself off from me, and it scared the ever-living shit out of me. If I lost her, I lost everything.
Fiona came back with the residents of the Unholy Stench at lunchtime so that we could all go over the plan Frank and his crew had established based on their intel. They liked to prepare, which made me like them even better. They had a good plan. Simple. Not too many variables. Efficiency would be key, and I liked that.
What I liked less was that by adding Tess to the mix, they’d gone from nabbing one cargo attachment to four and dumped the heaviest danger onto Tess.
She had a special way with locks—which I still didn’t understand, but she’d promised to explain to me. That meant Tess was going in. She chose Jax and me to accompany her. Frank and Caeryssa would fly in with us on my cruiser. We’d pose as the Dark Watch maintenance team whose security codes Frank had stolen. Once we were inside, we’d go straight to the spine of cargo attachments fastened to the outer wall of the spacedock and get to work.
As Tess overrode the vacuum seals to each of the food holds we planned to take, one of us would get inside the container, close it up again, and use its built-in thrusters to maneuver it away from the spacedock. Either the Unholy Stench or the Endeavor would pick up the floating unit with a vacuum seal at one of their available exits. Starboard or back door for the Endeavor. Portside wasn’t equipped with an air lock.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t take advantage of having super soldiers. Mwende wanted to keep a low profile and avoid being seen in a potentially compromising position. As for Merrick, his enhanced size made him stand out like a colossal thumb, and he could possibly also be recognized following his time in captivity. We were all wanted. All we could do now was take a calculated risk and send the least recognizable of us onto the spacedock.
It was a gamble—a gamble we didn’t really need when we had a bigger mission looming. The priority remained freeing Ahern and Shiori from Starbase 12, and the days were ticking down to when Daniel Ahern’s contact would disarm the plasma-shield alarm for us. I’d already come up with and discarded a dozen ideas about how to get in and get out with our targets, but making concrete plans was proving difficult without knowing what Bridgebane might bring to the table.
I’d signed on for sudden gambles when I chose Tess, and now I was seeing the reality of it. One risk after another. Provide for those in need. Further the rebellion. Nightchasers didn’t pass up opportunities like this. Reliable intel and relatively easy access to a fully stocked Dark Watch security hub didn’t come around that often. I got that—or I was trying to.
During lunch, Tess and Frank decided who would go and who would stay. Neither of their crews argued with their final choices, including me. In silence, I worked to convince myself any of this should be happening in the first place.
For our part, Merrick would fly the ship. Mwende and Gabe would man our two air locks with vacuum-seal capacities and attach the stolen food holds as soon as Merrick lined everything up.
Frank and his crew would do the same, with Macey, Asher, and Nic all staying aboard. One to fly, and two to work the vacuum seals.
Fiona planned to stay out of the way, but she’d have a com, like we all did. Frank had provided coms that hid behind the shell of the ear under a patch of adhesive that looked like skin. They were small and inconspicuous, even if they were outdated. We linked them to a common secure channel and could communicate with barely a mumble once they were activated.
The main problem I had with this whole plan was leaving Tess on the Ewelock station by herself. After Frank, Caeryssa, Jax, and I all floated off in a cargo attachment to be picked up by our ships, Tess would be left alone on the Dark Watch security hub to make her way back to my cruiser, take off, and meet us again.
For a rendezvous point, we settled on the Sector 2 planet of Nickleback—a place no one wanted to go because of the huge man-eating spiders. We chose coordinates for an uninhabited plateau in the fourth quadrant of the northern hemisphere and memorized the numbers. Once we secured the stolen goods, the acting captains would program in the coordinates and jump.