Jay hissed. “That sneaky fucking AI.”
“Okay,” Gracie said from the other side of the table. “We have hostiles inbound who absolutely cannot find out what Keris is. We need a plan. How about… Keris is a colonist we found on an abandoned shuttle after we received a distress signal?”
“No.” Jay shook his head. “Too many variables. Like, what is a human ship doing this far out? How did it get here? Where is it now? They’ll see right through it.”
He didn’t stop stroking her back and Keris leaned against him. She should add something meaningful to the discussion, but she couldn’t form a thought beyond panic that the B’Kaar were here and what they were likely to do to her.
“Jay,” she murmured, looking up to find she instantly had all his attention. “Something’s wrong…”
“What is it, sweetheart? Do you hurt somewhere?”
She shook her head, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. What was wrong?
“No, nothing hurts. But… Why can’t I think?” she whispered. “I can do this… problem solving, I mean. But all I can think about is the B’Kaar. That they-they… that they’ll…”
Understanding dawned in his eyes and he pulled her closer to press a soft kiss against her forehead. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re scared. That’s all.”
“This is normal?” she asked, stunned. How did they cope, feeling like this and having it disrupt their cognitive ability?
“Perfectly, yeah. As you get more used to it, you can learn to control it.”
“This is very inefficient,” she grumbled, and he smiled.
“It is. Get grumpy about it. It’ll take the edge off.”
He was still holding her in his lap and didn’t seem inclined to let her go as he looked at the others.
“Okay… we need simple. Not complicated. So Keris is now Kelly Hart, a human survivor from the S’Vaan ship. She was a Frontier Border Agent who was snatched by them for their sick breeding program.”
The two Lathar nodded.
“Makes sense,” Seren replied. “If we say she’s your mate, the B’Kaar are less likely to be interested in her beyond any superficial level. The emperor’s ruling on human females states that no mated female can be claimed.”
“That works.”
Jay looked at her, and his mask slipped for a moment, allowing her to see something in his blue eyes. Something deeper and entirely hotter than she’d expected.
“Kelly Stephens. My wife.”
7
Jay had no idea what to expect of the B’Kaars’ arrival. He’d seen a few types of Lathar over the last few weeks. Seren and Nyek were from different clans, as was Keris, even if she wore a human body now. Her “father” Xaandrynn, the emperor’s champion, was something else entirely. While they were all as different as night and day, chalk and cheese, they all had one thing in common. They were all warriors trained from birth for combat.
But digital warfare… That was all online. Wasn’t it? No rigorous lifelong physical conditioning or combat training was needed. He snorted to himself in amusement. Unless they did thumb training for the joystick.
“Like to make an entrance. Don’t they?” he murmured, standing next to Seren and Gracie in the shuttlebay, one arm around Keris’s waist. Indra stood the other side of Keris, with Nyek in front of them as they waited for the alien gamer boys’ to arrive. He suppressed a shiver as the frigid, dead air from the large space washed over them. Damn, it was cold in here. “The frigging suspense is killing me.”
Nyek half turned his head, irritation clear on his stern features. “Would that it were that simple, human. Now keep quiet. While the B’Kaar are part of the empire, they are a direct competitor to the K’Vass. We do not need to give them any advantage over us.”
Jay rolled his eyes, mostly to irritate the stick-up-his-ass former paladin. He would never understand the political and territorial interplay between the Latharian clans. On the face of it, the Lathar appeared to be a relentless, unstoppable army marching at the order of their warrior emperor. Scratch the surface, though, and you found a tenuous web of alliances and treaties that could be disrupted at any moment if a clan’s leadership changed. In a society where assassination was a viable promotional strategy, that could happen at the drop of a hat… or the thrust of a blade.
“Loose lips sink ships. Got it.” He pulled Keris closer, protectively against his side.
“Yet another nonsensical human phrase,” Nyek grumbled.
Jay didn’t bite back. He’d been where Nyek was, facing a larger, better armed force with no backup, and look at how that had turned out. Grimly, he locked down the memories and focused on the situation at hand. They were stuck on an old base in the ass-end of beyond with no help able to get to them. If the B’Kaar wanted to wipe them out, there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. Other than die loudly. It was a shit sandwich no matter which way you cut it.
He faced front again and swept his gaze around the hangar. It wasn’t the one they’d landed their shuttles in, but one of the larger ones. One just big enough to fit the ship they’d seen on the sensors in the command suite, a ship that had been far closer to the base than they’d expected. They’d only just made it down here in time. Why Miisan hadn’t seen it earlier on the long-range sensors, they didn’t know, and they couldn’t ask because the AI was incommunicado. Utterly absent.
“Holy shit,” Jay breathed as a ship appeared in the hangar bay doors with a small gust of displaced air.
Literally appeared. Not came into view and eased its way into the hangar under thruster power but not there one moment and there the next type of appeared. The gargantuan ship was already halfway into the garage, the massive, axe-like prow bearing down on them before they knew it.
“Cloaking technology,” Keris whispered, a tremor running through her delicate frame.
He recalled himself and stroked his hand down her side.
“It’s okay, love,” he murmured, watching the leviathan of a ship as it loomed over them.
Before it got halfway toward the landing platform they stood on, the lower part of the prow opened like jaws about to engulf its prey. From within, twenty figures emerged. Not shuttles as Jay might have expected, but humanoid shapes. Metal over arms and legs glinted in the hangar lights as the group of B’Kaar flew across the remaining space.
“Spacesuits?” he asked, a frown between his brows. But these didn’t look like any spacesuits he’d seen before. Not even frontier marine corps combat spacesuits. These were less spacesuits and more mobile combat platforms. He could see the shape of the B’Kaar within, arms and legs under the heavily armed and armored exoskeletons. Several of them sported multiple canon arrays mounted on rigs around their bodies and at least one guy at the back was carrying what looked like a couple of planet killer rocket launchers on his shoulders. Engine packs on their backs backlit them with an eerie blue-white glow.
They landed on the platform in front of the small group, boots clunking against metal. From the sound of it, those suits were heavy.
He eyed the warriors as they approached. Every one was as ripped as the other Lathar he’d met, if not more so, and they all walked with a confidence that said they’d practically been born in the death machines they operated.