Chapter 20

Harper

I wanted to get Batok off my ass as much as Nick did, but I still didn't think it was a good idea to infiltrate one of his camps. Seeing the supervisor who had opened and closed the vault I'd been in too many times to count was also a shock. I knew that's who we were there to see, but seeing his face was not the same as remembering. It instantly brought me back to that time, to the slow starving and the thirst, to see him coming and going with a grin.

That guy had been the worst; he had taken pleasure in seeing me there each time. I didn't know what he would have done if he had to deal with a rotting corpse for months on end, but he'd seemed hellbent on my death being quick rather than slow.

Then Nick put him in his place with some lightning-fast karate moves and the towering red alien went from frightening to pitiful in a few heartbeats. All I'd seen was his hulking shape when we entered this room, the glare in his eyes, the sneer on his lips. Now I noticed other things.

Nick controlled him viciously by his wrenched arms and had no trouble keeping the alien against the desk. He was big but a little overweight, and it was obvious that he'd relied on his size to protect him far too much. He didn't look so intimidating now or like he held all the power.

Only a little more pain and he started talking rapid-fire about all kinds of things. I knew Nick would remember all of it, but I still thumbed on the camera on my tablet to record it all. This wasn't really information that would help us figure out what the hell was on those implants, but it was certainly all kinds of intel on Batok's operations. Surely, someone in this quadrant of the galaxy could use that stuff to take him down for us?

Then he said the magic words. "Check my security protocols! Those will give you access to his data logs!" The large red alien would have gestured with his hands if they weren't pinned against his shoulder blades in a very unnatural position by Nick. Instead, he jerked his chin at the viewscreen next to him and then hissed when that caused him pain from the wound on his neck.

Nick ditched him with a knockout blow onto the floor so fast that things were a blur to my eyes. My mate was already hunched over the computer, and casually yanking on Ovran's hand to use it to unlock the system. I adored the casual toss when he was down, with zero regard for the alien's well-being, just like he'd had none for me.

"Does that help?" I asked him, daring to shuffle a little closer so I could lean over the desk and see the screen for myself. I made sure to keep my distance from the big, sprawled-out body. I didn't need him to snatch me if he was pretending to be passed out, I didn't need to be close to him at all.

Nick ripped his eyes from the screen to look at my face, his tigerite orbs glowing with his excitement. "Oh yeah, definitely." And then he leaned to the side and with a hand, like the dude weighed nothing, dragged that body out of my way. I flushed with warmth, and all kinds of tender feelings for my guy, because I knew he'd done that for me. He'd seen my discomfort, and he'd fixed it.

The symbols on the screen appeared in English to me, thanks to my handy, permanent contact lenses, but that didn't mean they made sense. "This isn't the cipher to decrypt the data we're after," Nick explained, "But I can infer a lot from it. Updating my algorithms now." The blue holographic visor over his left eye seemed to sparkle; it indicated that he was using it. Then it winked out, and he grinned at me, a warm, happy grin that made my chest feel the same.

That smile made me feel like we had it like we were almost there now. I couldn't wait for this to be over, and for us to settle into a calmer, normal life. Not that I could picture what that would be, but it would probably be something on a spaceship. Hopefully, we could live on the Varakartoom because that's what Nick considered home.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Nick said, and he rounded the desk. I was getting used to the way he'd slide a wing around me when he got close, always so eager to get me sheltered, protected. I was definitely not used to the way he kissed me. He dragged me into his arms, lifted me against his armor clad chest, and claimed my mouth. It was a short, brutal kiss, a celebration of the discovery he'd just made.

He put me back on my feet a moment later, but he kept hold of my hand as we left the small, tawdry office. I pretended not to see what he did when he leaned back in for a second, but I heard the laser fire from his pistol. The supervisor was no more, one less face to haunt me in my dreams at night. I didn't even care if that made me a bad person.

The courtyard was still empty when we stepped outside. The warehouses were all covered with a layer of sand, and the guardhouse was silent. I could hear noises from the smoke-belching mining equipment down in the pit, and the clamor of voices from the workers below, but all of that was far away. It felt like nobody even knew we were there, and that we'd walk out with our information, but no resistance.

Walk out? No, of course not. As soon as we were under the open sky, Nick wrapped me in his arms and took us into the air. My heartbeat sped up at the sudden loss of the solid ground beneath my feet, my stomach swirled, and the urge to smile pulled at my cheeks. I felt lighter already, knowing that we'd taken care of one of my demons and that we were this much closer to accessing that information.

I hoped they were damning secrets; all the information we needed to take down Batok. I hoped we could expose his entire operation once we were in and end his reign of terror. That would be worth every minute of suffering. Writing an article that did that would make me feel proud. I would not be earning a Pulitzer maybe, but in my heart, I'd know I'd done good. And wasn't that exactly what any dreamy-eyed, brand-new journalist set out to do?

We were approaching our shuttle, but this time, Nick was sending out his drones well in advance to search for traps. We didn't want a repeat of last time when a sniper had managed to ambush us. He was talking to the captain of the Varakartoom too, but I could only hear his side of the conversation. It sounded like he wasn't in hot water right now, which surprised me, and the Varakartoom would reach the solar system we were in soon. It made me feel a tremendous amount of relief to know that we would have backup. The kind that Mandy kept explaining was so badass that the Varakartoom's reputation often did half the work for them.

"We are ten minutes out," Nick declared after he ended his call with the mercenary ship. "I have visual contact and all is clear. The storm has decimated any cover, and I see no heat signatures." The words had only just left his mouth when fire sizzled through the sky. He swerved in reflex and it streaked past us without harm.

"What the hell?" I yelled, all that relief and happiness gone in an instant. My body flushed with adrenaline and the urge to fight or flee, but there was nothing I could do except hang onto him while he danced through the sky. Impressive aerial acrobatics to dodge and evade the dozens of strikes that came at us, not from the ground like we'd expected, but from above.

I scanned the cloudy sky for any sign of what was happening. This wasn't lightning, this was much too precise for that. Nick couldn't keep dodging much longer without getting hit. What were we supposed to do? I was a lousy shot, and I had never even held a laser pistol. Even if I could shoot, I couldn't see a target to aim at; it was just clouds everywhere.

"I'm coming around. Hang on tight. I'll need to use my hands," Nick warned me, and he banked suddenly, his wings making a loud snapping noise from the rapid twist. I had only a second to tighten my grip on his neck and clench my thighs more tightly around his hips. Then he released me from around my waist and his laser pistol was flashing as he raised it and fired.

I heard a stuttering noise, like a dying mosquito, and then a more steady humming. I craned my head and hooked my legs into the straps that held his backpack to his spine. There! I saw it now, a sleek silver silhouette that sank out of the cloud layer above us and finally into view. "A skimmer," Nick said. "Batok must have sent it down to look for us. Keep steady, Harper. I'll take care of it."

When he said he'd take care of it, I didn't expect him to turn toward the still-firing little ship and face it head-on. He was crazy, and I yelped in fear as laser fire whizzed past our heads far too close for comfort. But Nick was cool as a freaking cucumber when he took aim and fired a single shot. It seemed to glide past the skimmer's nose, down its flank and then struck the tail wing.

It wasn't a shot that looked devastating, but the results were obvious. The skimmer stuttered again, swerved, and its laser fire abruptly stopped. It twisted into a rapid downward spiral next, and while Nick carefully kept us hovering high in the air, we watched as the small vessel nosedived straight into the planet's dusty surface.

"There will be more," Nick said, while I was still gaping over his shoulder at the exploded, burning wreck. He sped off, his wings beating hard against the currents, our speed rapidly increasing as we careened through the sky. It didn't take long for the wreck to disappear from sight, only a hint of a smoke plume visible in the air.

I turned the other way and searched for any sign of our ship. It should still be there because Nick said he'd been communicating with its computers since the storm had passed. I spotted the dead, skeletal trees first, which we'd landed behind. Nick was starting our descent above the trees and I could see a darker spot, a deep black against the tan and browns of the planet; our ship.

"We got it!" Nick crowed, his arms tightening around my middle. "We got it, Harper!" His eyes radiated smug satisfaction, like he'd just won a battle. He hadn't even celebrated the end of that skimmer's attack, so I struggled to wrap my head around what he meant. The shuttle? Was he glad to be back?

Everything turned to hell in a handbasket so suddenly that it felt for a second like the whole world turned upside down. I was staring into his excited, happy eyes, a smile pulling on his lips, and then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he went limp. His arms slipped from around my middle, his head dropped, and his wings stopped their steady beating. We started crashing to the ground; the wind rushing past us at an alarming rate, and then we struck a sand dune and everything went black.