Chapter 27
While Hoss was still staring up at the golden shuttle that’d picked up Ember, Baz trotted to the black pack he’d seen her leaning over earlier. He’d thought her behavior odd, but then Verd was such a mess he figured it was that. That she was sad or needed space to think. So while he and Hoss had been scanning for survivors, she was supposed to be reading the DSU and then what? What had she done?
He read the note, let his hand flop to his side. Hoss came up behind him and snatched it away.
“What the fuck?” Hoss sounded incredulous. “What is she doing?”
Baz scrubbed his hands across his face then through his short hair. He listened as Hoss read the note out loud, still in that slightly high-pitched voice. Kinda funny for an orc, if he didn’t know the whys.
But already he knew most of the words.
I love you both, so, SO much. I figured it out. Came to terms with why I’ve been so awful about it.
I love you. I do. I do. I wanted to hug you and tell you this but you’d have stopped me.
Please believe me when I say I’m torn. I think I’ve fucked up us, our relationship. Maybe I don’t deserve you two but I have to do this.
She’d underlined that last part.
I read the DSU and it told me something I’ve been looking for all my life – where my home planet was. My home. Who destroyed it.
CESS did. That’s right. The company I worked for killed my world. They’ve done so many terrible things, and I think I can take them down.
I’ll be back.
If you hate me, I’ll understand.
Love, Ember
XXXXXXX
PS You might want to destroy this. It’s the one bit of physical evidence that will say what I did. Am going to do. This is not going to be pretty.
Finally. Proof that CESS wasn’t a squeaky-clean company. His days of being a mute had muffled his old existence and the rage he’d once felt toward CESS wasn’t there. He was still totally on board with taking them down, just not with Ember doing it.
“Fuck!” Hoss screamed then threw the note in the air. As it fluttered down, Baz caught it, then he stuffed it in his mouth and chewed.
“What are you doing?” Hoss thrust out his hand. “I want it. I don’t care what she said. If she dies it might be all I have left of her.”
Very deliberately, Baz swallowed. “Then let’s make sure she doesn’t fucking die. I’m following her up there.” He pulled up his retinal screen and ordered the Leaf to get down here ASAP. Not that she wasn’t already going fast as possible but he needed to do something.
Hoss was still swearing at the sky, probably at Ember’s vanished ass.
“I’ve told Leaf. I’m getting on it and you are too. You’re an orc, aren’t you? Do you leave your mate to get things done by herself? Leave her to die?”
Hoss shook his head, scowling hard enough to carve grooves in his ugly orc face. “I’m half-orc, like you’re half man. I feel like hitting you but I won’t...because you’re right.”
“Good! That note’s going to give me indigestion.” He rubbed his stomach, grimaced.
Hoss looked skyward again. “When we catch her I am going to...”
He could hear Hoss’s teeth grinding. He almost smiled. He was afraid to imagine everything that could go wrong with Ember’s little crusade of revenge. They had to save her. Not just because he loved her.
They had to succeed at this because he was dying to know what Hoss intended to do to her afterward. Spank her butt? Fuck her until she begged them to stop? That probably made him a sick man...cyborg. One of those.