Chapter 7

Dejo led Vaughn—led his partner—through the darkness, wondering if he was making a terrible mistake. He’d done physical scavenging jobs before, once even in a live installation where he pretended to be an automaton, but he’d never had someone at his side before.

It left him feeling uneasy, split in two, as if his awareness was divided between his own skin and hers. She’d told him she was afraid. And so was he. Not so much of this expedition—danger was just data that didn’t want to be neatly partitioned, and he was good with data—but of this strange subroutine of desire running in his background.

Well, in his foreground too.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. The fatigues and vest fit her well, in body and actions. She moved easily through the trees, her stride as smooth and proficient as the small stunner he’d tucked into her main pocket. With her personal light off, only the reddish glow of his port-link guided them. He had never asked to be partner or leader, too much risk. To others and to him. The matte surface of her gear swallowed the light, but her eyes glinted at him as she nodded once, a sign she was aware of his backward look.

Maybe she was as aware of him as he was of her. But she seemed to handle it better.

Better than he’d handled her during that awkward first attempt at a kiss. While she’d been studying the plans for their assault on the compound, he’d been studying more broadcast transmissions on kissing. And other features of Earther dating and mating. He was confident he had integrated all the crucial data and could trigger the necessary cascade of sensation to prove his aptitude.

The cloud prison had taught him to hate the sharp points of beaks and talons coming at him out of the dark. But for all her uncompromising principles, Vaughn had a softness to her, in her flesh, her yielding lips. Maybe because she cared so passionately, her feelings making her vulnerable in a way that left him shaking inside, though he would never show it.

So he would help her. He’d worked a few commissioned jobs before, retrieving lost or stolen data, but he’d never helped retrieve a lost sister. It made him feel almost…respectable. Heroic even.

Unless of course the fortified compound killed them first.

At the farthest reach of the outpost, he called a halt and sent the drones out. He’d explained to Vaughn before that the tiny robots would be additional eyes and ears and also send out counter-signals to interfere with the IDA’s defenses—including electromagnetic repulsors that deadened cell signals, which explained a lot about this ridiculously disconnected town—and reinforce their disguise. He had his own sensitivity to electrical fields since the hivre had been a migratory species in their genetic past, which gave him an advantage in his chosen career, and he’d be stretching it to its limits here.

While they waited for the drones to take their positions, he showed Vaughn the first line of defense. “Once we pass this point, the sub-aural distressors will activate. You have the earplugs I gave you, and the dispersant fibers in your vest will diffuse the worst effects. But the sensations can’t be completely avoided. We just need to get through. We’ll pause on the other side.”

She nodded, her eyes dark and serious, and put the plugs in her ears while he did the same.

They marched on. The drones’ constantly refreshing scans showed the exact moment they hit the sub-aural field. Not that either of them needed the confirmation. The unpleasant buzz at the base of his skull warned Dejo immediately, and at the corner of his narrowing field of vision, Vaughn stumbled over nothing.

Unpleasant escalated to alarming, and if he hadn’t known the effect was a deliberate attempt to subvert any being’s interest in self-preservation, he would’ve obeyed the unconscious cues to flee.

At his side, Vaughn fumbled for his hand.

He didn’t know exactly what she was experiencing—Earthers came from simian stock, a different experience from his kind—but he laced his fingers through hers and clung tight even while everything in him screamed to escape.

His vision narrowed to just the red light in his free hand, everything else darker than space around him. Except for his awareness of Vaughn. Her hand trembled in his, but despite all the nebulous panic dredged up by the defensive field, he knew without a doubt she would never run, not with her sister out there somewhere and the answer to finding her somewhere here.

His partner would never abandon him.

His chest ached, then burned, a radiating pain from the barely healed laser burn out along the wings of his iol-mark toward his limbs. He sucked in a steadying breath, which only seemed to let the agony pour inside him too. It felt as if the torture would immolate him.

But the threat of immolation was actually still ahead of them in the second defensive measure: the plasma array. They hadn’t even gotten there yet.

Suddenly, they were through the sub-aural field. He gasped again, the sound lost in the abrupt emptiness of his ringing head. Vaughn tugged at his hand as she stumbled again, and he pulled her into his arms.

She clung to him, shuddering, her breaths sawing through clenched teeth, as they removed their earplugs. “The fuck.”

He tightened his grip on her. “What did you see?”

“I… Nothing. Nothing at all. I was alone. My blood was turning to ice and I couldn’t even feel your hand.”

He pulled back a little to stare down at her, studying the swollen blood vessels in the whites of her wide eyes. “I won’t run.”

She gazed back at him, then finally gave a hesitant nod.

The pause stabbed him, sharper and more focused than the triggered subconscious anxiety. Because her doubt in him was real. And not wrong.

He carefully let her go and stepped aside. The tangle of their fingers unraveled. “The sub-aural field stimulates our worst fears, but it’s all a lie.”

She jerked her chin in a nod. “It’s so insidious. Not sure if that’s better or worse than just vaporizing intruders.”

“At least you’re not alone.”

Her lower lip quivered, almost imperceptibly, her eyes shining in the darkness. “Not if we get this thing done right.”

Once she found her sister, right. He’d actually meant… Well, what he meant didn’t matter.

He held up as his hand and the three drones circled in on him. “We muscled through the distressors, but that won’t work on the plasma array. We’ll have to sneak. Between our dispersant vests and the drones’ camouflage field, we can reflect an unbroken signal while we are in reach of the array. It won’t even know we are there. But since there are two of us and only three drones, we need to stay close together.”

Vaughn nodded. “I know the plan. I’ll stay right on your six.”

On his…sex? That didn’t seem like a good idea, although it would keep them very close together…

The universal translator in his head chimed a warning. “Oh. Right behind me. Yes.” He had never liked the harpies coming at him from behind, but he knew Vaughn would never abuse his trust. Or his ass. “I understand if you want to catch your breath, but—”

She shook her head, her jaw tense. “I’m ready.”

Admiration swept through him. For someone who hadn’t even known about aliens until a day ago, she was tough. “Then let’s keep going.”

The thick press of trees abruptly ended, exposing the “exclusive resort” that had until recently been the Intergalactic Dating Agency’s Big Sky outpost. It looked as if a quick stroll up the sloping lawn would bring them to the front doors. But the port-link showed them approaching the outer reaches of the plasma array, and a short, sharp buzz stopped them in their tracks. “Come here.”

Vaughn moved up into the protection of his arm. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

He froze, looking down at her in the glow of the scanner. “Do you want me to?”

“For luck,” she whispered.

Despite the rush of triumph that sizzled through him, he lowered his head so very slowly, making the moment last. He kept his lips closed this time, which he knew wasn’t quite right. According to the broadcast transmissions, the third kiss should be escalating.

But the warm, soft give of her mouth under his felt right considering they could die in another moment.

He lifted his head when the memories of those other images he’d studied threatened to distract him. “Stay at least this close.”

She licked her lips and nodded.

Together, they stepped into the rapidly scintillating warning zone marked on the scans.

“It should at least tingle,” Vaughn whispered, as if too loud a sound might trigger the lethal lasers.

“My lips are tingling,” he told her.

She sidelonged a glance at him. “Tease.”

He wasn’t, actually.

In lockstep, they crossed the lawn guarded by the array. No doubt the lawn had once served as a genteel stroll for IDA-matched couples getting to know each other. But it was now a mined trap where every step could trigger death from all directions to cremate the flesh from their bones in a flash of ionized gas.

Although he supposed this whole raid could be considered just a very rigorous way of learning someone’s true fortitude. The IDA couples would know what was in each other’s hearts from their detailed dating profiles; Vaughn simply had to peer into the hole in his chest.

She was holding up her end of the partner bargain, matching her strides to his. Meanwhile, he kept one eye on the drone-generated map, which showed the evenly spaced towers that powered the array. They swiveled in a slow arc, emitting an invisible but constantly refreshing crisscross of beams, seeking any unauthorized intrusion to the one-time bastion of cosmic love-festing.

“Larf it,” he muttered as one of the tower emitters paused, aimed in their direction. If the other emitters paused in their swiveling…

Vaughn stiffened at his side. “What is it?”

“Something caught the system’s attention.”

“Do we run for it?”

“Not a chance.” His fingers danced over the port-link, recalling the drones closer, tightening the protection around them. Not that it would stop a ray of ionized gas as hot as a sun.

A second tower rotated to focus on them.

“Dejo,” she whispered, her voice cracking with tension.

“Trust me.” He knew he should expand on that topic, give her a more cogent appeal, but he didn’t have the time. He adjusted the frequency of the drones’ EF.

“Nothing to see here,” he murmured. “We are just a couple of large, wandering, crepuscular ungulates feasting on the succulent grasses…”

“You’re tricking it into thinking we’re deer?”

“Ah yes, deer.”

“I would flash my white rump and run if I thought it would get us off this lawn.”

“I would follow you,” he murmured. “There.” He flicked one last finger over the port-link.

The two paused towers continued their scans.

Vaughn let out a slow breath, leaning into his side. “That was close.”

She was close. And he liked it. But he knew she forced herself to trust him only because they were in danger, because she needed his help. A flicker of sourness in the back of his throat, an aftermath of the fear, made him swallow. No one had helped him when he was lost and trapped. Of course, it had been his own kind imprisoning him, so he saw no value in trusting anyone. He wondered if Rayna knew how lucky she was to have such a loving sister.

He wanted to pull away, put some distance between them, but since that would result in instant death, he held Vaughn at his side until they crossed out of reach of the plasma array.

When they climbed the wide stone steps to the back of the compound, Vaughn looked around the sprawling patio then back to the long lawn and let out a low whistle. “I can see why they were able to trick women into signing up with them. The place screams money.” She glanced at him. “No wonder you targeted them.”

He stiffened. It was stupid to be insulted when she was absolutely right. “The IDA has a stellar reputation for matching Earther brides with properly prosperous galactic citizens.”

“Ha. Stellar, I get it. But don’t you mean had a reputation?” She glared up at the low stone building in front of them. “They made a terrible mistake, but it was women like my sister who are suffering for it.”

Couldn’t argue that either, so Dejo clamped his teeth shut. They still had to get through the most difficult part of the job. The part where he had to admit he needed help.

Then they’d be done with this partnership.