After being stuck in the med-bay for the last few days, the last thing Dante wanted to do was leave his soft, warm bed and his still-sleeping lover to deal with reality. Reality was a cold, miserable place full of greedy assholes and people who kept trying to kill him. The only thing that would get him out of bed and away from Tyra was a direct order, and that’s exactly what he’d received a few seconds ago.

Thanks to years of conditioning he’d managed to get to his comm before the incoming alert had woken Tyra. He’d eased out of bed and left her sleeping while he read his new orders. Downs had learned he was out of medical and was demanding to see him immediately. He was to meet her in the briefing room in less than an hour to give her a full report on what had happened during his last mission. Fraxx. So much for enjoying a little more time with Tyra.

After a quick shower, he returned to the main room to dress to find Tyra sitting up in bed, looking like temptation in human form. “Morning, beautiful. Did I wake you?”

“You were singing in the shower. I didn’t know you could sing.”

“Not a lot of call for it in my line of work. I’m sorry I woke you up, though. I was going to let you sleep as long as I could before I left. After last night, I figured you could use it.”

“I’m not the one recovering from a serious injury.” She blushed but managed to look stern at the same time, an adorable combination that made it hard to remember he had a meeting to get to.

“Rossi’s orders. Believe me, I wouldn’t have left that bed for any other reason.” He tapped a wall panel and pulled out a fresh uniform. “I’ve got a debriefing with Dr. Downs and her associate in about twenty minutes.”

Tyra wrinkled her nose. “What an unpleasant way to start your day.”

“Know what would make it better?” He asked as he dressed.

“Coffee?”

“Nope. I’m hoping you’re going to tell me you’ll still be here when I get back. I can make this the fastest meeting in the history of Nova Force if I know you’re lounging around my bed, naked.”

“Sorry, Muscles. Not today. I should have the results of my last batch of tests in an hour or so. I should have the results ready to be presented before noon, ship time.”

He’d known what her answer would be before he asked. They both had duties to perform. He just wanted her to know where he’d rather be, and with whom. “Well, as it happens, my doctor wants me on light duty for the next twenty-four hours, which means I’m going to be around tonight if you’d like to have dinner with me.”

“Dinner sounds good. This time, though, we don’t let Magi make our dessert selections. I can’t believe he had the food dispenser make three different kinds of shortcake!”

Dante snorted. “I can. I keep telling Rossi that kid needs more to do.”

“He’s been doing an amazing job of watching out for Nico. That’s a full-time job. He’s going to make a great father someday.”

“I think so, too, but first we need to fix his taste in women. He seems to have a thing for the dangerous ones.”

“His burns?” she asked.

“He told you about those?”

Tyra nodded. “He showed them to me. I got the feeling he’s had more than his share of pain lately.”

“He likes the dangerous ones. One gave him those scars, and the next one turned out to be an assassin.” He finished dressing, tugged his uniform straight, and gave her a snappy salute. “What do you think, do I look presentable?”

“You look great. Especially since I don’t think you’ve even had coffee yet.”

“I don’t drink coffee. No kick. I’ll grab a quick mug of Ja’kreesh from the galley before my meeting.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “You drink that supercharged rocket fuel? Do you have any idea what that stuff does to a human being’s synapses?”

“I’m not human, remember? Well, not completely. I’ve got enough Torski in me to handle the hit.” He grinned at her. “If you want to worry about someone drinking Ja’kreesh, talk to Trinity. She loves the stuff, and the lieutenant is one hundred percent human.”

“You’re both fraxxing crazy.” Tyra held up a warning finger. “You may have one mug. A small one. Your body has taken enough abuse this week.”

He chuckled. “Just a small one. I don’t have time for anything else.” He crossed the room and leaned down to plant a slow, lingering kiss on her lips. When he moved away, he groaned. “Though I’m tempted to trade the tea for more time with you.”

Her eyes glowed with pleasure. “I’d like that, too, but there’s not enough time. You don’t want to be late for your inquisition, and I need to get back to work. Playtime is over.”

“Only until tonight.” He ducked down for one last kiss, winked, and headed for the door with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face. This was the best he’d felt in ages, and nothing, not even a hostile debriefing with corporate lackeys could ruin his mood.

Once the meeting started, his optimistic outlook faded fast. The two reps didn’t even try to hide their agenda. They were there to try and get him to say something, anything, they could use to kick Nova Force off the planet and end the investigation.

They’d walked in together, neither one of them cracking even a hint of a smile. He rose to his feet as they entered and stood at parade rest until they were both seated across from him.

“Good morning,” he said.

Instead of answering, Dr. Downs set down a recording device on the table and steepled her fingers in front of her. “State your name for the record.” She spoke in Galactic Standard, but there was a trace of an accent that reminded him of Trip. She was probably from the same planet, Cassien Alpha.

“My name is Sergeant Dante Strak. Assigned to Nova Force, Team Three.”

“Sergeant Strak, we’re here to discuss your unauthorized intrusion onto private property, namely Bellex 3, which is owned and controlled by Bellex Corporation.”

“My mission was not unauthorized. As a member of Nova Force, I go where I am ordered by my commander. The mission was fully vetted and approved by Nova Force Command.”

Dr. Down’s lips thinned. “So, you’re admitting that you were on the planet without the permission of Bellex Corporation, the legal owner of said planet?”

Dante leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the table. “I’m saying I was ordered to go to Bellex 3 to gather intelligence about the pharma crisis and to locate a team of Boundless’ medical personnel that had gone missing while investigating the medical emergency on the planet.”

She sniffed and tapped the datapad she’d brought with her. “You will admit that you arrived on a civilian freighter and used a false identity to register as a freelance worker upon arrival on Bellex 3?”

“I followed orders. This was an undercover mission.”

“So, you were spying,” Chad Everest spoke for the first time. Unlike Downs, Everest spoke without any trace of an accent. Accents were common. The only beings he’d met without one were either cyborgs or people who wanted to erase any trace of their origins.

“I wasn’t spying.” He did his best to keep his expression impassive and deliberately slowed his speech as if he were speaking to simpletons. “I told you my mission parameters already. Collect information about the crisis and attempt to locate the Boundless team. Nova Force is a law enforcement unit. We don’t spy.”

Downs glanced at Everest before asking her next question. “What was the name of the ship that brought you to Bellex 3?”

“Classified.”

She pursed her lips and glared at him. “Is that the name of the ship or are you refusing to answer the question?”

“I’m informing you that the answer to your question is classified, which means I can’t tell you.”

“What about the name of the pilot?”

“Also classified.” Dax had warned him they’d try to get that information.

“This will go faster if you cooperate,” Everest said with a hint of a smile.

“I am cooperating. If you’d like this to go faster, I’d suggest asking questions you don’t already know I can’t answer.”

Eventually, they changed topics and moved on the second mission, the one that resulted in his capture. This time, the questions were different. The blame game was still ongoing, but it wasn’t the focus. It took a bit of time to work out what they were after, but he spotted the pattern. They didn’t care about what had happened to him. The drugging. The attack. The illegal tech on the hopper that allowed him to be moved without being tracked. They asked about it all, but the only time they showed any real interest was when he talked about what happened in the room before he was rescued. They wanted descriptions of his surroundings. The sights, sounds, and smells. The man who hid his face, had there been anything about him that would allow Dante to recognize him again? On and on it went. He answered what he could and was honest about what he couldn’t.

Finally, Downs sighed and looked at him with frustration. “For an investigator trained to notice the slightest details, you didn’t notice much, did you?”

He didn’t rise to the bait, though his patience was starting to wear thin. “I’d been attacked, beaten, and sedated at the time. A few details might have escaped my notice.”

The interview dragged on. It was a pointless exercise, and by the halfway point everyone in the room knew it. That didn’t stop them, though. They stuck to their assigned roles, followed the script they’d been given, and did their best to bore him to death until the very end.

“One last item, Sergeant. Please justify your decision to remove Bellex property from the planet. We’re aware this was your decision.”

It was the first time he’d been caught flat-footed since the interview began. “You’ll have to be more specific. I don’t remember removing Bellex property either time I left the planet. In fact, as we’ve already established, the second time I left, I wasn’t even conscious.”

“I’m referring to asset 749612-003,” Downs stated without looking up from her datapad.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Everest cleared his throat and gave him an insincere smile “The boy, Sergeant. The one who calls himself Nico.”

Dante rose to his feet, kicked back his chair, and slammed his hands down on the table. “He’s a little boy, not an asset!”

Downs jerked back in her chair, and for a moment he caught the barest glimmer of emotion – fear. Instead of standing up to him, she glanced at Everest.

“Is there a problem, Sergeant?” Everest asked in a voice devoid of all his usual cheer and affability.

“No.” Dante straightened up but stayed on his feet. “As for Nico, I brought him to the Malora because he’s a material witness to both the attack on the Boundless team and the later attack on our location in District Twelve. He’s an unaccompanied minor, and I couldn’t take the risk of him disappearing before the investigation was concluded.”

“I see. Then you will be returning the asset – I mean the boy - to Bellex once the investigation is over?” Downs asked, apparently ready to take charge again.

He folded his arms across his chest and stared down at her. “That depends on the outcome of the investigation. If there are charges, Nico will have to be available to testify at the trial.”

She didn’t look pleased about that, and her fingers flew as she typed something into her data tablet. After a moment, Everest took over talking. “Do you think it’s likely there will be charges?”

Dante managed to refrain from laughing out loud, but it was a near thing. After two hours of trying, they still held out hope that if they asked the right question, he’d give them something useful. “I’m not authorized to discuss the details of the investigation. You’ll have to talk to Commander Rossi.”

Downs sighed in frustration and looked up. “Since you aren’t interested in being cooperative, I see no reason to continue this interview.”

“I’ve been as cooperative as I can be.”

Downs gave a limp-wristed wave of her hand. “I’m sure you think so. You may go, Sergeant. I’ll be taking this up with your superiors.”

He knew it was another attempt to annoy him, so he gritted his teeth, nodded once, turned on his heel, and walked away before he said something he’d regret at his court-martial.

Normally, he’d work out his frustrations in the gym, but not today. Today, there was somewhere else he wanted to be. He headed for the med-bay and the woman who could make his day better just by smiling.

Tyra left Dante’s quarters shortly after he did, making the short walk to her room in hopes that no one would catch her in last night’s outfit, a pair of borrowed dress shoes in her hand and a serious case of bed head. She made it about three steps before Eric appeared.

“Good morning. Did you have a nice night, Dr. Li?”

“Good morning, Ensign. How long have you been skulking outside Dante’s door waiting for me to appear?”

His laughter filled the corridor. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just happened to be walking by. Just like I happened to be heading to the galley at the same moment Dante was making his way there for a mug of that unfiltered rocket fuel he drinks.”

“Dante’s right, you need more to do,” she teased, then touched his arm. “All joking aside, thank you for your help making last night happen. And thank you for watching over Nico. How’s he doing?”

“I was happy to help. Seeing the grin on Buttercup’s face this morning was the only thanks I needed. As for Nico, he’s great. We’ve got plans to hang out again tonight.”

“More games?”

“Droid repair. He’s fascinated by them. Plus, I figure that gives you and the big guy another date night.”

“Thank you, but you’re sure it’s not too much trouble? You’re supposed to on duty.”

“And one of those duties is maintaining the ship, which includes the bots and droids. It’s not a problem.” Eric glanced around, then lowered his voice. “He’s been telling me what it’s like down there. For him. No parents. No adults at all. He vaguely remembers going to some kind of school, but he says that was a couple of winters ago. He thinks his parents died, but no one ever told him anything. One day, they just didn’t come home, and he was on his own. It’s not right.”

“It’s horribly wrong. I’m still hopeful that we’ll find a way to give him a better life than what’s waiting for him down there.”

Eric nodded. “Yeah. Dax has me working on that. Unofficially, of course.”

She beamed with gratitude, then abandoned decorum and hugged him. “Thank you, Magi. Dante has some truly amazing friends.”

Eric hesitated for half a heartbeat before hugging her back. “You’re pretty amazing, yourself. Dante’s a lucky man.”

They said their goodbyes, and she hurried back to her room. A quick shower, a change of clothes, and she headed for the med-bay. Her brain was already buzzing with all the things she had needed to do. It was going to be a good day, she could feel it.

With Dante on restricted duty, Cris had taken his place on the ground team, which meant Tyra was managing the medical investigation on her own. Fortunately, she was used working shorthanded, and years of working with Boundless had given her a more diverse set of skills than most doctors ever needed. She checked on the progress of the various analysis programs she had running, then sat down at her desk and began working on a draft of her final report. She couldn’t come to any conclusions until the last of the data came in, but she had enough preliminary information to start writing her report.

She’d been at it for about an hour when the door opened and Trinity walked in.

“Hey, Tyra. You got a moment?”

“For you? Always. Do you need me as a doctor, an investigator, or because you want to hear how last night went?”

Trinity flashed her a small smile. “I want to hear about your night a little later. Right now, though, we need to talk about Dr. Castille.”

“You found something.”

Trinity nodded curtly, crossed the room, and pulled up a chair. “How well do you know him?”

“Not well at all. Like I told you, he was a last-minute addition to my team. I thought he was a competent doctor and a decent human being.” She sighed. “I missed something, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t. You had no way to know his family connections or his motivation for joining Boundless. Your instincts were right, though. He never intended to do more than one mission. This one.”

“My instincts weren’t good enough to figure out I had a liar on my team. Tell me the rest of it. Why was he on my team and what was he there to do?” How could she have missed it? She’d always prided herself on being a good judge of character, of always knowing who to trust. Had she been fooling herself?

“I haven’t confronted him yet, but it looks like he was spying for his family.”

“And who the fraxx is his family? What corporation are they aligned with? Are they the ones that pushed so hard to get us off the planet and away from Nova Force?”

“His grandmother is a Bardeaux, and yeah, it seems likely they were the ones pulling strings.”

Oh no. “Bardeaux, as in Bellex Corps’ biggest competitor in shipbuilding? Those slimy sons of bitches. Boundless is allowed to go anywhere because we’re unaffiliated to any government or corporation. They risked destroying our reputation just so they could see what the competition was up to? We weren’t even near the factories or production areas, we were focused on the people we came here to help.” That’s when it hit her. “Fraxx. You don’t think he was here to steal design secrets, do you? You think this was about the cobalt.”

“That’s my theory.” Trinity leaned forward. “None of this is your fault, Tyra. His family used their money and influence to get him a spot on your team. You took him at face value because you’re a good person and you had no reason not to trust him.”

“When this is over, will you inform Boundless about what you learned?” They had to know about this. There needed to be a review. Procedural changes. This couldn’t happen again. It should have never happened at all.

“Of course. And I’ll give you an update about what he said once I’ve spoken to him. I just wanted you to know what I’d discovered.”

“Thank you. Do you—” She broke off, swallowed hard, and started again. “Do you think he was part of what happened down there? Is he the reason my teammates are dead? Veth. He’s the one that told me they were dead! What if they weren’t and I left them behind?” Anguish and guilt crashed over her in an icy wave.

“I think he had a hole blasted in his chest and nearly died in that attack, which makes it unlikely he had any part in it. As hard as it is to accept, I believe the rest of your team died in the first few minutes of the assault, and you only survived because of Nico. I can’t tell you what Castille’s role was, but my gut tells me he’s not a killer.”

“I’m trusting your judgment because mine’s apparently pretty fraxxing faulty. I trusted him. I saved his damned life!”

“Of course you did. You’re a good person, and that’s what good people do. Don’t blame yourself for that. If you hadn’t saved him, everything he knows would have died with him. We need answers, and I’m going to make sure he gives us some.” Trinity got to her feet. “Is there anything you can think of that I should be asking him about? Times you didn’t know where he was? Locals he hung around with?”

She thought back to the first days they’d been on the planet. They’d been busy setting up equipment and letting the locals know why they were there. “Ask him about Livvy. I never made the connection until now, but he was the one who brought her into the clinic and introduced me. In fact, he was pushing for us to do community outreach before we even set foot on the planet. That’s already part of what we do, but he kept bringing it up.”

Trinity’s eyes narrowed. “Livvy? That would be the same girl who lured Dante into that trap?”

“What? That was Livvy? No one told me.”

“She left Dante a note telling him where to go, and who to speak to. It was a setup. Dante probably didn’t tell you because he knew you’d be upset.”

“Damn right I’m upset! Livvy’s moral compass was faulty, but I never imagined she’d turn on Dante. If she were going to do that, she could have done it while we were all on the surface. It doesn’t make sense.”

“We think someone got to her after you were gone. They probably offered her a wad of scrip to write that note. It had to be enough to get her out of the area because no one’s seen her lately. We’ve been asking around, and Magi’s been searching for her with facial recognition. So far, nothing.”

Livvy was an opportunist with minimal ethics, but she cared about her crew. She wouldn’t abandon them. At least, Tyra wouldn’t have thought so. Had she misjudged Livvy, too? Veth, had she misjudged everyone? “If you find her, what will you do?”

“Bring her here for interrogation. We’re chasing ghosts right now, and it’s getting fraxxing frustrating. If we can find her, we’ll be one step closer to finding the ones behind all this.”

“The final test results should be coming in soon. I’m hopeful the information will point us in the right direction.”

Trinity nodded and got to her feet. “I’m glad you’re here to do this for us. We all have multiple skill sets, but this level of lab work would be beyond us. If you weren’t here, we’d have to send the samples elsewhere to get these results, costing us time we don’t have.”

Tyra stood and walked Trinity to the door. “You’ll let me know what Oran has to say for himself?”

“Of course.” Trin touched her shoulder. “I won’t tell you not to think about what he did because I know that’s not going to happen, but don’t let it make you crazy. And if you need to talk? Come see me or Magi, we’re currently the team’s experts on trusting the wrong person.”

“Only currently?”

“Everything goes in cycles, even bad judgment. I’m off to ruin Castille’s day. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Thanks. If he gives you any attitude, tell him I’m filing a report with the Galactic Board of Health Professionals about his conduct. His family might be able to protect him from any legal trouble, but he won’t be practicing medicine much longer.”

“Nice play. I’ll be able to use that. Thanks.”

The moment the door slid closed, Tyra sank into the nearest chair and cursed in every language she knew. She’d been lied to, used, and betrayed. Echoes of the past stirred in her mind - memories of others who had promised to help and then left her and her father to struggle on alone. How could she forget those bitter lessons? When had she become so blind?

She forced herself back to her feet, squared her shoulders, and reminded herself of the promise she’d made herself all those years ago. Don’t trust anyone else to get the job done. It was time she followed that advice again.