Chapter Four
Marcus blocked Elle’s kick. She came at him again and he knocked her leg away with his forearm. He was careful not to use his full strength. She was lucky if she weighed sixty kilograms and he was twice that.
“Good,” he said. “Again.”
She nodded, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Dogged determination was etched on her face. She swiped her arm across her sweaty brow. Dark strands of hair stuck to her damp skin.
Then she attacked.
Roundhouse kick. Step, turn. Side kick. That one packed enough strength to make him grunt. A kick aimed at his head that he deflected. Then she moved in close and slammed a fist into his gut.
He caught her hand before it connected, spun her and yanked her up against him. Her back was pressed to his chest, her rounded ass nestled against his crotch. Dammit. He was going to kill Cruz.
“Don’t bother trying to punch.” God, he loved the feel of her against him. “You have to get too close. Raptors are bigger, stronger. Kick to incapacitate, to buy a bit of time, and then run.”
“I suck at this, don’t I?” Her voice was quiet.
“No.” She was actually getting pretty darn good. “But you aren’t physically strong enough to take on a raptor at close quarters, no matter your training or your armor. Not many of us are. Got it?”
She nodded. Her hair tickled his face and her scent filled his senses—something with flowers and coconut that was all Elle, mixed with healthy feminine sweat. His cock twitched and he recited a few mental curses.
He set her away and dragged in some air. “Again.”
She lifted her chin and rushed at him, her kick aimed for his midsection. He blocked and watched her move. Her kicks would never be powerful enough to do much damage, but damn, she moved gracefully. Like a dancer.
“Come on, Elle. Quit playing around.”
“Playing around?” Her jaw set, something flashing in her eyes. Yeah, he’d noted that determination in her before. First, when she’d lobbied to become Hell Squad’s comms officer. He’d fought just as hard not to have her.
But she’d found ways to prove to him she was the best person for the job. Getting extra intel for their missions. Filling in when their old comms officer was sick. Quietly winning over his squad until he’d had no choice.
Yeah, he saw her determination every time he was planning a mission or out in the field. Elle bent over backwards to do the best job she could for Hell Squad. He wondered what ghosts drove her burning need to prove herself.
Marcus remembered the night he’d found her. It was a few weeks after the alien invasion. The base had been a chaos of military personnel all jostling for command. But Marcus and his team had kept going out and bringing in survivors. Elle had been with a rag-tag group who’d made it out of the city. She’d been covered in raptor blood and shell-shocked, but she’d still been helping to comfort other survivors.
His brief foray down memory lane cost him. A sudden, hard kick to his knee took him down. Her slight weight slammed into him and he was enough off balance to hit the mats hard. Elle landed on top of him, straddling his chest.
“Yes!” She grinned and pumped a fist in the air. “How’s that for playing, Steele?”
Hell, she was so goddamned beautiful. He stared at her face and realized he rarely saw that free, easy smile on her. He wished he could see it all the time.
“She got you, Steele,” a voice called out.
Marcus managed to rip his gaze from Elle. Roth Masters, leader of Squad Nine was doing bicep curls with a couple of members of his team at the free weights in the far corner of the gym.
“Yeah. She did.” Marcus looked back at Elle and their gazes met. Caught.
Her smile melted away and Marcus felt the air leave his lungs. The air around them turned charged.
She licked her lips. “Marcus—”
“Nice work, Elle.” Roth appeared above them. “Felling an oaf like Steele takes some skill.”
Elle scrambled off him and onto her feet. “I think I surprised him.”
A tiny smile tweaked Roth’s lips. “Yeah, I reckon you’ve been doing that from the first day he met you.”
Marcus shot Masters a scowl, and without bothering to use his hands, leaped to his feet. “Don’t you have a mission to plan or training to conduct?”
“Nope. Watching you get your butt kicked by a girl is much more satisfying.”
“Screw you, Masters.” But Marcus knew the ribbing was all in good fun.
Roth smiled, but then his rugged face turned serious. “I heard you recovered the raptor comms map but the geek squad can’t get a location from it.”
“You heard right.” The burn of frustration was bitter.
“There are too many unknown raptor words,” Elle added.
“And our guest downstairs wasn’t any help?” Roth asked.
Marcus shook his head. “Doesn’t know enough English to be much good to us. Elle tells me she needs a Rosetta Stone.”
“The stone used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs?”
Marcus raised his brows. “How’s a grunt like you know that?”
“I’m not stupid.” Then a frown covered Roth’s face. “You know, I might have seen something like that on our last mission.” He spun. “Hey, Mac, remember that raptor research center we raided two days ago?”
Mac was short for Mackenna. The short, petite woman wandered over. Marcus knew more than one man had underestimated the female soldier who had a black belt in something deadly and took no prisoners. “Yeah, boss. They’d taken over a library in the city. Had a load of that damned organic cabling of theirs all over the place.”
“Do you remember much about the raptor comp screens we saw?”
“A bit. They had a bunch of raptor gibberish on them but there was English as well. Looked like they’d hacked into the library’s network. Also saw a bunch of those black crystals they use to store their data.”
Marcus had seen the black crystals before and knew that Noah had had some success pulling data off them.
“What were they doing there?” Elle asked.
“Not sure, exactly.” Roth shrugged his broad shoulders. “My best guess, they were trying to decode our data. We went in to investigate, but it turned into a rescue mission. They had a few librarians they’d taken prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” Marcus frowned. “Never seen them keep prisoners long.”
Roth shrugged. “Librarians didn’t know why the raptors kept them. They had been locked up in the dark and were lucky to get a little bit of food and water.”
Marcus didn’t know why the raptors wanted human prisoners, but whatever the reason, it couldn’t be good.
Elle turned to Marcus. “We need to convince General Holmes to send a team in to recover these crystals. They might just give us enough data to help us translate the comms map.”
“Yeah—” An alarm blared through the gym. “Fuck.” The squads were needed for something urgent.
“Got to go.” Roth waved and jogged out of the gym, followed by his team members.
“Go,” Elle urged Marcus. “I’ll get to the Comms Control Room and if I get a chance, I’ll talk to the general about recovering the crystals.”
Marcus nodded, his mind already turning to prepping the team. “You tell him Hell Squad wants to go in and get the crystals.”
“Will do.”
He started to turn.
“Marcus?”
He paused and glanced at her.
Her blue eyes were direct. “Be careful out there.”
“Always.” For the first time he wished he had a bit of Cruz’s good looks or Shaw’s charm. “I’m too tough to die.”
***
The Hawk swept in low over the trees, heading back to base. The occupants were mostly silent.
Marcus touched the button on the side of his combat helmet and the thin, high-tech thermoplastic retracted back into his armor. His shoulder throbbed. A fucking raptor had gotten close enough to take a swipe at him and the damn aliens had bloody sharp claws. It had managed to yank off part of his armor and leave a gouge that was still stinging and bleeding sluggishly.
He glanced at his team. Cruz sat silently, with his head in his hands. Gabe and Zeke were pacing—as best they could in the confined space—with their carbines clenched tightly in their hands, and Claudia was cleaning her weapon with a maniacal intensity. Even Shaw was quiet. He sat with his head against the wall, staring out the window.
They’d been sent out to rescue a group of survivors headed for the base.
The raptors had found them first.
Hell Squad had fought and chased the bastards off, but many of the survivors hadn’t made it. He scraped a hand down his face. After months of scavenging and hiding, those people had died just kilometers from safety, cut down like animals in the dirt.
But he knew what hurt his team most was the little girl they hadn’t been able to save.
She’d had her hair pulled up in two tails off the sides of her head. Someone had cared enough to scrounge some grungy purple ribbons for her. She’d almost reached the second Hawk when a raptor had shot her in the back with one of their poison weapons.
Fuck. Marcus looked outside again. He knew he’d see that little girl’s face when he went to sleep that night. He stared, unseeing, down at the trees lining the Blue Mountains. There was speculation that the thick trees were one of the things helping to keep the base safe. Raptors didn’t appear to like being amongst the trees, and as a result, they stuck to the city, open farmland and even the desert.
Oh, the bastards had to know they were here somewhere. But combined with the heavy forest, the entrances to the base were thankfully well hidden—and Holmes had entire teams dedicated to keeping it that way.
They passed over a river and a wide expanse of rocks. Suddenly, the rocks began moving. The giant doors above the Hawk hangars—disguised to blend into the scenery—retracted. The Hawk’s rotors tilted and they began their descent.
Marcus shifted his carbine and his injury burned. Shit. He hoped it wasn’t bad enough to require a trip to the infirmary. He hated the infirmary.
The Hawk touched down.
He slid the doors back. “Everyone get some rest. Grab a beer, watch a movie, find someone to fuck. Work out the bad and get your head screwed back on straight. We should have a mission soon to recover some crystals that’ll help decode the map we found.”
He got nods and grunts in reply.
“And you, amigo?” Cruz murmured. “What will you do to rest?”
“I’m fine.” He couldn’t rest. He had drone footage he wanted to review and he needed to do some prelim planning for the next mission.
One of Cruz’s dark brows rose. “This must remind you of—”
“Don’t want to talk about it, Ramos.” Cruz was a damned good friend, but that also meant he knew exactly what buttons to push. Instead, Marcus pushed back. “Why don’t we talk about you? The fact you’re getting quieter, playing the guitar less, fucking less? What’s going on?”
Cruz’s mouth snapped shut. With a final look at Marcus, he turned and leaped out of the Hawk.
As the others left the Hawk, Marcus stared at Cruz’s back. Damn, he was worried. Cruz was normally all charming smiles and laughs that women said were sexy. He wasn’t usually wound so tight he might explode.
With a sigh, Marcus jumped down from the Hawk, and his shoulder throbbed again.
Then he saw Holmes and Elle waiting for him. Dealing with Cruz was going to have to wait. He headed over to meet them.
“Well done bringing the survivors in,” Holmes said. “They’re already being checked over by Medical and are being assigned quarters.”
Marcus’ jaw worked. “We left most of them lying dead in the dirt.”
“You can’t save everyone.”
The little girl’s terrified face flashed through his head. He managed a nod.
“And I need you and the team ready to head out again.”
He stopped. Saw the other members of his team moving ahead of him stop and turn back. “What?”
Elle stepped forward. “The general’s authorized the mission to recover the crystals.”
“We need to find that comms hub, Steele. Whatever it takes.”
Looked like they were going to wade through more raptor muck much sooner than he’d thought. “Okay. But we need a few hours. We have minor injuries and the guys need some downtime.”
Holmes looked like he wanted to argue, which made Marcus want to punch the guy’s perfect face.
“Fine.”
Elle cleared her throat. “There’s a catch.”
Marcus’ jaw tightened. There was always something. “I’m listening.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I talked more with Roth and his team. They saw loads of crystals.”
Marcus frowned. “So we’ll grab all of them.”
“Hundreds. You can’t grab all of them. You need to find the right ones.”
“You’re saying we’ll need to look at what’s on them?”
She nodded.
“I can do it.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know enough raptor.”
“So, teach me what to look for.”
“You know that won’t work. I’ve been studying this for over six months. You can’t just have a ten-minute lesson.”
Holmes nodded. “She’s right. You won’t have time to decipher on the run. You need someone with the skills to do it quickly.” The general glanced at Elle. “Elle will be coming with you.”
Marcus’ heart stopped. “No—”
The general’s jaw tightened. “She’s the best we have. She’s going.”
Dammit. Marcus’ hands curled into fists. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t want her.”