Sage shook his head as another en-bolt hit their aft shields. He had expected the government to try to stop him, but he hadn’t expected them to round up so many ships to do so. Nor had he truly expected them to open fire. Oh, he’d deemed it a possibility, but he hadn’t believed they would want to risk damaging government equipment—namely the Falcon 8—and killing the crew, a crew that knew little of its captain’s disobedience. This response flummoxed him.

The archons must have been more worried about Gaia and what might happen if it grew aware of its place in the galaxy than Sage had realized. Either that or there was more at stake here than he’d been told about.

“Straight through and out Gate 78, Captain?” Zakota asked, his fingers flowing smoothly over the console, his voice calm, even though there were three ships chasing them, three ships that had been waiting as soon as they flew out the gate and into the Medea System. His head jerked to the side now and then, as if he could shake the chip embedded under the skin of his temple into more prompt obedience. That chip allowed him to mentally interface with Eridanus so he could guide the Falcon 8 through gate space, and it also helped with real-time navigation between wormholes.

“Fly toward Gate 498,” Sage said, his gaze on the holographic display showing his ship and the three others in three-dimensional space. A sensor display between the navigation and weapons stations showed further data about the entire system.

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

Zakota slid a hand off the console to fondle one of the charms dangling there. “Into the Cronos Nebula?”

“We’ll deal with the hazards there,” Sage said, glad Hierax had gone and Zakota was the only one he’d have to explain himself to. Not that he truly had to explain himself. He was the captain, and his men were used to following orders. They rarely questioned him. But the fact that this mission wasn’t sanctioned made Sage feel less easy about his power, his right to command.

“We going to hide out and hope nobody comes in after us?”

“Not hide, no. We’re taking an alternate route to that Gaian gate. Remember how it had four entrances? We’ll head for the one in the Aos System rather than Dakaron.”

Zakota knew the star maps as well as Sage, so it didn’t take him long to figure out what that meant.

“You want us to swing through the Scyllan System? Captain, unless something’s changed lately, the Scyllans don’t like visitors.”

“No, they don’t, but we’ll try to slip in one gate and out the next before they notice us.”

Zakota glanced over his shoulder. “I can see why you’d want to do that, since most ships won’t want to follow us, and it would also drop us off in the Gaian System two days before anyone arrived going the other way, but…”

“I’m well aware of how powerful and dangerous the Scyllans are.”

“You got some secret weapons stashed in your boot?”

They were outpacing their pursuers now—thank the gods for modern and efficient engines—but an en-bolt at the end of its range tickled their shields. The Falcon 8 shuddered slightly, a reminder that shield power was down after six ships had pursued them to the gate. Those warships had been redlining their engines to catch him. The fact that they’d been trying so hard disturbed him anew.

“I’ll worry about that,” Sage said. “Focus on flying. I see a couple more ships veering across the system to try and intercept us. Make it look like we’re going through 78 until the last possible moment.”

“Yes, sir.” Zakota glanced to the nearby weapons station and its empty seat. “Should I call up Killer? He’s probably lonely down in his cabin, polishing his knives and waiting for action.”

Sage hesitated. Their main gunner had an uncanny knack for hitting enemies that even the ship’s targeting computers couldn’t rival, so it seemed odd not to have him on the bridge now. It was empty, in general, without the standard six-person bridge crew up here. He would definitely need to call up Korta to take readings when they flew into the nebula—if not take command of the entire ship.

“Not yet,” Sage said. “We don’t need a gunner, because we’re not firing back.”

“Not even a little? You know Killer can target a ship’s engines and disable ’em with minimal fuss. And after all his duty stations, he knows Confederation ships almost as well as Hierax.”

“Not even a little. If we kill one person…”

Sage didn’t fill in the rest. Right now, he worried about the ramifications this self-appointed mission would have on his career, but if Confederation soldiers died because of his choice, he could be facing the death penalty.

“All right, sir, but I think you should trust the whole crew being up here. We’ve got your back, Captain. You know we do.”

“That isn’t my concern in this. I’m trying to keep as many people out of trouble as possible. The less they know, the less they can be considered culpable later on. During the court martial.”

Zakota's expression grew uncharacteristically grim as he focused on his displays.

The bridge door slid open, and the last person Sage would have expected walked in. Tala.

He glimpsed Lieutenant “Killer” Ku leaning against the bulkhead in the corridor, his face dark and dour, as usual, as he no doubt waited to be called in. Zakota’s guess that he was in his cabin was off, it seemed, and Sage wondered if the rest of his bridge crew lurked nearby.

Surprisingly, Tala hadn’t given Ku the wide berth and wary glance that his perpetual glower—and the impressive assortment of weapons sheathed all over his person—prompted from strangers. And fellow crew members.

“Injuries?” Sage asked as the door slid shut behind Tala and she stopped. Had she come in person to deliver a medical report?

But surely, she wouldn’t have left sickbay if there were need for her there. And wouldn’t she have used the logostec he’d given her to comm him from there if necessary? She wore it on her wrist, he noted, oddly pleased to see it there.

Tala touched her shoulder, then shook her head. “No.”

She looked toward the big holographic display that showed the ships coming at the Falcon 8. It looked worse than it was in actuality, since they’d already flown out of the firing range of the initial three that had jumped them. Those two angling to intercept them were swift, though, and might have time to make trouble. Zakota was doing his best to pick a route that would place obstacles in their way and delay them.

“I need to talk to you.” Tala glanced at Zakota, then met Sage’s eyes.

“This isn’t a good time.”

Normally, he would bark a “get out” at a civilian—or anyone else—who presumed to walk uninvited onto his bridge, but he owed her some latitude. She’d helped the crew—helped him—more than once in the brief time she’d been aboard. When those slavers had escaped, and Treyjon had gone down, Sage hadn’t been certain his tracker would survive the encounter.

“Should I wait until after the ship has been destroyed?” Tala asked, still holding his gaze.

He snorted, more amused than offended by her sarcasm. It had been a long time since anyone on his ship had looked at him with a fearless challenge in their eyes. Even Ku didn’t try to stare him down, not since that early fight they’d had, a sparring match that had turned ferocious, like some ancient contest for the right to command the ship. Sage had been lucky to come out on top, but he’d never let Ku know he’d been lucky.

“I will be less busy then,” Sage said.

Zakota touched one of his charms, but did not otherwise comment.

“What is it, Doctor?” Sage asked. “I can’t leave the bridge right now.”

Tala glanced at the display again, at the ships zipping between two planets and closing on their position. Zakota angled the fire falcon’s nose downward to go under one of the planets and perhaps slip past them, but their pilots were paying close attention and also changed their courses.

“I wanted to let you know that I—and I believe we—would be willing to take our chances on Dethocoles and delay going home—if it’s not too late for you to abort this mission.” She winced, and he wasn’t sure how to read it. Did she wish she’d made the offer earlier? Or was the offer difficult for her?

He couldn’t imagine she truly wanted to be trapped on Dethocoles where she might never be allowed to see her family again.

“It’s too late for that,” Sage said.

Oh, he could return and allow the Falcon 8 to be escorted home, but as long as he’d come this far, he might as well continue. Besides, no matter what she said, he didn’t believe she wanted to stay on Dethocoles. As he recalled, the women, led by Juanita and Orion, had been contemplating ways to escape before he’d made up his mind to facilitate their return home.

“I see. I should have made the offer earlier then.” She looked irritated with herself.

He didn’t want her to feel that way. He hadn’t asked for their permission to do this, after all.

“You are not to blame for anything.”

“If we weren’t here, you wouldn’t be getting fired on by your own people right now.”

“True, but you didn’t stow away on my ship. We came to get you. Actually, that was Orion’s idea. My brother is to blame,” he said, an attempt at humor, though making jokes had never been his knack. Besides, he’d agreed to back up Orion when he’d proposed taking down those slavers. Protecting humans was his job, the job of all Star Guardians, whether those humans knew they existed or not.

Tala pressed her lips together, not appearing amused by his humor, such as it had been. “You should have come and asked us our opinions before making this choice. Some were planning to take their escape into their own hands. You needn’t have gotten involved.”

“I heard Miss Juanita’s plan. You and your herd wouldn’t have made it off my ship, much less across the galaxy to Orion’s ship. A ship that is designed to hold three, I believe.”

“My herd and I aren’t helpless,” Tala said coolly. “We would have found a way.”

Damn it, why was he arguing with her? He hadn’t intended to insult her. Though a weird part of him liked the way she was always ready to go toe-to-toe with him. Was he subconsciously picking a fight because he wanted to give her a reason to do so? If so, his subconsciousness was displaying the maturity level of a ten-year-old, and it should be kicked in the ass.

“I know you aren’t helpless,” Sage said. “Please accept that I felt that helping you was the honorable thing to do, and I do not regret my choice.”

“We’re within their firing range,” Zakota said. “I’ll do my best to evade them, sir.”

“Good.” Sage tapped his logostec. “Hierax, how are the repairs going?”

“Just some minor damage, sir. A couple of bolts got shook loose when the shields dropped momentarily back there.”

“A couple of bolts were the reason the lights went out for ten minutes?”

“They were big bolts, Captain.”

“I have a crew of comedians,” Sage told Tala.

She blinked, seemingly surprised that he’d addressed her, or perhaps addressed her so informally.

Was he usually so stiff with her that she didn’t expect anything else? If so, he regretted that. It was hard for him to turn off command mode when he was on the ship. Perhaps, if they were on a quiet little moon in a quiet little restaurant with a view of the stars, and he were in civvies instead of a uniform, he could be more informal.

Or perhaps not. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to a dinner that wasn’t a Star Guardian function. He vaguely remembered dating a woman when his ship had been on a long layover for repairs back on Titan Station. That ship, he realized with a start, had been the Minotaur, the warship he’d commanded during the last few years of the war. Gods, had that been the last time he’d been with a woman?

“Did you want something, Captain?” Hierax asked.

Sage almost blushed. And he never blushed. But he also didn’t often call his engineer and then forget to talk to him.

“I just wanted to warn you that we might have more trouble coming, if Zakota can’t thread the needle between these two interceptors stalking us.”

“Doesn’t he have something he can rub to help him with that?”

Zakota’s hand had been drifting toward one of his charms, but he jerked it back.

“We have a guest on the bridge,” Sage said. “I prefer he not rub things in front of the women.”

“It’s your ship you’re risking, sir. Hierax, out.”

“Comedians,” Sage repeated softly.

“I should go,” Tala said.

She looked uncomfortable. Because of him? Or the rubbing discussion? Or did she also struggle to do informal effectively?

“Yes,” he said, though a random thought crossed his mind, that he might invite her to sit in his seat. He’d be too busy pacing to use it, and if they were about to be fired on, it would be better for her to be seated and belted in rather than wandering the corridors. Zakota might find it odd, since nobody ever sat in his chair, but who cared?

“Wait,” he found himself blurting as Tala turned away.

He extended his hand and was on the verge of offering his chair when it occurred to him that he might need her in the Cronos Nebula. In fact, he definitely would.

“Sit down,” Sage said, pointing to his chair. “I need to impose upon you.”

Tala quirked an eyebrow. “With your pilot watching on?”

It took him a moment to get the joke, and he almost blushed again. He was out of practice with women.

Zakota cursed and veered, leaning into a turn, as if the artificial gravity didn’t remain a constant and compensate for what would have been G-forces if they had been in a planet’s atmosphere. Two en-bolts sailed past the Falcon 8’s port wing, but another struck their shields.

Tala, perhaps expecting more bolts to fly loose, slid into the command chair. She crossed her legs and gave Sage a frank look.

“Will I enjoy this imposition?” she asked.

“Likely not. We’re taking a shortcut to ensure we reach your home world with plenty of time to drop you off and escape the system before our pursuers catch up with us.” Sage waved at the ships on the display, inviting her to imagine the difficulties of landing and unloading passengers with such vessels hugging their ass. “We’ll go through three systems that aren’t frequently visited by humans. The third isn’t much of a problem—it’s just not on the way to much. The second system is full of hostile aliens and is the more problematic of the two remaining, but the first is the one where having a doctor in sickbay may be useful.”

She watched him as he spoke, her dark brown eyes alert and intent, absorbing everything with surprising calm, especially since more en-bolts were streaking through space toward the ship as Zakota darted, dipped, and dove, trying to get past those ships without taking any more hits.

“The Cronos Nebula spreads across several systems, but it’s particularly dense in the aptly named Cronos System. Our people haven’t studied it much, but there’s something in the space there that affects the minds of human beings. It can make them irrational, angry, and prone to lash out at others, and the effect grows more extreme the longer people are in the system. Having shields up doesn’t change anything.

“The first Dethocolean explorer ship that visited the system didn’t make it back. The military vessel that later found that ship discovered that the crew had killed each other, or maybe a couple of the crew had gone more crazy than the others and done all the killing. The logs were a mess. The military ship itself might have succumbed to the same fate, but the captain put the autopilot on and had her medic knock out everybody on board until the ship reached the gate that led out of the system and to safety. The helmsman woke up and flew them into the wormhole. Once they made it to the other side, the effect soon wore off, and they returned to business as usual.

“This was over a hundred years ago,” Sage continued. “A couple of scientific vessels have flown in for long enough to gather samples since then, but nobody’s found an antidote to the poison, such as it is. For the most part, everyone avoids the nebula. Sometimes, smugglers use it, employing the method I described, setting the autopilot to take them from one gate to the next, while sedating themselves, but the system is full of asteroids, whatever planets it once had having long been destroyed. It’s asking a lot from the autopilot to navigate the route safely. There are reputedly dozens of wrecks in there.”

“So naturally, we’re going in,” Tala said.

Sage thought about, once again, pointing out that the nebula was the lesser of the two tricky systems they had to pass through, but he decided not to worry her more than he already had.

“The records tell us that not everybody is affected, or at least not to the degree that they go on killing rampages.” Sage thought of Ku leaning against the bulkhead outside and wondered if he should have the man put in the brig before they went in. For all his deadliness, Ku was loyal, but if he was one of the ones that went over the edge, he would be trouble. Lieutenant Treyjon was a deadly fighter too. And what if he got the notion to unleash his killer svenkars on the crew? Yes, it might be better to take some people out of action preemptively. Or, he could simply ask Tala to prepare sedatives. “Since it’s possible we’ll be pursued, I’d rather keep as much of my crew alert and awake as possible, myself included. But I’d appreciate it if you have Eridanus help you prepare some sedatives in case we need them. Stunners usually work in a pinch, but I’ve seen someone under the influence of the nebula shake off a stun and continue to attack.”

“You’ve been in there, sir?” Zakota glanced back.

Sage almost told him to focus on what he was doing, but they’d slipped past the two ships and were pulling away now, arrowing toward Gate 498.

“Yes, as an ensign in the fleet long ago. There’d been reports of the Zi’i using the system as a back door to get at our bases. Fortunately, we didn’t find any aliens in there, but it wasn’t a pleasant trip.”

“Sedatives is all you’ll need from me?” Tala asked, standing up.

Sage had moved nearer to the chair as he’d been talking and was surprised at how close they were. He caught a whiff of a pleasant scent. Some shampoo she’d found? He didn’t recognize it as the one the ship dispensed.

“Unless you want to take a stab at finding an antidote or some kind of prophylactic,” he said.

“Have many tried before?” A gleam entered her dark eyes. Would she relish the challenge?

There wouldn’t be time to linger in the system, so he doubted she could make much progress, but he wouldn’t forbid it.

“I’m sure the doctors on those early explorer and military ships would have tried,” Sage said, “but as I said, the policy of the Confederation has been to simply avoid the system. There are other wormholes leading to the destinations on the far side.”

“Hm.”

At her thoughtful expression, Sage promptly decided he would command the ship’s AI to help her in any capacity she wished.

“Women are known to be less frequently affected,” he said. “If the other doctors were male, that might give you an advantage.”

“Oh? That’s interesting.”

“Two hours to the Cronos gate,” Zakota said. “At this moment, it doesn’t look like any other ships in the system can catch us to intercept. Unless one comes out of the Cronos gate, but that’s about as likely as Ku cracking a joke.”

“Good,” Sage said, then laid a hand on Tala’s arm. “That gives you time to prepare. Research if you wish, but don’t forget to prepare the sedatives.” He realized he should probably also tell her that—

“Please,” Tala said.

“What?”

“I’m not in your command. I would appreciate it if you asked me to help instead of ordering me to. And said ‘please’ when you did it. And ‘thank you’ if I agreed.”

“I assure you, this is for your own good. You don’t want to see a ship full of strong, well-trained Star Guardians that have lost their minds in a very aggressive way.”

“I have no doubt, but that’s not my point,” Tala said, her voice cool. Her eyes bored into his, and she clearly expected him to relent, to agree that she was right, that a ‘please’ would be civil.

He silently acknowledged that she was right, that she wasn’t one of his crewmen, but he bristled at someone telling him that he was acting inappropriately, especially in front of Zakota.

“If you do not wish to help us get your people home,” he heard himself saying, “then I will simply have the medical robots handle the sedatives.”

Tala seemed to realize he was still touching her arm, for she jerked it away from him. “I understand that everyone on your world thinks you’re something special,” she said, her voice low, her eyes blazing, “but that doesn’t give you the right to be an ass.”

He stood stunned for a moment. Nobody called him an ass. Not even the admirals at Headquarters.

But, she wasn’t wrong, was she?

“Dr. Tala,” Sage said, lifting his hand to apologize, realizing that he’d spoken foolishly. No, asshole-ly.

But she spun and strode toward the door. At first, he was stunned. People didn’t stomp away from him when he was talking. But he recovered and stalked after her, determined to get his apology in.

But the door opened, and he caught site of Ku standing in the same spot. The man was usually as expressive as a rock, but his eyebrows twitched as Tala strode past.

Sage halted before he reached the doorway, realizing how silly he would look if he chased Tala down the corridor, calling apologies over her shoulder.

The door slid shut, and he let it. He would apologize to her in private later. He still needed to tell her what he’d started to tell her. Before he’d gotten so stiff and stupid. What had gotten into him?

Tala’s angry, blazing eyes flashed into his mind, and his groin stirred in response. Abruptly, he knew exactly what had gotten into him. His subconsciousness wasn’t so subconscious after all, not if he was aware of it, and of the problem. As he’d suspected earlier, he liked it when she stood up to him, and without quite knowing he was doing it, he’d goaded her into getting angry. Because it aroused him. She aroused him.

“Idiot,” he grumbled to himself.

Ten wasn’t the age he should have assigned to his subconsciousness. More like thirteen. The beginning of the horny years. Years he’d thought he’d left behind him long ago.

“Want me to add some extra blessings to your talisman, Captain?” Zakota asked.

“What?” Sage asked, still staring at the door, mostly because he didn’t want to stride around the bridge with a noticeable bulge in his trousers. Even if Zakota was the only one around and probably wouldn’t look at his crotch, it was unseemly.

“You know, instead of just luck. I could consult Po and channel some of her powers into the talisman. Make you alluring to women. And maybe smoother with them.”

“Just get us to the damned gate, Zakota.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zakota sounded far too perky and amused.