Right Ascension (The Sector Fleet, Book 3) Read online

  The shock of seeing the leaseholder incapacitated had been soothed somewhat by the knowledge that at least we’d gain clearance on the repairs undertaken by Nowak’s team. Who had been acting under orders from the mayor it seemed.

  For some reason, Nikolaev hadn’t wanted me to know that the mayor was in a coma. Even now, it was clear he wanted me nowhere near the man. If I let him force me out of the room, getting Sheryl in here to assess Nowak would be damn near impossible.

  So, stalling for time it was, then.

  “Where was he when it happened?” I asked.

  “Must you be so gruesome?” The mayor looked at me as if I were the grim reaper himself.

  “It would help to determine the area of the deck most severely damaged in the battle,” I said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The entire deck was a mess. He was just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Mechanism of injury,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It will help Dr Lin…”

  “If your female doctor requires your help to make a diagnosis then I am definitely not letting her near him!”

  “You don’t have much of a choice in that, your Worship,” Sheryl said, stepping into the room between two security guards and offering them a back-the-fuck-off glare as she did. “Captain,” she said, nodding to me and then turning her attention to Nowak.

  I stepped back and gave Sheryl her space. Once she was doctoring, it was best to stand out of the way.

  “Who treated him?” she demanded.

  “Our medical team,” the mayor said stiffly.

  “You have a medical team?” Sheryl snapped. “And you didn’t share them when the entire ship was in need of more medical staff?”

  “They are Mr Nowak’s personal attaché.”

  “This ship is not Mr Nowak’s personal anything,” Sheryl said. “If Anderson Universal requires the skill set of passengers onboard, then we have the right to second them.”

  “Not from the paid passenger list.”

  My head snapped toward the mayor. “Your security force is all paid passengers, then?” I asked.

  “Our medical team is.” He smirked.

  “And what of your social responsibility, Mr Mayor?” Sheryl said. “Or is that only on display when the cameras are rolling?”

  I wanted to close my eyes and let the room dissolve around me. Sheryl had often been a little tactless from memory.

  “Well, I never!” Mayor Nikolaev exclaimed.

  “Enough,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Doctor, the patient please.”

  “Of course, Captain,” she said sweetly, throwing a glare at the mayor. “No neural activity,” she added a second later. “He is brain-dead.”

  “No!” Nikolaev said adamantly, shaking his head. “You’re wrong. That’s not right. Where did you get your medical degree? In a doll’s house? You are mistaken. Get out!”

  Sheryl stood to her full height and glared at the mayor.

  “Listen here, little man,” she started, finger out and actively punctuating the air before her.

  “Dr Lin,” I said sharply. “Is that your final diagnosis?”

  She straightened her uniform and offered one final glare at the mayor.

  “Yes, Captain. That is my medical opinion. There are no detectable electrical impulses within Mr Nowak’s neural network. His heart and lungs are functioning due to the life support unit he has been placed on - outside of correct medical procedure, I might add - and he is in fact brain-dead. Take him off the machine, and I’ll be able to call time of death.”

  “I will not allow it!” the mayor shouted. “Security! Get these women out of my sight!”

  “Calm down, Mayor Nikolaev,” I said.

  “I will not calm down! Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?!”

  The Nowak security team who had managed to enter the room all reached for their sidearms. Sheryl glowered at each and every one as if her look alone could disarm them. Some of them did appear as though they thought so too right then.

  I opened my mouth to tell everyone to back down, when a new voice said, “That is the captain of this vessel you are yelling at. Stand down!”

  My eyes flicked to the new arrival. Where the hell had he come from? And with half of Anderson Universal’s security team at his back.

  “Lieutenant Commander Saitō,” I said, voice slightly harder than I had intended.

  “Captain,” he acknowledged, not taking his eyes off the mayor and his men. “I’ll not repeat myself, Mayor Nikolaev,” Saitō said, practically dismissing me with those words. “Stand your men down now or face arrest.”

  Maybe I should have put Leo Saitō in charge of security, I thought dryly.

  And then I sighed. No, Leo wasn’t a good fit for security either. Because he clearly wasn’t familiar with the lease. I pulled my eyes off the chief science officer and looked across the room to the mayor.

  Wait for it, I thought.

  And then the mayor said, “Not on your authority, boy! It’s in the lease.”

  I wanted to laugh. But I didn’t. I wanted to wring Leo Saitō’s neck. But that could wait ’til later.

  Instead, I stepped forward and protected my senior officer the only way I could.

  “He can’t, Mayor Nikolaev,” I said. “But I certainly can. Stand your men down or face arrest.”

  The mayor puffed up his chest, his cheeks turning splotchy red, and opened his mouth to argue with me. I shot Leo a glare that said everything I was feeling right then, and then pushed all those emotions aside, and faced the threat.

  Two hours later, Sheryl got her wish. The leaseholder was removed from life support and pronounced dead. The mayor had already left by then, though. And when I went to find him, he was missing in action. Or hiding like a coward. I had yet to determine which.

  But one person wasn’t running away with his tail between his legs.

  I strode up to Lieutenant Commander Saitō, who had remained outside of Nowak’s room with a contingency of AU men, and said, “My ready room. Now, Lieutenant Commander.”

  He nodded his head. But as I turned away, to march the condemned to my firing range for imminent execution, I could have sworn I saw the man grin with something akin to satisfaction.

  Bloody hell! Men!

  Twenty-Six

  Son Of A Bitch

  Leo

  She was brilliant when angry. I hadn’t realised that. Sophia maintained a steadfast appearance at all times. An almost emotionless façade. But if you happened to catch her when her blood boiled, she was magnificent.

  I didn’t occur to me to be worried. Perhaps a more ambitious officer might have been. But save from losing my rank, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t lose my role onboard this ship. I was the foremost knowledge on the development of the artificial intelligences for Anderson Universal. Our science department was meant to be the science department that transferred the AIs to the ground base at New Earth.

  Without us, what was left of humanity would struggle to create a functioning colony.

  So instead of standing at attention and staring impassively off into the middle distance, I stood at parade rest before the captain trying not to grin.

  It was ridiculous to think I was anyone special to Sophia. Someone she considered safe enough to show her feelings to. It was ridiculous to think her anger attractive. But I couldn’t help it. She was safe. The mayor had been dealt with. And I had a personal audience with the captain and got to see her in a rage.

  Well, a rage might have been pushing it, but for Sophia, the amount of emotion on display might as well have been a rampage. She was pacing her ready room, hands fisted at her sides as she marched from one gel wall to the other. Every now and then she’d throw a look my way. Like the look, she’d thrown at me in Nowak’s medical room.

  My grin slipped out even as I tried in vain to keep a neutral expression.

  “You think this is funny, Lieutenant Commander?” she snapped.
<
br />   “Not at all, ma’am,” I said immediately and grinned some more.

  “What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “Nothing at all, ma’am.”

  “Do I need to get Dr Lin in here to check you out?”

  I shook my head. “No need, ma’am.”

  She stopped in front of me, hands on hips, eyes searching my face. Then she just about made me jump out of my skin when she lifted her arm and placed the back of her hand against my forehead.

  “No fever. So you can’t be suffering from some strange mind altering illness, then,” she said.

  I grinned some more and risked looking into her eyes.

  She stared back and me, and as I watched the anger slowly morphed into something else. She let out a breath of air and shook her head.

  “Why do I find your insubordination amusing?” she asked, but I was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question.

  She stepped away. I let out a surreptitious breath.

  “How did you know I was with the mayor?” she asked her demeanour once again that of the captain.

  “Corvus was concerned for your safety.”

  “She was?”

  I nodded. “I agreed with the AI’s assessment and called security to you.”

  “And decided to get involved yourself,” she said pointedly.

  “I…”

  “You’re not chief of security, Saitō. You’re my science officer.”

  I rather liked the use of that particular pronoun a little too much.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She walked back to her desk, but rather than sit behind it as she would normally do, she leaned against this side of it. Keeping nothing between us but air.

  It would have been a subconscious move, I was sure. I shouldn’t have read anything into it. But I couldn’t seem to help myself doing so right then.

  I grinned again, catching myself before she looked back up at me.

  “Well, as you seem to have invested yourself in the situation,” she said, “what do you make of the mayor keeping knowledge of Nowak’s coma quiet?”

  So many thoughts spiralled through my head it was difficult to settle on just one of them. She wasn’t going to punish me for overstepping the mark. In fact, she was drawing me closer to her.

  “It does seem like an attempt at subterfuge,” I offered. If she wanted to confide in me, even just use me as a sounding board, I was going to drop the honorific and do everything in my power to draw her closer to me, too.

  Her sharp eyes flicked to my face.

  “Could it not, perhaps, have been shock that motivated him? Fear even? He had to have known the prognosis was not good, maybe he panicked.”

  “Possible, I suppose. But I don’t see Nikolaev as being the type to panic. He’s more inclined, in my opinion, to be cunning; to twist any situation to suit his purpose. It comes naturally to him. To put a spin on any event in order to best represent his client.”

  “You don’t think he has a personal attachment to Nowak? And his reaction stems from a sense of loss?”

  “No. Not Nikolaev. Granted he’d be looking at the bigger picture; what exactly Nowak’s death would mean to the civilian population. Perhaps even to him, but purely from a professional point of view.”

  “So,” Sophia said, “the question is, what is the bigger picture here?”

  I scratched the back of my head and started to pace before her. I’d taken several steps before I realised what I was doing. Sophia, though, didn’t seem put out by the inappropriateness of my actions. Which only made it hard not to grin again.

  I schooled my features and turned to face her.

  “Nikolaev seems very concerned about the lease,” I said.

  “That falls under his purview, of course,” Sophia said. “But I agree, he likes to throw the lease in our faces at every opportunity. Why?”

  “What does the lease say about the death of a leaseholder?” I asked her.

  Sophia would be familiar with the lease, not just because she had been a first officer and now a captain. But because of her former role within Anderson Universal. If anyone on this ship understood the lease, it would be the director of human resources.

  “The title, responsibilities and benefits all fall to the leaseholder’s heir,” she said.

  I stopped pacing.

  “Who’s his heir?”

  She blinked. Then sat up straighter. Her face suddenly a mixture of contemplation and concern. Then she stood up and pointed her finger at me.

  “You might be on to something,” she said, rushing to her desk and bringing up her viewscreen. “For the life of me, I can’t remember who Nowak’s heir is.”

  I crossed to the desk, but the viewscreen she was using was set at an angle I couldn’t read on this side of it. I took a second to decide if my chosen course of action was the right one and then mentally shrugged and proceeded around to the side Sophia was standing on. Perhaps I moved in a little closer than strictly necessary to her to see what she was doing, but I didn’t care.

  She didn’t show any reaction to my close proximity, though. She simply kept sweeping her finger across the screen, searching for information pertaining to Nowak’s heir. There didn’t seem to be anything in the official profile Anderson Universal had for him, which I thought was perhaps an oversight. Nothing at all in the lease, at least in the section of the lease Sophia went directly to. And I could only assume she knew exactly what section to search.

  That left Old Earth newsfeeds.

  “Corvus,” I said. “Scan saved Earth feeds for information regarding Felip Nowak’s heir.”

  “Scanning, Leo,” Corvus said cheerily.

  Sophia glanced over her shoulder at me and smirked.

  “Leo,” she mouthed, grinning.

  I grinned back. How could I not? This side of Sophia had been a fantasy until that second. I felt as if I were living a dream become reality and I didn’t want to wake up.

  “I have found reference to Felip Nowak’s heir,” Corvus said a few seconds later. I was aware she would have scanned an untold number of newsfeed articles and press release vids to find the information. At a speed, we couldn’t have hoped to match.

  “Excellent,” Sophia said straightening up. “Who is it and are they onboard this ship?”

  “They are not onboard the ship, Captain,” Corvus said. Sophia scowled, looking at me for my reaction, at a guess. I was frowning too. That didn’t make any sense.

  “If they’re not onboard the ship, “I said, and let out a shocked breath of air as it hit me.

  “What?” Sophia asked, placing her hand on my arm in anticipation. “What is it?”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do a thing but look down at where she touched me. Idiot.

  “What Leo has surmised, Captain,” Corvus said, coming to my rescue smoothly, “is there is no heir to Nowak Enterprises and therefore no heir to the lease of this ship, either.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sophia said, not releasing her grip on me.

  But instead, pulling me closer; inviting me in.

  Twenty-Seven

  No Regrets

  Sophia

  “I am unsure if Felip Nowak’s mother was a bitch,” Corvus said into the stunned silence. “But I will take your word for it, Captain.”

  I snorted. Saitō just brought his hand up to his arm and placed it over my fingers.

  I hadn’t realised until that moment that I was touching him. I jerked. His fingers tightened their hold on mine. My eyes slowly tracked up his body, a body that was very close to mine I might add, and looked him in the eyes.

  His were dark and deep and hungry.

  “I…” I managed and licked my lips. Oh my God, why did I do that?

  “Don’t run,” he whispered. “Don’t hide.”

  I stared at him.

  “Saitō,” I finally said in warning. To him. To me.

  “Don’t run,” he whispered, shifting closer.

  “This is not appropriate,” I
said right before his free hand cupped the back of my neck and a strong thumb stroked up into my hair, against my scalp. Eliciting all manner of sensations over my skin.

  My head tipped back, pressing into his palm and thumb without conscious thought on my part.

  And he moved in closer, lowered his head to the stretched line of my neck and kissed me.

  I let out a shockingly emotive groan.

  “Saitō,” I said again, but this time it didn’t sound like a warning.

  “Just go with it,” he whispered against my skin. “Just let your body go with it.”

  My hand came up and gripped his shoulder; needing something to ground me. He licked up my neck, and nuzzled his nose into my hair, kissing me slowly and softly behind my ear where the skin was especially sensitive.

  How long had it been since a man had touched me like this? Since I’d allowed myself even a moment of sexual satisfaction? Receiving such intimate sensations from someone meant lowering my guard. I’d learned a long time ago not to do that. That way led to heartache and abandonment.

  I wasn’t sure why I let Leo Saitō kiss my neck and ear and jaw so sensually. Other than the obvious fact that it felt so very nice. No. More than nice, it felt delightful. Dangerous. Forbidden. And therefore so very exciting.

  And for those brief moments that I acknowledged those sensations and allowed them to wrap around me, I let go of everything else in my life. Our survival. Our battle with Aquila. The lost lives. My new role as captain. The fear that I didn’t show anyone but that was with me every second of every hour.

  And I…relished it. I opened myself up and let the tides take me where they willed. I held on to Leo and for that brief moment in time let him catch me when I fell.