Killbox (Sirantha Jax 4)

She’s right. If this vessel slips away to give warning, we’ll wind up with more of them here than we can defend against. If they take out our mustered ships, then the war’s already lost before it’s truly begun.

A new voice pops up on the comm, relayed from the station. March. “What the frag are you doing, Triumph? Who’s at the helm? I didn’t give clearance for a pleasure cruise.”

“Can’t talk, Commander,” Hit answers smoothly. “We’re busy saving your ass.”

Oh, that’ll go over smooth as s-silk, but I can’t worry about him now. The Morgut vessel is coming about, readying to fire. Our sensors monitor their progress, and Mary help us, their weapons are faster, 65 percent and climbing. They must travel at half power all the time.

“Aim for their phase drive,” Dina orders. “Relaying target coordinates to your apparatus, Jax.” Her cannons let fly, fiercely red in the darkness.

At last, my lasers are ready to go, less impact, but I can fire more often. I adjust the targeting array more comfortably, take aim according to the location she’s provided, and open up. Within the ship, even one this size, I hear the whine of the lasers as they heat up. Outside in vacuum, there will be nothing but silence.

We hit shields first, but they’re weakening already with the way we’re concentrating our fire. At this distance and on a ship so fast and sleek, the rail gun might do some good, but we don’t have anyone to operate it. Unless—

“Dina, is there anyone on board who can—”

“Already on it,” she answers briefly.

Then the antipersonnel weapons come online. Bless those crazy, savage clansmen. If there’s one thing they know how to do, it’s fight, and doing it in space probably just adds a little bit of spice.

“Argus Dahlgren, reporting for duty.”

Bless the kid. He has my DNA running through his veins, and now he’s about to become the second veteran combat jumper. “Welcome aboard. Blow a hole in those sons of bitches, will you?”

“Taking evasive action,” Hit says suddenly, “so hold tight.”

Oh, Mary, they’re returning fire. There’s something less magical about having weapons turned on you, but the exhilaration doesn’t lessen. All of us must be crazy because I hear whooping from gunnery as Hit slings and rolls, performing impossible feats of reflex and agility.

And from that moment on, it’s like nothing can touch us. Argus weights the fight in our favor. Their shields don’t block projectiles and one of his shots goes clean through the hull. Once they have breach, their shields fall completely, and we first blow out their phase drive, then their engines; then Dina’s cannons smash the ship to bits.

“No quarter,” Hit says, studying the wreckage on-screen.

“None,” I agree. “Do we have any power left to test your mod?”

Dina’s answer comes slowly. “Just. We won’t have enough to jump, but I think I can get it to cycle up.”

“Go for it. I kind of doubt March is going to let us back out here anytime soon.”

Hit laughs. “Yeah, we’re in trouble, no doubt.”

“If we hadn’t been out there,” Argus says, tentative, “they’d have succeeded in gathering intel if nothing else.”

I nod. “We’d have been in deep shit. This was a lucky break for us.”

“We were due one,” Dina points out.

The phase drive hums as it powers up, not enough for a jump as Dina said, but I jack in, riding the adrenaline from the fight. Unfortunately, the phase drive and the nav computer still aren’t linking just right; the web array isn’t complete, so it’s not a win for a direct jump. To access grimspace in this ship would still require me as conduit, and it nearly burned out my brain last time. The best analogy I can offer: The cations pass from my bloodstream through the shunt in my wrist and let the phase drive open a corridor to grimspace. But that carries too high a price. I won’t be doing that again on purpose unless it’s a life-or-death situation. Dina has to fix this.

“Sorry,” I tell the mechanic. “Close, but not a go. Keep trying. We need that innovation to have any hope of keeping up with the Morgut ships.”

“No pressure,” she grumbles.

Then Hit takes us back to Emry, where the commander’s waiting for us.

CHAPTER 28

March glares at us, pacing.

As the responsible parties, Hit, Dina, and I have been formally reprimanded. Let me just say—I don’t much like having him in a position of authority over me. And he doesn’t seem to care that it worked out for the best.

“If I am in charge here,” he says in slow, measured tones, “then I am in charge. You don’t so much as schedule a bowel movement without my clearance. Anyone who doesn’t like the way I run things can get out. I mean it—pack your bags and get off Emry because I’m not putting up with this kind of insubordination from my officers.”

Technically, I haven’t accepted any field promotion, but I figure this isn’t the time to argue with him. I’ve never seen him so angry.

He continues. “What do you think this does to my authority with the rank and file? If my trusted staff treats me like a fragging joke, then how do I enforce discipline here? In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a military training installation, and we are at war.”

Well, yes. And we just won the first skirmish. I realize I shouldn’t point that out.

“I’m sorry,” Dina says. “I didn’t think. I should have cleared the mission with you beforehand, however harmless I believed it to be.”

Her humble tone doesn’t fool me for a minute. She thought he’d say no, deeming it too great a risk to me, and frankly, so did I. We intentionally went around his authority, which I suspect is why he’s so pissed off. Listening to his tirade about how we’re lower than slime, I try to look chastened. I don’t think it works, however, because when his rant winds down, he dismisses the other two—having grounded them until further notice—but he asks me to stay. His expression cures me of the notion it’s for personal reasons; I’ve seldom seen him so angry.

March stands before me, hands locked behind him. It’s an intimidating pose, showing off his biceps and broad shoulders. “I need you to take this seriously, Jax. If you can’t respect me as your commander, then I’m booting you off my team. You can stay here on Emry until you find some other ship to carry you, but it won’t be one of mine.”

That’s when it sinks in—he means it. He has the power to ground me. Maybe up until now, I secretly thought the fact that we’re lovers would protect me—that I could get around him—but it’s not true. March is my lover only in our off-hours. Right now, he’ll boot me if I smile at him wrong. Since it would kill me if he leaves me behind again, I can’t let that happen. I have to prove I can be a good soldier, who respects chain of command, however much it chafes.

The old Jax would whine and insist it wasn’t her fault. She’d blame Dina and offer a load of smart-mouthed excuses. I lower my head. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

His posture eases. “That said, you acquitted yourself admirably out there. It may make all the difference, buying us the time we need to finish up here.”

“We need Dina to perfect that direct-jump mod.”

“There’s no guarantee she can get it done before we have to start patrols, and I can’t factor it into the rotation.”

My brows go up. “You’re already working on the schedule?”

March nods. “I’m assigning sectors today. You want to help?”

“Trying to keep me out of trouble?”

“Partly,” he admits. “But I could use a hand, and I feel like I’ve hardly seen you.”

It’s true. All the training and preparation has kept us from doing more than falling into each other’s arms at the beginning of the sleep cycle. These days, we do little other than sleep together. Who has the energy for anything else? I keep my eyes fixed on the brightness that surely lies ahead. Our life together won’t always be like this. We just have to stay strong and fight through. I don’t like considering the alternative—that we were born for strife, and we will never clear the darkness.

“Lead the way.”

March heads for the commander’s ready room, a fancy way of saying “another converted conference room.” We won’t be interrupted unless more Morgut ships come calling. He brings up the array of data in 3-D, then Constance materializes. She’s been helping him a great deal, I collect, and I suffer a small pang, knowing she’s no longer just mine. But she seems to be thriving, pleased at being so useful, if such an emotional response can rightly be credited to an AI.

“Greetings, Sirantha Jax. You seem to be recovered from your incapacitation.”

“Mostly,” I answer. “I don’t think I lost too many brain cells.”

“Shall I scan you to determine the amount of retained cognitive function?”

I laugh softly. “Not necessary, but thanks. You like working with March?”

“I enjoy having access to station resources in addition to the facilities on the Triumph. I am able to complete my research in a miniscule amount of time.”

“Speaking of which, did you place the order for the uniforms?” It seems like ages ago that she got those numbers for me. After endless scrutiny and committee action, we went with a manufacturer with a satellite factory orbiting a moon in the Outskirts. No planetary tariffs, and they deliver.

“Affirmative.”

“Dahlgren,” March barks into the comm. “I want two cups of hot choclaste, and they better still be steaming.”

That answers what price Argus paid for his collusion, though to be fair, the poor kid hardly had a choice. He just happened to be on the ship when we took it out. Still, he could’ve done a lot worse than serving as the commander’s dogsbody.

Once we’re settled, beverages to hand, we go over the information. March sums up his intentions, and I listen, thoughtful.

“Do they know?” I ask at last, referring to Dina and Hit.

He shakes his head. “Not yet. But we need her on the Triumph. With Surge staying with Siri, Koratati needs a pilot. So I’ve assigned Hit to the Sweet Sensation. They’ll be responsible for patrolling the Gamma Omega galaxy.”

I stifle a smirk. Some of the smugglers’ vessels are former pleasure yachts, hijacked—and never renamed—out of some overdeveloped sense of irony or possibly . . . sheer laziness. You can never tell with pirates.

“That’s a lot of ground to cover.” I don’t belabor our need for Dina’s updated phase drive; we can’t pin our hopes on an innovation when the technology hasn’t been improved since we first discovered it. Sometimes you just have to make do and hope it’s enough.

“Agreed.”

“You assigned all the pilot jumper pairs, then?”

“I maintained the initial bonds whenever possible. Jory stays with Hon for instance. Hit and Kora are a rare case.”