The Prisoner's Deception (Renegades Book 4) Read online

  The screen went blank.

  ‘Computer, show the Halidan ship on screen.’

  The screen changed to a view of the ship banking away and disappearing into FTL.

  ‘Well, that was odd.’ The frown had finally found its way to Rebekah’s face. ‘You’re dismissed. Tell Marcus and Danielle I want them back in here as you leave please.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tara said, saluting and turning. She walked out of the meeting room and went up the staircase to the busy bridge above.

  The bridge was set over two levels. The main level and a small tactical station on a platform that sat behind the captain’s chair. Marcus stood there now, while Danielle was near the front of the bridge at one of the side cons. Danielle glared at Tara as she made a beeline for Marcus, the closest one to her.

  ‘Lieutenant. Suitably chastised, I hope.’ Marcus grinned at her.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Tara smiled back. ‘The captain would like you and the lieutenant commander to join her back in the briefing room. The Halidan just left.’

  Marcus seemed taken aback for a moment. ‘I saw that, but we thought they might be—’ His body jerked as though he was trying to dislodge some thought. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. I believe you’re off duty now?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Say hi to Sophia and Zoe for me.’

  Tara smiled. Marcus liked everyone and everyone liked him. He was like the Sophia of men. She assumed one day he and Sophia would marry and make the most adorable children. Possibly cute enough to stop space-time. She wasn’t sure, but she had a hunch.

  Tara left the bridge and made her way to the mess hall. It was time for the evening meal and that meant hot chocolate. Every night the three of them met for their dinner, shifts allowing—her besties, chocolate, and food. Everything would be better; Tara just needed those three things in life. Well, those and her career.

  Walking into the mess, Tara cast an eye across the room. Sophia was grabbing hot chocolate and already had food on the table. Zoe sat there, daydreaming. Smiling, Tara crossed the room to her friends and reached it at the same time as Sophia hit the cups onto the table, hard.

  ‘Oh my god, Soph, be careful with that.’ She stared at the chocolate slipping down the side of the cup as she pulled a chair out and sat down. She smiled at Zoe, her honey-skinned blonde friend who was so beautiful and truly didn’t know it. Then over at Sophia, who was so skinny it was almost like an optical illusion. Sophia hated being thin. She ate four times the portion sizes Tara did and never put on weight. Tara was jealous, but for Sophia, it meant she couldn’t put on muscles and go up in weight ranks in certain fighting matches.

  Switching her attention to the drink before her, Tara grabbed the cup and cradled it lovingly, sniffing the chocolate flavour that wafted under her nose. ‘Chocolate is life,’ she chanted, before taking a long sip. She put the cup down on the table and took a fork full of the chicken stew. It melted on her tongue, surrounded by delicious gravy and veg.

  I’m gonna eat you, little chickee, she sang in her mind. Tara usually sang to her food, just not in public. Even so, she couldn’t help humming the tune and bopping her shoulders to the beat.

  ‘What’s the goss? What’d I miss?’

  ‘Whittaker being a slime, as per usual,’ Sophia said, disgust on her face.

  They talked about Whittaker and his daughter, who Tara had made friends with in the successful belief it would keep the creep away from her. She hadn’t believed herself to be in danger at first. Whittaker definitely had an eye for the more beautiful ladies. But a couple of times he’d ten-to-two’d her, as Zoe called it. Having found no one else to have sex and in the dying minutes of the ship’s bar being open, or supper, he’d approached her, giving a half-hearted attempt to pick her up. Good looking men assumed, as a large lady, that she was desperate for any attention they gave her, and thus, they believed they could use her to get their cocks wet. Tara had disabused him of that notion with a joint conversation with his daughter. Now, of all of the ladies on this ship, he treated her with respect.

  From there, the conversation turned to the races they’d be meeting at IGC.

  ‘How does that even work?’ Zoe’s voice was a mix of shock and outrage when Tara told her about the mating habits of Kuyon. She looked at Sophia, and the two of them laughed.

  ‘And the Hinari have four fathers for each child.’ She smiled. ‘And Adosians, two to five fathers.’

  ‘How is that even possible? It’s ridiculous.’

  Tara remembered something about recombinant sperm, but it was idle speculation from the ship's doctor Reagan Miller.

  ‘I dunno, but I want to know what the hell I’m doing on Earth with only one man per woman.’ Despite the seriousness of Sophia’s tone, there was a glint of mischief in her eyes along with something else she couldn’t quite name.

  ‘We’re going to a space station filled with these aliens.’ Tara shook her head. ‘A lot of whom pay for human women. You are going to have options.’

  Sophia scowled, ‘Yeah, but when you put it like that.’

  ‘Oh, Sophia, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think.’ Tara felt herself grimace.

  Sophia smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘It’s fine.’

  The table fell subdued.

  Tara could have kicked herself. She knew Sophia’s sister had been taken and returned. She also knew Rosie had survived a suicide attempt several months ago that Sophia still didn’t like to talk about.

  ‘Hey, Pyri.’ Sophia waved. The darkness lifted from her, replaced with the relaxed, smiling, kind-hearted Sophia everyone loved.

  ‘Hey, sure thing.’ Tara looked up at Ensign Pyri Bjornsdottir, feeling her eyes widen as her jaw went slack.

  ‘Sure thing?’ Zoe gasped, her eyes widening in shock at her junior officer.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t mean that!’ Pyri’s skin blushed almost as red as her hair.

  ‘Aww.’ Sophia frowned in mock disappointment, evoking a laugh from Pyri.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Pyri thinks I’m one of the holders of the data packet.’

  Tara looked at Sophia, and everything fell into place. ‘Oh my god, that makes so much sense.’

  ‘I take it you’ve got your money on Sophia?’ Zoe said to Pyri.

  ‘Sure thing. I know it in my bones.’ Pyri sounded so confident.

  Zoe cast an eyebrow up, a smirk on her face. ‘Hmm, if I were going to give a data packet that contained all info on Earth’s resources for trade, and the payment and application for IGC membership to anybody, would I give it to Sophia Abara?’

  ‘Abso-fucking-lutely.’ Sophia winked, her smirk widening to a grin. ‘But I don’t have it.’

  Bullshit. She absolutely has it.

  ‘Which is exactly what you’d say if you were one of the holders of the data packet,’ Tara said through a mouthful of food.

  Zoe grimaced in disgust.

  ‘And is exactly what I’d say if I wasn’t.’ Sophia took a bite of stew. She seemed to be casual, as though she didn’t have a care in the world. She almost managed to lose the small, observant glint in her eye but gave herself away when she looked around the room to see if anyone had overheard the conversation.

  ‘I got the report,’ Pyri whispered to Zoe.

  ‘And?’ Zoe moved closer to Pyri, her own voice becoming lower.

  ‘Lieutenant Lansdown’s gone to the captain.’ Tara couldn’t see Pyri’s face, but she could hear fear in her voice.

  Zoe caught Tara’s eyes before turning to Sophia. Tara could see a range of emotions play over Zoe’s face, guilt being the primary.

  ‘The Halidan have been pushing us off course in tiny, regular increments for the last twenty-seven hours,’ Pyri whispered. ‘We’re not going to make the rendezvous with the Teyas.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Sophia whispered.

  ‘Shit,’ Tara said. That was the data the thing was eating away at. It was covering for the fact that the Halidan had betrayed
them. Tara thought of Ivorro’s face. The way he looked at them when he said sorry, like he was genuinely sorry. But the fucker had done it anyway. ‘The Halidan left us a few minutes before I left the bridge. They said they had an emergency.’

  ‘So we’re off course and we’re not being escorted?’ Zoe’s voice was breathless.

  ‘I have to go to the bridge.’ Tara dropped her fork and stood.

  A massive boom hit her ears, and suddenly she was on the floor. Someone fell on top of her. She saw red hair, and the dazed, frightened pale green eyes of Pyri looking back at her before they both jumped up. She studied the room and saw the shocked faces of the crew.

  ‘What are you waiting around for? To your stations.’ She was pre-empting the captain’s inevitable order. All of the circumstances leading up to this moment left Tara with one conclusion: they were being attacked.

  With one glance back to make sure Zoe and Sophia were okay, Tara ran.

  She didn’t stop until she was on the bridge, which was a bustle of activity.

  ‘The Mace is here for us, Hannigan,’ Rebekah called out. ‘Get your ass in your seat. We don’t have time for you to catch up. Comm, try the Teyas again. They should be close enough to jump in.’

  Tara looked around. Lansdown was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘They’re not, sir,’ Tara said, making a beeline for Rebekah instead of her post. ‘Sir, Officer Winters, along with Ensign Bjornsdottir just found that the Halidan have been pushing us off course. We’re not a few minutes away from meeting them, sir. The Halidan betrayed us.’

  Rebekah’s golden skin paled. Beside her, Danielle’s face paled.

  ‘No. Those bastards,’ Danielle hissed.

  ‘Sir,’ Ravi Acharya, the conn officer, called out. ‘The Mace just opened. We have thirty vehicles incoming.’

  A series of small impacts hit the hull of the ship.

  ‘They’re cutting through the hull sir. We’re losing hull integrity on four decks.’

  ‘What happened to communications?’ the captain yelled as Tara took the operations manager post next to Ravi.

  ‘They’re blocking us, sir.’

  Tara looked to Ravi.

  ‘A buoy?’ He frowned.

  ‘Outside of the dampening field,’ she answered, a plan blossoming in her mind. ‘Sir. If we send a buoy with a pre-recorded message outside of the range of that device, we can send a tight beam to the Teyas. But it’ll be voice only.’

  ‘Good enough. Do it,’ Rebekah commanded. ‘More power to the shields. Keep the rest of those aliens off my ship. Ensign Moretti, I want a full report on the locations of those aliens now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tara ran from the operations manager post to one of the side consoles, seeing Ensign Brosnan run to cover her post.

  Around her, Tara heard the chatter increase as Rebekah ordered missiles to target the slave ship and the open hangar. Tara focused on working with Lieutenant Zariah Nadar who was manually inputting Tara’s instructions into the buoy in her science station, three decks below the bridge. Tara recorded a quick message and the buoy’s trajectory, jump and transmission while Zariah, a cryptologic technician, encoded the message so that only those with the key would be able to translate it.

  ‘Sir, I see something. I have an energy spike coming off one of those pods,’ Ravi said, his voice full of panic.

  The console went dead in front of Tara. She stood up, looking around the room. The lights were on, the emergency generator kicking in, but the consoles were all dead.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ Rebekah had been leaning on the Tactical Display Station, overseeing the battle. Now she stood to her full height. ‘Someone get engineering on.’

  ‘Got them,’ a voice called.

  ‘Sir, this is Olivia Trent. Whatever that thing was, it knocked out the power exchange between the engine and the ship. The power’s there sir, we’re just not getting it.’

  More impacts to the hull followed her statement.

  ‘We’re on it, sir. It’ll take about three minutes to get it back up and running.’

  ‘We don’t have three minutes, Trent. Give me good news.’

  Everything was silent for a few moments, then Olivia’s voice came back.

  ‘They’re here. The aliens are in the engine—’

  Screams and sounds of violence echoed through the comm, then it went dead.

  When Rebekah’s eyes met Tara’s, she saw fear. It was quickly replaced by grim determination.

  ‘Comm, can we still communicate with our fighters?’ Danielle’s voice cut across the quiet panic that filled the room.

  ‘Err, yes, sir. Comm has a separate power supply.’

  Danielle turned to Rebekah. ‘Sir?’

  Rebekah, a grim look on her face nodded before she stepped away from the Tactical Display Station the captain and her first and second officers were standing at and went over to the comm officer. ‘Give me the conn.’

  Lieutenant Cane stood and made way for the captain. Rebekah sat down and picked something out of her pocket, placed it on the console, and waited.

  ‘Alice. Rabbit hole,’ she said. ‘And good luck, Lieutenant.’

  Tara didn’t know the order, exactly. But she had a feeling she knew what it meant.

  Rebekah stood. ‘Everyone to the escape pods now. Give the alert to abandon ship.’

  ‘Sir, the buoy is almost ready,’ Tara called. ‘If I go down to the launch tube, I can help Lieutenant Nadar finish.’

  ‘It’s too late, Tara,’ Rebekah said. ‘Do as I said.’

  Even as Rebekah spoke, the impact of more shuttles hitting the hull sounded through the ship.

  ‘Everyone down the stairs now. I don’t doubt they’ll be here at any moment.’

  As Tara watched, there were people already running down the stairs. She waited until almost everyone was off, waiting for Rebekah, who no doubt was waiting to leave the bridge last.

  When everyone but the two of them were off, they followed, Tara, then Rebekah.

  ‘This kinda feels like breaking into the pool again,’ Tara said.

  ‘It does,’ Rebekah agreed, though she seemed distracted.

  Marcus stood at the bottom of the stairs, handing out guns from the weapons cabinet to everyone before leading the way left and down the long hall towards the escape pods. Tara swallowed every noise, every breath making her heart race.

  ‘Do you think we’ll end up in some alien prince's harem.’ Tara looked back at Rebekah, but she was gone.

  ‘Captain?’ Tara stopped, turning. She knew what Rebekah had done, where she’d gone. She started back the way she’d come.

  ‘Lieutenant Hannigan, stay there.’ Marcus was there a moment later. Gazing past her down the hall.

  ‘I have to help,’ Tara said.

  ‘If she wanted your help, she’d have asked for it.’ Marcus looked at the line of people moving in front of them and frowned. ‘Everybody keep going,’ he snapped.

  ‘Marcus. It’s Rebekah,’ Tara pleaded.

  He grimaced. ‘Get back in line, Lieutenant.’

  Tara closed her eyes. This wasn’t right, just abandoning the captain. She opened her eyes and saw the resolve there. She was a lieutenant of the OSAF; she would do her duty.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, turning back and following the bridge crew.

  The escape pods were close.

  Off in the distance, she heard shouting. The whole line drew to a momentary halt, listening to the alien voices. They took off again, almost as one organism, quickening their pace by silent consensus, desperate to get to the pods, each of which was capable of FTL travel.

  ‘Here,’ an alien voice called out.

  Footsteps, many, sped down the hall towards them. The bridge crew broke, stealth dropped in favour of speed. Tara could see the escape pods when two dozen aliens appeared in front of them with weapons raised.

  ‘Weapons down, everyone,’ Marcus called. ‘We’re surrendering.’

  ‘Sir?
’ Tara stared at the aliens.

  ‘While we’re alive, there’s still hope,’ he whispered.

  ‘Pretty little female. I’m going to enjoy hurting you. We all will.’

  ‘All?’ Tara backed away from the huge green alien that had bought her from the auction. His eyes were pale green, his skin like the grass in the small park on a sentinel station. His hair was green too, forest green. It fell down to his shoulders and over the sides of his face like a curtain. He observed her through the green tresses, his eyes wandering over her body, his erection clear to see.

  ‘I am Hinari,’ he said. ‘My bond mates and I will hurt you and breed you.’ His lips twisted over his cruel promise.

  Fucking Hinari! What were the chances?

  He raised a hand and slapped her casually across the face. Casually, for him. Tara saw stars explode behind her eyes as she fell. Stars consumed her again when she hit the floor. Dazed, she searched for him, feeling blood trickle from her lip. He loomed over her, heat in his eyes as he tracked the blood.

  ‘Pretty, little female,’ he said again, then reached down and grabbed her hair.

  Tara assumed he had stopped hitting her when she fell unconscious. She was still clothed when she woke up, and it felt like he hadn’t touched her. At least that was something.

  ‘Idal, tell Adinan and Kilvin. I found our bond mate.’

  ‘You found her?’

  From her position on the floor, Tara could see the alien with his back to her. Whoever he was talking to, her view of him was obscured by his body. Hethan, she remembered. He’d called himself Hethan.

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘I bought her from a slave auction. She is resting.’

  Resting? According to the pain across her face, body, shoulders, according to the sharp, pinched feeling in her rib cage, she’d need to take a rest from this rest. In fact, she might need some time to recover from it.

  ‘Someone had a Hinari female enslaved?’ the alien’s voice hissed over the words.

  ‘She is human,’ Hethan answered. Idal. Hethan had called him Idal.

  ‘Human?’ The voice went silent for a few moments. ‘They are so small. So… What does she look like?’