No Such Thing (19 page)

"I need to talk to you," she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. This seduction business was a lot harder than Frankie made it look.

"Sure. Come in," he said without even a hint of suspicion, for which she died a little of guilt. She’d been in his quarters many times,
though usually with his roommate present, so he wasn’t the least bit wary.

Chewing on her lip, she stepped in, sending a quick glance around. No roommate. Not that she’d expected it—the last time she’d seen him,
he was wearing a dazed, daffy grin as Frankie led him away.

"What’s the matter, sweetheart?" Declan asked, holding her hand with such sweet concern that Ryelle winced.

"I’ve been trying to seduce you," she said bluntly, unable to proceed with her carefully crafted, well thought out plan.

He grinned. "I know. Been damn hard to resist, too."

"Yet you have resisted," she said so irritably that he chuckled. "So I’ve come up with a secret weapon." She paused, chewing
on her lip again, stomach doing acrobatic flips in her belly.

His eyebrows rose, his grin turning into a smirk. "Secret weapon, huh? That sounds interesting."

She didn’t try to play along, just took a deep breath and let him have it. "Would you like me to do what I did on the command deck again? Touch
you with my talent?"

The smirk disappeared in a hurry. He also dropped her hand and took a couple of hasty, disappointing steps backward, hands held up to ward her off.
"No! Ryelle…" The room wasn’t large enough for him to go far. He bumped into the desk behind him, catching a chair as it tried to
skitter away. "That’s not—you shouldn’t—"

"You said it felt good."

"Oh my god, woman, you don’t know how good. But I can’t—I wouldn’t be able to control myself—"

"That’s the whole point," she snapped, hurt and anger spiraling up her spine. "I don’t want you to control yourself! I want
you, Declan. All of you, the whole way. No holding back, no taking it a slow step at a time. I don’t care about going too fast. At the rate
we’re going, I’ll be old and gray before I get to take your clothes off."

"Ryelle, you’ve never—"

"I’m aware!"

"But I have."

"I know that, too."

"You do?"

"Yes. I was introduced to girl stuff. Frankie knows quite a bit of girl stuff, actually."

"God’s mercy," Declan wheezed, looking a little unwell as he leaned back against the desk.

"Right. Suffice to say, I am very well educated on the subject. What I’m not is experienced. It’s your job to fix that."

"Ryelle, honey—"

She unleashed her talent, slowly unraveling it between them. She knew he could feel it coming, saw his eyes widen and heard his swift indrawn breath.

"You touch me like that and I’m not gonna be any good to you anyway," he said shakily. "You almost finished me last time in the
middle of a bunch of crew. And that was before I got to torture myself by touching and kissing you every day. We’re alone, and I want you so bad I
hurt. How long d’you think I’ll last?"

She blushed hotly, both from embarrassment and desire. She understood what he was saying, but a part of her wanted to go through with it anyway. To see
what he really felt when she touched him that way. To see how long he’d last. The idea that her ability could cause such enormous pleasure made her
hot all over.

She bit her lip, trembling and weak with longing. Indecision made her power fluctuate around her and she heard him groan softly. He closed his eyes, his
face lined with pain or effort as his head bent forward, gripping the edges of the desk until his knuckles whitened.

"God, stop, Ryelle. Stop." Then his head came back up, eyes snapping open to fix on her with wild indigo heat. "No, damn it, don’t
stop," he growled, pushing off the desk and lunging at her.

Startled by his sudden movement, she wasn’t quick enough to prevent him from brushing against her power. He made a sound like a caged animal before
he collided with her. He pressed her against the wall, hands flat to either side as he dove into her mouth in a kiss that blazed like a sun. She could feel
every hard inch of him imprinted on her and she reveled in it. He was hot and hard and shocking to her quivering flesh, his kiss demanding and ruthless,
but she still could barely contain her delirious joy.
This
was what she wanted. She didn’t want him to be careful. She wanted him to let go,
to give her every part of him. She needed it like she needed her next breath. Wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, she pulled him closer with a moan,
kissing him back with everything she had.

The deck rocked under her and for a moment, it seemed part of her wildly unsteady, deliriously burning world. Then the ship alarm blared and they burst
apart as if blasted, staring at each other with shocked eyes. The deck rocked again and Ryelle stumbled for the door, crying, "Stay here!" over
her shoulder.

"Hell with that," he retorted, leaving the room right on her heels. "Be careful!" he called to her as he bolted down the corridor
toward engineering.

Ryelle ran in the other direction, lifting her skirts out of the way of her quick-moving feet. Her talent moved faster, ballooning out through the ship,
reaching to find the threat. The nebula was thinning, the violence of the cloud easing as they reached the edge. It had not been the star nursery that had
jarred the
Odyssey,
but another ship. No, two, three, four ships, each roughly a quarter the size of the
Odyssey.
Even as she identified
them as GenTec, one ship fired another blast of energy at the
Odyssey’s
protective net.

"That’ll be enough of that," Ryelle muttered aloud, batting the blast away so that it scattered into the nebula. It was an unlucky
shot—the scattered blast set off a chain reaction within that section of the nebula. Ryelle winced, feeling the building explosions with her talent.
"Oops."

She checked her headlong pace when she reached the command deck, smoothing her skirts before she stepped through the door and walked toward the commander
with as much dignity as she could muster. She could see by the tension in his lean form that he was in full hunting mode, though he couldn’t
pace—she could see the shimmer of force around his torso as he stood at his command podium, keeping him erect and secure against any battle jarring.

"Commander," she said breathlessly as she reached his side.

"Your work?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the chaotic scene on the viewer.

She winced a little. "My apologies. I didn’t pay attention to the composition of the gases when I—"

"Works for me. They’re running instead of fighting."

"Ah…so are we, sir," she pointed out, watching the viewer as the four GenTec ships led them on a frantic path away from the
nebula’s violent reaction and toward the edge of the star nursery.

"Nobody likes fire up their ass. Difference is the
Odyssey
could take it. When we’re in the open, I want you to act like a level five
unless I say otherwise."

"Yes, sir," she said, clasping her hands at her waist and trying her best to be calm. They’d discussed this strategy before, her
pretending she was a normal telenetic instead of the freak show she really was. Until he knew the situation, where the battle and all the ships stood, he
wanted to keep her in reserve. Ace in the hole, he’d called her, whatever that meant.

When they burst into free space, the communication system crackled to life, spitting with sounds of battle. Ryelle gasped and she wasn’t the only
one. They’d had the bad luck to exit the nebula into the middle of a skirmish, which was probably why they’d run into the four GenTec ships.
They’d been trying to escape the Fleet vessels, which had trapped a number of GenTecs against the nebula’s ominous façade.

The commander didn’t seem surprised in the least, nor did he hesitate. Ryelle watched in admiration while he began barking orders, turning the
Odyssey
without slowing her to glide along the nebula in a predatory arc, firing at the GenTecs and sending them scattering back toward the Fleet.
Then the
Odyssey
took position at the edge of the nebula and released a flood of fighters.

Ryelle’s heart jumped into her throat as she watched the formations of smaller ships dart after the fleeing GenTecs. They looked so tiny and
defenseless, though she knew they were agile and well armed. With grim determination, she extended her talent with them, knowing she shouldn’t but
unable to stop. She understood tactics and strategy, but if even one fighter died because she was pretending to be powerless, she’d never forgive
herself. Hopefully in the confusion of battle, neither the GenTecs nor her commander would see her occasional assistance.

As it turned out, she didn’t have the chance. The GenTec ships flared out just beyond the range of the larger Fleet vessels, their pattern looking
like a mushroom top as they arced back toward the nebula and around the fighter formations. The GenTecs came together again between the
Odyssey
and her fighters, swirling in a deranged cloud at maximum speed straight at the
Odyssey.
Their erratic movements were meant to make targeting
difficult, but not all would escape the larger ship’s firepower.

"Suicide?" she asked the commander softly.

"For some. The rest hope to escape around us into the nebula."

"But their ships aren’t made to withstand the nebula," she said with a frown as she watched the
Odyssey
cut through their
numbers. They were firing back, but their wild flight paths played havoc with their aim.

"Some will."

"Do you want me to stop them?"

"Not this time, little mims."

"But—"

"Believe me, there’ll be other opportunities. Just remember what I said and keep the
Odyssey
whole."

"Yes, sir," she responded, facing the oncoming horde and folding her talent around the
Odyssey
in a protective bubble with a lift of
her chin. This ship and crew had become so much more than just her duty. As she watched the swirl of hostility and violent energy bearing down on them, it
was suddenly hard for her to hold back, to restrain her response to merely passive absorption of their blasts. She wanted to force them away, to keep them
at a distance. She watched them thunder toward the
Odyssey
and clenched her jaw so hard that her temples throbbed.

She got an opportunity for more direct action when one GenTec ship received a disabling shot and spun out of control, heading directly for the
Odyssey
on a crash course. She reacted the instant it happened, the force of her repulsion breaking the ship apart. It was over in seconds, the
rest of the GenTec ships whirling around them and diving into the nebula.

Ryelle took a shaky breath, looking at the drifting pieces of her handiwork. "Sorry, sir," she whispered. "I overreacted."

"Excellent work, Telenetic Soliere," he answered in a voice raised for the entire deck to hear. "Please watch aft for any returning
GenTec."

"Yes, sir," she said, though she was already tracking the hostile ships deep into the nebula. They didn’t appear to want to make another
run at the
Odyssey
. But she focused on their retreating shapes with single-minded intensity, doing her duty and keeping her thoughts from straying
to the deaths she’d caused.

As she followed the path of the GenTec, the commander ordered the fighters back to the
Odyssey
and contacted the Fleet for an initial update on
the status of the conflict. She heard the Fleet captains check in with their commander and recognized Captain Gibbs’ voice announcing the
Destiny’s
location and status with terse professionalism.

Apparently there was a similar skirmish happening further along the nebula, an extension of the battle they’d just crashed which had moved away as
the GenTec worked to escape. The GenTec had been chased here from a planetary system they’d been pillaging for whatever goods they could scavenge. It
was on the edge of the Mirabella star cluster where the GenTec were making their most serious forays into Fleet territory.

The commander sent a few Fleet vessels to join the fray, before giving Ryelle an appraising glance. She spoke before he could say anything. "They
lost twenty percent of their forces and the rest have joined the others. Should we follow and engage?"

"That eager to go into battle, little mims?" he asked quietly, piercing blue gaze dissecting her every thought.

"That eager to protect our people, sir," she answered just as quietly, meeting his gaze straight on.

He shook his head. "They can handle it. You can’t be everywhere at once and the
Odyssey
needs to be in Mirabella. How are you holding
up?"

"I’m still here," she said grimly, tightening her linked fingers together until they hurt. Later she would think about what she’d
done. Later she’d consider the blood on her hands. Not now. Now the
Odyssey
needed her.

"You don’t need to be. You have my leave to go to my office. Keep an ear to the com so you can follow our progress, but we shouldn’t need
you until Mirabella."

She heard the dismissal and was frankly dismayed, but gave him a stiff nod of acknowledgement and turned away. She would have preferred to delay her
reckoning, to stand at his side and concentrate on the workings of the ship, but she knew he was right. At some point, when she’d stood still long
enough without actively participating, the truth would crash in on her and it was better for that to happen out of sight of the rest of the crew.

She hurried down the short corridor to his office and settled gingerly into her usual cushioned chair. Then she folded her hands in her lap and allowed
herself to remember. The ship had burst apart with a flare of light and a spray of debris. She hadn’t seen bodies with her eyes, but she’d felt
them with her talent, felt them scatter and die.

The blood drained from her face and she couldn’t seem to get any air into her lungs. She gasped, leaning forward for a moment, before jumping to her
feet and dashing for the restroom, where she was violently sick. She’d felt them die. She’d murdered human beings. There’d been no malice
in her actions, no anger—only swift alarm and a desire to protect. Still, she had killed. She hadn’t had the guts to count how many.