Rebel Souls (15 page)

He pulled his mouth away. “I need you now.”

“Take me inside the Avira.” Her heart pounded against her ribs. “Or take me here. I don’t care, as long as you take me.”

Flash.

“You’re going to have a baby, Ms. Frost. You’re around three weeks pregnant.”

Her breath hitched. How? She’d…. “That can’t be possible.” She eyed the test results. “I had taken measures to prevent it.”

“For Nexian women, not for Terran women. You have two ovaries. I assure you, you’re carrying a baby.”

My gods, she was going to have a baby—Seth’s baby.

***

The lid dropped down and the glass frosted, blocking her view of the outside, sealing her tomb. So this was it, her punishment for turning on her people and taking up with the enemy. She gave her crew a wry smile. Blood trickled from her lips and rolled down her chin. What a fucking way to go. The cell filled with frigid liquid that quickly turned pink.

She blinked once, twice as it washed over her face, pouring into her mouth and nostrils, pooling across the surface of her eyes.

Then darkness.

***

Seth bolted down the hall, alongside the cryo-cell, a casket shaped tube of solid glass. Ava was packed in a nearly freezing form of liquid oxygen. Her face was gray, her beautiful lips, blue. He’d ordered his wing ship to watch the wormhole and not to let another smuggler slip past. He hadn’t expected them to fire on the
Avira
without first contacting him.

It was his fault. He’d restricted their leave, punished them for the mistake the first time. What had he expected Captain Levore to do? He’d dealt her, and the crew onboard her ship, a hard lesson by denying them leave and forcing them to monitor the hole. Did he really think she’d sit back and make the same mistake that got them in trouble in the first place?

He continued to hold to a rail on the side of the cell as the medics from life flight raced her toward surgery. Over and over he rolled the scenario through his head. His officer didn’t know Ava. She only assumed she was a criminal. It wasn’t Levore’s fault.

One of the medics grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand free. “This is as far as you can go, Captain. You’ll have to wait out here.” They slipped masks on and pushed the cell through a bio-shield that resembled jelly a foot thick, disinfecting everything it touched. He stood back, the world around him fading to black as she disappeared on the other side, possibly the last time he’d see her alive.

And he’d failed to tell her he loved her.

Seth swung around and punched a wall. He yanked his hand back and gave it a shake. Pain shot up his wrist and his knuckles bled. All of little consequence compared to the crushing pain around his heart. Never had he felt so helpless. He reached up and rubbed his forehead with his uninjured hand. He should have told her he loved her. He should have asked her to be his wife as he’d planned to do that morning, but damn if duty hadn’t interfered, and like a good League officer, he’d put his job first. Seth dropped into a seat in the waiting room and sat back, closing his eyes. He’d be lost without her.

Seconds later, he was back on his feet, pacing the corridor. Waiting. Waiting. He turned toward the bio-shield. How long would it take?

What seemed like hours later, a surgeon came through the shield and pulled his mask off. “Legatus Reynolds?”

“Yes. You have news?” Seth rushed over to the surgeon.

“Captain Frost will live, but her injuries were extensive. We were unable to save the baby and her insides were torn up so bad, we had to remove her uterus.”

Seth furrowed his brow. “Baby?”

“Six weeks. Hard to tell with cross-breeds the gestation time.”

“Pregnant—carrying a child.” He could barely spit the words out. More pain. Dizziness. It couldn’t be. He would have been a father? He tightened his fists at his sides. Why hadn’t she told him? Maybe she didn’t know.

“That’s what I meant when I said I couldn’t save the baby. Not that it will matter. I have another issue to discuss with you, which I’m sure is why you’re here.”

“What do you mean?”

“That chunk from the hull we removed might be quadradium. Our lab technician is running a couple of tests on it, but I thought you might like to know. Also….” He handed Seth the medallion she’d always worn around her neck. “That looks like a royal Nexian crest of some sort, probably stolen. Can you see that it’s returned to the owners?”

Seth nodded. His throat constricted and his guts twisted. She’d lied. He’d bought her story, believed her, and he’d loved her, yet none of it seemed to matter. There could be nothing further between them. He had to make a choice, and that choice didn’t include room for a criminal in his life. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “When can we take her into custody for transport?”

“Not for at least three days. She’s in the cryo-cell on an intensive healing therapy. The woman is lucky to be alive.” He looked up and frowned. “I don’t know why I bother to patch them up when you’re just going to execute them.”

“They have a right to a trial—a right to prove their innocence. It’s League Law.”

“I’ll have the lab results shortly. I don’t think she stands much of a chance of proving innocence though. That one chunk is well over five million credits. If it’s what I think it is, the shard could make a bomb big enough to level this city.” He snorted. “I hope she enjoys her trip to the disintegration chamber. I can’t begin to think of the lives that have been lost because of her smuggling activities. Good riddance. It’s a pity all the scum in the universe come here. It would be a beautiful world otherwise.” He gave Seth a curt nod, flipped his mask down, and strode back through the seal.

Scum
? Seth sank into a seat. Even though she’d lied to him, he couldn’t see her as scum. Stunned, he could barely breathe. His muscles cramped, and a million emotions ricocheted in his head. He went from relieved, to furious, to completely confused. Why would she do this, risk her life and that of her crew to transport the substance?

Worse, he would have been a father. Her lack of judgment had destroyed the baby, his child. He should haul her in, see her tried and executed. No, she’d already lost her baby, the ability to ever have children, and a relationship with him. She’d thrown it away for what purpose? Didn’t matter. He couldn’t bear to see her killed, but he also didn’t want her around anymore. Her betrayal had crushed that future. He’d do her one last favor, something he shouldn’t even consider. He closed his fist around the medallion.

Seth turned, strode out of the hospital and toward the Blue District where he’d first seen the street children. If anyone knew how to find Brodie Mark, it would be them.

Gods help him. He must have lost his mind. Legatus Seth Reynolds of the STFR, Special Task Fleet Regulators, was going to help a criminal escape and then somehow, some way, he’d forget he’d ever known her.

Chapter Twelve

Brodie glanced both ways before slipping from the shadows and into the New Xiera Port City’s medical center. Seth stepped up beside him. “You have twenty minutes before my team arrives to secure her room. She’s in the trauma unit. Get her out of here and don’t ever let her come back into League jurisdiction. If I see her again, I’ll have no choice but to arrest her and see her executed.”

Brodie stopped and turned to him. “I told you I’d kill you if you hurt her. You’re lucky I need to get her out of here, or we’d be settling up on that promise. Forget her ever coming back here, if I ever see you again, I. Will. Finish. This.”

“One other thing.” Seth dropped his hand to his laser and flicked the weapon to full charge. “She was pregnant, lost the baby and any chance of having another.”

Brodie’s eyes glinted with murder. “You should really get out of my sight right now.” His gaze dropped to Seth’s weapon. “That weapon won’t help you.”

Seth nodded and walked toward the door. He stopped at the exit and glanced back. “I love her, but I don’t have a choice. I wish there was another way. Take care of her.” He’d nothing further to say that the Rebel leader would want to hear, or that he wanted to disclose. He’d loved her, still loved her, and felt the loss of the child deeply.

Now, all he wanted was for Brodie to get Ava out of the city, on a ship to somewhere safe, where he’d never see her again, and then maybe he could forget her and move on with his life.

Seth activated his com. “Contact the Port Police and start the process for a prisoner transfer. I also need a security team at the trauma unit at New Xiera Medical Center. We’ve caught a prisoner we need to keep secure until she can be moved for trial. I’m expecting trouble.” Twenty minutes, as promised. He couldn’t give him any more without the League knowing he’d helped.

He stepped into a dark alley and pounded his fists against the wall. Why? Why did she do it? His knees gave and he dropped to the ground, resting his forehead against the smooth stone wall on the backside of the medical center. Tears filled his eyes. Seth squeezed them shut, preventing them from spilling onto his cheeks. He tipped his head back and stared into the night sky. Gods, he’d been a fool. Never again.

***

Brodie strode through the bio-shield and into the intensive care unit. He shoved nurses and doctors out of the way and glanced in doorways as he passed, until he spotted Ava.

“You’re can’t go in there,” a doctor said as he stepped into his path. Brodie pulled his laser and pressed the barrel against the man’s chest. The surgeon swallowed and stepped to the side. Brodie slipped the weapon back in his thigh-holster, walked into the room and up to the glass cylinder they’d placed Ava inside.

He pulled up on the latches and lifted the lid. Alarms and lights flashed everywhere, but nobody moved to stop him.

“She needs to remain….”

Brodie looked back and pinned the doctor with the coldest look he could muster. The man swallowed his next words and shut this mouth. Brodie had always taken care of her, even in his absent years he’d watched out for her. He’d be damned if he let these hacks have her in their care any further. He slipped his hands into the nearly freezing liquid and under her body, lifting her from the unit.

Liquid poured off her limp and naked body torso, raining back into the glass cryo-cell. They’d used a laser to seal the wound, but they hadn’t taken care to do a good job. The scar would be ugly.

He hugged her tight to his body, looking for anything to wrap her in and restore heat to her frozen flesh. Her skin was gray, her lips blue, and her heart barely beat—forced hypothermia.

How could any man who did this to her claim to love her? Thoughts of murder washed through his head, and Brodie pushed them away. Now was not the time for vengeance. That would come later, once Ava was safe. “I want a thermal blanket, and I want it now.”

Nurses rushed toward him with heated blankets. Brodie eyed a large, central stand, the top covered with various vials, jars of liquid and medical instruments. He used his elbow to sweep the contents onto the floor and nodded for one of the nurses to spread her blanket on the surface. As he set Ava on her side, she coughed fluid from her mouth. He rubbed her back until the spasms stopped and then wrapped her up in a thermal cocoon. “Quickest exit?” Brodie scooped her into his arms.

Everyone pointed to a doorway opposite the one he came in. He nodded and walked from the room, down a corridor where staff parted before him, moving as fast as he could without jostling Ava too much. Another ten feet and he slipped out the back exit. A glance right and left alerted him to approaching Regulators and police.

The small patrol ships blinked bright orange and green, their lights igniting the night sky and the New Xiera Port skyline. They skimmed around the luminous, multicolored skyscrapers, and toward the medical center.

Yeah, as if he couldn’t see them coming. They could learn a thing or two about stealth. Too bad when they got to the med unit, they’d find Ava and their evidence gone. Having friends in the lab solved that problem. If the local authorities discovered the metal on their world, the sanctuary they’d granted the Nexian refugees could be in jeopardy and gods knew he’d caused enough trouble for his people by bringing the metal here.

He shifted her in his arms, holding her closer, being careful not to tear open the recently melded wound. “I’m taking you home, Duchess. It’ll be okay.” He ducked into an alley and headed for the docks, where Ava’s crew had hidden her ship and finished repairing the damage to the hull an hour before. “I’ve got you now.”

Not the safest place, but they’d leave the planet soon enough. The Regulators would be all over the Blue District, not in the high-end part of town, where the wealthy resided. After all, scum like him didn’t have the credit to live anywhere better, or at least that was an assumption that would be one of authorities many mistakes.

Another was letting the ship go after the hold had been searched. The shipment was still bound for Nexis. Nothing had changed. This one shipment would supply the funds needed to finish what they’d started and take back their world. His people were tired of being refugees.

The ironic thing, the by-product of the processed quadradium, a form of fuel, had been sold to the League through a legitimate Nexian corporation for years, Brodie’s company, and one he’d built with funds from smuggled metal.

His disappearance had nothing to do with dying, more to do with securing a future for all Nexians. Brodie didn’t use the metal to build weapons. Instead, he found another way, a way Ava would approve of.

After the carnage in the Blue District, he swore never to put Ava through that again. Violence begat violence. Ava had been right; it never fixed the problem. The Nexian aristocracy retaliated, and Brodie lost more than his pride, he lost his family, the men and women from the streets that raised him, grew up as brothers and sisters alongside him.

From that point forward, Brodie changed his tactics. His plan became more of a financial attack than physical, with the sole purpose of bankrupting the Nexian hierarchy and eliminating the control they held over his world. The rebels had built factories, businesses, corporations, creating jobs and offering products to the population they’d never been able to afford before. The Nexian public’s loyalties shifted to those who provided medical supplies, a greater income and comfort items they’d never enjoyed before. Then, when Brodie had the aristocracy on their knees, he went in for the kill, destroying any income the previous rulers of Nexis could use to recover from the financial crisis their companies suffered. The Nexian leaders lost their power, their money machines crumbled against the competition the rebel companies gave them, and like the cowards they were, all but a stubborn handful vanished like vapor, taking what little of their riches they had left into exile. The last bit on Ava’s ship should finish off the stubborn few who thought to stick around and fight.