“My darling warrior, I love the fact you love me so much. Even more, I love the fact you want to protect me. I’ve never had anyone in my life who cares as much as you.” She brushed a kiss across his marking and even through a couple layers of fabric, she could feel the answering heat. “I plan on being with you for the rest of our lives. And, whenever this fear of losing me hits you, just remember, I am an Alliance officer. I’ve been in danger every day since I joined the military. This is nothing new. And, now, with my increased empathic abilities and our ability to connect to each other’s minds, it will be much harder for the enemy to take either of us by surprise.” Mel held her breath, then smiled. He had taken her words to heart—but with their partnership so new, she imagined she would have to remind him of her strength—and love—from time to time. She’d been snatched from his life twenty-seven years ago; she understood his fears of having her taken from him again.
“Our connection is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” he said nuzzling her hair from her ear, then kissing it. “And I value your experience and training—never think that I don’t, but—
”
And there was always a “but.”
“—we still we must be very careful,” he finished, brushing a kiss across her forehead as if in apology for his over-protective alpha-ways.
“Hey, ask my old crew.” She reached up and traced the pulsing muscle along his jaw with her lips. “My middle name is ‘cautious’.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Ansu bhau!” Mel swore.
As she crawled out of narrow confines of the shield array maintenance tunnel, she added a few more pithy invectives learned in her many years in the military. Cursing wouldn’t fix the problems, but it did allow her to let off some of the anger roiling in her gut.
Huw following her out snorted back a laugh. “Very creative, but crude. I think I’ll start a list for future use now that I am part of the Alliance.” Mel shot him a wry grin. “I’ll send one to your com-box.” She swept some hair off her face. Damn all men and their fondness for long hair on women. She’d like to see how they’d like hair in their faces all the time. That morning, between deep, luscious, panty-dampening kisses, Wulf had begged her not to braid her hair, but to let it flow, and like a sappy idiot, she had. Okay, so she was easy, but the man could kiss.
She let out a disgusted sigh. Hair styles and Wulf were the least of her problems.
Defective, loose, or missing couplings on the exterior connections to the shields were.
“Good news is—the power sources still work,” she said, dusting off her uniform, making a mental note to have maintenance clean the shield array tunnels more often. “We just can’t get the power to the exterior shields. Bad news is—we need a space dock or a stable orbit around a planet out of the path of meteor showers to make repairs. Both of which are harder to find in this part of the galaxy than an Erian’s teeth. It’s an easy fix once we get outside the ship.”
His good-humored grin of a moment ago gone, Huw nodded. “I agree. Closest space dock in this part of the galaxy that can handle a ship our size would be the Alliance Military Dock orbiting Tooh 10. Wulf might know of another one, but I don’t.” Something, a specific place she’d heard of from a trawler captain with whom she’d shared a bar table many years ago, niggled at the back of her mind. She’d have to check the charts for this part of the galaxy to see if she could jog her memory.
If Tooh 10 was the closest, that wasn’t saying much. Their current position placed them in a vastly underpopulated area of the Cygnus-Orion spiral. Tooh 10, in the Mu Arae system, was located more centrally in the spiral. Right now, they were in the middle of frigging nowhere. Well, nowhere if you didn’t count the asteroid belts and other detritus of former solar systems floating around, threatening to make big holes in space vehicles without shields.
“Dammit all to hell! We need those shields. We might be able to handle small hunks of rock with the auxiliary shields, but I wouldn’t put good money on that bet,” she said.
“All it takes is one leftover hunk of a former planet running into our shield-less hull and we are fodder for a salvage yard.”
The deep creases on Huw’s forehead indicated that his thoughts paralleled hers.
Mel blew a lock of hair from her mouth, then glared at her brother-in-law as if her bad hair day was his fault. It wasn’t—it was Wulf’s.
“And, how in the hell did they bollocks up the exterior shield structure after leaving Cejuru Prime? Did anyone on board request an extra-vehicular inspection?” she asked.
“No. And only Wulf can authorize an EVI,” Huw said. “And, now, you, of course.” She nodded. “So, they did it in Cejuru Space Dock,” she stated the obvious conclusion. “Do you think they just loosened the couplings? The vibration of jump flight would eventually knock them completely loose.”
“Maybe, but unlikely. We made several jumps and used the shields multiple times on the way to Obam IV to get to you and Wulf,” stated Huw. “I’m betting the saboteurs installed defective couplings that failed under stress of repeated uses or, better yet, put something corrosive on them to cause them to break at a future time.”
“Whatever they did to them—bottom line, we don’t have our primary shields, just the auxiliary.” Mel turned and headed for the nearest elevator. Huw matched his longer-legged stride to hers. “The rebels figured that eventually we’d have to use the shields in an emergency of their or some other unknown’s making in the middle of nowhere. End result? A Grade-A cluster fuck.”
“Yeah, couldn’t have said it better myself,” agreed Huw.
Thinking back to the two men who’d tried to kill her and Iolyn, she frowned.
Something about this scenario didn’t ring true. An EVI took specific knowledge and training in zero G. Any monkey could mess up the couplings. A good knock with a hammer, some acid dripped on them, or leaving them loose would produce the current result. But a spacewalk required someone with skills.
“Do either Donte or Regin even have the experience and knowledge to do the EVI?” she asked. She’d done hundreds of them in her early years in the military. All transport captains knew enough basic engineering to fix their ships since they often made deliveries to the most far-flung areas of the galaxy under some of the worst conditions, which almost always necessitated a zero-g space walk. She had even more of an advantage. The military had paid for her engineering degree and she had first-hand experience making repairs under zero-g conditions.
“Ansu bhau. Why didn’t I think of that?” Huw glanced at her, an angry scowl creasing his forehead, and said, “No, they don’t have that kind of experience. That would mean that someone in Cejuru Space Dock is part of the rebellion.” The elevator opened at their approach. “Yes,” Mel said, as she led the way inside and ordered “bridge.” They rode to the command deck in silence as if the far-flung perfidy of the rebels had temporarily rendered them speechless.
Wulf’s head jerked up as the elevator opened onto the bridge. He turned his head and smiled at her, but then frowned.
Mel checked her mental filters to see if she had inadvertently left them open. No, she hadn’t. He was reading her emotions, not her mind.
“What’s wrong, Melina? Huw?”
She stepped to Wulf’s side aware that all the eyes of the bridge crew fixed upon her.
Self-consciously, she smoothed her hair back behind her ears.
Wulf’s amber-colored gaze followed the movement then heated, turning his eyes into the color of molten gold. His aura glowed red-hot. She didn’t have to touch his mind to know that he recalled how they’d spent their off-duty time. He wanted her again. Now.
An answering warmth swept through her, making her wet.
“Behave, Wulf. Now is not the time to get all amorous on me.”
“I was just admiring my gemate ’s beautiful hair.”
“You are so in trouble. As soon as we get a handle on what we’re going to do about this mess we’re in, I’m going back to our quarters to take a shower and braid this damn hair.”
“Not damn hair. Beautiful hair. I like it down.”
“Wulf!”
“Melina … later, my love. Make your report. The crew is wondering what we are discussing.”
Taking a deep, calming breath, she made a report of her and Huw’s findings.
Anger stole the light from his fiery gold eyes. “This, added to the fact that three out of five of our main weapon systems have had their energy source partially or fully discharged, places the ship in a dire situation.”
“Well, shit,” she swore. “How long to recharge?”
“Twenty standard hours—maybe more. As long as we find nothing else damaged,” Wulf replied. “Anticipating that we might have other, more serious damage as yet undetected, I ordered Gold Squadron to change course and to head back to meet us at top speed. We’ll need their escort to Tooh 10. Once we reach Tooh 10, I feel we should have the Galanti totally overhauled and given a clean bill of health before we head to Cejuru Prime.”