Hope's Folly Read online

  He could feel sweat beading at his temples. His leg throbbed.

  “Acknowledged. Thanks.” That was good news. A P-33 wasn’t. An older thirty-three- ton patrol ship, no ion cannon. Lasers and, if they were lucky, maybe one torpedo bay.

  Damned shame he couldn’t shoot his own leg off. He shoved his thoughts away from the pain again.

  “What are we carrying defensively?” he asked Martoni and the captain—who had a name but, as with his subbie, there hadn’t been time to engage in pleasantries. Rank would do until all emergencies were handled.

  “Standard laser weapons package you’d find on most Rouders,” she said, confirming the shuttle’s pedigree. Then she grinned slightly, almost impish. “And a highly illegal Gritter, but you didn’t hear me admit that.”

  A Gritter—a GRT-10 plasma cannon. Small, powerful, and one of the more common weapons used by traders, because it was easily disguised as part of an en-viro unit or an auxiliary sublight drive. Of course a shuttle like hers would have one.

  He could have kissed her, if that small move wouldn’t put him flat on the decking.

  “Find a seat, strap in,” she told him, her demeanor once again focused, serious. “It’s going to be ditch and drop,” she glanced at her armrest screen, “in two minutes.”

  His subbie tugged his arm. “This way. I’ll clear you a seat.”

  “Floor,” he said tightly, pointing to the open area between the galley and the airlock. “I need that leg straight out.” Or he was going to die right then and there from the pain. “Then you get yourself safe in a seat.”

  “Floor,” she agreed.

  He leaned against the bulkhead, ship’s drives shuddering hard through his body as they kicked to max, and slid clumsily to the decking. He forced his right leg out, teeth clenched, eyes closed, and fought the urge to pound the back of his head against the bulkhead.

  At least that would create a pain he could control.

  “One minute to departure.” The captain’s voice sounded calmly over the speakers.

  A sudden lack of warmth on his left told him his subbie had disappeared. Probably to strap in to a seat. Finally, she was listening to him!

  Then the warmth was back and, as the shuttle and his stomach lurched sideways, a hand came down firmly on his shoulder. Then a brief sting of something very small and very cold.

  “What the hell?” he ground out, slitting his eyes open to see her palming a short cylindrical hypo. “Subbie, tell me you didn’t do what I think you”—a slow, numbing heat trickled through his body—“just did.”

  “Quarter dose, Guthrie.” Her beret was back on at that jaunty angle. “Courtesy of the shuttle’s med kit, so it’s probably not all that strong. Just enough to take the edge off. I hate to see grown men cry.”

  “I don’t cry.” He wiped the back of his hand over his face. It came back damp. God, were those tears? No. “That’s sweat.” He glared at her.

  Damn, she had a beautiful smile.

  Must be the drugs.

  The stiffness leached out of his back, and the spasms lessened in his right leg. It still throbbed, but the pain was down to a dull roar.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Wipe that smug look off your face. That’s an order. ”

  “Just doing what I’m trained to do.”

  “Polite, professional, and prepared to puncture?”

  She snorted out a laugh.

  “We were set up, Subbie. Ambushed back there.”

  Her smile faded. “I caught on just about when you did. Mr. Wonderful played his part well.”

  “Tell the captain I need a report from Carmallis on injuries, fatalities, damages. If we left any of the bastards alive, I want them talking. I want to know who they work for.”

  “Copy the report to the Nowicki and Commander Adney?”

  She was good, thorough. That would serve her well on the Folly. Less so here.

  “I’ll do that. I don’t trust this shuttle’s encryptions. Now, shoo. Get busy.” He waved her away.

  She rose, nodding, then disappeared toward the bridge. No “yes, Admiral” or even a “yes, sir.” He’d have to work on that.

  Martoni appeared seconds later, squatting down in her place. “Got two P-33s riding us starboard and aft, sir,” he said. “So far, no bogies.”

  “Kirro security probably won’t stay with us all the way to Seth.” And his bogies, if they had half a brain, would know that.

  Martoni nodded. “Captain Ellis advised that Seth’s sending out a P-40 to intercept. But we could have a three-hour window where it’s just us and the one thirty-three from Umoran.”

  His bogies doubtlessly knew that too.

  “You said you can vouch for your thirty-seven people in the cabin,” Philip said, thrusting his chin toward the cabin behind Martoni. “That leaves fourteen possible unknowns.”

  “I’ve got my people spread through the seats. No unknowns are seated together. And as you probably noticed, sir, I’m the only one in the group who was armed.”

  Philip had caught that when only he, his subbie, and Martoni were returning fire.

  “That we know of,” he reminded Martoni, but the man was good. He’d earned his place on the Folly. Hell of a reward, that. “Your people take any injuries?”

  “Nothing serious, sir. Few bumps and scrapes. We were lucky.”

  “Where’s my gear?”

  Martoni leaned back on his heels and pointed to a familiar duffel along the galley’s outer bulkhead.

  “Drag it here, will you?”

  Martoni did. Philip pulled it open. His Norlack was there. His fingers found a trio of archivers. He plucked one out. “I’m going to need to send a prelim to Captain Bralford,” he said, pulling his comm link from his vest’s inside pocket and hooking an archiver into it. “I’ll have him contact Dina Adney. I don’t want any more messages going in and out of this bucket than are absolutely necessary.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Your first name, Martoni?” He wanted Jodey to place a commendation in the man’s file as soon as possible. It didn’t escape him that they might not make it to Seth.

  “Cory, sir. Cory Harris Martoni.”

  “Good name. My first CO was Cory. Captain Cory Bennton,” he said, the twenty-year- old memory washing over him along with the regret that it had been over five years since he’d made time to sit down and share a beer with the older man. Now that chance was gone. “We lost him at Raft Thirty.”

  “I’ve heard of him, sir. All good things. Damned shame to lose him.”

  Philip nodded, his subbie’s painkillers softening more than just his physical pain. “Go make your presence known in the cabin, Commander. Find out what you can on our mystery fourteen. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “I have no doubt of that, sir.” Martoni grinned, then shoved himself to his feet and headed toward the chatter of voices beyond the interior dividing bulkhead.

  Philip keyed on his comm link. His head propped tiredly against the bulkhead, his voice low but clear as he went through the rote opening identifiers and codes. He gave Bralford only the highlights, the absolutely necessary information. This was a preliminary report, just enough to get the Alliance Fleet moving in the right direction. Once he had Carmallis’s information—in terrogations could take a while—he’d file something more detailed.

  He had finished and was rolling the tension out of his shoulders when his subbie reappeared. He held up the archiver. “Send this via the shuttle’s most secure link.” The encryption filtered in from his comm link should keep the information safe.

  She grabbed it with a nod and strode off.

  What in hell had happened to “yes, sir”? He sighed.

  A few minutes later she was back. “Done.” She handed the archiver back to him. He slipped it into a vest pocket.

  She folded herself down next to him and, he noticed, kept glancing at his duffel.

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “Is thi
s,” she asked hesitantly, “what I think it is?”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Norlack 473 sniper, modified to handle wide-load slash ammo.” There was a noticeable reverence in her voice.

  He pulled the rifle out, hefting it. She had a good eye. Norlacks weren’t common. But recognizing it was modified for illegal and highly destructive charges … Then again, she’d seen it in action.

  “It is,” he confirmed, amused now by the expression on her face. It had gone from reverence to almost rapture.

  “That is so totally apex.” Her voice was hushed. “May I,” and she glanced shyly at him, her eyes bright, spots of color on her cheeks, “fondle it?”

  He stared at her, not sure he heard her correctly. Then he snorted, laughing. Fondle it, indeed.

  He handed it to her.

  She took it, cradling it at first, then running her fingers lovingly down its short barrel.

  Sweet holy God. He didn’t have enough painkillers in him to stop his body’s reaction to the smokiness in her eyes, or the way her lips parted slightly, the edge of her tongue slipping out to moisten them, as her hands slid over the weapon.

  “Uh, Subbie.”

  “Beautiful, beautiful job,” she said, turning the Norlack over, inspecting its power pack. One short-nailed finger traced the modified trigger panel. “See? The alignment is perfect. No gaps, no stress points. Nothing to fracture when this baby kicks out. I’ll bet her impact field is as sweet and tight as a—oh. Sorry, sir.”

  She quickly lowered the rifle to her lap, her cheeks reddening.

  Well, at least he’d gotten a “sir” out of her. He cleared his throat. “Someone taught you a lot about weapons.”

  She nodded without looking at him. “My father.” She pulled out her Stinger. “He gave me this when I graduated from the academy.”

  Her eyes were soft and sad. He didn’t know why, didn’t know if he should ask. He was never good with those kinds of emotions. That was one of the reasons he’d lost Chaz.

  “It’s a fine pistol, reliable. Your father did well.”

  “I had a Carver-Ten with the service. Had to give it back, though.” She sounded wistful.

  If he’d had to give back a Carver-10 at her age, he would have sounded wistful too. And, hell, yeah, if he really wanted to be honest, he would have fondled a modified Norlack back then too.

  She reholstered her Stinger.

  He pulled out his Carver and passed it to her.

  She took it, one hand around its grip, the other just under the barrel. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  “A Twelve,” he said.

  “Mmm.” The sound of pleasure rumbled in her throat. She didn’t open her eyes.

  Good thing. He was starting to sweat again.

  Another sigh. She opened her eyes, stared in adoration at it for a very long moment, then handed it back to him.

  “They fire a bit differently from a Ten,” he told her, hoping she thought the roughness in his voice was due to pain. Or drugs.

  “And a Ten fires differently from an Eight. They have that slight left-to- right vibration.” She folded her hands together, index fingers out, mimicking a pistol. “Except when you use a Garno High Issue power pack, but Fleet never wanted to budget for them.”

  Well, damn. She did know her weapons. “How in hell do you know that?” Carver-8s were taken out of service almost twenty years ago. The last time he’d had one was when he was on the Alric Stockwell. Under the command of Captain Cory Bennton.

  His subbie couldn’t have been more than a child.

  She turned wide hazel eyes on him. “You showed me.”

  Something was wrong with his hearing. He swore she said he showed her. “Who showed you?”

  “You did.”

  “I … ?” He stared at her, really stared at her.

  “It was a long time ago, Guthrie. I thought … well, for a bit I thought you might have remembered, but I guess you made more of an impression on me than I did on you. I was, I don’t know, maybe nine, ten?”

  He raked his mind for any kind of children’s camp he might have visited as a young Fleet officer doing a marksmanship demonstration. He couldn’t remember one—not even when his brother Devin, ten years his junior, was tucked away as usual in some school camp; not even with his handful of nieces and nephews. His parents never approved of anything military around them.

  “Don’t feel bad,” she continued. “I didn’t recognize you at first either. Your hair used to be brown.”

  He’d gone prematurely gray in his early thirties, just as his mother had. It was sort of a family badge of honor.

  “I let you fire a Carver?”

  “ Carver-Eight. The Stockwell was in on liberty. You came to our apartment for dinner. My mother was alive then, and we went to the Fleet shooting range after, even though my father said I was misbehaving as usual and didn’t deserve to go.”

  Memories surfaced, flooding him in a surge of surprise and nostalgia. He was suddenly younger, awed by the friendship extended him by the Captain Cory Bennton, who didn’t give a damn that the young lieutenant was an heir to the Guthrie wealth but saw him only as a kindred spirit. An officer with a passion for weapons.

  He had invited Philip to dinner to meet his wife and view his extensive gun collection. And bear up under the onslaught of his young daughter.

  Bennton’s little girl … a downright annoying, definitely pudgy, freckle-faced imp with wildly curly hair gathered on the sides of her head like two exploding reddish pom-poms. She’d bounced in her chair through cocktails, bounced in her chair through dinner, was soundly reprimanded for launching peas at him across the table with her fork, and had weaseled her way into going to the shooting range afterward, because obviously the brat never heard the word no in her entire short life.

  She was nine, perhaps ten years old. Philip was around twenty-five. Five hours with her left him feeling as if he’d been through a war zone. He’d even given her an appropriate nickname.

  Oh, sweet God.

  His beautiful, weapon-loving subbie was Rya the Rebel.

  She gently put the Norlack back on top of his duffel. “You hated me. I probably shouldn’t have told you who I was, but you’d have found out eventually. Plus, you’re half tranked.” She poked his shoulder where she’d hit him with the hypo. “I figured this was a safe time.”

  “I … didn’t hate you.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “Not exactly,” he amended.

  “Rya the Rebel?” she prodded. “Do you know how my father hung that over my head for years? Every time I acted up, he—” She turned away suddenly, but not before he saw her face crumpling, her eyes screwing tightly shut.

  Cory Bennton, her father, was dead.

  Oh, sweet God.

  He saw the stiffness in her shoulders, her back. Her posture radiated pain—something deeper and more permanent than his leg’s shattered bones. Sullivan would know what to do, but Sullivan wasn’t here.

  He reached carefully, tentatively toward her, let his hand clasp her shoulder. She was vibrating far worse than an old Carver-8, holding back sobs.

  Rya the Rebel had been one of the most out-of-control, annoying children he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. But he’d never doubted she adored, she’d worshipped, her father.

  And he, her.

  And now her father was dead.

  And it was Philip’s fault.

  “Subbie,” he said softly.

  She sucked in a sob and blindly batted his hand away, then shoved herself to her feet and flung herself into the small lavatory next to the galley. The door slammed shut.

  Philip let his head thump back against the bulkhead. He scrubbed his face with his hands.

  His subbie was Rya the Rebel. Sub-Lieutenant Rya Bennton. Polite, professional, and prepared to kill.

  And fully torn to shreds by the death of her father.

  And there was not one goddamned thing Admiral Philip Guthrie could do
to change that.

  Rya braced herself over the lav’s small basin as sobs wracked her body.

  Goddamned stupid slag-headed idiot!

  She’d fractured completely, coming apart in great horrible ugly chunks right in front of Philip Guthrie. Admiral Philip Guthrie. Her CO, if he didn’t toss her fat unworthy ass off his ship the minute they hit the Seth shipyards.

  Served her right if he did so.

  She was ImpSec. SPS. You did not—did not—come apart, ever. And never in front of a senior officer.

  Especially not when that CO was the one man besides your father who was your always-forever dream hero.

  Lieutenant Philip Guthrie. Odd how over the years she’d forgotten his face but not the effect he’d had on her. And not certain details. The way he’d lounged at her parents’ dining-room table, a slender-stemmed wineglass in his thick fingers. Strong fingers. Strong enough to hold something so delicate without breaking it. Strong enough to fire those powerful weapons that were her father’s passion.

  She’d tried so hard to behave that night, but when her father said he was bringing home one of his officers, she’d never thought it would be someone like Philip. She’d met his officers before. Gruff women who pinched her cheeks. Fat men who smelled like cigars.

  And then Philip strode in, tall and strong, with those beautiful blue eyes, like a prince from her storyvids. And for the first time in her life she’d fallen in love with a man who wasn’t her father.

  She could not sit still. She’d wanted to fling her arms around his waist and hug him.

  But she was just a child. Fat and freckled with frizzy hair.

  Then he’d put his Carver in her hands, talking all the while about the weapon’s problems as if she were a grown-up and really understood, and he held her small hands in his large warm ones while she aimed at the target and fired.

  She didn’t wash her hands for a week after that.

  And now she’d just completely unraveled in front of him. Dishonored herself. Dishonored her duty to her father.