Chaos Station 01 - Chaos Station Read online

  “Wants us to track an AEF bounty.”

  Felix jerked his head back up. “He...what?”

  Elias pushed his wallet across the table. He unfolded the flexible square of murky white and tapped the bottom half. A holographic image appeared over the top half, a captured frame from a newscast. “This AEF bounty.”

  The cool spot on his forehead pulsed. “Shit.”

  “You know her.”

  Felix let his head drop down again, his forehead smacking into the table. “‘Nother old friend.”

  He hadn’t seen Emma Katze since graduation from the Academy. Twelve years, or close to it. Felix had never expected to see her again, either. She’d been disappeared along with Zed about the same time Felix had packed himself into a shipping container in a bid to escape a stin POW colony. It made sense she would step back into his life on the same day Zed did.

  “Does she think you’re dead?”

  “Prolly.” His mouth didn’t want to work properly.

  “Why is there a large man laid out across the floor?”

  Felix squeezed his eyes shut and willed his ears to close against the sound of Nessa’s voice.

  “He’s all right, Ness,” Elias said.

  “He’s out cold!”

  “Yeah.”

  “You left him on the floor?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s kinda big.”

  “Is this our client?”

  “Ah...maybe.”

  “Is that...” Nessa’s voice dropped down toward the floor. “Elias, why is there a bruise on his jaw? Did Fixer hit him?”

  Hoarse laughter jolted out of Felix’s throat. Squinting into the tabletop, he concentrated on pointing the index finger of his gloved hand at Elias. “Eli did it.”

  “He got all crazy on us, nearly broke Fixer’s wrist.”

  Felix peered over the edge of the table. Nessa knelt over Zed with an expression of cool focus. She glanced up. “Are we keeping him?”

  More mad laughter tickled his throat.

  Elias nudged his folded arm. “What do you say, Fix? Should we dump him on the dock and fly off with the loot or drag his sorry ass to the med bay?”

  A part of him wanted to go with Plan A because Plan B might invite him to crawl into the med bay to curl up next to the man he’d loved like no other. His throat and chest constricted. Years of effort to rebuild his life, brick by solid brick, felt poised to crumble.

  But a promise was a promise and he’d given his most heartfelt to Zander Anatolius. They would always be best friends, even if one was supposed to be dead and the other had been buried so deeply beneath the weight of AEF secrecy, he might as well be dead.

  Then there was Emma Katze.

  God help me.

  “Put in him the med bay.”

  * * *

  Elias considered himself a pretty easygoing guy. His philosophy in life was simple and borrowed from the great Lao Tzu: flow as life flows. He went against the current occasionally—a captain couldn’t be a pushover. But generally he was happy just to cruise down the metaphorical river and see where he ended up. As long as his family—his crew—were happy too.

  Fixer looked anything but happy at the moment. He sat beside the narrow bed they’d hauled Loop onto. Even unconscious, the bastard looked big and capable, like if someone threw a switch, his eyes would snap open and he’d fuck up whoever stood over him. Elias had tugged Fixer’s chair back, out of reach of those long arms, and he figured it said something that Fix hadn’t protested.

  It said a lot.

  War messed with men’s minds. He saw evidence of it on every station, on every colony—there were always lost souls hovering about, searching for meaning, for purpose. A job, creds, drugs, something to take them away. More than the wreckage of ships and stations left behind by the stin, the rudderless men and women illustrated the cost of war. Hell, Elias had only to watch his engineer on any given day to recognize that truth. Fix functioned well, sure, but the shadows in his gaze were easy enough to see. He’d never insisted reality wasn’t real, though. He’d never attacked a friendly in such a casual manner.

  Whoever Loop was, he was fucked up.

  Elias leaned back against the counter behind him. “I still think we should tie him up. At least until we know if he’s going to go crazy on you again, Fixer.”

  No one messed with the man he considered his little brother.

  “Like hell you’re going to treat my med bay like a prison,” Nessa huffed. She stared at the top of Loop’s head for a moment, from her vantage point behind him, then turned to rummage through her drawers. “I can sedate him if we need to.”

  “And then we’ll leave his ass on the dock, right?”

  Though he’d given Fix the call on this one, Loop’s continued presence on his ship made his shoulders hunch. The man was trouble, his job was trouble. He’d known that from the start but he’d let the credits whisper to him. They needed the money—hell, they always needed money—but he was starting to think four hundred thousand credits wouldn’t be enough to make up for Loop’s disruption. The man moved like someone used to combat, and someone who was damned good at it. Scary enough. Add in his connection to Fix and how upset Fix had been, and one thing was for damn sure—this asshole wouldn’t hurt Fixer again.

  As though he’d heard his thoughts, Loop’s eyes opened. They focused on Fix, and Elias tensed. A hand on his arm stopped him from moving forward and inserting himself between their client and his engineer. Nessa followed up her gesture with a gentle shake of her head.

  “You won’t need the sedative,” Loop said, his voice low and rough. He stared at Fix, his gaze less cloudy than it had been before. “I...They never told me. They never fucking told me, Flick. They declared you KIA after a year and I—”

  Fixer hunched and continued to fidget quietly in his chair. Fix’s KIA status had been overturned, Elias knew that much. Kind of hard to own property and shit if you were dead. How had this so-called friend not known? Had Fix not been in contact with him? If he hadn’t...well, that said a lot too, didn’t it? It said Fix didn’t want this guy in his life.

  Here I come, dragging him back into it. Damn it.

  Groaning, Loop pushed himself into a sitting position and leveled that steely blue gaze on Elias. He wondered if he was about to be cussed out for decking the guy, but Loop just nodded. “Thanks.”

  Elias glared at him. “I’ll do it again.”

  “Good to know. Won’t give you reason to.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Nessa stepped in, all business, and shined a light in Loop’s eyes. The man flinched, an odd reaction for such a massive guy.

  “You don’t seem any the worse for wear, Mr...” She arched her brows.

  “Loop,” Fix supplied.

  Elias frowned. That’s not what Fix had called him when they’d first stepped into the mess. Zed? Zander? Whichever, Loop obviously wasn’t their client’s true name, and Fixer knew it. Why would he keep it a secret? For the first time since Loop had gone nutso, a fissure of fear overpowered the indignation and anger Elias had been feeling. He needed to be able to trust Fix—and he did, with his life and the lives of everyone on his ship. But would this new addition cloud Fix’s judgment?

  Loop smiled at Fix. “Loop,” he confirmed.

  Elias filed the other names away for a moment of quiet research.

  “Right.” Nessa took a hold of proceedings. “Well, here’s how it’s going to go, Mr. Loop. You mess with my crew, you mess with me, and I have enough drugs in my cupboards to render you a vegetable for the rest of your natural life. Am I clear?”

  The bastard’s mouth twitched but he managed not to let a smile escape. Lucky for him. “Crystal, ma’am.”

  Fixer watched Loop, not leaping to his defense or offering any assurance. His left leg hadn’t stopped bouncing once, though, which was a sign of his agitation. This whole situation was a mindfuck, and as much as he wanted to understand what Fix was going through, Elias couldn�
��t really imagine it—mostly because, he suddenly realized, he didn’t know enough about Fixer’s past and how the man sitting on the med bay bed fit into it.

  “I’ll be good,” Loop promised.

  Elias wanted to punch him again.

  Nessa poked him in the upper arm, hard. “C’mon.”

  “Ow. Damn it, Ness.” Elias rubbed his bicep. “You know I hate—”

  “We’ve got supplies to secure.”

  Elias called up the timestamp on his wallet. Damn it, they did. He hesitated, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving Fix alone with this guy. But unless he wanted to give up another shipment—and no, it didn’t pay as well as Mr. Moneybags, but it promised to be less complicated—he and Ness had to get their asses moving. Fix sure wasn’t in a state to help.

  He glared at the man, making his opinion clear. “You remain on this ship solely because you’re a friend of Fix’s, and it was his decision not to drag your ass onto the dock instead.” He kept the remainder of the threat unsaid. Ness had already made it clear, anyway.

  “Understood, sir.”

  He turned his attention to Fix and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You need me, you call me.”

  Elias shot one last glare in Loop’s direction and headed for the door.

  Chapter Three

  Felix fiddled with his glove, the fingers of his right hand plucking and poking, settling wires back within the framework of the web encasing his left hand. Beneath, his hand was all but useless. He could just about move the fingers independently, but not reliably and not with any strength. The glove apparatus added strength. He’d modeled it on the old hook principle. Curved, the steel-encased fingers could grip with ten times his strength. They could be locked into place and manipulated to hold things still—a boon in his profession. He’d experimented with adding tools but always fell back to what worked best: simple fingers. And, as a ship’s engineer, he had to say no to cybernetics. Biotech and j-space just didn’t get along.

  The glove said a lot about him—where he’d been and who he was—and as he fiddled with it, Felix could not help but wonder what Zed saw. Did he see the survivor, or did his old friend see right through the veneer, beneath the glove to the twisted ligaments and fractured bones?

  Felix forced his hands apart and gripped his knees. Slight pressure above his left stopped the incessant bounce. Then he looked at Zed, who seemed to have been doing much the same as him, gathering himself mentally and physically for what shouldn’t be a confrontation but, given their history, probably would be.

  “I tried to contact you,” Felix began. The words rasped against his dry throat. “Got the same result every time. Access denied. I couldn’t even leave a message for you after the war ended. No ripmail box.” He gripped his knees a little harder. “I even asked Marnie to try.”

  Felix closed his eyes in a long blink, and a circle of five young faces smiled from the past. Marnie, Ryan, Emma, Zander and him. The Fantastic Five. After graduation, Marnie and Ryan had dived into the world of military intelligence. Ryan worked the inside, Marnie the outside, making her easier to contact. Despite her skills and connections, Marnie had gotten the same bullshit result, though. The best they could find out was yes, Zed was alive, but even Marnie couldn’t get a message through the military secrecy that surrounded him. And Zed hadn’t reached out to her. Not once.

  The fact all five of them were still alive must be some sort of miracle. That two of them had managed to find their way onto the same station...fantastically coincidental. Opening his eyes, Felix frowned. He didn’t like coincidences.

  He glanced at Zed again and felt the familiar surge of emotion, though the old lust and desire were muted by time and circumstance. Zander had always been handsome, and age and worry hadn’t detracted from his looks. His gaze had a new hardness to it, however, something other than the familiar determination. He saw ghosts on a regular basis.

  Felix knew all about that one.

  He asked the simplest question he could think of. “Why are you here?”

  “Here, on your ship, or here, on Dardanos? Chance. To the first, anyway. As for the second...not like anyone would think to look for me on a mining station.” Zed picked at the med bay blanket. “About earlier, Flick...I’m sorry. I—” He rubbed the back of his head. “Shit. I was confused.”

  “Because I was supposed to be dead. Where have you been that...” That I couldn’t reach you...that you didn’t notice I was no longer dead. He was staring at his hands again. Lifting his gaze, Felix said, “The Zander I knew didn’t get confused.”

  “The Zander you knew—”

  He didn’t have to finish; what he meant was clear enough. The Zander he’d known didn’t exist anymore.

  “Why is there an AEF bounty on Emma?” Felix asked.

  Emma Katze was part of Zed’s current plan and apparently worth four hundred thousand credits to him. Were she and Zed involved? Would make sense; they’d gone through the same training, and the one inquiry Felix had made into Emma’s whereabouts had met with the same result: Access denied. They’d had years together that he and Zed hadn’t.

  Felix retreated to the study of his hands. He would not show his heartache to this new Zed. Loop. The client. Hell, his heartache wasn’t even supposed to exist. He was dead, wasn’t he? KIA. And Zed was an AEF secret.

  “She’s in trouble,” Zed said. “It’s classified. The why and the what. I can’t tell you, okay? But...she’s confused.”

  “Like you.” He didn’t have Zed’s way with words, so he’d state the obvious. “That’s a fucking cheap answer, Zed.” Cheap as in free. Access bloody denied.

  The heat of anger began to crawl through the haze of jumbled emotions that had held Felix all but immobile for the past half hour. He pushed against his knees and stood, leaned over Zed. “I talked Elias out of dumping your ass because I made you a stupid fucking promise twelve years ago. I’d always be your best friend, no matter what.” He flicked at the air with his right hand and winced as pain spangled through his bruised wrist. “But you know what? I’m supposed to be dead and you’re some AEF file not even Marnie can unlock. We’re not friends anymore, Zed.” A lump rose in his throat. Felix swallowed it, but the strain was evident in his voice as he continued. “We’re not even close to friends. So, I think you need to find another damned ship to carry your secret ass to wherever it needs to go, and you can take your fat wad of creds too. I don’t need it.” A half lie. “I don’t need you, Zander Anatolius.” A lie that would never be quantified.

  Felix turned and stalked toward the open med-bay hatch, already plucking a multi-tool from his belt.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Zed didn’t yell; he actually sounded sort of defeated, a tone Felix had never heard from him. “After they declared you killed in action, what was I supposed to do? My—” His voice broke. “My heart was broken. I grieved, I mourned, and no one fucking knew why I hurt so bad. So I shoved it down, I went to war, I threw myself in as deep as I could because that was the only thing left that had any meaning for me.” He cleared his throat. “Covert ops. Five years of it, deeper for the last two. That’s why you couldn’t reach me. I don’t have a wallet, haven’t since I started with the teams. I haven’t spoken to my family in four years. Fuck, I’ve hardly spoken to anyone.”

  Felix’s shoulders rounded. Fighting the urge to draw into himself, he turned to face the man sitting on the med bay bed.

  A muscle in Zed’s jaw ticked. “I’m out. Officially, my team and I are enjoying a well-earned retirement. Unofficially...they cut us loose. Emma is in trouble because of that, and I owe her, Flick. I promised her everything would be all right.”

  The promise wrenched. Felix wanted to fling it back at Zed, remind him that he had given that promise out before and that he had not kept it.

  Not his fault, Flick.

  The old nickname stabbed and poked. Felix made a fist around the multi-tool...and then breathed out. What was the use? His anger drained away, only to be replace
d by the weight of lost years. By the painful edge of truth he heard in Zed’s tone, by the desperation, and by the tiny voice inside, the one squealing beneath the press of invisible fingers banded around his heart. He’d been loved, lost, and replaced. And that hurt. But he couldn’t fault Zed for wanting to keep one of his promises. Sounded like that was all the guy had left.

  Felix remembered what it felt like to be cut loose. His medical discharge from the AEF had been a final slap, the last act in a tragedy that had all but claimed his life. He’d had four years to put that, and the reason for his discharge, behind him. Zed had the air of a man tipping toward Drunk Station.

  The cut was still fresh.

  “This isn’t how I imagined it.” Felix stared down at the tool he was gripping so tightly. “Not that I ever expected to see you again, but if I did? I thought I’d be happy. I thought...I thought the years wouldn’t matter, that our promises...” Trailing off again, he shuffled backward, hoping the shadow of the hatch would hide the blush he could feel crawling across his cheeks. He held up his tool. “I need to go...and fix the fridge.”

  Zed dipped his chin in a slow nod. “My gear still in the mess? I’ll grab it and go.”

  Hoisting himself off the bed, he glanced at Felix as though he wanted to say something, something that didn’t want to work its way past his lips. Was his throat tight too?

  “Fix?”

  Felix jerked his gaze away from Zed and tapped his bracelet. “Here.”

  Elias’s voice whispered through, stretched and tinny. “We have a problem.”

  Eyeing Zed, Felix replied, “When it rains, it pours.”

  “Remember that deal on Leto?”

  Felix’s blood tried to drain out of him for the second time that day, taking his organs along with it. They’d brokered a deal through a guy who knew a guy, and when they showed up to take delivery of the goods, everyone had been dead. So they took the goods and left, quickly and quietly. Dead people couldn’t use two thousand doses of antibiotics, but a colony lurking on the far side of the galaxy could and they’d pay dearly for it. Given that Felix and crew had left the warehouse with payment still in their pockets, they’d been able to cut a deal with the colonists too.