“I don’t know. But we’ve got the I.C. on board, so the gods only know what kind of bullshit we’re about to get tangled up in.”
Izak groaned and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Can you hear that?”
I stilled and listened, really listened. Nothing. “No.”
“They gave me this damn armor, and now I can hear them.” He rubbed his temples before sitting up and leaning his head back against the wall.
“Who’s they? Who gave it to you?”
“The I.C.”
Intelligence Core. “And you hear them? Who can you hear?”
His eyes met mine. “The Hive, Dorian. It’s the fucking Hive.”
The Hive. The I.C. Strange armor and stealth ships? Yes. We were fucked.
We were in a small launch bay, where we’d been told to report. Two stealth shuttles sat at the ready. They wouldn’t hold more than a handful of crew, less than ten warriors, and that was if everyone onboard was standing in the tiny cargo area directly behind the pilots. The ships were designed to be infiltration units, used to do collect intelligence behind enemy lines, and I had a very bad feeling about where this mission was going.
“What are they saying?” I asked. Izak’s armor was different than mine. I wore the standard issue black camouflage for space ops, but his was filled with silver streaks and odd circuitry that was unmistakably Hive.
He shook his head. “Can’t understand a damn thing. It’s like buzzing insects inside my head.” Izak started taking his armor apart, dropping pieces on the floor. “I can’t fly like this. By the gods, I can’t.”
Izak stripped in record time, then walked, naked, to a flight cabinet and pulled out new armor. He was bending over to put on the pants when the mission doors opened and in walked a dozen people, including Commander Karter and my mate. Chloe was dressed in the same silver streaked armor that Izak had worn and my heart plummeted into my stomach.
No. Gods, no. She was supposed to be sitting at a desk, not wearing battle armor. And was that an ion cannon strapped to her thigh?
The beast, Warlord Anghar, was behind her, wearing similar tech. The only one not wearing battle armor was Commander Karter. He called for Izak and I to join them, and I remembered the warrior’s naked state. A hot flame of jealousy rose up as I thought Chloe might see the warrior’s body. But when I looked up at her, she was staring at me, only me, with so much love in her eyes my throat threatened to close up. Her emotions flooded me through the collar. Love. Hope. Fear. Resignation that we were all going on this mission, and that we might not come back.
Gods, no. I didn’t like that coming from her. Not at all.
I grabbed Izak’s chest armor, threw it at him and nudged him on the shoulder. “Come on. Hurry up. Karter is here.”
Izak followed me, putting on the rest of his gear as we walked across the deck. When we reached them, it was obvious that there were two very separate groups. The Intelligence Core had a full infiltration unit of eight wearing the special armor that Izak had just removed. Then there was Chloe, Anghar and two Prillon warriors serving as guards or protectors, I wasn’t sure which. The commander rattled off everyone’s names and I noted the way Bruvan glared at my mate. He also wore the strange silver attachment over his ear that Chloe did. Hers was the first I’d seen, but I recognized Hive tech when I saw it, and seeing that thing attached to my mate’s head like a parasite did not alleviate my fear for her.
Short introductions over, the commander cleared his throat. “All right, warriors. You all know why you’re here. We need to get that net down. We’re sitting in the middle of a trap and I don’t like it. But we also need to know how it works and how to detect it. They could be deploying this weapon in other sectors, targeting more battlegroups. We need to know what we’re dealing with and how to destroy it.”
Karter turned to me and Izak. “Captain Kanakar, you will be piloting the shuttle with Commander Phan and Warlord Anghar. Your team is to operate in a support position. Coordinates and instructions have been loaded into the shuttle’s system. You will take your orders in the field from Commander Phan. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded. The commander made a point to force me to acknowledge that Chloe was to be the commanding officer on my shuttle, but I didn’t mind. I was too flooded with relief that Chloe was in the support team and wouldn’t be part of those going out there, into space, battling the gods only knew what kind of Hive treachery.
“Captain Morzan,” he addressed Izak. “You will be piloting the assault shuttle. You will take your orders from Commander Bruvan.”
“Yes, sir.”
Commander Karter looked at us, hard. “I’m not going to insult you two by reminding you of your rank and the rules of command, but this isn’t a standard op. This is I.C. Do you understand?” He stared directly at me when he said the last, a second blatant reminder that Chloe would be giving the orders, that my mate outranked me, and that even if I disagreed with her decisions, it was my duty to follow her authority. No matter the danger.
Fuck.
We both nodded, but chills raced over my skin and a feeling of foreboding weighed down my limbs. Izak seemed unaffected, but he wasn’t heading into a war zone with his mate to protect.
If she’d let me protect her.
Commander Bruvan spoke, “I am ranking officer on this mission, followed by Commander Phan. Once we leave the ship, we will operate on short wave radio frequencies only. No exceptions.”
“But we’ll be out of range for communications with the Battleship Karter,” Izak said.
“Exactly.” Commander Bruvan lifted his helmet onto his head. “Load up. Let’s do this.”