Chain Reaction

Chapter Seven

As the site of a future colony, the nameless moon did not look promising. From up high, Celene saw rocks, some bodies of water, barely any flora. Anyone attempting to settle on this moon would find it a hard, unrewarding task.

“I’m putting the ship down in that valley.” She guided the Phantom over the surface of the moon, her gaze constantly scanning for signs of sentient habitation. As they drew closer to the surface of the planet, she could make out more details. Dull blue rocks covered its surface, and the bodies of water she’d seen from higher up were merely gray ponds filmed with weeds. A few stands of short, scrubby trees comprised the plant life.

8^th Wing hadn’t made contact with any of the planets of this system, which would make her job much more difficult should she and Nils encounter actual civilizations. First contact was always handled by Diplomacy Division, not fighter pilots and engineers.

Nils grunted a response. Slanting a look at him, she saw that he’d retreated into his thoughts, his expression abstracted.

The moment the landing gear touched the surface, Nils leaped out of his seat. She barely had time to power the ship down before he began pulling open panels.

“Need a hand?” She went to stand behind him as he crouched on the floor. He did not answer.

Was he ignoring her? He had every right to, the way she had shut him down earlier. “Hey.” She nudged him with her boot.

He glanced up, startled. So he wasn’t giving her the silent treatment. It was clear he’d forgotten she existed—a marked change from his earlier confession. She took no offense, however. The fixed, alert sharpness of his gaze reminded her of the look other Wraith pilots wore during combat.

“Can I help?” she offered.

“My tools. In my kit.” Then he bent back to his work.

She went to get his tools. Articulate he might be, except when his attention was fixed on an engineering project.

She grabbed the kit and brought it back to him. He grunted again when she set the kit down beside him, but that was the limit of his conversation. Seeing that there really was nothing for her to do inside the ship, she decided to take a look around outside. The moon might not make for a good colony, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to learn from it. She knew a few people in the Research Corps who’d appreciate a few samples of new life forms.

“Going out for a survey,” she said to Nils after taking a science kit.

This time, she wasn’t even graced with a grunt. He merely made a vague gesture over his shoulder—the only sign she had that he’d heard her.

She double-checked that her plasma blaster held a full charge before opening the door. Stepping out, she caught the faint, acrid smell of sulfur borne on a weak breeze. Rocks crunched beneath her boots. Spindly trees reached their branches toward the yellow sky. Thin air made her work harder to breathe, so she kept her pace easy as she rambled in slow arcs away from the ship. Tiny rodents and lizards scuttled over the rocks, but there was nothing substantial with which to make a meal.

After snapping on a pair of thin deltex gloves, she bent to pluck a few blades of red grass. The grass released a sticky pink sap, and she collected both in sample tubes. She did the same with the sawtooth-edged leaves from the nearby trees. It seemed unlikely that any of these plants could prove to be a good food source for possible farming, but she wanted to be sure. PRAXIS had a bad habit of decimating planets’ ecosystems, robbing the soil of valuable nutrients so that none of the inhabitants could farm. The Research Corps constantly searched for sustainable agriculture in order to help post-PRAXIS worlds recover.

A chirp made Celene look up from her collecting.

“Don’t need supervision, thanks,” she said to the curious little rodent watching her. Small, furred and speckled, it looked like a hybrid between a squirrel and a moth, and it tilted its head in blank-eyed bafflement when she spoke.

She laughed when it burbled a response in a language only it understood, tail dancing. It scuttled forward, inquisitive. Clearly it had no experience with humanoids, approaching her without fear. But she held back and simply watched it, keeping her hands to herself. Cute though the squirrel-moth might be, she never forgot that it was an unknown variable. It might have a mouth full of needlelike teeth or spit a toxin that carried a paralytic. Too many explorers had crossed to the heavens because they’d been misled by appearances.

“Go on, now.” She made a shooing motion. “Get back to your den or hive and tell stories about the hideous beast you saw collecting plants. It’ll impress the females. Or males.”

As if taking her advice, the animal chattered at her before scampering away, disappearing between the cracks in a pile of rocks.

The creature had been better conversation than Nils.

Who was busy making the necessary alterations to the ship, while she played at Research Corps. Well, she had to make herself useful. Simply sitting back as someone else did the work felt foreign and uncomfortable. So she continued on with her gathering of samples, keeping her senses alert should anything happen.

Yet as she worked, filling tube after tube with collected specimens, her thoughts drifted back to what Nils had revealed earlier. She still processed the knowledge that he had been the stranger who had kissed her on the Night of Masks. It was like playing at blaster tag as a child, only to discover that the toy weapon she held contained live ammo.

No, that wasn’t true. She never saw Nils as a harmless toy. He held far too much capability—and she responded to him with an intensity that surprised even her.

It was more than surprise. It was fear. And she had even admitted that fear to him.

All of her protestations, all of her wishes. She got what she wanted, finally. But she had no idea how to proceed. She could shoot down a PRAXIS fighter in the middle of a meteor shower. She had taken down three of the biggest brawlers in the 8^th Wing during SimCom. But she didn’t know a damn thing about actually letting a man get close to her emotionally.

Nils might be NerdWorks, but the truth was that he had far more confidence than she did.

“How’s that for irony,” she muttered under her breath. Her fingers were less than gentle as she plucked a spindly weed from the soil.

Her confession to Nils… She had never been so honest, so…exposed. Unguarded. Admitting a weakness countered everything she wanted to believe about herself. And it left her open to attack. Or rejection.

But Nils hadn’t attacked her, hadn’t turned away from her. And instinctively she had known that if there was anyone to whom she could admit her fear, it would be him.

It had been difficult, though. Even now she felt a residual tremor of fear. A fighter pilot guarded her weakest point. Lessons she had learned at the controls of her ship, and from the men who’d passed through her life. Could she undo those lessons? They were all but hardwired into her heart.

She almost dropped the specimen tube when she heard Nils shout her name. Shoving the sample into the kit, she pulled her blaster and took off at a run back toward the Phantom. Her pulse hammered as she crested a low ridge. He could be hurt or in danger. They had done a scan and found no viable threats, but scans could be wrong.

Please don’t let it be wrong.

Coming up over the ridge, she collided with a long, lean body. Broad hands came up to grasp her arms as she took up a fighting stance.

Nils stood before her, his expression tight with worry.

“Hells,” she said on a growl, holstering her weapon. “Thought you were being eviscerated.”

“I looked up from making the modifications, and you were gone. I couldn’t find you anywhere near the ship.”

“Told you I was going to collect some specimens.”

He shook his head, and the tension from his body lessened slightly. “If you did, I didn’t hear.”

“With your head buried in circuit boards, that doesn’t surprise me.” She eyed the sonic blade in his grasp. “Planning on doing some whittling?”

His cheeks darkened as he shoved the blade back into its sheath on his boot. “If you were in trouble, I wanted to be able to protect you.”

Warmth uncurled within her. “A blaster has better range.”

“The knife was the first thing I thought of. I’d use it, if I had to.” She saw it then, how he was growing into the fullness of himself, gaining confidence, trusting his strength.

If only she had the same courage.

“Nothing but the finest for the 8^th Wing.” Celene stared down at the warmed sustenance-pak. She tore the top off the foil and squeezed its contents onto her plate.

She and Nils sat at the tiny table in the main cabin of the Phantom, a chamber that also served as the galley. Over the course of the mission, they had been steadily going through the stocked rations, and were now confronting the horror that was supposed to pass for midmeal.

“Calling this food is an exercise in wishful thinking.” Using his fork, Nils prodded at what was supposed to replicate Nivalian stew. Aside from the name, and perhaps a few protein configurations, the substance on the plate had nothing in common with actual Nivalian stew, which was normally a delicious combination of long-braised rindroast and early-Solstice root vegetables.

Against her better judgment, Celene took a bite of the “stew.” She shuddered at the flavor, but forced herself to swallow. “We’ve got to eat this stuff, though. Nutrients are nutrients, no matter how appalling they taste. We need as much energy as our bodies can produce, now more than ever.”

Nils’s expression darkened. “Getting to the most dangerous phase of the mission.”

“Junior cadets make their mistakes right about now.” She took a drink of filtered water to get the taste out of her mouth. “They think the finish line is closer than it really is, get overconfident and wind up blown to asteroid dust.” Memories flickered like vids, far too clearly for her liking. She wouldn’t mind a little static when it came to watching some of her comrades cross over into the heavens. It usually wasn’t a pleasant and easy crossing, either. Fighter pilots met violent, messy ends. The best one could hope for was instantaneous vaporization. The worst… She’d seen the worst. And even years later, it still made her skin clammy and her throat close.

“There are times for confidence,” Nils said. “Not arrogance. Not when lives are at stake.”

“Your own,” she noted.

“And others’.” He frowned down at his plate. “So many are counting on us to complete this mission. If I fail—”

“We will succeed.”

His gaze held hers. “Is it always this way with you?”

“What way?”

“As if the galaxy’s already yours. All you need to do is reach out and grab it.”

She snorted. “We already know my swagger only goes so far.”

His hand covered hers. The feel of his skin against hers sent warmth along her arm and spreading through her. “You can overcome anything. Even your own fear.”

Her breath came quickly. She felt as though she were struggling to climb one of the towering cliffs of Zevi Lo. But the fall seemed so much greater.

Then he turned her hand over, so that they were pressed palm to palm. Trailed his fingers along her wrist, and he had to feel her pulse stuttering beneath his touch.

Her gaze moved from this sight to his eyes. Intelligent eyes, revealing more than brains, but strength, courage. And a depth of emotion that nearly robbed her of all air. He held nothing back from her.

He wanted her. All of her. And she wanted him.

They were on a distant, barren moon. The most dangerous phase of the mission loomed. It was time for her to jettison fear.

Wrapping her fingers around his wrist, she pulled him near. His eyes widened briefly, but his surprise didn’t last. She felt the coils of tension and power in his muscles, the fact that he had enough strength to resist her, but he didn’t. At her tug, he yielded, moving close. They leaned over the table, and their mouths met.

She could’ve been dining on a meal prepared by the celebrated Aurelian master chefs, drinking the finest roxowine. Nothing tasted better than Nils. She sank into the kiss, his flavor filling her mouth, exploring the new territory of their shared desire and her unfettered heart. Keeping one hand pressed to his, she wove the fingers of her other hand through his hair, holding him close. Yet he wasn’t pulling away. He seemed to want only one thing: to take her mouth as she took his.

His lips shaped hers, and mutual need deepened the kiss. Full and hungry, they learned taste and heat and energy, their tongues stroking against one another.

This kiss was unmasked, not shaped by the excitement after battle. It revealed need and desire, the pull of two bodies. More than bodies, for she felt a greater yearning beneath physical want. As Nils brought his free hand up to cup the underside of her jaw, as she leaned into him, she sensed their release, two constrained souls breaking free of gravity and wheeling amongst the possibility of one another.

She wanted more. Shedding the armor of Stainless Jur and her own trepidation lightened her. Her limbs felt buoyant, capable of flight. Abruptly, she stood, breaking the kiss.

His fever-bright gaze burned, and he reached for her. With an agility born from years of training, she evaded his grasp, sliding from his hands. He made a growl of protest, but the sound cut off when he saw her shove the remains of their meal off the table. Nimbly, she perched on the edge.

He was an intelligent man. He rose and positioned himself to stand between her legs. The harsh light within the Phantom carved his face into even sharper angles, and the fire that blazed in his eyes was directed not at an engineering challenge or logic problem, but her. He might be NerdWorks’ finest, but he was also a man. A man who wanted her.

“Lucid dreaming,” he rumbled, his large hands clasping her waist. “I uploaded texts about it to my digitablet, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never shape my dreams.”

“I never dream,” she answered. “Just fall into my bunk and the next thing I know, it’s time to get up and go on patrol.” When her squad mates discussed their dreams over morning cups of kahve, she always kept silent, wondering what it would be like to visit impossible places, do impossible things. Her life kept her firmly grounded, as if the dreaming part of her mind simply refused to emerge, lest she wish for what could never be.

His voice was rough, so different from the controlled Engineering Corps member she had encountered in the briefing room on base. “Countless times, I wished for this very dream. You and me. The taste of you on my mouth. The feel of you beneath my hands.”

“I can pinch you,” she offered. “So you know you’re awake.”

A corner of his mouth tilted. “My consciousness right now is not under debate.” His hips pressed snug against hers, and the feel of the thick, hard shape of his cock sent waves of need through her.

She dug her fingers into his taut shoulders, urging him even closer. Their lips came together, hot and demanding. For a man who needed delicacy from his hands, he gripped her waist with a strength that skirted the edges of pain, as if concerned she might turn to smoke. Yet she reveled in the power of his grasp, holding him just as tightly.

As they kissed, hunger grew. Sensation gathered in her breasts, between her legs, lighting her nerves like a thousand stars. She moved her hips against his. His sharp inhalation drew breath from her mouth, and she moved again. It was only an echo of what could be, muted by the layers of fabric between them, yet even this contact sent hot shivers of pleasure through her.

Clever as he was, he followed her lead, his hips surging against hers. He rubbed his length along her, both a tease and fulfillment. The heat of him scorched. Her body responded, and she could feel lush slickness between her legs.

“This is real.” He growled. “Even if I had been able to dream of this, it couldn’t match the actuality.”

When he lifted his hand to cup her breast, she moaned. And when he circled his thumb around her nipple, drawing it into a tight point, her moan deepened, becoming almost animal.

More. She needed more. She leaned back, until she lay atop the table. Nils stretched over her, his straining body covering hers, and she reveled in the sensation of his weight pressing her down. They both knew that, trained in combat though he was, she could have him flat on his back and helpless in microseconds. Yet her willing ceding of control ignited them both.

They moved against each other. Even with the uniforms between them, she felt the gleaming edge of release coalesce, drawing nearer. It seemed impossible. The last time she’d reached a climax from simply touching, she had been a restless teenager in the cockpit of a local boy’s dustcruiser. Too much experience had happened between then and now for her to be this aroused. And yet she was.

What she wanted, what she needed, was Nils. Inside of her. Erasing the boundaries between them.

She pulled at the fastenings of his uniform. “Strip,” she rasped against his mouth. “Let me feel you.”

“Last I checked, we’re the same rank. Can’t give me orders.”

“Then, as one lieutenant to another, I strongly suggest you get naked.”

His grin was both boyish and wicked. “Having taken your suggestion under advisement, I concur that it’s the wisest course of action.”

They smiled at one another before they both attacked the fastenings on his uniform. An alarm shrilled through the ship, and their fingers froze. An instant later, she pushed upright and went for her blaster.

Nils’s hand covered hers, keeping her weapon holstered. “It’s all right.”

“If that’s PRAXIS—”

He shook his head. “After I made the mods to the ship, I set up an alarm to notify us when the ideal time to approach Marek’s planet arrived.”

“And that time is now.”

He groaned. “Seems like we’re always being interrupted.”

“Missions don’t care if we’re about to get naked.” Her words were flip, but true disappointment cut her right down the middle. She’d been so ready to let down the final boundaries between them. To create true intimacy, the kind she’d never before experienced.

She prayed to the many gods of the Starfield that she and Nils would get their chance.