The jane colt trilogy, p.80
The Jane Colt Trilogy, page 80
Turning her attention to the navigation computer, Ines mapped out the trajectory that would take her to Ibara. A straight line was impossible with the star and its six other planets in the way. After charting a course, she set the autopilot.
She strode to the back of the ship. When she pulled open the door to her storage closet, an assortment of weapons greeted her. She narrowed her eyes, considering. She had no idea what she’d be up against. For all she knew, her enemy had made an empty threat. But she wasn’t about to take any chances.
Guilt wrapped its prickly arms around her. She would have given anything to return to the paradise she’d known for three blessed years. The peace she’d experienced at Indigo Hills had been more than she could have asked for. People like her weren’t meant to find serenity. They wound up dead before wrinkles could assault their faces. Or they were stuck hiding for the remainder of their years, like Mek. But for that wondrous interlude, she’d thought that God had granted her a reprieve.
Not that she deserved one. The first tenet of Origin stated that one must strive to never harm one of God’s living creatures. She’d burned her last bridge to Heaven the night she’d escaped the brothel she’d been sold to at twelve by killing those who would have bought and sold her body. However evil the pimp and his leering clients had been, they’d still been people. The only remuneration for what she’d done had been to forfeit her own life. And she’d been ready to pay that price.
But the universe had other plans, though whether they were God’s or some other force’s, she didn’t know. When Striker, a Tenebrarum merc who’d been hired to take out that pimp and who’d arrived after she’d completed the job for him, had first entered her life, she’d seen it as a blessing.
“Come with me, girl.” He’d crouched beside the spot where she’d been kneeling, sobbing over the carnage her rage had caused. “I’ll show you a new life.”
Though she presently recalled him as Striker, his Tenebrarum designation, she’d once known him as Liam: the man who’d offered her safety for the first time in her life, who’d taken her in and declared her his apprentice, bringing her into Tenebrarum’s order. The man who’d captivated her with his rugged good looks and easy charm.
Standing before her private arsenal, Ines smiled wryly. She hadn’t thought about Liam in years. Once, the very mention of his name had tortured her, but no longer. That fantasy, at least, had dissolved.
Strangely enough, thinking about Liam at present brought her a kind of relief. If he could fade away despite over a decade of occupying her heart, then anything could—especially troublemakers she barely knew, like Devin Colt.
Ines ran her gaze across the various weapons hanging from the closet’s wall. Non-lethal equipment, such as scanners and armor, sat on magnetized shelves. She weighed her options. On the one hand, she wanted to be prepared, which would mean packing as much onto her person as possible. On the other, she didn’t want to be weighed down in case the situation called for nimbleness instead of firepower.
The first thing she decided on was the binoculars, since she couldn’t land too close to Indigo Hills. Her enemy could be watching. Whatever she found on Ibara, she’d have to see it to deal with it.
“Always know what you’re getting into.” That had been among the first lessons Liam had taught her, and he’d tested her ability to listen by setting up challenging obstacle courses. She’d loved them. She hadn’t cared how breathless, sweaty, bruised, and bloody she’d been by the time she’d finished. All that mattered was the approving beam from her hero.
“Just you wait,” she’d told Liam once, shortly after she’d become his apprentice. “In a few years, I’ll be Tenebrarum’s best.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Liam had given her a fond smile. “You’re not like the other apprentices, Ines. The Council pestered me for years to become a mentor, but I always refused, until I found you. Do you know why?”
“You’ve told me before.” Ines had returned his smile. “But if you want to say it again, I won’t stop you.”
Liam met her gaze. “I’ve always been straight with you, so I won’t sugarcoat it. I found you as damaged as damaged can be. Any other girl would’ve lost her spirit and trudged along until someone came to save her. I wouldn’t have blamed her for doing so after all she’d been through. But you took it upon yourself to reclaim your fate. And you didn’t just lash out in some brutish outburst—you were smart. You plotted, prepared. When the time came, you moved with such elegance, I couldn’t stop watching. I know I should’ve helped you, but you didn’t look like you needed it. I wanted to see what you could do, and by the Absolute, you were stunning.”
Ines drank in the words like liquor. Her cheeks flushed, and a new kind of warmth enveloped her heart.
The twenty-six year age difference had meant nothing to an awed teenage girl, especially since Liam had possessed the kind of chiseled features that only appeared handsomer with age. And he’d respected her. Admired her, even.
Besides, she’d never considered herself a child. She hadn’t cared that the rest of the universe considered a thirteen-year-old to be a girl. She’d been a woman, capable of sound reasoning and independent decisions. As the years advanced, her body had changed with maturity and training, but her mind hadn’t. Her desires had been perfectly true and not some youthful fantasy.
Or so she’d thought.
Ines shook her head as she strapped the binoculars to her belt. I thought I knew everything. Sometimes, she missed that sureness.
Her gaze fell on a high-caliber laser gun. It would take out any living thing, as well as certain types of vehicles. Her fingers itched for its trigger. Someone had threatened her child. She wanted to blast the fucker away. Heaven was lost to her anyway. She planned on dragging as many shitheads as she could to Hell with her.
But though she’d told herself the same thing for almost two decades, the idea of eternal damnation still filled her with fear and sorrow. She would never look upon the face of God. What would she have given for a chance at the happiness so many took for granted?
She’d tried to grasp it before. At seventeen, she’d told Liam point blank that she was in love with him. Enough years had passed for her to be certain, and no one could consider her a child anymore. Her girlhood had been stolen from her, but that wouldn’t stop her from claiming her womanhood. He’d laughed at first. But when he’d realized she was dead serious, the look in his eyes had changed.
Liam had crushed her with that first lusty kiss, and Ines had crushed him right back. She’d realized then that she wasn’t the only one releasing years of pent-up desire. But it hadn’t been enough. She’d wanted to be one with him. So with all the wisdom of a seventeen-year-old, she’d taken what she’d wanted.
“Start a new life with me,” she’d said, lying against his shoulder with the remnants of ecstasy racing through her blood.
He’d given her that roguish smile of his. “Maybe someday. But right now, we have work to do.”
Those words could have summed up the next seven or eight years. Ines scoffed at her past self. She grabbed the high-caliber gun—fifteen pounds of military engineering designed for interstellar warfare—and strapped it to her back. If she had to move quickly, she could always toss it. A replacement would be expensive, but that didn’t matter, not when someone was after her daughter.
Anouk was hers to protect. A perfect angel, a gift from God. Nothing in the universe mattered more.
Liam should have felt the same way. Bile rose up her throat at the memory of his reaction when she’d told him she was pregnant. After nearly a decade of impassioned encounters, which had continued well after she’d become a Tenebrarum member of her own right, she’d thought she’d known him. Though they’d both taken other lovers over the years and even compared boastful tales of their conquests, those had been temporary, meaningless flings. Her relationship with Liam had been different. They were meant for each other; Liam had admitted as much himself. Months would go by without contact—a common inconvenience in their line of work—but they’d always returned to each other.
Ines found her hand drawn to her stomach as she recalled the day of her fateful confession. At first, she’d been shocked by the pregnancy. After all the precautions she’d taken, how could it have happened? Yet the idea of new life blossoming within her had filled her with unexpected hope. Fear and anxiety had muddied the joy, and she’d chastised herself for that.
I’m twenty-five fucking years old, she’d thought. I’ve taken care of myself for years. Why should I be afraid of motherhood?
Thinking about her younger self, Ines lifted a corner of her mouth. Funny—she considered Jane Colt and Adam Palmer to be kids, and they weren’t much younger than she’d been. Time had a funny way of changing perspectives. Maybe in a few decades, she’d look back at her thirty-one-year-old self and think, “I was so young.”
Or perhaps the sentiment had more to do with the way Jane and Adam acted rather than their actual ages. Being chased all the way to the Rogue Planet hadn’t dampened their spirits. Adam had nearly been beaten to a pulp, and his eyes still held no bitterness. Yet ISARK said he wasn’t human. She didn’t believe them. If that kid didn’t have a soul, no one did. She’d barely spoken a word to him, but she’d seen enough. He was always hanging around Mek’s bar, watching Jane sing.
Ines grimaced. The two little idiots were constantly making love-struck eyes at each other. They probably thought their bliss would last forever. She’d felt the same way once.
It’s time to stop jerking around, she’d thought, when she’d gone to tell Liam about the baby. Though she’d known at once that it was his, she’d run a DNA test to confirm. This is the sign we’ve been waiting for. She’d believed the unexpected—and somewhat miraculous—pregnancy would launch the new life she’d hoped for.
But Liam had seen things differently. “Get rid of it.” His blue eyes had snapped with wrath. “I don’t need any liabilities.”
Ines slammed the wall to release the fury of that memory. After almost six years, it still angered her. That had been the moment her dreams had shattered. She should have cleared her head much sooner. She could have forgiven herself for clinging to the delusion in her teens. But she’d been twenty-five—old enough to know better.
She reached into the storage closet and grabbed a pair of lightweight guns. If she had to toss the high-caliber weapon, the smaller ones would suffice. She attached their holsters to her belt and stuck them in. Of course, she always had her laser ribbons—her first weapons, and the ones she’d used to kill those in the brothel—for close-range combat. She kicked the door shut.
When she returned to the Silverside’s cockpit, she found that only a few minutes had passed since she’d left. Behind her impatience, dread churned in her blood. Anouk was the one good thing she’d ever created. Ines had done everything in her power to protect the child, no matter how much it had hurt. But someone had found Anouk anyway.
No one should have known the girl existed other than the people at Indigo Hills. After realizing that Liam’s rejection of the child was more than just fear of parenthood, Ines had vowed to never speak to him again. The hero she’d constructed in her head had tumbled down from his pedestal. No longer was he the noble figure she’d imagined. She wouldn’t have gone as far as to call him evil, but he was selfish, arrogant, and more controlling than she’d realized. Her interests had always aligned with his, so she hadn’t noticed before. But the moment she’d challenged him, truly challenged him, his ugly side had come out.
“Get rid of it,” he’d repeated.
“No.” She’d moved her hand to her gun, alarmed by his rage. “I can’t.”
His expression had darkened. “Then I’ll take care of it.”
He whipped out his gun, but she was faster. A stun blast to the chest sent him crashing to the floor. Shocked, she scooped up his weapon. It too, was set on stun, but even if he hadn’t meant to kill her, what would he have done? The possibilities made her sick.
She’d left him tied up on his starship. It wouldn’t have taken him long to escape, but that hadn’t mattered. Her plan had been to vanish—from him, from Tenebrarum, from the universe.
Ines swiped her Silverside’s control screen to bring up a chart showing all starships in the Kyderan system, color-coded by type. Several battle-class vehicles guarded each of the planets, including Ibara. The sight of all that security brought her some relief. Her enemy would have to get past them to reach Anouk.
She leaned back in the pilot’s seat, surprised by the empty feeling in her heart. Remembering Liam’s betrayal should have hurt. She remembered all too well how acute that pain had been. The man who had been her savior, her mentor, her idol, had wanted to murder her unborn child. Looking back, she saw how thick a veil she’d thrown over her own vision. She’d built an idea of who Liam was and fallen in love with someone who hadn’t really existed.
He’d never been her Liam. He’d always been Striker, a merc who only cared about his reputation and his next job. It had taken years, but her heart had finally caught up with her mind. And she was back thinking of him as Striker—only Striker.
Someday, Devin would no longer be Devin either. He’d go back to being Pretender, a fake merc who worked for ISARK. That day couldn’t come soon enough. Why am I even thinking about him?
Ines glanced at the navigation screen again. Her ship drew closer to Ibara. She didn’t anticipate running into any Kyderan trouble once she reached the planet. She’d snuck past the patrols numerous times in her veiled ship, and she was confident in her ability to do so again.
But if she could, that meant her enemy could as well.
Where had she fucked up? She’d been completely off the grid when she’d arrived at Indigo Hills more than five years before. Anything that could have connected her to the Tenebrarum merc Flame Dancer had been abandoned or destroyed. She’d meant to go to Dalarune, a Kyderan planet with an Origin sanctuary she hoped to find shelter in, but the solar panel had fallen off her piece-of-shit starship on the edges of the star system. With the power rapidly draining, she’d headed for the much-closer Ibara instead. She’d spotted the orphanage as her starship was entering the atmosphere and headed for it, choosing it for its isolation.
Though Mbali, the woman who ran the orphanage, had seemed puzzled when Ines refused to give a name, she hadn’t pressed for answers. Ines had said only that she was pregnant and needed shelter, and that she was willing to work for her keep. At the time, she’d planned on staying only until she’d obtain a new solar panel. However, she’d found such solace in the orphanage’s simple existence that she’d chosen to remain.
I could stay here forever, she’d thought. Why don’t I?
She’d planned to live there for the foreseeable future, raising Anouk and working for Mbali. At times, an ember of discontent would spark within her—the feeling that something was missing. Though she could never figure out what it was, she knew she didn’t miss her old life.
But her new one hadn’t lasted. Striker had made sure of that. A wave of bitterness engulfed Ines. If that bastard had chosen to forget her, she could have stayed with her daughter. But he’d gone and crashed his ship just miles from Indigo Hills, to which he’d apparently tracked her. She’d seen the explosion from a distance and gone out in a hovercar to investigate. But he hadn’t even had the decency to stay alive long enough to tell her what he was doing there.
“Help me, Ines,” he’d said, though all the blood covering his face and chest made it obvious he was beyond saving. “They won’t stop until I’m dead…”
“Who?” she’d demanded. “Why are you here?”
He’d drawn his last breath before he could reply. Then Barracudas had swooped down from the sky, raining blasts at close range. Her combat instincts had kicked in, and she’d dodged them, even managed to bring one down using what remained of the weapons on Striker’s crashed ship. But the other two had gotten away.
And they’d seen her.
She’d realized that whatever Striker had been tangled in, he’d brought them right to her. If she’d returned to Indigo Hills, she would have brought them to Anouk. So she’d left her daughter behind and hadn’t dared go back.
Except, somewhere along the line, she’d made a mistake.
Forgive me, Anouk. Ines closed her eyes, picturing her daughter’s face. Though she’d told herself to move on with her life and let Anouk move on with hers, she’d found herself drawn back to Ibara and had watched the girl grow from a distance.
A beeping sound rang through the ship. Ines opened her eyes. Ibara’s blue-green surface shimmered on the viewscreen beneath a message telling her to switch to manual piloting. At last.
She disengaged the autopilot and grabbed the steering bars. As she drew closer to the part of the planet where Indigo Hills resided, she noticed that the Megatooth warship patrolling the zone was firing.
Her heart seized. Trouble had already arrived. She veered toward the scene. Whoever was being fired upon hadn’t shown up on her scope. As she entered the atmosphere, she saw a Barracuda dodging the warship’s cannons. No markings—that meant it probably belonged to a merc.
Her gaze fell on the landscape below. Black smoke swelled from the place that should have been Indigo Hills. An internal scream ripped through her head. Had Anouk been inside when the building went up in flames? Had the Barracuda been the one that fired? A powerful part of her wanted to blast the fucker out of the sky, but an even more forceful part needed to find her daughter. Besides, the Mega seemed to be taking care of the fighter ship.
