Page 64 of Star-Crossed Captive
“Commodore?” he asked, gesturing to the holo feed with his chin.
“Two shuttles in the field,” she said, her attention on the images. “They’ve broken off and are heading out of the mines.”
Mace frowned. Shuttles this far out, even long-range ones, were extremely unusual. “Let me see the replay, sir.”
Cache’s eyes narrowed, but she complied, retrieving the images of the shuttles weaving through the mines on the outer edge of the field.
Mace’s instincts kicked in. “Those aren’t shuttles.”
Her fingers tightened on the edge of the table while Grey leaned in for a closer look.
“Look at the way they’re moving,” Mace continued. “Shuttles don’t maneuver like that. Those are fighters. Condors would be my best guess, using faceted shielding to disguise their signatures like us.” He met Grey’s brown eyes, then Cache’s green ones. “They’re here for us.”
A glint of worry passed over her features before her expression hardened. “No. I’ll not allow it. They’re shuttles.”
“Cache. No. First, the Guardian, then the power outage, now this. We need to prepare for the worst. We need to prepOrionfor flight.”
Grey crossed his arms, seemingly undecided on the subject.
Her gaze flickered. “I don't think I’m the one unable to think straight.”
There was a warning in her words, and her threat to take Nia away hung between them.
“Cache,” he gritted between clenched teeth.
She spun on her heel and walked away.
“Dammit Cache!” He hit the holotable with his fist, but she didn’t react and kept walking.
The commanders on the other side of the table gave him a range of expressions from confused to worried. Mace ran a hand over his face.
“You okay?” Grey asked, concern etched in his brow.
“Yeah. Great. Fantastic,” Mace replied, trying to get a grip on his emotions.
Why did it feel like everything was spinning out of control? First, he couldn’t concentrate on anything but the woman in his quarters. Now, Cache ignored a blatant threat. Nothing in his life made sense anymore.
Two urges warred within him—the one to make sure Nia wasn’t freaking out right now, and the other to stop Cache from following through on her threats.
“I need to finish our training session,” he muttered, because both of those choices would be the biggest mistakes of his life.
But it didn’t stop the relief he felt when he noted Elec’s communique telling him Nia was safely ensconced in his quarters.
Chapter twenty-three
Eachpassingday,Nia’sspirit shriveled more inside of her. The reality of her situation pounded into her brain with every breath she took. The tracker in the locket wasn’t working, either because it was a dud to begin with, or she was too far away, or the shielding on this station was too sophisticated.
She wasn’t going to be rescued.
When she finally accepted the truth, a numbness settled over her body she couldn’t shake. The urge to reach for a suppressant disappeared because she no longer experienced high emotions. She understood she could make a life for herself here, make friends, a career, but she couldn’t force herself to crave it, to look forward to something. She just wanted to go home.
The only emotion to sometimes surface through the fog was a seething sort of resentment when she thought of Mace.
He’d abandoned her.
Of course, she wasn’t really ever on her own except in his quarters, but she’d never felt hollower. Her shifts in the med bay were completed robotically. She never spoke to Elec as he walked her to and from the bay and stopped wondering if he hated babysitting her—stopped wondering because sheknewhe hated it. Who wouldn’t?
Another day off, and she found herself on the second level of the atrium, leaning against the railing with Elec a short distance away. She stared at the slowly shifting groups of people below on the main deck but had no urge to join the mass.
