Page 56 of Reformation
“I’m a friendly,” he replied. “Resident of the Box.”
She didn’t relax. “What are you doing out here, then?”
Jonah sighed. “My ship was shot down a while back. I’ve been out here since long before your fight began.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jonah Helms.”
She went still for a moment before a little of the wariness bled out of her posture. “Cody Helms’ father?”
“Yes!” Oh shit, had Cody been on that ship? Was he out here in a pod somewhere, bobbing like a cut flower on the water? “Was he with you?”
She shook her head. “No, but his quadmate was my shadow for a while. Cadet Parrish.”
Darrel. If Darrel had been on board, then Grennson surely was as well. “Is he all right?”
“Last I knew.” She finally relaxed, and Jonah made his way over to her side, making sure she could see his hands the whole time. “The ship was being evacuated. Darrel was one of the last to leave the bridge; I think he stayed there to make sure the general came with him.”
General? What was a general doing, being in command of a ship? “You mean admiral?”
“No. General Caractacus was charged with leading the fleet here from Olympus. He’s …” Gradually, it dawned on the lieutenant that this news might be more than a little revelatory for Jonah, and her voice trailed off. “Oh.”
“Oh.” Miles was commanding the fleet? That made no sense, unless, again, politics had come into play. Miles wasretired; it was a big deal for him to be reinstated, and Garrett would have fought it every step of the way.
Holy hell. His husband had to be going out of his mind.
“I’m Lieutenant Agnieszka Reyes,” she offered by way of distraction. “It’s, ah, nice to meet you, but ... not really like this, you know?”
“I do.” Jonah replied on autopilot, his mind working at light speed. He had to make sure. “You’re sure my son wasn’t on your ship?”
“He wasn’t assigned to the fleet from what I know. It’s possible that—”
Whatever she was going to say next was cut off with the pain of her gasp and the sudden burst of darkness on her arm that could only be blood.
Jonah moved without thinking, tackling Reyes to the ground and hauling both of them behind the pod as more gunfire broke the peace of the night. Actualgunfire, with—hell, were thosebullets?Who in the universe still used actual bullets?
“Come out, come out, you poor little Olympians!” A shot rang off the top of the pod. “Come out, and I’ll make it quick, I promise.”
Well,fuck.
Turned out that space pirates had escape pods after all.
Chapter thirty-two
Raymond Alexander; Garrett; Berengaria
Watching the battle over Pandora was … strangely unsettling.
In retrospect, Raymond could see the places where he’d gone wrong. He’d deployed the dark fleet too soon to Pandora, given them too much leeway. They’d expended valuable resources on a fool’s errand, and he hadn’t thought to tell them not to. They should have saved their energy ammunition for the incoming Alliance force, not spent so much of it against Pandora’s shield.
Not that he’d expected the shield to be as resilient as it was—the technology had developed further than he’d been aware, and that too was unacceptable. His staff was meant to keep him up-to-date on everything that could conceivably change his strategy, and that they’d missed a key piece of data like this was a black mark against them, and by proxy, himself. He’d exact an appropriate punishment once he was in a more comfortable situation, but for now all he could do was watch and seethe insilence as Pandora City rested unscathed within its protective cocoon.
His choice of commanders should have been more nuanced as well. Raymond strongly believed in owning up to his own missteps so that they wouldn’t be repeated. In this case, Carver Orwell had been a better match by the data than in actual practice. Raymond had underestimated his bloodlust and the lengths he would go to in order to indulge it.
Strafing runs on the coast? Useless wastes of time and energy. And where Orwell was brilliant when in command of a small group of vessels, it was clear he had little in the way of a grand strategy when it came to putting them all to use simultaneously. They’d outnumbered the Alliance fleet of callow youths nearly two to one, yet Miles Caractacus had still managed to hold them at bay and, in some instances, put them at a serious disadvantage.
Even the deliberate incompetence of some of Raymond’s hand-picked Alliance leadership hadn’t prevented the man from pulling off a near-rout of the dark fleet before his own ship was destroyed, and his second-in-command was still fighting, and worse,winning.Whether Caractacus had died or not was largely immaterial—that he’d managed to be soeffectivebefore doing so was intolerable.
