Grace Goodwin - The Commanders' Mate

“You’re telling me he cleared his entire battlegroup of people, minus the command crew, into hiding, into… what, safety?”

He nodded. “It appears exactly that.”

“Do we have ships in Sector 437 available to come here and escort them safely through a manual evacuation? The Coalition will not want to abandon these vessels.” The other cargo and support vessels—the ones that had remained clear of the attack—had transport technology, but they were not equipped to handle the transport of nearly five thousand people.

The main battleship housed one-thousand four hundred warriors and family, as well as acted as the landing base for smaller assault ships. The ship itself was heavily armored and loaded with blaster technology in order to defend the smaller ships around it. Each commander of a battlegroup was in charge of one battleship and ten to twelve smaller support ships. Each group, referred to as a battlegroup, was named after their commander and responsible for one sector of space. Fully staffed, a complete battlegroup, all ships, held nearly five thousand people.

That was too many to transport in a short amount of time. Short-range attack ships from Battleship Karter would not be able to make it all the way to Sector 438 without assistance, and the ships still here in the dock of Battleship Varsten were all but destroyed.

The best option was to transport as many people as possible to Battlegroup Karter and send the remaining cargo and support vessels from Varsten’s fleet on a direct course to intercept with the Karter and her ships as quickly as possible. But that would mean the smaller ships from Varsten’s group would be unescorted and vulnerable to attack. And even that was assuming Prime Nial and the other fleet commanders would be willing to surrender this sector of space.

Not likely. Odds were Prime Nial would command me to split my fleet and resources and hang on to both Sector 437 and 438 until Commander Varsten’s fleet and personnel could be replaced. Prime Nial would commission a new battleship and assign a new commander to this area. But that would take time.

Time the Hive might not give us.

Bard sounded as grim as I felt. “A few. If the survivors left now, they would rendezvous with our support ships in about thirty-six hours, but Varsten’s pilots are refusing to move. They said they are under strict orders from Commander Varsten not to move yet, but they don’t know why.”

“And where the hell is Commander Varsten?” That was the question I most needed an answer to. Where was my old friend, and what the fuck had he been thinking?

Bard’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Dead. They found his body in the pilot’s seat of an attack shuttle. He was flying support, protecting the main ship. And he was alone.”

“No co-pilot?” He was dead, and so, it seemed, were my hopes of getting some answers.

“No one. No navigation. No comms. He was running solo.”

Another mystery I had no time to solve. Almost five thousand people were currently stranded on ships meant to sustain half that. And their battleship was gone. Well, we stood on what was left of it. Non-functioning and uninhabitable. Even if the rest of the Varsten’s battlegroup moved out from behind the star, they would have no battleship to protect them. If they returned… if we left them here, alone and unprotected, they’d be ripe for Hive capture. That would mean five thousand new Hive drones, soldiers, breeders.

No.

“How many survivors on the other forward ships? Do we have a body count?” I asked. Only a handful of dead warriors littered the corridors. I hated to think the Hive had taken the rest. It didn’t seem possible, but then, I’d seen worse things.

Bard looked down at the tablet he carried. “Only three survivors so far. We’ve counted twenty dead, including Commander Varsten, but we haven’t searched the entire ship.”

“What the fuck was he thinking?”

Vice Commander Bard didn’t respond to my question. I knew he didn’t have that answer. Instead, he said, “Two members of his command crew have been transported to ReGen pods back on the Karter.”

Gods be damned, maybe they would know what was going on here. “And the other survivor?”

When my second didn’t speak immediately, I stopped walking, forcing him to do the same. He was a strong Prillon warrior, and I trusted his judgment and his instincts. In this instance, his silence sent alarms through my system. As if the annihilation of almost an entire battlegroup wasn’t bad enough. Battlegroup Varsten had been protecting Sector 438 since I was a boy. The devastation around me was unthinkable. As was Varsten’s death.

“He’s I.C. and he’s not talking.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, let that extra level of insanity sink in. I.C. Intelligence Core. The dark side of the fleet. “Fuck. Where is he? I’ll make him talk.”

Bard arched a brow. “Should we get a message to Commander Phan?” He grinned, his copper skin and bronze eyes narrowing with anticipation. “I’m sure she would love to take a pound of flesh from one of her own.”

A few years ago, that would have been true. Now, the Earthling was a mother. A mate. And permanently under my command. She had saved my entire battlegroup not long ago, she, a human named Kira, and the contaminated beast she’d shown up with had worked together to dismantle a network of invisible mines the Hive had placed in space. Those mines had been trapping my entire group of ships. “She’s too valuable. I won’t risk bringing her here.”

The hiss of burst vent pipes, the groan of metal as it shifted after the explosion, the deep command of voices in the distance delegating tasks to clean up this clusterfuck surrounded us. Destruction was nothing new to me, but this was… personal. Close to home, at least as close to a home one could have on a fucking battlegroup.

“You’re here,” he countered.

“I am nothing,” I said simply.

Bard opened his mouth to argue, closed it. He knew how I felt about this. I was a warrior first and always. I fought. I killed. I protected my people, the people who became mine through Hive destruction. And if I died? So be it. Another member of my military family, or another worthy Prillon warrior, would take command. I was a cog in the wheel of the Coalition Fleet. I was a warrior. Nothing more.

“Chloe is I.C., Karter,” he continued. “She can take care of herself.” I often questioned the supposed intelligence of this group as they caused us more trouble than they were worth most of the time. But then, every once in a while, someone like Commander Chloe Phan came along and saved us all. I hated their secrets, but like all warriors, I recognized that spies and black-ops were a necessary evil. No battle commander could win a war without good intelligence on the enemy. And the hard-core bastards who served in the I.C. were the best. Including Commander Phan of Earth. But she was also mine to protect, a mate to two of my best warriors and a mother to their children. There was no need for her to risk herself out here in this chaos, especially when we had zero answers. I could beat the hell out of a tight-lipped I.C. commander all by myself.

“She’s a mother,” I said.

Bard grinned. “I’m going to tell her you said that.”

“Why don’t you tell Dara and her baby brother that you risked their mother’s life for your entertainment?” It was my turn to smile, and I made sure to show every inch of my teeth—the better to rip Bard’s throat out with. “If you make my Dara cry, I will destroy you.”

We walked on.

Dara was beautiful, with black hair and green eyes, just like her mother. I loved her like she was my own. She was small, but fearless. And the moments she wrapped her small hand around mine were the only times I felt like more than a killing machine. I would do nothing to hurt her small heart, including risking her mother’s life when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Her baby brother Christopher was full of fire and curiosity, a bright, daring child. But it was Dara’s sweet innocence that kept me sane, gave me a reason to keep fighting.