Ghost in the Machine (Corwint Central Agent Files) Read online

  “Orynn?”

  Her eyes fluttered open and looked at Ethan’s concerned face. The sharp pains that had knifed into her spine were dissipating rapidly. She flexed her fingers and toes as she drew in a long deep breath. It had been a close call, but she had come out of it without any immediately apparent consequences. She offered Ethan an encouraging smile, but then she felt the warm flow of liquid above her lip.

  “Dammit.” Ethan watched as Orynn’s smile faded and the blood started to trickle from her nose. Her eyes rolled back and he knew she was about to lose consciousness. “Zera, increase the oxygen mix ratio of the room to ninety percent.”

  “Command confirmed. Warning; prolonged exposure to that level of oxygen can lead to dizziness, hyperoxia and death.”

  “Duly noted.” Ethan turned to Hank. “She just needs a few minutes. You may get a little dizzy.”

  “Dizzy? I’m surprised I haven't vomited yet. I hate low gravity.” Hank’s feet were now precariously moving upwards and he was almost turtled on his back. He pushed himself away from the console he had been holding onto and floated closer to the pair. Ethan was still kneeling on the ground in front of his chair and holding Orynn in his arms, but her limbs were now hovering without restraint. It was a strange sight, to say the least. “What happened?”

  Ethan kept his attention on Orynn’s eyes, waiting for a sign of her return to awareness. “Vesparians are a low gravity race.”

  “What? Why weren’t we told?” Hank reached for the arm of Ethan’s chair to steady himself.

  “I only found out by chance last night.”

  Hank looked over Ethan’s shoulder at Orynn’s face. The sight of her bright red blood splattered across her pale skin was startling. Small beads of her blood had started to form floating globules. He took his knife out of his pocket and stretched out the bottom of his shirt, slicing out a strip of cloth. He held it out over Ethan’s shoulder. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” Ethan reached back and took the piece of black cloth and started to clean up the blood. He glanced over his shoulder at Hank and frowned. “Sorry. This wasn’t your fault. I should have brought it up in our meeting this morning.”

  “It’s okay.” Hank shut his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger. The dizziness was starting to set in. “I’m sorry I didn’t knock and walked in on... just what did I walk in on?”

  Ethan noticed the loss of focus in Hanks eyes. He would have to turn the oxygen back down very soon. “I was attempting to lessen the impact of the sharp return to gravity on her low density frame.”

  “And before that?” Hank may have been getting dizzy, but he hadn’t forgotten the passion in Ethan’s heated anger or the look in his eyes as he had caressed her cheek.

  Ethan turned back to look at her face. Her eyes were moving rapidly behind her eyelids and her breathing had steadied. He looked at the black cloth in his hand that was now wet with her blood and felt an emotion he couldn’t identify wash over him. He had let her connect with him. They had almost kissed. She had wanted to kiss him.

  Hadn’t she?

  “Ethan?” Orynn’s weak voice broke the silence that had settled in the room.

  He turned his attention back to her to see that her eyes were open and looking at him. Ethan lowered his hand with the cloth and gently raised her upper body forward. “Better?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Orynn felt a wave of nausea enveloped her as she sat up. She closed her eyes and tried to focus her thoughts.

  “I’m going to lower the oxygen levels back to normal before Hank has an aneurysm, okay?” Ethan waited until Orynn looked at him again and nodded. “Zera, return oxygen levels back to normal.”

  “Command confirmed.”

  Orynn blinked away the haze and noticed Hank for the first time. “Captain? What happened?”

  Hank still had a death-grip on Ethan’s chair and was fighting the bile rising in his throat. “I really need to learn to knock.”

  “Oh goodness.” Orynn frowned. “I am sorry, Captain. I should have explained this sooner. Ethan, it is alright to return to normal gravity, same ratio please.”

  “Are you sure?” Ethan didn’t want to rush her into it. “I heard a pop.”

  “Just my shoulder.” She rotated her left shoulder and winced slightly. “It is alright. It is an old injury.”

  “Alright.” Ethan gave the command to Zera and the gravity slowly started to increase back up to normal levels. He watched as her muscles flexed and contracted at the change. Her breath labored heavily for the first few minutes, and her face contorted in apparent pain. He wondered if she went through that pain each time.

  Hank was happy to have his feet back on the ground, and he leaned down to offer her a hand up. “Sorry.”

  She accepted the hand and he slowly pulled her upwards. “No apology necessary, Captain.”

  “Hank.” He corrected. “Just Hank is fine.”

  “Hank.” She nodded with a small smile. The ship moved suddenly and her knees buckled. Ethan was immediately at her side with his arms supporting her. “I may need a few moments longer. The ship feels like it is moving under my feet.”

  “That wasn’t just you.” Ethan held on to her as the ship rocked violently again.

  Hank grabbed the console to steady himself and looked at Ethan. “Shit, that feels like someone is firing at our shields. Zera, locate Brom and Tara and tell them to get their butts to the bridge.”

  “Command confirmed.”

  Another blast hit against the shielded hull, followed rapidly by two more. Orynn held onto the back of Ethan’s chair as he sat down and brought up the view-screens. Hank left the room and took his seat on the bridge as Tara and Brom joined him with flushed faces from running.

  Ethan brought up the bridge on one screen and a view of the attackers on another. He rolled his eyes as they looked at the dozen or so small short ranged single-man fighters. “Looks like we have a few T’jaros who want to get our attention.”

  “Are they out of their minds?” Hank spoke through the com. “They’re no match for us, even in those numbers.”

  “I’m more interested in how they found us.” Ethan was looking over the ship’s readouts on a third monitor.

  “There.” Orynn reached over Ethan’s shoulder and pointed at the readout. “There is a variance in your graphene reflector shielding.”

  “Dammit.” Ethan cursed as his eyes confirmed what Orynn was pointing to. “I thought you told them to fix that last time we were docked at Central.”

  “I did. I just didn’t confirm those slackers actually got the work done.” Hank scowled at his own mistake. “Let’s just deal with these piss-ants and worry about fixing the shields later.”

  “Way ahead of ya, Cap.” Brom already had the guns charged and had taken out two of the fighters. The other dozen fighters caught on and started rotating their shield variances. It was an unexpected tactical move from them. “When did they get half a brain? I can’t lock onto them now.”

  The ship bucked one way and then the other as the fighters split and fired from both sides. Orynn clutched to the headrest of Ethan’s chair, but her knees collapsed under her. He turned his chair and picked her up by her hips, sat her down on his lap and turned back to the console. His left arm wrapped around her waist to secure her.

  “Hold on. This is going to get worse before it gets better.”

  She sucked in her breath as his chest pressed against her back so he could reach the controls. His right arm moved around her to bring up another readout, and his cheek was just inches from hers as his eyes moved across the view-screens. Letting the breath out, she realized she was being a complete hindrance to him. Refocusing her mind, she slid her right hand on top of his left and pressed it against her stomach. The connection between them sparked. “Let me help.”

  “I don’t see how... oh...” His mind ignited in the connection, and with both their thoughts connected, she began pulling up readouts with her free hand before he could finish t
hinking about them.

  “Any ideas?” Hank called out in agitation. “I’m getting sick of these shits tearing up my ship.”

  “Well, we can’t hit them.” Brom slammed his hand against his console in frustration as the targeting scanners continued to miss their mark.

  Tara looked over her shoulder from her seat to the left of Hank. “And our shields are dropping, so we better come up with something fast.”

  Ethan’s voice joined the conversation on the bridge. “We are attempting to correct the misalignment in the reflector shielding, but we need time.”

  Hank shut his eyes for a moment and blocked out the blasts against his ship. He needed to get them out of this or buy them some time, but how? His eyes snapped open. “Ethan, are there any protonic clouds floating around in range?”

  “Thinking about doing a turn and burn?” Ethan pulled up the sector chart as Orynn called up an overlay of the most recent scans from their short range sensor array.

  “You got it.” Hank confirmed.

  “Turn and burn?” Orynn didn’t like how that sounded. “Ethan, going into a protonic nebulae is like setting a fire in a field of dry grass.”

  “Yes, yes it is.” He nodded, and he could feel her body tense against him with concern. Leaning away from the com unit, he whispered into her ear. “Trust him. He may be a poor negotiator, but he’s the best damn pilot I’ve ever seen.”

  The sound of his whispering tingled across her skin, and she fought to keep the feeling it sent along her body from entering the connection between them. She refocused her attention to the monitor while the feeling passed. “Here, there is a small protonic cluster at fifty-three, eighteen and five from our current position.”

  “Did you get that, Hank?”

  “Loud and clear.” Hank brought up the manual controls and headed the ship towards the new coordinates. Thrusting the ship to full gave him the distance from the T’jaros fighters he wanted, but they quickly followed his trail. The ship bucked left and right as Hank evaded the continued phaser blasts. “Persistent little shits.”

  “Forty seconds ahead and closing.” Ethan watched the approaching positively charged cloud on the readout as Orynn’s body rocked against him with the force of Hank’s maneuvering.

  “Thirty.” His hand tightened around her waist.

  “Twenty.” He felt her hand squeezed his.

  “Ten.” Their fingers intertwined and he could feel the speeding rhythm of her heart.

  “Now!”

  Hank cut power to the engines while banking the ship at a hard right. Everyone held on to whatever they could as the heavy g-force hit against them. Hank clenched his teeth and clutched the controls. The ship drifted through the small cloud of positively charged protons, while turning one hundred and eighty degrees.

  Orynn was pressed against Ethan in the chair they shared and he moved his hand away from the monitors to brace her shoulders. He heard her shoulder pop again, but her eyes remained locked onto the readout in front of them. The connection between them and the scent of her hair as it brushed against his face enveloped him as the g-forces slowed the time around their bodies. He could feel her fear, but he could also feel the strength of the trust she had placed in him. Her mind called to him through the connection as the ship’s path left the cloud.

  We are clear, Ethan!

  “Clear!” Ethan announced.

  Hank re-engaged the engines and the ship stopped dead in space. The sudden stop shook everyone and he nearly fell from his chair. He heard the echo of his uncle’s voice in his head reminding him to always strap in before doing something crazy. “Brom, now!”

  The T’jaros had also cut their engines as they encountered the proton cloud, and they were now coasting through it. Brom made several taps on his console and three well placed photon blasts ignited the cloud into a raging firestorm of electricity. The storm surrounded the T’jaros fighters, jumping from one ship to the next in a cascading path of lightning. A few of the ships exploded on impact, but the rest were left intact. Those lucky few were alive, but the electrical storms had left their ships dead in space.

  Brom hit his fist against the console in victory. “Eat that, you blasted pirates!”

  Hank settled himself back into his chair and turned the ship around to get back on their way to Chronos. The T’jaros raiding fighters rarely left the scanner range of their larger crew vessels. They were a bunch of drug running thieves and he didn't feel like sticking around to ask if they needed a hand. “Everyone okay?”

  “I’m fine. I strapped in.” Tara smirked at Hank. She had watched as he had nearly fallen flat on his face.

  “Saw that, did you?” He grinned sheepishly at her.

  “Oh yeah.” She laughed back. “Well, I’m going to go check on my baby to see if your heavy handed flying left any marks.”

  “Not my fault that engine is older than you.” Hank smirked as he watched her go, then looked down at the console and patted it gently. “Good girl.”

  “So, can you two fix our shields?” Brom looked up in reflex as he spoke through the com. There was no response. “Ethan, you okay?”

  Ethan reluctantly pulled out of the connection with Orynn as Brom’s voice brought the room around them back into focus. “Yes, just a little shaken. We’ll take a look at the shields and see what we can do with them.”

  He shut the com off, but after that he wasn’t sure how to proceed. Her eyes were staring straight ahead at the readouts, but he knew she wasn’t reading them. She had gone very still on his lap and their fingers were still intertwined against her waist. He found himself reluctant to let go of her. “Well, that was quite a ride, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded once. “Yes, but you were right. He is an exceptional pilot.”

  “Is your shoulder alright?”

  She nodded once again. “Yes. I believe that last jolt actually put it back into place.” Her fingers slid from his. “I am sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience?” He turned his chair and she stood up slowly, using the edge of the console to steady herself. The sensors along his skin immediately protested as the heat from her body disappeared. Swallowing back the impulse to reach out and pull her back down, he tried to clear his head with conversation.

  “You found that proton cluster more quickly than I would have been able to do alone. You told me how the connection works, but I didn’t realize it could be so in depth. You were completing my actions before I finished processing them and I could hear you inside my head.”

  “Yes, as I mentioned, I can send signals back along the link as well as receive them. It must have been invasive for you. I am sorry.”

  Ethan frowned. Her whole demeanor had shifted again. She was now rigidly still, and she had her back turned to him. Maybe he had read too much into that kiss that almost was, or perhaps she was just worried she had offended him. Either way, he wanted to see the other Orynn again, who bit her lip and laughed with him.

  “It was unexpected, yes, but it wasn’t invasive.” He reached out, touching her hand, and she finally looked at him. He offered her a smile. “”It’s okay, really. Now, why don’t we see what we can do about those shields?”

  She returned the smile and nodded, relaxing a bit. “Alright.”

  12 Different

  After two hours of trying to repair the reflector shielding internally, they managed to correct ninety-three percent of the fluctuation. The rest would need to be corrected from outside the ship. The ship would still be visible to short range scanners until they made the repair, but they were now much more difficult to locate and lock onto.

  Agreeing to calling it as good as it would get, they spent another hour making the plans and documentations for the ports in Chronos and Gokem. Still feeling that she was slightly uncomfortable, he kept the conversation light and work related. Hank interrupted them just as they finished the final flight plan, but he knocked this time.

  “Enter.” Ethan answered the beeping com unit.
r />   “Hey.” Hank nodded to the pair as he entered the room, thankful to find it at normal gravity. Orynn was seated in Ethan’s chair and he was standing next her. “Orynn, Brom was wondering if he could borrow you for a few minutes in the cargo hold when you get a chance. Something about limiks and cargo nets.”

  “Yes, of course. We were just finishing up the flight plans.” Orynn nodded and stood out of the chair. She smiled at Hank as she passed him in the doorway, then she stopped and turned to look at Ethan. “If you require anything further, please let me know.”

  “I will.” He nodded with a small smile as she left. He sat back down in his chair as Hank walked closer to him with one of his dumb grins taking over his face. Ethan narrowed his eyes at the look Hank was giving him and turned his chair back around to face the console. “Don’t start.”

  “Oh, but now I have to!” Hank laughed. “This is just my normal face. The fact that you read something into it tells me something really is up between you two.”

  “Yes, I had forgotten you always wear that stupid grin.”

  “So,” Hank didn’t remove the grin. “I was right when I asked you earlier. I had walked in on something.”

  “Not what you’re thinking. We were just talking.”

  “Seemed like some pretty intense talking, seeing as how you wanted to rip my head off my shoulders for interrupting.”

  “That was simply because I was worried about the sudden gravity shift.” Ethan frowned as he remembered those intense uncontrollable feelings of rage that had come over him. “Besides, you do have that effect on people sometimes, Hank. Just ask Tara.”

  “Stop changing the subject.” Hank looked around the room. “That fight rocked the ship pretty good and I don’t see another chair in here. Just where did you secure our guest during that whole thing?”

  “My lap.” Ethan mumbled and pretended to focus on the documents.

  Hank raised both eyebrows. He wanted to pat himself on the back. His brilliant plan of throwing them together was working out even better than he had thought it would. “Oh really? And how did that turn out for you?”