“I don’t think she’s speaking to us,” said Nils, dry.

“Save the dirty talk for later,” Celene said into the com. “If you say that Gabela’s trustworthy—reasonably trustworthy—we’ve got to help him out.”

“Tell that son of a dirtroach that he still owes me for that case of Lulani rum,” answered Skiren. “And stay safe.”

After signing out, Nils cut the com line. He glanced at Celene, seeing the wariness that tightened her mouth, the nervous energy that made her tap her fingers against the control panel.

“There’s a difference between what happened last time and this,” he noted.

She raised one neatly arched black brow.

“This time,” he said, “you aren’t alone.”


“By the ten demon lords, I never thought you’d get here.” Akash Gabela trundled toward Nils and Celene as they stood in his loading bay. After responding to Gabela’s signal, their ships had linked, and, with plasma pistols ready just in case, they had come aboard.

“We didn’t know if we could trust you,” Celene answered.

Gabela wheezed a laugh. He had the short stature and green skin of a Dejanian, and he hobbled around on a sherica-powered artificial limb. It wasn’t the newest in tech, hissing a little with each step, but the smuggler seemed unbothered by it.

“You’re 8th Wing.” Gabela shuffled closer. “So I know I can trust you. Bunch of galactic do-gooders.”

“If you want PRAXIS running the galaxy,” Nils said, “controlling every aspect of your life, and death, by all means, we’ll gladly step aside. I hear the PRAXIS prison barges are particularly brutal.”

“Fine, fine.” Despite the smuggler’s grumbling, his skin paled. “We going to stand here all day, using up the last of my oxygen, or we going to fix my damn ship?”

“We’re fixing your damn ship,” Celene answered. “Take us to the damage.”

Nils was already striding down the passageway toward the systems room. “I know the way.”

“Want some tools?” Gabela shouted after him. “Mine couldn’t do shit to fix the damage, but you might have better luck with ’em.”

“Brought my own.” He hefted the satchel slung over his shoulder.

Celene was at his side, her long legs matching his stride. “You studied the ship’s schematics before we linked.”

He shook his head. “Haulers usually follow the same configuration. I take what knowledge I already have and extrapolate the rest.” He glanced over when he heard her low laugh.

“Most people are either attractive or smart. Seldom both.”

He almost stumbled. “You think I’m attractive too?”

“Assuming I already consider you smart.”

“That’s a given.”

They reached the door to the systems room. The control panel wouldn’t respond to his fingers on the keypad, so he had to pry the heavy door open. Celene provided assistance, tugging on the thick metal until it opened with a groan.

Inside the systems room, the atmospheric temperature soared, a symptom of the failing life support. Torn wires and ripped-out panels lay on the floor, and a huge gouge ran the length of the external bulkhead. The blackness of space showed through the gouge. Fortunately, the ship had enough power left to generate an electrical shield over the tear, or else everything would have been sucked out into the void.

“Let’s get to work.” Celene bent to study one of the damaged panels.

He rummaged through his tools until he found the sonic welder he needed, then began his repairs on the life support systems. Gabela had spoken the truth. Only a handful of power remained, and soon the hauler ship would be dead—including anyone who was on it.

The heat in the chamber made it feel like a small sun. But the flush in his cheeks came more from what Celene had said moments earlier. These past two solar days had been extremely strange. His awe of her hadn’t lasted more than a few solar hours, for it had become clear to him that, despite her reputation as an utterly untouchable hero, she was no different from any other sentient being in the galaxy.

She left her used kahve cups in the galley without cleaning them, and her clothes were thrown all over the small sleeping chamber in the back of the Phantom. When hungry, she had little patience for anyone and anything, including herself. She liked to eat Qivani sugarcakes, but she only allowed herself half of one, saving the other in a heat-pouch for later. She knew a surprising amount of racy Uilan poems, but she was the one who looked surprised when he joined her in reciting the last stanzas.

And she was lonely.

“Stabilized life support,” he said over his shoulder. “We don’t need to worry about running out of oxygen.”

“Good work, Calder. Now toss me the sonic cutter.”

He smiled to himself, knowing he could not expect excessive praise for doing his job. “We’ve been sharing a tiny Phantom for days now. You can call me Nils.”

“Fine. Nils, toss me the sonic cutter.”

He lobbed the tool across the small chamber. She caught it with a quick grab, her reflexes precise, then flashed him a smile before returning to her work.

Getting back to his own labors, his mind processed both what circuitry needed repairing, as well as the more complex systems that comprised Celene. Over the past three solar days, with time to fill, they’d had many conversations: about life before joining the 8th Wing, what life meant after joining. She’d recounted dangerous missions, and, at her urging, he’d talked of some particularly difficult engineering challenges. She asked enough questions to let him know that she was actually interested, and it eventually occurred to him that she knew very few people outside of the Black Wraith Squad. Not by choice, but circumstance.

He joined two ruptured circuits. It was far easier to connect wires than people.

A woman with her reputation, idolized by many, possessed elevated status within the 8th Wing. But it also isolated her. She mentioned only a handful of friends. Never a lover. No one truly close to her. Not even Commander Frayne, though it was clear that they did have a friendship.

“Did you ever think about becoming a pilot?” she asked Nils now. “Maybe even Black Wraith. You’ve got the sharpness for it.”

“Gods, no. I’m happiest elbows-deep in a ship’s guidance systems, not a ship’s cockpit. Recruiting?”

She shrugged. “I always need a good man—the squad needs people, I mean.”

“NerdWorks, through and through.” He watched her as she deftly spliced power cables. “Perhaps you should consider joining Engineering.”

She chuckled. “Pilot, through and through. Flying is what I do, what my parents did and their parents. And it’s damn satisfying to blow PRAXIS out of the sky. Besides,” she added, “I’m too much of an egotist to work behind the scenes.”

“So you do like the attention.”

“A little.” She shot him a glance. “Am I not supposed to admit that?”

“Engineering isn’t all grunt work and crawling through service tubes. We take our share of the bows.”

“Even you.”

He pointed to the numerous patches on his sleeve. “When they gave me these commendations, I had to stand in front of the whole Engineering Corps on base and listen as my superior read a speech about me and my contributions to the 8th Wing. And I stood there trying not to grin, though gods knew I wanted to.”

She smiled. “I won’t feel so badly next time I polish my medals.”

“You should never feel badly about what you’ve achieved.”

“Believe me, I don’t.” She turned back to her work, half-burying her next words. “It’s other people who have a problem with it.”

Was that the cost of prestige? He had his own reputation in Engineering, but no one outside of NerdWorks ever came up to him and slapped him on the back, congratulated him for his incredibly innovative plasma-conversion processor. No one whispered about him in awed tones as he walked down the corridors of the base. No one expected him to be better than everyone else—except himself. He always held himself to a high standard.

Not Celene. She was Stainless Jur. Flawless. Except she wasn’t. But rather than disappoint him, it made Nils appreciate what she had accomplished that much more.

Could he even say that to her? And would she want him to?

Yes, Lieutenant Celene Jur was far more complicated than the most arcane computer system. But if he had to choose between simplistic and complex, he would choose complex, every time.

The work in the systems room was not difficult, not for him, in any case. Though he had stabilized the life support, the climate controls required more repairs, keeping the temperature at a blistering level. Soon, he soaked through his uniform. Celene had already peeled off the top of her uniform, so that she wore her tank top and uniform pants. He couldn’t help but stare as sweat gleamed on the sleek muscles of her arms and in the valley between her breasts.

“Analyzing my systems?” She turned, putting her hands on her hips. Seeming to dare him to look at her.

He would have blushed if he wasn’t already overheated. “I might be a fellow 8th Wing officer and I might be NerdWorks, I’m also a man with perfectly good vision.” He turned away to adjust the torque on a valve. “The only way I wouldn’t notice you was if I had already crossed to the Starfields of Eternal Bliss.”

“You want an inspection? Go ahead.”

He studiously avoided glancing at her.

“Come on,” she chided. “Consider it a research and discovery mission.”

“Mission accepted.” He turned back to face her. And swallowed hard.

She stood with arms wide, her chin tilted up, daring him to look. And he did, because once he caught a glimpse of her he couldn’t look away. Her dark hair had come loose from its sleek ponytail and damp tendrils clung to her neck and her bare shoulders. Back in SimCom she had also worn a tank top and uniform pants, but he’d been too busy fighting for a place on this mission to truly see the tight, lean wonder of her body. His gaze followed the lines of her collarbones to the hollow of her throat, and lower.