The Reprisal Read online

  He leaned in. “She’ll be labelled a traitor. She won’t be able to return. I’ll need to join the Renegades.”

  Romy’s mouth dried. Did he hear himself? Thrym never broke the rules. Even at Romy’s craziest he’d barely been able to bend the rules to allow for her insanity, and now he wasn’t giving a single thought to the consequences to save Nancy. Romy’s jaw dropped as she realised what that meant. “She’s gone to check that her friends are alive,” she said as Thrym took rapid, shallow breaths.

  He gripped her arm. “I know that. But Atlas won’t.”

  “Thrym.” Romy tried to hug him, but he backed away, hands raised. He was a mess. He was acting like Atlas when Romy was in danger. “They will understand. Phobos has gone as well.”

  “What?” he roared.

  Romy meant it as a consolation that Nancy wasn’t alone, but it didn’t have that effect.

  “That spoiled little—”

  Romy winced as Thrym cursed long and hard. Phobos and Deimos had run away. Elara was knocked up. She suddenly snorted. “Thrym, we make terrible parents.”

  He broke off his cussing and an unwilling sound, part laughter and part sob, escaped him. “We do.”

  The situation terrified her; it was the only reason tears began to pour down her cheeks. Thrym joined her with body-wracking laughter, and finally—more from needing each other to stay standing—they ended up hugging and gasping and crying all at once.

  Romy spoke once they’d simmered down. They were now leaning against the wall side-by-side. It felt . . . like it used to, and maybe there was a reason why. “Thrym, I think you have feelings for her.” Not just feelings—Romy was pretty sure he loved Nancy and had no idea.

  “Who?”

  She arched a brow.

  “Nancy?” he scoffed. “No, I don’t. I. . . .”

  This was what she’d missed out on with Phobos and Elara, watching this moment. But Romy had front-row seats as Thrym connected the dots.

  “You’re breaking rules for her,” she added. “I never thought I’d see the day. The way you look at her. . . . Thrym, are you sure you don’t love her?”

  His mouth bobbed open and shut. “I. . . .”

  “You literally just said you’d join the Renegades for her.”

  He inhaled sharply. “Yes, I would.”

  “You’ve been smiling around 500 per cent more than usual, just saying.”

  Thrym frowned at the floor, shaking his head.

  She watched her knotmate sort through his feelings, exploring all the options, as he tended to do, and witnessing his expression as every possible pathway led him back to one answer.

  “Holy crap,” he said in amazement. “You’re right.” Shifting, he stared at Romy like she had all the answers, a wide grin spreading across his face.

  “Yes,” she said, pushing off the wall. “So, let’s figure out how to get her back.”

  * * *

  “Are you okay?” Atlas asked. He sat at his desk, a blue screen from a nanopad projected in a semi-circle before him. The graphs and numbers hovered forgotten after the news she’d just imparted.

  Romy nodded. “It’s not like with . . . the other one.”

  “Deimos,” he supplied.

  “Him, yes. It’s not like it was with him. Phobos went because he felt he had to.”

  “And Nancy?”

  “Her friends are there.”

  Atlas didn’t look particularly accepting of either of them deserting, judging by the coldness in his grey eyes, but whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself, seeing her distress. He ran a hand through his hair. “What is the likelihood of you charging off after them?”

  Busted. “Moderately to highly probable.”

  He shut the screens off and stood. “That’s what I thought. Before you do anything, I would like you to consider your importance as a player in this war.”

  “Houston already has the cure.”

  “Your face is known to all, Rosemary. To everyone on Earth. It’s not about you giving us the cure anymore. You and the rest of your knot are figureheads, symbols. In some ways, that holds more importance. Not only that, they know of our relationship, especially Houston. They could use you against me.”

  “I know. But I’ve got to get them back.” Romy stayed still as he came closer and rubbed his thumb over the top of her cheekbone.

  “Will you let me handle it?” he asked. “Work with me, watch my every move, I don’t care. But please don’t let me wake up and see you’ve left in the night.”

  A refusal halted on Romy’s lips. Her nearly overwhelming need to fly to Houston’s front door, kick it in with her cool boots, and unleash the space fury was hard to rein in. But a question crept through that protective urge. Do I need to do everything? Really, Atlas was much better qualified for negotiations to have them returned. “As long as Thrym and I can be involved, yes, I’d be thankful if you’ll get them back for us.”

  He pressed his lips against her hairline and inhaled. “Thank you.”

  Romy would hate to wake and find him gone, and she trusted him to shift cities to get her knotmate back. “Oh, Elara can’t go to Rome today.”

  Atlas took his seat again. “She’s sick?”

  “Uh, she is pretty uh, not well after finding Phobos gone.” Romy fidgeted under his look. “She probably won’t be able to do missions for a while.” She recalled the number Charlee gave them. “For nine months.”

  Atlas’s eyes widened. “She’s pregnant?”

  What the—? “How did you guess that?”

  His laughter filled the room and he swept her to him and pressed his lips down on her tenderly, then harder. Nothing existed for Romy but him. His lips. His kiss. His tongue entered her mouth and she met the action. He’d done this before. The first time Romy had burst into laughter, but now she saw the appeal of it. She gripped his hair and pulled his face down, and he lifted her onto his desk, pulling her hips closer.

  “Atlas,” Romy murmured and reached under his shoulder to pull him closer.

  “I love you so much,” he breathed.

  They separated and she gave him a small smile that he kissed into a full-blown one.

  “You’re going to be an aunty,” he said, watching her closely.

  “Yes,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Elara said it’s a boy. I’ll have a nephew.”

  “Oh?”

  She narrowed her eyes at the neutral reply, but didn’t quite know what to make of it. “For the record, I didn’t tell you the news. You guessed. You need to pretend you don’t know around Ellie.”

  “I can do that. Can I recommend that you don’t tell others Elara won’t be working for nine months?”

  Romy shrugged. “Okay.”

  “I’ll put Elara on non-combat duties for the duration of the pregnancy.”

  She glanced at her watch. Time to head to the hangar. “Thanks. I’d best be off.”

  “Be careful, Rosemary.”

  The words floated after her out the door, and she weaved her way through the chaotic command room and to the outer passage where Thrym waited.

  He danced from foot to foot. “What’s he going to do to her? I know you like him, Ro, but I’ll probably need to kill him. Maybe you could do it as he slept.”

  “Jaysus, Thrym,” Romy scolded, borrowing some of Char’s Irish talk. “I don’t just like Atlas, I love him. He makes me melt inside, do you hear me? And you can bet that if either he or you ask me to kill the other, I’ll be killing the person who did the asking.”

  A speaker clicked on overhead. ‘Thank you, Rosemary.’

  Thrym yelped, leaping off the ground.

  The speaker clicked off, taking Atlas’s voice with it. Romy’s heart hammered double time. What did she just say? Oh no, she’d definitely said embarrassing stuff.

  “That is not a nice trick.” She turned in a circle, glaring. There had to be a camera somewhere.

  The speaker clicked on. ‘You make me melt, too.’

  The speak
er clicked off.

  “Well then,” Romy huffed, feeling her ears burning. She huffed again. “Right. Well then, okay.”

  Thrym watched her, nose wrinkling. “Your happy is leaking out.”

  “I’m not happy, I’m focused.” Romy shoved past him. “There’s a job to be done and you two are fooling around.” She strode down the hall to the hangar, ranting to a silent Thrym about how she had to do everything.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Where’s Ellie?”

  That Thrym hadn’t noticed their knotmate’s absence until now spoke for his state of mind. They were nearly in Rome. Perhaps she should’ve left him behind as well.

  “Uh, she. . . .” Romy tried to remember her lie. “Oh. She’s upset about Pho.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “That is extremely insulting.”

  “What’s happening?” he prompted.

  “I’m not allowed to tell,” Romy said. “But she’s okay.” She held Thrym’s gaze for a beat before he played nice and let it go.

  They descended ten minutes later and the craft bounced on its four legs, absorbing the shock of the landing.

  “Wanna ride with me?” Thrym asked, rolling out a motorbike. The refugees they were contacting were in a settlement ten kilometres away.

  “Nuh-uh, you handsome liquorice man. She’s my motorbike buddy.” Tina appeared and hauled Romy to a bike and chucked her a helmet.

  Romy snorted, saying, “I know you only grabbed me because I’m tall.” Tina had trouble propping motorbikes up with her shorter legs.

  “Shut it, space Barbie. Where’s Lazy, anyway?”

  “She’s sick,” Romy said smoothly.

  “Wow, you’re a terrible liar.”

  “She is. I swear.”

  “What’s she sick with?”

  Romy brightened. “Certain foods are making her ill in the mornings, and she’s irrational about small things.”

  Tina twisted to look back. “She’s pregnant?”

  “How do you people keep guessing this?” Romy exploded.

  “Stick to something general next time, like diarrhoea.”

  Romy sighed. “Can you please not tell anyone else?”

  Tina revved the engine. It didn’t make much noise; these motorbikes were unsatisfactorily quiet. The smaller woman took off, not bothering to answer the question. The other members of their team followed suit, falling into line on their own bikes.

  “Routine refugee mission,” Tina’s voice crackled through their helmets five minutes later. “The base is thirty minutes out of Rome and contains 150 civilians.”

  They’d completed ten of these missions in the last month. Other Amach teams were doing the same, methodically making their way through each country. Progress was slower than anyone would like—considering they had to get to as many of the settlements before the Renegades as possible.

  So far, Houston’s forces hadn’t ambushed any of the Amach teams. He’d been ‘recruiting’ refugees in other areas, and had only attacked the Mandate’s cities. That he considered the Mandate to be the bigger, more immediate threat was obvious, but eventually the Renegades and the Amach would meet. Their clash was inevitable. The doctor made no secret of what he ultimately wanted—to become the governing power of Earth. That meant the Mandate and the Amach were in his way.

  Romy once thought she knew Houston.

  Once, she’d found him entertaining and respected the power of his intelligence. That was before he tested an insanity cure on space soldiers and, when it didn’t work, left them to die and refroze them, so no one knew what he was doing. And before he’d betrayed the Amach and his best friend to form the Renegades.

  “Are we going into Rome?” Romy asked when Tina was done debriefing them. “Like, the Vatican?”

  “No.”

  “Colosseum?”

  “No.”

  “Why do I like you again?”

  Tina’s snort crackled in her ears. “Beats me.”

  “Where was the Renegades’ last reported movement?” Thrym asked.

  Tina replied, “In Greece, two hours south of Athens.”

  “Isn’t that close?” Romy asked.

  “Sure is,” Tina said. “We’ll be on guard, but he hasn’t given us any reason to suppose he’ll interfere just yet.”

  Romy couldn’t imagine Houston would give any warning before he attacked.

  She sighed and turned her attention to the passing country. Rome was warm, but not the same beating, relentless heat she’d experienced in Egypt. That blew her mind—that Earth wasn’t one temperature. Orbito One had always been maintained at a steady 23.8 degrees Celsius.

  She took in the different trees and tumbled mud-brick houses covered in creeping vines, thinking about all the places she’d go in New Italy if she ever got the chance. There was so much of the world she wanted to see, Romy wasn’t sure it could be done in a single lifetime.

  Tina pulled off the cracked tarseal road after another twenty minutes, and the team clambered off the bikes, ditching their helmets. They’d cover the rest of the distance on foot.

  “—this one doesn’t have sentry posts—”

  “—Roger that. Makes it easier—”

  Less fun, though, she thought, listening to the others talk as they walked. Romy quite enjoyed shooting people with tranquilisers from a hundred metres away.

  The good thing about the settlements was each one had the same layout and the same routine. There were three to five official buildings depending on the size of the camp. This one, being smaller, would have three. The thing about the layout being the same was that the Amach—and everyone else—knew exactly where the official people slept: the bungalow directly behind the middle official building.

  Their team crept through the settlement half an hour later, sticking to the weak shadows of the bungalows. These places never failed to remind her of Jimboomba, the first settlement she’d seen.

  They beelined for the bungalow where the settlement commander would be sleeping, and Thrym raised a hand and knocked on the door.

  He stepped back behind the sides of the bungalow where the rest of them were spread out. These folks tended to come out waving guns.

  Romy waited for the creaking door, the inching footsteps, the click of a safety release.

  Ping.

  “Fire!” she shouted. She grabbed Thrym and shoved him around the back of the bungalow as two more shots rang out. “They’re shooting from the medical wing.”

  “Anyone hit?” Tina asked, crouching.

  The ten team members did a quick search and each gave a negative answer.

  “Bolt for the trees, then work our way out?” Tina consulted Thrym. He eyed the distance and shifted in his crouch.

  “They’ve chosen a good spot,” he said. “The space all around the official buildings is pretty open. They only fired three bullets, though . . . and they had us in the open. Maybe they don’t know who we are. I say we talk to them.”

  Tina’s gaze narrowed. “I’m not a fan of talking. But okay, we’ll try. Leroy?”

  “Got it,” he said. The team translator dropped his case and rifled through it before pulling out a megaphone.

  “Eyes sharp,” Tina said to Romy. “The civilians may be creeping up through the trees. Fan out while Leroy works,” she said in a louder voice to the others.

  They crouched in an outward-facing semi-circle, guns raised, scanning the treeline.

  A string of rhythmic words that Romy assumed to be Italian blared out of the megaphone behind her.

  By the time the settlement responded, her knees ached from kneeling on the sun-dried ground.

  The blaring comments went back and forth behind her.

  “Do you think we’ll be back in time for dinner?” Romy asked Thrym. He didn’t answer. He wasn’t paying any attention to his area of the trees. She whacked him with the butt of her gun. “You’re no use to her if you can’t keep yourself alive.”

  He sighed. “I’m really worried ab
out her.”

  “I can tell.” Romy paused. “I hadn’t realised you’d spent that much time with Nancy.”

  “Yeah, well . . . less in recent months with all the stuff happening in the knot. But before that, tonnes. And after Houston and Deimos, we began hanging again, and it was a bit different from before, I knew, but I was too. . . .”

  Occupied with thoughts of me? “I got you.” Romy covered his slip. “Your feelings for her crept up on you.” She sniggered as a dark flush reddened his cheeks.

  Leroy repacked the megaphone. “A group of them are coming over to talk.” He glanced at Romy. “They saw the ‘crazy one’ and thought she was part of the Renegades, so they decided to hide.”

  “She’s not crazy,” Thrym said with a frown.

  Leroy held up his hands. “Their words. They only know what they saw on the screen a month ago.”

  In other words, they saw Feral Romy kill a room of Mandate soldiers, and then Houston telling the world she was with their new faction.

  A small group emerged from the trees on Romy’s side. She scanned their body language and hands, then lowered her rifle to the ground, close enough to whip it up if any of them got violent. Some peered her way, and she attempted to look pleasant and peaceful to put them at ease. One of the Italian civilians blanched when she smiled at him.

  Leroy took over once again, and soon Tina and the settlement commander were shaking hands.

  “Thrym,” Tina said, approaching, “call in the crafts. We have three hours to get their possessions loaded in the crafts, nothing unnecessary. Make sure they know not to bring snakes and shit like that,” she called back at Leroy.

  Romy and Thrym left for the hospital building to raid the medicines and equipment there. Their team took whatever they could back to the Amach. When you were bringing 150 more mouths to feed, you had to take whatever you could get your hands on.

  She and Thrym worked in silence, moving on to raid the weaponry room afterward. Like her, he was caught up in worrying about Phobos and Nancy. They would’ve reached the Renegades at their main base in Florida long ago.

  Romy hated to think about either of them in danger, especially Phobos. But traitor though Deimos was, he wouldn’t harm his twin.