Page 10 of Alien Mercenary’s Wife (Lathar Mercenaries: Warborne #7)
T he spaceport reeked of too many bodies crammed in one space, with an undertone of industrial-strength disinfectant.
Reese moved through the chaos of departing passengers and cargo handlers like she belonged there.
Head down, trudging along... just another maintenance worker in grimy coveralls.
Under the coveralls, the exo-legs hummed against her skin, a constant reminder of her current situation.
Funny how quickly you adapted to being broken. A decade ago, she'd walked into briefings with the confidence of someone who could drop ordnance on a target from five klicks out. Now she was grateful for obsolete tech that kept her upright long enough to run from corporate assassins.
The departure board glowed overhead like a promise she couldn't afford to believe.
New Geneva, Kepler Station, Mars Central—all of them might as well have been fantasy destinations for someone whose face was probably flagged in every security database from here to the outer colonies.
But desperation made optimists of even seasoned unit commanders.
She approached the ticket counter with manufactured confidence, tucking her false documents against damp palms. The clerk looked like she'd been processing passengers since the dawn of space travel…
middle-aged, permanently bored, the kind who saw hundreds of faces daily without actually registering any of them.
Perfect.
"Where to?" The woman didn't look up from her screen.
"New Geneva. Next available transport."
"Purpose of travel?"
"Family emergency. My sister's sick." The lie rolled off her tongue with practiced ease. After years of briefing superior officers who'd rather hear comfortable fiction than the ugly truth, she'd learned that people believed what they wanted to hear.
The clerk ran her documents through the scanner with mechanical efficiency. A standard procedure that should have taken thirty seconds, and then she'd be on her way. Instead, something flickered across the woman's screen, and her posture shifted from bored to alert.
At the same moment, Reese's comm unit buzzed against her hip. Once, then again, the insistent pulse she’d set to warn her of an encrypted message.
Shit. Two problems at once.
"One moment, please." The clerk's tone hadn't changed, but her eyes had sharpened with a focus that usually meant trouble. "There seems to be an issue with your documentation."
Reese's mind shifted into familiar patterns—the same mental shift that had kept her alive during Scorperio operations.
Exit routes, threat assessment, and contingency planning.
And all of it happened in the space between heartbeats while she kept the expression of a mildly confused civilian on her face.
The comm buzzed again. She risked a glance at the message, keeping her face neutral while her pulse kicked up another notch.
She recognized the authentication codes, so she flicked open the message and just barely stopped her eyes from widening in surprise. Holy fuck. Someone had responded to her darkfeed plea for help.
"An issue?" she asked, buying time. The message contained coordinates… a warehouse district where help might be waiting. Or another trap. Hard to tell the difference anymore.
Shit. The terminal's security systems were better than she'd hoped and worse than she'd feared. Facial recognition software that would see through her crude disguise, cross-referencing her features against watch lists in real time.
"Yeah. The system flagged your biometric scan for additional verification." The clerk was already reaching for her comm unit. "Probably just a glitch, but security will need to clear it manually. If you'll just wait here?—"
But Reese was already turning away, moving with the same unhurried pace that had carried her through the terminal.
She made sure to keep her body language relaxed.
No tension in her shoulders, no sudden movements.
.. Just another worker heading to a different counter, perfectly normal behavior that wouldn't register as flight until she was already gone.
Behind her, the clerk's voice rose in protest. “Ma’am? I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to have to ask you to come back.”
She made it twenty meters before the first security guard materialized from the crowd.
He was trying for casual… just another uniformed officer making routine patrols through the departure area.
But his route would intercept hers in about a hundred yards, and his hand was resting on his sidearm too casually for her liking.
The kind of casual that screamed he was ready to pull the damn thing.
"Excuse me, ma’am," His voice was pitched with just the right note of polite authority to make several women around them pause, wondering if he was talking to them. "Could I have a word?"
Instead of stopping, Reese angled toward the nearest crowd—a cluster of cargo handlers taking their break near the loading bays.
The industrial section reeked of machinery oil and propellant fumes, filled with equipment that turned line of sight into a tactical nightmare.
Her maintenance uniform would camouflage her perfectly among workers who moved cargo for a living.
The guard followed, speaking into his collar comm as he tried to keep visual contact. Behind him, she spotted two more uniforms converging from different angles. Pincer maneuver, designed to trap her between them with nowhere to run.
They knew who… what they were hunting. Or they thought they did. The question was how much they knew about what she would do when cornered.
Then her left leg seized without warning, the neural implant sending conflicting signals to muscles that no longer trusted her brain's commands. The exo-leg compensated, mechanical servos whining as they fought to keep her upright, but not fast enough to hide the stumble completely.
Pain shot up her thigh like liquid fire. She caught herself against a shipping container, fighting to keep her expression neutral while her nervous system declared war on itself. The guards were thirty meters away, close enough to spot any obvious sign of distress.
"You alright, love?" A cargo handler noticed her pause, his weathered face creased with genuine concern. "Look a bit peaky."
"Long shift.” She used his bulk to shield herself from approaching security. "Just need a moment."
He nodded sympathetically and returned to his work, unknowingly providing cover as she slipped deeper into the maze of equipment and personnel. The guards had lost visual in the industrial clutter, but they'd adapt quickly. Time to find an exit that didn't involve walking past checkpoint scanners.
The maintenance tunnels called to her like an old friend. Every major facility had service corridors connecting to city infrastructure… routes used by the invisible army of technicians who kept civilization running. Her uniform was a passport to spaces where important people never looked.
She found an access hatch marked with warnings to deter civilians and keyed in a maintenance code she'd memorized during her research. The lock flashed red... denied.
"Shit," she hissed, already punching in a second code, fingers moving quickly over the keypad. Red again.
"Dammit."
She glanced over her shoulder as the voices somewhere behind her grew louder. Fuck. They were expanding the security sweep. Which meant they'd be checking service areas soon.
She punched in the third variation... the emergency override she'd hoped she wouldn't need because it would flag in the system. The lock hesitated for a heartbeat, then flashed green. The lock disengaged with a soft click, revealing a narrow corridor lined with pipes and electrical conduits.
The tunnel stretched ahead into pools of light separated by comfortable darkness.
She started walking, her exo-legs finding their rhythm in the confined space.
Each step carried her farther from corporate surveillance and closer to.
.. what? Help from strangers who might be genuine allies?
Another trap designed to finish what the metro bombing had started?
Only one way to find out.
The coordinates led to industrial territory on the city's edge—the kind of place where surveillance cameras had accidents and questions weren't encouraged. If someone had really responded to her plea for help, that's where she'd find them.
The corporate teams hunting her knew her training, her background, and probably her favorite breakfast cereal. But they'd made one critical miscalculation. They'd assumed a broken veteran with failing implants would be easy prey for professionals with unlimited resources.
Time to educate them about the difference between broken and defeated.
She climbed toward street level, ready to find out if hope was just another luxury she couldn't afford.
Earth filled the viewscreen. Half his crew had come from that blue-white ball, and they were some of the toughest people he'd ever worked with.
They'd left Devan Station after a remarkably smooth diplomatic transfer—Lizzie's reunion with her sister had been tearful and efficient, complete with imperial credentials that would get them through human security without uncomfortable questions.
Nothing said "peaceful mission" quite like a ship full of wanted mercenaries pretending to be botanical consultants.
The tactical display cast a hard blue light across the briefing room as he studied approach vectors and extraction routes.
Eris sat across from him, her fingers drumming against the table with the restless energy of someone who preferred action to analysis.
A holographic map of one of Earth's major cities rotated slowly between them.
"Warehouse district, Sector 12." Eris stabbed her finger at the coordinates where her captain had gone to ground. "We go in fast, grab Payne, and extract before corporate security knows what hit them."