Into The Fire (Justice Keepers Saga Book 13) - R.S. Penney

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Into The Fire - book excerpt

Chapter One

Anna walked through the Scrappy’s white-walled corridors. People shuffled past, headed in the opposite direction. She had come to know most of the crew. Many were former members of the Space Corps who had joined up because they believed in what Jack was doing. Some were former Keepers.

Seth grew indignant at that.

As far as her Nassai was concerned, Anna, Jack and the others who had turned in their badges were the true Justice Keepers. Those who went along with Dusep’s plans had fallen short of their ideals. Seth insisted that the Nassai who had Bonded the latter group would restrict access to their Bending powers, and the stories she had heard seemed to confirm that assessment. Nassai developed individual personalities after years of living with a human, but they all shared a few things in common.

A young, pale-skinned man with spiky, brown hair approached her. His name was Paydron. “Captain,” he said, handing her a tablet.

Anna took it and skimmed through a quartermaster’s report. Amanda had requested permission to expand the mess hall’s food stores, preferably with more fresh fruits and vegetables. Those tended to go bad sooner than standard field rations, but the Scrappy spent most of its time in orbit of Alios. It would be easy enough to resupply if the need arose. And fresh food would improve morale.

Tapping her lips with one finger, Anna considered the request. She nodded curtly and returned the tablet to Paydron. “Very good,” she said. “You can tell Amanda she has my permission to bring up some new supplies.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Jack had encouraged this crew to use his name. After a great deal of arm-twisting, he had convinced them to drop the ranks – at least with each other – but they insisted on calling anyone who sat in the big chair “Captain.” Anna didn’t mind. Most of them were ex-military. There was really no getting around it. Besides, it made her feel like a bad-ass.

The corridor curved slightly to her right as it ran to the back of the ship. She spotted Cassi and Sun walking hand in hand and whispering to each other. The pair of them greeted her with a wave as she passed and then went back to their quiet conversation.

Two minutes later, she saw Kevin coming her way with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. The young man was tall and well-built with a dark complexion and short, black hair. “Anna.”

“Hey, Kev.”

“Drayvin sent me to find you. They say the nanobots have repaired the port-side shield grid, but they still think that we should put in at a space-dock for a total systems’ diagnostic and assessment.”

Turning around, Anna leaned back against the wall with her arms folded. “Tell me something, Kev,” she said, watching him from the corner of her eye. “Didn’t we just do a systems’ diagnostic six weeks ago?”

A flush put some colour in his cheeks. Chagrinned, he looked down at the floor. “Well, you know Drayvin.”

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “Remind our chief engineer that other ships need the repair crews’ services just as much as we do.”

“You got it.”

Blowing air through puckered lips, Anna blinked as she tried to decide whether she wanted to ask her next question. It came out anyway. Yay impulsivity! “He’s down in engineering, isn’t he?”

Kevin looked over his shoulder, suddenly fascinated by something on the wall. “Drayvin’s got him calibrating the auxiliary array,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to screw that up.”

“Let’s go.”

She fell in beside Kevin, storming through the hallways as they moved to the back of the ship. The young man gave her a sidelong glance. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Enough is enough, Kev.”

The engine room was an open area with monitors taking up almost every inch of space on its gray walls. Drayvin Parneel was bent over a central table with their hands pressed down on the SmartGlass.

The chief engineer was very thin – almost spindly – with olive skin and hollow cheeks. They wore their short, brown hair in a coiffe that fell to the nape of their neck. Though tall and broad-shouldered, they had delicate features, and Anna was fairly certain they wore makeup sometimes. Just a little blush, or so she thought. “In there,” they said, gesturing to Anna’s left.

Double doors split apart, admitting her to a room with black floor tiles and computer terminals on each of its sidewalls. A large screen directly in front of her displayed telemetry from the ship’s sensor array.

Jack was lying on his back beneath the terminal on her right, prodding some underside panel with a scanning tool. Her fiancé was a beautiful man. Sure, most women would say that about their significant others, but even after all this time, Anna’s heart still fluttered when she saw him. Well, sometimes it did.

Jack was quite tall. Not skinny but lean with a nice body he’d earned after years of training as a Justice Keeper. He had a pale face with a strong jawline. And as always, his short, brown hair was a mess. “Yup, that’s it.”

He wasn’t talking to her but to a SmartGlass tablet that sat on the floor beside him. For the last two months, he had been livestreaming almost every minute of his life so that his followers could know where he was at all times. The only time he wasn’t on camera was when he was in the shower or the bathroom. Otherwise, he took that thing with him everywhere he went.

The way Jack saw it, if he could prove that he was here, on the Scrappy, when his evil doppelganger did something monstrous, people would know that it wasn’t him. That the real Jack Hunter was just a sweet guy from Winnipeg who believed in standing up to corrupt governments.

He scooched out from underneath the computer and sat up. Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he grunted.

“Sweetie?” Anna said cautiously.

Jack raised his hand to his eyebrow in a sloppy Earth-style salute. “Captain,” he replied, flinging that hand out toward her.

“No,” she said. “That’s your job.”

He slipped the scanning tool into his mouth, falling onto his back and sliding underneath the terminal once again. “I don’t know why,” he muttered, twisting something with both hands. “You’re better at it.”

Anna crossed her arms, standing over him with a tight frown. She shook her head slowly. “You’re the one who brought this crew together, Jack,” she said. “They need you now more than ever.”

“We talked about this,” he grumbled. “If I’m the face of this movement, it delegitimizes everything we stand for. My evil twin made me into a pariah; so, the Screw-Ups need you to take charge.”

Anna crouched down, peering into the gloom underneath that workstation. “No,” she insisted. “You decided that all on your own. And I think it’s time we reevaluated that decision.”

“I can’t.”

“Sweetie,” she began. “This isn’t helping you. And it’s not helping the rest of us either. What you’re doing right now? That’s exactly what Slade wants. To take one of his opponents out of the game.”

Seth agreed.

In fact, that was a monumental understatement. Whenever she thought about Jack’s decision to hide from the world, while simultaneously recording his every move, her Nassai responded with a tidal wave of disapproval.

She didn’t even bring up all the ways that this was affecting their relationship. The fact that Jack wouldn’t sleep next to her anymore. The fact that they hadn’t made love in over two months. He spent every night on the couch in their sitting room with that stupid camera pointed at him.

And worst of all, people actually watched it! She had checked the analytics over the Interlink. Over a million people tuned in just to watch Jack Hunter sleep! Bleakness take her, she would never have imagined that anyone would be that bored.

Jack seemed to think that when she looked at him, she would see the man who had casually murdered dozens of Leyrian soldiers and a few civilians as well. He seemed to think that he was protecting her from a traumatic experience. Sparing her the pain of waking up and finding a monster in her bed.

As much as she loved him, there was no denying one simple fact: Her fiancè could be a moron sometimes.

Anna rested one hand on the terminal, ducking underneath it. She wanted Jack to look her in the eye. “Sweetie, please come out of there,” she murmured. “Never mind the crew. I need you.”

He paused for a moment, staring up at her. “All right,” he whispered. “Can we talk about it later?”

She bent to kiss him softly on the lips, then pulled away, careful not to bump her head on the underside of the control panel. “Okay,” she murmured. “But I’m going to hold you to that.”

She spent two hours touring the ship, speaking with the crew, keeping their spirits up. Months of constant war had a way of wearing you down even in the quiet moments between battles. At times like this, people needed to see optimism from their leaders. She had never wanted to be captain of a starship, but the job was hers now – at least for the immediate future – and she would do her best with it.

She visited Arin in the gym and watched him train with a punching bag. The man spent most of his days there. It was almost as if the repetitive tasks of working out pushed away the thoughts he would rather not consider. Thoughts of his past, of his guilt. At least Isara wasn’t pestering him. Thank the Companion for small blessings.

She stopped in at the mess hall and found Amanda preparing soup for dinner. The girl had several canned varieties in her storeroom. She seemed to have settled into her new role quite well.

They chatted for a few minutes. Amanda told Anna about the year she had spent living on Leyria before Dusep decided to start rounding up immigrants. The girl had been studying comparative religion, and she seemed to enjoy it.

A thought occurred to Anna. She made a mental note to stop referring to Amanda as “the girl.” Amanda was the same age as Melissa, and Melissa was a woman.

By the middle of the afternoon, she had run out of things to do; so, she decided to return to her quarters. Her sitting room wasn’t very big – put five people in here, and it would start to feel cramped real quick – but it was homey.

She had a small, blue couch propped up against the gray wall, facing the door. Jack sat there with his elbows on his thighs, his chin resting on laced fingers. He was staring into the tablet that he had left on the duroplastic coffee table.

Anna stepped into the room, the doors sliding shut behind her, and cocked her head as she studied him. “You gonna turn that thing off?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I do believe we were supposed to have a chat.”

Jack looked up, and the anguish on his face almost made her regret pressing the point. Almost. “I’d prefer it if they knew I was here,” he replied. “In case the other me decides to go and attack something on Leyria.”

One reason why she had tolerated this…intrusion…for so long was because Jack’s plan had worked. In the early days of his experiment, the doppelganger had attacked a Leyrian facility while Jack was on his livestream, and for many people, that was proof enough that they were not the same individual.

Of course, there were some who thought it must have been some kind of trick, that the livestream had been prerecorded somehow. Or that the two Jacks were in cahoots. At this point, continuing the stream was pointless – people who believed in conspiracies would always find ways to dismiss the evidence that disproved their pet theories – but Jack still thought he could clear his name with everyone, put all doubt to rest.

The doppelganger had gotten wise to their plan and had stopped attacking Leyrian installations. If the goal was to implicate Jack, he wouldn’t do that by attacking when Jack had an alibi. Naturally, that would make it harder for Jack to turn off the tablet. He was afraid that his evil twin would start killing again the instant the stream shut down.

Anna sauntered across the room, rounding the coffee table. She planted herself in front of Jack, fists on her hips as she hit him with a disapproving glare.

He looked up at her with those big, blue eyes, and the tiny flicker of anger she had felt faded away. None of this was his fault.

Anna straddled him, clamping her hands onto his shoulders and slamming him hard against the back of the couch. She leaned in to kiss him, then touched her nose to his. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

Twisting around, Anna grabbed the tablet off the table and then held it up in front of her face. “Tonight on Jack,” she said in her best TV-announcer voice. “Our hero is in hot water when a very horny Anna decides that enough is enough.”