Shadow

“I’m really likin’ the Captain’s idea that we stay here a few extra days, especially with a spa like this available to our private use.”

Tark sat in the bubbling hot tub, holding Gretta tight against him. The doctor smiled up at the mercenary, emphasizing what she had just said. “I’m tellin’ you, Spooks, a girl could get used to a life like this.”

“Didn’t you have stuff like this back on Sihnon?” Tark asked.

She shrugged. “Probably did, but I was too stuck into school and doctoring duties and the like. Honestly, I didn’t really even know what is was like to just relax until you brought the Captain into my office with a hole in his chest.”

Tark frowned, remembering what had happened on Florida Moon and the agony of the long flight to Osiris because no Alliance ship would let them board to get Etris taken care of. So much for the Alliance taking care of their own. Etris had actually died right before they had gotten him into the hospital, but Gretta had fixed him up nice. But Florida Moon…he remember the firefight there, when Etris had led a rescue mission onto the slaver ship to free the rest of his crew. They had almost lost, too, but Davis…Davis, the hwoon dahn engineer that had betrayed them in the first place offered the slavers a trade: himself, for the life of his former Captain.

God himself only knew where Davis was now.

“Spook, you still with me?”

Pulled out of his thoughts, Tark smiled down at Gretta. That was all in the past now, and Gretta was his future. “I’m good.” He leaned down to kiss her, to blank everything else out of his mind, when his communicator went off. He cursed.

“This better be good,” he growled, grabbing the black box.

Togan’s voice came back sounding rather worried. “You’d better get back here quick,” he said. “We’ve got a problem brewing.”

Tark groaned. Not now! “How bad is it?”

The terse response from the engineer came back quickly. “Bad. Get back here now!”

* * *

“Every piece of this protein is marked,” the man yelled out, his gun trained o