Page 6 of Reformation
“Either we take our chances on land, or we get blown to pieces in the air!” Jonah diverted the power to all noncritical functionsand boosted the excess to the thrusters. This was going to be hell on the engines.
He increased their speed by seventy-five percent, losing most of their maneuverability in the process. The cliffs were coming up fast, but the proximity alert was starting to pick up speed again. Their angle of potential descent was so narrow … a lot depended on whether or not the bottom of the ship would be able to handle the impact. The thrusters could help there but only as long as Jonah didn’t blow them out during their mad dash toward the lesser evil. Three kilometers. Two. One …
A flare of energy crackled across the viewscreen, killing the computer. The ship wavered but managed to maintain its altitude. Only now, Jonah couldn’t actually see any of the projections that had filled his vision a moment ago. The last plasma strike had taken out all the automatic functions.
“God motherfucking damn it all to deep space hell,” he muttered. “Okay. Brace yourself, Lacey, this is gonna be rough.”
She was staring blank faced at the dark screen. “I can’t see the ground.”
“I remember where it is, we’ll be fine.”
“I can’tseetheground!”
“Well, you’re gonna be feeling it any second, so get ready for—”
The impact snapped Jonah into his harness so hard he felt his ribs break. Blood filled his eyes, gushed from his nose. White light turned to red, which quickly faded to black.
Jonah passed out before the ship finished rolling.
Chapter two
Garrett
Garrett wasn’t panicking.
Panic wasn’t something he did. Panic was for people who didn’t know how to handle the unexpected. Panic was for people who got caught off guard. Panic wasn’t for someone who had a contingency for almost everything. Garrett wasn’t panicking?he was being concertedlyconcernedabout his husband because Jonah’s call was late. Jonahnevercalled late, not when it was so hard to schedule time for their calls in the first place.
Garrett let it go for a while, but after an hour, he called Jonah’s personal comm. No reply, just the message machine. Then he tried the house, but apparently, the power had been out. So, a storm? The colony was shielding, interfering with the comm arrays? Garrett tried the comm on Jonah’s ship just to check, but instead of a blank signal, he got a steadydot dot dot-dash dash dash-dot dot dot: the SOS call signal, a universal cry for help. That didn’t necessarily mean that the ship was disabled,or Jonah was in trouble, though. He tried Jezria Dowd, an old friend and Pandora’s former governor, and again got nothing.
What the fuck was going on?
Three hours and two hacked Alliance comm satellites later, Garrett finally managed to bring up a broad energy signature for Pandora. If there was a bad storm, then he should be seeing almost nothing of the colony itself and maybe a dozen personal ships docked at the tiny space station above the planet. Instead, he saw …
Garrett blinked, then counted again. Almost thirty mid-sized energy signatures, all of them active, none of them big enough to be the space station. Which meant that therewasno space station. Pandora’s Eye, it had been called. Well, now it looked like Pandora was blind.
Garrett was dimly aware of his heart rate increasing, but he ignored his sympathetic nervous system’s response to his unacknowledged stress and kept looking at the energy signatures, searching for anything that would serve to identify the ships milling around, above the colony. He read streams of data that could only be live fire, most of it seeming to splash off the barrier below. Pandora City was equipped with an energy shield that could hold off the worst storms the planet had to offer. If there had been time, one of the engineers could have modified it to reflect, or at least reduce, the impact of the plasma fire. If Garrett had been there, he could have done it in under ten minutes.
Ifhe’d been there.
“You could come with me.” Jonah’s hand stroked Garrett’s arm with absent tenderness as they lay together in bed. Touching Garrett like this was unconscious for Jonah, something he didn’t even think about before doing. Garrett thought about it, though. He felt every brush, catalogued every kiss, and hoarded them like credits. He didn’t mention it toJonah, in case it made his husband self-conscious, but it was one of his favorite things about him. Expressing his love came so easily to Jonah that it made it that much harder for Garrett to disappoint him.
“I can’t. I’m sorry”—and he genuinely was—“but with the election coming up, I really have to be here.”
Jonah sighed. “You’re not even runnin’ for office, you get that, right?”
“I know, but I might be able to tone down some of the violent rhetoric in the Senate, not to mention all this stupid business about not being able to vote if you don’t have an implant. It’s a last-ditch effort by the Central contingent to disenfranchise colony voters who can’t afford embedded implants, and I’m not going to let—”
Jonah laughed. “Oh, my lord, I know, darlin’. Iknow. I’ve been hearin’ you talk about it for months now.”
Garrett resisted the urge to wince. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I get it. I shouldn’t be complaining. I’m just gonna miss you, that’s all.”
“I’ll miss you too.” He really would. Garrett could barely breathe when he thought about it, being separated from his husband for months at a time. He was on the verge of asking Jonah to stay, but that wasn’t fair. Jonah wanted to be useful, and running much-needed supplies out to Pandora did that for him. Garrett had been selfish with their lives for long enough. He could let someone else have their way.
For a while, at least.
Garrett rolled on top of his husband, straddling his waist and grinding his ass down against Jonah’s groin. It had barely been ten minutes since they’d finished their last round, but he felt Jonah’s soft, sticky cock begin to thicken against his bare skin.
