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“Not as much as the people that are still here!” Leon pulled himself up straight and pushed her hand off. “They matter, and they trust me, and I’m going to fucking earn it for once.”
Martha grabbed his shoulders again, her brow furrowed and her eyes furious, and Leon knew she was going to give him some platitude about all the work he’d done so far, but he didn’t want to hear it.
He grabbed her wrists. “Tell Sebastian to get ready to take that fucking ship.”
The furious glint in Martha’s eyes disappeared, and Leon saw a flash of relief and sadness in them before she yanked him to her chest and wrapped her arms around him. She held him so tightly Leon’s ribs flexed. For a moment, she didn’t speak, but Leon could feel her shuddering breaths. Then she pressed a kiss to the side of his head. “You’re making the right call, Leon.”
“I know.”
And for once, he did know. He had no idea if their half-baked plan would work or if the Resistance would survive, but for once, he knew that he didn’t have to question this decision.
Martha released him and rushed out the door, leaving Leon standing steady in the room.
He wasn’t going to break his people or his country…or Sebastian. Not anymore.
But god, he also hoped this worked.
Leon grabbed a discarded data tablet from the table and pulled up a map of the surrounding area. It didn’t take him long to find the Turner-affiliated factory Martha had mentioned. Political rivals of the Ralsdis, its owners had been some of the primary agitators for the Turner ‘investment’—Leon had always referred to it as a ‘sale.’
As such, the Resistance had run a number of operations on the plant: sabotages, espionage, theft. Sebastian himself had even been on a few. They knew its layout and security systems well, so if there was anywhere that Sebastian had a shot of infiltrating on such short notice, this was as good a place as any.
He looked up as footsteps echoed down the hall—Martha’s brisk clip and a stumbling, off-kilter tread—and frowned as Martha appeared with a thunderous expression.
She hauled a soldier behind her—a familiar soldier, Jason, Sebastian’s friend—and all but threw him into the room. “Tell him!”
Leon stood straight and dropped the tablet back to the table. “Tell me what?”
Jason’s white skin had gone pale and sallow, and he pressed his lips so tightly together they went whiter still. But his eyes blazed with defiance.
Martha shoved him farther into the room. “Tell him!”
Jason stumbled forward a step but still held himself straight. “Sebastian’s gone.”
Chapter Fourteen
The floor dropped away from Leon and his stomach with it. “What?”
“He left and I helped him.”
“And where did he go?” Leon lunged and grabbed Jason’s shoulders, envisioning bashing the man’s head through a wall. But by the time he made contact, his mind had already moved on. Instead, he threw Jason out of his way. “Don’t answer that; I already know.”
“Leon!” Martha chased him into the hall as he strode down it, his legs chewing up the ground in front of him as his mind raced.
“Get me a radio!” he called over his shoulder as he turned into a stairwell and took the steps two at a time up to the hangar level. When he burst out into the huge room, a young woman met him with a radio and a confused look on her face.
“Sir!” She held the little box out to him. “Martha called, she said—”
“Thank you.” Leon snatched the radio away and tuned it to the first Resistance frequency. “Sebastian!”
Static.
“Sebastian, pick up the goddamn radio!”
Static.
Leon tuned it to the next frequency. “Sebastian!”
“He disabled the communications.” Jason and Martha finally came out of the door just behind him, and Jason pointed to a tangle of wires on the hangar’s floor a few ships’ lengths away. “He didn’t want you ordering him back.”
