AllFreeNovel
Share Us
You’re perfect, Sebastian.
Sebastian couldn’t make the words stop playing on a loop in his head as he navigated around the ice planet Orin’s tidally locked moon, hiding in its shadow and observing the guard ships circling the planet. He’d only just woken up from the chemically induced slumber he’d put himself in to handle the incredibly uncomfortable amount of Gs he’d had to put up with to get here within one Tava day. The autopilot had gotten him out here, but now it was time for his expert experience to guide him. That would be easier if he could focus on it.
Perfect for what? Perfect as what? The words didn’t actually mean anything, no matter what they’d done to his lower belly and his heart at the time. And were continuing to do as Sebastian replayed them, trying to perfectly capture the husky desperation in Hess’s voice as he’d said them.
One of the guard ships came close enough for Sebastian to read the Turner Corporation logo emblazoned on its side, and he killed his engines and coasted in the darkness until it had passed. He marked down the guard route on his old school paper notebook. A pattern hadn’t emerged yet, but it would.
You’re per—
Sebastian scowled and forced himself to listen to what Hess had said after.
And I can’t stand it.
Yeah, whatever Hess was feeling about Sebastian, Hess hated it. So it didn’t matter what he’d meant when he’d called Sebastian perfect. The insult and the degradation and distaste, it was all still there.
Sebastian ripped a piece off one of the blank sheets in his notebook and then ripped that piece in half.
Thank god that oblivious tech had come in when he had.
Sebastian ripped his half into fourths and then shredded one of the fourths into eighths.
Sebastian had been about to drop to his knees. Would have already been on his knees if Hess had given him the space to get there. Anything to give Hess what he’d wanted in that moment.
Touch me.
The sixteenths were too small for Sebastian to rip any further, so he started in on his second half.
Did he have any sense of pride at all?
Halves into fourths.
Was he that goddamn desperate for Hess’s approval?
Fourths into eighths.
To yearn for a man who treated him like that?
Eighths into sixteenths.
And Hess had shoved him away like embarrassing trash the second someone had walked in. He could still feel the dull pain of the metal hitting his back and the much sharper pain of reality crashing back in.
Sebastian gathered up his little pile of confetti, crushed it in his palm, couldn’t find the trash compartment, and then threw it into a corner without looking very hard.
One of the guard ships cruised past Orin at a fifteen-degree angle from Sebastian’s position. Sebastian marked it down and then looked up the patrol routes he’d already marked. Finally, a repetition.
Hopefully it was the beginning of a pattern and Sebastian wouldn’t be here for two days waiting for an opportunity. He pulled a ration bar from his pack more for something to do than because he was particularly hungry. Stopping this gas might be important, but the longer he was here, the less likely Kaston would make it past the first assault.
And Sebastian really wanted to make sure Kaston made it past the first assault.
Another half a day and a few ration bars later, and Sebastian was pretty sure he’d identified the pattern, and—more importantly—a hole in their surveillance that he could slip through. He didn’t dwell on what could have happened back in Tava during the twelve hours he’d sat behind Orin’s moon. It was too dangerous to broadcast a signal to ask someone, and even reading a signal could pop him on some surveillance systems.
He’d seen a small freight ship leave the planet during his surveillance as well, and there was nothing he could do but hope it hadn’t already been laden with fear gas.
He had a job, and all he could do was do it.
Sebastian found a hatch to the exhaust pipe of the ship and tossed his patrol notes into it, along with the ration bar wrappers and anything else that could too easily give away his aim or his origin. They would burn away to nothing and give nothing away about him. Not that the planet didn’t know who its main enemy was at the moment.
He tucked the data strip Joan had procured for him into a front pocket on his jacket, the most easily accessible to someone not in his current body, and checked the keenness of the knife hanging on his hip. Then settled into the pilot’s seat to wait for his opening.
