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Sebastian grabbed Leon’s shoulder, and his voice came out disconcertingly strained. “Leon.”
Leon reached out and covered Sebastian’s hand with his own. Then he looked at Garrett, his jaw firm and his dark eyes unreadable, assessing, thinking.
But Garrett didn’t have time for him to think. He started toward the door. “I have to get down there.”
Hzir’s sharp voice stopped him. “You’ll be useless by yourself.”
“You don’t know me.” Garrett threw a snarl over his shoulder, but doubt still stayed his feet.
He had guns, and he had a ship fueled up and waiting now, and he had a deeper knowledge of those mines than probably anyone left in Tava. But all that hadn’t been enough to save Maxwell last time.
“I’m not here on a social call. I’m here for official permission.” Hzir turned away from Garrett and took a step toward Leon. The hologram over his forearm morphed to show a shining Qeshian transport zooming along a dotted line that wound around the system’s sun, past Carta, and down to Tava. “We have a special forces team already dispatched. We only need your permission to land.”
Sebastian waved a hand through the hologram with a scoff before Leon could even reply. “Our permission and another twenty hours. They’ll all be long gone by the time your men break into the atmosphere.”
“And our sources say you’ll all be dead if you get down there any quicker,” Hzir snapped, and the two qesh behind him shifted from foot to foot. “You barely have fuel for your ships or ammo for your guns. Most of your men have deserted, and let’s be honest, you were hardly the most formidable fighting force before all of that.”
“Fuck you.” Sebastian snarled and spat and would have stepped into Hzir’s face if Leon hadn’t put a hand on his chest to hold him back.
Hzir just lifted his chin. “And you’ve lost the Klah’Eel. You are friendless, and you need us.”
“No.” Garrett shook his head slowly. “No, Leon, we’re not.”
Leon looked at Garrett with an apology in his dark eyes. “We are, Garrett.”
But Garrett shook his head more violently. “We’re not. Patrick is still here.”
“In technicality only.” Leon shook his head. “The Klah’Eel have officially rescinded any aid.”
“But Patrick hasn’t!” Garrett clenched his fists. He wanted to grab Leon and shake him, Qeshian recon team be damned. Didn’t he understand?
“And he’s already leaving.” Sebastian stepped between them and planted a palm in the center of Leon’s chest to hold him back. “Garrett, go now.”
Garrett didn’t need to be told twice, turning on a heel and running for the door.
He heard Leon’s frustrated exasperation behind him.
“Sebastian!”
“Leon…” And then Sebastian’s stubborn response, but the door slammed shut on anything Sebastian was going to say.
Garrett trusted Sebastian to handle Leon. And he trusted Leon to come around. It wasn’t that Leon didn’t want to save Maxwell, it was that he had a thousand geopolitical forces to balance on a knife’s edge that Garrett didn’t even understand. But that wasn’t his concern. His only concern was Maxwell—betrayed and hurt and taken and needing him.
He saw the Klah’Eel ships on the far end of the tarmac—still big and imposing but no longer gleaming due to the insidiously corrosive effects of Carta’s salt air. Klah’Eel milled about, loading boxes and bags onto their ships, and the one comparatively small human stuck out. Patrick stood off the side with a straight back and a proud bearing despite the fact that he was returning home in disgrace.
Garrett slowed his run to a decisive stride as he got close. A klah’eel saw him and gestured at him to Patrick, and Patrick looked over his shoulder. Once he saw Garrett, he scowled with undisguised exasperation and dislike and turned his broad back on him.
“Here to gloat, Twal?” Patrick called once Garrett got within earshot, not even turning to face him. “Here we are, packing our bags, just like you always wanted.” Patrick lifted his hand over his shoulder and flicked his wrist in a dismissal. “Congratulations.”
Garrett stopped an arm’s length away and tried to swallow down the emotion in his throat, but even so, his voice came out thick with it. “I’m not here to gloat.”
Patrick stiffened and turned, the dislike on his face already morphed into concern as he looked Garrett up and down. “What’s happened?”
Guilt and relief tangled in Garrett’s chest and made his limbs heavy. Patrick looked ready to spring into action just from Garrett’s tone and expression, and Garrett had never done a thing to deserve it. He had ignored every indication of Patrick’s honor and treated him accordingly. And now it was exactly that honor that Garrett had to rely on.
“Twal.” Patrick prompted as he turned to face him completely, and the klah’eel milling about their ship paused as they caught sight of their leader’s body language.
Garrett didn’t know where to begin, and so what came out of his mouth was just the thing that was eating at his chest. “Buck took Maxwell.”
