Polaris Rising (Consortium Rebellion, #1)(95)

I signed the contract and sent it to Father, along with a note that I would arrive tomorrow, barring any trouble. Postponing my departure would just make it harder. Besides, the sooner I left, the sooner I could return.

I found Loch on the flight deck, going through the maintenance records for the ship. “Find anything interesting?” I asked.

“Just ensuring everything is ready for you,” he said. “I know it’s only one jump, but I won’t be there if anything goes wrong. It’s making me crazy.”

I bent down and pressed a kiss to his neck. “How about I distract you?”

He made a sound low in his chest. “I could be persuaded,” he said.

I swung his chair away from the console and straddled his lap, facing him. Then, with a grin, I proceeded to show him just how persuasive I could be.





Chapter 26




The next morning I found Loch back on the flight deck, staring moodily into a steaming cup of coffee. As far as I could tell, neither of us had slept well.

Loch met my gaze and his jaw clenched. He looked like a man getting ready to impart bad news. Nervousness settled into my belly as I imagined what he was going to say. Had he decided I was too much trouble for a relationship after all? What if this was truly goodbye?

“I’m going with you,” he said, his voice hard.

I blinked, sure I’d heard him wrong.

“If you won’t take me on Polaris, I’ll follow on my own. But either way, I’m going with you. I know it’s not safe and I don’t care.”

Relief and joy surprised a laugh out of me. “Okay,” I said.

Now he was the one who looked blindsided. “You’re going to agree, just like that?”

“Yes. In fact, I was going to ask you to come. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I spent the night thinking. I have a plan, but it’s dangerous.”

His smirk was sharp enough to cut. “I’m dangerous,” he said. “It’s time the Consortium figured that out firsthand.”

I shook my head. “If you go in as a threat, they’ll treat you like one and eliminate you. This is my area of expertise. You have to be willing to trust me and follow my lead, even when it seems what I’m doing is counterintuitive.”

I held my breath as his eyes raked over my face. Finally, he sighed and nodded. “I’ll defer to your expertise. But if things get dicey, I’ll get us out by whatever means necessary. Let’s hear your plan.”

“I’ll bring you with me as my bodyguard. Thanks to the contract with Father, I can get you diplomatic immunity. It won’t prevent the other Houses from attempting to capture you if they realize who you truly are, but it will give you some cover. Do you have a secondary identity chip and a clean identity?”

Loch nodded. “I contacted Rhys this morning to make sure it was still good.”

“That will make things easier. I’m going to have to let my sister Bianca know your real identity because I need her help. We’ll use your secondary identity for everyone else.” I sighed. “It’s still going to be risky. It would be much safer for you to stay here.”

“I’m going. And going as your bodyguard is a lot less risky than sneaking in, which was my other plan.”

I stared. “You’re kidding, right?”

His grin did not reassure me.



I sent Bianca a priority message while we waited for a jump point. I’d need her help as soon as I landed, so it was better to give her at least a little warning. Loch had clipped into the navigator’s chair while I wrote the message. I slid into the captain’s chair and tried to ignore my nerves.

After we received the jump point, I triggered the hangar’s roof door to open, then let Polaris take off under autopilot. The route to Earth was already programmed.

I was going home.

The thought didn’t fill me with the warmth I thought it would. I felt vaguely uneasy. I’d changed a lot in the last two years. I wasn’t as naive or trusting, and while I was still loyal to House von Hasenberg, I’d lost the rose-colored glasses. I wasn’t sure my family would appreciate the changes, especially when they arrived along with a convicted murderer/bodyguard and a lot of uncomfortable questions about the Genesis Project.

APD Zero dropped away and the sky opened up. As soon as we’d cleared the atmosphere and put enough distance between us and the other ships in the area, the FTL kicked in and we jumped.

I hadn’t swapped out the alcubium, so this was a conventional FTL jump. I kept an eye on the systems as we popped out the other side, but the time in Sedition meant the drive had had plenty of time to cool down. The ship slid neatly back into normal space and Earth glowed blue in front of us.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Loch asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. It was hard to imagine that the entirety of the Consortium’s vast power flowed from this little sphere of blue and green.

Because of its importance, everything within a light-year of Earth was neutral territory. That neutrality was fiercely defended by the most seasoned of the RCDF forces. No matter what happened between Houses out in the greater universe, Earth remained peaceful.

That meant I had a good chance of seeing Richard in person at the next Consortium event, and I couldn’t even punch him in his pretty face. And I had no idea how I was going to prevent Loch from going after him.