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  It was nice to have a light-hearted moment before they tried to apprehend three violent criminals who had over a dozen murders between them. As Sector Guard assignments went, she sort of preferred sneaking into a Raider stronghold. It was far less scary.

  The Arrow set down gently on the unnamed world. They had chosen to come in using the stealth mode and as close to the multiple tracking implants that the prisoners had.

  The implants were moving slightly, so it was obvious that the prisoners either did not know about or had not had a chance to remove the trackers.

  Inside her shielded ship, Winder did a final check on her supplies. She had three pairs of restraints, a full complement of threads and both a stunner and a dart gun. Archer had his talent and an intense focus that she had not seen before.

  "I don't want you out of my sight."

  "We are going in with our cloaks on, so I will be invisible."

  "Don't get smart with me. You know what I mean." He scowled at her and gave her a quick kiss on her forehead.

  "Fine. I know what you mean. I will stay close." She let her face take on a serious expression and he accepted it.

  She really didn't want to tell him that her instincts were clamouring for her to race toward the small, primitive village on the hill. He was the senior Guardsman and she needed to follow his lead.

  "We should start at the village. If they needed supplies, they would have run in to steal it from the inhabitants." She blurted the words out before she even had a chance to second guess her impulse.

  "We will. That is the source of the strongest signal." He gave her a solemn look. "Are you ready?"

  "No, but let's get this over with." She straightened her shoulders and activated the stealth mode on her suit. Archer did the same and soon, they were on their way to apprehend or kill three men who had no business being on this world.

  Keeping to silence, they skirted the edge of the village, watching the locals for signs that the targets were nearby. The signs became obvious when villagers scuttled from one side of the central oval to the other, holding their children tightly to them.

  An almost imperceptible hum reached her ears and Winder noted that Archer had not only shaped his weapon, but it had a bolt ready to fire.

  With a jolt, she came to the realization that her hands had kept busy while she had been walking. She had a disk of fibre six inches in diameter and with the metal of the thread she had used, it could quickly achieve lethal intent.

  Two of their targets were sitting with their backs to the wall, the third had a village woman by the neck and a blaster pressed against her chest. There was a stack of dead villagers nearby and the sobbing of family members explained the lack of violence aimed at the interlopers. Attack the men in a disordered manner and you or your loved one would end up dead.

  Winder tapped Archer's arm and indicated that she would take the man with the gun. His hand on her forearm registered his concern, but she insisted with a more violent tap.

  A child nearby looked directly at her, his features twisted in confusion. Winder held her breath and when he looked away, she let her breath out softly.

  Archer touched her arm and counted down their movement. When he reached one, she surged toward the man holding the woman hostage and used her disk to slice his forearm in two.

  The hand holding the blaster dropped to the ground, he swung around, spraying blood on everyone in his vicinity and when she was outlined by the blood, he bellowed and jumped at her, striking out.

  Winder ducked, shifted, popped the climbing claws from her fingertips and slashed at his knees.

  She felt the impact of his fist on her shoulder, but just as suddenly as he attacked her, he was gone.

  The villagers swarmed him. Their lean, elegant bodies blocked him from her sight as they attacked him with every implement that they could find.

  Winder turned off her now-useless stealth shield and looked around for Archer. The other two escaped prisoners were getting the same treatment from the locals.

  Archer appeared at her side and wrapped an arm around her waist. "We had best remove ourselves from the village until they complete their venting. We don't want them turning on us."

  "They are rather involved in retribution. You have a point." She let him lead the way out of the massacre.

  The villagers who had been cowering in their homes streamed forward as if summoned. They joined the group pounding the prisoners into a fine paste and Winder fought nausea.

  "Do we have to take the bodies back?"

  "No, we only need to confirm that they are dead. Our suits have recorders for this sort of purpose. Are you all right?"

  "I haven't seen this kind of direct violence before, let alone participated in it."

  "You cut his arm off."

  "To disarm him." She blushed and a wry smile came over her. "Literally, I suppose."

  Archer took her by the arms and looked down into her eyes. "You behaved in an appropriate manner to the threat posed to innocents around you. That is our duty as Guardsmen."

  She nodded and her urge to cry receded. "Right. Duty. Put on the uniform and do a job. That's the idea."

  They stood together, watching the villagers slowly leave the area where they had done Archer's and Winder's job for them. Blood spattered them, several were sobbing, but a feeling of relief in their attitudes was palpable. Groups of folk carried out their dead, but they had a sense of peace that replaced the earlier panic.

  An elder walked up to them. "Are you here to try and enslave us as well?"

  Archer kept his arm around Winder in a non-threatening position. "No, we were here to remove them from your world, but you have done this for us. We need only see the bodies and we can leave you to burn or discard them as you will."

  The elder nodded and accompanied them inside the blood-spattered room. Winder winced at the tangled mess of what had been her blade. Sometime during its use, it had reverted to its base component. It hadn't been in time to keep the murderer from being hacked to pieces, but it had kept those pieces from getting too small.

  Archer confirmed the smeared paste that was the two other prisoners and he retrieved their trackers.

  Winder took the hint and located one of the trackers, wiping it off on the blood-soaked clothing.

  A small hand touched her on the shoulder. It was the child who had heard her before the carnage started. He offered her a bowl of water and a series of towels, gesturing to her uniform.

  She quickly rinsed off the tracker and stowed it in her belt before starting to sponge away the blood. "Thank you."

  "Why were you clear?" His stern expression was incongruous on such a delicate body.

  He had seen her. She continued to remove the stain. "We didn't want the men to see us. We tracked them here and were sent to take them away from you. They should never have been here."

  "We knew that, but we could not make them understand that they did not belong here. They used their weapon and started to hurt people."

  As she stared into his huge purple eyes, she felt him touching her mind. He surged into her thoughts and she cried out. Her thoughts blurred and she saw the flare of the bio-light scattered by one of Archer's arrows. The pain felt by the child ran into her own thoughts and she heard Archer's cry.

  Chapter Ten

  A light floral scent replaced the smell of blood and the moment that she sat up, Archer was at her side. "I am sorry, Winder. I didn't realize what he was doing."

  The child in question was sitting at the foot of her bed. "I am sorry as well, madam. I did not appreciate the amount of effort you engaged in just to be able to stand upright. I just wanted to understand your weapon."

  She rubbed her forehead. "It wasn't a weapon. It was a tool that I used as a weapon. As soon as I let the energy dissipate, it became its original form. How is it that you speak Alliance Common?"

  The elder came in and nodded to her with a smile, as if happy to see her sitting up. "We are a Wekali colony. We came here to engage
in a more simple way of life and for the most part, it has been successful."

  "I am sorry for this disruption in your lives. Other lives were lost when these men escaped and we were dispatched as soon as the details were known." She swung her legs out of the bed and smiled at her clean uniform.

  "Archer informed us of this. Rysus was simply trying to find out what exactly you were and how you did what you did. While our news reports have told us of the Sector Guard, we never expected to need them." The elder ruffled the feathers on the young boy's head.

  Archer helped her to her feet and kept an arm around her waist for support. "We didn't even know that you were here until we landed."

  "That is the way we like it. We are a very private colony." The elder was serious.

  Winder nodded and started to walk toward the door. "We didn't see you, you didn't see us. I will explain everything that is needed without mention of you."

  Archer didn't contradict her. He simply lifted her into his arms and walked out of the village and toward the Arrow. He did ask her one thing, "You will tell me what is wrong?"

  She pressed her lips to his neck and whispered, "Oh, yes. Just get us out of here."

  The village had seen them off and the moment that the ship was clear and she had completed internal scans, she breathed a little easier.

  Archer asked again, "What the hell was that about? Those Wekali were friendly."

  "And every one of them was a war criminal by Wekali standards."

  He blinked in shock, his pretty features twisting. "What?"

  "War criminals. Each person in that village has access to a homicidal rage that is far out of their planet's acceptable tolerances. A few have talents, but the prisoners were not susceptible to mental manipulation. They need to remain unknown and undetected by their governments in order to remain alive."

  "How do you know that?"

  "While Rysus was picking my brain, I picked his in reflex. How hard did you hit him?" She let herself smile as they made their way out of the atmosphere.

  "It was a glancing blow. He was up in a matter of seconds, but your information does explain the crowd that surrounded me until he stood up again." He cocked his head. "Do you really think they would have killed me?"

  "If Rysus hadn't stood up right away? If he had been dead and not injured and they thought they had the physical or psychic advantage? Yes."

  The rest of their trip was fairly quiet. They dropped off the trackers and confirmed the death of the prisoners at the facility before returning to Station 13.

  It was a far more solemn return than their light-hearted dispatch. They quietly returned to medical for their post-assignment checkups.

  Winder's mind showed signs of psychic interference. Archer was fine.

  Dirven scowled at Neva as she sat in the monitoring chair. "What the hell happened to your mind? There are blacked-out segments where the memories were invaded."

  "I ran into a sensitive where we found the fugitives. He wanted to ascertain my motivation, so he broke into my thoughts."

  "He was untrained."

  "Yes. That is true. It was his impulse that did the damage." She raised a hand to rub at her forehead, smiling over Dirven's shoulder to the worried Brav.

  "It isn't anything that you won't recover from, but try not to think too much for a few days." He patted her on the shoulder and moved the scanner out of the way.

  She got to her feet and walked with Archer to Haunt's offices. The debriefing was mercifully short. Haunt must have seen something in their eyes, because she didn't pursue the details of death.

  Winder declared that her opponent had bled out. Archer's died of reaction to the bio-bolts fired from his bow.

  "Okay, you two. Get some rest. You both look like hell." Haunt dismissed them with a wave of her hand and returned to her files.

  With relief, they left their commander's office and made their way to their quarters. The moment she was behind closed doors, Neva removed her uniform and turned to help Archer with his.

  She was shaking by the time they came together, but their coupling had nothing to do with passion and everything to do with seeking comfort from their partner.

  When they embraced sleep, they were curled together, clinging to each other tightly to hold away the memories of the day.

  * * * *

  Haunt appeared in medical and grabbed Dirven by the arm, hauling him into his office. "What was on those scans?"

  He looked down at her and she grabbed his shoulders, pulling herself up so that they were face to face. Her feet hovered several inches above the floor, but she had to know what was going on.

  "I haven't completed the report, but did you want a highlight?"

  "Give me what you have."

  "Tease."

  "This is serious, Dirven. They are both in shock. What did they see that they didn't tell me about?"

  He nodded and shifted from her bantering husband to the base physician. He ran through the scans and winced. "Whatever happened to the prisoners was far more violent than a simple slice of a major vein. Both of their uniforms were stained with matter from all three fugitives as well as bits of Wekali."

  "That can't be right. Wekali are pacifists who never leave their home world."

  "Well, they have at least nine sources of Wekali DNA, some of which shows flickers of talents."

  Ice spilled through her veins as her mind drew a picture for her. "Dirven, I want you to declare a global contaminant on that world and throw up every kind of warning satellite that you can find. Dangerous biologicals, the works." Haunt used her code to access the Alliance Archive. What she read brought bile to her throat. "Have freaking bombs around that world if you have to but keep everyone away. It is no longer accessible to the Sector Guard."

  Dirven looked into her face for a moment and immediately started the procedure for interdicting the seemingly innocuous, nameless world. "I am declaring that the dead fugitives were infected with a deadly plague. The first of the satellites will be there within the week."

  She sighed as she was able to breathe a little easier. "Thank you."

  "Will you explain what that was all about?"

  She took a position behind his desk and occupied his chair. "If Winder has any side effects, you will need to treat them, so okay. Sit."

  He sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms.

  Haunt rubbed the bridge of her nose. "The Wekali are a nice and sedate race. They like it that way. Two generations ago, a geneticist tried to enhance their intelligence in order to create a better citizen. They got smarter, but they also got more violent. This violence took on physical, emotional and sexual manifestations. The Wekali tried to reason with this new sub-species suddenly in their midst, but unable to remain under the control of their government, the new breed decided to leave their world.

  "What happened next is not known, but it was assumed that the new breed had destroyed itself en route. Rumours of rape, cannibalism and infighting abounded. The new breed of Wekali disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and it was thought that they were a small blip in history.

  "Archer and Winder saw behaviour that burned their souls today. How open does a body have to be before you can simply lift out the trackers?" She raised one brow at Dirven.

  "Depending on where they are installed, fairly small."

  "Winder managed to pick the tracker out of the body without using a knife. My guess is the Wekali were finally spurred into action by the arrival of reinforcements. Their first instincts are passive, their deliberate actions are not."

  Dirven winced. "Do you think that they need counselling?"

  "I know that they will need counselling. I also know that we don't have a Minder on staff…yet."

  Dirven grinned. "You are planning to get one on board?"

  "She is being convinced as we speak. A charming Wyoran who knows how to work for a living."

  "So, that is where Criton has gone. I did wonder."

  "He needs a partner who wi
ll make him want to return to base."

  Dirven's brows knit. "How will that work? She can't be a counsellor if she is off with her partner."

  "She can if she can operate remote therapies. It is one of her most desirable skills. If he doesn't blow this, our contract will be with one of the longest-range telepaths ever born."

  Dirven whistled low and long, a reflex that Kaylee had taught him over long nights and quiet days when they had been the only two occupants of Station 13.

  Despite her worry over Neva and Brav, Kaylee had a mate and he was feeling a little neglected. She could see the flicker in his eyes as they talked about other partners and finding mates.

  She rose to her feet, shoved him into his chair and snuggled into his lap. His body relaxed under her, a fine tension that someone who didn't know him as she did would never have seen. She simply sat with her focus on keeping her body tangible, her arms around his barrel chest and her face against his neck, breathing in his scent.

  When he bent to scent her as well, the tension was gone. As Dirven's lips started to whisper silent words against her neck, she smiled and revelled in having her husband with her on the station and not in harm's way. She had no doubt that he could battle as well as any warrior out there, but he was hers and she wanted him safe. As his fingers parted the opening of her uniform, she had to admit something else to herself, she just wanted him and she had to keep reminding herself to let it show.

  * * * *

  Neva had just rolled astride her partner when Haunt floated up through the floor, saw what they were doing and quickly slapped her hand over her eyes.

  "I have an assignment for you."

  Neva sighed and dismounted from Brav. He held the sheet over them both and watched Haunt.

  "What's the assignment?"

  Haunt kept her hand in place but spoke matter-of-factly. "We need you to take some hybrid plants from the Alliance Botany Research Station and bring them here to Balen."

  Archer looked at her suspiciously. "That seems rather simple for a Sector Guard assignment."

  "The plants each have the value of a small mining world. They have the ability to filter and balance any environment they are placed in. Balen has volunteered to allow a real-world application. The Raiders have tried four times to obtain them, so this is not a fluff assignment. You will need stealth and you will need to be on your guard. The details are waiting for you in the Arrow. Get your uniforms on. Oh, Winder, Fixer sent a spare uniform for you. It's in the wardrobe. Archer, yours is in your room."