Beneath the Storm

A mercenary who buried her real name thirty years ago.

Fated Stars Book 2

Brellen Storm takes contracts. She doesn't ask questions, she doesn't make attachments, and she has spent thirty years being very, very good at staying out of other people's wars.

Then the war finds her anyway.

One job — simple extraction, clean money, no complications — drops her into the middle of a government crackdown, a rebellion that's been building for a century, and a senator named Khol Tavish who is quietly trying to bring down a Chancellor from the inside. 

She doesn't need his politics. She doesn't need his history. She definitely doesn't need the way his voice has been doing something to her memory since the moment they met.

She just needed the contract to be simple.

It wasn't.

series order

Fated Stars

1. Below the Current
2. Beneath the Storm
3. Beyond the Black

excerpt

Hadyn knocked at the ninth hour exactly.

Brellen Storm had the implants back in, the arm covered by her sleeve, the assembled quality of Brellen Storm present and professional.

Hadyn was carrying two cups of caffe. He had always found the good caffe place in whatever city they were in within approximately four hours of arrival. So, no matter what the events of the job gave, there was always good.

Scratch that, superb, caffe at the ready.

"The client sent an update," he said, handing her a cup without asking if she wanted it.

The fact that she already had her hand out to accept was inconsequential. "What kind of update?"

"The kind that means the debrief has become a briefing." He came in and sat in the chair by the window, which was his chair in whatever room they were in — he had a relationship with windows, a preference for having the exterior in his sightline. "They have another job."

"Already."

"Already. It's connected to the last one — the chip we retrieved had information that opened a new thread. They want to follow it."

She drank her caffe. It was good. The soothing flavor that she needed today. Last night, she had not slept well. She didn’t mention the exhaustion. She didn’t have to. He knew. Neither of them was getting any younger.

Still, there were jobs to do. "What kind of thread?"

"A person," he said. "Being held. Someone the Chancellor's people took approximately three weeks ago. The chip had the location."

"An extraction."

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. Extractions were different from document retrieval. More variables, more exposure, more that could go wrong in ways that document retrieval did not go wrong. She and Hadyn were capable of extractions — had done them before, would do them again — but they required more preparation and more resources than she had available.

"Who's the client?" she asked.

"The network contact is the same," Hadyn said. "But this one has a new principal. Someone with political cover, apparently. The kind that could be useful if something goes sideways."

She raised her eyebrow. "Political cover." That could mean a lot of things, here on Alcor. The whole planet was a place filled with politics.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. Of course, she also thought they would be leaving today, too. Off to another world. Maybe even get out of the Alpha Prime system all together.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

“Who is it?” she asked, sipping on her caffe.

"A senator," he said. "Someone who's been building a case against the Chancellor for years. He has resources we don't. We have capabilities he doesn't." Hadyn looked at her with the expression he used when he had already assessed a situation and was waiting for her to catch up. "Our contact thinks the combination is worth the complication."

Do they now, Storm thought to herself. "What's the scientist's name?"

He looked at his notes. "Mekkans," he said. "Davan Mekkans."

She set down her caffe.

The name was thirty years old, and she had not said it aloud in all of them, but it had never left. It sat in her the way the vision sat in her — not forgotten, not examined, simply present. The weight of something she had learned to carry by not looking at it directly.

"All right," she said. Her voice came out even, which was what she needed it to do. "Set up the meeting."

Hadyn looked at her for a moment before he reached for his comm unit. She did not look back. She looked at the city outside the window and kept her hands still and let the name settle into the room like it had always been there.

Because it had.

She’d just never told anyone about him.

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