Free Moonstruck by Susan Grant Page B

minimum complement required by space regs for a ship this size, you’re good to go. And you do have those numbers. The Unity will depart as soon as all personnel are aboard.”
    “We’re launching…” she confirmed with Zaafran.
    “Now.”
    “Gods,” Rorkken muttered.
    Brit couldn’t have said it better herself.

CHAPTER SIX
    E VERYONE WAS ON BOARD . Launch was imminent. “I damn well want to know who you’ve brought aboard before we break dock with the Ring, Warleader,” Admiral Bandar ranted inside the luxurious new command office Finn would share with her during the voyage. It had direct access to the bridge. That door was now closed. Finn couldn’t help thinking this was Bandar’s best and last chance to kick him and his motley crew off the Unity .
    The terrorist threat hanging over their heads gave her little time to peruse the Pride personnel list he’d loaded on a borrowed data-vis: names, planets of birth, ages, past and present assignments, anything he could get out of them with Zurykk’s help, but Bandar was taking time all the same.
    She sat at her desk and scanned the data-vis with narrowed eyes. If the luck of the gods held, she wouldn’t decide to send one or several of them home once she saw who was on that list. Hells, she wanted to send all of them home, him for sure. That much was obvious.
    Bandar slid her elegant finger down the list, saying nothing. Her dark brows drew together in a frown. “Hadley, leave the warleader and I to confer for a moment.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” The lieutenant walked away and out of earshot.
    Finn folded his arms over his chest and stood before her, facing her across the desk. “Sit, Warleader,” she said, tapping a light pen against her chin as she read.
    “When the smart chairs on this ship stop being stupid, I’ll sit.”
    She lifted those cool blue eyes. “Put in your preferences—hard or soft feel, a quick response, or slower and smoother. Everyone is different. What do you like?”
    Hard and fast or slow and smooth? He swallowed. Gods. In his mind, they were naked and she was breathing those questions in his ear. He caught his thoughts and stopped them, but not before he saw a flash of heat in her eyes chased by alarm and that damned vulnerability again. It got to him every time. And heavens knew what she saw when she looked in his eyes if that’s the reaction he conjured in her.
    Her gaze was back on her gods-be-damned personnel list before he’d let out his breath. There was no denying the sexual pull between them. There was no denying they both found it damned inconvenient.
    “I’ll stand for now,” he said hoarsely, avoiding the chair.
    “As you wish, Warleader,” she responded with equal huskiness.
    He cleared his throat and tried to pretend he wasn’t battling sexual fantasies starring Admiral Stone-Heart.
    “There is an irregularity with a crew member named Bolivarr.”
    His Imperial Wraith. Finn gritted back a sigh. He’d really wanted the man along. His gut told him his knowledge of Drakken and Coalition intelligence would be useful—once the wraith remembered it.
    “Is there no given name?” she queried. “Or is it his surname that is missing?”
    “Bolivarr is his only name, according to him. He was an Imperial Wraith.” It was best to jump right in with the truth. “I found him out cold in the street on Junnapekk Station, a mining world in the Haydes Belt. He’d been stripped naked and beaten. No ID, except for his wraith tattoos. No weapons. I believe he was left for dead. If it wasn’t for the nanomeds in his body, he would be. He’d lost a lot of blood.”
    “You took him, not knowing who he was?”
    “If I didn’t take him, no one else would have. He’d have died. We’d lost a few space-hands in the weeks prior. Outside the injuries, Bolivarr looked strong and in good shape. I figured, if he lived, I could use the extra man.”
    “You list almost nothing between his years at the Imperial Military Academy and