Before the Present Day

“Hawthorne! Watch your ass!”

The warning came far too late to be of much use. One moment, Alex was firing his pulse rifle at the soldiers of the rival baron, mowing down his opposition. In the next, he heard the crack right above him as a pulse of energy destroyed one of the beams supporting the roof of the orbital ring.

Alex couldn’t move quickly enough to avoid the majority of the weight of the beam as it fell directly on his back, crippling him and knocking him nearly unconscious.

From that point in time, his fighting was over. Though Alex knew the battle was winding down, he was helpless to do anything to support it. His head was spinning, his body was aching, and there was no way he could get this beam off his back on his own.

Time lost meaning. He drifted in and out of consciousness for the next hour, especially as the fighting stopped and clean-up efforts began.

It was then that he heard the sounds of talking around him as the beam lifted off his back.

“Holy hell, Hawthorne is still alive!”

“Are you sure about that? Check his pulse!”

“I can see he’s breathing.”

“Check his pulse anyway.”

Alex felt two cold fingers press against his neck for several moments before they pulled away again.

“Like I said, he’s still breathing.”

“How in the world could anyone survive that? That beam must weigh nearly a metric ton! There’s no way anyone else could have taken that blow and still be alive.”

“He’s wounded gravely though. I’m almost certain his back is shattered. We need to get him to one of the doctors.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t dash out of the way. I’ve never seen a man that moves as fast as he does!”

That was when Alex heard a voice that he recognized—one that he would never be able to forget.

“He might have survived this one,” said Xander, crouching down to look at Alex’s broken body. “But he’s human after all. Maybe he won’t survive the next one.”

His tone made the hairs on Alex’s neck stand up. From there, he lost all consciousness as his body was hoisted onto the medical platform.

Present Day

“Hello, Hawthorne. Fancy seeing you here of all places.”

Alex froze in his tracks before slowly turning to see a group of men behind him. They were led by Grant Lido, who Alex recognized as being Serrano’s second-in-command. Lido was a brutish sort of man, one that Alex would have avoided in his personal life.

But unfortunately, he was also the type that he rubbed shoulders with when serving in the Orbital Wars.

“What do you want?” asked Alex, counting the number of men behind Lido. Three additional men for four total.

Not great odds by any stretch of the imagination.

Lido jerked his head back to Barnes’ office. “What a poor thing that happened to Barnes, wasn’t it?” he joked. “Would you happen to know anything about it?”

“From the sounds of it, you know all about it,” said Alex. “Let me guess—your handiwork?”

Lido sneered and then shrugged. “Perhaps. There are some here that would say he had it coming. Like a few other men I know.”

“The only men I know that have something coming for them are you and Serrano,” said Alex before nodding to the men behind him. “Not to mention your boyfriends behind you.”

Lido grunted as one of his men started cracking his knuckles.

“You know, it’s almost not honorable to kill a man when it’s only four against one,” said Lido. “But in this case, I’ll consider it a real pleasure when you can’t mouth off anymore.”

At that moment, Lido gestured to his men. “Restrain him. I want him to feel powerless.”

The three men wasted no time in going after Alex. They spread out, trying to use their combined size to intimidate him but Alex was used to this kind of confrontation. He regularly had to deal with multiple threats while serving in the Orbital Wars, and as the men closed in on him, his training kicked in.

His best weapon was the size and strength of his body, coupled with his speed. The first man never expected the quick jab to the face, breaking his nose with one punch. He was soon squirting blood all over the place as the other two men attempted to rush Alex, one landing a blow against Alex’s chest while the other wrapped his arms around Alex’s torso.

What they didn’t anticipate was that Alex was more than a match for their combined strength. Using his feet, he kicked off the man in front of him and pushed back, landing directly on top of the man behind him. Using his elbow, he jammed it hard against the mouth of the man, knocking out two teeth in the process.

“Goddamnit, I said to get him!” raged Lido, watching two of his men being put out of action.

The last man was too intimidated to fight on his own. Once he saw no help was coming from Lido, he turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. It was a rather anticlimactic end to the first round of fighting but at least Alex had evened out the odds.

Now it was only Lido in front of him.

“You’re a dead man,” said Lido, cracking his neck and advancing on Alex. “When this is all over, you’re going to wish you stayed on Earth.”

“Stop stalling and fight me,” growled Alex. “I hope you have more skill than your boys here. Or this is going to be a quick fight.”

Lido sneered and pulled a knife out of his pocket. “Who needs skill when you have weapons?”

At that moment, Alex’s hand drifted to his belt, finding his sheath empty. He hadn’t thought to pack his knife on the visit to see Barnes and he was already regretting the decision.

Lido noticed Alex’s movement and grinned. “Let’s see if we can poke a few holes in you.”

Lido lunged forward, using his knife in one hand to stab at Alex while using his other fist to block any blows. Lido at least seemed better prepared for hand-to-hand combat than his friends, and he even managed to land several blows against Alex’s chest, one of which drew blood.

“Big men always bleed,” said Lido, overconfident about his strikes. “You look just like Truman did before he died. He thought he was hot shit too.”

“I’m sure he didn’t think of this.”

Alex moved too quickly for Lido, using his leg to sweep the other man from his feet. Lido crashed against the floor, disorienting him enough to allow Alex to close in.

Alex grabbed the front of Lido’s suit and began to smash his face with his fist. One, two, three powerful jabs were enough to knock the sense out of him. Alex would have gotten a fourth bash in if the alarm system for the entire ship not gone off.

“System Alert. Please return to your cabins at once. All colonists please return to your cabins.”

Anyone that had been watching Alex and Lido fight now beat a hastily retreat as the ship’s alarm continued to blare. Even Lido didn’t seem to want to stick around, slipping out from under Alex and wiping the blood from his face.

“This isn’t over,” he growled at Alex. “You’ll be the first to die when we take over this ship. That’s a promise, Hawthorne!”

Just like that, Grant Lido was gone, as were the rest of his minions. With the alarm still blaring, Alex thought it wise to get back to his cabin. He didn’t know yet what had triggered the alarm but it could have been the discovery of Doctor Barnes’ body.

Once inside his cabin, he had quite a shock. Not only did he have a visitor but it was who it was that was the most surprising.

Jenna had returned. And she was now looking over his belongings in the cabin.

Alex’s entry surprised her and she jumped away, looking at his face with a mostly unreadable expression.

“You’re back,” said Alex flatly, staring at the beautiful blonde.

Jenna crossed her arms in front of her impressive chest. “I was told I had to move into your cabin. So here I am.”

Her tone was one of extreme annoyance, just like it had been earlier. Alex found himself wondering again why she’d even bothered to sign up for the program.

That was before Jenna did something that surprised him further.

She looked at his colony suit, seeing where the top had been punctured by Lido’s knife. The wound was bloody and Jenna was quickly moving forward to inspect it further.

“You’re hurt,” she said, putting her hand against the wound. “What happened to you?”

“Just a little misunderstanding,” said Alex, wincing once she touched the wound.

Jenna gave him a long look. “A misunderstanding that involves a cut with something sharp? Like a knife?”

At this point, Alex didn’t know how much he could trust her. He decided to err on the side of caution.

“Like I said, just a misunderstanding.”

“Men,” she grumbled under her breath. “You’re still bleeding. Take off your top.”

“I can take care of myself,” said Alex, earning a heavy response from her.

“With your luck, you’ll probably happen into another misunderstanding,” she said sarcastically. “Now are you going to do what I said or am I going to have to take this off of you?”

A smile started on Alex’s face, only because he was a head taller than Jenna and more than double her weight. There was nothing she could do to him if he didn’t want it done, but he took off his top willingly. She said nothing once his scarred chest was exposed to her, but he was pleased when he noticed she seemed to be taking several long looks at him in secret. She grabbed some ointment from the cabin’s first aid kit and began to apply it to the wound.

“Ah,” said Alex, feeling the burning sting of the ointment.

“Sorry,” said Jenna, smiling for the first time. “This stuff is potent but it will close up the wound. I know it’s hard in the short term.”

She was right though. The bleeding stopped almost at once and the sting of the ointment also ended shortly after.

“Were you a nurse or a doctor back on Earth?” he asked. “How did you know what to do?”

“It’s not that hard when you just read the directions on the back of the tube,” said Jenna, keeping her smile.

It was at that point that Alex realized that maybe Jenna wasn’t so bad after all. She barely even knew him, and yet her first instinct had been to tend his wound. Maybe she was here for the right reasons after all?

“Well, I’m glad you’re going to be my companion then,” said Alex. “At least I know you can take care of my wounds once we get on Vesta.”

She recoiled from him like he just called her a slut. The sulky look from this morning reappeared on her face and she crossed her arms again, removing her hands from his chest.

“I’m not going to be any man’s companion,” she said, spitting out the last word like it was a foul-tasting stew. “Least of all yours.”

Her emotions had changed at a drop of a hat, and Alex found himself suddenly back on the defensive.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, watching her march toward the door.

“I don’t care,” she said simply, leaving the room. It was as she was leaving that she nearly barreled into Rick on his way in. He was being followed by his companion, Nikki, and they both stopped to watch Jenna leave.

“Who was that?” asked Rick, watching her stomp away.

“My companion,” replied Alex, shaking his head. “Who seems like a complete wack-job.”

The door closed in the room as Rick and Nikki entered, which also stopped them all from hearing the alarm that was still blaring outside.

“The crew of the ship are saying that Doctor Barnes is dead,” said Rick. “I overheard them on the way back to the cabin. Weren’t you just there?”

Alex nodded. “Someone had killed him just before I arrived. Well, not just any someone. Grant Lido knew about it already, and I have to imagine that Serrano was behind it.”

Rick was already shaking his head. “The crew is going to have their hands full with a man like that. And I’m not sure they can handle him on their own.”

“My thoughts exactly,” replied Alex. “Which is why I’m going to the crew tonight to offer my help.”