The Unwilling Read online

  The Unwilling

  Strays of Lunar One #1

  C.M. SIMPSON

  Bite his friend—and be branded a criminal—or let his friend die, it’s a decision that has Oliver and Lewis running for their lives—and not just from the Lunar One Justiciars. The job went south, their client wants them to join up or die…and their target is out to get their data back—along with a side of revenge. With bounty hunters on their tails, Oliver and Lewis make for the shelter of lupari territory, but will the space wolves take in two stray weres, or will they turn them over for the bounty on their heads?

  1st Edition

  Copyright © January 5, 2022 C.M. Simpson

  Cover Art & Design © December 21, 2020, Jake at JCaleb Design

  All rights reserved.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. That’s what feeds the author while they write you the next one.

  Dedication

  This is for all those who believed in me enough that, eventually, I had the courage to believe in myself.

  Thank you.

  CONTENTS

  1—Infiltration

  2—Exfiltration

  3—Retrieval

  4—Old Acquaintances

  5—The Transporter

  6—Evasion

  7—Rendezvous

  8—Illusion

  9—Waypoint

  10—Confessions

  11—Adaptation

  12—Domination

  13—Orientation

  14—Revelation

  15—Escalation

  16—Extrication

  17—Cross-Country Flight

  18—A Calculated Risk

  19—Recruitment

  20—Revelations and Escape

  21—Escape Plans Awry

  22—Lewis and the Bounty Hunters

  23—Saving Oliver

  24—Stand-In Alpha

  25—A Hint of Lavender

  26—Lights Out

  27—A Very Messy Extraction

  28—A Short Trip

  29—Flight Transfer

  30—Jumping Ship

  31—Alpha 9

  32—Homecoming

  Author’s Notes

  Other Work by C.M. Simpson

  About C.M. Simpson

  1—Infiltration

  “I got you covered.”

  Lewis breathed a sigh of relief at Oliver’s voice. “Tell me I can open the door, now.”

  “You can open the door, take a step to the right and slide into an emergency locker, and wait forty seconds for the next guards to pass in… Now.”

  Lewis moved, running the dummy pass over the access controls and stepping through the door as Oliver instructed. The door to the emergency locker hissed open as he moved toward it, and he slid inside. The sound it made as it closed had his heart hammering.

  Reminding himself to breathe, Lewis exhaled, making a slow count to forty. As he reached it, the locker door clicked and then re-opened, and Oliver was in his ear, again.

  “Go straight to the end of this corridor, and make a smart left. Take the first door to your right and turn into the second aisle on your left. Our terminal is the third one along.”

  “The one next to the wall?” Lewis asked, not liking the sound of that.

  “Unfortunately, so.”

  Lewis kept moving, doing his best to look like he belonged in this part of the Lunar One complex. In truth, he didn’t, but most of those working here wouldn’t know that. He and Oliver were going for the data held in a closed system, with access authorized from one terminal only—and their time-frame was tight.

  Lewis found it ironic that he, the weakest of the pair, had the most dangerous role to play, but, as Oliver pointed out, he was better at the infiltration side of things. It was what kept them afloat.

  Oliver was good at the tech side, but passing unnoticed? Not so much. The were’s ancestry was clear to anyone raised on the moon, and old prejudices died hard. This company, for example, employed no-one of werewolf blood, but how it found the data it needed to make the differentiation was a mystery.

  Or it had been.

  Lewis reached the end of the corridor, and turned left, raising his head as if reading the designations above each door. It wasn’t hard to pretend he’d almost overshot and take the few steps back to where he was meant to be.

  It was much harder not to laugh as Oliver stumbled through hasty corrections.

  Chill, bro, Lewis explained, I’m just making it look good for the cameras.

  Oliver subsided, as the door opened and Lewis stepped through, scanning the desks until he found his place. How much trouble the real employee was going to step into when he got himself out of the storage compartment and let the company know he’d fallen asleep in a bar was not their concern.

  That lay solely in Lewis getting in and out of the company’s Lunar One premises with the relevant data. What they hadn’t worked out was how their contact had found the location, or why they weren’t retrieving the data themselves—or why they’d insisted there be a were on the team.

  “Is that a problem?” their agent, Charlotte Stamphir, had asked, when she’d called them.

  Her tone of voice had said it had better not be, and Lewis had shrugged.

  “The clients aren’t usually that specific,” he’d explained, “and it would be good to know there was nothing coming to bite us as a result.”

  “Only thing that’s going to come and bite you if you don’t take this job? Is me,” Charlotte had told him. “I need the commission I’ll get when you guys pull it off.”

  She didn’t tell them what she’d need it for, and Lewis didn’t ask. Those who’d found their way onto Lunar One and who stayed there for any length of time had their secrets. Sometimes it was to do with the slowly recovering world below, and sometimes not, but whatever it was, he’d learned it was better not to ask.

  “Promises, promises…” he’d teased, quelling his levity when she scowled.

  “So, you’ll do it?”

  “Yeah. We’ll take the job.”

  Lewis hoped he wasn’t about to regret that decision, as the door opened in front of him.

  Looking around, he noted the setup, surprised to see the work-station aisles were longer than he’d expected and that they contained large lab tables with a variety of equipment. It didn’t take him long to reach the one Oliver said he needed.

  As well as the lab equipment, this one had three small poly-foam boxes set on the in-tray at one end, and a glass-fronted refrigeration unit under the table.

  A quick glance at the front of the unit let him capture a picture of it with his implant, but he noted the tissue samples and blood vials with a twinge of unease. He noted, also, that each work station was surrounded by half walls. It was as if someone had started putting them in cubicles and gotten bored half-way through.

  …Or as if Security wanted the cameras to record what was going on inside each one.

  Lewis pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, glanced down at it, and then made a show of counting the desks along and reading the label on the half-wall at the back of the cubicle he’d chosen. Shifting his features into an expression of relief, he pulled out the chair and used the credentials they’d been given to log in.

  He was pretty sure the client had intended for Oliver to make the run, but both he and Charlotte had agreed that would be disastrous.
There was no way the were would have made it past the foyer without being identified and pulled aside—and this company had a very interesting history when it came to disappearing wolves.

  If Lewis hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was run by cats…except the company’s policy was the same for all shapeshifters. It was something he’d look into, if they got another call dealing with the place, but it also made him wonder why their client had targeted it—and why they’d asked for a were to do the job.

  He hoped they wouldn’t be disappointed in the fact Oliver had been kept strictly off-premises.

  Tell me what I’m looking for Ollie, he instructed inside the implant.

  Open up the registry.

  As he followed Oliver’s directions, Lewis was glad they’d been able to by-pass the security that prevented most communications. If it had been a blanket blocker, they’d have been out of luck, but since certain corporate executives needed to communicate externally, it wasn’t. The set-up was a series of not-so-simple access codes and tests that had taken him and Oliver a week to breach.

  Once that had been done, they’d only had to work out how to get the data out of the building, since the computer operated on an enclosed system.

  “They’ve got to be able to transfer their findings somehow,” Oliver had reasoned, “otherwise it wouldn’t be any use to them.”

  “Unless they run the queries they need on that machine, and copy the findings over,” Lewis suggested.

  “That still means they need a way to get it off the machine, and there aren’t any data ports,” Oliver had pointed out.

  “Short-range transmission?” Lewis asked, and Oliver frowned.

  “To authorized implants, only?” he proposed, and both and he and Lewis had sat back in their seats and thought about it.

  “We need to find the right employee,” they’d said, at the same moment—and then laughed.

  The memory made Lewis smile as worked through the files. It had added yet another week to the operation, but they’d finally tracked down the exec who ran the department and then the guy who worked most closely with it from the next management tier up. Either one of them would have been a likely candidate, so they took both.

  Both men remembered a wild night with some very pretty women, and had an extremely nasty hangover the day after, but neither of them could recall exactly how they’d managed to drink that much, or exactly who with. It wasn’t something they’d mention at work.

  Neither of them recalled their implants being accessed, either, but the downloads had been thorough, and the girls had told Lewis to call them if he needed any explanations. One had even offered to tweak his software—and then hastily clarified she meant the software with the actual coding he’d designed.

  He’d blushed as red as she had.

  Ducking his head to hide the way he blushed at the memory, Lewis continued his search.

  Those, Oliver told him. We need all of them.

  All of them? Lewis stared at the files in disbelief.

  And you need to do it fast. I think someone’s worked out they’ve got an intruder in the system.

  Gotcha, Lewis replied, opening the frequencies he needed and finding the correct command.

  As he hit the button to execute the command, he hoped they were right, and that the terminal really would transmit the files. What if it was set to only transmit completed calculations?

  His worries were brushed aside as the data began to flow, and he made a show of staring at the screen as though deep in concentration. Finding something to do to cover his inactivity was next on the list, so he started going through the terminal’s most recent activities.

  Before long, he had more he needed to add to the upload.

  Hurry! Moments later, Oliver’s transmission had a touch of urgency to it.

  Lewis checked the upload status and felt a twinge of unease. Fifty per cent.

  Give me the camera feeds and map me a way out of here, he instructed.

  Wish I could, bro, but… Oliver’s voice cut off, mid-stream, and Lewis felt his heart go cold.

  The only reason Oliver would break off was if he’d been booted from the system, or if he’d been found and physically stopped, which meant…

  Nothing happened…or not that he and the other employees could see.

  Lewis checked his implant. If Oliver had been discovered, then an implant hack wouldn’t be long to follow. The only question was how long the security measures at Oliver’s end held out…and how fast Lewis could get things done here and get the Hell out.

  He checked the upload and increased the transmission rate, hoping he didn’t trip an alarm by doing so. As he waited, he closed out of the documents he’d been perusing, and got ready to shut down the machine.

  Seventy-five per cent, he thought, and heard the door to the lab area open.

  Low voices reached him, but he didn’t turn around. Instead, he tried to stay as focused on his machine as possible.

  Eighty per cent.

  Soft, curt orders followed.

  Eighty-five, as footsteps started along the main aisle.

  Lewis tried to work out how close they were, as he followed the data stream. If he’d just stuck to the designated files instead of trying to go for the cream…

  Ninety-five, as soft words were followed by a chair scraping back.

  Ninety-eight. Keys rattling and more quiet speech.

  Footsteps.

  The computer chimed, telling him it was done, and Lewis forced himself to stretch as though this was what he’d been waiting on before going on a break. He leaned back in his seat, and then returned to the keyboard and shut the machine down, patting his pocket as though making sure he had his wallet.

  Footsteps moved purposefully toward him as he pushed back his chair and stood.

  “Stay where you are.”

  Lewis turned looking puzzled—and froze as he came face to face with a security operator.

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  The guard looked him up and down, taking in the newly minted tag on his shirt and the crisp freshness of his company uniform.

  “You new here?”

  Lewis swallowed and nodded. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked, glad his nervousness wouldn’t seem out of place.

  The guard gave him a tight-lipped smile.

  “No. This is just a routine security check. I need you to stand over there, please.”

  Uh oh, not good, Lewis thought, taking a step back toward the wall as he scanned the room.

  2—Exfiltration

  “Oliver?” Lewis sent, but silence greeted him and he knew he was on his own. Well, this sucks.

  Worry clawed at his gut, and he hoped the were hadn’t been found.

  “Hands on your head!” The command made him jump and he glanced up.

  The guard by the door was looking over the barrel of his blaster and had it aimed right at Lewis’s chest. Lewis’s eyes widened.

  “M…me?” he stuttered.

  The barrel jerked. “You.”

  The guard at the desk kept working, but a third one reached the end of the aisle. His weapon was also raised. Lewis lifted his hands.

  “Ookay…” He even managed to sound meek and scared.

  It wasn’t hard. The blood had drained from his face and his skin was cold.

  “Ollie, I seriously hope you’ve got something up your sleeve,” he sent, only to have the implant flash red.

  Transmission failed, he read. Well, shit!

  Lewis’s eyes darted to the door and this time he registered the guard standing behind the one at the door. That one wasn’t holding a gun, but she was looking intently at a hand-held and carrying several brick-like attachments on her belt.

  Well, double-the-shit! he thought, and hoped his consternation didn’t show.

  The third guard reached him. “Turn around.”

  Lewis stared at him, as if he didn’t understand
what was happening.

  “Turn around!” the guard barked again, and Lewis flinched. “Face the wall!”

  The guard’s finger started to flex around the trigger, and Lewis turned, keeping his hands raised. It was get shot or get captured. Somehow, he didn’t think Charlotte was getting her bonus. Not unless he could think of something really fast.

  “Hands on the wall!”

  Lewis placed his palms on the wall, and waited.

  The rattle of the blaster being released was all the warning he got before a hand on the back of his head rammed his forehead into the wall, and a knee slammed up between his legs. Pain rocketed through him and he groaned.

  The guard showed no mercy and his hands were jerked roughly down and behind his back, the snap of cuffs accompanying the roil of nausea and sudden weakness in his legs. Dizziness didn’t help as the cuffs were secured to his belt. The knee was removed and he was jerked around, someone’s hands at his collar and belt.

  Lewis stumbled as he was pulled past the seated guard working at the terminal, and propelled toward the end of the aisle. His fellow workers kept their heads down and their eyes glued to their screens, but the security guards divided their attention between him and the rest of the room.

  Whatever this company was, security was more than just a door decoration for them. These guys meant business. Gals, too, he added, reminded by the technician standing by the door. His nuts ached, his legs were still rubbery, and the grip on his collar was unrelenting.

  As soon as they hit the corridor, he realized he was in more trouble than he’d thought. The guy holding him, shoved him forward and he was grabbed by two others.

  “We’ll finish up here,” his captor snapped, “but I think he’s all there is.”

  The second team’s leader nodded, sweeping a stern gaze over Lewis. “We’re still chasing the connection,” he said, and Lewis felt some of his worry ease.

  Oliver was okay…at least for now.