Page 1 of Sheltered in the Storm

PROLOGUE

VOS

The ambassador wasa dead them walking.

From my hiding place inside an air duct, I watched through the metal grate as the Kurutan ambassador N’vors emerged from their transport, ambulating on four oversized flippers. They clacked their six-fingered claws in greeting to the five trade delegates and well-armed embassy guards who had gathered to welcome them.

My wrist chronometer showed 1400 hours. Right on time. Kurutan considered arriving early or late to be unconscionably rude. An admirable trait, but one that made them an easier target, even with the embassy’s extensive security measures, which were some of the best I had ever encountered.

But not nearly good enough to keep an elite assassin out, or to save the ambassador from their fate.

Nor would N’vors’s thick, insect-like carapace protect them. Attempting to shoot the ambassador through the tiny gaps between the plates of their exoskeleton would be difficult ifnearly impossible, so I had discarded that method as a means of attack.

Instead, I readied my weapon and waited for N’vors to finish their traditional dance of greeting and speak. My heartsbeats remained steady, my breathing slow and even. Quick kills and speedy exits were my trade, and I was very good at my trade.

I had gained entry during the night, in the wake of a diversion I had paid a street gang to create near the embassy’s entrance. My body ached from my long, silent wait inside this duct, from the tips of my human fingers to my webbed toes, squeezed inside heavy boots that were part of my worker’s disguise.

Even my tentacles twitched and ached, though I allowed them to stir and explore the interior of the duct as far as they were able to reach. I was a large man, powerfully built and two meters in height, with four large tentacles each as long as I was tall growing from my back. This duct was not designed for someone my size, much less my tentacles. The people of this planet, Bordians, were much smaller and often ran on their feet and hands. At least the slick, almost frictionless fabric of my coveralls helped me slide through the duct fairly easily.

I expected the ambassador’s transport to depart as soon as N’vors got out. Instead, a small Kurutan child, so young their carapace had not yet hardened, hopped from the transport’s open door and padded on tiny flipper feet across the stone floor to their parent’s side, claws clacking in excitement.

The ambassador paused their elaborate greeting dance to chitter at the child. I did not speak Kurutan, but a scolding tone needed no translation. The child leaned against their parent and chirped softly in reply. N’vors caressed the little one’s head and resumed their dance. The other ambassadors bobbed their heads in acknowledgement of their colleague’s greeting.

Damn it to all the hells. I lowered my weapon.

The poison gas dart I had prepared was deadly only toKurutans. The gas would not harm the other delegates, which was essential to my mission. It would, however, kill the ambassador’s child if they inhaled it.

My intel had said nothing about the ambassador bringing their child to the negotiations. My employer’s intel was never wrong. Too many lives—mine included—depended on its veracity. The Silent Guard could not afford to lose one of its best and most experienced assassins because of poorly vetted information.

These few minutes in the embassy’s foyer would be my only opportunity to dispatch N’vors before the delegates moved to the embassy’s ultra-secure meeting room. My brief stated the ambassador must die before they began negotiating for export rights. My life depended on fulfilling my mission. The Guard demanded extortionate prices from its clients in return for a guarantee of success. That guarantee only held up if there were no failures.

I had received my latest update on N’vors’s movements only an hour earlier when the ambassador was already on their way to the embassy. The Guardmusthave known about the child.

Unlike many less scrupulous guilds of assassins, the Guard prided itself on its precise kills. While their clients might not care about collateral damage, the Guard’s commandants did. Collateral damage drew the attention and ire of planetary leaders, the Central Alliance Defense, and various federations and interplanetary coalitions. Neat, surgical,quietkills were not just the Guard’s point of pride—they were a necessity for its ongoing existence, while other, more careless organizations came and went.

I could count the number of times in the past five years my hearts had raced before or during a mission on one tentacle. Twenty standard years of training, conditioning, and service in the Guard had rendered me all but indifferent to danger and death, even my own.

But when the ambassador’s child rested their head against their parent and sighed in contentment, my heartsbeats—normally so steady and even during a mission—pounded in my ears. My vision turned silver around the edges, and my glowing eyes reflected in the metal duct.

I did not kill children. Not even if it would mean my own life were forfeit. Not even on my last mission prior to my retirement.

Most of my fellow Guard assassins would not have hesitated to pull the trigger. And perhaps I would have had a difficult time explaining why after all the death I had dealt over the past twenty years I could not bring myself to end a single child’s life.

The child’s happy sounds and the way their wide eyes peered worshipfully at their parent had reached perhaps the last, tiny part of my primary heart that had not turned to stone.

On the other hand, if I left N’vors and their child alive, made it out of the embassy, and fled, the Guard would hunt me across the galaxy. They would bring me to their headquarters and make a spectacle of my death. All Guard assassins would be called in to witness the consequences of failing to complete a mission and trying to leave the Guard before a contract term ended. No greater suffering or horror existed in Alliance space.

I might put little value on my life, but I did not want that kind of death. I did not want my pain to be an exhibition. I had spent my life in service to the Guard; I would be damned if my death would be used to keep my brethren in line.

Also, the sight of this little Kurutan family filled my belly with bitterness. The genetic manipulations on my homeworld of Fortusia had given me extra speed, senses, and strength, along with my gills and tentacles, but they had also eliminated the dangerous and potentially costly biological instinct to seek and find a partner. I had been created to kill, not to love or treasure a mate. I would never know that kind of belonging. My life, if I reached my retirement and none of the ghosts orenemies of my past found and killed me, would be a solitary one.

But a lonely life would still be a good life, one I had wanted since my youngest days. Freedom was a dream for someone created to serve in the Guard. Few assassins survived the dangers of their twenty-year enlistments to reach retirement. I had not dared to even hope to reach mine until just this year.

I had not fought so hard for so long to reach this moment to have the only dreams I allowed myself to chase ripped away by one child and my own soft hearts.

I raised my weapon again and took aim. If I timed my shot perfectly, I might be able to get the dart to pierce the back of N’vors’s throat. The gas would kill in moments. Embassy security would likely get the child and other delegates to safety. The child might not die from the poison?—

—But they would see their parent die. If I recalled correctly, a Kurutan child was not likely to survive without its parent, especially if they witnessed the death.

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