Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The human female stared up at him with wide brown eyes, and Doren felt something dangerous stir in his chest.
Focus, you idiot.
A Key. An actual, living Key—not an artifact, not a relic, but a silver-skinned infant currently crying against the human’s chest. Twenty years of chasing legends and half-truths, of sifting through rumors and following cold trails, and he’d stumbled across one of the Seven in the cargo hold of a third-rate Ithyian smuggling vessel.
The universe had a twisted sense of humor.
“Move,” he growled, pressing his hand more firmly against the small of her back.
Her skin was cool through the thin fabric of her gown, far too cool despite the sweat on her brow but there was nothing he could do about it now.
“Unless you want to explain to the Grorn why you’re holding their prize. ”
She moved.
He had to give her credit—she didn’t argue, didn’t freeze, didn’t do any of the dozen useless things most civilians did in crisis situations.
She simply ran, bare feet slapping against the deck plates, the infant clutched against her chest with a competence that spoke of experience.
Did she have children of her own back on that pre-spaceflight world?
She shouldn’t be here. None of this should be happening.
But she was, and it was, and the Grorn were rounding the corner behind them with weapons drawn.
“Left!” He yanked her sideways into a service corridor, his body shielding hers as energy bolts sizzled past. The smell of scorched metal filled the air. The infant screamed.
“I want them alive!” The Grorn commander’s voice echoed off the walls.
Alive means leverage. Leverage means torture. Or in the case of the Grorn, sacrifice.
He bared his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. His claws extended reflexively, scraping against the wall as he pushed the female ahead of him.
“Keep moving. Don’t stop for anything.”
“Where are we going?”
Her voice was steady. Too steady for someone who’d just escaped a slave cell and stumbled into an armed confrontation. Shock, probably. It would hit her later, when the adrenaline faded and the reality of her situation sank in.
That was a problem for later.
“Hangar bay. There’s a flyer we can steal.”
“You have a plan?”
“Something like that.”
The something like that involved getting off this ship before it was reduced to slag, keeping the infant Key out of Grorn hands, and not dying in the process. Beyond that, he was improvising.
He was very good at improvising.
The service corridor dumped them into a larger passageway—one of the main arteries running through the ship’s midsection. Warning lights strobed red and amber, and the deck shuddered beneath another distant impact. The Grorn, or someone else?
It didn’t matter. Right now, every party on this ship was an enemy. The Ithyians would recapture the female and sell her. The Grorn would take the infant and probably kill everyone else as witnesses. And whoever was blowing holes in the hull clearly didn’t care about collateral damage.
His only advantage was knowledge. He’d spent the past two weeks memorizing this ship’s layout, searching for the artifact he’d believed the Grorn wanted. The forgotten maintenance corridors, the blind spots in the security systems—he knew them all.
Time to put that knowledge to use.
“This way.” He grabbed her elbow and steered her toward a cargo lift. “We need to go down three levels.”
“The baby—”
“I know.” He jabbed the lift controls, watching the indicator lights flicker. “Can you keep her quiet?”
The female shot him a look that would have stripped paint off a hull. “She’s terrified. Her whole world just changed. She was in some kind of suspended animation, and now there are explosions and strangers and—”
“I understand the psychology.” The lift doors slid open, revealing a cramped interior with an unpleasant mechanical odor. “I’m asking if you can manage it.”
She stepped into the lift without hesitation, already shifting the infant’s position, bringing the small silver face up to rest against her shoulder.
Her hand moved in slow circles on the baby’s back.
Her voice dropped to a soft murmur, words he couldn’t quite catch but whose meaning was clear enough.
Comfort. Safety. I’ve got you.
Something shifted in his chest again. Something warm and entirely unwelcome.
The infant’s screams faded to whimpers, then to hiccupping sobs, then to silence. The female looked up at him with something like triumph in those warm brown eyes.
“Experience,” she said.
“Clearly.”
Once again he wondered if she had children of her own, and why that thought made him so uncomfortable.
The lift descended, metal groaning in protest. His ears swiveled, tracking sounds beyond the walls—weapons fire, running footsteps, the distinct sizzle-crack of an overloading power conduit.
“You’re different to the guards,” the female said.
He glanced down at her. She was studying him with an intensity that might have been unnerving if he wasn’t used to being examined like an exotic specimen. The combination of Tajiri and Markelian features didn’t happen often.
“Obviously.”
“But you’re working on their ship.”
“Was working. Past tense.” He watched the level indicator climb downward. “I was looking for something they were carrying. Turns out I was wrong about what that something was.”
Her arms tightened around the infant. “Her?”
“Her.”
“Why? What is she?”
One of the Seven Keys to the Vault. A living genetic cipher that could unlock technology beyond anything the galaxy has seen in eons. A child worth more than most planetary systems combined.
“That’s a long story.”
“I think I deserve to hear it.”
She did. But not now. Not with Grorn warriors hunting them through a dying ship, not with his own plans crumbling around him, and not with the dangerous distraction of her scent filling the enclosed space of the lift.
She smelled like fear and something else—something sweet and warm that made his fur prickle and his tail twitch.
Female pheromones. Nothing more.
“The short version,” he said as the lift shuddered to a stop, “is that the baby is valuable. More valuable than you can imagine. And the Grorn will do anything to get her.”
And she’d made herself a target the moment she lifted that child from the stasis pod.
The lift doors opened onto a dimly lit corridor, this one lined with storage lockers and equipment bays. The hangar was close. He could smell the fuel residue and hear the distant whine of engines on standby.
“Stay behind me.” He drew one of the knives hidden in his boot, the blade glinting in the emergency lighting. “If something happens to me, take the child and run. There’s a shuttle in the hangar—small, fast, white hull with blue markings. It should get you clear.”
“What makes you think I can fly a shuttle?”
“I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
He stepped out of the lift and immediately pressed himself against the wall, every sense straining. The corridor appeared empty, but appearances meant nothing on a ship this chaotic. The sounds of combat had grown louder, closer. Someone was fighting their way towards the hangar.
“Clear.” He gestured for her to follow. “Move quickly, stay quiet.”
She moved quickly. She stayed quiet. The infant slept against her shoulder, exhausted by her earlier terror.
He found his gaze drawn back to the female despite himself.
The thin slave gown left nothing to the imagination—lush curves and pale skin, so different from Tajiri women with their sleek fur and angular frames.
Her hair was dark, almost black in the dim light, falling in tangled waves past her shoulders.
She was beautiful. Not in the polished, deliberate way of the courtesans he’d encountered in pleasure houses across the galaxy, but in something more fundamental. Something raw and real.
Stop it. She’s a complication, not a companion.
He needed her for the child. That was all. Once they were clear of the ship, he could find someone else to care for the infant. A professional. Someone who wouldn’t distract him with brown eyes and cool skin and that infuriating scent.
“How much further?”
“One more junction.” He paused at the corner, his ears swiveling. Movement ahead—one set of footsteps, heavy and plodding. Ithyian. “We’ve got company.”
“Is there another way around?”
“No.” He weighed the knife in his hand. “Wait here.”
“Wait—”
But he was already moving, rounding the corner with the fluid grace of a born predator.
The Ithyian guard never saw him coming. One moment the hulking figure was standing watch beside the hangar entrance, his weapon held loosely.
The next, Doren was behind him, one arm locked around his throat, the knife pressed against the vulnerable spot beneath his jaw.
“Access code to the hangar,” he said pleasantly. “Now.”
The guard made a strangled sound that might have been a protest. He increased the pressure on his throat.
“I don’t have time for games. The code, or I start removing pieces.”
“Two-four-six-eight.” The words came out in a desperate wheeze. “Don’t—”
He tightened his arm until the guard went limp, unconscious rather than dead. He let the body slump to the floor and retrieved the guard’s weapon.
“It’s clear.”
The female emerged from around the corner, her eyes widening at the sight of the fallen guard. “Is he...?”
“Sleeping. He’ll wake up with a headache and a valuable lesson about situational awareness.” He entered the access code, and the hangar doors slid open. “Come on.”
The hangar was designed for short-range craft rather than the larger vessels he was used to. Half a dozen flyers sat in various states of readiness—maintenance vehicles, cargo shuttles, a battered two-person craft that had seen better days.
And there, in the far corner, was the one he’d spotted on the security feed.