Chapter 20
Velda thought from the way the Caruso in charge took a long, thoughtful look at his three prisoners, and then began barking orders to his crew to load up the runner, that he was going to take all three of them, heavy fire from the Cores be damned.
That was bad news for Linao, because it meant they were holding a serious grudge against her, enough they were prepared to accept some trouble to keep her.
Linao had insisted to Brink and Ritter that the accusations were untrue.
She hadn’t done what she was accused of and it looked like maybe she was right, that either Wren wearing a disguise, or someone who looked a lot like Wren, had assumed her identity and done some damage to the Caruso in Linao’s name.
Although how and why that had happened, Velda had no idea.
The leader left two soldiers to guard them, and it didn’t escape Velda that one of the guards was casually resting the end of his massive laz against Ethan’s back.
There was something about Ethan that worried them.
She wondered what was different about the Caruson perceptions that they so easily recognized the danger he represented when Ritter and the Cores guards did not. Although, that perception didn’t seem to extend to her.
The other guard stood right beside Linao, and while he wasn’t resting his laz against her in the same way as his friend was doing to Ethan, it was pretty close.
Velda kept getting a pass.
That was interesting, because whatever was going on with Ethan was also going on with her.
She didn’t have the same sheer strength as him, but she brought other skills to the table.
Maybe those skills just didn’t register in the Caruson mind as dangerous, for some reason.
Linao was getting special treatment because they didn’t like her and blamed her for their ship exploding but it could also be that they were gambling that they wouldn’t actually come under heavy fire if they kept Linao, because she was a special case.
Maybe they were hoping that was a threat the Cores weren’t going to carry out, in case they harmed Linao in the process.
“How did you come to be switched out with Ritter?” Linao turned to look at them, and Velda made a face.
“One of the guards let the Cores crew know that we were prisoners. You and Ritter had been taken, and so they decided to offer an exchange.” She shrugged.
“Well, it worked out for Ritter,” Linao said, voice sharp. “And you seemed happy enough to out me. What difference did it make to you?”
Velda shrugged again. She really had been fifty fifty on whether to lie about Linao or not, but in the end, the more the Caruso trusted her, the more leash they might allow her later. Leash she could use to escape with Ethan.
Plus she believed the Cores would be much less likely to obliterate the Caruso—if that was a possibility—if Linao was still with them, than otherwise.
Linao narrowed her eyes at Velda’s response then sat down on the bay floor, forcing the guard beside her to shuffle back a bit.
She’d been hit by laz fire, so Velda guessed she was probably still a little weak.
She watched the Caruso load items into the small runner that must come from the ship, and one of those things, she noticed, was the box of silver balls.
The Caruso had boarded the Cores ship when they’d picked up the ore, and Velda guessed the Caruson warship wasn’t able to dock ship to ship with this vessel. Which meant they’d have to risk taking the ship’s runner to escape.
She’d rather not be on a runner, being shot at, but the leader shouted over to their guards, and the one holding a laz on Ethan prodded him with it, forcing him to move toward the ramp.
Velda moved with them, then glanced back to look at Linao.
She rose up carefully, as if she was in pain, and the guard lowered his weapon as he stepped back to give her room.
She used that moment to suddenly break for the bay door, running side to side in an evasive maneuver.
The Caruson guard gave a shout and fired, and he got her just as she reached the doors, hands outstretched.
She slammed into the doors as the laz fire struck her, bounced backward, and then fell on her side.
Ouch. That would have hurt.
And she was in for a world of pain when she woke up later, too.
The guard herding Velda and Ethan snapped at them to hurry, and then restrained them in seats side by side before he jogged out to help his crew.
Ethan tilted his head, able to see out a bit better than she could.
“She’s alive.” He grimaced as she was carried in and dumped on the floor. A guard attached restraints to her hands and feet, and then looped them through a metal rail that ran beneath the seats.
“Now we see if their gamble pays off,” Ethan murmured, as the whole Caruso crew got in. The ramp began to close up as the engine roared to life.
The Cores soldiers must have been close by, listening for the sound of the runner starting up, because the doors to the bay opened in a hail of laz light when the ramp was half closed, a team of six storming in and laying down heavy fire.
The runner began to move before the ramp was closed, but it slammed shut moments before they shot through the airlock membrane at the bay entrance. She felt the runner dip down and then spin the opposite way.
“They’re flying under the Cores ship,” Ethan said, voice low. “It’s a good strategy.”
Right now, whatever strategy meant they didn’t take a hit was a good one, as far as Velda was concerned.
She reached out to touch Ethan’s hand, the way her wrists were tied making it only just possible to reach him with her fingertips. He looked at her and then did the same, curling his little finger around hers.
For a moment all the noise around them shut off, as if they were alone somewhere, and then reality intruded as the little runner shuddered, spun again, and then accelerated away.
From the loud sounds coming from the Caruson, Velda guessed they’d successfully gotten away, and they were celebrating their escape.
Then the ship shuddered again, and the front end seemed to crumple, crushing the pilot and throwing the Caruso against the runner’s walls.
There must have been a hull breach, because an alarm began to shriek, and from beside her elbow, with a hiss of escaped gas, a cylinder rose out of her arm rest.
“An oxygen mask.” She looked at it longingly, but with her wrists restrained, she wasn’t going to be able to use it.
Ethan was assessing the situation, then he leaned toward her and brushed a finger over the restraint on her right wrist.
It popped open.
“Try it yourself,” he said. “On your left.”
Time to help, she said to the little voices in her head. What do I do?
She touched the left restraint and it popped open, and as soon as it did she was touching Ethan’s, both left and right, before she grabbed up the mask.
She looked around as she pulled the mouthpiece out of the cylinder and over her face, and saw all the Caruso, who had been sitting up front, had been either badly injured or were dead.
Linao was still out of it, and she grabbed up a spare cylinder and crouched beside her to put it on.
“It might be better to keep her restrained,” Ethan said. “That way at least she won’t roll around.”
Velda nodded, but released her ankles, so if they needed to move fast, there was only one set she had to deal with.
“You think the Cores deliberately crushed the front, because they scanned the runner and knew Linao was in the back?” she asked.
Ethan jerked his head up to look at her. “Maybe,” he said, slowly. “Maybe.”
She wondered how long they could last in here, even with air cylinders. The breach was obviously not big, but already she could see tiny ice crystals forming on the face of the Caruso lying dead up front.
One of the Caruso seemed to come to, flailed about, and then fell back down again, and Ethan moved cautiously forward toward them, then put his foot on a fallen laz, slid it back toward Velda, then reached down and picked up another for himself.
They were both braced for whatever was coming next.
Velda just hoped they’d survive it.