Chapter 25
Linao was being rescued again.
Velda wondered what this was costing the Cores, but obviously it was worth it to someone to get her back.
Even if it was just because she was Sylvester’s daughter.
She had nerve, though. Velda would give her that. And a certain ability to skirt consequences.
The mothership groaned again, and then went silent. Velda looked up at the ceiling.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
Ethan began down the corridor. “Let’s keep going, and keep trying doors along the way.”
As he got ahead of her, she noticed again how much harder and bigger he looked.
His clothes were tight around his biceps and across his shoulders, and when he’d shot that Caruson guard, she’d been astonished at his speed.
And the approval of her own internal voices at his style.
They had judged him worthy.
She guessed worthy of her. Which she had to admit was sweet of them.
They reached the next turn in the passageway and Ethan extended his arm back, hand clenched, to tell her to stop, before he peered around the corner.
He slid back and the look on his face told her there was trouble coming.
A lot of trouble.
“Run,” he whispered, pointing back the way they’d come.
She turned and sprinted, heard Ethan right behind her. Until a group of at least five Caruson stepped out from around the corner, blocking their way and forcing her to come to a stop.
She spun, and saw the reason Ethan had wanted them to run in the first place.
Another group of Caruson, at least ten in this group, blocked the passageway in the other direction.
They were cut off on both sides.
The bigger group called out in Caruson, and someone in the smaller group responded.
It sounded unfriendly to Velda, but she didn’t have an ear for Caruson, and they could well be exchanging greetings for all she knew.
Both groups were armed, and she pressed herself up against the wall to get out of their line of fire. Ethan did the same, and she glanced at him. “Are the weapons pointed at us or each other?”
He was holding his own weapon across his body, so he could swing it in either direction, but he narrowed his eyes at her question and looked again.
“I think each other.” He sounded thoughtful.
“So maybe the Cores didn’t hijack this ship. Maybe we’re privy to some in-fighting among the Caruso?” She thought that through, then shook her head. “No, Linao definitely knew this was going down.”
Before Ethan could respond, one of the soldiers in the smaller group shot at the larger group, and she and Ethan both dropped into a crouch, getting as low as they could as a laz fight ensued.
Someone in the bigger group shouted a command and all laz fire cut off.
That was because everyone in the smaller group was down, Velda saw. There was no one left to fight.
Unless she and Ethan were also on the list.
From the fire into the oven, as the Aponi saying went. She and Ethan were back where they started, just with a different set of antagonists.
Ethan was wisely pointing his laz at the floor as they were suddenly surrounded by at least ten Caruson, all wearing loose, dark gray clothing.
“Verdant String?” one of them asked.
“Verdant String,” Velda confirmed.
“Drop.” The commander pointed to the laz in Ethan’s hand, and he bent down and set it on the ground.
Someone came around the corner, and most of the group turned, weapons raised, then relaxed when they saw who it was.
Velda looked around them and saw it was Linao. So the Cores had had something in their back pocket when it came to the Caruson. Maybe they weren’t so clueless in their dealings with the war-like planet as she’d thought.
“Well, well.” Linao smirked. “You got out, too.”
“You created a good distraction,” Ethan said.
“Not that it helps you.” Linao smiled, then glanced over her shoulder as more Cores soldiers rounded the corner.
The Cores and the Caruson, working in harmony. Interesting.
The sound of laz fire was clear in the sudden silence, coming from up ahead and to the left.
“The bridge,” Linao said, and some of the Cores and some of the Caruson group around them jogged off in that direction.
“So you’ve taken the warship.” Velda was honestly impressed. “That couldn’t have been the plan all along. You were surprised when the Caruso took the ore runner.”
“No, it wasn’t the plan, but it didn’t work out too badly, did it?” Linao sounded positively exuberant.
“I’ll take them back to their cell,” she told the Caruson who seemed to be in charge, lifting the laz she was carrying. She signaled to two Cores guards and they flanked her, and she marched Velda and Ethan back to the brig.
Except no one could open it back up.
“That’s annoying.” Linao slammed her fist into the keypad. “Watch them,” she ordered the two guards. “I’ll go find someone who can open up.”
They stood in silence, up against the wall opposite the cell door, two laz pointed at them.
Velda sighed, rubbed at her eye and leaned back more firmly against the wall, sliding down it a little as if she was tired. “It’s been a long day.”
“It’s past time to sleep, is my guess,” Ethan responded. “How many hours since we were taken by the Caruson?”
“I’ve honestly lost track,” Velda said. “It could be we’ve gone for well over a day without sleep.”
Ethan yawned.
Go low, the voices in her head told her. Knock him over at the knees.
She used the wall at her back as a counterpoint and dove forward, twisting in the air and hooking her arm around the guard in front of her’s knees.
Ethan either moved a second before her, or at exactly the same moment, grabbing the laz held by the guard in front of him, spinning to stand behind him, hand still gripping the laz and pointing it upward as he got a chokehold.
Velda was on her feet, kicking the laz out of the guard she’d brought down’s hand, grabbing it up, and shooting him before he’d even pushed up from the ground.
She turned the laz on the other guard just as he slumped in Ethan’s arms.
Ethan laid him on the ground next to his friend, and they smiled at each other.
The sound of footsteps coming galvanized them both.
They ran in the opposite direction, looking for a place to hide, but the murmur of voices up ahead had them both slowing to a stop.
“What now?” She glanced behind them, but it would be moments before the guards were discovered and their escape would be known.
“Up.” Ethan leaped upward at an angle, and the passageway was narrow enough he was able to press his hands on one side, while his feet found purchase on the other.
He walked his feet up, until he was level with the floor, and then got even higher, until he disappeared above into the gloom of the already dark passageway.
“I’m too short to do that.” Velda didn’t need to try, the voices in her head were clear that it wouldn’t work.
“Then stay where you are, lure them in, and I’ll shoot them.” Ethan’s voice was whisper quiet.
They had no choice, there were shouts from the way they’d come, and the footsteps were getting louder from the other direction.
Velda crouched down on the ground, laz in her hand but pressed up against the wall so it was not as noticeable, and waited.
Two Caruso came from in front of her and another one came from behind, obviously fresh from the sight of two downed Cores guards.
They didn’t see her.
They almost missed her completely, and if they hadn’t met up with each other almost exactly where she was sitting, she had a feeling they might have passed her by altogether.
But the one who was coming from the direction of the downed guards slowed down, shouting at the other two, and then his gaze landed on her.
His shock was clear.
He came to a halt, hand going to his weapon, and then Ethan shot him.
The other two couldn’t work out where the laz fire had come from, one turned to look behind him, the other glanced at her, and as she brought her own laz up, Ethan shot him, and she took out the one who’d looked back down the way he’d come.
Ethan dropped lightly to the ground, hand out, and she grasped it, let him pull her to her feet.
“This is going to stir things up,” she said.
Ethan grunted in agreement and they both began running down the passage again. Velda hit the keypad on every door they passed, but nothing opened.
“You can’t do your fingertip trick,” she murmured, remembering how he’d disabled the lens in their cell on the Cores runner. Maybe he could open doors.
He reached out and touched a keypad, shook his head. “This tech is very foreign. I’d need time to learn it, first.”
They turned down a new passageway, and she saw double doors up ahead, the first she’d seen on this ship.
When they opened she could hardly believe it, but they stepped inside, weapons raised.
There was no one in here.
“It’s the med bay,” she said. There were a few beds and a glass cabinet of medication, and not much else.
“The Caruson who took us to the med bay to talk about the silver balls didn’t seem to have much time for injuries,” Ethan said. “Let’s hope it’s a common sentiment.”
“At least we’re off the passageways and out of sight.” Velda found a chair, the only one she could see, and sat down with a sigh. She was hungry and tired.
Looking over at Ethan, she guessed he was the same.
From her perch on the over-large chair, she looked around the room, and then stood when she saw some disposable cups. She went to the sink, filled two with water, and turned.
Ethan was watching her from the other side of the room, and she felt a full-body rush as their eyes met.
“Sit.” She pointed to the chair, and with a tiny quirk of his lips he obeyed.
She settled onto his lap, handed him a cup, and wriggled to get comfortable.
“I thought you said we’d do better next time,” he said, his voice a little deeper than usual.
“I lied.” She drank all the water in her cup and set it down, turned to look up at him just as he bent his head to kiss her.
His hand ran over her shoulder and came to a rest at her waist, and then he lifted her effortlessly, turning her body to face him.
As she sighed into his mouth, he suddenly stood, still holding her in his arms, his eyes on the door.
He let her swing down, and she heard it, too. A group of people running in their direction.
She glanced at him, and every warning signal in her spiked.
“You look too dangerous.” They had two laz, and from the sound of it, ten were coming their way, and the voices in her head were very wary of laz fire.
“You’re just muscle and deadly intent.” Her heart felt like it was going into palpitations with fear for him.
“Ethan, lie down on the ground and curl up. Now.”
He sent her such a look, absolutely incredulous.
“Please. Trust me. Please.” They were almost out of time.
With a disgusted grunt he collapsed on the ground, curling around his laz, and she crouched beside him, hand on his shoulder, just as the door opened.
Linao stepped in, four Cores guards and five Caruson behind her.
“He got hit,” Velda said. “He’s barely hanging on.”
Linao blinked, and Velda could almost see the tension drain out of not just her, but the whole group.
“He’ll recover if he isn’t already dead.” Linao dropped her laz to face downward, and so did everyone else. “How did you get him in here?”
She hadn’t really thought about that. “He was just able to stumble in before he collapsed. This is his third hit since the start of the week. There’s only so much a body can take.” She didn’t have to try too hard to manufacture some outrage.
Linao gave a laugh at that. “Who hit him?”
Velda sent her a filthy look. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask their name.”
Linao laughed again, and came forward to take both laz off them, and handed them to someone behind her. “You certainly keep things from being boring,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”