Chapter 34
“What’s going on?” Brink’s nostrils flared and she was staring at her laz, now in Sylvester’s hand. She looked . . . displeased.
“Ethan Hyt’s on the bridge. He’s taken it over.
” Sylvester reached forward and grabbed Velda by her jacket as soon as she got close enough, then spun her around to face the bridge doors.
He put the laz right up against her temple, the back of her collar twisted in his other fist. “This one distracted you while he slipped inside.”
Brink gaped at him. “He’s in there right now?” she asked.
As she said it, the bridge doors opened and Ethan stood in the opening, still with a laz in each hand. Behind him lay chaos, bodies sprawled on the floor and up against walls.
There must be some kind of comms feed visible on the bridge, which had shown him what was going on out here, because his gaze went straight to her.
She held it, gave the tiniest head shake and mouthed ‘trust me’, to him.
Because damned if they were going to give up the bridge and go back into a cell.
No way.
She would find a way out of this while he held the ship’s controls.
She saw him consider the alternatives, when suddenly one of the guards seemed to shake off their surprise and opened fire on him. As he jumped back and closed the doors, he looked conflicted.
“Next time anyone shoots at him, aim for the head.” Sylvester almost growled the words. “So he doesn’t get back up again.”
Someone came running down the passage and everyone, obviously still on edge, spun in that direction, weapons up.
Linao skidded to a stop. “What’s going on? Vine says there are five crew unconscious in the launch bay.” She caught sight of Velda, with her father’s laz against her head, and she stopped dead. “Careful,” she said.
“Are you talking to me?” Sylvester sounded outraged.
“Yes. You haven’t ever used a laz, as far as I know,” Linao said. “We don’t want Velda hurt accidentally.”
Velda remembered Linao had touched her in the med bay. Had pressed her fingertips into her cheek.
She doesn’t want you to be harmed, the silver balls said. Neither does the medic.
How long will that last? Velda asked them.
Uncertain, was the answer. We have never done it before.
Linao and Yarmouth were obviously still feeling that sense of protection, so she would have to either get them to touch her again or make a move as soon as possible.
“I’ll take her to a cell,” Linao said, nodding toward Velda.
“You’re not up to full strength yet,” Yarmouth said. “I’ll do it.”
“No, I will.” Sylvester hadn’t made skin contact with her yet, but now he did, pulling her hard up against his chest with his hand resting just under her throat.
He turned and forced her to walk like that, uncomfortably close, and she tripped and staggered, gagging as his hand accidentally choked her more than once.
Eventually, he loosened his hold and rested his fingertips on her neck, and she noticed the laz no longer pressed up against her head, either. Or anywhere else.
Others came along with them, walking behind Sylvester, and she realized only when Sylvester led her into a large suite and finally let her go that it was Yarmouth and Linao who’d followed him, as well as Brink.
“What’s going on, Sylvester?” Brink asked. “What’s the plan?”
“We need to get the bridge back,” Sylvester said, but he didn’t have the same rage he’d had earlier.
“Ethan will cut his own throat for her, he’ll definitely give up the bridge,” Linao agreed.
“Then why didn’t he do that?” Brink asked.
“He was ducking the shots,” Yarmouth said. “Maybe if no one had used their weapons he would have come quietly.”
“Maybe.” Linao nodded slowly. “What do you think, Velda?”
Velda looked around for a chair and sat down slowly.
Might be useful to still pretend she was getting over an injury.
“I think Yarmouth is right. He acted on instinct, ducking away. But also, you’ve threatened to kill us quite a few times since we’ve been your prisoners, Linao.
If he gave up the bridge to save my life, what’re the odds it would really be saved? ”
There was silence.
“That’s true,” Brink said. “I heard you tell them they were both as good as dead myself.”
“That’s . . . unfortunate,” Sylvester said. “However true you thought that was, it means he doesn’t have any incentive to comply.”
“I have a suggestion.” Velda leaned back. “One that will give us both what we want.” She hoped. She was stepping into the unknown with this idea, but it still felt better than being at Sylvester’s mercy.
The fact that Sylvester had brought her to his own suite, and was treating her more as a guest than a prisoner, made her hope this negotiation would go her way.
“What suggestion is that?” Sylvester asked. He seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, moving around the room as if unable to settle.
“Is there an exit from the bridge directly to the outside of the ship?” Velda asked.
She knew that was standard on most VSC ships, because the bridge was usually the most secure room on a warship.
It had never been needed before, to her knowledge, but an emergency exit from the bridge, in case a ship was overrun, was standard.
Sylvester hesitated, then nodded.
“What are you thinking?” Linao asked.
“That you give me the runner in the launch bay, and I’ll collect Ethan and we’ll be out of your hair. As soon as the crew on the bridge that Ethan shot come to, they can open up again, and you’ll have your ship back, and you’ll be rid of us.” It sounded like the best of a bad deal to her.
Hopefully, she and Ethan could make a run for Aponi, if they weren’t too far away.
There was silence for a moment.
“That would work,” Brink said. “We’d be down the runner . . .”
“You’d be up a ship,” Velda countered.
“We could threaten to kill you where he can see it,” Sylvester said. “He’ll probably come out.”
“Or he could take Linao at her word and pilot this ship straight back home to Aponi, and you’d all be in jail.” Velda wondered if Sylvester was more resistant to the silver balls than the others, because he wasn’t bluffing about shooting her.
She guessed the answer was yes. He had been willing to sacrifice his own daughter numerous times and likely didn’t have much capacity to feel protective. She wondered if he was a psychopath.
Direct contact with her skin had softened him a little, but it wasn’t enough to overcome his inability to feel any emotion.
“I don’t want to lose the runner, and I don’t want to lose you as a hostage,” Sylvester said. “I have plans.”
So he would shoot her, but not kill her. That was something.
“Let’s talk about this,” Linao said. “We could be worse off your way, Father. I’ve spent time with Ethan, locked up in a cell, and he’s a good strategist.”
Sylvester shot her a quick, hot look, but before he could respond, there was a chime from the door.
“Enter.” Sylvester turned his back on Linao deliberately.
A crew member Velda had never seen before stood there in a dark uniform, swaying nervously. “There’s a problem with the engine,” he said.
“What kind of problem?” Sylvester took a step closer. “Does the problem originate from the bridge?”
“No.” The engineer shook his head. “No. It’s a mechanical fault. I don’t know what’s causing it, but no one on the bridge could affect it.”
“Can you fix it?” Brink asked.
“We’ve had to stop the engine. I don’t want to risk permanent damage. Especially as we don’t have a way to get spare parts right now.” The engineer clasped his hands together.
“The timing is suspicious,” Sylvester said. As he said it, the lights went out. They were plunged into darkness, but before Velda could consider moving, she heard the door close.
“Don’t even think about running,” Sylvester said, and then light bloomed in his hand as he activated a portable illuminator. He was looking right at her and had Brink’s laz pointed at her again. “What do you know about this?”
“Nothing.” It could be Ethan, but she didn’t know for sure.
“How did you get the door to close so fast?” Brink asked in admiration.
“I didn’t. I think it was part of the same shutdown as the lights going off,” Sylvester said. “Yarmouth, try to get it open.”
Yarmouth’s mouth flickered into a grim line at the dismissive order, then relaxed again, and he walked to the door and tried a few times to open it. “No go,” he said.
“Maybe it’s the Caruso,” Linao said. “They were pretty unhappy with us.”
“And why is that, Linao?” Sylvester asked. “You were supposed to ease our people off their ship, and leave them thinking we were friends, and suddenly they’re shooting our team. Where did that come from?”
“Nirro found out we were talking to the Caruso government. He took that news badly. Thought we were stabbing him in the back.” Linao was only just visible in the glow of the light Sylvester was holding, but Velda could see her nonchalant shrug.
“And how did he find that out?” Sylvester’s question was soft.
“You told me to ask him if he’d seen the silver balls before. When he denied it, I brought up I knew he’d been on that Caruson warship that tried to steal the ancestral ghost ship in Raxian airspace. He worked out the only way we could have known that information was from government sources.”
“You could have sold the story that we still have spies there,” Sylvester said.
“I could have, but before I could say a word, he shot me,” Linao said. “Have you ever been hit by a Caruson laz?”
There was a beat of silence.
“If it is the Caruso playing with the ship’s power, how are they doing it?” Brink asked, eventually breaking the tension. “Did they plant a virus in the comms system?”
“If they did, we could only see that if we had access to the bridge.” Sylvester turned suddenly as the door opened.
“The doors have emergency opening protocols,” the engineer who’d been talking to Sylvester before the lights went out said. He was holding a tool of some kind in his hand. “I’ll have to open each one individually, though.”