Chapter 37
“Velda Shan?ha.” The voice coming through the comms unit was clearly Nirro’s.
“Captain Nirro.” Velda leaned forward. “I see you decided to come back for the Raptor after all.”
“I discovered there was a way into its systems that I wasn’t aware of before,” Nirro said. “It was too tempting not to exploit.”
“Well, I wish you the best of luck with it.” She glanced at the screen, saw Nirro’s ship was now hovering above the Raptor. “We managed to get off, so it’s no business of ours, one way or the other.”
“I saw you leaving in the runner,” Nirro said. “Unfortunately, part of the backdoor that had been set up in the Raptor included hidden visual comms, and we were able to see both you and Ethan overcome your enemies. It was . . . surprising.”
Velda hoped he wasn’t saying what she thought he was saying. “Why do you say ‘unfortunately’?” she asked.
“Because you are quite obviously affected by those silver balls, contrary to what you told me, and since we’ve had a chance to search our ship after we got the Cores crew off it, we also discovered all the balls that fell to the ground in the med bay are nowhere to be found.
And then when we checked the feed, we saw them come straight to you two.
” He drew in a breath. “That was sneaky, Velda.”
“What does it matter to you?” Ethan asked. “The silver balls kill you. They’re no use to you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Nirro said. “They’re useful to me because they do kill my kind. I have people back on Caruso that are very difficult to get close enough to to kill. But send them a silver ball and just like that, my problems are over.”
“So you want to extract the balls from us and use them to assassinate the current leaders of Caruso?” Velda asked.
“Exactly,” Nirro said. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
“You’re sure the extractor is still working?” Ethan asked. “I thought it was thrown onto the floor.”
“No, it’s quite safe. Only the box that contained the balls went onto the floor,” Nirro said. “And those balls rolled straight to you.”
Velda reached forward and cut the comms. “Thoughts?” she asked.
This was a blow. She’d hoped they could get away with no one all that interested in stopping them.
Ethan reached over and squeezed her hand before going back to the runner’s controls.
“We get away as fast as we can. Nirro wants the Raptor, and he can’t afford to delay taking it back for much longer.
The crew might have already gotten onto the bridge by now, and if they can find a way to get the backdoor closed down, he’ll lose his advantage. ”
She nodded. “And with Sylvester injured, now’s the time for him to strike. If he saw you and me being super soldiers, he saw that Sylvester is badly injured, and he’ll want to take advantage of that, too.”
Ethan’s gaze snapped to her face. “How was Sylvester badly injured?”
“Linao stabbed him when he threatened to hurt me.” She thought there was more to it than the protectiveness the silver balls had encouraged in Linao. It was years of resentment and anger finally boiling over.
Ethan shook his head. “And then what happened?”
Velda gave a laugh. “It was strange. Like I didn’t know how to respond strange.
Linao stabbed him a few times, and Brink didn’t know what to do.
She was angry with Sylvester as well, and I could see she sympathized with Linao, so she said she’d take Sylvester to the med bay and Linao could take me to the runner and get me off the ship, even though Sylvester had just said he didn’t want to do that. ”
Ethan gaped at her. “And she just did?”
“She did, but Sylvester obviously managed to assert himself a bit more when he got to the med bay, because he sent four guards to stop Linao and me. They got to us as we reached the runner. That’s when I had to go into silver ball mode, and I guess Nirro saw that through whatever secret feed he has access to.
Linao did, too, unfortunately. And she looked pretty interested.
I made her leave the launch bay before I took the runner, and it’s possible she went straight off to the med bay to finish her father off. He may be dead.”
Silver ball mode, the silver balls thought inside her head with amusement. We like it.
“If he’s dead, or even just badly injured, then yes, Nirro would be crazy to chase after us instead of taking the ship.” Ethan brought up a view of the Raptor and Velda leaned closer to see.
“The Caruso are not chasing us.” She watched as the larger ship hovered above the Raptor.
“They’re not chasing us yet.” Ethan said. “So let’s not be anywhere near them when they think about running us down.”
It really was all they could do.
“How far are we from Aponi?” she asked.
Ethan turned to her, scooped her up, and lifted her into his lap, and she twined her arms around him.
“That far?”
He chuckled, the sound a deep, rumbling vibration through her. “Yes.”
“Really?”
He pulled up a screen, and she looked over at it.
“We’re somewhere I’ve never seen. We pinched to the black twice, if you remember, way back at the start of the journey and have traveled who-knows-where since.
Maybe we could have figured it out in the Raptor if the Cores have the right maps, but in this runner .
. .?” He trailed off. “I don’t even know which direction to go. ”
“So my clever idea wasn’t so clever.” She should have found a way to keep them on the bridge.
It had been worth a try, but she had no way to know where they were when she’d negotiated to take the runner. She’d hoped—obviously foolishly—that Sylvester would have wanted to be near enough to Aponi to swoop in and take control of it when his troops were done.
“There was no good choice.” Ethan flicked the screen away.
“I couldn’t have held the bridge with no supplies, and anyway, the Caruso had cut the power.
The Raptor would have been of no use to us, either way, and the Caruso would have us as prisoners if we’d stayed.
At least we have control over our environment and some supplies right now. ”
So there was no winning, and if the Caruso were coming after them, they’d be prisoners again soon enough, given there was nowhere to run to.
She kissed Ethan’s cheek and rested her head on his shoulder. “Are we giving up?”
“Let’s keep going for a bit. It isn’t over ’til it’s over.” He didn’t sound very optimistic, though.
They might as well, Velda decided. The Caruso seemed to respect a strong opponent, and given the change in tone with Nirro, respect was better than nothing.