91. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
S avannah
Tarrex and I, stunners in hand, jog beside King as he lopes through the hallways. We thought it best for the other males to have the more deadly weapons. Between a male trained to kill and our secret K’tar weapon, I hope we’ll be fine with what we have.
We run into one crewman on our way to Khour’s cabin. He sees us approaching, his eyes wide in fear, not from us, but the beast. He pulls his laser, but King leaps before the male can pull the trigger, and the male is dead before he can draw another breath. I grab his laser pistol from his hand, and we race to Khour’s doorway.
After hearing laser bursts from elsewhere in the ship, there was no reason to stay in stealth mode. Tarrex tries to shoulder Khour’s door open, but metal trumps flesh—no matter how strong. I use my laser to slice a gash large enough for us to enter.
Khour isn’t here. My stomach lurches a little when I see the males’ cage is in its most cramped formation, the black tarp still covering it. It’s probably sweltering in there, and the two males have no way of stretching out. Fuck that evil bitch. I want her dead more than ever.
“Theos! Doctoré! It’s Savannah and Tarrex.”
Tarrex whips the tarp off the cage, wastes ten seconds looking for the key, then says, “Stand back.”
I realize he only has the stunner. I’m the one with real laser power, so I carefully aim at the locking mechanism and the cage pops open.
“Are there any weapons in this room?” I ask.
“None that we saw.” Both of them reach for the water that was on the table just outside of their reach, then gulp down two bottles each.
When I see both my friends eyeing King, I tell them, “He won’t hurt you. We’re all breaking out of here together.”
“There are six males from the cellblock who are on our side. I hope they’ve all made it to the bridge alive. That’s where we’re headed,” Tarrex tells them.
“All hands to the bridge!” It’s Khour’s commanding voice on overhead comms. Am I crazy, or is it tinged with fear? “All hands to the bridge!”
“Excellent!” Tarrex says.
It will hopefully mean we don’t encounter any resistance on our run to the bridge to join the fray—everyone should be there already.
“Can you guys run?” I ask.
“We’ll do whatever it takes to get out of here,” Theos rasps.
“And kill that bitch,” says Doctoré, whose words sound strong although both males look frail.
“Collars,” Tarrex says. “We need them removed.”
“She teases us with release all the time, keeping a controller right here,” Theos says as he limps the few feet from his cage to a controller hanging on the wall. It was within sight, but out of reach the whole time he was locked up. Another of Khour’s diabolical and sadistic moves, just like the water, to make the males thirst for their freedom.
“Safety in numbers? Or should we go two different ways to ensure at least two of us make it?” I ask. As they’re thinking, I add, “It’s the same layout as the ship we commandeered. You can go the back way to the bridge. We’ll go past the dining room.”
Theos and Doctoré take off at a limping run in one direction. Tarrex and I head toward the dining room.
Perhaps you should have stayed in Khour’s room until after the fight. You’d be safer there. Tarrex says.
I know he’s well-meaning, but I hit him with a blast of angry disapproval so strong even King must feel it because he gives a little yelp behind us. I don’t even deign to comment. Obviously, Tarrex doesn’t know what a Marine is capable of.
Just as we enter another hallway, an enormous crewman blocks our path. He’s an Anthen, one of the biggest species in the galaxy, and he’s pointing his laser at us. He looks terrifying.
“The Commander wants me to bring you in alive,” he says in his deep bass voice, “otherwise I’d kill you where you stand.”
Gun clutched in his two hands, he flicks it between Tarrex, King, and me.
“Throw your weapons on the floor,” he orders.
Before I can even raise my weapon higher to shoot the massive male in the chest or head, Tarrex’s stunner goes off and the huge warrior topples almost in slow motion, his eyes wide in shock.
I used my abilities, Tarrex says. I slowed his reflexes.
Go you, big guy. I say, then slice him in two with my laser.
After Tarrex grabs the Anthen’s laser, we run to the bridge, then pause outside the closed metal door.
There’s no more weapon fire , I say.
He closes his eyes, probing his mind past the doorway.
There are a lot of thought signatures on the other side of this door. I don’t know if it’s a standoff, if one faction has the other faction at laserpoint, or if they’re engaged in negotiations. There’s too much going on and we don’t have time to sort it out. One thing I know, my love, it’s not safe. You and King wait here until it’s over. I’ll go in.
Arguing will cost precious minutes we don’t have.
His final, Please , clinches it. I acquiesce and can feel his skepticism through our bond. I toss him a shrug and an innocent smile, then take a half-step backward to indicate I’ll stand down.
I’m certain he only half believes me, but he slams his palm to the plate and barges through the doors, his laser in front of him just like the cops in the police shows I watched back on Earth.
I almost stroke King’s head before I realize I’ll pull back a bloody stump if I touch his bladed body. Stay alert, King. Tarrex might need us.
I push my way into Tarrex’s head and watch through his eyes.
Khour is standing next to the pilot’s seat, her back is to the nav screen as she faces the room. Two of her males are holding Theos and Doctoré, their hands clamped over my friends’ mouths. Why would that be?
The contingent of six males from the cellblock is standing with their hands up in the classic “don’t shoot” pose as two other crewmen hold them at laserpoint.
Tarrex sends me a swirl of suspicion along with the command, Run!
I take a few steps back, but continue to watch through his eyes.
“I’m so glad you could join us,” Khour says to him. “Did you really think you could fight your way out of this ship? A MarZan cartel ship? My ship?”
“We can overpower her,” Tarrex says to the males from the brig. “There are ten of us and only five on her side, including her. You called her hellspawn. You don’t have to work for her anymore.”
They put their raised arms down as they laugh and jeer.
“Did you think they would throw in with you? Really?” Khour sneers. “A ragtag bunch of escaped gladiators against the strong arm of the MarZan cartel? We’re a well-oiled machine. I have riches to offer them. You have nothing. They won’t have to spend another moment in the brig. All has been forgiven. Right?”
They nod, murmuring their agreement.
Fuckers! They must have stormed the bridge, and when she offered them a deal, they switched their allegiance.
So it’s Tarrex standing in that room with Theos and Doctoré. Two debilitated and demoralized males who have nothing left to bring to a fight. It’s the three of them against Khour’s well-armed crew.
“Where’s that female of yours? She couldn’t be too far away. I’ll just have some fun. You stole some joy from me last night. I’m determined to get some now.”
She swipes the screen in front of her and a picture of what’s going on in the bridge broadcasts on the screens in the hallway.
Via overhead comms, her grating voice announces, “Female!” She never bothered to learn my name. “Female, why don’t you take a look at this?”
Every muscle in King’s body is on high alert. He may not understand language, but he can certainly feel emotions. Between Tarrex and me, our shock and hatred must communicate loud and clear.
Maybe you can help later. I tell him. Now isn’t the time .
With perfect clarity, the vid displays two of her henchmen gripping my male. He’s strong and has trained to fight for a decade, but with guns trained on him and two burly males holding him down, he simply can’t evade their grip.
“You have such a pretty face… as these things go,” Khour says dispassionately. “I’m going to show you how cuts to the face combined with Frain spit do not mix. This happened to a relative, but I’ve developed a bit of a fixation on watching it firsthand and up close.”
Shit, there’s a cockroach-like Frain to her right, between the door and her. My beautiful male, the one who looks like an angel, is about to be disfigured. I can’t stand here and do nothing.
Do not come in here, my love. Gather every gun you can find and hole up in a well-defended corner. He urges. When everything is done here and they come looking for you, kill as many of them as possible. Perhaps between you and King—.
I’m coming in , I interrupt even as I tell King to wait right here. I’m a Marine. I’ve been in jams. I’m good with a gun. I picture in my mind exactly where I’ll start. Shooting from right to left, starting with the male on his right and ringing my way around the room.
Within a minute of barging through the door, I’ve been disarmed and pushed into a corner. Shit. I’ve messed everything up. I came in half-cocked, wanting to save the day, desperate to rescue my male, and I’ve done nothing but given myself to Khour as a bargaining chip. All my years of training went right out the window when she threatened the male I love.
I’m sorry, Love, I tell him as my heart squeezes in pain. We’ll both be dead in minutes. At least I hope we are. Khour is so evil she can drag out our torture for days or weeks. Now the only thing I can pray for is a swift death.
“Oh, this should be fun,” Khour shows us a feral smile. It’s the first happiness I’ve seen her express.
Hate bubbles up in me, overriding every other feeling I possess. Not my fear, not even my love for Tarrex. I just want her dead.
She pulls a blade from a slim thigh holster and stalks to me, swinging her hips as if she’s in her full feminine power. She’s loving this.
“Keep your eyes open, gladiator, or Naveen will cut your lids off. You’re going to watch what I do to your female.”
“She’s not my female,” he protests, although she watched us have sex last night. She has to know the tenderness with which we touched each other was deep and real.
I use a jiu-jitsu move to break free from the male who was holding me, but just as quickly as I move toward the door, I’m caught again. This time, two males hold me, and when I struggle, I realize I’ll never break free from them.
“The little Earther has courage. Let’s see how you deal with pain,” her voice is full of venom and contains not a whit of compassion.
She stands in front of me like a painter staring at a blank canvas. She even puts her chin in her palm as she considers what she should do to my body.
All my instruction in the military should have prepared me for this. They taught me how to tolerate enemy torture and interrogations. I never dreamed it could feel so personal, though. This female doesn’t want information, which is what I trained to withstand. There is no end game for her. Torturing me isn’t a means to an end. It’s the end itself. She thrives on inflicting pain.
This is gonna hurt.
Stay strong, Savannah. Jump into my body. Look out through my eyes. Perhaps it will dull the pain.
The only thing it might accomplish is to make us both endure the agony.
I’ll gladly take it if it spares you.
I’m too terrified to have the concentration to jump into Tarrex’s head. I’m fully present as she rips my shirt off, exposing my bra-covered torso.
“Hmm, so many choices.”
She wields her six-inch knife as if it’s a scalpel and sets it precisely between my breasts, draws it up my chest, and stops at the notch at the bottom of my throat.
When I was a child, my older brothers used to play a game with me. They would blindfold me and then run a butter knife under either cold or hot water and draw it across my skin. They’d ask me if it was hot or cold. I only got it right fifty percent of the time.
When you’re terrified and your nerves are on red alert, you can’t tell what’s happening to your skin.
Right now, I don’t know whether she used the tip of her knife or the slim handle. Whether she cut a deep gouge or whether she even drew blood. I’m terrified, though. I know that. And the look on Tarrex’s face tells me all I need to know about the blood. By the way his eyes are bulging in his head, she cut me, alright.
“Pretty,” Khour says.
I tip my head and we both watch my blood rise to the surface and flow in a rivulet down my abdomen to soak into the top of my pants.
“Commander!” one of her crew says as he points to Tarrex.
Tarrex is wearing a t-shirt, so I have no idea what happened under the black fabric. I can clearly see a straight line of blood rise about two inches from the neckline stopping at the notch below his throat.
You’re bleeding where she cut me , I inform him in case he hasn’t figured it out from the confused looks on people’s faces.
This moment is crazy and surreal and deadly, and we might be moments from gasping our last breath and yet the tiniest smile graces the most perfect masculine lips I’ve ever laid eyes on.
We’re truly bonded, Savannah. Meant to be. I’ve never heard of anything like this. We’re so much more than empath and null, so much more than mere viates like Maleen and me. If she kills us both, and if there is a heaven, I will meet you there.
“What is this? Is this a curse?” Khour says, her voice so loud it could be heard at the other end of the ship without benefit of overhead comms. She quickly backs away from us as if we are suddenly showing signs of a very contagious disease. “We need to end them!” she thunders.
I never would have dreamed a hardened bitch like Khour would believe in magic or sorcery or curses. But the female who seemed ready to play with us for hours or days or months is ordering our immediate death.
For a moment, it feels as if my insides freeze. My brain quits working, too. There’s no way out of this. Even in Syria, I never felt so close to death.
I love you, Tarrex.
I love you, Savannah. King! Can you find a way through that metal door?
Tarrex sends him a picture of my cut. I feel the animal’s rage rise like a tsunami.
As Khour orders her crew to move Tarrex and me into a corner so our blood isn’t spilled all over her bridge, the eeriest metallic grinding pierces through the room.
I picture what must be happening on the other side of the bridge doors—the huge feline is probably heaving his body against the door. Those hundreds of sharp, knifelike scales are scratching and scraping and hopefully cutting their way through.
All movement in the room has stopped as we watch in fascinated horror as the door is literally shredded. As the K’tar bursts through I flash him pictures of Theos and Doctoré, reminding him they’re our friends.
Tarrex must be using his telepathic powers to control the crew because they’re too sluggish to fire their weapons. When one or two of them finally fire, King’s metallic scales deflect the laserfire as he whirls like a dervish, slicing everything he comes into contact with. Whether it’s flesh, desks, computer consoles, the animal is on a mission.
The males who had been holding us steady as others prepared to kill us, have tried to rush out of the room, but the bridge doors have been battered so badly they’re too warped to retract into their slots, and the shredded metal is as deadly as the animal that created the hole. No one is leaving this room.
Tarrex, Theos, Doctoré, and I huddle in a corner near the front nav screen as King continues his rampage. What he doesn’t kill with his razor-like scales, he gnashes with his five-inch-long fangs and claws.
The sound of his roars is deafening as he goes berserk in this cramped space. At first, the shock, the extent of the mayhem, and the spurting blood were too scary and ugly and difficult to follow. Now that almost all of our enemies are dead, I look for Khour. There are buckets of blood and piles of body parts, but I don’t see any remnant of her.
Khour? I ask Tarrex.
He scans the room, then points his chin at an indent in the far wall.
What is that?
I believe it’s an escape pod. An empty space where there used to be an escape pod to be exact. She must have slipped away the moment King burst through those doors.
Shit. I wanted to kill that bitch.
I’m a warrior, not a shy, retiring flower, but I express no argument when he pulls me into his arms and breathes into my ear, “I’ve never been more relieved than when those males turned their attention to that wonderful beast instead of harming the female I love.”
He sets me far enough away from him to inspect my chest, then has no ability to hide the string of epithets that fly through his thoughts and into mine.
How bad? I ask about the cut.
It’s not deep, my love. She cut through the layers of skin but not the muscle. It’s bleeding but not life-threatening. His relief comes through loud and clear. I’ve heard the female takes after her father and likes to flay people alive. I believe she was preparing to do that to you.
“I imagine it’s going to hurt like a son of a bitch when my adrenaline quits pumping. I can see your blood darkening your shirt and pants,” I say.
Doctoré hands me a rolled-up shirt he has stripped off a body and hands another one to Tarrex. I lift his shirt and press it against his wound as he does the same to me. At least it staunches the flow of blood.
“But before we take a trip to the medbay, I want to thank that magnificent beast,” I say.
Theos grabbed the knife Khour left behind and is methodically finding any body that is still even partially whole and stabbing it in the heart.
King has a much more direct approach. He’s shaking each and every torso like a ragdoll until he is personally satisfied they are dead.
“I take that back,” I say. “Medbay first, then bath, then kudos and praises.” The K’tar’s metallic covering is no longer silver. It’s painted in every shade of blood.