Chapter Five
Aphrodite peaked up from the ship and watched Danny, thrusters engaged and bloody knife in hand, run at the hunter.
Just go for the ship while he’s taking the bait.
She knew the smart thing was to save herself.
That’s what everyone else had been so concerned with instead of getting out together.
Aphrodite scowled, watching Danny and the hunter tango.
Thrusters pushing left and right, Danny swung for all he was worth.
That’s when Aphrodite realized something.
The way the hunter moved…they were moving strangely.
She crawled along the ship, recalling her drone.
It zipped to her location. She switched it to analysis mode.
An orange beam shot out from the center of its orb face.
A grid appeared on the pair of men. Watching her screen switch to a breakdown of their movements, she furrowed her brow.
“Their armor, it’s…there’s no way they have command of the suit and are able to… ”
She looked up at the hunter’s seamless reaction and fight with Danny.
The protection specialist, who was trained to fight and engage thrusters at the same time since he was a child, was still jerky in his movements.
It’s hard to use the hand controls on the inside of his gloves and strike at the same time.
“It’s like their armor is a part of their skin, like it can think and change magnetism and thrusters, like it’s plugged into their brain,” she gasped, clawing her way up to her feet.
Engaging her own thrusters, she kept her feet as close to the ship’s metal as possible.
There’s no way. She sent her drone closer, keeping her distance as best she could.
The drone scanned her hunter again. With a massive smile on her face, and a flutter in her chest, she spotted it.
Just under the helmet, a sliver of a cord—a connection.
It is plugged in. Aphrodite dug in her pockets and found the pocketknife she kept in her suit.
Just in case something small needed to be stabbed or a screw was being belligerent…
or sometimes you just needed a tiny knife.
It wasn’t a big thing, but it’d do the trick.
She turned off her drone’s lights and dropped to the outside of the ship as the hunter tossed Danny away from them again.
Creeping along the metal, keeping as low and quiet as she could, she focused solely on getting to them.
Just keep them distracted, Danny. She was inches away, hunkering behind a ripped-up piece of metal, her drone bobbed beside her.
Like a lioness in tall grass, she watched her prey.
Just…a little…further. She waited for Danny to go hand to hand with the four-armed hunter again before she launched.
She wrapped around him, a leech on their back, she latched her legs around their torso, grabbed at the connection blindly, and ripped her knife through the chord.
Space seemed to grow still, and everything stopped.
Aphrodite blinked, staring over the head of the hunter to Danny.
His helmet was in the meaty hand of their attacker.
His eyes were wide, staring at the cracks forming on his visor.
He was inches from burying his knife in the space between the hunter’s armor and mask, held back by stronger arms than his.
Then all the hunter’s armor fell off. And the red lights began.
“Warning, oxygen low,” Danny and Aphrodite’s suits cried out.
Wait…fuck…how long had they been out here?
Aphrodite stole a glance down to the screen on her suit and felt pure fear claw at the inside of her belly.
The screen flashed a dull red with the words ‘Warning’ plastered on it.
I’ve been sucking down air like a hyperventilating newbie. Her attention flickered to Danny.
The hunter tossed him into the open space between ships while Aphrodite still clutched to them, backpack style.
Danny reached for his grappling hook, a small device meant to connect their suits with a small, metal line.
It was for when the terrain was bad, and they could get lost. Aphrodite reached an arm out to him, her drone bobbing its head above them.
Strange, the hunter didn’t move. All the Hunter’s armor fell away, leaving their skin exposed to the space around them.
“I’ll catch it!” she called out, thrusters engaged. As she scrambled to detach from the hunter, two large hands wrapped around her ankles and kept her locked in place. Aphrodite screamed, panic pitching her voice up an octave. “Danny! Send out the line!”
But it wasn’t the line that Danny grabbed. It was the anti-vacuum gun that he whipped off his belt and aimed at their attacker. Aphrodite saw her life flash before her eyes.
Small Aphrodite, cute and chunky, wandering her tech wonderland of childhood.
Her mother was a database specialist; she had computers and wondrous code everywhere.
Her father, an engineer, taught her how to hotwire a data pad by the time she was six.
Her brothers, just as adorable and wide eyed, helped her build tiny robots and made all their inventions fight in their playroom.
She saw her life at the station, growing up.
Best friends she’d never see again or write emails to, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends she regretted not making amends with, old colleagues she wished she’d kept in touch with…
all of them, she saw their faces and how hurt they’d be to learn she’d died.
Died because her asshole crewmate chose to win the fight over saving her life.
Honestly? He had better not miss… She inhaled sharply, closed her eyes, and hunkered around the hunter.
As the gun went off and the hollow of space was filled with its crackling boom, she waited for the pain.
She’d been shot before; it hurt like a son of a bitch.
But the hurt never came. Aphrodite waited, eyes clenched shut and fingers locked around the flesh of the hunter. Nothing hit her.
“Warning, oxygen low.” She opened her eyes, her vision drenched in the red light from her helmet.
She looked down at the being she clung to and found them staring back at her.
She blinked. They blinked. When did they shift me to their front?
Her lungs tightened. She studied their face, following the features down to the chest, then to the arms.
“Did he fucking miss?” She seethed. Snapping her head toward where Danny had been, she opened her mouth to berate him only to lurch.
Danny was still there, but he wasn’t alone.
And he wasn’t alive. Her mouth dropped open and eyes widened as two other beings, like the one that chased them, were beside him, pushing two long blades through his torso.
Danny’s head was already knocked against his helmet, blood pooling around his visor.
Aphrodite returned her attention to the naked attacker.
Her stomach lurched and she nearly fainted as all four of their arms hugged around her.
They situated her better against their body.
Palms flat against her back and backside, they squeezed her, hard.
Something akin to a chuckle if it were under water and floating around her filled her ears, “Fair hunt, my mate, you have won. Now, claim your prize.”
“My what?” she blurted out before her vision began to spin. “Oh no,” her speech was slurred as the lights around her grew bright and dark at the same time.
“My Mate?”
She shouldn’t be able to hear him. He was talking…in space! She flopped backward in his arms, the lack of oxygen attacking her brain first.
“Kannatch, your mate; the suit says oxygen low.”
Aphrodite was blinking in the dull, flashing red lights of her helmet when a large hand was placed at the back of her head. The hunter cradled her, speaking to her but she couldn’t understand. She swirled down the drain of her mind before everything went black.
At least…I died to oxygen loss…and not to Danny and his fucking ego.