Chapter Ten #3
He had pulled out his weapon, too, as smoke began to swirl down the corridor from the upper decks.
Was the ship on fire? If so, that was an extreme emergency in space, and we could die quickly.
Morris was yelling something about getting me to my cabin, but was that the right thing to do?
Maybe we’d need to make it to a shuttle if the ship was on fire or maybe even exploding.
The shuttles were on the lower decks. Besides, if there was any chance that this was Davos, I had no intention of getting off this ship without him.
I pulled desperately back against Morris’s arm, trying to shrug him off.
“No, we may have to evacuate the ship!” I cried. “Let’s move down to the lower decks just in case.”
“Not until we know for sure what’s happening.
We’re definitely under attack,” he shouted back over the noise coming down to us from the upper decks.
Now that he’d mentioned it, it did sound like a fierce battle was raging above us, with sounds of disruptors firing and the acrid smell of smoke and the sharp cries of men in pain.
“I’m getting you back to your quarters,” Morris said.
He seized me around the waist and picked me up bodily to haul me to my door. We were both out of breath by that time, but I still managed to ball up my fist and punch him right in the jaw. “Damn it, I’m not going in there!”
Suddenly, the fight raging on the upper decks spilled down into the narrow corridor we were struggling in.
It was immediately apparent that these were Tygerian soldiers in their Axis uniforms and bristling with weapons.
I called out to them and tried to yell for help to get Morris off me, but they didn’t seem to hear me.
To be fair, they were fighting the Alliance soldiers who had come careening down the stairs with them, so they were all pretty busy.
Morris pulled desperately again on my arm to move me down the passageway, but I managed to shake him off and turned back toward the soldiers, hoping they’d recognize me.
One of the Tygerians shouted something that sounded like my name, and for a moment, I tried to get closer to them.
Then one of the Alliance men lifted his disruptor and aimed it directly at me.
I yelled and flailed my arm, knocking the barrel to the side.
It fired and the charge hit Morris in the chest. He gave a soft cry, reeled backward and fell at my feet.
Disruptors could maim or even cause death instantly.
Charges from a disruptor, even one set on stun, hit their victims with great force and had been known to break bones when they didn’t kill outright.
More frequently, the victims didn’t live to complain about it.
I looked down at Morris and was pretty sure he was dead.
I didn’t have time to do anything but react to the violence around me.
I dropped to the floor as another shot zinged past over my head, barely missing me, and I saw that I was lying next to Morris’s unmoving body.
I grabbed the disruptor he was still clutching in his hand, jumped to my feet and began waving it around and shouting.
I don’t even think I was making any sense at that point, because I was so scared one of the idiots in that corridor was going to shoot me before I could be rescued.
Someone grabbed me by my shoulder and whirled me around, and I pulled up the disruptor to point it in their face. I had my finger on the trigger, and I was ready to fire, when I suddenly realized who I was aiming at.
Davos stood in front of me, his hands out and a wary look on his handsome face. “Don’t shoot me, baby. I’ve come a long way to find you.”
I was so stunned I couldn’t seem to say anything.
I just stood there shaking, still holding the gun on him.
“Listen to me, Lieutenant. I know you thought you’d made it back to Earth.
That you escaped me, but I don’t want to let you go.
The baby needs you, and I-I need you too.
So much. I can’t do without you, but if you really want to go, then I-I’ll try not to stop you.
I love you too much to ever hurt you that way.
But I have to hear it from you. Tell me that you don’t want me and the baby, and I’ll-I’ll go.
Put that disruptor down, baby, and I’ll take my men and leave.
Unless…unless you think you might want to come with me?
Do you? Would you? Will you come back to me, sweetheart? ”
“Oh, Davos!” I cried out, taking a step toward him. “Yes—yes, I want to come with you. Please take me.”
I threw myself in his arms. He wrapped me up tight in his arms and kissed me, right there in the midst of the chaos.
He placed a arm around my waist and then picked me up and put me against the wall, shielding me with his big body, cradling the back of my head with his other hand.
He kissed me ravenously as he pressed his body against mine.
I hooked my leg around his strong thighs and held on tight.
I’d thought for a while now that I might never have this again.
He swept me up in his arms and carried me out of there, heading to an upper deck.
I buried my face against his throat and just breathed him in.
I had my eyes tightly closed, because I didn’t want to see people being killed around me.
Being in this fight was awful, because naturally, I didn’t want any of the Earthan men killed.
They hadn’t done anything but follow orders, after all, and they’d come to try to save me.
The same went for the Tygerians. That’s why I’d buried my face and didn’t look.
If that made me weak, then so be it. I guess I was.
I think Davos realized how I felt, though, because he started shouting and telling his men to stop fighting, get out and get back to their ship.
They began to rush past us, a few of them guarding us until we all made it back onboard.
Once there, Davos took me below decks to keep me safe.
He tried to calm me down. as we pulled away from the Alliance ship, and then before I knew it, we were soaring out into space, heading for home.