Chapter 7 #3
"Hang on," he said, and threw the Vett'an into a corkscrew that put a slab of rock between them and the ship below.
The field thinned out up ahead. He saw it coming, the ragged edge of the debris where the rocks gave out and open space opened up… black and clean and lethal. In the field they had cover, but out there they were sitting ducks. The C'Vaal ships were bigger, faster, and better armed.
He had nothing left that was clever. So he reached for stupid.
He slammed a hand down on the drive controls and killed them.
The thrust cut out, jolting them forward in their harnesses while all the ship’s systems screamed at him.
He used momentum to flip the ship, then took every joule of power that had been feeding the engines and shoved it into the weapons systems.
It was a terrible idea. It was also the only idea he had.
The forward cannon array came online with a whine, and he opened fire.
The first burst caught the pirate on the left broadside.
It sheared off hard, spinning away from a fight it hadn't expected.
The other two slowed and spread. He knew what they were thinking.
A yacht that quit running and turned to fight meant one of two things.
Either it had backup coming and the balls to wait for it, or whoever was flying it was crazy enough to be dangerous.
Both made a pursuer think twice. And that hesitation was all he needed.
He didn't waste it. He fired again, walking the cannons across their noses to keep them off balance.
"What are you doing?"
"Buying time," he said, and fired again.
But the time he'd bought ran out as the lead ship recovered its heading and the other two slotted in beside it. They’d have active scans on, watching for inbound Imperial ships. But there were none, and try as he might, he couldn’t get a vector solution to get back into the asteroid field.
The C’Vaal came in, slow and certain now, circling like sharks. But they didn’t fire again.
They were going to board.
He knew it the way he knew he needed his next breath. They'd close, they'd grapple, they'd cut their way in, and then it would be draanthic pirates in here.
Gods, if he had the mutation like Raaevik, that wouldn’t be a problem. Well, it would be, for the C’Vaal.
If he had what Raaevik had, the rage riding under his skin, the mutation that turned a Latharian warrior into something that didn't feel pain and didn't stop, he could tear every one of these draanthing pirates apart with his bare hands and not even break a sweat.
But he didn’t. There was no blood-rage mutation, no berserker under his skin.
Then his jaw tightened. He compressed the fear, the worry, and the sheer and utter rage that anyone would dare threaten the safety of his female into one hard knot.
He didn’t need the blood-rage mutation. He was an Imperial Bodyguard, a sub-commander.
He had his training and more years of bloody and brutal combat under his belt than he’d ever want to admit to his female, and gods help anyone who set foot on this ship.
He locked the array onto auto-fire, setting it to keep the C’Vaal off them for as long as the power held, and shoved himself out of the chair.
"Up. Now." He had Amelia’s harness undone before she could argue, his hand closing around her arm as he pulled her out of the seat. Barnaby exploded out of her lap and hit the deck running.
"Thyaar—what—"
"Move." He pushed her ahead of him out into the corridor. She twisted in his grip, her bare feet skidding on the carpet as she looked up at him, wide-eyed. The fear in her eyes almost did him in there and then.
“No! Tell me what's happening!"
"They're going to board." He got her to the bedroom door and shoved her through it, into the one space on the Vett'an he could seal. "This room locks. The bulkheads are rated. You stay in here, you keep the cat in here, and you do not open that door for anything that isn't me."
"You're not—" She grabbed for the doorframe, her expression stubborn as Barnaby wound himself around her ankles. “No! You can't just lock me in here and go out there alone! Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’re my mate, that’s why!” he roared, everything he felt exploding through him.
She stopped, her expression shocked.
“The bond hit me when you broke my nose with that bat." The words rumbled over each other, fast and rough. “My entire existence stopped and rewrote itself around you. Every minute since I walked through your door. It's been you."
Her eyes went wide, her mouth opening and closing. There. He'd said it. Out loud, with pirates at the hull and no time to say any of the rest of it. Hell of a time to tell a female she was his.
Managing to pry her grip off the doorframe without hurting her, he stepped back and triggered the door release.
"Thyaar—"
The seal hissed home, cutting her off mid-word. Closing his eyes, he stood there for a second with his palm flat against the cold metal. His female, as safe as he could make her.
Then he turned away and went to meet the boarders.