Chapter 8
The seal hissed home. It didn't even have the decency to slam.
It just... closed.
"No," she said, to the door. "No, no, you absolute—"
She hit it. Flat-palmed, both hands, the way she'd never once in her life hit anything she actually expected to give. The metal didn't move. Didn't flex. Her palms stung and she hit it again anyway, harder, and the impact rang up through her wrists into her elbows and did exactly nothing.
"You don't get to do that!" Her voice cracked on it. "You don't get to say that and then lock me in a fucking room! Thyaar!"
Nothing.
Barnaby paced a tight circle by her ankles, tail lashing, throwing up that low engine-trouble growl he saved for thunderstorms and the vacuum cleaner. She wanted to scream with him. She wanted to put her foot through the wall.
Because you’re my mate, that’s why! The bond hit me when you broke my nose with that bat. My entire existence stopped and rewrote itself around you. Every minute since I walked through your door. It's been you.
The ship lurched, throwing her into the doorframe.
She winced, rubbing her shoulder as beyond the door, the sound of something heavy hit something else, and a deep voice shouted an order.
Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes.
That wasn’t Thyaar. It was a voice she didn't know, all harsh and cruel.
The anger at Thyaar for locking her in here drained away, and she lifted her head.
What was left underneath was colder. Harder.
No, nobody got to protect her. Not unless she said.
And she sure as shit hadn’t said Thyaar got to protect her.
She could bloody well protect herself, thank you very much.
She'd always protected herself. With a bat and a frying pan and a scream of fire instead of help if she had to, because help didn't come but rubberneckers did.
And she was not about to sit all safe and sound in what amounted to an alien saferoom while the man who’d just told her she was his mate was out there probably getting gutted by asshole pirates.
Screw. That.
She turned to glare at the panel beside the door.
It glowed softly, a neat little array of symbols she couldn't read.
She didn't need to though. She didn't have to understand the thing, she just had to break it.
And breaking things she understood. Eleven years on a packing line had taught her exactly how the clever machines failed, and they all failed the same way in the end…
they were only as smart as the dumbest connection in them. Which was usually the operator.
"Okay," she breathed and started jabbing at buttons, not giving the thing time to catch up. "Okay. Come on."
It flashed, and bleeped in warning but she carried on, her grin widening. “Come on, give it up, you alien piece of shit. I can do this all day.”
The panel whined at her and started flashing, then it cut out and went dead. Eyes wide, she looked up at the door.
“Come on, come on…” Shit, the failure mode on this had to be to open, surely? Otherwise if the thing failed then the emperor would be locked in here, and they wouldn’t want that. Would they?
After a moment, the door gave an unhealthy buzz and slid open a hand's width. It groaned and stuck there, half-open, lights dead all down the frame.
"Ha." It came out shaky. "Ha. Dumbest connection in the machine. Every time."
Shoving her fingers into the gap, she pulled. It fought her for every inch, all dead weight and alien metal, but she put her shoulder into it. Pushing with her whole weight, she managed to get it open far enough for her to slip through sideways.
"Barns. With me."
She didn't have to ask twice. The cat poured through the gap ahead of her like he'd been waiting for the invitation his entire life.
The corridor was wrong. The warm low amber light she'd padded down barefoot last night was strobing now, a sick stutter of red along the ceiling, and the air had a taste to it—hot metal, an ozone bite at the back of her throat, something underneath it sweet and chemical and burning. The deck thrummed under her bare feet, a deep ugly vibration. And at the far end of the corridor, the door to the cargo bay was buckled and broken, its frame scorched black in a ragged ring. Her eyes widened; they’d cut clean through it. That was how they'd gotten in.
Noises came from the bridge, snapping her attention back that way. There was a wet heavy sound she knew; the sound of fists hitting flesh, followed by a pain-filled grunt. A voice she didn't know snarling words her new translator patch turned into sounds she could half make out…
“—stay down.”
“Where is he?”
“Where's the Emperor?”
She padded toward the bridge on silent feet.
She’d never considered herself particularly brave, and her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to go the other way, but she kept moving down the juddering corridor until she reached the bridge door.
And everything in her stopped.
Thyaar was on his knees, with a gun to the back of his head.
His hair was loose around his face, and one arm hung wrong. Blood covered the side of his face from somewhere above his ear down to his jaw. His chest heaved, his hands bound behind him as he stared at the floor.
Her hand flew up to cover her mouth.
His head snapped up and his gaze found hers. He gave a small shake of his head. The look on his face hit her in the gut. Fear, but not fear for himself… she'd seen a man afraid for himself, and this wasn't it. No, it was worse. It was fear for her.
Behind him stood a pirate, the long ugly snout of a weapon pressed to the back of Thyaar's skull. One twitch. One bored flex of a finger, and the man who'd told her his whole world reset around her would be gone, just gone, a mess on the Emperor's expensive carpet.
The cold thing in her chest cracked clean open.
She loved him. Of course she did. She'd been arguing with it for hours, telling herself it was adrenaline and proximity and that she wasn’t going to be that woman… the one who fell for her kidnapper. None of that mattered now.
He was hers, and if that pirate fired she was going to lose the one thing she'd ever decided to keep before she'd even told him he didn't get to leave.
Like hell.
She and Barnaby moved at the same time. She didn’t have a bat this time, or even a frying pan, so she grabbed the cylinder off the nearby wall that she assumed was a fire extinguisher and brandished it with a bellow.
Barnaby jumped up onto the console, tail swishing furiously as he yowled loud enough to burst eardrums.
The three pirates in the room turned to focus on them, just as she let loose a volley of fire-suppressant foam and Barnaby landed square on a pirate’s shoulders, all claws out.
White foam splattered across the bridge, covering everything, including the pirates. Swearing, they swiped at their faces, trying to clear the foam from their eyes.
Thyaar surged to his feet and slammed into the nearest set of legs before his brain fully registered the opening.
His left arm screamed agony and fire, the shoulder joint aching where they'd wrenched it the wrong way when they’d beaten him.
He ignored it. It didn’t matter… all that mattered was the half-second of confusion as Barnaby hit a pirate's face with all four sets of claws extended and Amelia sprayed foam into the bridge like a woman who'd done riot control in a past life.
He hit the pirate low and they both went down. Hard. He groaned as his shoulder slammed into the deck and his vision threatened to white out for a heartbeat. Not a good place to be when he was still underneath the biggest pirate of the lot, his hands still bound behind him.
Draanth.
The pirate got an elbow into his ribs, then tried to pin him.
Twisting Thyaar brought his knee up sharply and connected with something soft.
There was a grunt of pain, and the weight above him shifted.
He rolled away, putting the bigger body between himself and the gun he could hear charging somewhere to his left.
Another body made decent cover in a pinch.
Somewhere behind him, Barnaby screamed. Not the yowls he’d given before. This was a scream—high and furious, like a battlecry. One of the pirates howled and swore in pain.
Thyaar didn't have time to look. His pirate had recovered, already reaching for the blade at his waist, his face twisted into a snarl of rage. Thyaar rose up, slamming his forehead into his opponent’s face.
Something crunched and the pirate dropped, the dagger dropping to the deck plating next to the body.
Thyaar grinned. Somewhere in his unknown family tree, someone had paid for some extensive bone-mods, his forehead was as strong as hull plating.
Rolling, he picked up the blade, twisting it to bring it to bear on his bound wrists.
He worked the edge against his bonds, hissing as he caught himself a couple of times.
He didn’t have time to think about it, not with the battle raging around him.
The binding was cheap cargo webbing though and it parted in three hard sawing motions and his hands were free.
The pirate with the gun had been trying to get a firing solution on Amelia but she’d been clever enough to keep the foam spray aimed in his direction so he couldn’t.
He caught sight of Thyaar’s movement out of the corner of his eye and swung around.
Thyaar grabbed the blade and threw it. He didn’t have a good angle, so he aimed for distraction.
It caught the pirate in the meat of his forearm, and the gun went off into the ceiling.
Sparks rained down and another panel on the main console flickered and died.