Chapter 4
The light on the panel cycled from green back to amber, almost sullenly. “Guest communication privileges require secondary authorization.”
“Oh, hell no. No, you don’t.” Jabbing a finger at the panel, she narrowed her eyes at the blinking light. “You just said it… like a minute ago. ‘Guests are afforded the right to communicate with kin or legal representatives’.” She imitated its tone for good measure.
“Guests are afforded the right to communicate with kin or legal representatives in the event of separation or distress,” the computer replied, and she wanted to kick its digital ass.
Instead, she just nodded. “Exactly. I’ve been separated from my kin, and I’m distressed about it. I meet both criteria. You can’t slap a right on the table and then yank it back like some rigged game. That’s bad faith.”
Pursing her lips, she tapped them with a forefinger as if she was thinking. “You know, that probably violates a whole bunch of Latharian honor codes. Do you want to explain to a war-commander why you blocked a message to his new mate? Because I wouldn’t.”
The computer was silent for a long moment. Then it made a sound like a sigh. “State your message.”
“Ha!” Bouncing on her toes, she composed the words in her head. Harper was on her honeymoon, and the last thing she needed was to look up from her alien sex vacation and see her cousin’s drama glaring at her from a comm screen.
Delilah plastered on her brightest voice, the one that charmed bartenders and sympathetic landlords.
“Hey cuz. I’m awake, obviously, or I wouldn’t be talking to you.
I’m fine, I’m on a spaceship, but don’t worry.
I’ve not been kidnapped, just… on a road trip with the hot alien doctor.
You have fun with your big scary alien husband.
Do honeymoon stuff. Drink whatever passes for champagne up here.
Don’t think about me. Love you, mean it. Don’t feel guilty. I know you do. Bye.”
“Message recorded and queued for transmission.”
“See? How easy was that?” She grinned at the panel, her reflection warped in the dark metal. “Now. Open sesame.”
“Request not recognized.”
She sighed. “Open the door, please.”
“Request denied.”
She groaned, dropping her head back against the wall so hard it thunked. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Only crew members are authorized—“
“Yeah, yeah, crew designation, security protocols, I’ve heard the greatest hits already.” She rolled her shoulders and pushed off the wall, squaring up to the panel like it was a bouncer who’d ID’d her at thirty. “But why?”
“Authorization protocols require crew designation for access to ship functions.”
“For this door?” She gestured at the blank metal. “It’s a bedroom. I’m the only one inside it. What exactly am I going to steal? The mattress? The exciting wall paint? I promise you, I am not a threat to ship security.”
“Request not recognized.”
She gritted her teeth. “Okay. Why do crew get to leave and guests don’t?”
“Crew have unrestricted access.”
“And guests have freedom of movement, remember?”
“Only to non-secure areas.”
She let a hint of a smile quirk her lips. “Okay… non-secure areas. This is a bedroom. Is it secure?”
There was a pause. “…Negative.”
“Sooooo…” Folding her arms, she let the logic hang in the air.
“If I’m a guest, and guests can move freely, and this is not a secure area…
but why is the door locked from the outside?
That’s a fire hazard. What if there’s an emergency?
I’d be trapped. A dead guest. Which is veeeeeery bad press for the Latharian Mate Program. ”
The light on the panel turned green, and with a soft hiss, the door slid open. “Access granted.”
“Yes!” She fist-pumped the air, then caught her reflection in the dark glass of the porthole. Her hair was a wreck, dark roots glaring against the honey-blonde, and the borrowed sweater hung off her like a sack. She looked like a disaster, but right now, she didn’t care.
“Who’s the best? I’m the best. And Kellat V’Raav is a handsome asshole who locks sick people in rooms. Mental note: annoy him about it later. Extensively. Maybe hide his toothbrush. Hey, do Lathar even use toothbrushes? Whatever. I’ll find something.”
She peeked out into the corridor. The hallway stretched in both directions, all dark metal panels and red lights that made the whole place look like a location in a heavy metal music video.
Her gaze darted left, then right, and she slipped out of her room. Somewhere ahead, heavy boots thudded against the deck, accompanied by the rough rumble of male voices.
Flattening herself against the bulkhead, her heart kicked hard against her ribs as three big lathar passed the junction up ahead. One had a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw, raw and angry, while another carried a big gun that looked like it could punch through a tank.
Pressing her back against the wall behind a support strut, she held her breath until the footsteps faded. When they had, she waited a few more seconds, then peeled herself off the wall.
She made it down another two corridors, ducking behind support struts and holding her breath every time a shadow moved at the edge of her vision, but didn’t run into any more overly muscled alien traffic.
“Real smooth, Sawyer. Real super spy shit.”
Peeling herself off a cold bulkhead, she wiped her damp palms on her thighs. Harper would lose her mind when she heard about this. Delilah bit her lip. If she heard, Kellat might just stuff her back in that room and throw away the key when he found out what she’d been up to.
That didn’t stop her though, and she carried on.
The passage tightened for a section, the walls either side humming.
Must be some kind of machinery behind them.
Perhaps the engines? She didn’t know how human spaceships worked, let alone alien ones.
Then she was past that section, and the corridor opened up again.
A wash of air hit her, and it was different. Dry enough to crack her lips and snapping with an electric charge that lifted the fine hairs on her arms. It snapped against her skin, leaving a metallic taste on her tongue. She frowned. What the hell… it was like licking a battery.
She blinked hard, utterly blind after the brighter light of the hallway behind her. Standing stock-still, she breathed shallowly as she waited for her retinas to get with the damn program.
Shapes resolved from the gloom. Huge and hunched, like they were about to attack.
She gasped, jumping backward and slamming into the bulkhead behind her. “What the fuck—“
Her eyes widened. She was standing right beneath a row of the biggest alien war robots she had ever seen. Eight-legged monstrosities of dark metal and piston joints, they were hunkered down, but each was big enough to dwarf Kellat, and he was the biggest guy she’d ever seen.
Dull-red eyes clustered on one’s front plate. Guns were mounted across another’s back, easily big enough to punch through a station wall. She didn’t want to know what the saw blades were for. Or the hooks on the one at the end, curved and vicious, built to tear a hull open.
She bit back her whimper. The news feeds back home had shown Lathar combat bots, sleek bipedal machines that marched in neat formation. These were nothing like that. These looked like they’d been built by something with a serious grudge against anything soft and squishy, to take it apart painfully.
“Nope.” Shaking her head, she pressed flatter against the wall. Her lips moved, but it was like her vocal cords had seen the same thing she had and refused to form sounds out of self-preservation. “Hell nope from Nopistan.”
Her eyes wide, she pressed herself flat against the wall like she was trying to merge with it and slid sideways, an inch at a time. Her gaze darted from machine to machine, ready to make a break for it if any of them so much as twitched a metal leg.
None of them moved. There was no whirring or targeting lasers sweeping her face. They sat there, dark and silent.
Her heel scraped the deck, and she froze, her heart doing a frantic drum solo against her ribs. But nothing whirred, and no weapons systems activated to turn her into a smear of blood on the metal of the wall.
It could be a trap. She inched sideways along the wall. They were alien war robots, so they could be playing dead to lure her in. That’s what smart predators did, right? Act all dead and then—bam—alien blender.
Her pulse hammered in her ears as she moved, her knees all loose and wobbly.
It was okay. It was fine. She was tiny and quiet… basically a mouse. She took another shuffle backward, and her heel bumped a strut. She froze, biting her lip hard enough to sting. Mice didn’t get eaten when they didn’t move, right? She frowned. Wait. Owls ate mice. Shit. Bad analogy.
She looked up. The nearest robot stared down at her with a blank, eyeless face, all smooth dark metal and menacing angles. It didn’t twitch or power up with a threatening hum.
Please be broken. Please be broken.
She shifted another inch back the way she’d come. Be out of batteries. Please be scrap metal or something.
A flicker of movement caught in the corner of her eye. Low down, where the deck met the wall, tucked behind the legs of the biggest, meanest-looking robot.
Narrowing her eyes, she crouched down, her fingers pressed flat against the cold metal floor.
There. She gasped softly. There was a baby robot hiding back there.
It was tiny. Maybe the size of a big house cat, all huddled into itself with six spindly legs tucked tight and two smaller arms wrapped around what might have been its head. The thing was shaking, actually shaking, small round lenses blinking at her in rapid, terrified bursts.