Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The cargo hold was as dark as midnight, and to her surprise, the lights didn’t automatically turn on when she entered.
Maybe they’d malfunctioned, like almost everything onboard this aging, dilapidated freighter.
Arin flicked on her guide-light as she made her way amongst the empty cargo containers, searching for her squad.
She cursed herself for not making arrangements to retrieve the boys earlier, but amidst all the chaos, with the Xargek breathing down their necks and everything going to shit in the central hold, it had slipped her mind.
Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d seemed to have the undivided attention of a certain grand distraction named Rykal.
That Kordolian. He was at the center of everything, and now more than ever, her independent soul longed to have him by her side.
A soft snort of disbelief escaped her. Since when had she relied on anyone else to keep her safe?
Arin crept forward, flashing her light into empty cargo containers. Stripped of their contents, the large cage-like structures gaped at her, the coalescing shadows making them appear all the more vacant.
The hold was quiet, eerily so. Arin’s vision was limited to the cone of light provided by her link-band; beyond that, there was only darkness.
Her instincts screamed at her to get the fuck out of there. The Xargek had appeared from nowhere and infiltrated every part of the freighter. By going it alone, she was taking a big risk.
But all she had to do was get her guys out of there, and they would be fine. All it would take was a quick in-and-out, and then a short run back up to the docking bay.
She thought about calling out, but if there were Xargek down here, even larvae, she didn’t want to alert them to her location. Instead, she crept along with her plasma gun raised and her senses stretched taut, listening carefully for any signs of life.
She’d mapped out a clear route to the exit, so if she encountered anything, if she heard that hair-raising skittering noise, she’d be out of there in a flash.
Arin reached one end of the hold and doubled back, having found nothing.
“Sarge!” A loud whisper broke the silence, coming from one of the containers up ahead. “You gotta get us out of here!”
“Decker?” Arin recognized the voice. She ran towards it, watching the floor carefully for signs of Xargek as she approached. “Where the hell are you?”
“Over here.” For some reason, he was keeping his voice down.
Arin reached the container and, to her immense relief, saw all six of her team members through the metal-cage doors. They were sitting with their backs against the walls of the container, looking haggard and fatigued.
Dekker stood, rattling the cage in frustration, his oversized frame hunched under the low ceiling of the container. “The monster locked us in,” he snarled, humiliation twisting his features into an ugly frown.
“Fucking alien,” grumbled another peacekeeper, a tall, athletic guy called Okello. “I didn’t know they could see in the dark.”
“Well, now you know,” Arin said dryly, as she studied the doors of the container. It seemed Rykal had gone and found a stray piece of Armium pipe somewhere and actually twisted the metal around the door handles, binding them together and trapping the peacekeepers inside.
Their weapons had all been removed and were stacked neatly in front of the container.
“Freak,” Arin muttered under her breath as she tried to figure out the quickest way to get her people out. “Stand back,” she warned loudly as she raised her plasma gun.
The peacekeepers stared at the weapon in her hands and hastily shuffled to the rear of the container.
“Where the hell did you get that, Sarge? That’s alien tech.”
“Never you mind,” Arin steadied her aim. “You all turn away and duck, now. I’m about to blast this thing.”
Arin squeezed the trigger, preparing for a loud blast.
Nothing happened.
“Is it broken?” one of her men whispered.
“Wait.” Arin studied the thing. It had a blue charge indicator on the side alongside what looked like the safety. Of course. She flipped it off, pulled the trigger, aimed at Rykal’s makeshift ‘lock’, and fired.
Boom! Blue plasma fire lit the darkness, and the gun’s powerful recoil threw Arin back onto her ass, sending her crashing into one of the empty cargo containers opposite them.
“Aargh,” she groaned, momentarily blinded by the flash, her lower back and ass aching. She hadn’t expected such a mean recoil. The Kordolians made shooting these things look so damn easy.
With lots of frantic rattling, the peacekeepers busted out of the container, falling upon their weapons as if they were a pile of gold.
“You okay, Sarge?”
“Yeah.” Arin got to her feet, dusting herself off. She briefly considered launching into a long and scathing dressing down on why human soldiers shouldn’t follow a Kordolian warrior off into the darkness with the intent to ambush him, but she decided that could wait for later.
Right now, they needed to get out of here before a stray Xargek found them.
Arin shone her guide-light at her squad, noting their dazed expressions.
“Thanks, Sarge. We owe you a pint or two if we ever set foot on sweet Earth again.”
Arin deflected their gratitude with a short, sharp shake of her head.
“All of you, cut the crap and listen to me. There’s an evac taking place in Docking Bay One.
There may be Xargek down there, and there may be Kordolians.
Hopefully, the latter will be engaging the former.
I want you to make your way down to the Docking Bay in a swift, orderly fashion and assist with the evac efforts.
If you see a Kordolian, do not engage. Am I clear? ”
Hesitation.
“Am I clear, assholes?”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
“Listen to your commander, assholes.” A low, rather snarky voice drifted to them from beyond Arin’s small cone of blue light.
Instantly, an array of guns, knives, and hateful looks were summoned and pointed towards the darkness.
Arin sighed, even as a warm wave of relief coursed through her. “Rykal, what are you doing?”
“I came for you,” he said. “I was worried about you.”
Arin raised her wrist so that the radius of her link band’s blue light increased, illuminating the surroundings.
Rykal’s golden eyes flashed as the light reached him, reminding her of a wolf in the night. Slowly, the rest of him came into focus. He was leaning casually against an empty cargo container with his arms crossed, wearing an infuriating devil-may-care expression
“You bastard!” Dekker lunged forward, but Arin pinned him with a hard stare.
“I told you not to engage,” she snapped. “What do you think you’re going to achieve, Dekker?”
“He killed Harris!”
“That human shot a missile at me. Be thankful I didn’t kill all of you,” Rykal said mildly. “I could have.”
“Oh, yeah? Picking us off one by one in the dark is one thing, but taking all of us on at once?” Dekker raised his bolt rifle.
“Go ahead, human,” Rykal taunted. “I thought you humans were supposed to be intelligent life-forms, but apparently, some of you don’t learn.”
Arin rolled her eyes. Men. “Can I interrupt this testosterone-fest and remind you that this freighter’s been taken over by Xargek?” She glared at Rykal. “Rykal, stop teasing my squad.” She turned to her men. “Stop trying to pick fights you can’t win and get your asses to the loading dock, now!”
Rykal was grinning like a fool. The men in her squad had faces like thunder, but they reluctantly obeyed as their training kicked in.
Okello glanced over his shoulder. “You coming, Sarge?”
“In a moment.”
“You can’t be alone with…”
“That’s none of your business,” Arin barked, losing patience. “Get the hell out of here, Private!”
She turned to Rykal, moving closer until he was fully bathed in her blue light. He wore a stripped-down version of his armor that left most of his torso bare.
His skin gleamed in the blue light, and Arin could make out every delicious contour and ridge of his perfectly honed torso.
“I like it when you’re bossy like that,” Rykal murmured. He was so close. She was acutely aware of him. He watched her every move like a hawk, his smile widening as he took a deep breath. His scent surrounded her, crisp and masculine and like nothing she’d encountered on Earth.
Arin lowered the plasma gun as Rykal moved in on her. She wasn’t really sure what he was doing, but she found herself unable to stop him. In this huge, cold, dark cargo hold, it was just the two of them.
The sounds of footsteps and voices grew fainter as her squad departed the hold, leaving her well and truly alone with her cocky, infuriating, insistent, beautiful alien.
“You shouldn’t have come down here alone,” he chided. The harsh edge to his voice was gone, replaced with tenderness. “I was worried about you.”
His words made Arin feel strange. A warm, pleasant shiver coursed through her. It had been a long time since anybody had been worried about her.
“I can take care of myself,” she grumbled half-heartedly, because that was what she was expected to say. But the truth was that Rykal’s presence at her side made her feel ridiculously invincible.
And he was supposed to be the enemy.
But deep down, Arin already knew her battle was lost.
Sometimes, surrender could be a good thing.
“Something strange happens when I worry about you,” he said, moving ever closer. “I can’t really explain it. I can’t think straight. Anger fills me. If I think of you being with another, or being harmed by another, I risk losing all self-control.”
Persistent Rykal was becoming possessive Rykal.
“I’ve created a monster,” Arin whispered half-jokingly, but her eyes were drawn to him, drinking in his sincere expression. There was a strange innocence about him, even though he was as dangerous as the devil himself.