Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Rykal was fully recovered now, and Arin was fully dressed. They’d found her clothes in an empty waste bag, and she’d wasted no time dressing herself and picking select weapons off the dead guards until she was armed with a decent arsenal of bolt-guns of varying sizes.
Rykal’s nanites had recharged enough for him to be able to ‘form’ his armor again, but he’d needed to do something to get to that point.
What exactly that thing was, she wasn’t sure, because he’d asked her to step out of the room for a moment. His voice had been subdued, and his eyes had been downcast, as if he were suddenly self-conscious.
When he’d emerged, his muscular form had been encased in his customary suit of exo-armor again, and Arin had given him a short, sharp shrug, as if to say: don’t worry about it.
She suspected that whatever he’d done to ‘regenerate’ so quickly had something to do with the bodies on the floor, but he hadn’t wanted to share, and she hadn’t wanted to know, so she’d let it drop.
Together, they stalked down the dim corridors of the nameless surveillance ship, searching for a way out. Rykal had no weapons. Arin had offered him a bolt gun, but he’d sniffed disdainfully at the weapon, muttering something about inferior human technology.
And for some reason, that had made her laugh, granting them a moment of levity in such grim circumstances.
The lower decks of the ship were strangely deserted. The subdued agents who had been monitoring all kinds of surveillance equipment had disappeared, and there was no trace of either E1 or E2.
Arin wasn’t sure how many Rykal had killed, but it had to be close to half the guards onboard the ship.
So where were the others?
“They think they can ambush us,” Rykal whispered as they entered the bridge. Even the navigators had disappeared, leaving the ship to be manned by its AI. “Don’t worry. I will kill all of them.”
“Don’t,” Arin said, giving him a stern look.
“Do what you need to do, but don’t kill people who are defenseless.
Not everyone on board this ship is a soldier.
They might be doing weird, fucked up shit up here, but they think they’re doing it for the good of their race.
For my race. They think they’re doing the right thing.
I’m sure you, of all people, can understand that. ”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I will try, but I can’t promise anything. Sometimes things just happen.”
“Don’t they just,” Arin said dryly as they passed through the bridge and down a narrow corridor.
The corridor ended, widening into a small docking area where the only way out was beyond the thick metal walls of the ship, into space.
The surveillance cruiser wasn’t huge, and its docking area was only big enough for things like small escape vessels, mobile airlocks, and maintenance craft.
There were weird-looking things in here, too, mysterious objects that could have been satellites or sophisticated spy equipment.
To one side sat an array of escape pods, housing just enough seats to fit all the crew.
“Where the hell have they gone?” Arin shook her head, astounded that the entire crew of a ship could just disappear like that.
“Shh.” Rykal held up a hand, his ears twitching. “They are tracking us.”
“They?”
“Human soldiers. I can hear their footsteps. They all walk a certain way, even you. But unlike them, the way you walk is special. Sexy.”
“Oh.” Well, that was nice to know. Rykal had been analyzing her walking patterns. What else had he observed about her?
“They think to trap us here.” He smiled coldly. “Stay here and keep your guns ready. I’ll hold the corridor. They won’t get past me, but be ready just in case.”
Arin nodded as Rykal disappeared down the corridor. All the while, she thought they’d been walking around the ship blindly, but now she realized he’d been looking for a place such as this; a narrow, difficult place where he could pick his opponents off one by one and keep her safe at the same time.
Perhaps, with his uncanny hearing, he’d known where they were the whole time.
It was good to have a Kordolian at one’s side, even if he’d lost all his Callidum weapons. He still had his armor and his fists, and for these particular opponents, that was enough.