Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Durik hit the tile and Jarran was on top of him before he could roll.
The memories were all there now. Every combat drill, every grappling technique, every pressure point on a Virilian body.
Pella Rin’s training sat in his muscles and his hands.
He could assess distance and leverage and angle of attack without conscious thought.
He hated that it was there, but it was there, so he used it.
Durik threw an elbow. Jarran slipped it, got his forearm across Durik’s throat, and drove his weight down.
Durik bucked and twisted and Jarran locked his legs around the bigger male’s torso and squeezed.
The bathroom tile was slick with steam and condensation and they slid sideways into the base of the tub.
Jarran kept the choke. Durik’s fingers clawed at his forearm, gouging skin, and Jarran tightened his grip and held.
Ten seconds. Fifteen. Durik’s movements slowed. His hands dropped. His body went limp.
Jarran held the choke for three more seconds to be sure. Then he released it and sat back on his heels, breathing hard, and looked at the unconscious male beneath him.
He could kill him. One sharp twist. The knowledge was right there, precise and clinical, sitting in the front of his mind.
There were so many ways to break a neck, or crush a trachea.
He knew how to drive a thumb into the soft spot behind the jaw until the heart stopped. Just the thought of it sickened him.
He felt that pushing, that pressure on his mind, almost taunting him to do it.
To kill Durik. But the push was a little too hard, too eager, and Jarran scrambled back from the edge.
If he became a killer, it would let Pella Rin back in.
Something in Jarran would die along with Durik, and he wouldn’t risk that, even though he knew Durik would be a problem in his future.
But for now, the male was out cold. Jarran yanked a belt from one of the thick robes on the wall and bound Durik’s wrists behind his back, tight, knotting it twice. He used a second belt on the ankles. Then he heaved Durik into the tub and left him there.
The first female was on her feet. She’d cleared the salt from her eyes enough to see and she came at him fast, low, driving for his midsection.
Jarran sidestepped. He knew exactly what she would do next because he knew the training protocol: Right cross to follow the tackle.
Knee strike if the cross missed. Retreat and reset if both failed.
She threw the right cross. He caught her wrist, redirected her momentum and put her face-first into the bathroom wall.
She bounced off it and spun, but he was already behind her, arm across her throat, pulling her backward.
She grabbed his forearm and he felt her fingers flinch away from his skin.
The heat was still there, radiating off him.
His body temperature was running so hot that contact with his bare skin burned.
She went limp in twelve seconds. He lowered her to the floor, bound her wrists, and added her to the tub. She fit beside Durik with her legs folded.
The second female had recovered enough to stand. She was pressed against the far wall, blinking rapidly, face scalded from the steam. She raised her hands. Combat stance. Feet shoulder-width apart, weight forward, chin tucked. Textbook. He’d designed that textbook.
Jarran moved. He feinted left. She committed to the block. He came right and got behind her, locked in the choke, and it was over before she could adjust. Nine seconds. He caught her as she dropped, bound her, and put her in the tub with the others.
Three unconscious bodies in the oversized bathtub. Steam still curling from the shower nozzle. The bathroom smelled like eucalyptus and blood.
The heat finally faded from his skin. It left all at once, pulling back beneath the surface, and the absence of it hit him harder than the adrenaline. His legs went weak. His hands started shaking. He braced himself against the wall and breathed through it.
A sound came from the tube shower. Knuckles rapping on plexiglass.
He turned. Evie was standing inside the shower with her palms pressed flat against the clear wall, watching him.
Her face was pale and her hair was a cloud of frizz as she stared at him with the widest eyes he’d ever seen on her.
Fear, relief, and a few other chaotic emotions fought for the dominant expression.
“You can come out,” he said.
She unlatched and opened the door, then stepped out. Immediately, she crossed to him and examined the cut above his eyebrow. Her fingers were cool. The touch grounded him.
“It’s not too deep. Here. Hold this against it.” She snatched a hand towel off a rack and thrust it at him. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” Her eyes moved over him, lingering on the scratches on his forearm where Durik had clawed him.
“I’ll live.”
She glanced at the tub and the three bound figures, piled together, unconscious. “Fuck, Jarran.”
“I knew their training.” The words tasted sour. “I designed it.”
She held his gaze for a beat. Then she turned practical. “Search Durik for the implant’s control device. If he has it on him, we need it.”
Jarran went back to the tub. He searched Durik thoroughly. Nothing. No device. No remote. Nothing but a standard comm unit and a folding blade.
“Not on him,” Jarran said.
Evie pressed her lips together. “Worth checking. If he’d been carrying it, he probably would have tried to use it on you.” She paused. “Which means it’s somewhere else on this ship.”
“Or someone else has it.”
“Either way, we can’t get it now.” She was already looking past the problem, her mind moving forward. He could see it happening behind her eyes. “The door is unlocked.”
He looked at her.
“Durik walked in. The suite door is open.” She met his gaze. “How long before someone notices he’s missing?”
Jarran pulled the information from the place in his head where Pella Rin’s knowledge lived.
Shift rotations. Chain of command. Reporting protocols.
“Durik reports to no one. He runs this operation with a small command staff. The females likely answer to him directly. If he doesn’t appear for a scheduled briefing, someone will come looking, but if he doesn’t…
” He calculated. “If we’re going to make a move, we need to do it now. ”
“Then let’s make a move.” She was already walking toward the bedroom. There was no panic in her voice, but he could hear the nerves. “We need to change clothes.”
She opened the wardrobe and pulled out two sets of dark clothing. Close-fitting. Black. “Will these work out there?”
Jarran recognized the style. It was similar to Sifter crew gear, but clearly designed for people—them—who were not Sifters. “Close enough.”
Evie tossed his set to him and peeled off her nightclothes. “This is insane.”
He turned his back and changed quickly. The black clothes fit him well.
Too tight, of course, but that seemed to be how everyone around here dressed.
The fabric was thick and dark and when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, the Sifter tattoos on his forearms were hidden beneath the sleeves.
He could pass for any crew member on this vessel, if only the great Pella Rin wasn’t so easily recognized.
Evie tugged the hem of her fitted black shirt and tucked every strand of her brown hair under a dark cloth she’d wrapped around her head. She was too short and soft to look like a Sifter, but in dim corridor lighting, at a distance, with her head down, she might pass for a servant.
“You look like a child wearing her brother’s clothes,” he said.
She glared at him. “You look like a war criminal. We both have problems. Let’s go.”
A sound came out of him that startled them both. He was almost positive it was a laugh. It was short, rough, and sounded a bit like a cough. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.
Evie stared at him for a second. Then the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Needs work,” she said with a grin. “But I like it.”
He vowed to work on more laughing once they were out of this mess, if it meant earning more of her smiles. He checked the suite door. Unlocked, as she’d said. He pressed his ear against it and listened. The corridor beyond was quiet. He pulled the door open a crack and looked.
Empty. Dim lighting. The shift change would be happening now. Crews rotating, corridors clearing, the brief window when attention was elsewhere.
He took Evie’s hand. Her fingers were cold. They closed around his and held tight.
Jarran led them through the ship’s corridors with a clarity that turned his stomach.
He knew this layout. The knowledge was detailed and specific and it came from the part of his brain that knew the type of ship they were on.
This was likely a mining vessel that had been converted to a mobile base.
They looked like slow-moving wrecks from the outside, but it was just a disguise.
And they could go just about anywhere. Supply routes would be masked as shipping lanes.
The corridors, the security placement, the shift rotations.
All of it based on protocols Pella Rin had established.
He used those protocols now to game the system.
Left at the junction. Right past the equipment bay.
Straight through the cargo corridor where the overhead lights were spaced too far apart and the surveillance vids had a blind spot at the halfway point.
He counted steps. He timed their movement to the gaps between security sweeps.
Evie walked close behind him, her footsteps almost silent.
A guard rounded the corner ahead.
Jarran lowered his gaze, rounded his shoulders, and continued walking with purpose. As he hoped, the guard didn’t so much as glance at him.
When they were past, he glanced back at Evie. Her expression was pure relief.
“You could have killed him,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Would you have, if he’d recognized us?”
“No.” He didn’t have the time or space to explain why he would not do that, unless he had no other choice.
She held his gaze for a moment before he turned back around and they continued down the corridor.
The docking bay was two levels down. Jarran had them take the service ladder instead of the lift.
Evie climbed behind him and dropped to the deck below with a soft thud.
The bay was dim. Six vessels sat in the launch cradles.
He identified the one he wanted immediately.
A Sifter scout ship. They were small and fast. There was room for a single pilot and one crew member.
Or passenger. In this case, Evie. It also had a long-range communication array.
He led them across the bay, keeping to the shadows along the wall.
Evie matched his pace. There were a handful of crew members in the bay, doing service checks and maintenance.
No senior officers, thankfully, and no one who would sound an alarm if a pilot with all the correct access codes took out a scout ship.
The hatch of the vessel Jarran wanted was sealed with a code lock.
He punched in the master override. Pella Rin had set this code himself.
Durik should have changed it and hadn’t, or couldn’t figure out how to.
The hatch hissed open. They climbed inside. A worker glanced over, saw the hatch slide closed and returned to his duties. The cockpit was tight, and Evie wedged herself into the space beside the pilot’s seat. She strapped herself in and cast him a wary look. “You know how to fly this?”
“Pella Rin knew, so I know.” Jarran had dropped into the pilot’s chair and powered the ship’s systems. The console lit up.
His hands moved across the controls and the movements were automatic, embedded in muscle memory.
He tried not to think about how many times these hands had done this before.
Preflight check. Thruster alignment. Navigation array online. Launch cradle disengaged.
The bay doors opened ahead of them. Black space, scattered with the dense rock field of an asteroid cluster stretched out before them. An alarm started somewhere behind them, distant and muffled. Someone had found Durik, most likely, which meant it was time to go.
Jarran hit the thrusters. The scout ship launched from the cradle and shot through the magnetic force field and into the dark.
The asteroid field closed around them, with massive rocks making slow rotations.
He flew through the gaps, threading the ship between formations that would have crushed them flat if he’d miscalculated by a meter.
They cleared the field. Open space stretched ahead, vast and black and empty.
Evie let out a breath. It was long and shaky, and sounded like she’d been holding her breath since the corridor.
“We’re out,” she said.
“We’re out.”
He didn’t set a course because he wasn’t sure where they should go.
Instead, he sat back in the chair and closed his eyes for a moment.
His hands shook. His ribs ached where Durik had hit him.
The cut above his eyebrow had dried to a stiff line of crusted blood, but stars, it hurt.
The heat beneath his skin was gone entirely now, and in its absence he felt hollowed out.
What he wouldn’t give to be back in the agricultural bay right now, letting Evie attach electrodes to his forehead.
Or running through Tagja City’s tunnels with Taron.
That gave him an idea. He opened his eyes and looked at the communication array.
There was a frequency he and Taron had invented as boys, but it was old.
Decades old. It had been a pattern of pulses they’d set in their short-range comm devices—little more than toys, really—and they’d used it to find each other in the dark.
Three short taps, two long, three short.
A rhythm that meant one thing: I’m here. Come find me.
He programmed the pattern into the array. Set it to repeat on a loop, broadcasting on the old frequency, pushing the signal out into the black in every direction.
He had no way of knowing if Taron was listening. No way of knowing if the frequency was still monitored, or if anyone in the galaxy knew what the pattern meant. It was a message in a bottle. A boy playing in a dark tunnel, hoping his brother could hear him.
He sent it.
Then he took Evie’s hand and held it gently. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where this turned out okay for them, but he sat in the pilot’s chair of a stolen ship with the woman he loved beside him, and he watched the stars.