Chapter 5
The fuel projections hadn’t magically improved overnight.
Fred had been chewing on the numbers since Parac’Norr’s atmosphere had stopped trying to murder them, and Fred was never optimistic on a good day. After the detour? Forget it.
Cait hunched over the main console and keyed a new sequence into the nav-comp, fingers stiff and awkward on the glass. The steady vibration of the drive core thrummed up through the deck and into her boots, a familiar chorus.
“Fuel consumption on the port thruster is seventeen percent above nominal,” Fred announced through the cockpit speakers. He normally didn’t bother, but he had since the alien had come aboard.
“On it,” she muttered, eyes fixed on the crawl of green data over the screen. “I’m adjusting the intake mix.”
“Adjusting the mix will increase thermal stress on the manifold.”
“Better thermal stress than drifting in the void because we ran dry halfway to the drop point.”
“Debatable. Drifting implies a lack of explosion. Thermal stress implies we stop being a ship and start being shrapnel.”
She scrubbed both hands over her face. “You’re a ray of sunshine this morning, Fred. Truly.”
“I am a realist. And the math is ugly, Cait. We burned too much on the ascent. The detour cost us. If we make the pickup, we arrive with reserves at four percent. That is within the margin of error for stranded.”
“We’ll make it.” She stabbed the enter key harder than necessary. “We glide the approach. Cut the main drive early, use the gravity well to brake.”
“Risky.”
She shrugged. “Necessary.”
The console flickered as the sensors cycled through a passive internal sweep.
Then the indicator for the hold door blinked amber.
At the same time, a red icon blinked to life as the corridor defenses armed in the time it took her to take a breath.
Fred had woken the turrets without being asked, which meant something was wrong.
Oh fudge.
She didn’t whip around or bolt from the chair. Instead, she set her cup down with care and kept her face blank as heavy footsteps sounded outside the cockpit, the weapons panel tracking them closer with every step.
She drew in a breath, held it, then swiveled the pilot’s chair as the door behind her slid open.
The alien filled the doorway.
He blocked the light from the corridor and made the cockpit feel very small.
His dark hair had fallen loose around his face in a way that had no business looking that good on a man who’d spent hours locked in her corridor.
The strands fell across his brow, dark against the sharp lines of his cheekbones, and her stupid, traitorous brain decided that now was a great time to remind her what the rest of him looked like without a shirt on.
She told her stupid, traitorous brain to shut the fudge up, because they had bigger problems than cheekbones right now.
But he wasn’t looking at her… he was studying the cockpit instead. The ceiling mounts. The secondary screens. The empty co-pilot’s chair. Every inch of it. His arms hung easy at his sides, but there was nothing relaxed about him. He looked wound tight enough to snap skin.
“I told you to stay in the corridor,” she said, keeping her tone level.
He paid her exactly no mind and stepped into the cockpit as if the turret aimed at his head didn’t exist. His gaze lifted to the speaker grille in the corner, then cut to the empty air in the middle of the room.
“You going to keep hiding?” he demanded, his voice little more than a growl.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I’m talking to him.” He lifted his chin at the empty space, pure challenge in the movement. “The one in the walls. The one tracking me.”
The turret whined, and he spread his hands in a mocking gesture.
“If you’re going to point guns at me,” he said, his voice laced with contempt, “you should at least have the stones to stand behind them.”
She blinked, wondering if he had, indeed, gone mad in that corridor.
“A male who hides behind a female,” he snarled, voice hardening, “who lets her fight for him while he skulks behind a console isn’t worth the air he’s breathing. Step out. Face me. Or are you just a coward with a toy?”
Her eyes widened. Oh… ohhh. He thought—
The silence stretched out.
Then the speakers crackled, and Fred spoke, “I have been monitoring your respiration for twelve hours. Your carbon dioxide output is offensive.”
The alien went absolutely still, not a flinch or a recoil, but a full-body freeze that started at his shoulders and locked him in place, as if someone had cut the power.
His eyes moved first, up to the speaker grille and then down to the console, until his gaze landed on the little matte-black cartridge plugged into the data port beside her hand.
It was the size of her fist, just a box with a soft blue light pulsing on its face, and she watched him stare at it. Then he turned his head and looked at her.
She bit the inside of her cheek so hard copper flooded her tongue. Don’t laugh. If she laughed now, he’d kill her. She wouldn’t blame him either.
So she pressed her lips together and fixed her eyes on the fuel diagnostics as if the scroll of numbers had suddenly become fascinating.
It didn’t help. The corner of her mouth twitched, and a tiny snort escaped that she tried to pass off as a cough, but it was a shit attempt that wasn’t going to fool anybody.
The alien still didn’t move. Instead, his jaw clenched, and his hands curled into loose fists as he looked at the cartridge again.
His gaze cut to hers again, his expression blank. Completely blank. Whatever was going on behind his eyes was happening fast and hard, but none of it reached the surface. Then he turned on his heel and walked out.
His footsteps rang down the corridor, measured and heavy, and a second later the cargo hold door sealed with a soft mechanical thud.
She let out the breath she’d been strangling and folded over the console.
The laughter hit all at once.
It tore out of her in helpless bursts, forehead pressed to her arms, shoulders shaking hard enough to rattle the chair. Hysteria, mostly. Stress. Exhaustion. The whole ridiculous, impossible situation finally found a crack and poured through it.
Still felt good, though.
I liked him better when he thought I was your mate, Fred said directly into her implant, his voice dropping to the private channel. He was more respectful.
She swiped a tear from the corner of her eye and gasped for breath. “Oh, fudge off, Fred.”
I am stating a fact. His respiration is inefficient. He wastes oxygen.
That got one last broken laugh out of her.
Then it faded.
She sat back up and scrubbed at her face with her sleeve while the last few chuckles died in her throat. Quiet settled over the cockpit again.
She waited for yelling, for pounding on the bulkheads, for something… anything. But there was nothing, just the gentle hum of the ship. Frowning, she reached for the secondary monitor. One flick across the screen, and the internal camera feed bloomed across the screen.
He wasn’t pacing or punching walls. Instead, he sat on a crate by the rear bulkhead with his elbows braced on his knees and his hands loosely clasped between them, staring at the floor. Then, after a moment, he turned his head and looked up directly at the camera.
She stabbed the kill switch for the feed so quickly that her finger ached.
The screen went black, but his stare seemed to stay there anyway.
She turned back to the main console and looked at the fuel projections still crawling across the display, she didn’t see them. All she could see was the alien guy sitting on a crate in the cargo bay.
Shit, she didn’t even know his name.
A cartridge.
Raaze stared at the scuffed floor plating between his boots. He’d been jealous of a draanthing circuit board.
A circuit board with opinions and a weapons lock and the personality of a disapproving uncle, but still, a piece of hardware. They’d paid him a hundred thousand credits a week. The highest in three generations. And he’d just squared up to a box the size of a ration pack and told it to come outside.
He turned his right hand over. Palm up. Palm down. It was a playing habit. Check the grip… check the control before the next play.
He had neither because he’d misread the whole field. He’d assumed a protector where there was none, which meant that she had been bluffing him from the moment he’d walked up to her on that landing pad.
Static cracked overhead as the ship’s comms opened.
“Priority alert,” Fred announced in a monotone voice that was loud enough to wake the dead. “Incoming transmission. Broadcast is system-wide. You might want to hear this.”
He lifted his head as a different voice filled the air.
“Repeat: Stolen freighter, registry K-774-L. Pilot is a human female identified as Cait Rhenn. Vessel flagged in connection with the escape of a high-value prisoner from Parac’Norr.
Suspect is an Izaean male. Considered extremely dangerous.
Any sightings to be reported immediately to Sector Command.
Vessel is to be grounded on sight. Repeat: Vessel is to be grounded on sight. ”
Stolen.
He pushed off the crate before the loop could start again and headed for the cockpit, eating up the corridor in long, silent strides.
He stopped in the doorway.
Cait stood at the console with her back to him. Rigid with both hands braced on the metal edge, knuckles pale… listening to her life get dismantled one sentence at a time.
He leaned his shoulder against the frame and folded his arms. He kept his mouth shut.
He knew enough about freight to understand what this meant.
Reputation was currency. You didn’t get the good contracts if your ship was flagged on a security broadcast. You didn’t get fuel.
You didn’t get dock clearance. You got boarded, stripped, and shoved in a cell while some bureaucrat decided whether you were a victim or an accomplice.