34. Gnash #2
“Polite violence,” he says. “Strange flavor.”
“Acquire a taste.”
The first Coalition interceptor joins us five minutes later, sleek and bright beside our ugly hull.
Then the second. Their pilots transmit formation requests with professional calm.
Drokk mutters insults about shiny cowards, then accepts the formation because he is not stupid enough to refuse useful speed.
Theryki speaks through the escort channel. “Hostile patrols have shifted toward your rescue vector. They are attempting to thicken the route.”
“They know I am coming.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“That was not approval, Lord Gnash.”
“I did not mistake it for anything pleasant.”
Her voice cools. “Ursa’s distress packet is spreading through civilian channels. Your public corridor broadcast and her attack are being linked. Alliance command is being asked whether it can guarantee journalist safety in contested space.”
Despite fear, a rough laugh tears from me. “She is making them sweat while boarded.”
“She appears skilled at inconvenient timing.”
“You have no idea.”
The route ahead erupts with threat markers.
Drokk’s grin vanishes. “Three hostile patrols. Two cutters, four light craft, one unmarked bastard pretending to be debris.”
“Path?”
“Through them.”
“Then do not waste my time describing the scenery.”
He slams the engines harder.
The first patrol comes at us near the broken moon shelf, where old rock fragments drift in ragged clouds and sensor ghosts multiply like lies.
Hostile light craft spread across our approach.
Combine cutters sit farther back, angling to box us against the debris.
Coalition interceptors surge forward, shields bright, while Black Mercy dives low enough that rock dust rattles against the hull.
Weapons fire streaks past the viewport in white and green lines.
The ship bucks.
A warrior behind me starts laughing, deep and delighted.
“Do not enjoy yourself too much,” I say.
He answers, “I enjoy being useful, lord.”
“Then stay alive.”
Drokk rolls us beneath a cutter’s broadside. Our port cannon fires upward at brutal range, tearing open the cutter’s lower shield grid. A Coalition interceptor slips through the gap and clips the enemy’s weapons array with surgical precision. The cutter spins away venting atmosphere.
“Elegant,” Drokk grumbles.
“Jealousy makes you ugly,” I say.
“I was born ugly.”
“You improved with effort.”
Another craft sweeps across our bow. Its shot hits hard enough to throw sparks from the overhead panel. The cabin fills with the scent of burned plastic.
Our slicer calls from the rear station. “They are trying to jam the distress beacon.”
“Jam them back.”
“That is not how?—”
“Make it how.”
She curses creatively and buries herself in the console.
We punch through the patrol with shields battered, one Coalition interceptor leaking coolant, and Black Mercy’s aft stabilizer whining like a wounded beast. No civilian corridor lies beneath us now.
No shelter map restrains every shot. Even so, I find myself issuing orders differently than I would have days ago.
“Disable engines. Mark prisoners. Send coordinates to public rescue channels. No executions.”
Drokk glances back. “You are sure?”
“I am sure.”
“Even if they boarded her?”
My claws flex against the command brace. “Especially then. Dead cowards tell no one who hired them.”
Drokk accepts that with visible disappointment and competent obedience.
We race deeper into contested space.
The second patrol has already found Ursa’s route by the time we reach the Ceres transfer shelf.
Wreckage floats ahead: torn panels, medical cargo pods, strips of hull insulation spinning through the dark.
Hestia-Seven’s beacon flickers weakly through interference, tagged by the evidence packet Ursa forced through damaged systems. The unmarked private security vessel is docked against her side like a parasite.
The inspection cutter hangs nearby, pretending legitimacy with its lights still clean.
For a moment, I see nothing but the boarding vessel.
Every part of me becomes teeth.
“Lord,” Drokk warns.
“I see it.”
“Weapons?”
“No,” I say, and the word nearly breaks my jaw. “They are attached to Hestia-Seven.”
The inspection cutter broadcasts immediately. “Approaching vessels, this is authorized medical compliance inspection under emergency?—”
“Shut them up,” I say.
Our slicer snaps, “With pleasure.”
The broadcast cuts into squealing static.
Coalition interceptor One banks toward the inspection cutter. Interceptor Two screens us from the aft angle. Black Mercy drives straight for the docked boarder, cannons locked but cold because Ursa is somewhere behind that hull.
The private security vessel tries to detach.
Too late.
“Grapples,” I command.
Black Mercy’s forward grappling harpoons fire.
They slam into the boarder’s hull and bite deep.
Drokk reverses thrust with savage precision, wrenching the vessel away from Hestia-Seven’s wounded side just far enough to expose the breach without tearing the transport open wider.
The gunship screams around us. Metal complains in several languages.
“Boarding team,” I say.
My warriors rise as one.
I lead them.
The assault tube slams into place between Black Mercy and the private vessel. We cross in a roar of boots, claws, weapons, and restrained fury. The first armored guard inside the enemy airlock raises his rifle.
I take his weapon hand with one clawed strike and his helmet with the other.
He drops screaming.
Alive.
Barely.
“Prisoners,” I snarl at my warriors. “Names. Employers. Command chain.”
They hate the order.
They obey.
We move through the ship like judgment that has learned procedure.
Two guards surrender when they realize Reapers are not killing the fallen.
Three resist. We break bones instead of necks.
Our slicer, patched into the assault channel, locks enemy bulkheads behind us and opens the route toward the boarding umbilical still connected to Hestia-Seven.
Rana’s voice crackles over a local channel suddenly punched open.
“Whoever just made those assholes scream, identify yourself before I shoot you too.”
Relief nearly knocks the strength from my legs.
I seize the comm. “Rana, this is Gnash.”
A harsh laugh bursts through the static. “About damn time. Your woman is alive and very cranky.”
The world returns all at once.
“Where?”
“Forward cabin. We have wounded. Boarders inside. Evidence intact, mostly. Hurry up, big guy.”
“Gladly.”
We hit the umbilical at full force.
The interior of Hestia-Seven is smoke, red light, torn metal, and bodies.
Emergency fields shimmer weakly around the blown hatch.
A dead boarder lies half in the aisle with foam from a medical extinguisher crusted across his visor.
Another kneels with both hands raised while Dane, the cargo handler from Ursa’s file, holds an empty extinguisher like a club and looks deeply surprised by his own survival.
Rana stands near the rear compartment, bleeding from one eyebrow, pistol steady. “Left side, two more behind the cargo brace!”
My warriors move.
I move faster.
One boarder swings toward me.
I hit him hard enough to throw him into the ceiling.
Not dead.
Probably resentful.
The second sees me and wisely drops his weapon.
Then I see her.
Ursa is behind a row of bent seats, one arm wrapped around a cracked toolkit and the other pressed against her ribs.
Blood streaks her cheek from a cut near her hairline.
Her jacket is torn. Her eyes are too bright, furious, terrified, alive.
The bond between us surges so violently that the damaged cabin, the smoke, the war, every watching warrior and enemy prisoner, all of it falls away for one impossible breath.
She stares at me.
“You came,” she says.
My voice does not work correctly. “You called.”
“I told you to hold the corridors.”
“I did.”
Her mouth trembles.
I cross the cabin and drop to one knee in front of her because if I remain standing, I will look like a warlord, and I am not that in this moment. I am a male whose heart has been dragged through vacuum and returned bleeding.
My hands hover because she is hurt and because touching her feels like something too sacred for a battlefield.
“Where are you injured?” I ask.
“Shoulder. Ribs, maybe. Pride, absolutely.”
A sound leaves me, broken and rough. “Your pride is indestructible.”
“Good. I was worried.”
Then she reaches for me.
That is all permission requires.
I gather her carefully, one hand behind her back, one at her waist, avoiding the worst of the blood and damage while every instinct in me demands I crush her against my chest and never let the universe touch her again.
She grips the front of my armor with shaking fingers and presses her face against me.
I feel her breath hitch. I feel my own answer it.