34. Gnash #3
Around us, my warriors secure prisoners. Rana barks medical priorities. Sera the courier tells someone that the toolkit matters, then immediately yells for bandages. Dane keeps repeating that he is not qualified for any of this while helping anyway.
Ursa lifts her head enough to look at me. Her eyes search my face with all the anger and love that have been tearing across relays between us.
“I’m still mad at you,” she says.
“I know.”
“I nearly died carrying your evidence.”
“Our evidence.”
“Do not make this romantic while I am concussed.”
“I would not dare.”
“You absolutely would.”
I press my forehead gently to hers, careful of the cut near her hairline. “Yes.”
Her laugh breaks into something dangerously close to a sob. She swallows it because she is Ursa, and Ursa would argue with death if it interrupted her sentence.
I breathe her in beneath smoke, blood, disinfectant, and burned metal.
Alive.
Mine, not as possession, but as gravity.
“Little reporter,” I whisper, “you are very difficult to rescue.”
Her fingers tighten in my armor. “You should see the other guys.”
“I did.”
“Did you kill them?”
“No.”
She pulls back enough to stare at me.
Despite everything, despite blood and smoke and the enemy vessel still locked outside, something like pride lights her exhausted face. “You didn’t?”
“I need them alive to answer questions.”
“That is infuriatingly responsible.”
“I am experimenting with personal growth.”
“Hot.”
A startled laugh tears from Rana across the cabin. “I cannot believe I almost died protecting this relationship.”
Ursa looks past me. “You’re welcome.”
Drokk’s voice cuts through my comm. “Lord, hostile reinforcements approaching. We need to move.”
The war returns.
Of course it does.
I cup Ursa’s face with one hand, thumb brushing ash from her cheek. “Can you stand?”
“With help.”
“You have it.”
“I also have the evidence.”
“I assumed.”
She holds up the cracked cartridge. “Nearly lost it.”
“But you did not.”
“No.”
“Good.”
I help her to her feet, keeping one arm around her as she sways. Her pain flickers through the bond, not as a thought but as a sharp pressure under my ribs. I hate it. I carry it because hating it helps nothing.
Rana tosses me the toolkit. “The cartridge stays with her. If you lose it, I’ll haunt your spikes.”
“She has gathered alarming friends,” I tell Ursa.
“I have excellent taste in dangerous people.”
“Yes,” I say. “You do.”
We move toward the assault tube as my warriors carry the wounded and drag prisoners behind us.
The cabin groans around us, Hestia-Seven’s systems failing in cascading little deaths.
Sera refuses to leave until the last medical container is secured.
Dane helps her with a look of stunned devotion that suggests surviving a boarding action may have rearranged his romantic priorities.
At the hatch, Ursa stops and looks back at the ruined transport.
For a moment, I know what she sees. Not only metal. Not only damage. A place where the story almost died. A place where she nearly did.
“I got the signal out,” she says.
“I received it.”
“Everyone received part of it.”
“Good.”
She looks at me. “This changes things.”
“Yes.”
“Those prisoners know who sent them.”
“They will tell us.”
“And if they don’t?”
I look at the captured boarders, then back at her. “Then we will make the truth more uncomfortable than silence.”
Her eyes soften for half a breath. “You really are learning.”
“Do not sound so surprised.”
“I am trying not to.”
Black Mercy shudders as we cross back aboard. Drokk yells over the internal channel, “Hostiles in range in ninety seconds!”
I guide Ursa into the medical bay and lower her onto the first cot. The medic descends on her with scanners, foam, and the grim enthusiasm of someone about to tell a stubborn person to sit still.
Ursa catches my wrist before I can step away.
Her grip is weak.
It still stops me.
“Gnash.”
I look down at her.
The gunship vibrates as engines power for escape. Warriors shout. Prisoners groan. Coalition interceptors exchange fire outside. The entire ship smells of sweat, blood, smoke, and the wild electric stink of survival.
“I need to yell at you later,” she says.
“I know.”
“I need you alive for that.”
My chest tightens.
“I know that too.”
Her eyes shine, fierce and wet. “Don’t leave me again without telling me why.”
The blade finds the old wound between us.
I close my hand over hers. “Never.”
She searches my face, then nods once because it is all either of us has time for.
I bend and press my mouth to her knuckles, where blood and soot stain her skin. It is not enough. Nothing would be enough.
Then I straighten and turn toward the bridge.
“Drokk,” I call through the ship. “Get us home.”
The captain laughs as Black Mercy’s guns open fire and the deck kicks beneath us.
“With pleasure, lord.”
I look once more at Ursa as the medical team works around her. She is bruised, bleeding, furious, alive, and still clutching the evidence that might cut the legs from this war.
Outside, hostile ships close through the dark.
Inside, my heart has found its way back to my body.
I return to command with smoke in my lungs, prisoners in my hold, Ursa aboard my ship, and the first true hope I have felt in days burning brighter than every weapon in the void.