Chapter 13
Irena
It was the strangest thing to suddenly have time to myself.
I didn’t really know what to do with it, and at first I felt this low-key anxiety that I should be out there, working.
Flack was right, though, now that Xathena was after me, nowhere I went on the ship would be safe.
Except here, hidden so deep between pipes and bundles of cables, in a junction impossible to reach by anything except a repair bot.
Too bad for them the Vidu’s repair bots were all broken.
So I sat on my blankets and took inventory of the supplies Flack had brought me.
Stacks of boxes with rations, and lots and lots of clean, bottled water as well.
It was instinctive to count out the food and water and calculate how many days it would last me.
When I came up with a shockingly large number, it was still hard to convince myself to use any of it—let alone for something as frivolous as washing up.
I was sweaty, though, and sticky from the things Flack and I had done together.
Recalling that made heat sting my cheeks.
Had I really touched his cock, let him touch my folds?
God, it had felt so good to give into such a basic need.
To forget everything for a short while and just surrender to pleasure.
Flack had been a very generous lover, and we hadn’t even had real sex yet.
It was inevitable that we would, that much was obvious to me now.
If he came back, that is. I trusted him, as crazy as that was to realize.
So I slipped out of my dress and eyed the sticky strands of seed that decorated the front with a hint of amusement.
More white had dried on my breasts and neck, which I wiped away with cold water and a corner of a blanket.
After that, I washed up with stolen soap no pirate would miss, and more water.
It wasn’t as good as a shower, but I even managed to give my hair a rinse and a soak.
A first since getting here, and it felt good.
After washing up, I sat naked on my blankets while I let my panties and dress dry, hanging from some pipes overhead.
With a ration cradled in my lap, I tried the self-heating alien stew with delight.
It was remarkably similar to the food Trixom had been giving me to serve Flack, and now I wondered if the chef wasn’t just heating rations.
I wasn’t complaining; it was lovely to have a full stomach and to feel safe.
Fed, and my clothing already dry courtesy of the ship’s warmth, I dressed, then worked the tangles from my hair with my fingers.
It was a slow, patient process, but I had nothing better to do anyway.
When I was done, I eyed myself in the reflective surface of the ration’s discarded packaging, and a completely changed face stared back at me.
What a surprise, how three days of solid meals could already make such a difference to my features.
I did not look quite so gaunt now, or so sickly.
The scars were still very present, still ugly to my eyes, but they were not nearly as bad as I’d thought they’d be either.
Perhaps it was the way my brown hair now lay about my shoulders in waves that softened everything.
Whatever it was, I almost felt pretty. Almost, I felt like I was the woman Flack called beautiful.
It was, I realized for the first time since my abduction from my dorm room, that I felt normal again.
Normal meaning that I had hope, that it felt like I could actually have a future.
One that didn’t include fearing for my life and scavenging for food from the trash bin in the galley.
No, that was never happening again if it was up to Flack.
That big pile of food was proof of that.
It made me feel so warm and floaty inside that I knew I was in serious trouble of fixating on my future rescuer.
Perhaps it was this warm, cozy feeling that left me completely unprepared for what happened later.
I napped, my body catching up on much-needed rest. Then I ate some more and began considering whether I could sneak through the ship to visit Flack in his cell somehow.
I missed him, especially the warm, steady feel of his hand on my back, the safety I’d felt when he held me in his arms. I’d never take another hug for granted; that was certain.
A groaning sound warned me something was happening overhead.
I froze and peered up, but there was nothing to see.
Bracing myself to flee, I eyed the three options available but got caught up in indecision.
To the engine rooms? Up toward the crew decks?
Left toward med bay, where that awful, creepy doctor held court?
None of those options were appealing, or safe, not like it was in here.
Flack told me to stay, told me to hide, and he’d been very certain I was safe.
That sound, it was probably nothing, wasn’t it?
They couldn’t actually reach me when I was down here...
It came again—a deep, heavy groaning noise.
It made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Instinctively, I searched for the metal pipe and held it up defensively in front of me.
What was that? It wasn’t anything like the many FTL jumps we’d been doing the past few days.
Those often came with little warning and nearly smacked me into a wall or the floor if I wasn’t careful.
This sounded like the engines were rumbling, a vibration that came through the metal pipes and the floors.
I hunched low, ready to move, just as something rolled into the junction toward me through one of the larger pipes.
It was the pipe that led toward an exit by the engine room not far from here.
I blinked at the spherical object for several seconds, surprised and confused.
I’d never seen something quite like it before.
Just as I began to think it kind of resembled a grenade and I should probably be alarmed, it began to hiss.
Then smoke spooled out in long, white ribbons.
It stung my eyes something fierce, and within moments I found myself coughing and hacking, struggling to draw air.
Blindly, I scrambled through the junction to the nearest exit.
I had to get out of here before I passed out.
The smoke was so thick it felt like the lantern had gone out, but the burning in my eyes was worse.
I rolled into the pipe, banged my head against the sharp twist that followed, and, panting, scrambled around the corner.
There, the air was instantly much clearer, and I could finally see that I’d taken the pipe heading toward the med bay exit.
My stomach twisted painfully; I was caught between a rock and a hard place.
I did not kid myself into thinking that canister of smoke had rolled into the junction by accident.
No, that had to be Xathena’s doing. I wasn’t safe—not here—and now that I knew she could find me even this deep in the bowels of the ship, where could I possibly run?
The med bay was out of the question, but I followed the pipe anyway.
As soon as it diverged, I’d split off, and then I’d make my way across the ship as far away from where Xathena was currently looking as possible.
With my heart pounding in my chest, I wondered if I should make it to the brig.
If Flack was there, he’d protect me, I knew it.
But if he fought now, they’d know he was free, and that might mean very bad things for us down the line.
He seemed so confident about being able to rescue me—and himself—from this ship somehow.
He had not shared his plan, however; we’d been too busy sharing other things last night.
Now I had no idea what to expect. I just knew that if Xathena got her hands on me, I was as good as dead.
The pipe twisted left, then right, curling up through the ship for ventilation.
There were several vents along the way, but only the one in the med bay was big enough for me to crawl through.
It was a very tight squeeze to crawl into a less-explored pipe that branched off beneath the deck.
I was pretty sure this one veered back toward the crew decks, where most sleeping quarters were located.
Not good either, but the ship’s butcher-turned-doctor didn’t hold court there.
I’d have to take my chances that everyone else was out.
I crawled out of the vent, chased by curling tendrils of pale white smoke.
The quarters were abandoned right now, and in stinky disarray.
Sweaty clothes were piled in a corner, food wrappers scattered across the desk, and crumbs of something sticky crunched beneath my bare feet.
There was no panel or other exit for me to slide in from this room, so I had to brave the hallway.
How long had it been since Flack left me that morning?
Damn it, the passage of time was so hard to keep track of on a spaceship.
The hallway appeared deserted, but the camera up here was functional, and it would catch my presence and alert those hunting me.
I didn’t have long; I darted through the hallway, around the corner, and back to the very same wall panel I’d used to slip Xathena away from before.
Pounding footsteps chased me into the cramped space mere seconds after I’d slammed the panel shut behind me.
Then I was beneath the deck, crawling along bundles of cables that stretched endlessly through the ship.