Chapter 32
32
Sai? Can you hear me? I whipped around the last turn toward the airlock so fast my ankle rolled, ducking into a vestibule when the shrill whine of blaster fire erupted down the hallway.
Sunny? Sai’s voice came through strong in my mind. Where are you?
I’m close. What’s happening?
That Kravaxian female came into our suite—the older one. I tried to fight. I kicked her and bit her. But she was too strong. She dragged me from my suite by my hair. Why didn’t my moms hear me? His voice warbled. I screamed so loud. I broke glass on the floor. Why didn’t they come? Why didn’t they stop her?
Oh, darling. They would have, but that female did something to them to make them sleep. But they’re okay. They’ll be okay. They’ll be coming to help soon.
It’s too late, he commed, fear riding through each word. Mom’s SOs are here now, but there’s nothing they can do. The Kravaxians are about to put me onto a shuttle. I’m scared, Sunny.
A man’s thickly accented voice shouted down the hall. “Give us the kid, and we’ll let you leave.” I knew that accent, that voice. It was the New Earther stable hand from the Cosmic Spectacle.
“Put down your weapons. There is no way you’re getting off this ship unless you release the child.” The next voice was even more familiar. So familiar that I found myself creeping closer to the airlock in time to hear a booming thwump while Makenna and the stable hand flew through the air, the New Earther’s blaster shooting in a wide arc that burned a hole in the ceiling, straight through to the deck above us. They landed hard against the wall, suspended there in some sort of sticky, black webbing.
Makenna was one of Sonia’s security officers. For so many reasons, I hissed, “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
They’re going to take me. I don’t know where we’re going.
Be brave, Sai. Be brave like Captain Zorba and Bartholomew from your books. Can you do that?
“In the shuttle. Now,” Tano commanded while—in an act of pure, blind absurdity—I held my breath, raised my hands into the air, and skirted past the wall where Makenna and the stable hand struggled against their webbing.
“Sunny,” Makenna slurred against the sticky black strands covering her mouth. “Don’t.”
The airlock I stepped into was smaller than my pod, and I found myself face-to-face with four heavily armed Kravaxians and one terrified ten-year-old.
“Sunny,” Axel said, his wide-eyed shock giving way to his signature amused expression—although this time there was an edge to it—as he holstered his web-shooter. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you were leaving,” I said, lowering my hands, attempting to give them a smile. “And I never let my guests leave the ship without a personal send-off.”
Completely unamused, Tano raised his web-shooter and aimed it directly at my chest.
“No need for that, darling,” I said, resisting every life-preserving urge that screamed at me to run. “I’m unarmed and harbor no secret military training whatsoever. I’m as threatening as a cleaning drone. Cross my heart.”
“What do you want?” Marisia demanded.
“Well”—my laughter was one note shy of shrill—“it can get pretty boring on this ship. And why take only one hostage when you could have two?” I knew attempting to get them to take me instead of Sai would have been pointless; they needed the senator’s son for leverage. The best I could do was make sure he wasn’t alone—and hope that the rumors of Kravaxian cannibalism were baseless.
“She’s got a point,” Axel said with a roguish grin.
I let myself take a breath. I’d only had a second or two to come up with this plan, and it pretty much hinged on Axel’s tendency to flirt.
“Fine,” Tano bit out. “We’ll take her too. But we must leave now.” Grabbing Sai by his cuffed wrists, he hauled him into the shuttle.
Axel reached out for my arm.
“I’ll come willingly,” I said. My voice was inexplicably calm, considering the river of panic rushing through me. They might harm me. They might kill me. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t leave Sai. “But I do get jumpsick, FYI.”
Shaking his head, he secured a set of mag-cuffs around my wrists. “I thought you were smart,” he said low into my ear, nudging me forward into the shuttle. “This is not a smart move.”
“What are you doing?” Sai asked me after Axel deposited me in the jump seat beside him. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Probably,” I replied. My hands trembled as Axel secured a second set of mag-cuffs around my ankles, connecting both sets with some sort of elastic cable that gave me only enough rein to scratch my nose.
“My moms?” Sai’s eyes were huge. “They’re okay? You promise?”
Squinting up at Axel while he rose to nearly his full height, having to duck a little in the small shuttle, I asked, “Will his moms be all right?”
He looked at the boy and said, somewhat sympathetically, “They’ll be fine after an hour or two. Just a little tired.”
“See, your moms will be fine.” I arched a brow sharply at Axel, daring him to disagree. “And you will be fine too.”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Sai muttered as Axel joined Tano and Marisia in the cockpit to initiate undocking.
While Tano steered the shuttle away from the ship, Marisia snapped her fingers at Reya and barked, “Disconnect them.”
Reya nodded, standing from her seat to place a thin metal band around my head. “This won’t hurt,” she said, her eyes swollen and bloodshot, her fingers shaking. “I promise.”
“What are these?” Sai asked while Reya fitted another band around his head.
“Short-range EMPs,” she explained in a whisper. “They’ll frag your VC. That’s all.”
My VC. Freddie, I commed while I still could. I’m with Sai. We’re unharmed. They’re shorting our VCs.
Sunny, you’re being followed by Captain Jones and Morgath in cloaked ships. Don’t let the FFKs jump?—
And with a pop and crackle, Freddie’s voice vanished. The loss of input from my neural implant thrust me into an abrupt, disorienting silence. Until the shuttle’s faster-than-light drive whirred, spooling up for a jump. Don’t let them jump ? How in the worlds did he expect me to keep that from happening?
Leaning in close to remove the EMP band from around my head, Reya whispered, “You shouldn’t have come. But they won’t harm you or the boy. They aren’t like that.”
I scoffed. “They— you —are kidnapping us, Reya. Forgive me if I don’t share your optimism.”
“I know this looks bad,” she said, emotion thick in her voice. “But we aren’t bad people.”
“Reya!” Tano barked. “To your seat.”
“Stay quiet and do whatever Tano says.” She looked at Sai, then back at me. “I’m sorry.”
Once she’d buckled herself back into her seat, I turned toward Sai and asked, “Any chance you know how to stall an FTL jump?”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“I’m ten years old,” he said, incredulous. “So, no.”
The shuttle shook as two warning shots from the Ignisar ’s exterior defense mechs soared over our nose. Tano cursed in Kravaxian. I couldn’t decipher it without my VC, but I thought I’d heard something about Orion’s balls. “How long until the drive is ready?” he snapped.
“Fifteen seconds,” Marisia responded with an ominous, unshakable calm despite the onslaught of super-heated metal.
“That long?” Reya’s fists clenched in her lap, her knuckles turning white.
Turning to look at her, Tano said, “Worry not, young one. They will not shoot us. Not with the boy here. ”
“Tano, stand down.” Captain Jones’s voice thundered through the shuttle comms. “You are surrounded. Return your captives, and we will be lenient. You have my word.”
Tano’s only response was a short-lived flex of his jaw as the onboard AI started a five second countdown. The captain didn’t shoot at us again, and when the countdown hit one , I placed my cuffed hands over Sai’s and squeezed. The FTL drive engaged, and there was a gut churning instant of suspended gravity. Then we jumped away from the Ignisar , disappearing into the black void of open space.