Chapter 41
Vytln
They were ripping holes in his ship!
With a furious roar, Vytln slammed the back of his opponent’s head onto the ground.
He didn't hear his helmet and skull break over all the other noises, but he felt the force of it going up his arm.
He honestly didn't know if that was a cousin of his or one of the people his family hired. He couldn’t recognize any of the droves of people coming in as they were all suited up to protect against the vacuum of space.
Because they were ripping holes in his ship!
It was infuriating. He had spent so much time working on it, and they just finished that big remodel. But now the entire main storage area had a huge hole in it.
They'd used a feirnan tunnel to bore their way into the side of main storage. Named after its inventor, it was originally designed as an emergency boarding tunnel for ships in distress that couldn't allow a proper boarding connection – in the event of total power loss or crew illness or whatever.
Pirates had, of course, found another use for it. They didn't care about killing anyone on board, nor if the ship could still be flyable after they were done.
That was why Vytln and the others had to drop back from their positions to run for their envirosuits. They had no choice. If his brother broke that connection, they'd be exposed to space, and they'd be dead before they could do anything to save themselves.
The ship alarms weren't going off yet, but that had to be because of the hijacker, because any hull breach should have triggered them as well as the bulkhead doors all shutting to try to minimize the areas of damage.
The brief retreat and taking turns throwing their suits on cost them, and now the halls of the Humility were filling with enemies.
His brother was an ego maniac, but he was a careful one. He wasn't going to underestimate Vytln or the crew he ran with. And to that end, he was throwing a variable army at them.
As a team, Vytln and the others were good. They were damn good, in fact. But even they could be overwhelmed.
That's how Vytln and Tanin found themselves fighting in the halls, separated from Sorbet and Tebros. Tanin had his helmet in one hand. Vinyl had his on, but he hadn’t sealed it to his suit yet.
They were trying to block the hall and succeeding just because their enemy was being forced to bottleneck themselves. But their numbers were unending.
“How much longer?” Vytln snarled, annoyed, as he grabbed another one of his maybe-relatives and threw him bodily into another.
He came from a big family. These could very well be his many cousins. He didn't know. He still didn't care. It didn't matter at the end of the day, because they were all dead anyway.
“Soon,” Tanin responded, the red of his ribbon the brightest mark in the room.
The unbreakable silk was currently wrapped around someone's neck, his entire body bent up backwards as Tanin simultaneously stepped on his lower spine and pulled up on the ribbon.
Thanks to his suit, it wasn't choking him, but it did nothing to stop Tanin from using brute force to snap his neck.
The now dead body went limp as Tanin turned his attention to the next person.
Their enemy was gaining ground.
Not much. But every time they stepped over the bodies of their fallen comrades, they forced Vytln and Tanin to take a step back. The two of them had the advantage thanks to the bottleneck of the hall, but they had to fight to keep it and their enemy was relentless.
But Vytln's problem wasn't their slow regression. He could keep this up forever if he had to. They'd run out of corpses to throw at them eventually. Vytln would fight until his body broke if that's what it took.
Except that Haven was down this hall. The shelter was this way. If they kept losing ground, they'd come upon her, then she'd be in danger. And Vytln would rather hand himself over than let something happen to her.
Even as he had that thought, from deep down the hall, he heard the unmistakable shriek of ripping metal followed immediately by a loud, popping crash. One he knew but hadn't heard in person before.
The immediate and devastating sound of the vacuum of space sucking all the air from a room.
An instant later, the ship's alarms all started screaming at the same moment. The big, bright, loud ones warning of a hull breach. And finally, all across the ship, the loud bangs of the airtight doors slamming closed at the same time.
At the same moment, Vytln and Tanin shoved their helmets down and activated the seals, locking themselves safely inside.
Vytln hadn't felt the air rush by telling him that the broken hull was affecting their area, but it was a case where being wrong meant near instant death, so it was better to act as if the breach was always one room away and spreading.
But their enemies, already suited up against the void, didn't pause at all.
Vytln wasn’t getting tired yet. He could keep this up for marks. But he hated each step that he was forced to take back, knowing it was getting him closer and closer to Haven.
“Almost…” Alred suddenly called from overhead. His voice still sounded glitchy and distorted, but Vytln was sure the lights were brighter than before.
They were hanging on. They just needed to keep fighting until he got control back of the ship. Once he had that, he could deal with the intruders.
They just needed to keep fighting. They just needed-
The harsh pop and sizzle of plasma hitting metal was as familiar to Vytln as a lullaby lain dormant since childhood. And more horrifying than the shrill alarm overhead.
He turned at the same moment as Tanin. Both of them tracking the sound to a hole melted into the side of the wall. Big enough that he could see the storage room beyond, and the sacks of nutrition powder that had been partially eaten through by the plasma bolt.
They whipped their heads around again to see two males pushing their way to the front, plasma pistols in hand. Already aiming to shoot – solely at Tanin. As Vytln suspected, they had probably been ordered to bring him in alive, but no one else.
But the horror wasn’t from seeing them aiming at his captain.
It was the sight of the plasma weapons at all.
Yes, they were suited up against the void, and yes, those suits would protect them against the unshielded vacuum of space, but those pistols coming into the fight meant that they genuinely didn’t care if anyone lived or died, if anyone was ripped out into space, if anyone was hit by a stray shot.
They didn't care. They were willing to take the risk, to do all the damage possible to the Humility, to themselves if it meant accomplishing their mission. That’s how they were trained. That’s how Vytln himself trained them when he led the family.
They were ripping holes in his ship; they were putting his entire crew in danger.
They were putting his mate and young in danger.
The thought must have struck Tanin at the same time, because they both changed.
They both locked in on those fools with the plasma pistols.
They were the biggest issue. The greatest danger.
And they knew it because they were hiding behind a wave of bodies that ran forward, trying to prevent them from stopping their shots.
The envirosuit would work on the vacuum of space, with the right upgrades, it could be used for heavy pressure environments like deep water, extreme heat and cold temperatures, or even made to avoid detection by most scanners.
But what they could not do, especially the basic models, was survive plasma fire.
Vytln grunted, forced to take blows he would normally block just to avoid the plasma fire being shot his way.
One person seemed to have been given leave to aim at him – and he was aiming only at non-lethal areas.
Tanin was getting it worse. Having to duck and weave and dodge, sometimes throwing himself at their enemies, to avoid being shot down.
Vytln’s gritted his teeth as he slammed his elbow back into the helmet of someone who screamed in agony. They were being overwhelmed. The plasma fire was carving holes through the metal body of their ship. They were being hurt, forced to choose between injury or death.
No. They just needed to hold out a little longer. They only needed to let Alred get back in control of the ship. Then-
The soft gasp at his back should have been too quiet for him to hear. But he was highly attuned to that little voice. To that beautiful sound.
He whipped around just in time to see Heaven’s feet disappearing around the corner. Running away from the fight that had finally come upon her. Putting distance between them and her.
And the plasma fire.
The overwhelming wave of males.
Enemies.
Danger.
Right on the heels of his mate.
Pain burst in the back of his head. He turned with a roar, throwing out his hand in a blind swing, hitting the male who had struck him, knocking him into the wall.
He grabbed him by the front and threw him at the others.
He was immediately trampled, no one caring about him.
Completely focused on their target, their objective.
Him.
He was bringing danger to his mate.
His crew. His home. He’d brought them here.
And he could get them away.
“Captain!” He yelled.
Tanin turned, fists up and ready for whatever threat Vytln was trying to warn him of. He wasn’t ready for Vytln to grab him by the wrist. He jerked him to the side, put his other hand on his back, then threw him.
His captain flew further down the hall. Away from the crowd of males that immediately fell on Vytln, taking advantage of his opening.
Vytln grunted, feeling their heavy weight, their fists, their hands, their blows. But he kept his eyes forward as Tanin hit the ground and rolled, coming back up on his feet.
The only male he respected in the universe looked at him, expression tight, as Vytln let himself be grabbed, hit, and dragged backwards.
There was anger in his captain’s eyes. And he knew why.
Tanin had not given him permission to sacrifice himself.
But it was this, or risk them shooting Haven, or an outside wall around her.
Tanin was back up on his feet, but the males with the plasma pistols were still shooting. He could see the way his captain’s eyes narrowed before he turned and ran, disappearing around the same corner Haven had.
There were a few more plasma bolts melting the metal walls on his heels, but no one else chased after them. Of course not. They’d achieved their objective.
And they weren’t gentle with Vytln as they dragged him back over the bodies of those who had fallen in the attempt.
His shoulders were wrenched back painfully, and mag cuffs were snapped on his wrists, entirely too tight.
And once his hands were controlled, they punched and kicked him with impunity, laughing and whooping in their victory as they pulled him away.
Leaving the rest of Vytln’s crew safe.