Metal Pirate (Warriors of Galatea Book 3)

by Lauren Esker

  "Not that I know of." Kite looked puzzled and worried. "Did he shift too many times, too fast? That wipes him out sometimes. But I've never seen him have a seizure because of it. How is he now?"

  "Unconscious. I came to get help." She took a breath, bracing herself for another teleport. At least it was a close one, and to a location she'd done before. "C'mon, I'll take you up."

  Kite hesitated, then nodded and folded her wings. She must have been keeping them half-open for a quick getaway, and Claudia couldn't help staring curiously as the wings folded away neatly into a bundle on Kite's back. Folded up, the wings looked like a large brown-and-gray backpack.

  "So much staring. Haven't you ever met a Tybor before?"

  "No. Is that what you are?"

  Kite raised her white-tufted brows, and Claudia noticed for the first time that her eyes had no whites; they were black to the rim. "Where did Skara pick you up?"

  "Earth." This clearly rang no bells. "Uh. I think maybe you call it Birthworld?"

  "Ohhhhh." A fascinated sound, but not particularly surprised. "He does like going there. Surprisingly, you're not even the first of your planet's people I've met. But we can discuss it after we check on our mutual friend. Do you have the access codes to the ship?"

  "No, but I wasn't going in that way, anyhow." And, okay, she wanted to show off a little, confronted by a woman who could fly with actual, realio-trulio wings. This time, it only took a moment's concentration and a brief dip into the unpleasant but visceral memory of Skara falling to the floor before she felt her brain do the thing, and the eye-searing blue-violet light unzipped the air at her fingertips.

  Kite fell back a step. "Whoa. You have a symbiont! How?"

  And now that it was too late, she suddenly realized that Skara might not want anyone, including his allies, to know that he didn't have the ability to teleport anymore. "Long story. Come on."

  They stepped through, the portal closed, and Claudia was glad a seat was handy, because she dropped abruptly into it as her legs stopped being legs and turned to rubber. She ate her last energy bar and stayed in the seat, not sure if getting up was a good idea yet, while Kite knelt over Skara.

  It still felt very wrong seeing him so still, stripped of his normal animation. At least Kite, unlike Claudia, seemed to know a fair bit about first aid. Her hands were swift and sure, checking vital signs and then swiping her wrist across him in a way that made Claudia think the cuffs must have some kind of built-in scanning function along with all the other things they could apparently do.

  Kite touched her wrist to Skara's, their cuffs clinking together. She was frowning.

  "How bad is it?"

  "I don't know." Kite sounded puzzled. "I see what you mean. I don't know what's the matter with him. You said he had a seizure? Did anything happen beforehand? An unusually hard stun, a blow to the head ..."

  "We did a, what's it called? Hyperspace jump?"

  Kite frowned down at Skara. "I guess it's possible he could have gotten feedback through the cuffs and the pilot mods in his brain. But that wouldn't normally happen on a routine jump." She brushed his brow with the back of her hand, and Claudia experienced a powerful surge of completely irrational jealousy.

  "He wasn't looking great before the jump, either." It came out snappy and she had to bite back on her irritation.

  Come on, what's wrong with me? I'm not normally a jealous bitch! So what if he has female friends, or girlfriends, or whatever she is. You had sex with him once. You don't own him.

  But there was still a part of her that wanted to snap Kite's hand off at the wrist every time the hawk-woman touched him in that gentle, affectionate way.

  "Not great how?"

  "Kind of shaky and sweaty. I saw him inject himself with something in the medbay, but he wouldn't tell me what it was. He's not addicted to anything, is he?"

  "Not that I know of. But that would explain some of the readings I'm getting. He's got a ton of stimulants and painkillers in his system. That might be the only thing keeping him from crashing even harder than he is. Or maybe it's doing the opposite and it's the cause of the crash. Oh, Skara," she sighed. "What have you done to yourself now?"

  Claudia couldn't take it anymore. "I know this is none of my business, but are you and he ... are you—?"

  Kite looked totally baffled for a moment, and then she laughed. "Me and Skara? Oh no. Gosh no. To begin with, I'm with someone else, and I'm not really into guys anyway, and even if I was, Skara is more like a brother. We grew up together."

  "Oh," Claudia said, surprised, and that made her realize she had just assumed Kite's wings, and Kite's overall appearance, were natural. "Are you like him? A shapeshifter?"

  "No, I'm a Tybor ... but you've never heard of us. I keep forgetting." She shook her head and got her arms under Skara's frame, then staggered to her feet with a grunt. He wasn't a huge guy, but Claudia knew for certain that she could never have picked up him up like that. Was everyone in outer space abnormally strong? "Come on, let's use their medbay. The facilities at Lake City are, let's say, not that great."

  "We're locked onto the bridge, unless you can open the door. I think Skara locked down the entire ship before he passed out. But," Claudia said, with only a slight inward wince for her escalating headache, "I can try to teleport us there."

  "I might be able to get the door open." Kite shifted Skara in her arms so she could press her left-hand set of cuffs to the door. From Claudia's perspective, nothing happened for a minute, and then Kite shook her head. "Guess I can't. Skara, you brilliant idiot. I don't know why he's so stupidly good at this stuff and so terrible at remembering that sometimes leaving a backdoor for your allies is a good thing. Okay, portal us there."

  Claudia's legs wobbled when she got up, but she focused on the medbay and found that the mental twist to engage the symbiont was coming ever more easily to her now. This is gonna suck ... There was already a dry ache at the back of her skull as she opened the portal, like a harbinger of the migraine to come. When the portal blossomed in front of them, Kite went first, followed by Claudia.

  She hadn't been wrong about the headache. She sank down to the floor, pressing her fists against her temples. Fuck.

  "Are you okay?" Kite's voice seemed to come from very far away.

  I'm not going to faint. Claudia blinked the black sparks away from her vision. "Fine," she said weakly.

  Kite was lowering Skara onto the bed. "You know, this looks like the medbay on Skara's ship. Are you sure we aren't—"

  Damn. It was the medbay on Skara's ship. She'd only seen the other briefly; this must have been the one she'd pictured instead.

  Which meant—

  "Look out!" Claudia shouted from the floor. Movement flashed in the medbay doorway.

  Kite flung up a shield over the three of them. Green light splintered off it as Mrs. Potato Head fired at them at close range from the doorway. Claudia wobbled to her feet and threw herself over Skara by pure instinct.

  Instead of retreating, the female bounty hunter extended her arms into tentacles and threw them around Kite's shield.

  "She's a shapeshifter?" Kite exclaimed.

  The tentacles wrapped around them, dragging all three of them into a heap on the floor. Like everyone else here, the purple woman was terrifyingly strong. Claudia ended up tangled around Skara on the floor of the medbay, with a faceful of Kite's feathers.

  "Where's Kriff?" the shapeshifter demanded.

  "Who's Kriff?" Kite shot back. She folded up her wings and struggled to her knees.

  "Her partner. He's our prisoner," Claudia said, trying to sound authoritative rather than hurting and terrified. Skara was limp in her arms. "He's on the other ship and he—and he'll be fine, if you surrender right now."

  "Me surrender to you?"

  "She's right." Kite, who was no slouch at picking up subtext, touched one of her cuffs. "Surrender to us or I'll pump all the air out of your partner's cell. Right now."

  "You're bluffing," the woman sai
d uncertainly.

  "Do you want to listen to him suffocate? Let's try, oh, ten seconds. Not enough to kill ..."

  Kite stroked a thumb over her cuff. Claudia knew it was a bluff, but even she was half convinced by the deadly conviction on Kite's face.

  So, apparently, was the bounty hunter. She muttered a curse and retracted her tentacles.

  "Your cuffs," Kite ordered.

  The woman cursed again and took them off, one by one, and all but threw them at her.

  "Thank you," Kite said mildly. "Claudia, keep an eye on her." She rose and began rummaging through Skara's drug collection.

  Claudia looked down at Skara's wan face as she held him in her lap. Why did they never seem to manage to get this close when he was awake so they could both properly enjoy it? She could feel his heartbeat against her own chest.

  She glared at the woman whose face was a female reflection of Skara's. "What did you do to him?" Claudia demanded.

  The bounty hunter looked baffled. "What did I do to whom?"

  "Skara! You poisoned him or something, didn't you?"

  "Why would I do that?"

  "So you're not responsible for his condition?" Kite asked, snapping a vial into an injector.

  "Of course not. I don't even know what his 'condition' is."

  Claudia looked at her thoughtfully. She seemed to be telling the truth. "What's your name, anyway?"

  "Why should I tell you?"

  "Because it's nicer than calling you Mrs. Potato Head." The woman frowned in puzzlement. "Never mind. I'm Claudia. Who are you?"

  "Ilyx," the woman said reluctantly. She scrambled backward when Kite turned around with the injector, and sprouted a bristling hedge of spikes from her shoulders and forearms. "Hey! What are you doing with that?"

  "It's a sedative. I'm not going to put you under completely, just enough to make sure you don't cause trouble for us."

  Ilyx's defensive spikes lengthened. "My people don't always react to sedatives the way others do."

  "You think I don't know that? I grew up with Skara. Now let me do this or I'll just stun you and let you deal with the headache when you wake up."

  Ilyx reluctantly submitted her arm. The injector hissed. She fell back against the wall. Kite turned away and lifted Skara out of Claudia's arms, back to the medbay bed.

  Ilyx tried to say something and then sank in a limp heap.

  "Uh ... I thought you weren't going to sedate her completely," Claudia said.

  "Of course I said that, and of course I did. I don't want her running around the ship. It'll wear off in about an hour." Kite flashed her a quick smile. "One thing I didn't lie about is that I did grow up with Skara and I know more about drug dosing for Iustrans than most people. What about you? Are you ill?"

  "Headache," Claudia admitted. She wobbled to her feet. "Skara gave me glucose injections after I got sick the last time. I don't suppose you could do one for me?"

  "Sure." Kite snapped a vial into a fresh injector. Claudia had a moment of doubt, but if Kite meant harm to them, she'd had plenty of opportunity.

  The injector hissed and her arm stung briefly. Claudia rubbed the injection site with her thumb.

  Kite turned to Skara, getting him arranged on the medbed. Claudia moved closer and rested her hand on his arm. His lips parted and he turned his head toward her, as if he was somehow aware of her even while unconscious.

  "What in the world," Kite murmured. She tapped her cuff with a distinct Is this thing on? kind of vibe, then reached up and pulled down a screen above the medbed. "These readings I'm getting ... this isn't possible. It looks like he doesn't have the symbiont anymore."

  "He, uh ... he doesn't." Claudia squeezed Skara's arm lightly. "It's in me now."

  "What?"

  "I didn't do it on purpose!" Claudia protested. "I don't even want it!" Though now that she'd started getting used to it, it was actually turning out to be pretty cool. Teleporting around was kind of fun, at least when alien bounty hunters weren't chasing her. She could get to work instantly and skip the commute. She could step from Seattle into her mom's house or her dad's apartment ... of course, she'd have to tell them about it first ...

  "You have to give it back!" Kite exclaimed, staring at her.

  "How, though?"

  "I don't know!" Kite looked down at Skara. The alarm in her face faded to a worried look. "You said he had a seizure and collapsed. This has got to be what's wrong."

  "Not having the symbiont is hurting him?"

  "From what I know of them," Kite said softly, "it could kill him."

  "He didn't say anything to me about that!"

  "Typical," Kite muttered.

  "But ... I didn't even want it!" She shook Skara's arm. "I got it by accident. I want to give it back. Is it possible I could give it back to him the same way I got it?"

  "How did you get it?"

  "I ... um." Her ears warmed.

  Kite sighed. "Never mind. Knowing Skara as I do, I can guess."

  "Hey!" Claudia's temper flared. "He's not like that."

  "Oh?" Kite said dryly. "Did he tell you that you were special, not like the others? I hate to break it to you, but he tells that to everyone."

  "No he didn't, and—no he doesn't." She wasn't sure what made her so positive. But she remembered how gentle and caring he'd been in bed, the way he had made her feel like the center of his world. "Maybe he's a little bit of a player, but—"

  "He has casual hookups wherever he goes. Did he mention the Skara Experience to you?"

  "The what?"

  "That's what he calls it. I've also heard him refer to it as 'riding the purple comet.'"

  "Oh, my God." Claudia covered her face with her hands.

  "Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is, if you get hung up on thinking it's more than that, you'll just break your own heart. Don't fool yourself."

  "Maybe we can talk about this later," Claudia said between her teeth.

  "I'm not trying to insult him, or you. I just want you to know." Kite pushed the screen back up into the ceiling. "Anyway, if that is what it is, there's not really anything else I can do for him here in the medbay that we can't do for him back in the village clinic. We may as well go there. Just give me a minute to get Ilyx stashed somewhere. Where did you say her partner is?"

  "He's tied up and locked up on their ship. Skara locked him into one of the cabins."

  "Hmm. I hate leaving them with the ship, but if Skara locked him up, he's probably going to stay locked up. I'll just stash her in a stasis pod. Stay here with him."

  She scooped up Ilyx, threw the woman over her shoulder, and left the room.

  Claudia sat on the edge of the bed. She felt less shaky now, but she was also starting to get intensely hungry despite the energy bars she'd devoured earlier. And thirsty. Hopefully they'd feed her at the village.

  "Why didn't you tell me, you idiot?" she murmured, running her hand down Skara's arm. "I don't want to keep this thing if it means you'd get sick otherwise. You can have it back in a heartbeat. Why didn't you just explain?"

  "Oh, hey!" Kite stuck her head in, and Claudia jerked her hand guiltily away from his arm. "I was just down in the cargo bay getting our uninvited guest stowed away. You didn't tell me Skara was coming in fully loaded."

  "Huh?" Claudia said intelligently.

  "The cargo bay is full! Oh, this is going to be good news. I can't wait to tell everyone."

  "Why is it good news?"

  "Didn't he tell you what he was hauling?"

  "No." She decided not to mention that he'd seemed to be going out of his way not to tell her.

  "It's for us." Kite's entire face was bright with joy. "For the village. Food, seeds, tools, medical supplies. There's so much we need, and it's so hard to get anything while we're having to hide."

  Claudia's head spun. His smuggler cargo was seeds and medical supplies? "What is this place, anyway? Who are you hiding from?"

  Kite's brightly animated face closed down. "Don't you know? I didn'
t think he would have brought you here if he didn't trust you."

  "We didn't have a choice," Claudia pointed out. "We crashed here. He didn't tell me anything."

  Kite clicked her tongue against her teeth. Her gaze went to Claudia's wrists, and the gold cuffs there. Claudia was puzzled to see Kite's face grow distinctly unfriendly. "You know," Kite said slowly, "with Skara unconscious, I have only your word for any of this. And you're a citizen."

  "A citizen of where? I'm from Seattle."

  "You know what? I think maybe it'll be better to let the village council settle this," Kite said. She pointed her fingers at Claudia.

  "No!" Claudia exclaimed, because she knew what usually followed that. It wasn't like she could do anything to stop it. She flung her hands in front of her face. There was a green flash.

  And then she lowered her hands cautiously. She wasn't unconscious or dead, and there was a faint green glimmer in the air in front of her.

  "Damn it," Kite muttered. There was a green glimmer around her now, too. "Okay, yes, I was hoping I could stun you before you raised your shields. As you can see, I'm shielded as well, so don't even try. If you'll come quietly—"

  Her voice faded to an irrelevant hum in the background, because ... what had happened? Claudia waved her hand in front of her own face, feeling a slight tingle as her hand brushed against the green flicker, and for a moment brighter green sparkles blossomed around her fingertips. Her wrists tingled too. She touched one of the cuffs and found it warm.

  "Hey!" Kite said, waving a hand to get her attention. "You okay?"

  "No!" Claudia moved a hand carefully through the air. "What's happening? What did I do?"