Metal Pirate (Warriors of Galatea Book 3)

by Lauren Esker

  "Yes." A smile broke out across her face, tentative at first and then growing firmer. "Yes, I do. For one thing, I've already seen what happens when you do things on your own. It's a disaster."

  "Hey! I saved your life, you know."

  "After you endangered it in the first place!"

  "Claudia." Skara stepped forward, until his legs bumped her knees, and took her face in his hands. "Thank you."

  "I—I don't mean for you to—" She flustered adorably, but made no move to pull away. "That is, it's strictly a business arrangement, right? I took your symbiont, even though I didn't mean to. So I should help you get a replacement. Not that you deserve my help, after everything—"

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  It was much longer this time, holding the contact until she melted against him. She kissed back eagerly, urgently, fingers tangled in his hair; and he thought, with the part of his mind still capable of rational thought, that he could imagine himself doing this over and over, forever ...

  A sudden, jarring Thump! shook the entire ship. In the same instant, a disgruntled voice said into Skara's mind, *Skara! Are you in there?*

  Claudia's lips parted from his with an audible pop. "The bounty hunters?" she exclaimed.

  "Worse," Skara said, thoroughly irritated. "My big brother."

  He slammed every mental block in place that Lyr had taught him, and sent back a tendril of annoyance. *You have the worst timing imaginable, you know that?*

  *Is the Earth woman with you?*

  *Gosh, how did you figure that one out? If only the rest of us could share your highly evolved dragon intellect.*

  *Am I interrupting—oh.* There was a sudden surge of embarrassment in the dragon's mental voice. Skara grinned.

  "What is it?" Claudia asked, reminding him that she couldn't hear Lyr.

  "I fear our absence has been discovered. This sweet dalliance couldn't last forever, alas—"

  Claudia pushed him off her. "Sweet dalliance, my butt. Is Lyr on the roof?"

  "Would you like to see a real, live dragon?"

  "I ... thought I already did?"

  "Ooh, you're in for a treat. This way, my dear."

  They went out into the hallway and Skara pointed her to the ladder up to the observation deck. This also afforded him a very nice view as she climbed up ahead of him. The hatch opened onto an expanse of copper-colored scales. Claudia gasped and started to duck down.

  "Don't worry, he won't eat you. He only eats bad people."

  *I do not eat people.* At Lyr's disgruntled mental voice, Claudia gasped again, so Skara knew the dragon was sending it to both of them. *Stop telling her lies, Skara.*

  "I do not lie, I exaggerate. There's a difference. Go on up, Claudia. If he tries to eat you, you can just portal out."

  *For the last time, Skara—*

  Claudia's pleasantly rounded bottom and legs disappeared over the edge of the hatch as she overcame her fear of the dragon enough to scramble up. Skara followed. He discovered, as he put his head over the edge, that Lyr had withdrawn from the observation platform and was now curled around it, his long scaly body draped over the top of the ship with his massive, horned head resting on the railing.

  "You really are a dragon," Claudia breathed. She reached out a hesitant hand toward Lyr's scaly muzzle and then pulled it quickly back.

  "You can pet him," Skara said. "He likes it. Scratch behind the horns."

  *Stop answering for me, you utter annoyance. It's all right, Claudia. I don't mind if you touch me.*

  Claudia cautiously touched the side of his jaw, brushing a hand across the fine scales around his mouth. "He's warm! I mean, you're warm."

  "He's not a reptile."

  *Thank you for answering for me yet again, Skara.*

  "Anytime."

  Feeling bolder, Claudia scratched under Lyr's chin. He half-closed his great silver eyes in pleasure. The railing creaked as he rested more of his weight on it, leaning into it like a dog enjoying a good scratch.

  "You are such a complete slut for skritches," Skara muttered. He leaned on the railing so he could look out at the trees rather than the shameless display going on next to him. From up here he could look down on the unloading going on from his cargo bay. It annoyed him deeply that they hadn't even asked first. Though, in fairness, the cargo was for them, and some of it was perishable now that the ship's engines were on standby. And he'd given them a passcode to the cargo bay some time ago. It was still overstepping to start unloading without his say-so, though.

  Assholes.

  The villagers paid little attention to the dragon on top of the ship. That kind of thing was pretty normal around here.

  *Skara!* Lyr thought at him. *Are you jealous?*

  *No!* Skara thought back, now even more annoyed. *If you let her hear that, I swear I'm going to make you pay for it.*

  *I'm terrified. Note how I'm shaking in my scales.*

  *I'll shapeshift into a twenty-foot-long snake and slither under your door and curl up in your bed. Meri will never speak to you again.*

  *Shaking. Trembling.*

  "Are you two talking?" Claudia asked, and somehow Lyr managed to look guilty, an impressive feat on a face that was the size and approximate shape of a small passenger vehicle.

  *Apologies. I can only speak telepathically in my present form, and I am accustomed to speaking to one person at a time. Would you like to see me shift?*

  Claudia nodded eagerly.

  "Hey, I can change shape too!" Skara protested. "You don't see me making a big deal out of it."

  *I have most definitely seen you making a big deal out of it.*

  Claudia giggled.

  "Teaming up against me. It's not fair. I'm going back down to the ship."

  But he stayed, as Lyr hooked a big clawed paw over the railing and then shifted with the rippling fluidity of his kind. The enormous sprawl of scales collapsed into Lyr's human shape, standing on the other side of the railing with his booted feet braced on a jutting support strut. He was wearing leather pants and no shirt, which was just unfair.

  "Your clothes change with you?" Claudia asked. "How? I don't think Skara's do."

  "Thanks for rubbing it in," Skara muttered.

  "It's something my people can do," Lyr said in his normal mellow baritone, both like and unlike his mental voice. "Even we aren't quite sure how it works. I can take anything into a shift with me except metal."

  "Why metal?"

  "He just told you he doesn't know how he works. But keep rubbing it in."

  "We don't know, any more than we know why we can also change our mass, as you saw," Lyr said. "Most shifters can't do that. Skara is limited to changing into other forms of the same mass as his natural shape."

  "So are you just here to cockblock and be annoying," Skara wanted to know, "or did you have an actual reason for coming out here?"

  Claudia raised her brows and hopped up to sit on the railing, gripping it securely in both hands. "Maybe he just wanted to hang out with us, because he's nice. You don't mind, do you, Skara?" Her eyes were dancing now.

  "He's jealous," Lyr said. Skara sputtered in wordless fury.

  "Yeah, I figured that part out." Claudia reached out to poke Skara with her toe. "Stop it. You're being a jerk."

  "He's being a jerk." Skara was aware this might not have been the best retort, especially since both of them now looked even more amused at his expense.

  "Actually, I wanted to find out where you'd gone," Lyr said, turning serious again. "I realize that locking you up is pointless and I think the villagers know it now too. As I promised, I've spoken to the council on your behalf. You've never let us down, Skara, and you've always gone above and beyond; we owe you a great deal. I am here, in part, to convey their apologies for imprisoning you and your friend. You must consider how afraid they are, how much they fear discovery and recapture. It's a fear that you and I can both understand, I'm sure."

  Skara grunted and tightened his grip on the railing. It hurt:
that was the thing he hated to admit even to himself. It hurt that he'd been sacrificing for these people for months and they didn't even trust him.

  "They do trust you," Lyr said quietly.

  "No reading my mind without permission, huh?" Skara snapped.

  "I'm not. I don't have to. They do accept you here, Skara. They are simply afraid."

  "I'm an Iustran," Skara said. He didn't look at Claudia. "We're like no one else. We belong nowhere. I don't know what made me think a village of outcasts and escaped slaves would be any different."

  It didn't help that his headache and dizziness had been increasing ever since he'd been up here, until he needed his grip on the railing to stay upright. The drugs weren't lasting long at all anymore. He was going to need another dose soon to stay functional.

  I'm on a clock. And it's running down fast.

  "Skara—" Claudia began gently.

  "You know what? I'm going back down. Because I have work to do. You two can stay up here and do whatever you want."

  He dropped back down the hatch. His intention was to casually extrude tentacles and propel himself quickly down the shaft that way; he'd been climbing things like that since he was a kid. But the tentacles didn't respond as they should, and he ended up tumbling and catching himself on the ladder. He scrambled awkwardly out of the shaft into the hallway, legs trembling. He'd almost fallen ten feet onto his head.

  He really hoped no one saw that.

  A few fast, wobbly steps took him to the medbay. He all but fell onto the medbed and reached for another injector.

  Fast, light steps in the hallway alerted him to Claudia's arrival. His first urge was to hide the injector, but he needed the shot, damn it. She appeared in the doorway as he pressed it to his arm, and he gave her a glare that challenged her to do anything about it.

  "Skara—" She paused and took in the scene. "Didn't you just do that?" she asked, her voice soft.

  He didn't answer. It burned going in, this time, and he felt his heart rate accelerate wildly. He really shouldn't have done two of them so close together. But he hadn't had a choice.

  Claudia blew out a breath, huffing a stray wisp of hair off her nose. She looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she closed her mouth, crossed the room, and sat down on the medbed beside him. Her shoulder rested against his.

  "Don't you want to stay up there petting a dragon?" Skara asked, tossing the injector into the sterilizer. He knew it was nasty and hated himself for it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It was hard to think, with his thoughts bouncing around in his head like butterflies, his body vibrating with everything he'd just injected into it.

  "Lyr is worried about you," Claudia said. "He won't say it, but I can tell. I can't believe you can't."

  "You'd better not have told him about—"

  "Of course I didn't, though Kite knows, so I'm sure she'll tell him eventually. Why don't you want him to know?"

  That simple question cut straight to the core of his own denials and justifications. "I need him not to know. Don't even think about dropping a hint to him."

  "He's your friend, though, isn't he? Wouldn't he want to help?"

  "Because he's Lyr," Skara said shortly. "As soon as we tell him what's going on with me, any hope of handling it ourselves will fly straight out the airlock. He's going to hate the symbiont-stealing idea. It won't be 'honorable' enough for him."

  "If he cares about you, he wouldn't want you to die."

  "Who the hell knows?" Skara demanded. "This is a guy who voluntarily stayed in captivity among his worst enemies even after his friends started dying, because honor told him to. Maybe he would decide I should die to satisfy his rigid ideas of right and wrong."

  "Then he's a terrible friend."

  It was much easier to argue with her when she was yelling at him, rather than this cursed calm sympathy, turning each of his arguments back on itself. "Maybe he is!" he retorted, feeling vaguely disloyal even as he said it. "The point is—"

  "That he'd worry about you, and you don't want him to."

  "That has nothing to do with it." The warm concern in her eyes was hard to take, but far worse was the way she seemed to be able to see through him, the same way Lyr could. He blamed Lyr's telepathy for it, but she didn't have telepathy and she could do it anyway. "The point is, as soon as it's out of my hands—our hands," he was forced to amend, "we're going to lose the ability to make our own decisions about it. Lyr likes to boss people around. He'll take over and try to do things his way."

  "Would that really be so bad, though?" she asked. "Not to have to do everything by yourself all the time?"

  "That is so far from the point that the point may as well have vanished into the event horizon of a black hole." He stood up and was relieved to find his legs were steadier, though his heart was still racing unpleasantly. "I'm going down to make sure those bumpkins don't destroy my ship. You can come or stay, whatever you want."

  She came. Because of course she did.

  Claudia had almost forgotten, until stepping outside with Skara, that she was on an alien world.

  It didn't quite seem alien, was the thing. The transition from Seattle to Louisiana had been more jarring. The forest around them, of mixed coniferous and deciduous trees, could have been a forest in the Pacific Northwest, aside from the purple cast to some of the bushes and trees. Even that seemed like a peculiar optical illusion, as if maybe she'd just forgotten she was wearing purple-tinted sunglasses.

  Then she looked up and noticed the planet's rings.

  They arched overhead at an angle, a pale stripe across the sky from horizon to horizon. They could almost have been mistaken for a jet contrail, except the band was too wide and too solid and there was no hint of drift or fading. Loose feathers of clouds trailed across it, emphasizing its steadiness and strangeness.

  Claudia stared upward with her mouth open until realizing Skara was no longer by her side.

  He'd gone over to berate the villagers loading barrels onto a makeshift wooden sledge. Claudia sighed aloud and started to follow him, then decided it wasn't her job to smooth things over between Skara and other people. If he wanted to yell at people and burn bridges for himself here, that was his issue to deal with.

  "—at least ask me before opening my cargo doors and taking things from my damned ship—"

  ... anyway, he kind of had a point.

  Claudia stretched on tiptoe, but it didn't look like Lyr was on top of the ship anymore. No one was paying any particular attention to her. She wandered over to investigate the trees.

  Aside from the purple tint, most of the trees looked normal. Claudia crushed some needles between her fingers. They had a strange, sharp smell, not really like pine at all, and left a purplish smudge on her fingertips as if she'd been picking berries.

  "Be careful," Skara said behind her, and she jumped.

  "Why?" she asked, turning quickly around and scrubbing her fingers on her jeans. "Is it poisonous?"

  "No, there's big wildlife on this planet, and a lot of it is immune to energy weapons. Didn't you notice the fence around the village?"

  "No," Claudia said. "The only part of the village I've seen is the inside of one house. They stunned me and took me there."

  "Jerks," Skara muttered, and it suddenly occurred to Claudia that a good deal of his anger was on her behalf, not his own. Before she could examine this more closely, he said, "Hey, give me your hand."

  "Why?" But she trustingly put her hand in his.

  Skara brushed his fingers across the gold cuff on her wrist. It split open and dropped off into his hand.

  "Hey!" Claudia snatched it and jerked it out of his reach. "Those are mine. Uh, I mean, actually that other guy's, but—okay, so I stole them, but—"

  "Whoa, slow down. They're not baubles, you know. I can get you pretty bracelets if that's what you want. These are—"

  "Extremely powerful energy weapons," Claudia said, cupping her hand protectively around the cuff as she sealed it b
ack into place. "I know. I want to keep them."

  "Claudia, you can't use them," Skara said in a patient voice that she had absolutely no tolerance for.

  "Yes, I can."

  "No, you can't. You don't have the mods."

  "So you said, but I totally did use them. I blocked Kite's first attempt to stun me. It only worked after she convinced me to let my guard down. Which I owe her some payback for," she muttered. "Though I guess she let me keep them, come to think of it, so that's something."

  Skara stared at her. "That's not possible. Give me your hand?" This time Claudia kept her hand where it was. He rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to take anything. Let me look at your arm."

  Claudia hesitantly held her hand out. He took her wrist gently in his hand and turned her arm over. When his fingertips trailed across the inside of her arm, she couldn't resist a pleasant shiver.

  "You don't have mods. At all. None of your people do."

  "Those silver things Kite had? No. I don't think those are a thing on Earth."

  "The cuffs require implants in your arms to work. Are you sure that you actually used the cuffs, and it wasn't something Kite did?"

  "Yes!" she snapped, pulling her hand back. "Do you want me to prove it?" She pointed at a nearby bush.

  "Claudia—"

  "Shh! I'm concentrating!"

  Like the symbiont, it was all about mental control. She had made the shield by accident, but she had dropped it on purpose. Now she concentrated on those green shafts of light she'd seen Skara and the bounty hunters making. She wanted the cuffs to do that.

  "Listen, Claudia—"

  "Hush, I said!"

  Green light. She remembered how the cuff had warmed against her skin when she'd used it before. Focused on that feeling. It was like opening a portal with the symbiont, just a matter of finding the right mental twist—

  A spear of eye-searing green light stabbed from the cuff and the bush went up in a puff of flame.

  "I did it!" Claudia jumped into the air in pure delight, and flung her arms around Skara. "I did it, I did it! Did you see that?"

  "I saw it." He sounded stunned, but kept his arms around her, turning both of them to look at the smoking bush. Wet and green, it was scorched but not burning. "Claudia, that shouldn't be possible. How did you do it?"