by Lauren Esker
The deck shuddered suddenly and the lights flickered. Some of the captives cried out, and the hysterical woman, who had just been starting to calm down with Frank's arm around her, burst into loud sobs again.
"What's happening?" Frank asked Meri.
How should I know? she wanted to scream. This is all just as strange to me as it is to you! But she couldn't admit that when she was trying to keep people calm. "It might be someone coming to rescue us," she suggested.
Maybe it was, she thought wistfully. Maybe her beautiful bronze-statue rescuer was here. He seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't be stopped by a few pirates.
***
Lyr and Tamir ran into the first defenders on the metal ladder leading up the maintenance access tubes to the next level of the ship. There were two pirates, both with their shields up and weapons armed. Lyr kicked the first into the second, then grabbed him and jumped down to the nearest landing, where he slammed him repeatedly headfirst into the decking until his shields failed, then a few more times for good measure, and snapped his neck. Honorless, murdering bastard.
There was a startled yell as the other pirate lost his balance fighting with Tamir and plunged down the access tube. Far below them, his shields flickered. He wouldn't have been killed in the fall, but it would take him a while to climb back up.
Tamir glanced at the body of the pirate Lyr had killed. "Do you think you could do less of that and more capturing?"
"These people are trying to kill us. We don't have time for squeamishness—"
"I was thinking interrogation. We could search this whole place by brute force, or we could simply ask one of them where the prisoners are."
"Ah." Lyr looked down at the dead pirate at his feet. He considered taking the man's cuffs for spares, but there was no point; they were completely discharged.
"You really have changed," Tamir said quietly. Lyr looked up to see Tamir looking down at him from higher on the ladder, wearing a hard-to-read expression. In the dim light of the maintenance tube, Tamir's eyes were reflective as a cat's. "You never used to be like this."
"Maybe I used to believe in things I don't believe in now."
"Like what? Honor? Compassion?"
Lyr stood in a quick, fluid motion. "I still have honor. Honor is all I have."
He meant to say more, the anger in him flaring beneath his self-control, but he was interrupted when the ship shuddered around them. The lights flickered.
"And that'll be our ship, right on cue, shooting at us." Tamir hooked an arm around the ladder to avoid falling as the ship continued to shake. "We can probably steal a transport to escape with the prisoners if there aren't too many of them. Now we just have to figure out where on this ship they are."
"I ... think I might know a way," Lyr began reluctantly.
Tamir was no idiot. "Are you talking about telepathy? But you need someone whose mind you're familiar with to connect from a distance, don't you?"
Having known him since childhood, Tamir had a better idea of how Lyr's abilities worked than, probably, anyone else in the Empire. What Tamir didn't know was that using telepathy right now was like tearing the scab off a wound that had just stopped pouring blood.
But he didn't have a choice. They could wander around in the pirate ship for hours, and all the while the ship would be engaged in combat with a Galatean warship and probably preparing to jump out of the system.
As if to underscore the urgency, the ship shuddered violently again.
"I connected with one of the captives on the planet's surface," Lyr admitted. "I think I might be able to find her mind again, if she isn't too far away."
"Do it, then." Tamir glanced down the shaft. "They'll have reinforcements here soon. We don't have much time."
Lyr closed his eyes. On the planet, it had happened spontaneously, in the heat of the moment; it was much harder to make himself do it with time to think about it beforehand. Opening up to let someone else into his mind hurt. He couldn't even tell if the pain was emotional or physical. He'd felt his septmates die, felt them ripped away from him forever, and had temporarily lost himself in a madness born of grief and despair. Now he felt himself teetering on the edge of that abyss once again. He felt, again, the warm sparks of Rook's and Rei's minds flaring and dying in his awareness, felt the way his dragon had risen inside him to take over and save him from a grief so terrible he thought he would die from it—
"Lyr." Tamir's voice was low and near, his hand warm on Lyr's arm. Grounding him. Pulling him back.
And Lyr didn't want it. He yanked his arm away. He was alone, always alone. If he stayed open like this, the next thing would be feeling Tamir in his mind again, and with that sense of connection would come all the memories of those early years with his sept-siblings, when they were all together and alive—
No. No. He couldn't survive the loss a second time.
Lyr snarled wordlessly at Tamir, who pulled back, his face sympathetic. But his touch had helped pull Lyr out of his own head, and when he reached out with his mind this time, his barriers were firmly in place. He groped for the warm touch of the woman's alien mind.
When he used to touch his septmates' minds, werewolf Rei had been moonlight and snow and fleet-running paws; winged Rook was the rustle of feathers and the smell of high mountain air; Skara was the sharp smell of soldered circuit boards and the flicker of lightning in a storm. When he reached for the woman, he thought of candlelight, and the lightly spicy-sweet smell of her skin, and the way that it felt to wrap up in a warm knitted fabric blanket.
And he found her.
***
As the ship shuddered again, the door to the captives' holding area burst open and two pirates stormed inside. One was a cat-man with leopard spots on his tawny fur. The other was the centaur. He was limping and looked like he had the world's worst headache; the lights in the room made him squint. He also looked deeply pissed. Meri found herself wishing that she had let her beautiful bronze savior kill him, and then felt sick at the thought.
Both of the pirates were wielding short baton-shaped sticks, and the centaur carried something else, a small box like a garage-door opener.
One of the captives, a slight man with blue skin and claws, lunged at the pirates. The leopard-spotted one jammed the stick into his attacker's chest. There was an audible crackle, and the man went down with a cry. He struggled to his knees, but the centaur turned and pressed a button on the gray remote-control thing in his hand.
The blue-skinned man screamed. His hands went to the collar at his throat, tearing at it as if he could rip it off, but he couldn't get a grip. He fell to the floor and began to convulse.
Meri couldn't help herself. She was a nurse; she had to do something. She flung herself forward, trying to reach the writhing man on the floor, but she was driven back by the leopard-man. His baton smacked into her arm.
It felt like being electrocuted. Her arm muscles knotted up violently, and a scream tore from her throat. Clutching her arm, she fell to the floor and crawled blindly away until her shoulder slammed into the wall, where she huddled as the pain faded until she could think again. She flexed her hand carefully. It tingled, but didn't seem to be damaged.
And then a voice said clearly, *Can you hear me?*
Meri jerked violently, banging her tingling elbow against the wall.
*Sorry!* the voice said.
"Who," she whispered, looking around wildly. It wasn't words, not really. It was something happening entirely within her head, unfolding like the memory of a conversation, where the specific words didn't matter so much as the meaning.
*I'm speaking to you inside your mind. Don't worry, I can't read your mind, the unseen voice added, which only panicked her more, because she'd just been thinking that. I can only feel your emotions. I can tell that you're frightened.*
"How—what—"
The leopard-man snarled something incomprehensible and jabbed at her with his pain stick. A sharp burst of agony made her cry out again.
*Don't speak aloud.* She sensed regret for her pain in the stranger's ... mental? ... voice, and that was what made her decide that perhaps she could trust him. And it was a him. She could tell that much, though she wasn't quite sure how. *If you want to talk to me, focus on the words inside your head. I'll understand their meaning if they're close to the surface.*
*Like this?* She closed her eyes, and found herself moving her jaw and tongue with her lips closed, forming the shape of the words even though no sound emerged. *Can you hear me?*
*I can! Nicely done. Most people don't get it on the first try.*
As oddly pleasing as it was to be praised by someone who was only a voice in her head, there was just one thing she really wanted. *Please get me out of here,* Meri thought at him, silently shaping the words with great care. *Please, help me. Can you help?*
*I will.* This came with a sense of determination and a kind of ... she could only think of it as supportive warmth, like the mental equivalent of a hand on her shoulder, holding her steady.
*Who are you?*
*You met me earlier.*
And with that, a picture came into her head, her silver-eyed friend from the planet with his hands on her shoulders.
*Oh, it's you!*
Her body and emotions both betrayed her with a sudden flood of delighted warmth. Surely he had to have felt that through whatever link connected them. Meri felt her cheeks grow hot, especially when she caught a flash of his answering reaction, warmth and a startled, reciprocal delight that was far more endearing than his cool, marble-statue beauty.
*I meant to say, thank you for helping me earlier.* It was getting easier to talk to him this way; she didn't have to concentrate quite so hard at forming the words without opening her mouth.
*For all the good it did.* Disgust, directed at himself.
*It's not your fault. Er ... where are you now?*
The answer was a picture: Silver-Eyes crouching in some kind of stairwell. She could dimly make out scarred, bare metal behind him. She had a vague sense of someone else with him, but couldn't see the other person clearly.
*Are you on this ship with us?*
Affirmation answered her, not quite in words, and then: *I need to know where you are.*
*I don't know. We were in some kind of warehouse-like place, and then there was a hallway—*
*Don't describe it in words. Give me pictures. Here's where I am.*
What followed was a dizzying three-dimensional series of images, not just flat pictures but a visceral sense of depth and motion, like moving around in a video game. She saw a door in the side of the ship, saw and felt Silver-Eyes catch hold of the ship itself, and had a general sense that he'd entered the ship below and to the side of that door.
She had been so disoriented when she was first brought on board that it was hard to visualize the turns they'd taken, but she tried to send him her memories of the hallway, the processing room where they'd deloused her, and the direction they'd taken her to get to the cell where she was now.
It was hard to concentrate. The deck kept shuddering under her, and she thought she could smell something burning, which seemed like a deeply bad thing on a spaceship. Although she couldn't understand what the pirates were saying, they seemed agitated and angry. The leopard man kicked some people out of the way and grabbed hold of a frightened-looking young woman, little more than a teenager. She had cat ears and fur, like him. He dragged her to the door. Meri leaned forward, her hands curling into fists.
*I think they're doing something. They're taking some people out of here. Should I—?*
*No! You can't fight them. You'll just get yourself hurt.*
*But where are they taking them? Are they going to kill them?*
*Probably not yet. They might want hostages, someone they can take up to the bridge and threaten to kill if my ship doesn't stop firing on them.*
*Your ship? Where do you come from?*
Hesitation. *It's a military ship trying to stop people like them.*
She used his voice as a lifeline to keep herself calm. Now the centaur had hold of the fragile-looking woman with green skin, hauling her up by a punishing grip on her arm. The woman cried out in pain and fear. It was clear that he was hurting her and that she didn't want to go wherever he was taking her.
*There are a lot more of us than them.* Meri rose to her knees. *If we all attack at once—*
*No!* She could feel his frustration and dismay. *They have weapons and shields, and you don't! If you make trouble, they could close the doors and pump all the air out of the room, or eject you into space. I know where you are now; at least I have a general idea. Stay there! We're going to get you out.*
The green woman cried out again in pain. The centaur had her frail-looking arm bent double behind her back as he forced her toward the door; it looked as if he might break it.
*I'm sorry. I can't just sit here while they do whatever they're going to do to these people.*
*Dammit! Stop!* Silver-Eyes ordered.
Meri ignored him and struggled to her feet. She didn't know what she was going to do, just that she had to do something.
5
___
“I
KNOW WHERE they are," Lyr declared, scrambling up the access ladder. "And they're about to get themselves killed."
As he and Tamir ran down the hallway, he was still dimly aware of what was going on with the human woman, dividing his attention between her and his actual surroundings. She seemed to be tensing herself to leap onto the Hnee pirate—Oh, not that guy again, Lyr thought in disgust.
"Where are we going?" Tamir demanded, and Lyr remembered that Tamir didn't have the same internal map.
"They're on this level, in an interior module of the ship."
"Makes sense. That way if anyone escapes, it'll be harder for them to get to—" Tamir halted in his tracks. "Lyr. Wait."
"What?" Lyr turned back. "What are you doing?"
Tamir pressed a hand to the bulkhead. "The engines. Feel that?"
Lyr took his attention off his connection to the human woman for a moment. The tone of the engines had been changing, but the artificial gravity kept him and Tamir glued to the deck, so they wouldn't have felt it much if the ship was banking and turning in evasive maneuvers. But now the vibration had risen to a level that could mean only one thing.
Tamir was the one who voiced it. "They're preparing to jump. Your collar—" He stopped.
The collar was set to detonate if it lost its connection to the ship it was linked to. That way war-slaves could be trusted to go on raiding parties and even pilot their own jump-capable ships, knowing they couldn't jump to freedom without killing themselves.
If the pirate ship jumped—
Lyr's sudden surge of raw terror surprised him. He hadn't thought he still cared whether he lived or died. Pure animal instinct, he thought; the dragon inside him didn't want to die, even if Lyr himself did.
And maybe that Earth woman, with her courage and her curious, eager mind, had something to do with it too—but he drew away from that thought, not wanting to examine what it implied.
Tamir, meanwhile, didn't hesitate. "Hold still." With no more warning, he moved into Lyr's space and placed a hand at the back of Lyr's neck.
Lyr jerked his head back. Tamir had touched him more today than he'd been touched in the last six months. He hated it.
"Hold still!" Tamir snapped. He took something out of a belt pouch; Lyr recognized it, in the glance he got, as the controller to his collar. Loathing flooded him. With that little device, he'd been hurt, abused, punished; with that, he'd been brought to his knees.
Tamir had never used the collar to hurt him, but it still took all his self-control to let Tamir touch the device to his collar. He felt the moment when it went dead, the tiny leads disconnecting from his neck. Abruptly the collar felt looser, sliding freely over his skin.
Tamir's hand, on the back of his neck, gave a spasmodic jerk. It was already illegal, unlocking
a collar without authorization. Taking it off would probably get him court-martialed.
But there was only the slightest hesitation. Without speaking, he did something else with the controller. The collar clicked and came apart.
Lyr jerked away from Tamir, wrenching the Galatean's grip off him. As the collar slipped off his neck, he grabbed the hated thing and flung it as far from him as it would go. It clattered somewhere in the darkness of the vents.
They stood for a moment looking at each other, both breathing heavily. Inside Lyr's chest, a spark of heat grew, rising up in rage. He was no longer limited, no longer contained. Every insult that had been done to him during his long captivity among the Galateans could now be avenged. He could rip open the side of the ship with his claws and expose the people inside to raw vacuum. He could shred the engines and the tanks that held water and air. He could leave this ship a derelict husk floating in space.
Hell itself knew nothing so terrible as an enraged dragon.
A soft glimmer flickered across Tamir's body as he powered up his shields. He half-raised one of his hands in what Lyr recognized was a defensive position, preparing to fire if necessary.
Lyr felt his lips curl into something that was not quite a smile. "Afraid?"
"I'm not your enemy," Tamir said softly. "Your enemy is in there."
"Oh, I'll kill them, don't doubt that," Lyr promised. "And after that—"
He stopped and spun around, alerted by movement in the corner of his eye and by Tamir's sudden reaction. A vivid green plasma bolt seared the air in the corridor and splintered on Lyr's shields as he flung them up. A split second later and it would have caught him in the back.
He was a fool, allowing himself to be distracted by emotion. There were two pirates at the end of the corridor, who had just ducked out of sight behind a half-open door. Lyr's grin widened, showing teeth. He felt the tingling rush of the change sweeping over him, a wave of heat and power.
