Linked

by Imogen Howson

  The bounty hunters came to an abrupt stop before a door clamped so tightly shut that only the faintest swirl of hairline marks across the steel surface showed that it was a door at all. The hand across her mouth and nose shifted a little, and she gasped in a huge gulp of air, watching through blurry, oxygen-deprived vision as the man in front put his blast-gun to the central point of the door.

  Sparks sprayed around him as he fired. The door shook a little in its frame but didn’t move. As he drew out another instrument, Elissa tried to twist her head to see if Lin had been brought with her, to see if she was all right. To see—oh, please, God—if anyone, anywhere, was coming to save them. But the moment she moved, the man holding her tightened his grip, jerking her head back to face front so hard that pain jabbed through the top of her spine.

  Lin! There must be something you can do. All that electrokinesis—there must be something.

  But either there was nothing or Lin was frozen, too terrified to think of it, because nothing happened.

  The door sprang open. Almost before it finished dilating, something cracked through the air and snatched the blast-gun from the hand of the man in front of Elissa. The weapon flew up, clanked against the wall, then hit the floor and skidded away down the corridor.

  Figures leapt through the doorway. One crashed into the first man, throwing them both against the side of the corridor. A knife blade flashed.

  Then Elissa was being dragged backward by an arm across her throat, being held tightly against her captor’s chest. Like a shield. The realization flashed into her head. He’s using me like a shield.

  He brought his blast-gun up, and a bolt of heat sizzled over Elissa’s head. A direct hit on the chest of the second man who’d come through the doorway—Elissa saw the fabric of his jacket smoke and singe. But he came on—he must be wearing a blastproof vest—knife in one hand, and in the other the whip—oh, that’s what it is—cracking out faster than she could see.

  Her captor gave a grunt of pain. The gun spun out of his hand. The whip flew out again, streaking along the arm across Elissa’s throat. The arm jerked, and then Elissa found herself staggering forward as the man let her go, shoved her toward the man with the whip.

  She managed to stumble to the side, knowing she had to get out of the way of the man who’d saved her, but she couldn’t keep her footing. She went down on one knee and both hands, and, as the man with the whip leapt past her, her brain caught up with itself and she realized it was Cadan.

  Back along the corridor the men holding Lin had turned to race the other way, only to meet more crew members: Markus, another man, and two women she recognized from earlier, their reinforced jackets deflecting knives and blast-guns.

  You couldn’t fire bullets or high-powered lasers on spaceships, not unless you wanted to risk puncturing the hull and killing everyone on board. All combat had to be close-range, the only weapons knives, shock-guns, or short-range blasters. And Cadan’s whip. She remembered now: A couple of years into the SFI training, the cadets had been offered the chance to learn the use of an alternative weapon. Bruce and Cadan had both gone for the whip—Coolest weapon ever, Bruce had said at the time. She didn’t know if Bruce had continued past the initial year of basic training. Cadan obviously had.

  He was fighting Elissa’s captor now, too close to use the whip again. The bounty hunter was big, his movements brutally fast, and Elissa found herself flinching, expecting every moment to see his knife slice into Cadan’s unprotected throat or face.

  The knife came up in a thrust that looked as if it couldn’t help but drive home. Somehow Cadan’s own knife flashed out to block it, slammed the blade up across its owner’s nose. Bone cracked. Blood spurted. The man slid to the floor, unconscious.

  Cadan spun back into combat. The whip snapped out again and again, faster than Elissa’s eyes could follow, snatching weapons from hands before they came near him, leaving the pirates with nothing but bleeding fingers, then curling back to snatch their legs from under them and send them slamming to the floor.

  And then, all at once, it was over.

  The bounty hunters—six of them—sprawled, unconscious. There was blood smeared up the wall, and more blood in spatters along the floor. And blood on the blades of the knives some of the crew members were holding.

  Elissa became aware that there was a buzzing in her ears, and her heart was beating far too hard, up at the top of her chest so she couldn’t draw a full breath. That man—the one who’d opened the door—was slumped against the wall, his head sunk far forward on his chest, his neck—

  Sweaty, hot nausea swirled up over her. That’s wrong. His head shouldn’t be at that angle. No one’s head should be at that angle.

  She moved her own head, stiffly, taking in the other men lying along the floor of the corridor, and once again her brain seemed to suddenly leap forward, catching up with what she should have seen before.

  They weren’t unconscious. None of them were unconscious. They were dead.

  The buzzing in her ears seeped away, but no other sounds replaced it. Instead all the other sounds she knew there must be—people’s voices, a boot scraping on the floor as Markus stepped over a bounty hunter’s body to help Lin to her feet—seemed to go with the buzzing, flowing away, leaving nothing but a thick silence like cotton wool in her ears. She didn’t want to look at the dead men, but she couldn’t make her gaze move away from the one slumped against the wall, from the other one, who’d held her, the one Cadan had . . . oh God, killed. Cadan killed him . . .

  “Elissa. Put your head down.”

  Cadan’s voice. Cadan’s hands on her arms, pulling her to a kneeling position, gently but firmly pushing her forward so that the floor came up toward her and her hair swung all around her face.

  Sound returned in a crash of voices, boots, and the ever-present background noises of the ship: the whisper of the air-filtration system, the faint hum of the gravity drive. Elissa put her hands up to push her hair off her face, grateful that her right hand blocked out the sight of the blood, of the bodies—and she met Cadan’s eyes.

  “Are you all right?” he asked

  She nodded.

  “Okay. Just hang on, all right. Stew?” That confused her for a moment until she realized he was speaking into his wrist unit. “We’re done. Status? . . . Good. Yeah—they’re not going to fire when they think their men are on board . . . . No, don’t wait. Make the hop now. I’m coming back to the bridge.”

  The hop. Hyperspeed again. But it won’t help. They tracked us so fast. They’ll do it again. And again. Until they catch us.

  “Let’s get you out of here. And Ms. May, too.” As she got to her feet, he moved his hand to under her elbow, supporting her, and glanced over her head up the corridor. “Ariel, leave cleanup for now, okay? All of you, stand by for further breaches. Markus, give Ms. May a hand.”

  She heard the voice of one of the women. “Yes, sir.”

  Then Lin’s, far calmer than Elissa knew her own voice would be, should she attempt to speak. “I’m okay.”

  Elissa couldn’t look up the corridor toward her, to see if the calmness was just the false calm of shock. She couldn’t look again at the dead bodies, at the— Oh God. She wouldn’t faint. She wouldn’t.

  As the bone-deep whine of the hyperdrive built around them, Cadan, his hand steady on her elbow, steered Elissa through the door the bounty hunter had opened, into another stretch of corridor and along a little way to where a side door stood. He thumbprinted it open, and, followed by Lin, they went through into a second corridor that ran parallel to the one they’d just been in, like its narrower cousin. In this smaller space the noise of the hyperdrive was magnified, a strong enough vibration to make Elissa’s teeth chatter.

  Cadan said something, but she couldn’t hear. The vibration went through everything, raising every hair on her body, prickling over her scalp. Then there was that universe-shaking jerk, and they’d made the hop to . . . no, not to safety. Not this time. Not anymore. />
  “Listen,” said Cadan. “I have to get back to the bridge, and I need the crew standing by.” He paused. “Lissa?”

  She looked up at him.

  “Are you with me?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. Look. You and Ms. May, you can go back to your cabin. Or you can come to the flight deck. You don’t have to be alone. You’ve never seen hand-to-hand combat before, and that was—” He broke off suddenly, shutting his mouth hard on the words, his whole face rigid.

  “Neither have you.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until she heard the words echo. She shouldn’t have said it. He’d think it was a jab at him, the same kind of jab she’d made before. “I mean—”

  “You’re right.” His eyes met hers and he swallowed. “We’ve done a hundred training exercises, though. At least I’ve been prepared for this.” He swiped his hand across his forehead, and she realized his hair was sticking up, dark blond and damp with sweat. He’d killed someone. All she’d had to do was watch it happen, but he—he’d had to do it. And now he had the memory, a physical memory, lodged in his hand and arm muscles, of what it had been like to break bone, to smash a man’s nose hard enough to drive it back into his brain. How could you prepare for something like that?

  He brought his hand down, and she saw him pull himself together, straighten his shoulders, ready to deal with the next crisis. “Lis, I’m sorry. I have to get to the bridge.”

  “We’ll come too.” She said it without thinking any further, without checking with Lin to see if she agreed.

  Once they were both hurrying after Cadan as he strode up the corridor, Elissa glanced at her sister. Lin’s face was pale and tight, a bruise darkening on her cheek.

  “You got hurt? Your cheek.”

  Lin blinked. “I don’t know. I—oh, the men pushed me out of the way when that guy—Markus—came up from behind. I hit my face, I think.”

  “You don’t want to go back to the cabin?”

  “No.” Lin spoke vehemently. “I want to know what’s happening.”

  Elissa dropped her voice, although Cadan, striding fast, was much farther ahead now. “I think we need to. Those men . . .”

  Lin dropped her voice too, as low as a whisper. “They weren’t just pirates, were they.” The tone of her voice made the words not a question.

  “Bounty hunters, I think—no, I mean, I’m sure.”

  Lin’s eyes met hers. They’ve sent them after us? hovered, unspoken, in the air.

  Elissa nodded, then put her hand out to grasp Lin’s. Lin’s fingers were ice cold. They hurried after Cadan, unspeaking, hands tightly clasped.

  On the bridge Stewart sat at the controls. He didn’t take his eyes off the screens—or his hands from the keyboard and control panel—as they entered.

  Cadan was across the platform in three strides. “Status, Stew.”

  “No tail so far. External damage at three percent, auto-repair taking place. I’m running the enviro-scan.”

  Cadan slid into his seat, tapped a screen to bring up a display. “These are the coordinates?”

  “Yes. I did a basic-distance hop—”

  “Do you think that’s enough?”

  “I . . .” Stewart hesitated.

  “No, don’t think about it. Just answer.”

  “No, then.” Elissa caught a glimpse of Stewart’s face, set in anxious lines, as he turned a little toward Cadan. “They shouldn’t have caught up with us so quickly, Cay. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Just my thought. Keep the scan open. I’m taking her into a longer hop.”

  “Now?”

  “Before they catch up with us again? Yes, now.” He eased the hyperdrive lever back, his other hand flickering over the controls; once again the noise of the hyperdrive built and built, shivering under Elissa’s fingernails, tickling the insides of her ears. She found her gaze clinging to the quick, deft movements of Cadan’s hands, and with the gathering buzz of the hyperdrive came a sensation of relief, of safety. He’d been super well trained, was top in his class. He knows what he’s doing. He’ll keep us out of danger long enough for us to escape.

  A flicker of a thought came: I always thought he was so arrogant, so pleased with himself. Maybe it’s not exactly arrogance—maybe it’s just that he’s really good at what he’s doing.

  Cadan’s hand moved on the controls. Elissa’s thoughts fled. She braced herself, one hand gripping Lin’s, the other tight on the rail.

  At the very last moment, a fraction of a second before the screens would go dark, before the massive jerk that would take them into hyperspeed, something jumped on one of Stewart’s screens. There was a sound like a dull thud.

  “They’re here! They—”

  But at that point the shriek of hyperspeed rose around them, the screens blinked out, and they’d made the hop.

  Coming out of hyperspeed was different from before. The ship jerked as she reached her destination, then jerked again, as if something had damaged her balance. The screens flashed first blankly white, then dark, then began to scroll information that looked as if it were moving even faster than before, surely too fast for even Cadan and Stewart to read.

  “Cadan, they got us. They hit us.” Stewart’s voice was panicky. “Damage up to seven percent. And the shields—I can’t get them back up. The shields aren’t coming fast enough.”

  “Don’t waste the energy. We’re taking another hop.” He turned his head a tiny bit, not enough to see the twins, just enough so that Elissa glimpsed his profile. “Lissa, are you two strapped in?”

  Elissa grabbed for the straps. “We are now.”

  “Okay. Keep the scan open, Stew. Forget about the shields.”

  He took the ship into another hop—and into another bad, jerky exit, the screens flickering from dark to light to dark.

  Stewart glanced up at the screen and swore between his teeth. “The coordinates are off.”

  “I know. She’s falling short.”

  “Because of the damage?”

  “I don’t know,” Cadan said curtly, one hand on the controls, one hand pulling information down across yet another screen.

  “Damage is still at seven percent. Going into hyperspeed again so soon—the auto-repair hasn’t had a chance. Can we risk another hop?”

  “We have to. We have to get farther away. If they catch up with us now, with the ship damaged and our shields down—” Cadan bit the words off and forced the ship back into hyperspeed.

  This time they came out of hyperspeed not just clumsily, but with a clash, a shriek of tearing metal. For an instant every warning light around the whole flight deck went to red.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Lin. Elissa shot a look at her. Lin’s eyes were glazed, distant, as if she were not seeing the flight deck but instead focusing on something somewhere else. The electrical system inside the ship? She can control electricity—can she see it too? Elissa looked back at where Cadan sat, her mouth twisting wryly. Not that it takes freaking electrokinesis to tell that something’s wrong.

  Cadan eased the hyperdrive control back into place, reached up to clear a screen of the frantically scrolling information, and pulled up what looked like a view of some part of the outside of the ship. Elissa heard his breath go in a short gasp.

  What is it? What’s he looking at?

  Then the picture resolved itself and she realized what it was.

  In that first moment of going into hyperdrive, when the Phoenix’s shields had been down, the ship had taken a hit. A hole gaped in her side, the metal peeled back in ragged shreds like paper.

  Without speaking, Cadan threw open another screen—an inside view of the damage. Elissa could see that the automatic repair Stewart had mentioned was in process. The adjacent chambers were already sealed off, and spider-bots were swarming out onto the Phoenix’s hull to drag the edges of the smart-metal back together so it could begin the process of repairing itself.

  But all the same, looking at it, Elissa felt sick. With d
amage like that, no wonder the Phoenix hadn’t handled hyperspeed well. Her balance would be affected, her fuel efficiency impaired. A hole like that—even with the next-door chambers sealing themselves, she’d have hemorrhaged gallons of precious oxygen out into space. And if they were attacked again before the auto-repair was complete, Cadan wouldn’t dare take her back into hyperspeed. That sort of weakness, under the stresses of hyperspeed—it could tear the whole ship open.

  There are sixteen crew members on this ship. They could all die. Cadan, Markus, the others—they could have already been killed, fighting the bounty hunters. All the air seemed to leave her lungs, and she bowed over the rail, trying to steady her breathing. Because of us. Because I lied to Cadan and took advantage of him and got us onto his ship.

  The familiar defense rose to clamor within her. What else was I supposed to do? Lin has no one—no one but me to help her. But it didn’t carry the same force as before. She was bound to help Lin, bound by guilt and the beginning of a bond she hadn’t expected and didn’t yet understand. But was even Lin worth the lives of sixteen other people?

  “What in God’s name is going on?” The new tone in Cadan’s voice snapped her head guiltily up. But he wasn’t talking to her. He’d spoken without looking up, his attention focused on the controls, working on getting the shields back up to full strength, while Stewart was again running the environment scan to check for hostile craft.

  “Tracking us like that—they should never have been able to do that.”

  “The hop I made?” said Stewart. “If it was too short . . .”

  “No. Yes, it turned out to be too short, but it shouldn’t have been. You made a standard defensive hop—it took us plenty far away to be out of range of tracking beams. But they caught up so fast, they must have locked onto our signal within minutes. Nothing can do that, not once the ship’s gone into hyperspeed.”

  “They couldn’t have hacked into SFI?”

  Cadan laughed, a short, unhappy sound. “I’m about ready to believe even that—or I would be, if we hadn’t had it drilled into us it was all but impossible.” He rubbed the back of his arm down over his face. “But nothing else makes sense either. They got through our defenses to jam our shields, they tracked us through hyperspeed—twice—they knew where the passenger—” He stopped dead. Even his hands, for just a second, froze on the controls. “Lissa?”