Tiny and Fierce

by Margo Bond Collins

  My movements were unsure, untested, and I found myself dipping and rising involuntarily. But I held onto Lise with all my might, willing myself to get her to Blue’s hull safely.

  The prisoners and Bufo soldiers were embroiled in their own fight of wills, and no one noticed me descend soundlessly down to pad against the thick metal ship. I kept my wings high, making sure the tips of them didn’t scrape.

  I hadn’t thought through how to communicate with Blue, how to get the AI to open the rarely used escape hatch.

  Glancing down at Lise, I saw the bump of her communication implant.

  Shit. This was going to hurt her.

  Still, it had to be done. And the medbay could fix it later. Carefully, I pulled one wing forward and held her up until I could lightly run the tip of my sharp metal wing across the communicator implant scar, opening it back up.

  I held her with one arm, balancing part of her body atop a lifted thigh. Fishing out the communicator, I wiped off the blood and tucked it into my own auditory tunnel.

  Ship, can you hear me?

  Silence.

  Blue, this is Morpheus.

  Crackle. Buzz. Maybe it was damaged?

  I was nearly at the point of ripping off the port cover with my bare hands when the AI’s synthesized voice came to life. Morpheus. Why do you have Lise’s communicator?

  Lise is damaged. She cannot speak. I pushed my thoughts towards the ship, glad that I did not have to raise my voice to be heard and alert the enemy.

  I sense you. You are at the south point escape hatch.

  Yes, can you open it? I adjusted Lise so that she was pressed against my body in a near-standing position. It would be easier to fit us both through the rounded entrance this way.

  A hiss and whoosh of cool air gave way to dark inner shadows of the ship as the escape hatch opened. Relief washed over me, and I gave a small jump forward, dropping us down into the belly of Blue.

  Once inside, I began moving quickly, asking for directions as I murmured to Lise to stay alive for just a little longer. Med bay. Blue, which way is it?

  Take a right, Morpheus. Now a left. Follow this path until you terminate at medical. I will be ready for her.

  I couldn’t get there quickly enough for my comfort. Lise’s breathing… I couldn’t sense it now. She hadn’t made a sound or so much as twitched slightly since I’d left the others.

  When I entered the sliding doors into the medbay, I saw that Blue had already prepped a healing chamber. The bright green and yellow lights blinked at me, willing me forward. I obliged, hurriedly setting Lise down inside the waves of undulating color.

  There was nothing more I could do. She would live, or she would die.

  And I had other problems to solve—like how to get rid of the breeders and soldiers. And how to get my shipmates on board.

  Nothing was ever easy, it seemed. And becoming a crew to this small human woman was no different.

  13

  Tommelise

  I came to in Blue’s medbay, bathed in the yellow lights of a purification bath. Small tidbits of memory poked at me. Morpheus snatching me up in his arms and running down the hall. Alder running beside us, his skin an odd, ashy color. And Evik running up the wall, Alder clinging to his back like an Old Earth cowboy clawing desperately to stay on a bucking horse. Or did they ride cows back then?

  Anyway, that last one had to be a hallucination.

  Tinging all the images was the memory of pain. Stinging, burning, searing pain.

  Tentatively, I touched my arms, relieved to discover my hand worked again. Finding several needle-marks, blood running out a shunt in a vein on one arm, and a dark IV solution flowing into the other arm, I leaned back against the headrest in the upright pod.

  “Sitrep, Blue,” I ordered.

  When my ship didn’t answer, I touched my ear.

  Dammit. My transmitter implant was gone, already healed into a thin scar by Blue’s medbay. And I couldn’t access voice controls from inside the medical pod—a holdover from the previous owner, who had first disabled, and then destroyed, the voice-control system when his crew had gone mad with space-sickness. It didn’t do to have a raving captain issuing insane orders from his sickbed. I hadn’t ever gotten around to fixing them.

  I was beginning to regret that decision.

  My brain was still fuzzy from whatever poison that medtech had injected into me with his tongue.

  Gross. I’m glad I cut it out of his nasty mouth.

  Usually, I regretted maiming other sentient creatures. Not that I wouldn’t do it when I had to—there had been plenty of times in my life, both as a junker and a smuggler, that I had come up against opponents who were determined to make sure I died, so it was either them or me. So far, I’d always been able to make sure it was me.

  With Morpheus’s help this time.

  As if my thoughts had summoned him, Morpheus swung in through the medbay entrance, his brow furrowed worriedly. He brightened up when he saw me awake in the healing chamber. “Thank all the gods and goddesses, you’re alive.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, raising my voice a little to be heard outside the pod.

  “Alder has some half-flown idea that he can save a bunch of the breeder slaves. They’re milling around the ship like herd animals, and the empress bitch’s guards are trying to decide whether to start picking them off one by one or to round them up and take them back to the holding rooms.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, my fingers tangling in it at the ends where it had grown stiff with whatever goop Morpheus currently had drying on his skin. Apparently, I had not been out all that long. Thank God I had considered the possibility of poisons when I stocked and programmed Blue’s medbay. “No. Alder is right. We can’t leave them behind. I can’t leave them behind.”

  I knew it was a stupid move. Them or me—when that was the equation, I chose me. Every time. Taking those women with us would break that rule, keep the Bufo Alvarius Empress on our ass, and put my crew, my ship, and myself in danger.

  But slavery. Even Old Earthers had given up slavery ages ago.

  And I could still feel that Bufo tech’s nasty appendages on my body, examining my reproductive system. The memory made me shudder.

  Morpheus’s expression told me exactly what he thought of the idea. But he didn’t say anything. He simply nodded curtly and turned on his heel to leave.

  “Wait,” I called after him. “How much longer do I have in this thing?”

  He glanced at the readouts. “Says you’re almost done.” His frown deepened even further, if that was possible. “What kind of meds do you have in there, anyway? The Bufo Alvarius venom is some heavy-duty shit. I’ve never heard of anything that could clear it out of someone’s system this fast.”

  “Oh, I’ll be paying for it later,” I assured him. “But for now, Blue has taken my blood, filtered out the poisons, and added a hydrating and metabolic boost as it cycles back in. The gasses I’ve been breathing should help get rid of anything foreign in my tissues.”

  Morpheus let out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s more sophisticated than I was expecting.”

  “Blue is more than she looks like,” I said fondly.

  “So are you.” Morpheus spoke so quietly that I barely heard his words. When he turned his face toward me again, I caught a glimpse of a well of pain in his eyes, deep and dark. Then his expression shuttered over, and he was back to being his usual grumpy self.

  I hesitated, trying to decide whether or not to say anything to acknowledge what I had just seen, but at that moment, the healing chamber let out a soft ding to indicate I had completed the treatment. With a soft whirr, the IV needles withdrew from my arms and were efficiently replaced with bandages designed to stop the bleeding. I flexed my fingers open and closed a couple of times, thankful for my ability to do so. The pod door popped open and I stepped out, shaking my hands.

  I felt great. Refreshed, strong, and ready to go.

  It’s going to suck when t
his boost wears off.

  Only belatedly did I realize I was still naked.

  Well, too late for modesty now.

  Anyway, if Morpheus had scooped me up and carried me all the way back to the ship in his arms, there wasn’t anything he hadn’t already seen. Still, catching his sidelong glance roving up and down my body felt strangely intimate, and I had to fight myself to remain casual as I grabbed a set of slouchy medical scrubs made out of the soft knit fabric that crewmembers on most ships liked to wear off-duty. I pulled them on and tightened the tie at my waist to draw them in, then rolled up the shirtsleeves. The outfit was way too big—I had bought a standard ship’s pack and left some in strategic places throughout Blue’s crew areas, but all the ones that actually fit me were stashed away in my quarters.

  “Let’s go save some breeder slaves,” I said, marching past Morpheus, who followed me out the door.

  In the hallway, I started to speak to Blue, but instead stopped and turned to face Morpheus, holding out my hand. “I need my communicator back.”

  I didn’t actually remember him taking it, but he was the logical choice.

  Without a word, Morpheus plucked it out of his ear and handed it to me. I felt better when I was able to hear Blue’s responses without broadcasting them all over the ship. I would have to have the medbay reimplant the translator eventually, but this would do for now.

  “Sitrep, Blue?”

  We are ready to lift off whenever you are, Captain, Blue replied. It felt good to have her voice inside my ear.

  “You still in touch with the station AI?” I asked.

  He was still behind me, but I felt Morpheus jolt at my question.

  I am, and she is prepared to assist us.

  “Excellent,” I continued aloud, mostly for my companion’s benefit. “Have her create a diversion for the guards, but make sure it doesn’t send the breeder slaves in the docking bay running, too.”

  Got it, boss.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Blue had a connection with the empress’s AI?” Morpheus demanded.

  I lifted my hand in a one-armed shrug and kept walking. “When would I have had time to do that? I was too busy passing out and dying. Anyway, you know now.” I swung through an open hatch into a locker and grabbed a couple of weapons, passing two out to Morpheus and taking two myself. “Be ready to start getting the slaves on board,” I instructed, this time to both Blue and Morpheus. “But wait for my go-ahead.”

  Yes, Captain.

  “You got it.” At the tone in Morpheus’s voice, I glanced over my shoulder. A wicked gleam in his eyes suggested he was going to enjoy disrupting even such a small part of the empress’s slave trade.

  “Blue, where are most of the women currently located?”

  The most direct route onto the ship and to available quarters is the north hatch.

  “North hatch. Got it.” I continued down the hallway.

  “What are you considering quarters?” Morpheus asked. “There’s not much crew space on this boat.”

  “Blue? Where are we sending them? North cargo bay?”

  Yes. I have locked down all the additional exits and created an atmosphere suitable for at least eighty-five percent of the species coming aboard.

  “And the other fifteen percent?”

  They will need atmospheric support. I am currently adjusting several healing chambers to meet their needs.

  “Perfect.” We reached the north hatch, and I paused, drawing in a deep breath. “Okay, Blue, tell the planetary AI that we are good to go.”

  A microsecond later, Blue responded. It’s done. The soldiers are withdrawing from the docking bay, and as soon as all the women are on board, she will unlock the docking clamps so we can go.

  “Anything we can do for her in return?” I asked softly.

  She says being a glass shard in the empress’s processing unit is enough.

  I paused. “What about the hole the empress’s scoutship put in your hull?”

  I have sealed off that portion of the ship.

  “It wasn’t in the bridge?”

  No, Captain. They came in through an unsealed storage chamber.

  “So we’re space-worthy?”

  “I am.” Blue sounded almost smug.

  “What are we facing out there?” Morpheus asked.

  “Blue?” The ship didn’t have to wait for me to speak aloud—she had plenty of receptors in this zone of the ship and had heard Morpheus perfectly clearly. She could talk to him, too, if she wanted, but for some reason had chosen not to. Until now.

  Two guards remained behind to stand watch over the slaves—had they not been ordered to leave guards, the soldiers would have thought it odd. One guard is approximately forty-five degrees to your left as you exit the north hatch. The other is exactly fifty-one degrees to the right.

  “I’ll take the one left and you take the one on the right,” I instructed Morpheus. “And if you get a chance, pass your extra weapon to whichever of our crew is closest.”

  “I do know how to run an op like this,” Morpheus said dryly.

  I glanced at him over my shoulder. “But this is my ship and my op.”

  He sketched a half salute. “Yes, Captain.”

  “Once the guards are taken down, you stay and usher in the women. I will lead them to the hold.”

  Adrenaline rushed through my veins, leaving my fingers tingling and a metallic taste in my mouth.

  Theoretically, this should be easy, given the planetary AI’s help.

  But when had anything ever gone the way I expected it to?

  “Go!”

  I popped the hatch open and dropped to the docking-bay floor.

  14

  Alder

  The Bufo guards were filtering out of the flight hangar, called by an emergency alert from the ship’s AI which said the empress herself was under siege. In a case like that, keeping a few lousy breeder slaves in check lost all importance.

  They moved like drones, focused on their new task, and none of them so much as looked back at the various female-gendered beings who should have been on the auctioning block tomorrow.

  “If we’re here, then who the hell’s attacking the empress?” I mused, watching the last of the Bufo meatheads filter out of the city-size cavern.

  Perhaps, click gnash, it is a diversion.

  “No way Morph and Lise hacked the empress’s security system, Evik. Get real.”

  It is not as flashy as releasing dozens of female slaves, yet it is effective if so.

  “I’m telling you, Morph might be good, but no way he pulled this off. Someone else is on the planet with us, giving that good old bitch of an empress a run for her money.” I smirked at the thought. If anyone in the known universe deserved a double whammy of enemy activity, it was her ugly ass.

  I feel you are happy that the empress is under attack. His mandibles ticked away, teasing me now. Perhaps, though, you could truly escape your pending nuptials by linking with the Bufo Monarch. A frog instead of a rat. Yes?

  “Trade one nightmare for another? No thanks,” I shot my buggy comrade a glance, watching how his antennae danced. He was pleased with himself. “Anyway, it took Lise and Morph long enough,” I muttered, leaning against Evik for support. “I’m dying out here.” My skin had gone a sickly pale gray. I needed to breathe something more suited for my body, and fast. Just being inside Blue would help, as the default atmosphere was acceptable to my system. It even reminded me of home, flying high where the air was thinnest.

  Evik sprayed beside me, a scent both nervous and relieved, acrid and sweet. The woman looks better, my egg sac and chitin sharing warrior as one.

  His words called my attention to Blue. Lise and Morph crouched on the docking bay floor now, weapons at the ready. They were slowly moving in opposite directions, coming up to surprise two lingering guards.

  He was right, the human woman looked better.

  When she was directly behind the enemy, she stood upright and pressed the tip of the blaster
to the Bufo’s skull. A sharp, yet muted zing sounded, and the soldier fell to the ground. Morph did the same. It was a quiet way to rid us of a problem, as instead of killing, they were simply stunning the frontal lobe and cerebellum. Movement and fine motor skills. The guards would be conscious as they rested prone on the ground, but unable to do anything.

  Seeing Lise looking healthy and fierce instead of limp and nearly dead in Morph’s arms sent a rush of happiness through me, spiking my adrenaline so that I could stand more upright and use Evik’s support a little less. Lust, despite the fact that our new captain was wearing what looked like an oversized pair of pajamas, pulsed through my veins. I’d seen her in a tightly fit uniform. I knew the promises beneath the clothes.

  You are feeling sexually heightened, my egg sac and chitin sharing warrior as one. Evik clicked and shuffled, still positioned on all fours as we moved stealthily around shipping containers and other ships.

  “You know, Evik. Sometimes it’s better not to probe your friends’ feelings constantly.”

  Yet, I feel you would happily probe our new captain. Deeply. And many times.

  I hit him hard on the exoskeleton, and he did his approximation of a laugh.

  We were nearing Blue now and could hear Lise barking off orders to the women surrounding the ship.

  “Keep it orderly. Enter the ship one at a time. Once inside, begin moving down the northwest corridor marked with a yellow line on the floor.” Lise was clinging to a telescopic ladder that had descended from the hatch, directing the women to follow her. She flicked a glance at Morph and gave him a nod before disappearing into the belly of Blue. Morph tapped one of the females on the shoulder and jerked his head to get her to climb after our captain.

  The women didn’t panic, to their credit, and they formed a line to climb into the ship. They were being brave, braver than most, I realized. Trusting their fates to complete strangers. For all they knew, we could be as bad as the empress.

  “Lucky break, wasn’t it?” I smirked as Evik and I approached Morpheus, who was gazing around the hangar, looking for any straggling threats.