by Leslie Chase
Ahead of them, the brute who'd threatened her tipped his hat sarcastically, and Lilly fumed. If she'd listened to his threats, she wouldn't be here now, but that was a useless regret. Her chest tightened, leaving her short of breath, and any thought of running was out of the question. She could barely walk, but she still forced herself to smile up at him as best she could. It wasn't fair that he felt responsible for this.
It wasn't easy. The fear had a hold of her heart, and her lungs burned with the effort of keeping her breathing steady. She managed another faltering step before stumbling into Jaranak. He caught her instantly, strong arms supporting her as they followed their kidnapper.
"Ain't they sweet?" the man in front of them remarked, leading them away. "Don't worry, kids, I'm sure the boss'll let you both go safe as long as he gets what he wants."
The coughing fit came over Lilly with the inevitability that she hated. Her lungs seized up and she collapsed against Jaranak, convulsing. Not now, she tried to tell her rebellious body, but there was no way to fight it off. She knew that once it struck she couldn't control it on her own.
Grabbing for her handbag, she tried to dig out the medicine bottle inside. But one of the thugs was faster, slapping the bag away to land in a puddle. "Keep moving," he snarled.
She shook, slipping from Jaranak's grip and bracing herself against the wall. With an effort she tried to tell him what she needed, but no words could get past the coughs.
"Move," he said, uncompromising. "Or do you want us to carry you? You won't like it if we do."
The other thugs turned towards her, and she struggled for a clear breath. Her eyes watered, and she shook her head, trying another step on her own. It wasn't easy, but she knew from the cold hard eyes of her captors that making them carry her would be worse.
That was when Jaranak took his chance. She barely saw him move, just a blur that intersected with the gunman's hand for a second. Then the pistol sailed away to bounce off the red brick wall beside them. The second punch was easier to see, a straight blow to the man's chin which lifted him off his feet and dropped him in a puddle.
The scarred man behind them recovered in time to leap away, dodging Jaranak's attack and getting some space. Lowering his head, he charged back into the fray like a bull at a matador, and just like a matador Jaranak spun out of the way. The thug crashed headlong into the wall with a crash.
Lilly stared at the whirling dance of violence. Whoever he might be, Jaranak had learned to fight somewhere. Against any one of the thugs, the brawl would have been over before it began. Against three of them, though, he struggled.
The third barreled in, arms wide, and tackled Jaranak as the first rose groggily to his feet. The scarred man, bouncing off the wall, shook his head and reached into his pocket, coming out with a knife. Lilly's blood ran cold at the sight of it. With Jaranak held, how could he protect himself from a blade?
Am I just going to watch them cut him open? She asked herself. If she did, she'd never forgive herself, she knew that. And so, as the knifeman raised his blade, she threw herself at him.
Her mother had taught her self-defense, but all those lessons went out the window now. Shaking and coughing, all she could do was grab hold of his knife arm and hang on for dear life, all of her weight pulling him back away from his blue-skinned target.
The man roared in rage, throwing his own weight against her and slamming her against the brick wall. Whatever breath she'd had left was knocked out of her, and her grip loosened as they tumbled away from the melee. But not enough for him to pull free.
"Let me go, bitch," he spat at her. "Or I swear to God I'll gut you like a fish."
That wasn't exactly a great inducement to release his knife hand, and Lilly clung on with all her will. Behind him she could see the fight continuing, Jaranak shouting something in his own language as he struggled free of the grapple and kicked his other opponent hard. But he was too far away to reach the knifeman, and she couldn't keep her grip for any longer.
With his free hand her opponent grabbed her throat and pressed her against the wall, pulling his arm back and out of hers. In desperation Lilly kicked him, trying to get away. With a bark of angry laughter, Scar ignored the kick and stabbed.
The cold feeling of the blade entering her stomach made Lilly gasp. It didn't hurt as much as she'd expected, but a numbness spread out from the wound and her legs went limp. Clutching at the wound, Lilly slumped to the ground.
"I told you what would happen if you didn't leave this alone," Scar spat, brandishing his bloody knife and standing over her. Lilly stared up at him, eyes wide and desperate, wondering if this was her death approaching.
A strange whining hum cut through the noise of the city around them and Scar froze. For a moment Lilly had no idea what had happened and then she saw it. A circle, four inches wide, was missing from the center of his chest. The edges smoked faintly, and Lilly realized that she could see all the way through his body.
He stood for a second, mouth moving silently, and then his knees gave way. The fall was a slow, graceless collapse, and Lilly knew with eerie certainty that he was dead before he hit the ground.
Tearing her eyes away from the corpse, she looked up at Jaranak. He stood brandishing a thin metal wand, its tip glowing red. The remaining thug stared at him, frozen in place until Jaranak turned towards him. Then he turned and ran, a panicked sprint that careened off the sides of the alley until he was out of sight.
As soon as he fled, Jaranak leaped to Lilly's side. His knuckles and face were bloodied, but all she could see in his eyes was concern for her. Lilly tried to tell him it was okay, but she found she couldn't breathe enough to talk. Between the wound in her guts and her traitorous lungs, she could hardly move. The world fading around her, she scrabbled for her handbag and the life-saving medicine inside.
Seeing the direction of her struggles, Jaranak lunged for the bag and pulled it over, emptying its contents beside her. There! The bottle nearly slipped from her hand as she grabbed it up and popped it open, taking a long swig. The sickly-sweet taste soothed her muscles instantly, and Lilly heaved in a deep breath.
The pain in her lungs receded, but each breath made her shudder in pain as the knife wound shifted. Looking down she saw blood spreading across her dress. This was my favorite, she thought, aware that she was going into shock. The dress was the least of her worries.
Jaranak looked down at her and said something in his own language. Lilly didn't understand him, but she could spot a swearword when she heard one. She tried to smile at him reassuringly and sat up. The numbness was spreading through her body, but the pain wasn't too bad now.
"I'll be alright," she said. In hurt to speak, but she could manage. She was sure of it. Get to a doctor, get the wound seen to, and I'll be fine. No need to worry him. "Help me up, please?"
With a dubious look, Jaranak offered her his hand and helped her to her feet. A wave of dizziness washed over her and she fell against him, clinging to him for support. He held her up, a strong arm around her waist, and resting against his strong body made her feel better. But when she tried to support her own weight, her legs failed her and Jaranak's arm was all that stopped her from falling again.
"I guess we should find a policeman," she said uncertainly. Even to her own ears, she sounded weak. I can manage, she told herself firmly.
"No," Jaranak said firmly. "There would be too many questions about how he died. Neither of us wants to be swept up in this. We have to leave, and leave now."
"But... the body?" The New York police weren't going to just ignore a corpse like that, and there was the other unconscious thug here too. If he was arrested, he'd place them at the crime scene.
Jaranak grimaced, raising his wand again. "I can take care of that."
Before Lilly could ask what he meant, Jaranak raised his wand. A high-pitched humming sound filled the alley again as the wand's tip glowed. Jaranak swept it over the body, and where he pointed the corpse seemed to evaporate into dark smoke.
Lilly shuddered at the sight, weakness spreading through her and the world going dark around her.
Jaranak spoke her name, and it sounded as though he was a million miles away. She tried to smile, to tell him she was okay, but she wasn't sure that the words came out before the darkness closed around her.
13
Jaranak
Jaranak held the unconscious Lilly in his arms, feeling a mix of exasperation and panic. Great. What do I do now?
One moment Lilly had seemed mildly injured, the next she was unconscious in his arms. He had no idea how serious an injury that wound was on a human, but he knew one thing for certain. He wasn't going to trust her well-being to any human doctor. Lilly's injuries were his fault, and he would make sure she was treated properly.
Lifting her carefully, he cradled her in his arms. Her breathing was shallow and she felt cool to the touch — but he hadn't enough experience of humans to know how warm she should feel. It didn't seem like a good sign, though.
Certainly the amount of blood she was losing was worrying. He wanted to shout at her, to tell her how foolish she'd been to try to hide how badly hurt she was, but that would have been a waste of time they didn't have. He settled for cursing under his breath as he carried her to the end of the alley and looked out.
Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any more of the attackers. Their car sat empty at the curb, and for a moment Jaranak considered taking it. But that was a foolish plan when he barely knew how to drive the human vehicle and their destination was so close. Instead, he chose a moment when no one was looking and walked out, setting his course for the docks.
Every step of the way he felt like a target. Anyone looking for him would have found him easily, and with Lilly unconscious he'd be hard pressed to defend them both. Keeping his disintegrator in hand, Jaranak looked carefully into every side street, and thanked the stars that he'd chosen to eat close to the ship.
Doubtless he looked quite a sight carrying her, but the evening had turned to night and the darkness hid the blood staining his clothes. A fixed glare turned aside the curious looks of a few passers-by and soon he was walking onto the wharf where his fake ship was tied up. He didn't doubt that rumors had already started, and possibly the police would pay him a visit — here he was carrying a clearly unconscious young lady aboard. All he could do was hope that they'd hold off until Lilly was able to explain that there was nothing wrong.
Right now, her recovery mattered more to him than anything else, and he cursed himself for starting that fight. But he'd seen the opportunity and taken it, and he didn't trust the kidnappers to let her go, not after they'd seen that Lilly gave them power over him.
It's easy to second guess myself, he thought as he carried her up the gangplank onto the creaking vessel and took her below. The door wouldn't open for anyone but crew, and once it shut behind him he felt the tension ease. And there, in the belly of the fake sailing ship, was his true ship. The Far Hunter stretched the length of the hold, a fat cigar-shaped vessel of silver and black. As he approached the scanners recognized him and a hatch opened to welcome him home.
Carrying Lilly quickly into the medical bay, he set her down in one of the healing pods. It wasn't a big facility, and it didn't know human physiology, but a knife wound was a knife wound on anyone no matter the species. Peeling her cut dress back from the wound on her stomach, Jaranak grimaced. It looked bad, and her already-pale skin had turned white.
But her pulse was strong despite the deep cut. She'll be fine, she just needs to be stitched up, he told himself as he prepared her for the autodoc. He couldn't help worrying, though. What did he really know about humans? Perhaps the injury was even worse than it seemed. She'd lost a lot of blood, and he couldn't tell if any vital organs had been damaged.
The dress was already ruined, blood soaking the area around the cut, but he found himself curiously uncomfortable with the idea of taking it off her. Humans were shy about their bodies, from what he'd seen, and he had the impression that she wouldn't be pleased with him undressing her. It didn't help that, ever since he'd hauled her out from under his hotel room bed, he'd wanted to know what she looked like under her clothes.
He wasn't going to let her shyness keep him from saving her life, though. Pulling out his own knife, the edge finer than any material humans could make, he carefully sliced through the dress's straps.
I don't have a choice here, the machine can't operate through clothing, he told himself firmly. It was true, especially with a new species. The computer needed to be clear on what was and wasn't part of the patient — the less extraneous material in the chamber, the better.
Jaranak peeled it off Lilly, marveling at the complex and unnecessary array of clothes and underwear a human female needed to wear in polite society. Once she was naked he lifted her again, setting her down in the autodoc's pod. Before he closed the hatch he couldn't help pausing to look at her, feeling his heart stir at her beauty. But there was no time to admire her now.
Slamming the pod shut, he let the machine get to work. This was a complication he didn't need, an injured human he was responsible for. He knew that Orshar would advise simply disposing of her here and now. If she was dead, they could try to put off any investigation into her disappearance for as long as it took to fix the ship and leave. It had a good chance of working.
The very idea made his blood boil. No one would hurt Lilly Hardridge while he had anything to say about it. He could have spared the man who'd cut her, but seeing her blood on his blade had been too much. The idea of letting him live hadn't even occurred to Jaranak until after he'd fired his killing shot. That was one death Jaranak didn't regret it in the least.
If Orshar threatened her, if he even mentioned harming her again, Jaranak didn't think he'd be able to restrain himself from hurting the man.
I need a distraction, he thought. The fight had left him full of energy and he hadn't had a chance to work that off yet. With a growl he stalked off to find something that that needed doing.
Pulling off his ruined jacket and shirt he growled as he threw them aside. Both were sticky with blood, some of it his but mostly Lilly's. It was another reminder of the danger he'd brought down on her, another thing to feel guilty about, and he turned away from them with disgust. He kept turning back to the fight — could he have handled it differently? Should he have gone with the men?
No, that wouldn't have protected Lilly. They'd have used her as a lever against me, and I won't have her in danger. I can't.
"Far Hunter, status report please," he said, pulling himself away from his memory of the fight. If he dwelt on it he'd only get angrier, and that achieved nothing. And he didn't want to think about Lilly's wounds, deep and bloody. He had done all that he could, and it was time to think of something else while the autodoc did its work.
Holograms flickered around him, showing the damage and how far repairs had gone. Orshar and Parvak had done most of the work, and they'd done well with what they had. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough.
"Flight capacity on battery is twenty minutes," the computer said in its friendly tone. "Engine warning: engaging transstar fields unsafe. High chance of catastrophic failure."
"I know," he growled back. "That's what got us into this mess."
So. They could launch, and fly for at most twenty minutes. During which time the fields would almost certainly fail and send them into another crash. He shook his head sadly. Without finding the source of the interference, there wasn't much hope of getting away from Earth. Even if they could, they wouldn't get out of the solar system. Unless they could start up a transstar core again, there was no way for them to travel faster than light.
They needed to either find the Skystorm's core, or the materials to manufacture one of their own. Neither would be easy. And he couldn't do anything about that here, so it provided no distraction from his worries about Lilly. He needed something, anything, to think about while the autodoc operated on her.
"Display security records," he tol
d the ship. If people were attacking him in the streets, they might well have tried to get access to his ship as well, and it was something worth checking out. There had been a few curious intruders when they'd arrived in port, mostly kids trying their luck. None of them had gone as far as trying to force the doors and get below decks. Perhaps that had changed?
The security system would have alerted them if anyone had actually gotten down the stairs, but even a failed attempt might give him clues. Whoever sent those men, Jaranak was determined to make him pay for what he'd done to Lilly.
But there was no sign of an attempted break-in on any of the camera feeds. Jaranak ran through them again, looking carefully. It was strange that someone would attack him directly but not try to get onto the ship. After all, who on Earth would know that he might have security like this? But no one tried to come aboard. There were plenty of people who came to gawk at the unusual ship, of course, but that was hardly the same thing.
There! In the background of one of the crowd scenes, he saw one of the thugs from earlier. Probably. The man wore his hat pulled down low, hiding most of his face. If it wasn't for his distinctive scar, Jaranak might not have recognized him. It almost looked like he was trying to make himself hard to identify from the video, but that was impossible. No human should be aware of the possibility of being recorded like this.
Jaranak frowned. Was it impossible, or just hard to believe? Looking at the time, he saw that the man had appeared early that afternoon. At about the time that he'd been summoned back to the hotel by the alarm, in fact. Frown deepening, Jaranak looked at the other security logs, the ones he'd ignored until now.
And there it was. Shortly after the man arrived at the dock, the security system recorded an attempt to access the ship's computer remotely, using the sensor suite's interface. Whoever it was Lilly had seen at the hotel had tried to use the equipment there to shut down the Far Hunter's security.
