by SA Payne
Part Fourteen:
Ichi had trouble getting himself moving. Head trauma, he figured, blood was making his shoulder
sticky in an unpleasant way, but he got himself moving toward where Will waited. Once he
reached the other man's side he felt down his arm and got a grip on the cuffs. They were cheap
and simple, a tri button release but Ichi struggled to gain the focus to push all three buttons at
once.
When the cuffs jumped free, Ichi sat down uncertain of what he was supposed to do next. Will
didn't wait, he slid a hand across Ichi's shoulder and moved to start releasing the others. As soon as a couple more were free, Will hurried across the room and pried the emergency med kit from
the wall, before he could even worry about things, he was slapping out pain killer patches to
those that needed it.
"Ready?" He asked as he checked and made sure Henry was still breathing and his pulse was steady. Will glanced to the handful of men still able to fight and saw the abandoned cudgel
weighted in one's grip. "Mark?" Will questioned where the other man sat, trying to piece together the broken gun with one arm.
Mark raised his eyes and caught Will's sideways glance to Ichi. "Got it covered."
"Good, let's go!" Will shouted and waved the small group to the docking tube.
Before they could move, protesting shouts echoed down the tunnel and one of the remaining
pirates burst back onto the station. He was bleeding from a slash along his chest and moved in
stumbling wide eyed panic.
"Help me!" He screamed to his former captives. "Oh God, help me! He's going to kill me!" A knife appeared deep in the back of his thigh and the man fell hard to the ground, moaning in
fear.
Rye didn't stop his run when the blade stopped the last of the pirates from the ship. He hurried
over, swinging the cudgel he had in one hand in a quick arc. It connected to the begging man's
head, once, twice and again and the man fell silent. Rye wasn't in the mood to take chances, his
other hand swung out and the mag gun in better shape fired, cutting a hole into the man's chest.
For good measure, Rye smacked the man with the cudgel just to make sure he was going to stay
down.
The men of the station stood in horrified silence. Rye glanced over his shoulder to where the first of the women were bunched in the tubes entranceway and saw the startled surprise in Amanda's
eyes. His eyes sought out and found Ichi, but the man sat empty and blank, in obvious shock. All
the violence was so quickly resolved and Rye hadn't even started to breath hard.
"Where were they headed?" He asked of Will who seemed to be the only one still functioning.
He shook his head. "Don't know for sure, there's a lot of sensitive items here. Mark's lab most likely, ours too. They'll be after Bare Earth, the vaccine and any information on how we made it."
He moved and took the mostly repaired gun from Mark.
"You know how to use that?" Rye questioned.
Will charged it, checked the prime and shrugged. "Yeah, I can manage."
Rye just nodded in response, spared on last look to Ichi and hurried from the cargo hold.
Mary pushed past Amanda and she was holding a long blade. She fell in beside Will with the
ease of a former fighter, one that had long since put aside war but not forgotten it. One or two
other's fell in beside him and Will nodded. "Amanda, see to them?"
She nodded and moved forward and watched as Will went off to a difficult fight for the second
time. Her only hope was that like that first battle when the odds were so high against him, he'd
find a way through again. She prayed so anyway.
That was all there was time for, the open med kit was scattered about and there was some work
she could do other than merely passing out pain patches. She moved among the group,
checking obviously serious wounds and simple ones alike and trying not to worry about Will and
the others.
"Better?" She asked Mark as she worked the sling across his broken arm.
He nodded.
"Don't worry, we'll get it fixed up. I need to get the lot of you to the med lab."
"Henry?"
"Still breathing, lucky for him his skull is all bone." She tried to joke. "More worried about Ichi at the moment. He's never seen this before, he's going into shock." Between the emotional trauma
of seeing violence for the first time and having violence done to him for the first time, added in
with the head wound and bleeding gash to the side of his head, Ichi was by far the most
worrisome case. Amanda knew the folks from Avalon were tough but Ichi? Ichi was raw and new
to this and she seen people die of shock that didn't have a single wound on their body.
"Where'd you leave him?"
"Who?"
"Ichi." Mark had glanced around but Ichi was no where to be seen.
"Over there..." she glanced to the side. "Oh, shit."
But, in the confusion, Ichi was gone.
Ichi wasn't thinking. He started moving in an effort to return to his apartment. The cargo hold was filled with blood and horrible things and he wanted to get away from that. The apartment seemed
like a good safe place but his head was pounding pretty badly and he was dizzy.
He reached the turn where one direction would take him to his apartment and the safe locks he
could hide behind and the other way would lead to his lab. Something about the labs was
important and he stood there, swaying, trying to think.
A scream, a man's but fear made it sharp and high pitched, echoed up from another hallway and
Ichi remembered. There were pirates, actual pirates, on their station. He'd read about them, sure
as anyone in the Concord had. Men and women manning crews of unregistered ships that floated
on the outskirts of civilized space. They ran raids inward, stealing what they could and dragging
other crews off to be sold in slave markets on the most distant of worlds. One story, of a man
taken and held in a small mining colony for over a decade before he managed to escape, had
given him nightmares as a child.
That was all they were supposed to have been, stories, nightmares of children and childhood.
The Fleet was the finest military force ever and they declared piracy extinct. Only there were
pirates on his station. They'd herded the women into their ship, were preparing to take the men
too. They'd killed Harvick and worse, they'd planned on taking and using Rye. He remembered
they'd planned on using him too and he shivered and wrapped his arms around his body. Never,
even in his most dark childhood fear, had he ever worried about rape. It wasn't a threat or even a
suggestion of a threat and these pirates had made it clear his safe idea of the universe around
him didn't exist.
Now, they were running loose on the station, looking to steal their work. Which was logical, a
pure sample of Bare Earth was worth a life time's fortune on the black market. The vaccine was
worth more, but the real score was the information on how Avalon had made the vaccine to the
supposedly impossible to protect against virus. That would be worth a thousand lifetime's money
on the open market and no one would ask where it came from.
"The babies." He whispered. His swarm was valuable too. Nearly impossible to collect in the wild, never successfully held in captivity, Ichi's swarm was a rare prize. If they knew anything about
what was on the station the swarm would be on their list too. He considered himself a reasonable
person and even he'd had idle fantasies about how evil
owning such pets could be. The mere
threat alone would be enough to make most people do what you wanted.
Ichi brushed blood out of his eye and turned to go to the lab.
Rye had started at the most obvious labs first, killed two in Will and Amanda's, one in Mark's and
that was the extent of his knowledge of what might be valuable on the station. He simply didn't
know just what everyone else was studying, only that it was high risk and needed high
containment. So he ran a lab by lab, hallway by hallway search and all he found was Will and his
group.
"Check below." He snapped as he sprinted by, sending the group to check the other storage holds and the kitchen, the communal areas and if needs be their apartments room by room.
"Right." Will had just nodded and they'd moved to get out of the blood covered red head's way.
That was the last he'd seen another person but on he hurried and on he checked. He froze when
he darted around one last corner and found Ichi standing in the hallway. The shorter man stood,
stiff and wide eyed, just on the hallway side of his lab. He was staring into the workspace with an expression of confusion.
Rye didn't pause, didn't blink or breath. He ran faster and slid to a stop in front of the doorway.
Inside, one of the pirates was gingerly setting the swarm's central habitat on the counter and how
he'd worked it free of it's layers of default protection Rye wasn't sure. Until he saw the second
man and the mag gun he was holding , a nice one, and knew from the fragmented clear polymer
sections that sprinkled across the room that the fellow had actually risked shooting the layers
away.
Which meant the man wasn't that smart and willing to take chances. He couldn't tell of the first
man was armed but he knew Ichi was about to be shot. As his feet slid on the floor, scrambling to
stop himself and do something, Rye judged everything and figured out what was most important.
He fired his gun. It whined at full charge and the swarm's last containment shattered. Lights in
the lab went red, an alarm sounded and the lab doors instantly closed. As they shut, a small dent
appeared. It was at Ichi's head level and if the doors had stayed open a breath longer there
would have been nothing between Ichi's head and the fired mag slug.
It was the first screams from inside the lab that broke Ichi away from the startled shut down his
mind was in. "No." He muttered and ran toward the door. "No!" He scrambled for the lock and tried to remember if he'd ever designed the system to have an override for a full breach.
Rye caught his lover by the waist and pulled him away from the door. "Stop it!"
"No!" Ichi squirmed and fought but his motions were sluggish and random. "It'll kill them, the system, it'll kill them."
"Ichi," Rye struggled to hold the other man without hurting him. "Stop."
He felt something hot on his face and it wasn't blood. "The system, for a full breach, it'll kill them!"
"It's too late!"
"No!" He stumbled and fell, taking Rye with him and landing wrapped in the other man's arms. "If the code isn't input in the first two minutes, the room, the system will gas the room! I have to get in there and put the code in!" He'd made it so the code had to be entered inside the lab. To
prevent heroics, he'd thought, in case things went really wrong. The gas default was to prevent a
death that would linger for days but it would also kill his swarm and prevent them from getting
loose. Ichi's own stubbornness had demanded a two minute window to have the attempt at re-
containment. "There's still time."
Rye wrapped his arms tighter around Ichi and pulled him close. "Nothing is going to allow me to let you go in there." The screams inside the room grew worse, more tormented, more horrible.
"Nothing."
But Ichi continued to struggle until the seconds ticked away and the screams mercifully ended.
Rye released him then and Ichi crawled to the door and hit it. "No!" He sobbed. "No." Tears rolled
from his eyes, sobs wracked his body. It was too much and he cried as he'd never cried as a
child. Something inside of him broke, it was too much to carry in silence. The grief for his
mother, the mourning of not only her death but the lack any mothering from her, had been a
horrible weight to carry. The isolation he'd wrapped himself in and the loneliness that went with it sparked by the promise and fear of more with Rye was too great to tuck inside and pretend not to
feel. The horror and shock of being attacked by pirates, of all things, was more than he'd
expected to ever see but the death of his swarm and most likely of every other collection of
insects inside his lab? That broke him, that was too much.
He crumbled there, sobbing, each gasping breath making his head pound worse. Part of him
wished that Rye hadn't acted, that the mag slug the door had stopped would have shattered his
head like Harvick's. In that moment, everything felt empty and futile. His chest felt tight and
hollow, he felt like a shell, empty and alone. The tears fell and he had nothing left within to fight them with, found nothing worth facing another day for.
Until warm arms wrapped around him and gently lifted him from where he'd collapsed in front of the door. There was strength there and comfort and Ichi let it wrap around him, clutching at Rye's
shirt, simply unable to stop sobbing.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Rye whispered. "I couldn't let them hurt you. I'm sorry." He pulled Ichi tighter to him and wondered if the other man would hate him now. To save his life he'd destroyed
the only thing he loved. "Can you stand? We should get you to the med lab." There might have been more pirates on the station but Will and his group would find them if there were. They didn't
matter now, Ichi was all that ever mattered.
Part Fifteen:
Rye was half carrying Ichi by the time they reached the med lab but he got them there and
reluctantly passed the still sobbing Ichi over to Rosie's care. The med lab was packed, which
wasn't difficult given how small it was. He pressed himself against a wall and tried to be invisible because there was no way he was going to let them shoo him out. Ichi wasn't going to leave his
sight.
There was no room to put Ichi on a bed but Rosie pressed him to sit in a chair. He could still sit, unlike some of the others. Rye stood silent and apart, watching the controlled chaos move
around him, directed and controlled by Amanda's strong sure voice. Watched as Ichi was spoken
to softly, watched as his wound was carefully treated. He was so focused on Ichi that he didn't
notice Amanda approach him until she ran a wet cloth across his face. It came away bloody.
"You hurt?"
Rye just shook his head no.
"You sure?"
"How is he?" He pulled his face back from another cleansing swipe.
She lowered the cloth. "We've worked on the concussion. The gash was sealed up but it'll take a while to fully heal. I've given him a sedative, little one, but it'll help calm him down."
"He's okay?"
"He's upset but he'll live. You should take him home, put him to bed."
"But what about..." In his mind he saw again the men he'd killed, it replayed in clear and brilliant detail but brought with it no remorse or guilt. "I should help them clean up."
"Don't worry about it, we got it. Will and the other's can handle it, but you're the only one I think can handle Ichi right now. So go, get him home. Put him to bed and let him sleep some of this
off, things always look better after a good nights sleep." She patted Rye's arm. "Okay?"
Rye nodded. "Okay."
&n
bsp; Ichi came along willingly when Rye tugged gently on his arm but he didn't glance up and he
didn't look around. He let Rye lead him out of the med lab and down hallways and didn't even
glance up until they were back in the apartment. His only reaction then was to turn and lock the
door.
"You're covered in blood." Rye said gently.
Ichi looked to the red head. "So are you."
"Yeah, but it's not mine. Let's get you cleaned up and tucked into bed."
Ichi dropped his head and sighed but didn't protest or complain when Rye led him to the
bedroom and further into the bathroom. Steady hands stripped him and soon Ichi was being
pressed into the shower. The hot water felt perfect and he shut his eyes and let it pelt across his skin.
Rye moved as carefully as he could. Ichi seemed frightfully silent and he suspected it wasn't
from the drugs. With gentle hands he scrubbed them both clean, washing blood tenderly from
the matted dark hair and roughly washing away the blood from his own skin. He wanted to wrap
Ichi in his arms, hold him under the water, but he wasn't sure it would be welcomed.
When they were clean, Rye lead Ichi out of the shower. The fluffy towels were a nice way to
keep the shivering man warm as Rye patted his skin dry and lightly towel dried the short dark
hair. He quickly wiped the water from his own body before leading Ichi into the bedroom. The
clothes Ichi slept in wre right where the other man always kept them, neat and orderly. Rye
helped him dress, Ichi moving like a doll with no free will of his own.
"Here now." He pressed Ichi to sit on the bed and hurried to pull on his own clothes. "Amanda said you're supposed to rest." Rye pulled down the covers and Ichi slid under them without
protest.
"You're not coming to bed?"
Rye shook his head and brushed wet hair back from Ichi's face. "Not yet, but I'll be here. You just rest."
Ichi shut his eyes, giving into the exhaustion, giving in to the gentle touch of Rye's hand soothing across his head. Some of it was the drugs, he knew that, but a large part was just emotional
exhaustion. He couldn't go another step, he was just too tired and happily surrendered to sleep.
Only to wake feeling heavy and groggy but finding something wrong. His head was sore but
