by Elsa Jade
An icy blue glare pierced her. “You can’t… What makes you say that?”
“Because I might be an ignorant closed-worlder, but I know how bad luck works in this universe.”
He stiffened, as if he wanted to deny her assessment. But then he nodded once. “If he still has resources here, he may have used them.” He spoke into his pad. “Lieutenant, patch into the station’s comm system and send a coded message back to Azthronos. Tell them to cross reference with the database Dejo Jinn left for us and check in with any associates of Blackworm. See if they’ve had contact. If he has the dreadnaught, he may be heading back to Azthronos for a bit of vengeance.”
Trixie clamped her hand on his elbow. “You have to reinforce security at the estate. Lishelle is there alone. At least Rayna is with the duke.” She tightened her grip on him. “We need to get back to the shuttle.”
He put his hand over hers even as they hastened out into the corridor. “Trixie, I know you’re frightened, but we can’t run away—”
“We have to catch him,” she interrupted.
Nor glanced down at her, one eyebrow raised. “You amaze me,” he murmured.
She didn’t have time to blush. “Blackworm could’ve stolen a ship anywhere if all he wanted was to escape,” she said. “But he came back here. I don’t think you need to worry about revenge against anyone on Azthronos. His interest was here, on the station.” She clamped her free hand over the satchel, as if she could take courage from those missing women.
Then she switched her grip to brush the blaster at her thigh. Because courage made for fine poetry, but a burst of plasma set to kill was more practical.
“Captain.” Linn’s tensed voice sounded smaller than before. “All the teams have responded and are returning. Except Lieutenant Otlok and Ensign Amanu. They were assigned to the engine compartment, and shielding there may be preventing comm connection, but I can’t reach them through the station’s comm system either.”
Nor glanced at Trixie, his expression grim. “I’ll detour to the engine and find them,” he informed the pilot. “Be ready to leave on my command.”
Not as soon as we get back, she noticed. On his command, whenever that might be.
Her nerves screamed, a silent keening that seemed to deafen her from the inside.
Until Nor grabbed her shoulder. “You know the way back to the shuttle.”
She heard the permission in his voice to get away from the danger she sensed this time, when last time she’d known nothing of alien abductions and black holes and spaceship captains.
What a regret to discover that knowing the danger didn’t make escaping it any easier.
“I’m going with you,” she growled at him.
To her surprise, he only nodded, as if he’d known she’d say that. But how could he, when she hadn’t known it herself?
Blasters out—because apparently he agreed with her assessment about bad luck—they raced through the silent, darkened station.
What had been creepy and ghostly before now felt a hundred times worse as she realized violence and death were lurking much closer than the singularity. She should’ve gone back to the shuttle. No, she should’ve never left Azthronos…
The engine room was huge, as it had to be to power a space station. The entry chamber towered three stories above them, a cathedral to engineering, although it took more than prayer to keep a ship suspended just beyond the black hole’s hungry grasp.
Nor pulsed a message from his dat-pad—Trixie felt it in hers strapped to her forearm—but there was no response from the missing crewmembers. She wanted to try an old-fashioned scream, but that probably wasn’t dignified in this futuristic universe where she’d found herself.
“Otlok and Amanu were checking the neural gel that Jinn inserted into the engine’s data core,” Nor said as they strode through a slightly smaller hall, deeper into the compartment. “That will be at the center.”
Of course it would. Farther away from a sensible escape. Trixie clenched her teeth on that scream she wanted to let loose.
A subliminal thrum vibrated through the soles of her boots and up her spine. The engine, she assumed, maintaining their safe orbit. But they weren’t safe, not at all. The tremor sank deeper, until every atom of her body was quivering like a jellyfish blob of fear.
Maybe Nor felt it too—the bone-deep unease if not the jellyfish part—because he dialed his blaster from stun to kill. After making sure the satchel was tight against her body, she did the same.
They moved quickly through the engine compartment. The thrum was no longer subliminal; it thumped against her eardrums like it wanted to get into her head. As if she didn’t already have enough frantic noise going on in there.
She jolted sideways when the dat-pad on her arm vibrated too. Man, she was going to shake right out of her skin…
A text message appeared, strange alien gibberish. It took a second for the sensor to render in English for her.
Someone else is here.
The comm indicated the message was from Amanu.
The sleeting panic in Trixie congealed in a cold lump in her belly. Nor glanced at his wrist pad and sidelonged another look at her. She nodded to show she’d seen the message.
He tapped at the pad, and another message appeared on her screen: Go back to the shuttle.
She shook her head hard, and he scowled, but he was already tapping again. Since no message came to her, she supposed he was contacting Amanu.
They edged past the huge central core of the engine room. Trixie hadn’t studied anything about alien space station engines—or Earth ones, for that matter—and since she didn’t have a translator, she couldn’t read the static signs, but the symbols of dangerous-looking wavelengths emitting from the core were an obvious warning even to a clueless closed-worlder. God, they couldn’t start shooting in here…
Beside her, Nor stiffened and gestured toward a recessed doorway set into a bank of multi-sensor panels studded with digital readouts and indicators, most of them blinking only intermittently with the station in hibernation mode. Since he kept moving steadily that way, she assumed they were not heading toward Blackworm…
Slipping past the door into a narrow walkway, they found Ensign Amanu crouched over the older lieutenant who sagged against the wall, eyes closed. When the door closed behind her, the loud pulse of the engine was cut in half.
Nor was already on one knee next to the wounded man, peering through the hole in the leg of the lieutenant’s charcoal ships fatigues. “How certain are you that they didn’t see you retreat in here?”
This must’ve been the ongoing texting he’d been doing with Amanu, Trixie guessed.
“They caught us when we were on our way back to the shuttle,” Otlok said. “We ran, but they made no attempt to follow us.”
Nor grunted as he finished assessing the wound. “Already sealed over. You’ll make it back to the shuttle.” He glanced up at Amanu. “Fine work with the emergency aid, Ensign.”
The younger alien nodded, her eyes wide. Whether in shock or pleased at the praise, Trixie wasn’t sure.
But she knew how good the captain was at motivating his people.
He straightened. “I already sent our route to your dat-pads,” he said. “Lieutenant, I’ll give you the booster injection when we open that door. It won’t last long, no matter how strong you feel, so don’t linger. Ensign, I know you ranked first in marksmanship in your class, so you’ll go first. Trixie, you’re almost as proficient as Amanu, but Otlok is going to need support on his wounded side, even with the booster. Will you stay with him?”
She stared at Nor, her pulse skittering. “Where are you going to be?”
“Right behind you,” he promised.
She squinted at him, trying to gauge his intent. “You’re not going after Blackworm to retake the Grandy?”
Maybe no one else would’ve noticed his infinitesimal hesitation. “Considering the odds against me, that would be reckless.”
Oh, so he was totally think
ing about it.
She nodded. “Then let’s go.”
He removed a tightly rolled kit from a leg pocket of his fatigues—she’d known that Earth troops carried their own first aid kits, which made her wonder what was tucked away in the pockets of her stolen uniform that she hadn’t found yet—and removed a small ampule of blue fluid. Otlok held his breath when Nor pressed the pointed end to his throat and then surged to his feet. Trixie reached out to steady him, and he nodded at her. They fell into line as Nor had assigned them and Amanu reached for the hatch release.
“Ready?” She hefted her blaster.
Trixie wasn’t sure about the others, but she said a quick prayer that consisted mostly of “Oh God, oh God,” and then they were on the move.
Chapter 13
Nor held his rage in check the same way he held his blaster: lightly and at the ready.
The bastard had stolen his ship.
Well, technically, Nor was the bastard, but the dreadnaught was his ship. Bought and paid for. How like a Thorkon noble, even a disgraced one, to think he could take it away.
Despite his internal disturbance, he kept his head on a constant swivel as they hustled through the empty corridors of the station back toward the resupply port where they’d docked the shuttle. He didn’t doubt that Trixie was right—as improbable as it seemed, Blackworm had returned.
In Nor’s ship! Insufferable.
Ahead of him, Otlok stumbled once, but Trixie wedged her shoulder under the taller Thorkon, righting him quickly to limp onward. Though she was small, he knew how strong she was, and pride surged through him. Not that he had any claim to her strength, but this disaster must be the worst of all her nightmares and still she was steady beside the injured lieutenant and she held her position behind the ensign, her own blaster held coolly to one side.
If he hadn’t already perved on her twice, he’d be so tempted to do it right now.
Larfing Blackworm.
They were halfway back to the shuttle when his dat-pad rattled against his wrist. “Captain,” the pilot said. “I’ve established a clear comm signal through the station. The Grandiloquence is here, docked at the main port off the primary deck. What are your orders?”
The primary deck and main port. On the other side of the station from the shuttle. That distance was safer for his crew. “We’re almost to you,” he told Linn. “Prepare for release. And relay everything you have to security headquarters on Azthronos.” He swallowed hard. By each and every Thorkon god, it riled him to say it… “And to the duke’s cruiser.”
“Yes, sir.” Linn was silent a moment. “Message away. There is some lingering interference but—”
Before he could finish, the signal blinked out.
“Captain Nor.”
The unfamiliar voice boomed not through his dat-pad, it seemed to issue from the station itself.
Next to Otlok, Trixie stumbled, as if she’d been shot. “It’s him.”
Coming through the main comm set at regular intervals in the corridor walls, the refined Thorkon accent sounded like a god. “I have retaken control of the station,” Blackworm said. “Once the radiation clears, I will have every sensor at my disposal, so there’s no sense in hiding from me.”
Nor cursed under his breath. At least the interference that was bothering them was hindering Blackworm. Docking the shuttle at the underutilized resupply port had been unintentionally fortunate.
But as Trixie had pointed out—and as his sire, who’d been an Avatar of the God of Fortuity, might’ve agreed—such fortune never held.
Grabbing a scrambler from his kit pocket, he plugged it into his dat-pad and patched into the station comm. He’d loaned one of the illicit devices to Raz when he’d been wooing Rayna, and everything had worked out beautifully for his half-brother. Hopefully, the reroute would confuse Blackworm for awhile longer.
Long enough to get to the shuttle?
He waved his little team ahead. “This is Captain Rokal Nor irThorkonos, of the Azthronos dreadnaught Grandiloquence. Unauthorized operation of the station communication system is a code violation.”
The answering chuckle, echoing along the corridor from every comm unit, made his hackles prickle.
“I would apologize for the disrespect, Captain,” came the wry response, then the voice hardened. “But you know I’ve done much worse.”
So they weren’t going to dance around. Just as well, Nor thought grimly, since he’d never been good at dancing.
“Which is why you were locked up for multiple lifetimes,” he said. “Why are you back here?”
“To find what I lost.”
“If you threw it into the black hole, you’re never going to find it again,” Nor said. They were almost to the shuttle, so he only needed to keep the distraction going a little longer. “The singularity is greedy and jealous that way.” He couldn’t hold back the jibe. “Just like a nobleman.”
“And how like an irThorkon privateer to think his opinion matters,” Blackworm responded with smooth disdain. “But you do seem to have what I want.”
“You already have my ship,” Nor muttered. “That’s all I have.”
“I want your bride too.”
Nor’s blood iced although his boots kept carrying him forward determinedly. “I’ve no bride,” he said. “As a half-blood, I could never win a Thorkon woman, as a nobleman should know.”
Blackworm’s disembodied voice was a growl. “I want the Black Hole Bride.”
A soft sound from Trixie, not even a whimper, stabbed through Nor’s veins, freeing up the cold slosh of his anger. “As much as I live to serve the nobility of Azthronos, I’m completely out of singularity sacrifices. Sorry.”
They had reached the large delivery hangar and only needed to cross the empty space to get to the docked shuttle at the end of the far corridor. With the Grandy on the opposite side of the station and the shielding bulk between them, they’d be safely away before Blackworm could pin down their location.
“I don’t think you are quite sorry enough, Captain,” Blackworm said, his voice an unnerving murmur through the comms.
Before the word captain faded, a beam of yellow light lanced across the hangar toward them. Amanu, still in front, dodged with a sharp cry as the stunner charge clanged against a stack of loader containers.
So much for not getting pinned down.
Nor shoved Trixie and Otlok behind him and shouldered up next to the ensign. “Where’d that shot come from?”
“Other side of the bay, there, behind that backwash buffer.”
They hunkered down behind the thick barrier on their side of the bay. Nor quickly checked his connection to the shuttle. “Linn, can you get a read on body count over there.”
“Sorry, Captain. Between the exterior radiation and interior shielding, nothing’s clear. From the bio mass, I’d guess at least seven or eight intruders.”
Nor grimaced. Was it too much to ask that Blackworm be foolishly overconfident as well as a psychopathic criminal? Nor laid his hand lightly on Amanu’s shoulder, conscious of the young ensign’s shaking. If they got out of this alive, he was going to run some wargames with these coddled Thorkons. “At this point, we need speed and firepower, not precision,” he said. “Ensign, you take Otlok’s other side. You and Trixie are making a run for it. I’ll keep Blackworm’s people busy.”
Amanu nodded, like a good order-following crewmember, but Trixie made a noise of dissent.
“We’re not leaving you here,” she snapped.
He lifted one eyebrow. “I hope not. You lay down covering fire for me when you get to the other side.”
Of course he knew it never worked out that simply. Once Blackworm’s invaders charted the path to escape, they’d be able to pick him off easily as he ran, no matter how much plasma covered his backside.
Amanu dropped back beside the injured lieutenant. “On your go, sir.”
Nor grabbed Trixie’s elbow. “Otlok is injured and won’t make it alone,” he hissed at her. �
��And Amanu may be as much a target for Blackworm’s black hole as you were. You need to get out of here, get rid of Blackworm’s purpose for staying here.”
After what seemed like an eternity—he hadn’t realized how used he’d grown to command—Trixie nodded. She handed him her blaster, her chin high. “In case you need another shot,” she said. She looped Otlok’s arm over her shoulder and looked at Amanu. “You’re the marksman, so you keep your blaster out. I have the lieutenant.” She turned her wide, piercing gaze to Nor. “On your go, sir.”
His chest tightened at this incontrovertible evidence of her trust. Like the mishkeet he’d called her, she always wanted to keep to the fringes. Out of sight, ready to run from danger on her own. Yet here she was, giving over her defense to the young ensign while she supported the much bigger Thorkon male. And she believed that an ex-pirate with half-noble blood would get them through.
The responsibility weighed on him like all the stolen mass of a black hole. No wonder his half-brother was so serious. And arrogant. Because it felt a little like being a Thorkon god.
“Go,” he murmured.
He fired blindly around the edge of their sheltering baffle then popped out to keep up the furious fusillade from both blasters in his hands as his little trio bolted toward the far corridor and their escape. At least Blackworm’s squad was equally blinded by the radiation interference and wouldn’t have a clear count on their small number, otherwise this could go badly.
Trixie and Otlok were almost to the service corridor that led to the smaller dock and the shuttle, Amanu falling back half a step to turn and cover their last steps. Nor tapped his wrist while keeping up a steady orange shower of killing plasma. “Linn,” he barked. “Injured incoming. Send someone to grab them and get the larf off this station.”
“Yes, sir, Captain. But how will you—?”
“That’s an order.” Nor let the piercing whine of Trixie’s overextended blaster punctuate his insistence. One last sputter of orange and her weapon was drained.
The mere moment he’d taken to ensure the safety of his small contingent was all the distraction Blackworm’s minions had needed. A lancing beam of yellow tangler energy blazed through the gloomy hangar and caught him high in the shoulder.
