Buccaneer: Starship Renegades, Book 4

by S. J. Bryant

  "Right," Aydin said. "But how do we get her out? They never open the door."

  "Only to let us in, and then once, when Gerbil told them one of the others would die if he didn't get help," Piper said. "To crack the lock without automated assistance would take twenty minutes, uninterrupted."

  "Right," Ryker said. "So, cracking the lock isn't an option, we have to get one of them to open it."

  "Easy," Aydin said. "We tell them Wren is sick, they take her out, and she works her alleged magic."

  "I don't think it will be that easy," Kari said. "They won't believe us, especially not Taylor. They listened to Gerbil because he's got some kind of understanding with them, but if it's one of us they won't listen."

  "So we get Gerbil to tell them," Ryker said.

  "He won't," Kari said, gazing across the room.

  Atticus saw that Gerbil was looking at them, as if listening to their conversation.

  "Why the hell not?" Ryker said.

  "Because he doesn't believe in fighting back," Kari said.

  "That spineless, no good—"

  "He has his reasons."

  "I've got reasons right here," Ryker said, brandishing his fist.

  "Then I guess we have to put on a good show," Wren said.

  "What do you mean?" Atticus said.

  Wren winked at him, picked up one of the blank toothpicks, and touched the very tip of it to her tongue.

  Atticus lunged at her, tried to knock it aside, but she moved too fast and danced out of his way. She placed the toothpick beside the others, staring at the group.

  "What have you done?" Atticus said.

  "Hopefully saved all our lives," Wren said. "If not, at least it might partially make up for… before." She folded her legs and returned to sitting on the floor.

  "For before?" Aydin said. "None of this is your fault. He caught us the same as he caught you."

  Wren's mouth twisted. "Yes, but he shouldn't have been able to catch me."

  "Don't be stupid," Aydin said. He made to snatch at Wren, fingers aimed to shove into the back of her throat.

  Atticus cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier.

  Wren twisted and slipped out of Aydin's grip before he got close.

  "Do you have a death wish?" Aydin said. "If you throw it up you might have a chance."

  "I do have a death wish," Wren said. "But not today." She returned to sitting beside Kari.

  Atticus looked around the cell for something, anything, that would help. But there was no magic cure, no first aid kit, hell, not even a bucket.

  "Wren," Kari said. "Whatever the hell you think you're doing. Don't. That's an order."

  Wren chuckled and met Kari's eyes. "I might have agreed not to kill you, but I didn't agree to take your orders."

  "Seven minutes, eleven seconds," Piper said.

  Atticus blinked, glanced at her. "What?"

  "That's how long she has left."

  "Wren," Kari said, frustration making her voice raw.

  "She's right," Atticus said. "Wren, this won't help."

  Atticus felt like everything was happening at twice the normal speed and here he was trapped in slow motion. He had to do something to save Wren, and yet there was absolutely nothing he could do. Heat flushed his face and his eyes stung. Just moments before things had actually seemed hopeful, they'd had the start of a plan, and then Wren… he'd known she was depressed but he'd never thought she'd actually…

  Wren wavered and tilted forward. Atticus grabbed hold of her shoulders to lower her to the ground. Burst blood vessels turned her eyes red and pink tears streaked the sides of her face.

  "One minute," Piper whispered.

  Wren smiled up at Atticus. "Better make it a good one, aye?"

  CHAPTER 16

  "Guards!" Kari bellowed. She ran from Wren's prone body, snatched hold of the bars, and tried to shake them free. They didn't even rattle. "Guards! Get in here!" She waved at the cameras in the roof and tried to tear the door loose. It didn't move.

  "What's going on?" Gerbil said.

  Kari glanced at him and then at Wren. "She's dying."

  "What?" Gerbil scurried across the room and knelt at Wren's side. He pressed his finger against her throat and leaned in close to her mouth. "What happened?"

  "She took poison," Aydin said.

  The others stared at Wren's body and said nothing.

  "What? Where did she get poison from? What sort was it?"

  Kari barely heard them. She needed to get the guards so they could give Wren every kind of antidote they had. Her heart hammered her chest and her vision narrowed to a thin tunnel.

  "Guards!" she roared.

  The other prisoners looked from her to Wren with wide eyes, edging away to the other side of the cell.

  "How do we get them here?" Kari turned on Gerbil.

  He clutched Wren's hand in his fingers and shook his head.

  "How?" Kari said, her voice echoing off the walls.

  "Just keep yelling," Gerbil said. "They'll come."

  Kari spun back to the bars and gripped the cold metal. She put all her strength into trying to wrench them apart. "You ugly bastards. Get down here and help us!" She screamed and swore and promised every kind of punishment she could think of on their captors if they didn't appear. An eternity later a single man sauntered through the door. He didn't look happy to see Kari.

  "What?" he said.

  "She's dying." Kari jabbed her finger at Wren. She couldn't burst into tears, and she couldn't try to kill this man. Right now he was Wren's best chance of survival.

  "Right," he said. "Pull the other one."

  "Dammit, Randy," Gerbil said. "She's taken something."

  As soon as Gerbil spoke, Randy's expression changed and he stepped close to the bars. "What do you mean she took something? She didn't have anything."

  "She must have smuggled it," Gerbil said. "Her pulse is weak. She needs an antidote."

  Randy fumbled at his belt and pulled out a communicator. He scrambled with the buttons. It took him three goes before the screen lit up and a rough voice spoke. "What do you want, you ugly son-of-a-bitch?"

  "We've got a prisoner down."

  "Don't tell me you're falling for that? It's the oldest trick in the book."

  "Gerbil says she took something."

  The voice on the other end of the call went quiet for a while. "We're coming up."

  Randy paced in front of the cell, watching Wren. Small beads of sweat dotted his forehead, occasionally dripping down his face. Kari watched them, mesmerized, because it was easier to focus on that than to think about what was happening behind her.

  Three minutes later, four more pirates entered. These wore less flamboyant clothing than the rest. Three of them trained guns on the prisoners, while the last wrenched open the cell door and pushed inside. He went straight to Wren and dropped a black bag at her side.

  "What did she take?" he said.

  "No one knows," Gerbil replied, pulling Piper and Atticus away from Wren.

  Kari turned to watch but she didn't dare get any closer. What was happening? What was Wren thinking? Kari's thoughts kept getting stuck and grinding to a halt. All she could see was Wren's face when she put the toothpick on her tongue. It had looked like she was enjoying the biggest joke in the world. But who was laughing?

  The pirate at Wren's side pulled a monitoring device from his bag and held it beside Wren's throat. Kari assumed he was some kind of doctor or medic. As long as he could save Wren then that was all that mattered.

  Kari edged around them so that her back was to the solid wall at the rear of the cell.

  The medic watched the monitoring device. It flashed red. He sighed and pulled it back. "She's gone."

  "What?" Kari said.

  "There must be something you can do," Gerbil said.

  The medic shook his head. "I could shove all sorts of things into her, but it wouldn't do any good. Her heart's stopped, she's showing no mental activity. She's gone."
r />   "What sort of medic are you?" Aydin roared, shooting to his feet. "Haven't you ever heard of CPR?"

  The pirates at the door trained their guns on Aydin's chest but the medic looked up at him, face calm. "The poison—or whatever she took—has done its work. I could give her CPR for the next ten hours and it wouldn't do her any good."

  Aydin's hands clenched into fists. "There has to be something—"

  "There's nothing." The medic tossed the monitoring device into his bag and snapped it closed. "I'm sorry."

  He stood and gestured to two of the pirates outside. They traipsed inside, one of them reaching for Wren's feet, the other stretching a black plastic bag on the floor beside her.

  "What are you doing?" Kari said.

  "We're taking her away," the medic said.

  "You're not touching her."

  The medic raised an eyebrow. "I'm afraid you don't have much authority here. And I'm not leaving a biological hazard lying around."

  "She's not a biological hazard," Kari said. She wanted to strangle the man. How dare he talk about Wren like that.

  "Maybe not yet," he said. "But give it a few days." He gestured at the two pirates. They hoisted Wren up between them, then lowered her into the body bag. The zip made a sharp noise as they pulled it up, hiding Wren's face behind the plastic.

  Kari wanted to attack them, to claw them, to drag Wren away. What right did they have to take Wren? She deserved a proper funeral with a burial in space like any member of the crew would get. These people couldn't take her away to—

  But the cell door clanged shut behind them and they carried Wren out of view. The medic and the other guards followed. Randy glanced back at them once then he was gone too.

  Kari lashed out, kicking the toothpicks across the floor until they rolled into the waste hole and disappeared. Kari didn't care that they might be useful, she couldn't bear to look at them a moment longer. Her knees shook and she collapsed to the floor with a strangled cry, her back against the wall. She stared at the bars of the cell but didn't really see them. A heavy weight filled her stomach and crawled up the back of her throat, making her want to throw up. What the hell had Wren been thinking?

  Their small circle broke up so they each sat in lonely pools of misery. The other prisoners left them alone, although Gerbil came and patted Kari's shoulder a few times.

  Silence filled the tiny cells and even the smallest shuffles of the prisoners trying to find more comfortable positions on the hard floor were like loud clarions compared to the stifling quiet. No one spoke. Most people didn't even look at each other.

  Kari had no idea what the other prisoners thought. They'd been angry at her and her crew for trying to cause a fuss, and then the next minute Wren was dead and the guards were there and…

  Now what?

  Piper and Atticus stared at the floor. Atticus kept fiddling with the piece of string and the other scraps they'd each pulled from their pockets before Wren… did what she did.

  So what if Wren had tried to kill her not so long ago? It turned out that Kari's hard feelings didn't follow Wren into the grave. All she could remember were the times that Wren had saved her life, or when she'd helped rescue Piper even though she didn't want to. Wren might have had her hard edges but she wasn't all bad. And now, gone.

  Kari had no idea what Wren's plan had been. Did she figure they might be able to overpower the guards when they came to take her body away? That seemed unlikely. How many guards would there be in a place like this? Or perhaps she hadn't had a plan at all. Now that Kari had time to sit and reflect, Wren hadn't been herself for a while. Kari tried to shrug it off and tell herself that no one could see what Wren was feeling, it was like trying to read a piece of steel. But that would be a lie. Wren had been different; even more quiet than normal and somehow darker… impressive given her usual personality. But would she really kill herself, just like that?

  Kari sighed and ran her hand through her hair. It snagged on tangles and bits of dirt. Hadn't Wren's whole life philosophy been that life wasn't sacred? That death was king? That would explain how she'd gone out with such a big goddamn smile.

  "So what now?" Ryker said, shuffling closer to Kari and leaning against the wall so that their shoulders brushed.

  "I've got no damn idea." Kari's voice caught in her throat.

  "What a bloody mess," Ryker said.

  "What was she thinking?" Kari asked out loud the same question she'd been asking inside her head for the last three hours.

  "Who could know what Wren was thinking? But she made her choice."

  Kari looked out of the corner of her eye at Ryker. He might pretend to be tough in front of strangers, but she knew him better than anyone. He'd be hurting over Wren, hurting a lot. She could see it in the shine over his eyes, but he kept his voice steady. "We can grieve her later. But we can't stay here."

  "I'm out of ideas, Ryker, and I don't want anyone else to get hurt."

  Ryker made the barest gesture toward Piper. "What about her? If we don't get out of here, I promise you she will be hurt."

  A steady thump started behind Kari's left eyeball, pounding in time with her heart. If anyone so much as looked at Piper… but of course Ryker was right. What power did she have in here? And once they got to the slaver's planet, she might be separated from Piper, this time permanently.

  "No," she said.

  "Then shake it off, Captain," Ryker said. "We'll grieve for Wren later."

  Kari drew a deep breath and nodded once. For Piper she could put aside her guilt. Wren would understand. "Atticus." She waved him closer.

  Dark circles ringed his eyes and he'd obviously been crying. He stood, shuffled toward them, and slumped to the ground beside Kari. He didn't speak.

  "What have you come up with?" Kari said.

  Atticus dragged his gaze from the ground to her face. "Excuse me?"

  "What have you come up with. What gadget have you invented to get us out of here?"

  Color bloomed across Atticus' pale cheeks. "Excuse me?" His voice rose higher, threatening to break into full-blown hysteria.

  Kari kept her expression firm. She had to keep control of this situation, because if Atticus fell apart then she didn't think she'd be able to keep the rest of them together.

  "We need to get out of here," she said. "For all our sakes."

  "And you expect me to just make something magic appear?"

  "You can—"

  "In case you hadn't noticed," Atticus said, his voice dropping low and eyes flashing with a danger that Kari had never seen in him before. "All I have is a few bits of string, a piece of chewed gum, and some damn poisoned toothpicks which—" He drew a deep breath and his lower jaw twitched. "Which are gone now."

  "I know," Kari said. "I know. I'm sorry. But without you, we have no way out."

  "I'm not a magician."

  "No, but you're brilliant."

  Atticus rolled his eyes and went back to staring at the ground.

  "Will you just try?" Kari said. "Please?"

  Atticus rubbed his face. "There's nothing I can do with the resources you've given me."

  "Then we'll find more." Kari tried to keep her tone light, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. But in truth she felt herself teetering on the edge of despair. Where the hell could she find more resources? She was as trapped as any of them.

  Atticus shrugged.

  "Will you at least try?"

  "Yes, I'll try."

  "Thank you," Kari said.

  It didn't feel like much of a victory, because in the end, Wren was still dead.

  CHAPTER 17

  Wren swam back to consciousness through a thick swamp. Darkness swirled across her vision like muddy water and a foul, rotten taste filled her mouth. Much like the time Guildmaster Silvan had forced her to drink fourteen glasses of the cheapest ale on Zenith and she'd spent the next three hours throwing up and begging the guildmaster to kill her.

  Crust glued her eyes together but she didn't try to wipe
it away, not yet. Something stifling clung to her skin. Plastic. Confining the air around her, making the oxygen thin. A bag. They'd zipped her into a plastic bag. A body bag. It had to be. They thought she was dead.

  No sound of people nearby. She inched her hand up to the top of the zip; her arm weighed ten times as much as normal. Inch by inch, she eased the zip down. Cool air, filled with fresh oxygen, brushed her face. She stopped there, the zip open just enough to bring sound and air, but not enough to be noticed by a casual observer.

  She forced herself to lie still and listen. The dull buzz of ventilation sounded from above and a tiny, continuous vibration rattled through the floor she lay on—it had to be floor. The smooth metal and sense of vast space to either side gave it away. The tiny vibration was the same as the one she'd felt back in the cell, right after she'd taken the poison and laid down. Still on the space station then. But how long had she been unconscious?

  It had been a gamble. She'd only recently started desensitizing herself to the tribecs poison that had coated the toothpick. With the dose she'd taken… it had been a fifty-fifty chance whether she'd wake up again. But here she was. Fate wanted her to keep trudging through her own existence, even if she'd lost the taste for it.

  Aside from the ship's engine vibrating through the floor and the whisper of air from the ventilation, the area around was silent. No other people breathing, no footsteps, no low voices.

  Wren peeled her eyes open and darted a glance around the room through the narrow slit in the body bag, then shut them again in case someone was watching via a security camera. Underestimating your opponent was one of the quickest ways to get dead—she'd learned that early.

  She lay in the middle of a large, undecorated room, probably a storage room. A few large crates lay pushed up against one wall and a thick door opened out of the other; unlocked if the green light beside it was anything to go by.

  She flexed her fingers. Still sore. No wonder. Her heart had probably stopped for at least three minutes along with her breathing. Who knew how many brain and muscle cells she'd lost? She'd been dead, enough to fool the guards, or they would never have brought her here and left her unattended.