Lainie’s mouth fell slightly open, anger replacing the smile that had been on her face seconds before. “You can’t be serious. After what I told you? You’ve been on this ship three days. You must have seen what Cap does for people. Shit, he scooped your ass up on the way to hell. That should count for something.”
“I’m grateful for that, truly.” Interfering moron! “Without him all the people on that ship would be headed for a short, miserable life.” I have to remember that! “And I can tell that you and lots of others on this ship owe him a debt of gratitude. But he’s human, Lainie, and he has his faults, like anyone else. Maybe more than anyone else. I’m not ready to overlook them.”
Lainie’s expression hardened. “Maybe you can’t see beyond the fact that he’s an independent operator, huh? No matter the good he’s done? He doesn’t wear a uniform or follow some admiral’s orders, so he’s scum.” Her youthful enthusiasm was gone, replaced by the cynicism more typical of someone who’d grown up on the streets.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” The girl shot up from her bunk and bolted for the hatch. But she turned back and took a stand. “You know what, just forget it. I got you pegged now. You’re no more a slave than I am. I don’t know what you were doing on that slaver, but Cap put an end to it, and I say good for him.” She shot Rayna a look that could’ve curdled milk and disappeared out the hatch.
Rayna was even more determined not to go to the party that Lainie had referred to as a mash, but the return of her bunkmate signaling a change in shift had meant she had few other options. The PT deck had been requisitioned for the event. She couldn’t hang out in the darkened rec lounge where others were trying to sleep. She could walk the corridors, but she’d just look pathetic should she run into Captain Snark. She had already put in enough fruitless hours on the library comps where she’d learned only that Solomon Armstrong Murphy had been born on the agricultural planet of Ixta IV 35 years ago. A farmer.
That was about as far away from where she’d grown up as you could get. Life in the domes and tunnels of Terrene had been raucous, stimulating, a daily lesson in trade, communications and cultural and interspecies diversity, but also robbery, theft, coercion and worse. It was urban, proudly so, a place built by returned slaves to welcome their own. The only agriculture on her planet was conducted in hydroponic tanks in the surface domes. She’d toured them once on a school field trip.
Okay, so Murphy had started out with dirt on his boots. After that the record was silent until six years ago when he showed up in command of the Shadowhawk, previously captained by one Marlena McCoy. He was wanted throughout Confederated space for numerous crimes of piracy, and God only knew what the Grays wanted him for. According to the computer he was single, childless and unattached, though why she should find that of any interest, she refused to consider.
There was nothing more to be learned about him from searching the files. So maybe, eyes and ears open, she might learn something at this “mash” thing. She joined the throng in the corridor outside the PT deck and shuffled through the hatch into the converted exercise space. There she was assaulted by a wave of pounding sound so dense she immediately looked for somewhere to hide. The press of humanity in the dark left nowhere to run. Someone nudged her in the back, and she was forced to move forward though she had no destination and no sense of her bearings. Christ, they didn’t call it a mash for nothing.
The flow of people took her past a table where a line of crew members staffed a bank of dispensers. The eager hands reaching for mugs of grog across the table told her this was the place to start. No one challenged her right to drink, so she grabbed a mug and fought to hold it steady against the jostling crowd. Then she shuffled and dodged her way around to a relatively underpopulated section of the room where she could observe the fracas without being crushed.
Damn it, she couldn’t see in this crowd! She took a step up on one of the exercise modules folded back into place against the wall. Mug held high, she could survey the scene from a normal man’s height, at least. And what she saw was sheer, piratical chaos. Either Murphy’s crew had been drinking a while or they’d been drinking fast, because the dancing, boasting, shoving, sparring, and thinly disguised lovemaking were well under way. Rayna took a deep draught of the bittersweet grog; though she intended to stay mostly sober, she had some catching up to do just to fit in.
She found herself scanning the crowd for a certain tall, dark and handsome and blew out a breath in disgust. Give it a break, Carver! He’s probably drunk on his ass screwing a pretty little engine room tech in a corner somewhere. Setting a great example for his lovely crew.
A scuffle broke out at the edge of the crowd nearest her—two burly crewmen too far gone to land a hard punch where it would do much damage. People pulled back to make room for Security, who arrived within seconds and scraped them up off the floor.
“Come on, Frang, do you have to do this every time?” The Security man was the same one who’d taken her to the captain her first day. He had a firm grip on his man as he marched him past Rayna. “You know Cap will have your ass for this.”
“Yeah, yeah. No fightin’ at th’ mash. Tol’ me.”
“He started it.” This from his opponent who was next in line with his own escort.
“We know. You get to go to bed anyway.”
Rayna had to give them credit. Murphy’s Security boys knew their business. The party had absorbed the incident without a ripple and was still going full bore. She looked over the crowd again, seeking out the enforcers in the milling, murky dark. There were a lot of the crewmen with the yellow letters across their chests and the vigilant expressions on their faces stationed throughout the room. They weren’t drinking or talking, unless it was into earcoms. Organized, trained security. On a pirate ship. Stars and wonders.
“I’m telling you, Arden, these are pirates. Their captain is one of the worst ones in the galaxy.”
Rayna lifted her head at the snatch of conversation. She searched people nearby for the source, but could not make it out.
“He’s . . . to take us and sell us . . . open market.”
“I don’t . . . Murphy seems okay.”
The crowd shifted and surged around her. Other conversations drowned out part of the words. She craned her neck, trying to see past the bodies surrounding her to find what had to be slaves from the Fleeflek, slaves who weren’t supposed to be here. She’d been hoping to pick up a juicy tidbit or two from Captain Snark’s own crew, but something about these particular morsels attracted her interest.
The voices drifted to the right with the movement of the crowd. “Sure, that’s what he wants us to think. You and me . . . others who are resistant. He wants . . . think he’s this great hero . . . let us go. That’s bullshit. He’s just like all the rest of them. He’ll sell us . . . bidder.”
Rayna still couldn’t get a good look at who was talking. She gave up her perch on the machine and dove into the crowd after the voices.
A small, wiry human just in front of her guffawed. “So what are we supposed to do about it? Steal a shuttle or something?”
“No, you mulaak dumbass.” Someone in front of him, moving, fast now, through the pack. Damn it! Where is he? “There are more of us than them. It’s like the engineer said. We make him give us the freakin’ ship.”
The guy in front of her pulled up, and Rayna nearly plowed into his back. She sheared off just in time, but found herself in front of a massive crewman who seemed to want to dance with her.
“. . . fucking nuts? Most of us . . . barely remember our names.” The little man was hissing in agitation. “You expect . . . some mulaak big plan?”
The giant in front of her was insistent. “Come on, baby! Just one dance. This is my favorite song!”
Fuck! She was desperate to see the other man’s face, if only for a second. “Okay, but on one condition.”
The big crewman grinned in anticipation. “Sure, sweetheart, anything.”
She smiled sweetly at him. “Lift me up in those big, strong arms for a minute. I just have to have a look around from up there.”
The crewman’s grin widened as he hoisted her up on one enormous bicep. She squealed with what she hoped was appropriate girlish enthusiasm. And just as she spotted the lanky, fox-faced human she was looking for, she heard him say:
“Anyway, don’t worry. The big man gave us a plan for tonight, didn’t he?”
What the hell? Sam stared across a heaving sea of partying crew to see Javin Darto deadlifting the troublesome subject of his thoughts up on one beefy shoulder above the crowd. Though he was too far away to be certain, Rayna seemed to be enjoying the experience, giggling like a marketplace wh . . . well, like she’d been paid. Shalssit!
“Security report, Cap.”
Sam turned to Lieutenant Chen and nodded.
Chen was efficiency in a slim, compact package. She wasted no time with preliminaries.
“You were right about the LO’s, sir. We’ve got at least a dozen in the crowd. The Sec crew is rounding them up now.”
“How the hell did they get in here in the first place, Mei? I thought I was clear.”
“You were, sir, and I believe things held up for the first hour or so. We had the main entrance well covered.” Chen shook her head. “Right now I don’t have enough information to give you a good explanation, but I think someone must have let them in a side door. And by this time, one or two could have just walked in the front.”
Sam surveyed the feverish scene from his post on the climbing scaffold overlooking the main deck and conceded the point. Managing this throng of wildly-diverse, deeply-intoxicated beings was a mighty challenge, but this wasn’t the first time he’d asked Chen to rise to the occasion. She always handled the task well and without complaint. He started to dismiss her to do her job when he spotted a scuffle in one section of the crowd as the Sec crew struggled to subdue a drunk-and-resisting LO. As he watched, someone standing nearby started a shoving match and fists shot out in multiple directions. Rumbles erupted all across the deck, merging into a huge, malignant pattern.
“Shit, Mei, your people are in trouble. We have to close this thing down.” But his Security Chief had already seen what he’d seen and was calling for backup.
Sam swung down through the bars of the climbing structure, headed for the sound system and lights, Chen right behind him on the stairs, barking instructions into her comm unit. His crew could generally hold its liquor—and its temper—but LO’s coming out of the mindwipe and captivity were volatile and often violent. It would be easy for them to serve as the catalyst for something dark and dangerous in the grog-soaked mob.
And worse, Rayna was in the middle of it.
Brawlers blocked his way at the base of the unit, and he waded in, tossing lighter combatants aside to get to the heart of the conflict. Sam took a few random hits before the fighters realized their captain was in the fray. He barely felt the blows. He was angry. Furious. Someone had started this mess on his ship, and they would pay, the sonsofbitches!
He finally reached the center of the floor and found a crazed LO and two crewmen, with one beleaguered Security man trying to pull them apart. The LO’s broken nose was streaming blood in a bright red flood, and he swayed with every punch he threw, but he refused to give up. The two crewmen were just as battered—eyes blackened, cheeks bruised, lips split—but still they circled, looking for an opportunity to attack. The exhausted Security officer stood between them, unable to do anything but take a blow meant for one or the other of the combatants.
“All right, that’s enough!” Sam put all of his authority as captain behind the words.
His crewmen and the Sec officer froze, eyes wide. One of the crewmen opened his mouth to explain.
Sam held up a hand. “Don’t.” He turned to consider the LO—and caught a sucker punch in the jaw. Staggered, his next move was pure instinct. He blocked the second broad swing coming at his head and let fly with his own right. With Sam’s weight behind it, the punch lifted the scrawny little guy off his feet and back onto the deck, where he remained in a crumpled, unconscious heap.
Sam stared down at the man in surprise. “Huh.”
“We must have softened him up for you, Cap.” The two bloodied crewmen and the Security officer grinned at him.
He would have returned the grin, but the scene around him had become a riot. He had to regain control fast.
Sam gestured at the Security man. “Get this guy back to Sickbay. And you two are confined to quarters. Get out of here. Now.”
All around him men and women pushed, shoved, shouted and screamed. Punches flew, bodies slammed to the deck. He smelled blood and sweat and the bittersweet of grog. This was worse than any bar brawl he’d ever fought on any dusty, backwater planet in the galaxy. Worse, because it was on his own, sweet ship and, damn it, he couldn’t seem to stop it.
“Captain, we have a new problem.” Chen was suddenly at his side again.
“What now?”
“All the exits have been sealed from the outside. The computer locking mechanisms were engaged, then the programs were fritzed somehow. We’re stuck in here until Engineering can cut us out.”
“Come on, we have to get you out of here.”
“Uh, no, that’s okay, big guy. I really need to stay for a minute.” Rayna struggled to extract herself from her protector’s grip, but the man wouldn’t let her go. She had to admit the roiling crowd around her was intimidating, but it was imperative she follow the two slaves from the Fleeflek, especially now that their plan seemed to be taking effect.
The big crewman kept walking, pushing his way through the throng toward an exit. “You’re not even supposed to be in here. Cap said so—no LO’s. Must admit you’re cute, though. If I’d been working the door, I’d have let you in, too.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Seems like that policy hadn’t worked so well tonight. But Security had tipped to the large number of visitors crashing the party. Their efforts to scoop them up were causing a ruckus. No, make that a riot. And it was spreading. Fights were erupting everywhere, fueled by too much grog and encouraged by a few choice words or pushes from Fleeflek conspirators. The Sec crew was overwhelmed.
But Rayna’s brawny dance partner knew how to make his way through a bar brawl. He never stopped moving, and his size guaranteed that no one dared to stand in his way. He kept her in front of his massive body, framing her in a protective cage of muscle as they moved through the crowd. Scrappers careened into them, and he shoved them sprawling back into the fray. Rayna would have pitched in with a punch or two, but he wouldn’t allow it, steering her aside and taking out any offenders with a simple one-handed push to the face.
“Damn, sweets. I have to say I’m impressed.” She tilted her head back to look up at him once they’d reached the exit. “You’ve got skills.”
He gave her a goofy grin. “I played professional bloodball back home on Argent for a while.”
“And you still have teeth?” She grinned back at him. She glanced at the exit, where Security officers led a steady stream of injured and restrained through the open double hatch. People were making their way out and back to their quarters, but not nearly as quickly as the situation warranted. They lingered inside, hoping for more fun, or in the companionway, waiting to see how it all turned out.
There! The two she’d been looking for just slipped through the hatch. She turned to her rescuer. “Hey. Thanks for getting me through that. I better go.”
Just before things got awkward, a Security officer grabbed the big man’s arm. “Hey, Javin. We need you in there. Give us a hand?”
He nodded at the man. “Sure.” Then he looked at Rayna. “See you.”
She was already a step away, keeping her guys in sight. “Watch your back in there.”
He grinned and turned to make his way back through the crowd.
The two from the Fleeflek were loitering in the corridor like the others, the taller on
e wearing an expression of secret amusement, the shorter one looking worried. Rayna gave a moment’s thought to approaching them openly. They’d all been on the slaver together, hadn’t they? But there was little to be gained from showing her hand at this stage of the game. She resolved to watch and wait a while longer.
Outraged shouts and a sudden tattoo of heavy pounding broke out at the entrance to the PT deck. Rayna jerked around to see crew members and Security officers throwing themselves uselessly against the closed hatch doors, pulling at the handles, trying the emergency releases at the sides and giving every indication that the hatch doors were locked.
Rayna turned to the woman next to her. “What the hell happened?”
The woman blinked at the scene in front of the locked hatch. “You got me. One minute the hatch was open, the next it slammed shut. Now they can’t get it open again.” She pointed down the companionway. “Looks like the same thing happened with the B exit.”
“Holy shit! You mean they’re locked in there?”
The woman, who reeked of grog, swayed slightly as she goggled at Rayna. “Yeah. Damn.”
Rayna spun around, scanning the milling crowd for her quarry. They were already headed down the corridor, nearly at the turn in the passageway that would take them out of sight. She spared a glance back toward the barred hatch and found her big crewman still on this side.
“Javin!” When she saw his head swivel in her direction, she waved at him. “I need your help. With me. Now!” Then she started pushing through the crowd.
She could only pray that Javin had heard her and was following somewhere in her wake. She couldn’t spare another look over her shoulder; she had to see which direction the men from the Fleeflek turned at the junction of the corridors. Left! And they were picking up speed, as if they had a destination in mind. Her blood chilled as she realized what was down that passage—Engineering, the heart of the ship. She began to wish not only for Javin but for a whole squad of Security at her back.
Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3) Page 4
