Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3)

by Donna S. Frelick

  The tracker headed for the exit. “If he has Rayna, he’ll want time to work. He’ll be in the deepest, darkest, least-accessible area he can find. There’s a sump pump and plumbing cleanout in the southwest corner of the lowest level—a room about four meters square. That’s where I would go, if it were me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Cold, like the metal tables of the examination room. And hard, like the stone floor of a prison. Weak, unable to summon the will to fight, like so many others before her. Dying, the life flowing out of her minute by minute.

  Rayna swam her way back to consciousness, cataloguing the physical sensations of her body and the rough floor where she lay curled around her leaking belly. The details of her surroundings gradually came into focus: the wire cutting into her wrists and ankles; the dust and grime covering every surface in the small room; the whirr and gurgle of a massive pump coming on at intervals and pushing water through the pipes that ran along one wall; the smell of sewage. And behind it all, the coppery tang of blood and the punch of pain that lit up her belly with every breath.

  The bleeding was a slow seep of misery, not the frantic gush that would kill her in minutes. The Thrane had been precise. He’d wanted more time with her.

  “Fucking bastard,” she panted. “How ’bout I just rip this hole open and ruin your fun? Bleed all over the floor nice and quiet and go out on my terms?”

  The thought was followed by a streak of curses in all the languages Rayna knew. Like she’d ever take the easy way out. No, this would be a fight to the ugly ass end. And if she wanted to keep her strength a few minutes longer, she needed to find a way to slow the flow of blood.

  The long strip of cloth that had held her home-made knife in place was still wrapped around her forearm. Rexus Kor had been arrogant enough to think he didn’t need to bind her hands behind her; she could reach the wrappings with her teeth. She attacked them, picking at them to find an edge, her mind focused on nothing but the task. Until suddenly her head jerked up, sending a flare of pain through her belly.

  “Portal’s balls in a fucking vise!” The laser knife! Kor couldn’t have been stupid enough to leave it in her boot. She drew up her feet, ignoring the agony in her gut, and reached down the inside of her boot. There! The arrogant ass hadn’t thought it necessary to search her. He thought he’d disarmed her by taking the shiv. She huffed out a thin laugh. “Joke’s on you, asshole.”

  Not that it was going to be cake to cut through her bonds with that laser. It was a precision tool, all right, but it wasn’t designed for surgery, and her skin was swelling around the wire.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, suck it up.” She settled herself on the floor, put her wrists on her knees to brace them and flipped on the tiny switch. The barely perceptible blue line lanced out from the tip of the knife; she pointed it at the wire crossing the back of her left wrist and gritted her teeth as the laser hit flesh and metal at once. In seconds she’d severed the band of wire, leaving a line of fresh scorching across the bruise the metal had cut into her wrist. The rush of blood—and feeling—to her hand made her want to scream.

  When she could move her left hand again, she unwound what wire she could from her right wrist and cut away the rest. There was some slack on this side, so she avoided the burns she’d experienced earlier. When she’d finished with her wrists, she did the same for her ankles.

  But time was running out. Her lap was cold and sticky now with blood from the wound in her belly, and her head swam with every movement. She unwrapped the cloth from her arm and did what she could to fold the material into the slick gash below her ribs. It hurt like a sonofabitch, and by the time she was finished an inky black fog had reached up to claim her once again.

  Nothing much had changed when she woke an unknown time later. She was weaker, much weaker. And thirsty, her tongue thick and clinging to the roof of her mouth. Her arms and legs were like thermocrete, and moving only brought agony to her belly, so she soon gave up.

  It would be so easy to let go. Part of her really wanted to. She wondered again why she couldn’t do it. The image of her parents flashed into her head. Not as she had known them—old, worn-out, damaged by their ordeal—but as she had seen them in the Thrane’s torturous vision—impossibly young, afraid, but strong, so strong. And her mother’s face, even glimpsed as a wavering reflection in glass or metal, was so like her own it was like watching herself go through the processing center.

  Rayna’s parents had never told her anything about their abduction or their escape, other than to say Rescue was responsible for their salvation. They had said almost nothing about her birth. Could she have been conceived before they were Taken? If that was true the Grays would have postponed her parents’ removal to a labor camp, preferring to keep them for breeding at the processing center. But if they had discovered her mother was resistant, they would have battered at her mind over and over, determined to break her.

  Rescue must have gotten to her parents before their baby was born. But not soon enough to save Shirley Carver’s mind. Tom might have retained enough to be sent back home, but if Rayna knew her dad, he wouldn’t have gone without Shirley. So the couple ended up on Terrene, where little Rayna was born, and made a new life.

  It hadn’t been such a bad life, as Rayna remembered it now. No one had it easy in the polyglot colony. There were shortages of the basics—food, water, housing, energy—but virtually anything could be had on the black market if you had the credits or something to barter. Tom Carver worked in the recycling center, an unglamorous job, to be sure, but he was a skillful picker and trader. The family lived decently on what he could barter for in the market. He was quiet, protective of his wife and daughter. And devastated when Rayna decided to join Rescue.

  Rayna had always seen her parents as victims in need of saving. She saw everything differently now. They’d had to be so much stronger than she’d imagined to survive the Grays. But they had survived—for her sake. And her father had refused to go home to Earth out of love for his wife and child. Rayna had always believed their love had made them targets at the hands of the Grays. Instead it had protected them, both during their captivity and after.

  A rusty, grating laugh escaped from her throat. “You stupid child!” How could you live almost thirty years and not see such a thing? And Sam was right. You’re afraid to love him.

  She supposed she should thank Kor for these insights before she killed him—she glanced down at the cloth under her hand, soaked now with bright red—or he killed her.

  “Fuck that.” She struggled to her knees and swung her head from side to side, looking for the laser knife. The tool was not far; she clutched it in one fist and lurched to her feet.

  She found the door, durasteel and locked, of course. But the knife . . . her head floated like a body in zero-G. She braced herself against the wall with one shoulder and raised the laser to the lock. Her eyes refused to focus. This was delicate work, finding and melting the correct part of the mechanism without fusing the entire lock. Black spots threatened to steal her sight. Maybe she should wait.

  “No!” She shook her head to clear it. “Just do this and get the fuck out of here.” She hit the switch on the knife, gently inserted the thin, blue line into the lock, heard a sizzle and a pop. She had time to smile before the black swept up to cover her like a thick blanket and she slid unconscious to the floor.

  “Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Sam couldn’t see two meters in front of him in the murk, a close, hot dark filled with the smell of grease and metal, thermocrete and dust. Functioning machinery surrounded them, though Sam had no idea what the big, enclosed things powered or moved. Were they part of the plumbing system or the power grid? The recycling system or the ventilation? All he knew was that they ran loud and they ran hot. At the moment no one was here to monitor or service them, but the Thrane could be hiding anywhere in or around them. He and Gabriel hadn’t found Rayna, and the alarms should be going off any minute.

  Gabrie
l’s gaze shot in his direction. “We’re almost there. And relax. I don’t sense him anywhere near here.”

  Sam had to admit the tracker was a useful sonofabitch, though his skills were enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. In this case, especially, it was necessary to fight fire with fire. Their enemy, too, would be able to sense them with more than just eyes and ears.

  Gabriel jogged ahead as the space opened up in the large, underground chamber. The only lights illuminated gauges and panels on the equipment in the room; Sam was forced to keep close behind his friend or lose his way, even though the floor was smooth under his feet and nothing rose up to bark his shins. They crossed nearly the entire length of the space before Gabriel finally slowed, turned and inclined his head in the direction of a durasteel door.

  —This is it. No sign he’s inside, but he might be well shielded.

  Sam had experienced Gabriel’s telepathy before in combat situations, but it still shook him. No one liked to have another person in his head, and those mulaak Gray slime lizards had given him even more reason to want to keep his thoughts to himself. He shivered, and nodded.

  They lined up on either side of the door, stunners at the ready, and Sam counted them down on his fingers. Three . . . two . . .

  —WAIT! Gabriel held up a hand, then pointed. The door is unlocked.

  In fact, it was slightly ajar. Did that mean the Thrane was here? Or had he left, with Rayna? They waited, listening. Nothing.

  Gabriel pushed at the door, opening it a crack. Sam saw a room just as the tracker had described it: maybe four meters on a side, ringed with large-gauge piping, a big sump pump in one corner and a plumbing cleanout in another. No Thrane. But, there, thank the gods! Huddled off to the side. It was his Rayna.

  Sam swung open the door and fell to his knees beside her. Then he saw the blood and his heart ripped open in his chest.

  “Ray! Look at me! Ah, fuck, what happened? Let me see. C’mon, let me look.” He was babbling, he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He just kept up a stream of talk as his hands scanned her body for the source of all that red. “Shalssiti pultafa! What has he done to you?”

  Gabriel knelt beside him. “Here. I have some supplies in my pack. Let me help.”

  Sam moved over to give the tracker room to work. As Gabriel cleaned the wound, sealed it with sprayskin and stuck a thick pad over it, Rayna finally opened her eyes.

  “Sam?” She frowned at him, gaze not quite in focus. “You’re not real.”

  “Oh, yeah, baby, I am.” He touched her face. “I’m here to take you home.”

  “All right, then who the hell is that, and why does he have his hands all over me?” She looked like she’d take a swing at him just as soon as she got her strength back.

  “My friend, Gabriel. But he’s done now, right, Gabriel?”

  The tracker’s lips curved upward. “Lift her up so I can wrap this around her middle.” He held a length of bandage in his hands, waiting for Sam to bring Rayna to a sitting position so he could secure the pad in place over her wound.

  Sam gathered her in his arms. The tension in her body told him she was trying to sit up on her own, but a quick glance at her face showed him the effort it cost her. He would have let her have her pride, knowing how stubborn she was, but at that moment red lights started flashing in the equipment room outside the door and alarms blared behind them.

  “Shit! The fire alarms!”

  Gabriel caught his gaze. “The Thrane will be coming back here to get his prize. We have to get out now.”

  Sam hauled Rayna to her feet and let the tracker wrap the bandage around her wound. Then he started to pick her up.

  “No!” She shook him off. “I’ll make it for a little while on my own. Give me that much, at least.”

  He picked her up anyway. “Point taken. You’re a scrapper, Little Bit. But you weigh less than a week’s rations. I’m packing you out of here. Otherwise you’ll slow us down.”

  He’d have laughed at the stream of curses that filled his right ear if they hadn’t been issued in such a shaky voice.

  Gabriel left the room ahead of them, surveying the larger mechanical chamber outside for any sign of the Thrane. He waved them on, and the three of them pounded through the cavernous space, their ears ringing with the echoing scream of the alarms, their vision distorted by the hellish red glare of the emergency lights.

  The exit was in sight, Gabriel framed in the light shining in from the hallway. Sam put on speed, ready to be free of the dark and the oppressive clank and pulse of the heavy machinery. The blast came from ahead to his right, tearing a hole in the world and filling it with white-hot light and searing heat. His feet left the floor and he flew, losing his grip on Rayna. He landed the gods knew how far away. Broken. Deaf. And alone.

  What the fuck happened? Rayna lay sprawled at the edge of a pile of rubble, covered with dust and small bits of debris. She could hear almost nothing; her ears seemed to be stuffed with foam. Her side hurt like a bastard—but that wasn’t from whatever had sent her to the floor. Then it all came back in a rush: Kor and the knife thrust and Sam and Gabriel and the bomb blast. Sam. Sam!

  She rolled over and managed to drag herself to her knees. “Sam!” She couldn’t see him. It was completely dark now, except for a few faint, fragmented rays of light, the source of which she couldn’t determine.

  She crawled, the twisted metal and jagged edges of the wrecked thermocrete shredding her hands and knees. “Sam, goddammit, answer me! Where the fuck are you?”

  She heard a moan, and though every movement tore at the wound in her belly and shot hot pain deep into her side, she scrambled over the debris toward the sound. “I hear you! I’m coming.”

  When the sound came again it was closer, and she soon found him, lying pinned under a slab of thermocrete the size of a bridge console. There was no hope of moving it without help. Where the hell was Gabriel?

  “Jesus God, sweets. How am I supposed to fix this?”

  He looked up at her and tried out a grin. “Unless you’ve got an AG lift or about ten guys, I don’t think you’ll be fixing this, Little Bit.” His breath was constricted, wheezing.

  She refused to believe there was nothing she could do. “What’s underneath you? If there’s enough debris holding you up, we could dig—”

  “No. Except for a few really uncomfortable pieces of slag, there’s just the floor.”

  She shouted for Gabriel, not caring if Kor could hear her. If the Thrane showed up, she would rip out his throat with her bare hands for this. Nothing answered her but the hiss of settling dust.

  “Rayna.”

  No. She wouldn’t lose him. Not like this, the breath squeezed out of him second by second.

  “Lie still. I’ll look for Gabriel and get this thing off you.”

  He grabbed her hand. “Ray. Stay with me. It won’t be long.”

  “Goddammit, Sam Murphy, don’t say that! Don’t you say that!”

  His face, pale against the shadows of the rubble at her knees, showed no pain, no emotion to match the desperation in her heart. “It’s okay. I’m a blackjack, remember? Short life span is part of the job description.”

  Blackjack. That’s when she knew. She wasn’t talking to Sam Murphy.

  Sam had no idea how long he lay amid the crumbled thermocrete and twisted metal, fighting for breath, wavering in and out of consciousness. Now, as his eyes regained their focus, they could tell him little in the dark and the swirling dust. He tried to move, but everything felt loose and slushy inside his torso, and ragged coughs brought up hot blood. His right side, from the ribs to the ankle, seemed broken into a thousand pieces of sharp glass. Fucking hell.

  He lifted his head, then struggled to his left elbow, though crushing pain sought to drive him back down again. “Rayna?” He couldn’t see her, and there was no sign of Gabriel, either. The configuration of the room they’d been in was unrecognizable after the blast, machinery and structure reduced to piles of rubble
. Please, gods, tell me she’s not in there.

  “Looking for someone?”

  Sam dropped off his elbow and twisted his head to the other side to see the owner of the voice, and a curse escaped his lips. He could make out a tall, well-muscled male in the dim light—the Thrane, it must be. And he had Rayna clutched tight in his grip.

  “Ray!”

  “I’m fine, Sam. Don’t bother getting up for this asshole.”

  He wanted to, gods knew he did, but that was impossible. He could only growl in frustrated fury.

  The Thrane laughed. “Get up? Oh, yes, by all means. Rescue your woman before I slice her eyeballs. And take her ears for souvenirs. And do other things. Until I finally decide to put her out of her misery.”

  Sam was in agony, but the pain had nothing to do with his injuries. He saw the fear on Rayna’s face, though she tried to hide it. Saw her struggle against the Thrane’s hold, with as little effect as a ten-year-old girl might have. Fight, he wanted to tell her. Fight harder!

  The Thrane pulled her closer, and Sam could see the glint of madness in the man’s black eyes. “You begin to understand now, don’t you.” His boot lifted and came down on Sam’s hip, crushing, crushing. “You’ve lost everything—your woman, your crew, your ship. You’re going to end just like you started. A slave.”

  Desperation washed over him in a choking wave, the pounding of his heart drowning out the sound of his enemy’s venomous words. But cutting through everything he suddenly heard Rayna’s voice. He looked up and realized it didn’t come from her lips. It was inside his head.

  Sam! Wake up, Sam! This isn’t real!

  Sam opened his eyes at last, and Rayna exhaled the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. He sat up so fast his head almost clipped her chin. Then she was in his arms, and she was holding on to him like she would never let go. Remembering the way he smelled, the way it felt to have him hold her, she almost forgot everything else.