by Zoe York
“Station’s fire-fighting squad?” Striker asked slowly, looking around at walls decorated with scorches from laser blasts and dangling ceiling panels that had never been replaced. “What makes you think this hole even has such a thing?”
“It might not, but that’s even better for us. We’ll borrow a couple of maintenance uniforms and show up at the ship to do a search.” Marat eyed Striker’s grenades. “I think I can modify a couple of those and use the chemicals to quietly start a fire in some back cabin, and then we can get Ying and deal with Wolf while his people are trying to put it out.”
“We?” Striker jammed a fist against his hip. “We?”
“I assumed you would want a part of the heroics, Chief of Boom. So you could write about them in your comics.” In truth, Marat did not expect Striker to help—he would settle for Striker turning his back and pretending not to see Marat escaping into the station. Still, though he spoke calmly, his plan daunted him, and he wouldn’t mind help. If Wolf’s crew was even half the size of Mandrake’s, sneaking around the ship and getting to the captain would be challenging, even if he managed to send smoke billowing down the halls.
“Sergeant Hazel would shoot me if I went along with anything you’re saying. And the captain would do worse than shoot me. You ever seen him lose his temper? He’s killed crew members who have crossed him. With his bare hands.”
Marat had heard such stories, even if he hadn’t seen it for himself, but he kept his face sturdily optimistic. He knew that had happened before the captain had met Ankari, and he doubted he would kill someone with his bare hands in front of her. Marat would just have to make sure she was around when he returned to receive his punishment.
“How can he be mad at the two men who are going to bring his girlfriend the cook she’s been dreaming of?” Marat asked.
Striker snorted. “As if that crazy girl is going to want to join the company.”
“I think she will. She doesn’t have anything else left in the world.” A feeling Marat could empathize with. He wished he had already made Ying the offer, not that he had the power to do so. Still, Mandrake might feel differently about someone who wanted to sign on versus what he could only assume was a fling on a space station.
“Shit, Azarov. What exactly were you doing in that tunnel when we came up? You didn’t tame that she-tiger, did you?”
“Of course not.” As if anyone could “tame” Ying. He wouldn’t even want to try. Earning a smile was much more appealing.
“Huh. You think she’d let me have another good look at that tattoo? For my comics. I want to make sure it’s realistic.”
“I think she’d jab a pen in your eye if you tried to lift her hem.”
“Oh, I know that, but I thought you could lift it, and I could stand back.” Striker sighed and peered over his shoulder toward the airlock for a long minute.
Sensing the decision he was making, Marat kept his retort to himself.
“Too bad I left my flamethrower in my cabin,” Striker said.
Marat grinned. “You’ll help?”
“I’m not promising anything,” Striker said, pointing a finger at Marat’s nose, “but you show me that you can make some trouble happen on that pirate’s ship without him knowing who did it, and maybe I’ll go with you to start some fires. This is my shore leave, after all. I’m supposed to be having a good time.”
Since Striker was agreeing to help, Marat wouldn’t question the morality of someone who considered lighting fires a good time.
“Just need to find a public terminal I can use.” In case Wolf had some good intel people, Marat did not want to risk connecting to the pirate’s ship from his own tablet. He might know about fire suppression software and hardware, but he didn’t know a thing about hacking or hiding his virtual tracks. “What are the odds that computer time will be reasonably priced here?”
“About the same as the odds of me getting another look at that girl’s tattoo.” Striker sighed and cast a longing look toward the airlock before he and Marat turned down a corridor and headed in another direction.
• • • • •
Ying took small, demure steps as she approached the airlock, keeping everything clenched so she would not lose her clandestine cargo. Sergeant Hazel walked behind her, a pistol jammed realistically against her spine. So long as she didn’t trip, Ying should be fine. Or so she told herself. That did not keep her heart from hammering against her ribs and sweat from trickling down the sides of her face.
A security android stood beside the airlock, watching her approach with its pale face emotionless, though she caught its lips moving slightly as it murmured into a comm. Ying wondered how thorough of a search it would do before letting her on board. With luck, it wouldn’t expect an attack from a bed slave.
As Ying stopped in front of the android, a shadow darkened the back of the tube attached to the airlock. Captain Teneris Wolf strode toward her, a pleased smile on his hard face. Ying washed all of the expression from her own face, though it was hard not to show the hatred she felt for him, or the fear that churned inside of her. She had hoped to deal with his security people first and have time to prepare herself before she had to face him.
“Well, well,” he said, eyeing her up and down. He clucked with distaste at the shabby robe. “Is my property being returned to me? How thoughtful.”
Sergeant Hazel said nothing.
Wolf reached for Ying’s face, as if to clasp her chin in his hand. Forgetting about the pistol at her back, she dodged to the side and slapped his arm away. That was her intent, but he anticipated the attack and moved even more quickly than she had. Though she managed to get her fists up in a boxer’s defense, he bowled into her, nearly knocking her from her feet.
Afraid she would lose the capsule of poison, she didn’t dance away as quickly as she might have otherwise. He caught her by the robe and spun her, hefting her from her feet and slamming her against the wall beside the android. As his face came in, his lips rearing back from his teeth, Ying tried to ram her knee into his groin. She caught his thigh instead, and the blow did not slow him. He pinned her with his weight and leaned in.
She thought he would inflict some kiss on her or maybe bite her, but he stopped with his lips two inches from hers, his eyes gleaming as they stared into hers.
“I looked forward to breaking you when you were just a slave,” he whispered, “but now that I know whose daughter you are, I will relish it even more.”
Even though he was hurting her, his body mashing against her breasts and his hands digging in, she gave him her best defiant sneer. “Been doing research, have you? Impressive. I wouldn’t have guessed you could master using the network.”
“I’ve mastered much. Far more than your weak father ever did.” He grinned, then his head darted in, and a flash of pain came from the side of her head before she realized what he had done. He’d bitten her ear hard enough to draw blood.
She tried to twist away, but he was easily twice her weight. Her toes barely touched the ground, and she had no leverage. He pulled his head back just enough to look her in the eyes again. His grin almost seemed to hold madness this time, and his lips glistened red with her blood. He ran his tongue slowly across the lower one and ground his hips into her.
Ying had expected this, all of this, but she couldn’t quite sublimate the panic that threatened at the feel of his hard cock through his trousers. Worse, she worried that she wouldn’t have the opportunities she had hoped for, now that he knew exactly who she was. He would be aware of her reputation, her education, and what she could do.
As much as she wanted to kill him herself, Ying couldn’t help but glance past his shoulder to see if Hazel was still there and what she thought of his. With his back to her, maybe she could shoot him.
Indeed, Hazel hadn’t lowered her pistol when Ying had lunged away. But she was looking at the android, not at Wolf. It held a pistol aimed at her face, even as hers was aimed at its chest. With them standing off against each oth
er, nobody was in a position to shoot Wolf.
Ying closed her eyes, wishing Marat could have come along. But he must have been dragged back to his ship by now.
Wolf clasped his hand around Ying’s throat and stepped back. With his body no longer against hers, she should have dropped to the floor, but his powerful arm kept her pressed into the wall, her windpipe squeezed under his grip. She gritted her teeth, refusing to whimper or cry out as all of her weight dangled from her neck.
“Take her inside,” Wolf told the android, “and search her thoroughly.” His eyes glinted. “Very thoroughly.”
“Yes, sir.” The android tilted its head toward Hazel, not moving right away. It did grab Ying’s arm, its grip even more steel-like than Wolf’s.
Wolf released her abruptly and faced Hazel, a gun finding its way into his own hand so quickly that Ying did not see him draw.
“Did you need something else, Sergeant Hazel?” Wolf drawled. “I’m guessing from your presence here as delivery girl that Mandrake knows he was in the wrong and you’ve come to beg for my pardon.”
Hazel snorted. “Eat your cock, Wolf.” She jammed her pistol into its holster and walked away, either confident that Wolf wouldn’t shoot—or confident in her armor.
Ying tried not to feel like every hope was abandoning her as the sergeant walked away. She reminded herself that she had never expected help. Of course, she had also hoped Wolf wouldn’t figure out who she was until it was too late. She had wanted to feed him that information as he lay dying on the floor at her feet.
As the android dragged her into the airlock, she lamented that her scenario could never happen now.
— EIGHT —
Marat hunched close to the holodisplay, keeping it to a narrow view since the computer terminals were out in the open concourse, with people streaming past, brushing his shoulder with their shopping bags. A cleaning robot with rotating mops nearly ran over his foot. What was on his display probably didn’t matter to anyone here, but he couldn’t help but glance around as he typed in commands, trying to find a way to access the pirate ship’s network. Unfortunately, the old override codes hadn’t worked. He was disappointed, but not surprised. It had been several years since he had served on that model of ship, and even if the pirates hadn’t changed the codes, Fleet might have in that time. Since he no longer had access to the Fleet network, he could not check.
“Done yet?” came Striker’s voice from behind his shoulder.
It was only when he spoke that Marat realized he hadn’t done so for quite some time. Earlier, Striker had been pestering him with questions and sighing dramatically to show his boredom.
“Trying something new.” Marat glanced back, then looked again. “Where did you get that?” In addition to his pistols and bandolier of grenades, Striker now wore a compact backpack attached by a hose to a two-handed weapon with a broad metal muzzle. “Is that a flamethrower?”
Striker grinned. “Wilma.”
“Pardon?”
“Her name is Wilma, and yes, she’s a flamethrower. A Darkstar 3636, one-hundred-meter range with a burn time of—”
“Striker.” Marat lifted a hand. “There’s no way Wolf’s security is going to let us walk onto the ship with obvious weapons, especially not with obvious weapons bigger than a tank.”
“I thought I could make her look like a fire extinguisher.” Striker patted the side of the flamethrower lovingly.
Marat groaned and turned back to the terminal. If this next attempt to get in didn’t work, they might have to try a frontal assault with the flamethrower, after all. Two men against a crew of fifty to one hundred did not sound promising.
“Any luck?” Striker asked.
“I’ve learned that the pirate ship’s computers haven’t accepted any of the Fleet-wide updates in the last five years.”
“Was that a yes?”
“It means that the old override codes, the ones I know, should work. But they’re not. Oh, I just realized...” Marat went back to typing, his fingers flying through the air over the holo keys.
“That the flamethrower would be an effective way to set their alarms off? Without computers?”
“Once you agree to help, you throw everything into it, don’t you?”
“I’m a good soldier.”
Marat snorted as he hit the last button. He leaned back, holding his breath.
“What’re you doing now?” Striker asked.
“Before, I was trying to give the live operating system some orders. Now, I’m trying the testing system. All we need is, hah.” Marat pointed at a flashing “Accepted” that displayed in the air.
“What’s that mean?”
“There’s a little button in engineering that’s now flashing. I’ve got their fire suppression system stuck in a testing cycle, so the software that monitors everything will be getting uppity because that means the main system is offline.”
“An uppity button. That’ll make those pirates wet themselves.”
“It’ll open a door.” Marat shut down the terminal, wincing when he saw the charges that had been wracked up in the hour he had been working. Seeing how much time had passed made him wince for another reason. Hazel would have turned Ying over to Wolf by now. She could already be in all kinds of trouble.
“If you say so.”
“Come on. We need to find uniforms, preferably with helmets to cover our faces.” Marat glanced at Striker. “We need to find someplace to hide your weapons too. There’s no time for you to go back to the ship.”
“We can hide them on me.”
“The odds of us passing as station firefighters are low, as it is, especially since Wolf and his androids have already seen us. Carrying a flamethrower would only be acceptable if you were lighting back-fires on the side of a mountain somewhere.”
“Wilma can light back-fires.” Striker patted the flamethrower again. “We’ll just do it in engineering instead of in a forest.”
Shaking his head, Marat jogged toward a lift. Earlier, while he had been waiting on the network, he had memorized the route to the small fire station on Level Five.
When the lift doors opened, two security officers walked out. Marat ducked his head and slipped past them, hoping they wouldn’t glance twice at him. He also hoped they wouldn’t stop Striker and ask why he was carrying armament enough to take out the entire station.
They didn’t stop him, but one of the men did pause and look back. He frowned, lowering his hand to his pistol. Both of the men wore armor, but Striker growled, and neither pulled a weapon. As soon as the lift doors closed, Marat slammed his palm against the panel for the level they needed.
“Wolf got station security paid?” Striker asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe your grenades just made them uneasy.”
“No laws against going about armed here.”
“You’re more than armed. You look like you’re ready to rob a bank.”
“Rob? I could level a bank with all I got. Too bad hardly any banks actually hold gold anymore. You think the one here does?”
“Not now, Striker.” The lift doors opened, and Marat jogged into a corridor that was thankfully devoid of shoppers and security officers. Following the route he had memorized, he took two rights, then a left before stopping in front of a door at the end of a short hall. Judging by the pictographic sign warning about chemicals inside and the sprinkler system schematics bolted to the wall, he had found the right place. Unfortunately, the door did not open when he waved a hand at the sensor.
“You need help?” Striker dug into one of several pouches on his belt. Between the pouches, the ammo, and the weapons hanging there, it was a wonder his trousers stayed up.
“Of the explosive variety?”
“What other variety would there be?”
“I thought you might have something subtle, quiet, and that wouldn’t do permanent damage,” Marat said. “Like a lock-picking tool.”
“Please, I’m no thief. Besides I’ve got all the tools I need,
right here.” Striker pushed Marat to the side.
As much as Marat hated the idea of blowing open any doors or doing anything else that would cause Mandrake Company trouble, they didn’t have time to locate and bribe someone who had access. Though he worried there would be consequences later, he stepped back and let Striker work.
Fortunately, Striker didn’t simply stick a bomb to the door and back away. He rapped his knuckles on the metal wall beside the door in a couple of places, then attached a black sticky patch. He jammed a button-sized device—a detonator?—into the middle of the patch, then backed up, waving for Marat to do the same.
The button disappeared in flame, then a moment later, a gush of smoke came from the patch. A sizzling sound followed, then a square of metal clunked to the floor. Striker fired into the now-open piece of the wall, melting circuits. The door opened an inch, hissed, and stuck. Growling, Striker thrust his hand into the gap, leaned his shoulder into the jam, and pushed. His face turned red before the door finally groaned open.
Striker grinned and backed away, then tapped his biceps. “Tools.”
“Uh, right.” Marat made himself add, “Thanks,” though he couldn’t help but think about how Mandrake Company would now be getting irate calls from the station as well as from the local pirates. “Come on. There should be some suits in here.”
“Suits?”
“Like combat armor, except rated to withstand extreme heat and toxic environmental conditions.” Marat jogged past a big control station with cameras that monitored the different levels of the station. Some of the feeds were blacked out, and the dust on the panel and the smell of moldy food left behind a console somewhere suggested this room wasn’t maintained often. He doubted they would find suits that could actually do what he had promised, but so long as they came with helmets that would partially hide their occupants’ faces... “Here they are.”
