“Yves!” She rushed over, arms out, and lowered her head directly into the path of the laser shots.
Fuck. He jerked his brace up and caught her right between the eyes. “Don’t move!”
Her eyes watered, arms still out.
A white light burned the end joint. The crutch disintegrated. The bottom six inches fell to the blackened floor and rolled against his calf.
Mercury stared at the smoking, charred fragment of the brace, eyes wide.
He pushed her to the glass. “Stay back.”
She retreated, looping her arms around her knees, hunched into the familiar ball.
He took control of the frigate. Hinges shrieked a warning, and the running lights flashed red. The doors were closing. Ah, he’d hit the emergency control rather than the regular control. On land, emergency doors forced enclosed spaces open, but in space, emergency doors forced open spaces closed. And quickly.
The standing units lowered their weapons and ran, leaping over fallen comrades shot by their own lasers. The heavy artillery unit rose, potted a few more shots against the crate and wall, and zoomed out of the closing gap, their bottom hull scraping the frigate floor.
He pushed himself to his feet, discarding the laser-shortened brace.
The frigate shuddered.
Although the door had closed, it hadn’t fully sealed. Sudden reverse pressure sucked it closed with a clang. So, the lounge had begun a catastrophic decompression-vent cycle. No one would be blasting them from inside.
Mercury clapped her hands over her ears.
Yves gripped the tablet under one arm and used the other to position his body into a rolling tripod-lope. As soon as the troops reorganized, they would deploy the hull-borers.
Only one advantage: They were too close to the shipping lanes to be blasted into space.
He needed to be beyond hub periphery by the time the small machinery bored through. Depending on how quickly the z-class reestablished control, the odds were very low that they would make it.
But that could be okay.
He had located an escape pod.
~*~*~*~
Zenya’s warship screamed in super-accelerated orbit around Sentinel Hub, whipping past a Tube that led to Onyx Hub, then one that led to Hyacinth Hub, and rapidly approaching the one that led to Cloverleaf. She moved inward, weaving between ships into a slower lane. Guardian Hub pinged her as she moved closer to an approach. She replied that she was not looking to dock. Guardian read her clearance codes—prepaid, because she was Faction—and allowed her to continue around the hub.
On her screen, the disaster in Arrivals Lounge 422-N reached its conclusion.
It was so cute watching the y-class lure her into sacrificing her control screen so he could decouple the ship. He had no idea she’d allowed him to go.
He was about to have far bigger problems than a handful of attack droids.
The head of Hope Station pinged her screen.
She sighed—like clockwork—and answered. “Yes, Bobby?”
The distinguished woman shifted her collar and composed her features. “Representative Sen. There has been an unfortunate development with the criminals. Let me apprise you—”
“Shoot the frigate,” she said.
The woman blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You let the criminals get away.” She disguised her smile behind her robot’s impassivity. “Now you have to blast it, like we discussed.”
“But it’s in the shipping lanes!”
People simply could not think for themselves.
“An eight-second pulse will blast it out of the shipping lanes,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “Then slice it in half with a Proximity Field Adjuster and vaporize the remains.”
The woman frowned, her white brows almost comically confused. “We are required to give fair warning before using the PFA.”
“After the arrivals lounge, I think they know you intend to use force.”
“But—but—the debris—no, the forces alone— We’ll take off half our own station, to say nothing of the danger to passing ships. And—”
She blathered on about risk to life and profit margin.
Well, if she didn’t vaporize the remains, the target’s possibility of survival went from sixty to eighty-five. Too high. The y-class would suspect Zenya’s game.
After all, she didn’t want them actually dead. She needed Yves to cinch Mercury’s head into the noose himself. Otherwise, he might realize the Faction was using him as bait, and he might accidentally tip off the rogue.
Plus, it would be less fun if Zenya had to kill everyone herself.
Zenya finally waved at the manager to stop. “You have to do something. Send in manned drones with assault equipment.”
The woman blinked rapidly. “Is that really necessary?”
“No, because manned drones will take a hundred standard human-hours longer than a simple vapor-pulse.”
“Yes, but we’re slicing a ship in half. In space. Is it really necessary to send a unit to individually annihilate the debris?”
If Yves|Santiago didn’t survive, molten scrap would be too good a fate for him.
The target, of course, could easily expire. Humans were so fragile. But oh well, that wasn’t her problem.
Zenya shrugged. “I’m happy to personally vaporize every living molecule within Hope Station. Actually, within the whole Cloverleaf. To be safe, you understand.”
The woman swallowed. “Thank you for your advice and remote assistance in this matter, Representative Sen.”
She leaned back. “Call me when you’re sure they’re dead.”
The connection ended on the Hope Station side.
This assignment wasn’t exactly interesting yet, but the y-class had mildly surprised her.
She would give him another orbit to make it count.
~*~*~*~
Seconds after they blasted off from the station, Mercury dropped her hands from her ringing ears—again—and fought her nausea and disorientation as she rose, fell, and crawled across the frigate after Yves. His simple plan, using nothing but glass and mirrors, had worked. If he ran from the door, she probably needed to run too.
Wherever he went, she needed to be.
The frigate shuddered again, as though it were being bombarded.
She crawled to her feet and scrambled after the disappearing figure. “Yves!”
“Hurry,” his voice floated back.
Catching up to him wasn’t hard, although she did have to give him a wide berth to avoid getting caught in his strange swinging gate. “You saved me.”
His answer came through clenched teeth. “Not yet.”
They raced along the soft red glow of small floor light-cells, heading in a completely different direction from their living area. “Our tools are that way.”
“We have to get to the front.” He breathed hard. He was not an athletic robot. “One of the crates contains—”
Abruptly, the gravity failed.
Her stomach shot for her throat. They rose into the air, along with the crates and junk, spinning helplessly.
“Shit.” He swung around and grappled her, squeezing her to his chest while they slowly rotated upwards into the cavernous hold. Without letting her go, he manipulated the tablet behind her back. “Shit. Hold on.”
She clung to him while the world turned upside down. Crates arced past them, half-ton bricks floating in space. Her stomach wheeled.
He shoved a floating crate up to the ceiling and used the opposing force to hook the brace on a flooring tile. “Hold on to my back.”
She swallowed nausea and clasped her arms around his neck. “What happened?”
He stuffed the screen down his flight suit and pushed them across the ship. “We’re hit.”
Her stomach made another leap for her mouth, even as the rest of her organs jerked toward her free-floating feet. “Oh.”
Loss of gravity was a Big Bad. In the hierarchy of seven deadly sins, explosive dec
ompression took the top position, then loss of gravity, loss of air, visible fire, drowning, freezing, and uncontrolled radiation. The first would kill you instantly, while the last one could take hours or years. Uncontrolled gravity either turned people into a pudding smear or meant life support had ceased to function.
“The engines are restarting,” he said, making her feel briefly better.
“A temporary flux?”
“In addition to interrupting the engines, the force pushed us sideways a significant distance.” He swam up the floor. “I assume when they lock onto our new trajectory, they will hit us again.”
The floor hummed.
He sailed into it, wrapping his arms around her, and rolled hard to the right. Her head smacked the metal. All around them, giant crates crashed, bounced, slid, and banged. He hugged her until the deafening noise stopped. One hand protectively cupped the back of her head, and she realized they were sitting up.
But the shock of the fall shook the truth loose in her brain. She had been tricked into tiptoeing around her fear. Hiding from her fear, and not facing her true, best self.
She was afraid of screwing up. She was afraid of hurting her family. She was afraid of making the wrong choice, the choice that would make her uncle shake his head and swear he had taught her better, the choice that would make her sister and half-brother hear about later and cry.
But that wasn’t how she lived her life. She leapt without looking all the time. If she fell, she got up, and if she skinned her knee, she slapped on a synth-skin bandage and kept leaping.
Now, a sexy and gorgeous android was holding her in his arms. He wanted her to teach him the heights of ecstasy, and she put him off until…when? Seriously, what the hell was she thinking?
“You okay?” His voice sounded strangely soft next to her ear. “One of those bangs was your head.”
“Fine,” she promised, although her head rang like a bell and she felt cross-eyed. “I just figured everything out.”
“Great. Let’s go.” He squeezed her then rolled to his feet with his crutch. A maze of crates blocked the way. He swore, consulted his screen, and swore again.
She rested against a precariously balanced crate. “Don’t worry. The way will clear when we get hit again.”
He cut his gaze at her. “A second direct hit is the last thing we want.”
They scrambled through the tumbled crates. He pressed the screen against the one he had been seeking and tapped in a code. The top fell in and the sides fell outward, making them both dodge away from the tumbling contents.
“That’s way easier than an electric wedge,” she said, catching her breath.
A big glass oval rested in the middle of the junk. It was the kind they used to shoot smaller crates down pneumatic tubes in old footage of frontier outposts, and it looked about as old as space travel.
She reached up and tapped the glass. “Are you sure this can fly?”
“It doesn’t have to fly.” He gripped the ancient wheel on the top of the oval and cracked the hatch inward. “It has to withstand pressure.”
His arms bulged through the ripped, blackened suit as he flexed himself up, into the glass. She clambered up the junk pile and crawled in after him. The oval rested at a fifty-degree tilt, so to sit in the single seat, he had to lie horizontal to the floor and strap himself in, cinching upward. The old-style straps did not self-tighten. He held up the screen for illumination and studied the simple levers. She sat on the curved floor—technically, the glass wall behind the seat—and watched him.
He tapped a big black button in the middle of the console. It made a satisfying click as it depressed. Nothing happened.
“It’s dead.” He blew out his disappointment. “Completely dead. If we rolled the unit into full radiation for a week, maybe it could power up, and maybe it would all drain right out again. In either case, there’s no way to run a full diagnostic.”
He unstrapped himself and slid upward, out of the seat, toward her. He rolled over and crawled, elbow over elbow, screen tight under one armpit, his legs dragging uselessly behind.
“Where are you going?” she asked as he scooted past her.
His dirt-grimed hands gripped the hatch. “I’ve got to find an alternate power source.”
She put her hand on his ankle. It was cold. “You said it might drain.”
“And it might not. Even if I can’t power it up, I need to install an emergency transmitter and the basic components of life support. You’ve got maybe two hours’ worth of oxygen, assuming there isn’t a leak, and you’d have to be shot out of an anti-particle cannon to reach a station in two hours.”
The frigate shuddered again. The running lights flickered, and the capsule shifted on the junk pile. In the distance, crates fell, booming.
Her grip on his leg tightened. She had to tell him everything. Everything. “I’m sorry I broke your crutch.”
“A laser broke it.”
“I moved when you said not to move.”
He paused then released the hatch and slid down the curved glass to her level. “You’re going to be fine.”
The capsule shifted again. Something crashed and tinkled in the red glow.
She couldn’t release him. Apparently, the fear had been closing her mouth for so long that now it took all her will to break open and tell him the truth. “I…I’m sorry I made your people turn against you.”
A brow rose. He curled a finger under her palm and pressed his thumb to the back of her hand, stroking her. “They were acting illogically.”
She accepted his comfort and the long, sensual strokes of his powerful thumb across hers. He was warm and vital and doing his damnedest to keep her alive, even to the point of defying the Robotics Faction. He still might not survive meeting her. All he’d asked in return was one thing. And she had been too afraid to give it to him.
Mercury swallowed and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll teach you everything I know about a physical relationship.”
There. Out all at once, and immediately, a weight lifted from her shoulders and she felt a hundred times better.
He stilled.
She squeezed his hands. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
His eyes seemed to turn luminous, more gold than blue, in the odd light. “Everything?”
“Everything, so much as I’m able.” Hair fell into her mouth and she pulled it out impatiently. “But you should be realistic. It’s not going to be useful for anyone but me.”
“I don’t want anyone but you.” He stroked her cheek. “So let me save you.”
Yes. She leaned into his touch. “Find yourself some oxygen and we’ll continue.”
“The oxygen is for you,” he said, amused. “I can go twenty hours in a vacuum.”
“It’s weird when someone goes longer than twenty seconds without breathing,” she said. “Don’t sacrifice yourself or anyone else for me.”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
She swallowed again. He melted her with one look, and threw his rock-hard body into danger to protect her, and got all scorched and grimed. She wanted the whole adventure, despite knowing the risks. He rubbed her right, and saved her life, and turned her on.
He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and drew her close. He pressed his forehead to hers, bending so she only rested gently against the unblemished part of his skin. “Thank you.”
She licked her lips. “Yes. I mean, thank you.”
He rubbed her cheek and started to let go.
“Wait. You don’t…” She licked her lips again. “Now you don’t want to kiss me?”
He groaned. “If I let myself taste you now, I will still be tasting you when they breach the hull.”
She fought her leaping heart. “A few minutes... We probably have a few minutes.”
“Don’t tempt me.” He gripped the hatch again and pushed himself out of it. “You stay here.”
No. She followed to the edge. “I’ll help you.”
<
br /> “You are a help, but you need to stay here.”
She started to protest.
He silenced her with a kiss. A quick one, to drag her breath away, and his too. He pulled back with a groan, slithered down the junk pile, and gripped his crutch. “If you hear anything, close the hatch.”
“Anything like what?” she called.
He paused and looked back at her. His profile, so beautiful, glowed in red silhouette against the dark metal crates. “Anything like the ship breaking apart.”
Then he turned and staggered between the jumbled crates.
CHAPTER NINE
Mercury slid deeper into the pod.
She didn’t want to die. She also didn’t want to stay in this dim pod, in the near darkness, all alone for however long it took Yves to find an atmospheric conditioner. Next time, she would demand to go with him.
Mercury pulled herself down into the pilot’s chair and clicked the big black power button. Nothing happened.
Was there anything Yves could have missed?
Uh-oh, there was. Hiding under the seat, most likely dropped and then kicked as she had stopped him from leaving, lay his screen. He needed it to read the contents listings and break open the crates.
She grabbed it and started climbing to the hatch.
White light burned her eyeballs.
She clapped her hand over her eyes, but the light seared through. A whooshing sound sucked her toward the opening. The hatch swung closed and she smacked into it. Massive booms, groans, and shrieking hit the capsule in successive waves, and then abruptly disappeared as the sound waves lost medium to travel through.
The sides of the frigate peeled back, launching her stomach into her mouth and the frigate’s contents into open space.
Her hair, the screen, and her clothes floated up to her face. As the frigate halves fell away, crates flinging their contents around her, star-spatter filled the horrifying view beyond the glass. Her tube slowly rotated, end over end, disappearing into the vastness.
She stopped herself against the glass.
Yves was out here. Weightless, alone, with nothing but a brace.
She grabbed his screen, pulled herself into the restraints, and practiced her childhood emergency training. Don’t throw up in an out-of-control zero-G. Everything will be fine. She forced her swelling fingers to touch the screen. Numbers flew at her face. She swallowed hard and concentrated. This screen could locate Yves or make an emergency signal for a passing ship, perhaps. Let rescuers know she was here.
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