Ashes and Metal

by Naomi Lucas

  “We’re going to fucking hide until I say we’re done hiding, and then we’re going to get ourselves to an escape pod.”

  Elodie chewed on the inside of her cheek just as her belly grumbled for food.

  “Them men up there are looking for anything and everything to save their own hides. Everyone’s on fucking edge.” He stopped and sighed. “If they use you to get to me... Elodie.” She blinked. He never called her by her name. “They’ll find out you’re a woman. We can’t let that happen.”

  Sweat coated her palms. “It won’t happen.”

  “It will! It’s a miracle you’re with me right now!” He cocked his head and ushered her deeper among the machines. “Let me try and save you, us, for as long as possible. If we’re lucky, this ship will land sooner than later, and we can climb our way out of the thrusters or warp drive.”

  Climbing deeper into the machines had never seemed so unappealing to her, but she took a step forward, hugging Gunner’s jacket tight around her. Every second was a battle for her not to turn around and find him; she wanted to find him and make sure he was safe, then scream at him a little, then kiss him for a little longer.

  We had a deal. Have. Have a deal.

  It frightened her how much she had come to depend on him in such a short amount of time. Maybe because he never lied to me? Even when it was something unbelievable, something seemingly impossible, he never lied. He never hurt me. His sharp face appeared in her mind, red eyes, and guns. It made her shiver and calm. It made her uneasy and content.

  As they traveled deeper, the sounds became more muted. Soon, the sirens were replaced altogether by the low hum of machines. The familiar silence was all at once soothing and dangerous, and she perked up, trying not to be lulled into a false sense of security by the nostalgia of it all. Even the wafting heat pulled at her concentration. Sweat had been a constant for her when on the job. Unlike some men, who went shirtless at times, she always had to wear a jacket to hide her figure.

  “There should be a break room somewhere further in,” her dad grumbled, ducking beneath a pipe.

  “You think this ship will have one?”

  “It’s got the workings of a Legionnaire Titan with freighter modifications, of course there’s an engineer’s room down here. They might have just filled it with bullshit, but doesn’t mean the floor plan is any different.”

  Several short minutes later her dad jittered, “There. There’s a door up ahead.”

  He lifted his keycard but she stopped him. “Don’t. They may be able to track access.”

  It took several minutes toying with the lock, but with both of them and the abandoned tools they had picked up on their journey into the innards, they unlocked the mechanism the old-fashioned way.

  A cold breeze hit her in the face, along with stale air and dust.

  Elodie took in a deep breath as she stepped in, seeing the array of lockers first, straight across, and the scuffed up shelving on the wall beside it. It was all so normal. So like any other ship she’d ever been on. The ping of a siren and a flashing red orb jutted out of the wall above her, and it was the only connection to the rest of the ship.

  The door closed behind with a thud and she moved deeper into the space. Behind the lockers was a mostly empty storage room, and beyond that was a lounge.

  “Dad, come look at this,” Elodie called. Chesnik stood up from the lock he was reinstalling on the door.

  The lounge was small but luxurious compared to the brig, with one steel table and four stools rooted to the ground, and a replicator. Elodie scrambled toward it and powered it on. Her heart pumped at the prospect of food. The panel lit up and the codes and choices were all there for the world to see. She saw stars in her eyes and for a brief moment, everything was right in the universe.

  “Try it,” her dad urged. They were kids in a candy shop as she coded in the machine for coffee.

  It thumped and ticked, the smell of burnt dust filling her nostrils, but a gel produced itself with clear, brown liquid within. She picked it up and marveled. A food replicator.

  “Well?”

  She plopped it into her mouth and moaned as the fake, fabricated, magnificent taste of black coffee spilled out and over every inch of her mouth.

  “Coffee,” she told him, eyes half closing in pleasure. Chesnik slapped her on the back and she let out a laugh. It startled her.

  “Good thing your old man is looking out for you.”

  “Yeah.” Elodie took a step back. “Yeah,” she repeated.

  She followed him into a side room that was lined wall-to-wall with empty bunk beds, and back out to the door next to it that led to a small washroom.

  She sank to the floor, staring at the turned-off faucet. Water. Fresh, running water. Moisture beaded her eyes and a warm arm went around her shoulder, joining her on the floor. Her tears fell like how the water would soon flow over her.

  “It’s okay, Ely. It’s okay. For now, we’re safe. There’s no two better people who know how to get lost in a ship than us. We’re safe.” Tears continued to fall and she scrubbed her face. “I would’ve never left you. I would’ve found a way to get you out, regardless of the opportunity that presented itself. Luck is on our side. It always has been and it always will be.”

  He tried to comfort her but it only made the floodgates open further. “That’s not it...” she began.

  “You’ve never left me, not once in your entire life, not once. I’m not a great man but I sure as hell got lucky enough to have a great child. Ever since your mom died...”

  “Please.” She didn’t want to hear it.

  “I ran and I took you with me, forced you into a life that you should never have experienced, and for all the stress of having you there, I loved every moment. I couldn’t do what was right and leave you behind. I tried. I made all the wrong decisions, knowing it was my way of trying to run away. But when it came down to it, it wasn’t enough and I brought you along on all my bad decisions.” His hold on her tightened. “And our luck hasn’t run out. We’ll get through this too, make it off this ship, and before you know it, this’ll all be a bad dream.”

  Elodie nodded, uncomfortable. The warning sounds pinged in the background. She pressed a hand into her heart and hoped it’d stop hurting—that the wariness would go away.

  One drop of water emerged at the edge of the faucet and her gaze zeroed in on it. Waiting for it to fall.

  “We stick together, okay?” Chesnik said. “You’ll never leave me?”

  Gunner’s face, welted with bruises, swollen, staring at her with impassive, dark eyes shot to her mind.

  “Never,” she whispered.

  He gave her another squeeze and then stood up, bringing her with him. “It’s settled then. I’m going to crack open the replicator and see what we have in terms of reagents. You go ahead and get cleaned up, you smell like a pig.”

  “As if you know what a pig smells like.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Do you really think it’ll be okay?”

  “If I have any say in our fates, yeah, it’ll be okay.” He patted his newfound gun and turned to leave. Her gaze followed him until she closed the door and silence filled the space.

  The only telling sign of an emergency was the flashing red light on the ceiling. Elodie stared at it as it stared back down at her.

  Red like his eyes.

  The orb grew in her mind and she watched it unblinking, willing for it to stop, and hating she wasn’t waiting in the brig for Gunner. She hadn’t even been able to leave a note or anything. But my dad’s safe. I’m safe. The others were not. She wondered if her dad knew about Gunner and his ship. Elodie locked the door from the inside.

  Will he come for me? It hasn’t seemed like anything on this ship has been able to stop him yet.

  Her pulse raced.

  I want to go to him. The sentiment damned her and she buried her nose into her shoulder, breathing in the smell of Gunner as if she’d never get a chance to again. She felt safe with Gunner, even behind the
bars of her cell, she felt safe, safer than she did now. His forthright nature had her trusting in him, believing in him.

  Elodie checked the faucet at the sink, refusing to look at the mirror, and shook with joy when the water spurted out in bursts over her hands. The shower stall reacted the same until ice-cold water flowed freely into the receptacle.

  She dropped Gunner’s jacket to sag on the floor at her feet. She didn’t want to risk washing it and have it no longer smelling like him. Elodie stepped under the frigid water, clothes and all, and pressed her hands into the walls to hold herself up. It sluiced and clung and claimed every inch of her body, drenching her in seconds. Her skin froze, and her hair plastered to her head. A shuddering moan escaped her lips. She was surprised when there weren’t rivulets of dirt washing down the drain.

  Her shirt came off first, followed by her jeans and underwear. She kicked them into the stall’s corner. Her fingers drifting up to tug at the double band around her chest.

  For the first time since her entrapment, she looked at her naked body.

  Unmarked, unclaimed, unused by everything but the water. But for how long?

  He’s coming.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I NEED TO GET TO ELY.

  Gunner dug a bullet out of his arm, his fingers prying skin open. Bullets stopped dead on impact the moment they hit his metal frame but that didn’t stop them from burying into tissue and muscle.

  Pulling the projectile free, he dropped it and went to work on the fifth one, feeling like a grade-A piece of target practice.

  So much for staying under the radar.

  “Give up!” A man roared at the other end of the hallway. Gunner humphed and tore another round out of his shoulder.

  The pain should have been debilitating but he barely felt it. Pure organic adrenaline coursed through him, keeping it at bay.

  “We need to rush him now,” one of them whispered, thinking he couldn’t hear. “I saw him take more shots than a goliath from Elyria! There’s no way he’s still alive.”

  Oh, I’m alive. Alive and annoyed.

  The second floor crew quarters had devolved into a battlefield. When the men found him naked as the day is long, holding a gun in Ballsy’s shrine, they hadn’t asked questions. Shoot first, ask later.

  His eyes found the body closest to him—the last pirate who tried to ‘rush him.’

  Let them think I’m dead. He jerked out another bullet, releasing a spray of blood.

  “He ain’t dead. He’s holed up like a fucking trap-door spider. If you want to rush him, be my guest but I’m staying here. You saw what happened to the last guy. Only an idiot would charge a blind corner like that.”

  “Where the fuck is Ballsy when you need him?”

  “The asshole destroyed security—you didn’t see it—Ballsy’s corpse is probably among the burnt-out tech.”

  They prattled on.

  Gunner opened his clip and checked his ammo, then closed it again. At least one good fucking thing happened. He didn’t have to worry about being found out any longer. The jackal’s out of the bag. It wasn’t the opportune moment, his discovery, but it was one less thing to worry about.

  If he had his way, he’d have the coordinates of his ship before the real bloodbath began.

  “Captain’s not responding.”

  “Piece of shit is safe, why would he fucking come out?”

  That piece of shit is the smartest man on this ship. Gunner mused. Except for maybe Ballsy. That bastard was long gone.

  “I’m going forward,” one of them hissed and Gunner heard the telltale click of a chamber being loaded.

  The pirate inched forward, his steps light but hardly silent. Gunner kept his back to the wall at the corner of the hallway. On the other side where the men converged was the elevator shaft he needed to get to. It shouldn’t have been hard, but he was still weak.

  He didn’t count the blood loss or the dozen or so additional bullet wounds in his back as destabilizing him. He’d had limbs torn clean off, been ejected out into the hard vacuum of space, had a gun fired off in his mouth, and had survived it all. No, it was Ballsy's damn program weakening him, unlike anything ever had before.

  As if he summoned it, another cellular electromagnetic pulse fired off, temporarily plunging him into blindness.

  The man’s footfalls were mere yards away. A normal man wouldn’t hear him under the sirens. Gunner was far from normal.

  Gunner let his hand drop and closed his eyes, drooping his head, feigning death.

  The guard sucked in a sharp breath when he saw him.

  “Well!?” one of the others demanded.

  “He’s dead,” the man yelled over his shoulder. “I think he’s dead!”

  “Check him!”

  The moment he rounded the corner and was out of sight of his crewmates, Gunner lurched up and dragged him to the floor, pressing a hand to his mouth and crushing the bones of his wrist until the laser pistol was released. The pirate’s body jerked in surprise, and he stared up at him just as he succumbed to death.

  “Hey! Is he dead?”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “I told that dumbass he was making a mistake. I told you that twat was waiting for us.”

  Gunner pushed the body away from him after he peeled it out of its pants and tugged the undamaged gun strap off it. He slung the strap over his own shoulder and stuffed his legs into the ill-fitting trousers, dressing himself.

  “What’re we going to do? Half the crew isn’t accounted for. We can’t get to the bridge from this side.”

  Gunner smirked. And I can’t get to the goddamned brig. He jerked and twitched as another pulse rolled over him. His nanocells were busy fighting off this cybernetic disease, too busy to replenish his strength.

  “We can retreat,” one of them mentioned. “Go down. Short circuit the elevator, or lay a trap. We can overpower him at close range if there’s nothing to shield him.”

  Oh, fuck no.

  “We’d be sitting ducks down there. Our best chance is going up, not down.”

  “Our best fucking chance? We have no other chance!”

  They argued.

  Ely was down there. He wasn’t letting another man get close to her if he could help it. Gunner pushed himself from the wall, flinching as his flesh shifted and tore. Several more pulses went off, causing cascading lapses in his mainframe. The more he moved, the worse it got.

  He dropped his gun but caught it before it hit the floor.

  “We can get the prisoners on our side.” Elodie. “Tell them it’s a matter of survival.”

  “Like hell that’ll work! What do you think those half-starved lumps can do? They know my face. I fried the balls off of one of them their first day.”

  “We need one of the new recruits to convince them.”

  Gunner edged closer to the corner, listening.

  “If you haven’t looked around, they ain’t here, or they’re dead. I’d take my chances with one enemy, not several dozen. And if Juke comes out—”

  “Juke ain’t coming out! Look, a patrol went down before all this happened, and that one fucker, the one that won’t stop talking—”

  “Kallan?”

  “Yeah, he’s down there. Maybe he can convince them.”

  Gunner gritted his teeth. How’d he fucking let Kallan get by? The lech had a special place on his death list.

  And I left Elodie down there with him.

  “I don’t like the guy. He can’t be trusted.”

  No fucking shit.

  “What other choice we got? Even the fucking androids have been pulled back. If I get my hands on Juke...”

  “I like the idea of having a shit-ton of metal between us and him.”

  The men quieted down as if contemplating. Gunner skirted his eyes across the area around him. I can’t let them get to the elevator. He had noticed the androids withdrawing before, back when he sensed Ballsy leaving on an escape pod, but it hadn’t occurred to him why.

/>   If he could get to them, he could control them, but they weren’t close and he was weak.

  He eyed the second elevator shaft, the one that went up. I could go up and take the ship. Forget about the others. I’ve already been discovered. Juke would possibly know where his ship was.

  The codes that ate away at the freighter's systems were still doing their job. Gunner knew that the captain had changed course—he just didn’t know to where. But if they were headed straight into enemy territory his job was going to get a hell of a lot harder.

  I could go up and take over the ship... And hope that nothing happened to those below. Elodie wouldn’t have protection. But he would steer their course. If I did that, the rest of the pirate fleet would know.

  Gunner spat out blood. No. It could take me hours, maybe days. It depended on what he was up against. Even if Ely remained safe, there would be no one to keep her and the other prisoners fed until he wrangled the androids.

  He rubbed his gun over his brow. When did everything get so fucking complicated?

  “Let’s go!” one of the pirates urged. He heard them move.

  “Wait!” Gunner roared. It was the first time he’d spoken. “I don’t trust Kallan either. No one in the brig does.”

  They stopped. “You can fucking hear us?” one asked.

  “Obviously, dumbass. I heard you piss yourself when I started talking too. I’ll make a deal with you.” He inched out from behind the wall. The men ducked and watched from the other end, weapons raised. Two shots went off that missed him.

  “Deal, my ass! You’ll just kill us.”

  “Will I? I have a better idea.”

  “And what’s that, you marked up twat? We’re not idiots.”

  Sigh. “You’re alone. Three of you, I take it—don’t try and bluff me—I fucking know. Now listen!” His systems flickered again. “Your captain’s holed up, and the security systems are fried. I can’t be contained, anywhere, at least not for long. I’ve had free reign of this ship the moment you brought me aboard.”

  “Then why haven’t you taken over?”