by Kate Rudolph
“Hopefully they’re worried about something outside,” she said, half to reassure herself.
Kayleb reached a hand down. “We know this leads to the cargo bay, it might go somewhere else. It’s all better than here. I can boost you up and then climb behind you.”
She took his hand and clambered up over his shoulders until she was half in the chute and still held by Kayleb. Placing her arms on opposite walls, she wedged herself in, using her back and her legs once she started to climb to cover the distance. Unlike the journey down, she was squeezed and it was slow going, centimeter by tortuous centimeter earned through burning muscles and a slide of cloth against metal.
Every few meters, vents no bigger than her hand crisscrossed the chute. Tessa eyed one cautiously. Air didn’t seem to pump out of them and one was blackened around the edges, the metal appearing burnt. She really hoped they didn’t shoot fire or acid or anything that could eat through her or Kayleb before they had a chance to know what killed them.
“Is everything alright?” Kayleb hissed from below her, barely panting from exertion.
Tessa realized that she’d stopped and nodded before speaking. “Yes, I’m fine.” She kept moving.
They’d fallen in seconds, but climbing up from the depths of the ship was hard work. Muscles strained and burned and more than once Tessa wanted to give up and surrender to the darkness, to take the easy path and fall back down into pain and suffering and loneliness.
It was hard work, to recover from an unexpected hardship, but once they were free it would be worth it.
Kayleb’s arm brushed against her ankle and Tessa tried to stop the startled smile that bloomed. At least he couldn’t see it. When they got free, he could have her smiles. Maybe.
Maybe there was more than one hole for her to climb out of.
Tessa’s hand shot out when she went to find her next handhold and she slid, legs flying out and accidentally kicking Kayleb as she shot her hand out and gripped down a secondary tunnel. “There’s an opening here,” she said once she got her breath back. “Turn or keep going up?”
“Is it steep?” Kayleb asked.
Tessa wedged herself up and her arms came perpendicular to the way they’d been climbing. Her thighs burned and her arms ached and she wanted to nap for a week after a long soak in a tub somewhere far from all the excitement. But she wedged herself into the gap and climbed a little, trying to get her bearings. “It looks like it leads to a storage closet or something. I can see a door through a grate.”
“It’s still a long way to the cargo deck,” Kayleb’s voice echoed, now that she wasn’t beside him to muffle it.
That decided them.
It took a bit of jostling for Kayleb to make it into the little tunnel she’d found, and even more to get him in front. But he was the one with stronger legs and though she’d tried, Tessa couldn’t more than budge the grate that led to the closet. At one point, they ended up splayed around one another, Tessa pressed flat against the metal under them while Kayleb crawled over her, his scent enveloping her and giving her ideas. She’d never loved tight spaces before, but she was beginning to think of the possibilities.
Kayleb got them through the grate in two kicks. Climbing out was much easier than climbing in and Tessa stumbled and fell to her knees as soon as she tried to put weight on her suffering legs. Kayleb clamped his arms around her, but he was barely steadier. They clung together, holding one another tight as the ship bobbed around them. Gravity still felt real, for that she was grateful. Artificial gravity was a good approximation, but nothing could quite replicate the real thing, and as long as it was real, that mean they were still on Earth, and they still had a chance to escape.
“Any idea why they haven’t broken atmo yet?” Kayleb asked, echoing the question in her own mind. She might have been grateful, but that didn’t mean that it made any sense.
“Don’t want to lead anyone to the main ship?” she guessed.
“That would be promising,” Kayleb replied. What he said next almost knocked her off her feet. “So how did they find you?”
TESSA LOOKED AT HIM like he’d bared fangs and claws at her, but Kayleb didn’t remind her that he’d never cause her harm. They needed to solve this problem before they were hunted down once more. When she said nothing, he kept speaking. “The device you gave the police was secured. If they had the means to find it, they could have retrieved it before we got to the precinct. But they knew you were there. How?”
Tessa let out a frustrated growl and put her hands on her hips. Her feet tapped like she wanted to pace, but the closet they’d found was barely big enough for both of them. Kayleb had wedged himself into a corner to try and give her more space. It didn’t do much.
“How the hell should I know?” she demanded. “This isn’t my fault. Maybe they had a lookout. Maybe someone sold me out. Don’t blame me for this!”
Kayleb grabbed her shoulders and yanked her close before she could punch a wall and risk bringing attention to them. That her body was soft and familiar against his was a side benefit. “I’m not blaming you.” He found a well of calm and tried to exude it, but he’d never been the most serene person. He wanted to find each of the pirates and rip them limb from limb for giving his denya even a moment of trouble. “But if they have means of tracking you, they might find us even if we evade any security measures on the ship.”
She let out a breath and seemed to deflate against him, arms hanging around his waist and giving him her weight. “I don’t know,” said Tessa. “They’ve been on my ass since I got to Earth. I thought it had to be the tech I stole.”
“Were you close to Earth when you escaped?” he asked. Earth wasn’t exactly a backwater, but it was out of the way of many shipping channels, and it took planetary defense seriously. Pirates usually avoided it for wilder solar systems.
Tessa let out a hollow laugh. “God, no. It took a while to get this far. I didn’t even know the ship I found was coming here. But it was a big ship. Easy to hide on, hard to attack. They must have followed.”
“What are the odds they put a tracker in you?” Geo trackers implanted in living beings were popular in the slave trade and it turned Kayleb’s stomach to think of what they’d had planned. Rending the pirates limb from limb was too fast and painless for what they deserved.
“That’s... that’s definitely possible.” Tessa slumped and slid down a wall until she was seated on the floor. “They knocked us out not long after they nabbed us. They could have implanted trackers... or worse. Not a control chip, thank God. I couldn’t have escaped with one of those in me.”
A control chip was another popular tool of the slave trade, though they were prone to malfunctioning and killing the subject, which wasn’t good for business.
The light in the closet wasn’t good. A thin band of wiring along the ceiling pulsed with pale blue lights, giving them enough to see by, but not in any detail. Kayleb used a hand to feel around near the door and found a control pad. He swiped up and the lights brightened a little more. He kept them relatively dim in case anything escaped beyond the door; he didn’t want to draw attention. With gentle hands, he sat and pulled Tessa close to him. She came without resistance and his heart hurt for the pain radiating out of her.
He parted her hair and ran his hands over her scalp and the delicate length of her neck. She had such strength, and yet was so fragile under his fingers. It didn’t take long to find. Trackers were rarely well hidden, from what he’d heard about them. Just to the right side of her neck, a sliver about the size of one of Tessa’s fingernails bumped out of her brown skin. Kayleb placed a kiss over the spot and murmured in her ear, “I found it.”
Tessa nodded. “Take it out.”
He didn’t have a knife or a scalpel and unlike his instincts when he thought of the pirates, now his claws itched to stay in his skin rather than shoot out. Taking out the tracker would cause pain to his mate, something he never wished to do. And yet, if he didn’t, then she—they—would be in e
ven more danger. “I’ll be as gentle as I can,” he promised.
Tessa placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed and in any other circumstances, the feeling would have shot up his leg and given him different ideas. “Just make it quick,” she said.
Kayleb nodded, even if she couldn’t see. With a snick, the claws on his hand shot out. He used his other hand to hold her head steady and keep her hair pushed back. He pressed the tip against her skin and gritted his teeth as harsh red blood beaded under his hand. He had to do this, hesitation would only hurt her more. With a quick jerk of his claw and gentle prodding, he had the thin metal transmitter out of her and gathered up some of the discarded cloth from his t-shirt that he’d kept in a jacket pocket to stop her bleeding.
“Give it to me,” Tessa asked, holding out a hand. Kayleb’s claws retracted and he placed the metal in her hand. She squeezed her fist around the tiny device as if she could crush it.
Then Tessa pushed back against him and pulled out of his embrace. She clambered back into the tunnel and down towards the chute they crawled up. A moment later she was back empty handed. “I don’t know if they can track it in the ship,” she said, “but if they’re looking, hopefully that lands back in our shitty little cell and they don’t spend too much time looking for us.”
He hoped she was right. “Let’s find a way off this piece of shit and go home,” Kayleb said, getting to his feet and offering a hand to Tessa.
She grabbed it with a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN THE SHIP STOPPED moving, Tessa and Kayleb each let out a sigh of relief and the knot of tension that had coiled along Tessa’s spine relaxed until she could finally drag in a deep breath, something that had evaded her since Kayleb cut the tracker out of her. The back of her neck was tacky with blood, but the flow had stopped, thanks mostly to the bandage of torn shirt that Kayleb had kept pressed against her.
A tracker.
She was a fucking idiot. How had she missed the damn thing? She’d been so convinced that the pirates were tracking the tech she’d stolen that she hadn’t for one second considered that they might have been tracking her. And now she’d gotten both herself and her mate captured just because she hadn’t paused to think about consequences. She was lucky to have lasted as long as she did, lucky that the jammer she’d used had cloaked the signal from the tracker embedded in flesh when she thought she was stopping something completely different.
Kayleb squeezed his arms around her. “Don’t blame yourself,” he murmured against her ear. They were still in the little closet they’d found and the most comfortable position they’d managed was with Kayleb’s back to the wall and her nestled against his chest, between his legs.
It had been too trying of a day for her to put up even a token protest at the intimacy of the position, and Kayleb, the smart man, said nothing when she nestled in closer to him, tilting her body sideways and laying her head against his chest. “I should have checked for a tracker,” she argued.
He didn’t have a reply for that. A few minutes passed and footsteps pounded in the hallway beyond the door. Both of them stiffened and didn’t dare to breathe. But no one tested the door, nor did the pirate even pause. For the moment, they were safe.
“My cousin has a craft like this,” Kayleb whispered against her, his breath tickling the inside of her ear and making her shiver. “He said it has some of the best cloaking tech in the galaxy. But when it’s used up, it takes days to recharge. That’s how he met his denya.”
That tickled Tessa’s memory. “This is the cousin you and Krayter were going to meet, right?” She couldn’t recall his name, or the name of his denya, but she remembered the excitement that had laced Kayleb’s voice when he spoke of the match.
“Ruwen, yes. And Lis. She was stranded on a shithole of a planet and he was hired to steal something from the locals. They escaped together, and the rest is history.” His thumb stroked idly against the cloth of her jacket and Tessa reached over to lace their fingers together.
“What are they like?” she asked.
“They’re good together.” She could hear Kayleb smile. “But, honestly, I don’t know them very well. The last few months have been...”
“Yeah.” She knew all too well how they’d gone. And they didn’t have time to dwell on the budding relationships of Kayleb’s family while they were at risk of discovery by the pirates who owned the damn ship they were on. “How long does it take your cousin’s ship to charge?” she asked.
“About a week, I think. I’ve only been on it once, and it’s smaller than this one. Whether that means the pirates need longer, or their generators are larger and they’ll be ready by night, I’m not sure.” And he didn’t sound happy about that uncertainty. He squeezed her hand and leaned further back against the wall, his muscles a hard wall behind her. “We’d best do some exploring if we’re going to get off this thing.”
“Do you have a plan there, Mr. Big Shot? Or are we just going to go with a suicidal charge?” The pirates had blasters for sure, and she wouldn’t be shocked if at least one of them had a las gun. She’d seen what las fire could do to naked skin, and she didn’t want to be the victim of that unrelenting fire any more than she wanted Kayleb to suffer from it. “We need weapons, and intel. How many of them are there on the ship? Can we fly it if we incapacitate them? Stuff like that.” She wracked her brain, trying to come up with different things they needed to know, but most of her ideas came from the media shows she sometimes devoured during long, lonely stretches of space. There wasn’t excitement like this on normal merchant ships. She’d hoped that the pirates she faced at Kayleb’s side on the Kella would be the worst thing she’d ever face.
And she’d been so, so wrong it wasn’t even funny.
“I’m beginning to think that I should have been a soldier,” Kayleb groused. “We need to get a look out first,” he decided. “See where we are. And you’re right, we need weapons. So, weapons and recon. We can do this.”
“You watch the same media shows as I do, don’t you?” Tessa guessed. The tension was riding high, but Kayleb was keeping her grounded, making this entire awful situation alright. As long as he was there next to her, she could figure out how to put one foot in front of the other and make it out the other side of this damn mess. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with him once that was done, but she’d figure it out when they got there. When they survived and were safe.
“If they’re charging the cloaking shield, it probably means that we’ve landed somewhere,” Kayleb mused. “And while I’d love to overpower anyone here and triumphantly steer the ship back to New York, I’m not a pilot.”
Tessa agreed, though something bloodthirsty in her wanted to rebel. “Do you think there’s an information station in the hall? We had them on all the ships I’ve travelled on. It will give us a map of the ship.”
Kayleb shrugged. “The longer we wait, the bigger the risk of discovery. I say we go out there and find out.”
KAYLEB WANTED TO WRAP Tessa up and keep her safe. Being trapped aboard a pirate ship, that wasn’t an option. There was nothing he could give her for extra protection, and with the wound in his leg, he risked becoming a liability for her if he wasn’t careful.
So he was careful.
They waited a few breathless minutes, listening for any pirates who might be walking by. But no one joined the one they’d heard before. With steady hands, Kayleb eased the door open, sliding it into the wall beside them.
His claws itched to shoot out and face any unseen threat, but he kept them sheathed, a secret weapon in case they ran into trouble. More trouble. No one waited for them in the hallway. It was a simple corridor that could have belonged on any short range ship. A door, identical to the one they’d been hiding behind, stood opposite them and Kayleb assumed it also led to storage of some kind. Space was at a premium on ships and every crevasse that could be used to stow things was used.
Tessa stepped out besid
e him and the door slid shut with barely a hiss of sound. His denya stepped forward and opened the door opposite them and glanced inside, closing it after a few seconds. She looked back at him and shook her head—nothing useful.
By unspoken agreement, they turned right, heading in the opposite direction of where the pirate had walked earlier. Kayleb’s skin pulled tight and his instincts were on high alert, ready to jump into action at the slightest provocation. But their goal wasn’t to fight. The best option was to get off of the ship with no one realizing they were gone.
The metal of the corridor echoed as they walked, no matter how soft their steps. A passenger ship might have put down carpeting or a dampening fiber to muffle the sound, but the pirates didn’t need such luxuries. While they walked, Kayleb’s jaw set and he wished for something that would let them walk like the silent predatory beasts that stalked the deserts of Jaaxis.
But when footsteps pounded their way, walking at a fast clip, he rethought his desire for a rug. Echoes, it seemed, had their uses.
Adrenaline flowed through his veins and he quickly realized they had no place to hide. They’d passed another pair of doors, but they couldn’t make it back without running and alerting someone to their presence.
Kayleb pushed in front of Tessa and waited, breathing in and out slowly while the calm of the fight settled heavily on his shoulders.
The pirate rounded a corner and froze, his mouth dropping open in comical exaggerated shock. He was human, and short. He would barely come up to Tessa’s chin if they stood side by side. A blaster hung loose in his holster and Kayleb was on him before the short man could try to fumble for it.
They slammed against the wall, the crash of their bodies too loud to Kayleb’s ears, but he pushed that concern aside. He punched, hitting hard at the man’s ribs and giving no quarter. With a jut of his hips and a quick flip, he had his arm around the man’s throat and squeezed, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain. The man jerked at his arm but Kayleb’s hold was too tight.
