ANDERS

Allex and I had managed to move all the men into the fifth wing. There was a mad scramble to use the flying area. I made sure he was in the first group. I never wanted to see him get infected again. He didn’t argue with me.

I took my turn flying, but after an hour the women still hadn’t arrived. My anxiety increased until I decided to go looking for them. Either they were a lot slower than the men, or something unforeseen had happened.

I searched all the passageways they could have used, but there was no sign of anyone. Where were they? I knew they had kept a lot of women in one area of the ship. But when I checked it, no one was there but sleeping pirates.

Apparently, they had gotten themselves out of the room. I needed to get more information about their current location. I eavesdropped on a pair of guards talking in the hall by standing on the other side of a wall. I discovered that they had moved the women, but that was the only useful piece of information I gathered.

I continued moving, finding another set of guards. This time I heard the distinctive voices of my good friends Oona and Dorron, the pirates who had chased us and returned to the transport empty-handed.

“I can’t believe we’re stuck on guard duty.” Oona sounded bitter. “This is all your fault.”

“All you do is complain. I was trying to keep us out of trouble. If he didn’t have that jet pack, we would have caught him. No one could have known about that, Oona. He flew out from under us.”

If he thought I had a flying device, our secret was still safe.

“I can blame twenty-five lashes on you. All you had to do was keep quiet about what happened, but you had to tell everything to anyone who would listen.”

“Shut up.” He bent down and kissed her roughly. “If you were really upset with me, you’d be fucking someone else by now.”

“Maybe I should start.” Oona turned her head away.

He grabbed her and shoved her against the wall, pinning her with his body. She gasped. “You know you don’t want anyone but me.” He whispered something else into her ear, and she shuddered.

Soon they were making out in the dark, deserted hallway, and I was wondering how far they would go. I wasn’t going to learn anything from them, so I went to find someone else for more information. On my fourth happway, I found two male guards talking about the women.

“Some of those sex slaves are hot!”

“No kidding.”

“There was a redhead in my line. I only got to touch her for a minute.”

My heart stopped. That sounded like Gwen. How many redheads were on the ship? She wasn’t supposed to be with the slave women, though.

“Is that why you got punished?”

“I guess so. The masters don’t want damaged goods, but how are they going to know if they’re spoiled or not? As long as we don’t bruise them when we fuck, no one can tell the difference.”

I could feel the fury building inside of me.

“Are you going to get some?”

“I might. People can’t stop me if they don’t find out. When I want a woman, I’m going to take her.”

“You probably want to fuck the supervisor too.” The comment was followed by laughter.

“Don’t even get me started on that hot ass. I wouldn’t dare, though. If I didn’t kill her afterward, she’d cut off my dick.”

“I’m going on a break. Will you be okay until I get back or should I send a replacement?”

“Nothing is happening here. I think I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll have a chance to jerk off thinking about that redhead.” The pirate laughed again, and I heard footsteps moving away.

That bastard had touched Gwen. I was going to beat the crap out of him and then find out everything he knew.

Maybe I had that backward. I crept down the passage and emerged farther down in the hall behind the guard.

When I was close enough, I attacked. Hand-to-hand combat was part of pilot training, and I had been in enough bar fights to know how to throw a punch. This pirate was a tough fucker and a dirty fighter. It only took a few minutes for me to realize I was going to get my ass kicked. I wasn’t going to be any help to Gwen if I got beat up or captured.

I took a punch to my left cheek and stumbled back. Instead of moving forward to hit him again, I let the momentum carry me and started racing in the other direction. He shouted at me, wanting both to finish the fight and work out his sexual frustration.

I wasn’t planning on a rematch. He chased me, but having an angry pirate on my heels made me fast. When blaster fire hit the walls around me, the adrenaline really started to kick in.

The door into the flying area was close. I would be safe if I could make it through, but he caught me before I reached it. The pirate hit me again in my stomach, making me double over. He slammed his knee into my face for good measure.

Even though my head was spinning, I managed to shove my foot into his kidneys, which slowed him down. After two jabs to the face and a leg sweep, he was on the floor. I wasted no time dashing through the door and moving into a hidden passage.

The pirate was already up and shooting at the door. If he hit the mechanism, he would blast through it. Not only would he find all the men, he would see them flying around too. He was armed, and I had nothing. The pirate could easily take a hostage and make me do whatever he wanted. I was about to draw him away from the door when a woman sauntered out.

She was barely wearing anything, and her nearly nude body captured all the pirate’s attention. He was staring at her like he hadn’t eaten in a month and she was his next meal. The pirate began to follow her up the hall. Normally, this would have been good. The problem was that the woman was Gwen.

I couldn’t think clearly. What was she doing? The man followed her, then stopped. If he didn’t go with her, I had a chance to take him out or lead him away.

This guy had already been kicking my ass when Gwen distracted him. I was strong, but not as powerful as the pirate. My ears were still ringing from his punches.

I watched in horror as Gwen convinced him to follow her away from the door by taking off her shirt. She moved down the hall, but he caught up and pulled her into a small bathroom. That was probably not part of her plan. She needed my help, but what could I do?

Imagining them in the bathroom together wasn’t helping my thought processes. I needed to get in there.

I ran to the bathroom door and pressed a release that opened a maintenance panel. I stared into the mechanics of the door lock while trying to ignore the sounds of struggle inside the room. It felt like minutes, but it probably only took me a few seconds to manipulate the lock. The pirate had been leaning against the door. It slid open, and he promptly lost his balance.

Gwen immediately kicked him in the chin. The pirate’s head snapped back, and he collapsed on the floor. I ran into the room. “Did he hurt you?”

“Well, he touched my boobs, but it didn’t hurt.” She was putting on a short top. After she dressed, she pulled her foot back and gave the pirate a hard kick in the ribs. Gwen wrinkled her nose in disgust. He looked pathetic, with his pants around his ankles and a huge bruise spreading across his face. A pair of tweezers protruded out of the soft skin of his neck.

“We have to get out of here.” I tried to remember the nearest entry into the secret passages, but I was drawing a blank. We had to move in a new direction so no one could follow us. “Come on.”

Pirates were all around us, and we had to be ready to hide at any moment by squeezing into a janitor’s closet or ducking into an administrative office.

By the time we concealed ourselves in the tunnels, I was starting to feel sick from the adrenaline coursing through my veins. As soon as the door closed, I wrapped my arms around Gwen, and she buried her face in my shoulder, breathing raggedly.

I couldn’t control myself anymore. I was furious. “What were you thinking, Gwen?” I pushed her away, trying to see her face in the subdued light of the tunnel.

“What do you mean? I was saving your ass.”

“Do you realize that guy almost raped you?” I couldn’t believe she would willingly place herself in so much danger.

“Of course I do, you ungrateful bastard. But I wasn’t going to let him kill you.”

I was nauseated at the thought of her getting hurt because of me. “I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you.”

“I do. You wouldn’t like it, and neither would I. But you would be alive. We would get over it. He was about to kill you, Anders. You can’t recover from death. That’s much worse than what he was going to do to me.”

“That’s not exactly true.” She went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“I wasn’t going to let him kill you if I could do something about it.” She stared at me angrily over her shoulder.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re my friend, Anders! What kind of person do you think I am?”

I stood still, staring at her back. She was practically naked. I refused to let myself hope.

“I guess I should say thank you.” I put my hand on her shoulder and tried not to let her bare skin affect me. I gently tugged her, making her face me. Her eyes had ensnared me when I first met her and continued to intrigue me.

Her lips twitched. “You’re welcome.”

“Are you in shock? You can tell me the truth, Gwen.”

“It will take a lot more than one scumbag pirate to bother me. I just need a shower to wash off the feeling of that asshole’s dirty hands. When you choose to sacrifice yourself, it’s different from being forced into a bathroom against your will. I made the decision.”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m upset, of course. But not traumatized. I led that guy away from you and into a trap. Do you believe me?” She took my hand.

“Whatever you say, partner.”

“Good. Let’s get these fuckers off our ship.”

* * *

We had placed rooms at regular intervals in the tunnels in case of emergency. They were equipped with beds, water, and food. None of that was useful right now, but they also had clothes. Gwen was rummaging through them now trying to find something that fit her.

She said she had decided to leave the women after getting lost in the passageways, but we couldn’t go back to them now. We had to rely on Priya to figure everything out. In the worst case scenario, Allex could try to find Priya and lead them to the fifth wing.

I was trying to do two things at once. I needed to figure out a way around the tractor beam and avoid being completely distracted by the fact that she was changing her clothes in front of me. I faced away from her completely so I could think and use the computer.

After a minute, I groaned and held my head. What else could go wrong?

“What is it?” I dared to peek at her. She wore plain black cargo pants and a dark T-shirt. She looked stunning.

“They figured out what I did last time and plugged the hole in their code. I don’t know how the pirates did this in three days, but it looks like they have an entirely new security system.”

“So what? You’re good at four things, right?”

“I don’t know if I can hack the tractor beam and take it down.” I felt the bitter feeling of defeat in my stomach. “Okay. I can’t.”

“What are we going to do now?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think we can get into their control room? It’s a long shot, but it’s all we have left, Anders.”

“Let’s do it.”

* * *

Going to the control room turned out to be a bad idea.

“Put your hands up in the air where I can see them.” Gwen stiffened and lifted her arms. I took my fingers off the keyboard.

I didn’t know what kind of a weapon our assailant wielded. The best-case scenario was still pretty bad. If he was holding a stun gun, I didn’t want to get hit. It could scramble your nervous system for life even on the lowest setting. Everyone’s body reacted differently to the discharge.

Gwen’s eyes darted in my direction. No, I didn’t want to fight back right now. I shook my head. We couldn’t resist yet. She nodded at me. At least she understood our situation was a disaster.

* * *

GWEN

I sat down on the floor of the cell. I didn’t know there were rooms like this on the transport, but it made sense there’d be a brig or the equivalent somewhere. The room was cold, empty, and bleak. There weren’t any secret passages in here.

There wasn’t a way out for us this time. We weren’t going to be able to escape or save anyone. We had failed completely.

Anders had fallen asleep on the floor across from me. He had a black eye and looked like quite the brawler. I couldn’t sleep at all thinking about my fate as a sex slave.

I stared at Anders, who didn’t have any problems snoring despite his burdens. Tears came into my eyes. Why did it hurt to watch him sleeping on our last night together? I felt like I was breaking into pieces.

I tried not to think about how much I had hurt him, but the guilt overwhelmed me. He loved me, and I had broken his heart. The realization made my tears start to come down harder. I sobbed as quietly as I could. The agony inside me had to get out before the pain destroyed me. Anders rolled over in his sleep like he was turning away from me. I couldn’t blame him. I had been an awful friend. Now I would never see him again.

The crying only stopped when I ran out of tears. I felt empty and emotionless as I waited for sleep to take me. But it wouldn’t come. I felt like I was waiting for something.

A realization hit me like a wave breaking on the shore: I loved Anders. But was it too late to do anything about it?