The lights came on as Orion ran through the intersection, and he cursed. He would have preferred darkness for what he needed to do. That could only be Sage out there, leading an attack. Orion appreciated that his brother had come right away, apparently deciding that rescuing women was more important than vague orders about staying hidden from the planet’s inhabitants, but he wished Sage had warned him. There wasn’t much time for him to do his part.

A woman cried out from down the corridor to his left, in the direction that led to the brig, and he faltered, almost sprinting that way. But he forced himself to stay on mission, to head straight down the passage that led to engineering. He could best help the women by disabling the slaver ship’s shield generator so Sage’s fire falcon could come in, clamp on, and do a forced boarding.

The lights went out again as a series of thwumps reverberated through the ship. Star bombs. Not surprisingly, the slavers were firing back. Their ship was still in motion, too, and judging by the rattling of the deck plating, it was flying at top speed. Captain Cutty must think that if he made it to the wormhole gate, he could escape the Star Guardian ship.

“Not likely,” Orion muttered, tapping his logostec to project a light in front of him as he ran around a dark corner.

The wide hatch to engineering stood closed at the end of the corridor, and he would have sprinted straight for it, but two female figures standing in front of it made him pause. They were trying to get the latch open, but a keypad on the bulkhead would keep it locked to anyone who didn’t know the code.

Orion hadn’t been trying to make his approach silent, so they heard him barrel around the corner, and they whirled.

After staring at him for a shocked heartbeat, the lean one with straight black hair dropped into a crouch, fists coming up in a fighting stance. The other one, the curvy young woman with the blue-tipped dark hair held a hand toward her friend and stepped forward.

Instead of making a threat, she met Orion’s eyes squarely, then lifted her right hand, palm toward him. Her four fingers split down the middle in a V, and she spoke.

“We come in peace,” she said without a quaver to her voice—was she not afraid of him? “Uhm, live long and prosper.”

Orion wrinkled his brow at the last sentence, wondering if the translation chip embedded in his ear canal had interpreted that correctly. It sometimes struggled with Zi’i, Alabaster, and the Gemi languages, but it didn’t usually have trouble with the various human tongues of the galaxy. Of course, this one was new to the chip. It’d had time to work on learning the women’s language while he’d been standing guard and listening to them speak to each other, but it was too soon to expect precision.

Orion touched his fingertips to his forehead, then showed her his open palm as the traditional greeting—and to show that he wasn’t holding a weapon, even though his bolt bow hung on a strap across his back. He walked slowly forward.

The older woman glowered and tightened her fists.

“It’s all right,” the younger one said. Orion sure would like to get their names. “He’s the one who helped us.”

“Helped us? He helped capture us, the same as the others.”

“But he didn’t let, uhm, things happen that could have.”

“Just because he’s not a rapist doesn’t mean we can trust him.”

Orion winced. The translator seemed to be doing fine with the words now. Unfortunately.

More thwumps reverberated through the decking, reminding Orion that he had a mission and that he couldn’t delay.

He pointed toward the keypad on the wall. He needed to get past them and save introductions for later, but he didn’t particularly want them attacking him—or fleeing from him either. Could he convince them to stay with him without using force?

“Orion,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest.

“Oh!” the young one brightened, looking ridiculously excited by this attempt at communication. She touched her own chest. “Juanita Manriquez.” She touched his wrist and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Orion.”

She inadvertently bumped one of the small buttons on his logostec, and the adventure novel he’d been reading earlier popped into the air, a few rows of text under an image of Herakles about to lead his magical space chariot into battle against the Zi’i.

“Is that a comic book?” Juanita blurted.

“Uh, it’s really more of a novel.” Orion blushed, even though she wouldn’t be able to understand him. His mother had teased him about still reading books with pictures when he’d been in the military academy. “There are very adult themes and adult moral issues that the characters wrestle with. Adultly." His blush deepened.

But she grinned, her eyes gleaming. “I love comic books. Junior year, my roommate and I wrote a whole series of them. She did the art, and I wrote the stories.”

The other woman cleared her throat, and Orion tapped his logostec to make the novel disappear. He hadn’t expected such a response from Juanita, and found himself intrigued, but there wasn’t time to discuss it further now. That would have been hard, anyway, given that she couldn’t understand him.

Juanita pointed at her comrade. “This is Tala. She’s a doctor!”

Orion wasn’t sure why she’d volunteered career information, but he accepted it with a nod. Maybe it would come in useful later. Hadn’t Sage said his own doctor had been killed in action on their last mission? Orion didn’t know if he had a replacement yet. At the same time, he imagined that any doctor from a planet that hadn’t achieved interstellar flight would have a primitive level of skill.

“Orion?” the older woman—Tala—asked, her eyes narrowed to slits. She was about as friendly as the captain’s svenkar, and Orion could tell she would be hard to win over, or even reason with. “Juanita, it seems unlikely that your aliens would have the same names for constellations that we do. That the Greeks made up.”

Aliens? They thought he was an alien?

They were the ones from a world nobody had known about three weeks ago.

He had grabbed a couple of translator chips from sickbay when he’d been in there supposedly getting headache medicine. Maybe he would have time to insert them into the women’s ears if they would allow it. He had also, under Truok’s bored eye, palmed two injectors full of the same sedative the slavers had used to capture the women.

Shouts came from the direction of the brig, and a feminine yell of pain rolled down the corridor. That idiot Bray wasn’t molesting them while his ship was in battle, was he?

Growling, Orion headed for the keypad, waving for the women to step aside. Tala glared at him and turned, keeping her fists up as she watched him. Juanita smiled at him, the gesture so enthused and authentic that it nearly made him trip. Her eyes gleamed, as if she were on some grand adventure rather than trapped aboard a ship with a crew determined to sell her to aliens to be eaten. Maybe she was excited to have escaped. How had they managed that?

A question for later, after they were all aboard his brother’s ship, and this one had been blown out of the stars.

Orion tapped in the code—he’d observed one of the engineers doing it the week before and memorized it—glad the unsophisticated clunker of a ship didn’t use fingerprint readers or retina scans for security. The pad beeped once, and a thunk-hiss sounded as the hatch unsealed.

As he grabbed the latch, he considered the women. Should he ask them to come in with him, where he expected to do battle? Or should he tell them to stay here?

Yells echoed down the corridor, and he grimaced at the idea of them staying behind. He dug into a pocket, his hand brushing one of his daggers on the way, and Tala tensed again. He pulled out one of the injectors and held it on his palm. Tala’s knuckles whitened. Orion couldn’t blame them for hating the sight of those things now, but Juanita didn’t display the same wariness. She looked at his hand and then into his eyes, as if she was trying to read his mind.

Orion pointed at the hatch, then glared at it and made a fist, hoping to indicate that there would be trouble inside. He offered the injector to her.

Her eyes widened, but she smiled and took it. She even bounced on her toes, as if she was excited to play a role in his plans. Her breasts jiggled under the thin shirt she wore. He found himself staring, then mentally kicked himself. This wasn’t the time to ogle a woman, especially not one he had helped kidnap.

Orion pointed at the button on the side of the device to show her how to use it. He thought about giving the other one in his pocket to Tala, but he might need it himself. Besides, she would probably use it to stab him in the neck as soon as he turned his back on her.

“Follow me,” he said, hoping Juanita understood and would do so, and gripped the latch again. But he paused before opening it, realizing he might be able to use the women as a way to get close to the men inside without arousing suspicion. Maybe he could say he’d been ordered to bring them down to entertain the hard-working engineers. “Go with what I say, please,” he added, though they only looked at each other in confusion.

Was there time to insert translators into their ears now?

His logostec beeped softly. It was Sage.

“Yes?” Orion whispered, bringing his wrist to his mouth.

“Why aren’t the damned shields down?” Sage growled without preamble.

“I’m working on it. You surprised me by not waiting.”

“Just get the shields down. Zakota's trying to damage that ship without blowing it out of the sky, but they’re fighting like cornered jayctor, and they’re going to keep it up as long as they’ve got shields to hide behind.”

“I’m on it.”

Orion pulled open the latch. There wasn’t time for subterfuge now. Or anything else.

Juanita watched the man she’d been referring to as “Tooth” stride through the hatchway. Orion, he’d called himself. She gripped the hypospray or whatever it was that he’d given her and started after him.

Tala gripped her arm. “Where are you going?”

“To help him.”

“Don’t be silly. He’s leaving us here, so now’s our chance to go hide someplace. You can’t trust him. He was eyeing your boobs just like the others.”

“He’s not like the others.” Juanita pulled her arm free, though Tala’s grip was surprisingly strong.

Before Tala could try to restrain her again, she slipped through the open hatch and into the first well-lit area she had seen on the ship.

Gauges and monitors glowed from walls covered in more of the protective bronze plating, along with machinery with buttons and input keypads all over the sides. An oblong cylindrical object took up a third of the space, stretching along one wall. The reverberations she’d been feeling through the floor—the deck—seemed to originate from it. Was the engine inside of that casing?

Two men were standing by a control panel and pointing to it, and one glanced toward the hatch as Juanita came in. But his eyes soon turned further, toward Orion.

He’d strode into the room—what Juanita assumed was engineering—without hesitation. Instead of going toward the engine, he headed toward a workstation in the back. There were more panels and displays, including a holographic one. Two men were pointing at it. No, they were tapping holographic buttons in it. Two other men were on their backs under some big piece of equipment.

Six people in total. Six people that, if Juanita had understood Orion correctly, needed to be subdued.

The two at the engine control panel turned toward Orion. One frowned and walked toward him, saying something as he held his hand up.

Orion blurred into motion, jerking up that crossbow-like weapon off his back and firing straight at the man’s chest. It blew a hole even bigger than the one that guard had left in the deck when he’d fired into the cell earlier. The engineer reached for his chest, his eyes huge, but that was all he managed to do before toppling over.

Juanita stumbled back, her shoulder blades clunking against the hatch. She had expected subduing, but not killing.

The room erupted into chaos as everyone else lunged for weapons. Orion whirled toward a boxy construct in one corner that reminded Juanita of some steam-age boiler. He fired several blasts of blue energy into it.

An alarm wailed, and smoke poured from the damaged casing.

Orion dove to the deck, somersaulting toward the other man at the engine as his other opponents fired weapons. Energy beams crisscrossed the space where he’d been standing a second before.

“Move,” Tala barked from behind Juanita, her voice barely audible over the wailing alarm.

Juanita hadn’t realized she had stayed close, but now Tala slipped in, grabbing her arm and pulling her along the wall toward a corner where there was a gap between the bulkhead and a hulking bank of machinery. Juanita almost balked, since Orion had clearly intended for her to help when he’d given her the hypospray. Hiding in a corner wouldn’t do anything to help him. Even after killing that man, he was outnumbered five to one.

But weapons fire streaked wildly about the room; one energy bolt slammed into the wall right above Juanita’s head. That convinced her that Tala was right. The hypospray wasn’t much of a weapon against all that. She and Tala could hide for now and help if an opportunity presented itself.

They squeezed side by side into the gap, their shoulders pressed between the bulkhead and the bank of machinery. Juanita angled herself so she could watch the fight.

Smoke hazed the entire room, but Orion was close enough that she could see him, alternating between grappling and punching men next to him and firing at ones farther away. He was doing his best to keep one of his foes between himself and the ones shooting, but the engineers were working together, shouting orders and trying to surround him. He ended up with his back to the cylindrical engine, kicking and punching. He moved with amazing speed and surprising grace, but he was still cornered.

Juanita couldn’t believe he wasn’t being overwhelmed. Even though his opponents were apparently engineering officers, they weren’t geeks in glasses with pocket protectors. They were as big and tough as Baldie, and they sprang at Orion from all sides.

His bare muscular arms gleamed as sweat dripped down them. He ducked just before one man fired at his head, the en-bolt clipping the top of the engine housing. He grinned as shards of metal blew off it. One of the engineers yelled at the one who’d shot, and Juanita guessed that Orion had put his back to the engine for a reason. If they missed him, they risked damaging it.

She had no idea what the equipment he’d started the battle by blowing up did, but it was still smoking, and that alarm hadn’t stopped blaring.

“Everyone on the ship is going to be down here any second,” Tala growled. “This was not a good place to hide.”

Juanita flushed at the glare that accompanied the words, but she grew worried more for Orion than herself. She hadn’t considered that reinforcements would show up. What would happen then?

Orion spun, his long hair coming free from its knot and flying about his face, and he kicked one of his opponents so hard that the man flew back. He landed on the deck, his head cracking against it, and skidded toward the corner where Juanita and Tala hunkered.

For a second, he lay stunned, staring up at the ceiling, his arms splayed.

Juanita sucked in a breath, gathering her courage, and leaped out of hiding.

“Juanita,” Tala whispered harshly, reaching out too late to catch her sleeve.

Not hesitating, Juanita ducked low as she ran to the fallen man’s side. He squinted, eyes focusing on her, and he started to rise. She smiled broadly, hoping to confuse him, as she sneaked her hand in. As soon as the tip of the hypospray, as she was calling it, touched his neck, she thumbed the button.

Eyes bulging, he whirled to the side.

Juanita scrambled back. Had she gotten him before he pulled away? How fast would the drug take hold?

He crouched to leap at her. Shit. The hypospray was the only weapon she had, and he would knock it away easily.

Weapons fired, and a streak of blue cut through the air between them just as he’d been about to lunge. He paused to throw a curse toward his comrades, but the words sounded slurred. He blinked slowly, opened his mouth again, but then pitched over a few feet away from Juanita. He didn’t move again.

“One down,” she whispered, turning toward the sounds of punches. “No, three down,” she amended, taking in the unmoving bodies on the deck around Orion.

Two more men were still battling him, trying to coordinate their attacks so that he would have too much to handle. None of them were shooting now. A couple of the bow-like weapons lay on the deck. Orion must have knocked them out of the men’s hands.

Unfortunately, these two engineers seemed almost as powerful and fast as Orion. And it looked like they had worked together in battle before. One threw a series of jabs and punches, forcing Orion to turn slightly to block them. The other had a dagger and lunged in, aiming for Orion’s unprotected kidney.

Juanita was on the verge of yelling a warning, but Orion anticipated the attack and brought his knee up to knock the dagger from its path as he kept blocking the other man’s attack with his arms. The knife clanged against the engine housing, but the man didn’t drop it. He merely eased away a couple of steps, his determined expression promising he would be back in with another attack.

Juanita considered returning to her corner, hoping to get another opportunity to help later, but the men were so focused on Orion. Was it possible they weren’t aware of her?

She circled to the knife holder’s back and crept toward him. Smoke burned her eyes and tickled her throat. If she coughed, they might hear it over the alarm. She clamped her mouth shut, not letting the urge win out.

Something slammed into the ship hard enough that the deck tilted thirty degrees. The men stumbled, the battle pausing as they all fought for balance.

A whistle sounded across the room as a valve seemed to blow and steam escaped. The knife holder glanced that way. Juanita hurried in, reaching up to his neck.

He must have glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye because he spun toward her. But not before she tapped the hypospray against his throat and pressed the button.

He roared, his arm moving so quickly she didn’t have a chance to get out of the way. He clubbed her in the chest, knocking her to the deck.

Orion roared and leaped onto his back, snaking a muscular arm around his neck. The man reached up, snarling as he grabbed Orion’s forearm with both hands. But he wasn’t strong enough to break the grip. Orion flexed his arm and twisted.

A snap echoed through engineering. The man’s neck breaking.

Juanita, on her butt on the deck, stared as Orion dropped the now-dead man to the deck. She’d just gone from never having seen someone killed to seeing it twice in five minutes. Maybe more than twice.

She looked past Orion to where the man he’d been trading punches with now lay on the deck with the others. His neck, too, was twisted at an unlikely angle. Aside from the man she’d drugged, Juanita doubted any of the engineers were left alive.

Orion moved toward her, and she turned her incredulous stare toward him. What had prompted all this? Why was he attacking the people he had been working with just hours before? And why was he destroying parts of the spaceship they were all riding on? The ship they were stuck on? It wasn’t as if they could call AAA and get a tow from Saturn. Had he lost all his marbles? Had she been right to trust him?

He bent toward her, extending a hand. Blood stained the back of it and dripped from a cut in his arm. His lip was swelling from a fresh punch, and he looked fiercer than a hellhound, but that fierceness didn’t seem to be for her.

Tentatively, she lifted her hand to his.

Before he could clasp hers and help her up, another attack struck the ship. Something snapped and hissed on the engine, and he sent a worried glance in that direction.

Maybe he was thinking about the lack of AAA coverage out here too. Then the lights went out again.

His hand clasped hers, warm and calloused and surprisingly gentle.

He started to pull her up, but a big thrum of energy came from a piece of equipment near the workstation, and the universe seemed to light up with bright purple confetti. Juanita didn’t see the brilliant purple with her eyes, but instead with her mind, as if some weird waking dream had taken over her thoughts. The confetti turned colors, pulsing and flying all over the place, as if it were caught in a tornado.

Was she having a seizure?

That was Juanita’s last thought before blackness replaced the purple, and she passed out for the second time that day.