The bare-chested man flew off the mat and crashed against the bulkhead with a resounding thud. He glanced toward Angela and the other women, jumped to his feet, puffed out his chest, and raced back in to face his opponent. He threw himself at the other man, punching and kicking before they went down in a tangle of limbs, turning what had started as some kind of kickboxing practice into a wrestling match.

“Do you think they always train this hard?” Angela asked her comrade. “Or are they trying to impress us?”

The six other pairs of Star Guardians on the mats were throwing each other around just as vigorously. Several men sported fresh lumps, and more than one bled from the nose or a split lip.

Angela didn’t mind the show, as their speed and strength made them quite impressive, and it didn’t hurt that they were all training shirtless, their lean bodies full of rippling muscles on display. They’d been at the sparring matches for almost an hour, so those muscles all gleamed with sweat, and more than one of the forty-odd women in the spaceship’s rec room looked like she wanted to offer to towel off their chests. Or lick off their chests.

“What?” Tala asked, removing one of the earbuds she wore. It was wirelessly connected to a wristwatch computer the captain had loaned her—a logostec, the Star Guardians called it—and she seemed to be taking the equivalent of online medical classes, the chip in her ear canal translating everything to English.

“You’re not even watching,” Angela said, raising her voice to be heard over the thuds and smacks of flesh striking flesh.

She and Tala were farther back than many of the women, sitting at one of the tables on the opposite side of the room from the gym area, but they had a clear view of the training mats.

“Watching what?” Tala frowned at her, a puzzled furrow to her brow.

Angela tilted her head toward the mats as another man flew off, this one skidding across the textured deck on his back. That looked painful. But he sprang back into the fray with enthusiasm.

“Oh,” Tala said. “Why would I?”

“Because they’re hot and sexy.”

“Really.” Tala curled a lip and looked back down at the holographic display floating above the logostec.

“You don’t think so?”

“They’re admirably athletic and fit. A far cry from the patients that usually landed on my operating table.”

“You did heart surgery, right?”

“In the US, cardiothoracic surgeons handle the heart, lungs, esophagus, and other organs of the chest, but I did heart surgery most often, yes. I—” Tala frowned and looked up.

A break must have been called, because two of the men were walking in their direction.

Others from the sweaty group headed over to talk to the clumps of women who had been watching from the sides of the mats. They had apparently gotten over the trauma of being kidnapped from Earth by slavers. Of course, the Star Guardians had helped rescue them, so it was natural to feel gratitude. And, as Angela had pointed out, they were hot and sexy.

Not all of the women had been openly ogling the men, but many of the ones sitting on their cots or using the gym equipment nearby had only pretended not to watch them. Tala was probably the only one in the room who truly didn’t care whether the men were there or not—and who was also unimpressed by their shirtless musculature. Well, she was in her mid- to late-thirties, and was probably the oldest woman in the group. Maybe she had less excitable hormones these days.

“That’s not a particularly inviting smile,” one of the approaching men drawled, nodding toward Tala.

He looked her up and down. She might be older than Angela’s twenty-three years, but Angela thought Tala was pretty, if in a cold and aloof way. She was from Hawaii, but had said her heritage was Filipino. Having been born and raised in the mountains of northern Arizona, Angela found both notions quite exotic.

“That’s because it wasn’t a smile,” Tala said, looking back down at the logostec. She didn’t add the word “dumbass” to her sentence, but it seemed to be silently implied.

At least Angela thought so. Maybe the man didn’t, because he looked her up and down again, as if he considered her a challenge. And liked challenges.

“What’s your name?” the second man asked.

His focus was on Angela, almost brazenly so as his gaze flicked toward her chest, and it made her a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t as if she had a huge chest, or anything else huge that excited men. Her father had always called her a wisp of a girl. With her braided blonde hair, artsy dresses she made herself, and tattoos of her favorite flowers, she usually attracted the artistic free spirits rather than… whatever these Star Guardians called themselves.

From what she’d gathered after six days on the ship, they were something between police officers, soldiers, and bounty hunters, being tasked with protecting the humans of the galaxy from evildoers and aliens who wanted to eat them. They definitely seemed to be an elite group of warriors, and so far, had treated Angela and the others respectfully. Until today, none of them had come down to use the facilities in the rec room. An alien named Korta, who looked like an ambulatory pile of rocks, usually brought their food, and the captain occasionally came with a couple others to check on them, but that had been it.

It was amazing that her friend Juanita had managed to slip away often enough to establish a relationship with one of the men on the ship. Of course, Orion was a bounty hunter rather than a Star Guardian, and didn’t seem to have to obey the captain’s orders.

“I’m Angela Arkwright,” she said when the man’s gaze lifted to her eyes again. A part of her didn’t want to say any more, lest she encourage him, but as an Aquarius, wasn’t she supposed to be friendly and have people skills? “You all seem to train very hard. Is it required to be a Star Guardian?”

“We have to be in peak physical shape at all times.” He flexed his shoulders and shook his arms so that the muscles rippled. “And stamina is very important.” A wink went along with that statement. “It’s good to meet you, Angela. I’m Jarok.” He touched his forehead, then extended an open hand toward her.

Angela had seen the gesture a few times and gathered it was the equivalent of a handshake among them.

“Would you like to go on a tour of a ship, Angela?” Jarok asked.

The man standing in front of Tala elbowed him. “We’re not supposed to take them out of the rec room.”

Jarok winked at him. “We’re not supposed to talk to them either, Tor, but here we are.”

His buddy—Tor—frowned toward the door, as if he expected someone to walk in and notice their indiscretion. Angela wouldn’t mind if that happened. They were both standing closer than she liked. And even though Jarok had a nice chest full of muscles, Angela preferred to know someone a little better before going on unchaperoned tours with them.

“That bounty hunter got to take one to his cabin,” Jarok added. “Angela, would you like to see my cabin? I’m about to get promoted to sub-lieutenant, and they already gave me a place of my own.”

“Uh, no, thank you,” she said, but he probably didn’t hear her, because his buddy was elbowing him again.

“Orion isn’t part of the crew,” Tor said, “and he’s the captain’s brother. The rules don’t apply to him.”

“Well, isn’t that nice for him?” Jarok shifted closer to Angela.

Since she was sitting, he towered over her. She stood up in the hopes of alleviating that, and stepped between two of the chairs attached to the table. All of the furniture was locked down to the deck so she couldn’t scoot anything back. Unfortunately, Jarok still towered nearly a foot over her, and with those broad shoulders, he was twice as wide. At five-foot-six, Angela wasn’t exactly short, even if she didn’t weigh a lot, so she wasn’t used to feeling dwarfed by men, but that was definitely the case here.

“Don’t know,” Tor said. “Means he has to be related to the captain. That seems like it would be stressful. Say, Tala, isn’t it? Where’d you get a logostec? Your people don’t have our tech, right?”

“From the captain,” Tala said, looking up long enough to give him a cool look.

“Oh.” The man eased back a step, as if he worried the borrowed tool constituted a claim that the captain had made on her.

Angela was fairly certain Tala thought the captain was a pain in the ass, especially after he’d asked her to assist with a medical situation, but then hadn’t let her try to resuscitate a man who’d been poisoned. Angela hadn’t been there for that, but later, Tala had filled her ear as she stalked back and forth, slamming her hand against the walls.

“I could get you a logostec,” Jarok told Angela, stepping closer.

She swallowed, realizing she had trapped herself by easing between the two immobile chairs. Unless she climbed over the table, she couldn’t go anywhere to escape this man. And, after seeing him spar with the others, she didn’t have any delusions about kneeing him in the groin and fleeing. She’d grown up on her parents’ off-the-grid lavender farm and, thanks to her father, could hunt and fish and find water in the wilderness, but she didn’t have Tala’s martial arts background. She didn’t know what she would do against someone who tried to force her into a situation she didn’t want to be in.

Too bad Roar from the shelter wasn’t here. The big Rottweiler was one of Angela’s favorites, and his growl alone would scare any man away.

But one of the Star Guardians wouldn’t try to force a woman into a compromising position, would he? They’d rescued her people from those slavers. They were supposed to be heroic and noble. At least according to them.

“I don’t need one,” Angela said, trying to find somewhere to look except at the huge chest right in front of her. She dug out her smart phone. “I’ve got this. Your engineer was nice enough to make a bunch of charging things for us.” Admittedly, the phone had no cell or wifi signal to connect to in whatever solar system they were flying through now, so it was of limited use, but she didn’t want any gifts from this big brute.

“Hm.” Jarok reached out and poked it with a finger. “Looks kind of big and clunky.”

“It’s fine.”

His finger slid off the phone and to her wrist.

Angela started to pull her arm away, but he grasped her wrist. It was a loose grip, but it trapped her, nonetheless. Her heart started to pound against her ribs, and she glanced to the side. Tala could use that logostec to call the captain, couldn’t she? Did she know how?

Laughter came from behind Jarok. One of the men had three women around him, and they were smiling and flirting openly.

“I think that group might be interested in talking to you,” Angela said, looking up at Jarok.

He wasn’t looking at her eyes. He was stroking her wrist with his thumb and eyeing the Aquarius waves tattooed on her forearm.

“What does this mean?” he asked, his hand sliding higher up to touch them. His hand was big enough that he had no trouble keeping his thumb and fingers locked around her arm as he did so.

“It’s my astrological sign. I haven’t seen my horoscope from today, but I’m sure it would warn me against getting felt up by strange men.”

Faint grunts came from another part of the room, and Jarok’s head twisted in that direction. He still didn’t let Angela go. Worse, he’d shifted closer somehow, and his thigh touched hers.

He pinpointed the source of the grunts, and his lips parted as he gazed over.

Angela peered past him. She saw Indigo and Katie and a few other women whose names she’d learned on the trip using the equipment and ignoring the flirting going on by the mats, but then behind them, against a wall between two gym machines, a man and a woman were…

Angela blinked. Were they having sex? Right there? In front of everyone else in the room?

Granted, that spot was somewhat out of the way, and the machines hid a bit, but not that much, and the grunts were getting louder now. The man had the woman pinned against the wall as he thrust into her, but from the way her arms were wrapped around his shoulders and from the close-eyed expression on her face, visible above his shoulder, she was into it.

“Damn, how’d Varro get one so quick?” Jarok asked.

“I don’t know, but this isn’t a good idea,” his buddy said. He took another step back from Tala, who had her earbud back in and seemed oblivious to Angela’s predicament—and to the people having sex in the corner. “If the captain finds out, he’s going to be pissed.”

“What’s to be pissed about?” Jarok asked, watching the couple in the back. “If they want us, we’re just being accommodating to our guests.”

“I think some of those women over there want you,” Angela said, pointing past his shoulder with her free arm.

She wasn’t sure she should send this problem toward anyone else, but she didn’t know how else to deal with him. Maybe trying a knee to the groin wouldn’t be such a bad idea, after all. Though he technically hadn’t done anything that warranted violence. Yet. That could change.

Angela glanced down to see if she had the right angle and could knee him from the awkward position between the chairs she’d let herself be trapped in. He was so close that it would be hard. She could feel the heat of his thigh through her dress and, with a lurch of alarm, realized she could feel his penis too. He’d shifted so that it pressed against her hip, and it seemed hard as it strained against his trousers. She flushed with embarrassment, and she wasn’t even certain what else. Was he aroused from watching those two have sex? Sicko. It wasn’t as if he was in his dorm room and this was porn hour.

Jarok turned back toward Angela. “If you don’t want to go to my cabin, we could have a good time right here. I—”

“I’m not interested,” she said, loudly this time, as she stared him straight in the eye.

Tala looked over, seemingly noticing for the first time that Angela didn’t want the attention that was pressed right up against her. The guy just looked confused. Like how could a woman not want his attention?

“But I saw you looking at me.” Jarok let go of her arm, but before she could let out a sigh of relief, lifted his hand to her face. “Why don’t we just—” He leaned closer as he spoke, and Angela panicked.

She shoved at his chest, which was like shoving at a hundred-year-old oak tree, and jerked her knee up.

There wasn’t enough room to make it to his groin, and her heel caught on the bottom of a chair, but he stepped back. He looked more confused than aggressive, but she wasn’t sticking around to get trapped again. She scrambled over the table, landed on the other side, and ran toward the door. She had no idea where she would go, since the women had been discouraged from exploring the ship on their own, but she wanted to get away from the horny bare-chested brutes. Especially that one.

The door slid open as she approached it, not for her to leave but for a man coming in. She couldn’t slow down in time to keep from crashing into him. He lifted his hands, catching her as she bounced off his chest.

“Get off me,” she blurted, afraid this one would want to show her his cabin too.

The hands jerked away from her, and she stumbled back.

It was Lieutenant Treyjon, the Star Guardian who sometimes accompanied the captain when he came down, the one who trained the four-hundred-pound, dog-like creatures with the leathery hides.

She wished she could take back her words. He had been nothing but polite with the women, and he was wearing all of his clothes, the black fatigue uniform with the sleeves rolled up to reveal the tattoo that everyone on the crew had, and also a furry sash that looped over one shoulder and across his torso. His tangled black hair, dreads that fell to his butt when not pulled back, made him look a little wild, but his face was pleasant under his tidy goatee and mustache. Even handsome, as she’d noted on more than one occasion.

Treyjon frowned, but not at Angela. His dark eyes locked onto someone behind her.

“Ensign Jarok,” he said coolly. “Were you chasing this woman?”

“Just to apologize,” Jarok blurted.

“For what?”

The man who’d been so hulking and confident—and arrogantly annoying—when he was pressed up against Angela now shrank under Treyjon’s hard gaze. They were about the same size, but somehow, Treyjon seemed bigger and fiercer. Maybe it was because he was wearing his full uniform instead of being barefoot in sweatpants. He also glared impressively well. Angela hadn’t seen that from him before and was glad it wasn’t directed at her.

“Uhm, she didn’t want to come to my cabin.” Jarok’s forehead wrinkled, and he seemed to realize his answer didn’t make much sense.

“The women aren’t going to anyone’s cabin. This isn’t a harem for your use.” Treyjon whirled toward the mats, his wild black hair swinging about his brown-skinned face. He raised his voice. “Everybody, you’re done training. The captain was right. You idiots clearly didn’t care about working out when you requested to be let back into the gym.” His eyes narrowed as they pinned one man, in particular. The one who’d made the request?

The man in question was fair-skinned and his cheeks flushed an impressive red.

“Careful, Lieutenant,” came a cool voice from the back of the gym area. The man who’d been having sex. Apparently, he’d finished his impromptu rutting quickly, because he had his fly up and was walking back out into the open. The bite marks on his shoulders were new, and the woman he’d been with lingered against the wall, looking breathless. “You don’t get to decide when our training session is over.”

The man, now that Angela could see his face, was definitely older than Treyjon, in his late thirties or early forties. So much for her theory that hormones got less demanding as one got older. Did he outrank Treyjon?

“You know the captain doesn’t want anyone harassing our guests, Lieutenant Commander Varro,” Treyjon said, his chin up.

“Nobody’s harassing anyone.” The commander gave the woman he’d had sex with a long look over his shoulder. “We’re just exercising here.”

“Then why was this woman fleeing out of the room?” Treyjon asked, frowning at Angela.

As all eyes in the room turned toward her, Angela wanted to hide under one of the tables and disappear. Now that Jarok wasn’t standing so close, she felt that she’d overreacted.

“Because Jarok is as smooth as that rotgut they make on Amberlin 6,” the commander said with a snort.

“Nobody should be trying to be smooth.” Treyjon stepped to the side of the open door and gestured through it. “Everybody with a penis, get out of here.”

“He just wants the room to himself,” one of the men near the mats muttered.

The commander opened his mouth, but Treyjon spoke again.

“If you don’t leave now, I’ll bring the pups up here to help enforce the captain’s orders.” Treyjon smiled, giving the commander a hard look.

The pups? The giant animals he trained? The ones with the massive, blunt heads and wide snouts full of six-inch fangs? The ones that looked like they would eat pit bulls for snacks?

Maybe it was crazy, but Angela wouldn’t mind seeing more of them.

The men seemed to find the idea unappealing, because they grabbed their shirts and headed for the door. Jarok rushed past, leading the way out, like a dog with its tail between its legs. The others went more slowly, sharing long backward gazes with some of the women.

The commander came last. He was as handsome as any model, but the surly curl to his lip made Angela dislike him immediately.

He gave her a withering glare as he passed, then turned that glare on Treyjon.

“I’m not afraid of you or your overgrown svenkars, Lieutenant,” Varro said, stopping in front of the door. Only a few inches separated them, and they were of similar height and size. None of these Star Guardians were on the short and runty side. Maybe arms like tree trunks were a prerequisite for the job. “And if you go tattling to the captain about this,” the commander continued, his voice soft and dangerous, making a chill run down Angela’s spine, “we’re going to have a problem.”

“We can have that problem right now if you want, sir.” Treyjon turned fully toward him. He didn’t reach for any of the daggers sheathed on his belt, or the lightweight throwing knives poking out from the underside of that fur sash, but he did flex his shoulders and loosen his arms, as if readying himself for a fight. “Unless you’d rather hide behind your rank and write me up for my insubordinate ways.”

“I don’t hide from anything, you know that.”

The commander threw down his shirt, stepped back, and lifted his hands, fingers wriggling in an invitation.

Treyjon lunged at the man, and Angela skittered back as they came together in a flurry of blows. They didn’t bother going over to the mats. Nor did this have the look of a sparring match partaken for practice.

Angela backed all the way to the table where Tala now stood with her hands propped on her hips, like a teacher exasperated by wayward students. Indigo, a divorced woman also in her thirties, had come over to stand beside her.

“Your doctoring duties may be needed soon, Tala,” she said.

Tala rolled her eyes.

The smacking of blows landing or being blocked seemed thunderous, the women all silent as they watched. Angela couldn’t take her gaze from the fight, from the lightning fast punches being thrown. Each man had already connected solidly, slipping past the other’s guard, at least once. She worried that Treyjon would lose and be hurt. She also worried that he would win and be punished for picking a fight with a higher-ranking man. Wasn’t that frowned upon in the military? If he got in trouble, it would be because she had been running out of the room.

The fierce skirmish went to the ground, wrestling moves replacing punches. The men twisted and writhed, each trying to get the upper hand.

“Come on, Treyjon,” Angela found herself calling, urging him to come out on top.

Tala slapped her on the arm. “Stay out of it. Let those fools burn off some of their testosterone on each other.”

“I’m just cheering for him. He’s the one who wanted to stop the others from bothering us. Not that you’d notice if you were being bothered.”

“I—”

“Do you yield?” one of the men demanded, and Tala didn’t finish the sentence.

Angela looked over and pumped a triumphant fist. Treyjon’s fur band was up around his neck, and his uniform jacket was torn open, but he’d gotten the upper hand. More than that, he was atop Varro, pinning him face-down to the deck, an arm wrapped around his throat. That was no light hold, either. Already, the commander’s face had flushed a deep red, almost a purple, as if he couldn’t breathe.

“Yield,” Treyjon growled in his ear. “Sir.”

“Fuck you,” Varro managed to spit out, though his voice was hoarse, the words weak.

“Not from that position, you’re not going to.”

Finally, the commander rapped his knuckles on the deck. A sign that he gave up? It must have been because Treyjon rolled off him, rising smoothly to his feet.

He pulled down the shirt under his open jacket, but not before revealing a chiseled abdomen no less impressive than that of the any of the shirtless men. He kept his eyes on the slowly rising commander as he tucked in the shirt and refastened the jacket, wary but not worried. Something about him reminded Angela of the very predators that he trained. Wild. Deadly.

She wondered what she would have said if he’d asked her to go to his cabin.

“Fickle woman,” Indigo muttered.

Angela flushed with embarrassment as she wondered how Indigo had read her thoughts. Surely, she hadn’t been drooling as she watched Treyjon put his clothing back together.

But Indigo was looking toward the gym area where the woman who’d had sex with Varro leaned against one of the tall machines. She wasn’t paying attention to her former lover, who was slinking out, much as Jarok had, with blood from his nose spattering his chest. No, she was watching Treyjon, looking him up and down and licking her lips, like she wanted to go another round right now, maybe to compare the two men.

“I feel like I’ve been kidnapped by cavemen,” Tala muttered. “And am surrounded by cave women.”

“Hey,” Indigo protested. “I’m a database programmer. The closest I’ve come to a cave is touring that one down by Tucson.”

Angela might have made a similar protest, even if there were caves near her parents’ farm that she’d explored as a kid, but Treyjon was walking toward them. She looked at his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t know what she’d been thinking. Or maybe hoping he would.

No, it was silly of her to think about sex right now. Why would she want a relationship with some weird man from another planet? Before long, Angela and the other women would be returned to Earth, and life would continue on. Normally.

Unless the Star Guardians’ government told Captain Sagitta to reveal himself and the existence of humans on other planets to the people of Earth. In which case life for lots of Earth’s citizens would probably get very interesting. But not for her. Angela just wanted to go back to the animal shelter in Flagstaff and keep gaining experience so she could become a professional dog trainer. She didn’t want to have to go back to her parents’ farm. As much as she loved her family, she didn’t want to spend her life picking lavender and making soaps and lotions.

“Sorry about that,” Treyjon said, stopping in front of them. “I had a feeling there might be trouble when I heard about this. The captain… well, he likes to think he’s leading the best of the best, and that the men here are honorable and would never think of being…”

“Assholes?” Tala suggested.

“Yup, that’s the word. Translator got it right.” Treyjon smiled and pointed to his ear.

The translation chips that Angela, Tala, Juanita, and a few of the other women had been given seemed to be ubiquitous, with everyone on the crew having them.

“Usually, there are only a couple of women on the ship,” Treyjon went on, his smile fading and his face growing more sober, “and sometimes when we’re on long assignments, the men get, uh, antsy. The women that are here are also Star Guardians, and you don’t mess with a Star Guardian woman, if you don’t want to have an operation to retrieve your testicles later. Not that anyone should be messing with anyone. Trust me, the captain will have further punishment for those who did. But anyway, we’re almost back to Dethocoles, so you won’t have to deal with horny men any longer.”

“Aren’t you the ones who’ll be taking us back to Earth?” Angela asked, though from what she’d heard, it wasn’t entirely guaranteed that their government would allow her and the others to return to Earth. The captain had admitted that. Still, Angela had a hard time believing it. If the Star Guardians were about nobility and protecting humanity, wouldn’t the government that had created them ensure they did the right thing?

“To Gaia? Oh, maybe so. I know the captain said he’d volunteer. But we’re just soldiers. Who knows what High Command will decree? You’ll be taken care of, though, one way or another.” Treyjon turned toward the open door. “Commander Korta, it’s safe to come in now. You still out there?” He smiled at Tala, Indigo, and Angela, and Angela decided she liked that smile a lot more than his scowls. “He’s got trays full of food for you all. He has good ears and heard mating sounds, as he called them, and didn’t want to come in until he could be certain he wouldn’t have to witness such unpleasantries. He finds all things related to human reproduction quite disgusting and isn’t sure why we don’t simply use test tubes and science to make babies.”

“Doesn’t sound very fun,” Angela murmured and smiled at Treyjon, hoping to convince him to smile again. And maybe more at her than at Tala and Indigo.

But Treyjon didn’t notice. He frowned and stepped back toward the doorway. “Korta?”

The clang of something heavy hitting the deck out there sounded.

Treyjon reached for one of the weapons at his belt, a stunner, someone had called it.

“Should we be worried?” Angela whispered, imagining the cock-blocked men coming back with reinforcements. Or maybe that commander had decided to complain to someone, and a bunch of security guards were coming to lock up Treyjon.

“I don’t know,” Tala said.

Treyjon was halfway to the door when his eyes widened. He dove sideways, as if he were heading into a swimming pool rather than the hard metal deck.

Before he hit the deck, a bolt of blue energy zipped through the doorway, slicing through the spot where he’d been standing. It blasted into the back wall, gouging a charred hole in the metal.

“Get down,” Treyjon ordered even as he rolled and jumped to his feet.

He came up with a knife in one hand and the stunner in the other.

Tala grabbed Angela’s arm and pulled her around the table. All over, the women were diving for cover as Treyjon charged toward the door.

He used the wall for cover as he approached, so the shots streaking through missed him. But more of them came, blue and white energy bolts. Phasers. Or lasers. Or some damn energy thing. Angela didn’t know and she didn’t care. They looked deadly, and that was all that mattered.

She ran with Tala and Indigo, racing past tables and to the far wall.

Someone ran through the doorway before Treyjon reached it. He fired the stunner, and a different kind of blue energy struck the invader. It took him in the chest, and he dropped his weapon, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Before he hit the deck, more men stormed in behind him, some grabbing their comrade and using him as a shield. Treyjon fired again, but the blast struck the same man.

“It’s the slavers,” Angela realized, taking in the men’s mismatched clothing and desperate eyes.

“Get down,” Tala growled, pulling her low as more weapons fired into the rec room.

Angela crouched down beside her and Indigo, using the table for cover.

More slavers rushed in. Treyjon managed to down several of them with the stunner, but they seemed fearless in the face of it. Most of the slavers weren’t carrying weapons, other than improvised bars that looked like they’d been torn off the ship, but a few had far more lethal-looking crossbow-like energy weapons. They turned those on Treyjon.

He fired twice more, then sprang sideways as they shot at him.

“No!” Angela heard herself cry as men kept racing inside and shooting at him. How many had escaped? All of them?

Treyjon moved impossibly fast, dodging and diving and rolling, but as he came up and leaped over a table, no doubt hoping for cover, one of the energy bolts finally caught up with him. It slammed into his back, and he grunted in pain. He landed hard on the deck and didn’t move.

More slavers ran inside—dozens—and there was nobody left to protect Angela and the others.