Settling a dozen women onto a tiny ship fleeing from a hostile planet in a matter of minutes was almost more difficult than extracting them from their prison in the first place. Sierra turned down the extra seating in the kitchen, folding down benches that normally laid flat against the wall. She guided the women to the seats, using her most comforting voice, but after the fight and the run to freedom, she was riding high on adrenaline and she knew she sounded more excited and high strung than competent.

“Buckle in, buckle in,” she commanded a short blond woman and a woman with short, wiry black hair and brown skin who wouldn’t let go of the blond woman’s hand. “We need everyone secured before we break atmo.”

“Who are you?” the black woman demanded. The other women around her all nodded.

There hadn’t been any time to exchange pleasantries as she and Mindy ushered them out of the holding pens. “My name is Sierra Alvarez. I’m from Earth and we’re taking you home.” The women just stared at her, one a few seats away daring a small smile. Sierra reminded herself that these people had been held for months, maybe longer, and forced to endure great hardship and abuse. Of course they weren’t going to cheer the second a human showed up to take them away. Hell, most of the pirates out here were human, so there was no reason to trust her more than anyone else.

She’d deal with winning them over later. She confirmed they were all secured safely and climbed up into the cockpit with Jo and Mindy, who were already completing the pre-flight checks.

“Do we have any company?” Jo asked as she pressed several buttons on her control panel and slowly pulled back on one of the joystick controls.

“We have clear skies,” Mindy replied. “Take us home.”

Sierra strapped herself in and braced for takeoff. Their deflector shield wasn’t as good at cloaking as the one Raze and his men had, and the Detyens had agreed to draw the most fire while Jo snuck into the settlement to gather Sierra, Mindy, and the prisoners. That meant they had an easier escape path and Sierra would need to find a way to thank them, somehow. She’d have months to figure it out, months until she saw Raze again. Months until she’d find out if anything went wrong on their end.

What would she do if he didn’t show up at Honora Station?

“Are you with us, Sierra?” Mindy asked, jolting Sierra out of her spiraling thoughts.

She was so out of it that she hadn’t realized they’d broken atmo. “The women are buckled up,” Sierra reported. “They aren’t happy, but I can’t blame them for that. We just need to prove that we actually did rescue them. It will be okay.”

Mindy offered her a smile and then jerked her head back to her screen as a proximity warning blared. From where Sierra was sitting, she couldn’t see anything. The warning could be anything from a little space debris to another Oscavian warship. She bit her tongue to keep from barking out orders. This was Jo’s show now.

“What have we got?” the pilot asked, steady and calm.

“Looks like an abandoned craft. Might have been too damaged to reenter atmo,” Mindy speculated, scanning her screen intently.

Sierra leaned forward as if that would give her a better view, heart hammering. “You’re sure it’s a pirate craft?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“Since everything they have is scavenged, there’s no way to be certain.” Mindy wasn’t any comfort.

Jo glanced over her shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

Raze. “The Detyen ship. If they were under fire while leaving…”

“Are you willing to risk the women we just saved to check it out?” Jo’s eyebrow quirked up and her gaze held the weight of fourteen lives in the balance.

“They didn’t have to help us. We just need to get close enough to scan for life forms. If there’s nothing, we move on.” It killed her to even think it, but she couldn’t risk the women on her ship if Raze and his men were already dead. She ignored the stab of pain in her chest and the bile in her throat, doing her best to tamp down her emotional reactions.

“Wait!” Mindy held up a hand. “We patched in to their comms. If the line is still functioning, we should be able to hail them.”

A wave of relief washed over Sierra and she let out a heavy breath. Though it was on the tip of her tongue to give the order, she looked at Jo and waited.

“Do it,” the pilot commanded.

She opened the line of communication and sent out a signal. Seconds ticked by and Sierra’s pulse beat hard enough for her to hear it in her eyes. She clasped her hands together and bit her lip. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, but as long as Raze was alright, she would call it a win.

“This is Toran,” a voice finally crackled over the comms. “We could use some help.”

***

Raze could see his breath in the dim light of the ship. He’d lost feeling in his fingers, but his arms pulsed with a pain that radiated out of his chest and had been getting worse since the moment he stood up from his chair. The systems had failed in a cascade and now the only thing keeping them alive was the ambient air and the human ship coming to their rescue. It would take a few minutes to set up the dock, and in that time, he, Toran, and Kayde packed as many of their belongings as they could. Though, in truth, the only thing that they needed to take with them was the copy of the hard drive from the Lyrden. As long as that tech made it back to the legion, they had done their duty.

Coming back from his quarters, Raze slung his gear bag over his shoulder and watched Toran place the drive in a secret compartment in his own bag. “No one on that ship can know about this,” Toran said, and waited for Raze and Kayde to nod their understanding. “Unfortunately, this,” he gestured to the powerless ship around them, “will set back the mission by months or more. I don’t know when we will get this data back to the legion.”

“If it weren’t for the humans, they’d never get the data,” Raze commented. “Dead men can’t deliver anything.”

“True,” Toran agreed. He turned to Kayde. “Set the self-destruct sequence for thirty minutes.”

The seconds ticked by slowly, but soon the welcome sound of grinding metal reached their ears as the human ship docked with them. The airlock engaged and in no time they were through the hatch and safe on a ship full of air, light, and too many humans. Sierra met them at the air lock, her smile as bright as the sun on the snowiest day back home. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling back while Toran was looking. Some of the pain he’d been feeling dissolved under the warmth of her gaze.

“Welcome,” she said, giving them room to step completely onto the ship before shutting the seal behind them. Sierra hit a button on the wall beside it and the lock unhitched from the other ship and began to retract. She touched her ear and spoke to her crew. “Our guests have arrived. We are clear.”

“Prepare for jump,” crackled a voice over a loudspeaker. “Two minute warning.”

Sierra glanced up at the ceiling where one of the speakers was installed and muttered something that Raze couldn’t make out. “We’ll get you set up with somewhere to sleep once we’ve made the jump to FTL. Right now, we need to get buckled up before we get thrown around like rag dolls. Please follow me.”

They walked down a narrow hallway with Toran right behind Sierra and Raze taking up the rear. He didn’t trust himself not to try and touch his mate if he stood too close, but he wanted to surge forward and step between Toran and Sierra to keep the other man away from her. The need to claim boiled in his blood, the need to declare to all that Sierra was his and he was hers. But with the imminent jump to FTL and his crew all around, all he could do was bide his time.

Sierra came to a sudden stop and Toran almost ran into her, making Kayde almost run into him, and Raze brushed the back of Kayde’s uniform before he realized what was going on. Sierra let out a curse under her breath.

“One minute warning.”

She turned around and looked past them before shaking her head and steeling her shoulders. “All of the women we rescued are in here. We have extra seats for you in there and I don’t have time to set up anything else. Please don’t scare them.” She stared for an extra second at Kayde and Toran, as if she trusted Raze to behave himself. He couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. Sierra caught it and her eyes brightened for a second before they both got themselves under control.

“We will do our best,” Toran promised.

Sierra held up a hand. “Do better than your best. These women are traumatized and terrified. They can handle you all being emotionless robots or whatever, but…” She shook her head again. “Just be good.”

Toran shot Raze a look and Raze was suddenly happy for all of the people around them. He’d have to answer for Sierra’s knowledge later.

“Thirty seconds.”

Sierra opened the door and pointed to four empty seats, two on either side of the central aisle. She took one closest to one of the human survivors and before Raze could sit beside her, Toran took that seat. Raze slid in across from her and didn’t say anything about the arrangement, instead focusing on buckling up. A human woman sat next to him and he could feel her stiffen and stare, but he kept his eyes forward, uncertain if looking at her would cause even more fear. Sierra murmured something to the women around them, but the final countdown to FTL crackled over the speaker and the ship jolted to high speed, making communication momentarily impossible.

Once his senses adjusted to the shift, Raze tried to meet Sierra’s gaze, to speak in glances if not words, but she was lost in thought and not looking at him. A few minutes later, the lights flashed twice and Sierra looked up. She unbuckled her belt. “I’ll be back later, please stay seated,” she told everyone in the room. Finally, she spared him a glance, but quickly looked away and headed through the rescued human women up to the cockpit.

They might have been rescued from certain death, but with each minute that went by, Raze knew this was going to be torture.

***

Sierra had no clue how to treat Raze when he was in front of his men. He went to that stoic, emotionless place that left her feeling cold, but then she caught him flashing her a smile when Toran and Kayde weren’t looking. Did they know that he was feeling again? Did it matter? And would the humans freak out too badly if she sat on his lap and stuck her tongue down his throat? Okay, maybe she shouldn’t do that, but mostly since she wasn’t sixteen, not because he wasn’t human. They all just needed a little time. It had been one of the busiest days of her life and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept.

She slid into the cockpit and closed the door behind her, taking her seat behind Jo and Mindy. “The aliens are sitting by the humans. I didn’t have time to set up any other seating. I warned them to be cool, but I don’t know if that will last for long. Since you’re both busy here, I’ll get sleeping arrangements settled and do an inventory on our food. We should have enough not to starve, but it won’t be a pleasant couple of days. I wish that I could give them more than the most basic health scan, but we can’t even look for tracking or control chips. No one ran away, so I’m thinking the slavers didn’t risk taking control. I know those chips blow up half the time, so why risk the cargo, right?” As for tracking, Sierra didn’t need to add, once they got close enough to Earth, they wouldn’t be in much danger. It didn’t matter if the pirates knew their destination, they wouldn’t follow the women down to such a densely populated planet. Any tracking chips could be removed by the medical teams back home.

“Right. Get the arrangements made,” said Jo. She leaned back from her controls and spun her chair around to face Sierra. Mindy did the same. “Any ideas so far?”

She’d only been thinking about it nonstop since Raze came aboard, but putting him in her quarters seemed a little obvious. He didn’t have to sleep there… officially. “I want to put the Detyens in Jo’s quarters and have the two of you share.” At the start of the mission, she would have never suggested it, but her crew seemed to be getting along better now. Though from the sounds of protest they made, a person would have thought that Sierra suggested the two of them sleep in a vat of acid.

“What? Why?”

“No way!”

The response could have been worse. “Jo’s quarters are biggest. Three people won’t fit in mine or Mindy’s.” That, at least, got Mindy’s nod. “The women will panic if we put the guys in with them, and they’re already going to be squeezed like sardines into the unused crew barracks. They’ll have to sleep two to a cot.”

“That’s still not explaining why I have to share with Mindy,” Jo bit out. “This better not be just so you can get laid.”

“What? No!” Sierra sputtered, completely unconvincingly. “It’s not that,” she protested, “really. I promise.” Mostly, it mostly wasn’t that. “You and Mindy will be working in shifts and neither will be sleeping at the same time. With managing our guests, I could be up at all hours and in and out of the room all night. I don’t want to disturb your sleep.”

Both of her crew mates looked at her skeptically. But finally Jo looked at Mindy for a long second and nodded. “Fine, move my bag over into her room. You owe me for this.”

Sierra owed them both a lot, and given the risks they’d put their lives and their jobs in, she could never repay them. After talking logistics for nearly an hour, she left the two of them in the cockpit and went to get the ship in order. Some of the women had unbuckled themselves from their seats, but they seemed to be staying in the kitchen area, so Sierra didn’t tell them to sit back down. If walking around made them more comfortable, she’d let them walk all night.

She grabbed Jo’s bag out of her room and tossed it into Mindy’s before heading further into the ship to get the beds ready for the women. Time flew by as she worked, and by the time her muscles were straining from cleaning and set up, she was done. Food was another issue. They had a limited supply of fresh produce which wouldn’t be enough for even a single meal. Between canned goods and protein bars, Sierra could stretch their food to last until they made it to Earth, but they didn’t have much room for error.

At mealtime, she passed out the first batch of protein bars to everyone. A few of the women muttered complaints, but they were shushed by their fellow passengers. She could have hugged Toran when he told her that he’d brought spare rations from his ship, but restrained herself to a single nod of thanks.

And nowhere in the hours of work could she managed a spare moment to say anything to Raze. After the meal, she showed the Detyens to their quarters and gave them leave to move around the ship. As she was leaving them to their work, Raze grazed his fingers across her wrist and she shivered, but Toran called him away before she could try to get a word in.

Then she was left to manage the women, explaining the sleeping situation and trying to learn all their names. Tory, Helen, Chi, CJ, Muir, Davy, Nella, Ella, Laurel, Monica, Valerie, and Quinn. Maybe she could get them to wear name tags. According to the mission brief, Muir Henderson was the niece of the senator who had agitated for the mission in the first place. The young woman couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her stringy blonde hair could use a good wash and she was so pale that her skin took on a bluish tint under the harsh light of the ship. She had bruises under her eyes and wouldn’t say a word, even when asked a direct question. She’d need therapy and lots of it, Sierra was sure. All of the women would. But some seemed to be in better spirits than others.

Quinn, the black woman with short hair who’d spoken up earlier, seemed to have taken up the mantle of leadership. She spoke for the other women and asked Sierra a barrage of questions ranging from who she and her team were, where they’d come from, where they were going, who had captured them, how did the women know they could trust Sierra, who were the aliens on board, and why did they all have to share beds. Every time Sierra answered one question, another three popped up, and by the time she extricated herself from Quinn, her throat hurt and she just wanted to take a nap for the next three days.

Instead, Sierra satisfied herself with a glass of water and hid in her room for five minutes while she scarfed down her own neglected protein bar and took a few seconds to collect herself. When a knock sounded at her door, she stifled the groan and wedged herself up from her bed, crossing the three steps to the door as if she were walking on hot coals. She placed her hand on the latch and took a deep breath, putting her game face back on before swinging the door open.

She couldn’t keep the shock off her face when she saw who it was. “Raze?”