Inrit threw her body over Max’s prone form to shield him from the shots that never came. It only took about ten seconds for her to realize that the people holed up in the engine room were friends, not foes. But it took another minute or two before she was ready to push herself up off of Max and trust that they wouldn’t hurt him.

Finally, she got to her feet, her fingers itching for a blaster, but she kept her hands empty. The last anyone on this ship had seen of her, she’d been accused of piracy and locked up. They might think she was part of the attack. She looked around and saw Krayter, Tessa the doctor’s assistant, the Tronx whose name she still hadn’t learned, and Symes with her blaster still in hand, though now she pointed it at the floor.

“You’re not dead,” said Symes with something like wonder. “We saw the number they did on your door and thought for sure you’d been murdered.” She holstered her blaster and held up a hand to wave Tessa over. “He needs medical attention.”

Inrit refrained from mentioned that she’d cut them out of their holding cell. No need to bring that to anyone’s attention. Tessa rushed over with the med kit that Inrit had stored with her things. She hadn’t had a chance to collect it between finding the smuggled goods and speaking with Morvellan. As Tessa checked on Max, Inrit forced her gaze away. The woman was a trained professional and Max’s problems were organic. She could help.

Still, it was a fight.

Instead, she turned her attention to the rest of the room. At first she’d just registered that her fellow Detyens, Tessa, the Tronx, and Symes were here. But huddled further back, closer to the door to the heart of the ship, were the twenty or so other passengers that the ship was carrying. They’d all taken shelter in the safest part of the ship.

“How did you know to come here?” she asked.

Inrit hadn’t met most of the passengers, but from the way they huddled into each other and flinched when she spoke, she knew they must have heard of her. She gave them a quick once over and decided none of them was a threat. Symes or the Tronx could give her the most trouble if they wanted to. So until Max was better, and there was no way he wasn’t getting better, she’d play nice.

Symes didn’t look back to check on the rest of the passengers. She must have trusted them not to do anything stupid like rush up and hug Inrit. Krayter looked ready to, but Inrit shook her head to keep him in place. She stood in place and waited for an answer to her question.

“The captain sent us here,” Symes finally said. “He didn’t want passengers at risk.”

He didn’t want them getting in the way was more likely. Inrit had angled herself away so she couldn’t watch Tessa care for Max. After the work the human woman had done to save Kayleb, Inrit knew she was beyond capable. That didn’t mean that she didn’t want to shove her away and tend to her mate herself.

“And what of the rest of the crew? We barely saw anyone on our run here.” But that ‘barely anyone’ had been enough. Inrit felt like she was trying to digest broken glass, her insides torn up in sympathetic pain as Max lay on the floor. The few bruises she’d sustained were nothing.

Symes crossed her arms and jutted a hip out. “Should I really trust a woman the captain accused of piracy?” Her hard expression faltered when she looked beyond Inrit to where Max was being tended to. But when she turned back to Inrit, she was all business once more.

“I’m not a pirate. If I were, I would’ve teamed up with the people attacking the ship and gotten my ass out of here.” She’d had enough of this standoff. Inrit turned away from Symes and knelt beside Tessa. Max had gone pale and he was covered in sweat. His skin was cool to the touch and Inrit didn’t know whether that was bad or good. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, practically begged. She needed to do something and Symes was an icy wall of coldness.

Tessa wiped a cloth against Max’s forehead and looked up. There was something… different about her from the last time Inrit had seen her. But it wasn’t anything that she could place. Or perhaps it was just the heat of battle hardening the medic’s reserve. “The generalized anti-toxin in the med kit is doing its work. The cyborg’s mechs helped to slow the spread. In a few minutes, he should wake up. Once his healing factor improves and closes the wound, he’ll be fine.”

“And how long will that be?” The ship rocked for the first time in several minutes and Inrit threw herself forward again to keep Max steady.

Tessa shrugged and pushed her hair back. “Ten minutes? Twenty? I don’t know. I don’t normally work on cyborgs.”

Once the ship steadied, Inrit sat back up and barely kept herself in check. She wanted to launch herself at the medic, grab her by the throat, and squeeze until she got the answers she wanted. “But he’s going to be okay?” she asked through gritted teeth. Her claws peeked out and Inrit let the medic get a glimpse.

The human woman paled. “He—He’ll be…” She stuttered out something like an answer and backed up.

To Inrit’s great surprise, Kayleb lunged forward and placed himself between Tessa and Inrit. “Get a grip,” he said. “Your mate will make a full recovery. Now stop hassling Tessa.”

He laid a hand on Tessa’s shoulder and her own came up to cover his. Inrit gave those joined hands a hard stare and followed the line of Kayleb’s arm up to his face. Before she could coalesce anything she was thinking into proper thoughts, Max groaned and began to stir. Inrit’s head snapped down and looked for the knife wound on his chest. It was there, but about half the size it had been only a moment before and sewing itself shut fast enough for her eyes to watch.

His eyes snapped open and locked on her. Inrit reached up and cupped his face, the relief that flooded through her strong enough to make her legs quiver. She slid from her knees to sit beside him. They didn’t say anything. She couldn’t find the words to say what she needed to say.

I love you. Don’t scare me like that again. I need you. What in all the hells? You’re mine. It all mixed together into a big ball of emotion that escaped from her throat on a rough sob. Tears threatened to spill, but she hadn’t lost that much control. But Inrit tipped her head forward anyway, letting her hair frame her face so that only Max could see her.

Emotion bled into those silver eyes of his, the small wrinkles crinkling as they stared at one another. “Ow,” said Max, carefully enunciating it and holding onto the ‘w’ for a moment too long.

Inrit hadn’t known she could be any more relieved. This time she sagged, her chest falling towards his as the big knot in her back loosened. “I can’t believe a big bad cyborg was brought down by that tiny little scratch,” she said, rubbing her thumb over his eyebrows. “That whole tough guy thing is just a front, isn’t it?”

“You caught me,” he confessed. “It’s all just a big act. But it worked.” He grinned, even though she still saw the shadow of pain in his eyes. “I got you.”

Another blast hit, this one strong enough to send Inrit flying back a few meters. She rolled back with the flow of the ship and rolled over, coming up on her feet in a smooth motion, planting one hand on the floor in front of her for balance. As the rocking subsided, Max pushed up to his feet and stood. Kayleb had thrown himself over Tessa to shield her from danger, and many of the passengers were cowering into the walls.

Symes braced herself against the console and scowled. “I’ve been sailing for nearly ten years and this is the first time I’ve been attacked by pirates.”

Inrit secured her hair with a spare tie and raised her brow at Symes. “This isn’t an attack. If it were an attack, we’d all be dead. And don’t get too high on yourself, you’re not the target. Not directly, anyway.”

“They want to take us all as slaves,” Max said. The tattered remains of his shirt formed a vest, leaving his chest exposed. He pulled it off and hung it on a rung behind the door. His jacket was salvageable so he wore it over his bare skin.

With the grime of the ship and the specks of blood from his injury, he almost looked like the pirates that Inrit had once known. She’d never found any of them attractive, but if she and Max were alone, he’d know just how much she wanted him.

“Can we get the external feeds on the monitors in here?” Inrit asked, bottling up the lust and keeping it hidden deep. She knew it was possible to view anything from the engine room, but only if the system hadn’t already been damaged in the battle.

Symes gestured to the chair, inviting Inrit to try. It took a minute, but only one of the exterior cameras was too damaged to send data. When the pictures from outside came through, a few passengers gasped at the massive ship that had chained itself to their own with massive lasers. A shaft of light burst out from the bowels of that ship into their own, the light bridge that had allowed the pirates on.

Inrit smiled. She knew that ship. She’d lived on it.

Max rubbed his hand against her shoulder and she looked up at him. He quirked an eyebrow as if asking, friends of yours?

She nodded. Not friends, though. Pirates didn’t have friends. But there were life debts. And some of them even put stock in the concept.

Max flicked his eyes towards Symes. If Inrit could get it done, she needed to get that woman on her side. The ship rocked and the lights flickered. One of the exterior cameras went out, taking out a giant puzzle piece of the alien ship.

There was no time for finesse.

“I can stop this fight,” said Inrit. “We’ll all get out of here free and alive. But Morvellan won’t listen to me and let me do my thing.”

Symes gave her a hard stare, a good one. She must have been practicing. Then she looked over at Max and the gaze softened. Not into love or lust or even like. No, it bloomed into respect. Morvellan might have locked Max up, but Symes still thought of him as her superior.

“I trust Inrit,” Max told the human woman. “If she says she can get us out, she’ll do it or die trying.”

Symes nodded and the matter was settled. “What do you need from me?”

Inrit grinned. “How would you feel about hijacking the ship?”