Chapter Seventeen

Outer Reaches. Geonate New Time, Year 2402

It was so dark. She was a quivering mass of live wires curled on the floor, dreading the pain to come. The bruises on her arms and welts across her shoulders burned through her old scars. Or were they new scars? She was so confused, afraid. She curled tighter as the walls closed in. The blackness seeped into her pores, invaded her senses, and taunted her sanity.

Deep inside, she doubted herself, doubted her reality.

Where was her angel?

*

Piotr’s breath came fast, in gulps that burned his lungs. Anna!

“You can’t help her by expending your energy on the shields. She wouldn’t thank you for ending like that, like a spent battery.” Gregory tried to calm Piotr as he gripped him tightly around the torso from behind.

Weak as he was, Piotr still struggled to phase off the Firewalker where Gregory, with his sharp talons, had dragged him in his weakened state. He’d barely had the reserves to shift. His arms ached where Gregory now held him, a sure sign he’d expended himself.

And then, while his heart struggled against the band tightened around it and anger held him mute and helpless, Ivan slapped inhibitor cuffs on his wrists. No energy in the world would help now. He was stuck in human form.

“Sorry.” Ivan winced.

The indignity knifed through Piotr, and the added insult exploded from him.

He kicked out, and Ivan fell on his backside clutching his stomach. Gregory dropped Piotr and stepped back. Piotr fell to his knees. His hair hung forward, covering his face and the contorted expression he felt there, rigid with agony.

The memory of her on the day he’d first seen her, lying on the floor, beaten, and so vulnerable seared into him, sank its teeth in, and bit hard.

 He had to get to Anna. She didn’t like to be touched. She might lose herself as prisoner, get that faraway look in her eyes and never come back. She’d be scared, right now, as he knelt here detained by his so-called friends.

Piotr spat on the floor.

Behind him, he heard the gruff command. “Leave.  There’s nothing you can do for him but win this war.”

“Yes, sir.” Gregory and Ivan both responded and shimmered away.

In his own cabin, Piotr remained on the floor, alone with Leader Torrin—the only man with the authority to order inhibitor cuffs to be used. Fabric rustling and a weary sigh announced that Torrin still remained close behind him.

“I know what it’s like to lose a mate.”

Piotr hung his head lower. He needed more energy. Now. He had to get her back. If they’d take off the manacles and get him into a recharge chamber…

“I suspect I may be the only phoenix who knows what that’s like,” Torrin continued. Piotr could disabuse him of that notion if he could part his grinding teeth—that Ritter had a mother still alive and unable to escape into death.

Piotr growled, low and long.

Torrin put a hand between Piotr’s shoulder blades. Piotr’s muscles bunched. A low, primal seething snaked in his gut. He needed to pounce on the enemy and tear him to pieces. Koschei. And Ritter. Ritter was behind Anna’s capture. He’d kill the mongrel with his bare hands and then pick out his internal organs with his beak.

“Then you know.” Piotr grated, his voice garbled and full of fury. “I will not stop until I get her back.”

“I know,” Torrin sighed again. “But we can’t get her back. We’ve never breached that ship.”

At that moment, the door slid open. Piotr flinched, another growl echoing in his chest. He slung his head around toward the lean woman in the doorway.

“Vivie.” Torrin didn’t quite cover the surprise in his exclamation. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Through the red of his vision, he didn’t recognize the woman who had been so young the last he’d seen her.

“Perhaps I can help.” A confident sensuality covered the slight hesitation of her statement.

“Not now, Vivie, Piotr is not himself.”

“I think.” She paused and took a deep breath. “If we bond, it will remove his pain. He’ll be safe.”

“No,” the shout erupted from him through a scratchy tightening of his throat. He barely kept the foul language and insults from spewing, the hold on civility and his debt to her family the only thing that kept him from launching at her in defense of his mate.

Torrin pulled him to his feet, and Piotr couldn’t struggle away. So weak. He understood how Anna must have felt when she’d been imprisoned, with no will of her own. How she must suffer now. He ached all over for her.

Gripping his chin, his Leader forced Piotr to look him in the eye, the eyes of a mated phoenix with blue irises, rather than the red of immaturity. His bristly blonde hair was shorn closely to his head and lines of age crinkled around his mouth.

“You should heed her offer. You have no future where you’re headed. None at all. Only death. Vivie can complete you.” Torrin’s eyes darkened with bleakness, and he whispered the rest so that only the two of them could hear. “You can’t bond with your human. It’s for the best, trust me.”

“Never.” Piotr struggled against Torrin’s hold. He saw the moment his Leader decided. Torrin firmed his jaw. Icy dread formed in Piotr’s stomach, alleviating the fire that had burned there.

“That is an order. You will bond with the woman you promised. That’s why she’s on this ship. Remember, soldier? It’s the only way to pull you from this madness. It’s your bound duty.”

Leader Torrin released Piotr and moved away. “This door stays locked and guarded until you do.”

The portal closed behind Torrin, trapping Piotr inside with Vivie as her hand stroked through his hair. The action released the scent of ozone caught there from the laser fire of the battle. He’d promised Vivie, and only days before, he’d intended to follow through on that promise.

“It will be fine once we’re bonded. You’ll be better,” she whispered before she placed a kiss on his head. “We’ll both be complete.”

Piotr’s body shook with the surety he’d never be complete again.

“Duty,” he murmured and swung menacingly toward his intended mate. Looming over her like the animal he now was, he snarled into her beautiful, kind face, so like Ivan’s. “Let’s get this over with. How do you want it? Against the wall? On all fours? Or right here, on the floor, with your legs spread to the ceiling?”

*

Len slapped the side of her console in frustration. Ritter’s shuttle threaded through the fight, but it wouldn’t respond to her hail. At least Anna would be here soon, to calm the escalating fear of the crew. Len hadn’t been a good replacement.

All she could do was watch the heart-rending, heart-stopping blur as the battle escalated. A new development from moments before, the distant ships bombarded each other with laser cannon. In the escalation, phoenix troops swooped, dove into their opponents, and sent sparks flying. She should have been able to wait patiently, a skill she’d mastered years ago.

She needed to do something.

Even with her comp shrinking the battle to small proportions on the vid, the awesome breadth of destruction staggered. The laser cannons did no real damage to the ships, but would tear apart any mimics caught in its path. She could understand why the Firewalker might continue its use. It defied reason that Koschei’s ship used a weapon that made little headway against the enemy.

The phoenix who ran through the laser fire lit up even more brightly. Chests expanded, light slipped up and down their bodies, but after a pause, they surged forward with a recharge in reserves and fought with renewed fury.

Mimics caught in the lasers paused mid-combat and followed the laser, staying within the ray until they expanded, no longer within their physical form. Dispersing from their center in small pinpoints into an explosive exhaling—then they were gone. If any phoenix were near a mimic caught in the ray, they dispatched them with ease. No doubt it was to save the mimic any pain involved in exploding, but being dispatched by the enemy looked just as painful.

She’d never seen anything like it—beaks tearing and rending each other, sometimes with no result. At others, a tear in the energy shield would allow power to leak from within the creature, phoenix or mimic. The phoenix with a leak would retreat, she assumed to receive treatment. Many of the mimics became more frenzied, more violent until they began to fade. Fade until they were gone.

So far, the Venture hadn’t been targeted, but Len suspected it had more to do with the virus they all carried than any humanity on the part of the mimics.

Len shuddered.

She hoped none of her new friends had been hurt, and though it made her selfish, she hoped beyond all hope that Ivan, over all, made it home safe.

The comp pinged.

Ritter’s ship waited for docking.

*

Engineering exploded into action as Treena stood with her back against the wall, out of the way.

The captain remained trapped on the Stealth, and one lone hostage had returned. The frail creature in diaphanous robes sat, oblivious to all, in the middle of the harsh cursing and arguing. Ronin wasn’t with them. He’d never been there. Her stomach pitched. All she’d done had meant nothing. She’d never had a chance to save her brother. She fell back heavily against the wall.

Only two of the phoenix had returned, Ivan and Gregory. Ivan stood stoically holding Len from launching herself at the one they called Ritter. Her face red and disfigured with anger, Len fought like a wildcat. Ivan held her effortlessly.

Gregory leaned over the newly arrived woman, and putting her hand in his, she looked at him with a distant smile. He smoothed her hair in a fatherly gesture.

“We have to get Anna,” Len insisted, tears streaming down her face. Treena didn’t think Len knew she cried. The short woman went limp and leaned back on the phoenix who seemed a giant behind her.

He wiped her tears with a gentle pass of his hand. “We can’t board the ship. The shields block us.”

Ritter stood proud and defiant. “The alarm sounded. I had to get the shuttle from doc before it was too late. She ordered us to return with the data. No exceptions.”

“You never should have left her.” Hailey glared at the defector.

“Enough.” Ivan didn’t curse, yell, or growl. With a soft word, everyone in the room listened as if they could do nothing else. His ability to command made sense with the rumor she’d heard whispered by the phoenix when she hid and spied on them—to see if they were hurt, nothing else. Well, maybe fascination. This Ivan was a royal of some kind and he’d taken hold of this situation like a leader. How much confidence it must take for that? Treena couldn’t imagine it.

“Gregory, take the matron to the Firewalker. Ritter, you and I will recon the Stealth. If we see an opening, you’re going in. And you.” Ivan looked down at Len. “You are staying put and staying out of trouble. You can’t help her now, but I’ll get her back.”

Len’s face paled, and she seemed to step back into Ivan even further. His arm went around her waist in a snug hold.

“I’m sorry to say this, Ivan, but you can’t risk yourself, even for a friend,” Gregory raised a brow with a meaning underlying his words. More of those hints that Ivan was royal but he hadn’t told anyone on the crew. Maybe not even Len.

Treena’s tilted her head to hear better. Something passed between the two men, but she couldn’t understand it.

“No risk.” Ivan kissed the top of Len’s head. “Only recon.”

“I’ll go back.” Ritter appeared unaffected. “But odds are I’ll be killed. You must promise to help my mother find peace, and I’ll need that disruptor bar.”

Ivan wiped all expression from his face. Now cold, determined, and with an air of authority, he stepped away from Len and toward Ritter. “You’ll go back, help me get to Anna, and then you’ll turn yourself over to the Firewalker. Or you die. And I will not put a disruptor bar in your hands.”

Guilt weighing heavily in her chest, Treena put one sluggish foot forward. Then another and another before she stood among the aggrieved collection of people ready to strike at each other. An impulse too strong to deny, to save anyone else from being hurt, sent her forward.

“I’ll go,” she tried to say forcefully, but it came out in a whisper—nothing like Ivan’s authority. Everyone continued arguing except for Ritter. He lifted a brow and studied her.

“Perhaps there is another way.” Ritter never blinked as he pinned her in place with his stare. It wasn’t hard to do. She barely breathed.

“And that would be?” Ivan replied.

“This ship would never be targeted. Koschei has spent too much effort to ready these women to breed. I can scent the beginning of it on them. They’re not yet mate-able but they will be. They’re valuable to Koschei.”

Ivan growled in his throat and it vibrated through the room.

“He’d risk every soldier out there fighting right now to get these women safely in his clutches so he could launch his latest program,” Ritter continued.

“Where are you going with this?” Len’s biceps flexed as she shoved her hands on her hips and stood akimbo. “I’d rather die than breed.”

An angry slash to his lips, Ivan looked as if ready to throttle Ritter with his bare hands. Treena had to stop the argument before someone got hurt, but she didn’t know how. Ritter spoke before she could decide.

“You don’t understand. I’ll take one of you. Say that I made a trade for one. Give a reason why it looked like I defected but I was bringing him one of his valuable subjects.”

Gregory moved between the two before Len’s fist made it halfway to Ritter. He caught her hand mid-swing. “This might work to get him aboard but I don’t see how that gets Anna out.”

“You get aboard. With a disruptor?” Ivan pulled Len back to his side. “Even if I trusted you with one—and I don’t—you can’t take out that entire ship with one.”

“I don’t need to board,” Ritter replied. “Just get close enough to sabotage the shields. Shields are down, you can phase through.”

“Then why do you need one of the women?” Gregory asked.

“They’ll run a scan.” Ritter shrugged. “Even if they suspect me, they’ll hesitate to hurt one of his test subjects.”

“How can you damage the shields from outside the craft?” Gregory persisted his questioning. “If there was a way, we’d have found it by now.”

“You don’t know the ship like I do. Disrupt the energy intake in the right quadrant—where the power connects when docked to stations—and it shuts down the shielding to send remaining power to life support. I’ve spent years studying the schematics and repair logs. There is a weakness in a new adapter installed for connecting to ships and stations. He anticipated working with the world of these women.”

“I don’t trust you any more than Koschei.” Ivan’s cold mask back in place, Treena could easily mistake him for the aristocratic nobles who came through the station on the luxury liners.

“I’m the only one who can get close, aren’t I?” Ritter spat back.

“I’m going. I’m bringing back my captain,” Len made as if to walk away, but Ivan gripped her shoulder and kept her in place.

“You need to lead your crew. There’s nobody else who can do it.” Ivan scanned the small crowd around him before he stopped to assess Treena.

Treena didn’t need more prompting. “I said I’d go. I’m the one who got us in this mess. They’d believe I wanted to go. They lied to me, said my brother was on that ship.”

“The only risk you run is the ship being disintegrated. If they don’t believe me, we’ll both die on that shuttle.” Ritter’s hard stare seemed to flay her to the bone.

“You need a bargaining chip,” she answered, proud that her weak knees didn’t buckle. “I’ll do it.”

More arguing.

More insistence from Len to go on the mission. That she’d be able to watch over Ritter with such a valuable weapon.

Through the discussions, Ritter marked Treena with his visual assessment, cold and unemotional. Finally, he held up a hand for silence which wasn’t heeded, never looking away from her, and added his voice to the fray. “You’ll do.”

The only one to still disagree was the chief engineer, but Len finally relented when Hailey took her aside and spoke with her quietly for a few moments. Len spoke into her comm and the end started, the countdown to Treena’s reckoning. After what she’d done, she’d rather sacrifice herself—maybe find news of her brother—than face the crew after they got the captain back.

“All crew report to stations. I repeat, report to stations.”

Len moved to Treena and muttered low, menacing. “Don’t forget this for one minute. Anna’s more important than you to this crew. The same crew you’ve already betrayed. If you do it again, I’ll break every bone in your body. Slowly.”

Then she grinned, as if she hadn’t just made Treena nearly pass out from fear and nausea.

“Let’s get that shuttle back out there,” Len said to the room at large. Then, while Treena still shook, frozen in place, the compact, muscular chief ran her hand across the back of the captain’s chair. “We’ll have her back soon.”

Hailey delivered a cloth-wrapped rod to Treena before she stepped aboard the shuttle to follow Ritter. The other woman gave her a friendly smile and an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder. “You redeem yourself out there. Keep this disruptor on you. Don’t let him double-cross us. When it’s time, if he’s on the up and up, destroy that shield.”

Unable to speak, Treena nodded. Gripping the weapon, she went aboard and collapsed into the nearest seat. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer.

“Buckle in.” Ritter closed the hatch of the shuttle and settled into the pilot’s chair. “If I can talk my way into the outer shields, the rest is simple. You don’t even have to move from that chair.”

Treena made an agreeable noise of some kind. Her mouth was too dry for talking.

“And if not, the ship will disintegrate so quickly, you’ll never feel a thing. Relax.”

Her teeth chattered. When the shuttle lurched on launch, she covered her mouth to keep the bile in.

“Back and forth, back and forth,” Ritter muttered then gave a laugh. He sounded as out of control as Treena’s churning stomach. Then he fiddled with the comms and spoke as soon as the ping of a connection sounded. He rambled off some sort of rank and code. Then boasted, “Got a delivery for the scientists.”

“What are you doing on that craft? It bolted without permission and is under a destroy at sight order.”

“Managed to track some escapees from the medical wing.” Ritter turned toward her and gave a shrug. She understood what he was doing. Going with whatever made sense. All they had to do was get close but all she could do was picture some guy—just as irreverent and uncaring of his own death as this Ritter—with his finger on the gun trained on this shuttle.

“Scan picks up a woman.”

“Caught her. Bringing her back,” Ritter replied matter-of-factly.

“Bring it in. Slow. You can explain it to leadership yourself.”

“Slow it is.”

Ritter glanced back at her again, put a hand over his mouth and pointed to the comms.

They had to keep quiet, then.

It felt like forever. Tension gripped her spine and sweat soaked her clothes, but she didn’t move. Barely breathed. The brightly-lit battle disappeared behind them as the ship got closer. Darkness filled the small shuttle.

“Caught in a slight drift.” Ritter announced.

It wasn’t for her benefit. He deftly maneuvered the craft as it slid a bit sideways, giving her a view of the battle again, the dark side of the ship coming at them fast to her left. She wanted to squeeze her eyes closed but if they were going to blow them up, she wanted to see everything.

“You’ve got some phoenix on your tail. They’re coming in fast,” warned the person on the other side of the comm, letting them know that they were still suspicious of Ritter’s thin explanations.

“They won’t get through the shields,” Ritter replied and slowly, quietly rose from the pilot chair. His stealth mesmerized her. He moved like a shadow and before she could react, he’d take the disruptor from her slack grip. Then he bent in front of her. She frowned, but when she opened her mouth to question him, he shook his head and put his hand over his mouth again.

She nodded and slid her legs to the side when he reached beneath her seat. Then he withdrew the emergency mask and held it out to her. Once she had it over her face, he tapped her unsecured harness. Shaking, she slid the straps over herself. He gave her a once over then got to his feet and moved to the hatch.

The comms chirped. “You’re off center. You won’t attach. Open up the systems, we’ll guide the attachment.”

Ritter ignored his ship’s commands and worked on the console next to the hatch.

A strange peace overcame her and the shaking and sweating went away. Strapped into a chair, watching as this strange man manually cranked open a hatch into space, she couldn’t help or stop it. All she could do was watch.

The internal shuttle alarms blared.

The door cranked open and the sound stopped. The cold gripped her. The air around her went still. An unsecured cup flew across the shuttle and wedged into the small opening at the hatch. Ritter’s arm bunched as he held onto the hatch’s handle with one hand. The wrap around the disruptor few into the small opening. Fluttered, then ripped through, sucked into the vacuum of space.

Gravity in the shuttle fluctuated and her body shifted against the harness.

Ritter shoved the bar through the gap. Light flashed.

The shuttle shuddered.

Ritter yelled something, the sound lost in space. His body lurched and he let go of the handle. His sturdy body slid toward the gap still there from the shuttle’s open hatch. His eyes shut, his chest not moving, he looked dead. But maybe he wasn’t. Not yet. Not if she could get an air mask on him or shut that hatch.

Her still-wet clothes from her sweat made her cold, but she couldn’t sit here and shake and shudder. If anyone was going to save her, it’d have to be her. She snapped out of her harness and dove for Ritter. He wasn’t far. The gravity held enough for her to get over there, but every second, it got weaker. The shuttle wouldn’t be able to maintain this in-between state between a livable atmosphere and the death of space.

She had to get him out of the way. Grabbing his arm, she tugged. He was solid. Heavy. But the gravity system’s failing made him lighter or she’d have never moved him.

The she did what he’d done but backwards. She cranked the hatch closed. The handle burned her, it was so cold, but she’d recover from the rips in her skin from where she froze to the metal.

Finally, the hatch sealed. The alarms in the shuttle changed from high-pitched wails to systems warnings. She tugged her air mask over to Ritter and snapped it over his face.

She thought his chest moved but she wasn’t sure.

“Shuttle drifting,” the systems warned.

Treena dragged her suddenly exhausted body to the pilot’s seat, and wiping her bloody palms on the thighs of her pants, tried to decipher the commands on the console.

They’d been hit with an electrical weapon’s discharge and now floated away from the ongoing battle. They’d be fine. As long as someone knew to look for them and tow them back.

Surely someone would look for them.