Qaiyaan watched Lisa depart to the med bay, her gaze lingering on his until she disappeared around the corner, then turned his attention back to the stranger. “Sure would be handy to have a brig right now, wouldn’t it?”

"We should just push him out the back during liftoff." Noatak tightened the rope holding the man's wrists behind his back. "No telling what other cybernetic gizmos he's got on him that might sabotage us."

“We could stick him in the cryo-pod,” Tovik said.

“Not a bad idea.” Qaiyaan grabbed the stranger by the collar and hoisted him to his feet.

“You were just saying the cryo-pod wasn’t working!” the man choked out, struggling feebly against Qaiyaan’s grip.

"Would you rather be pushed out the airlock?" Qaiyaan started pushing him toward the cargo bay. "Noatak, get us airborne. Tovik, with me."

After stuffing the struggling and cursing man into the pod and slamming the lid closed, Qaiyaan watched Tovik fiddle with the controls. The man’s muffled shouts could be heard through the pod’s thick lid, his breath clouding the small window. The light inside alternated from amber to red and back again. Qaiyaan asked, “You sure you don’t need Mek?”

“Nah, I got the basics.” The light settled on amber, then flashed green. Tovik stood, brushing his hands together in satisfaction. “See?”

“All right.” A surge of extra gravity set the deck thrumming. Liftoff. So much for getting the Hardship’s outer plating fixed before they had to endure another burn. Ellam Cua, let it hold together. He and his men could withstand void if the ship popped a seam, but he had a new crew member to consider. What were they going to do with her when it was time to burn? They still hadn’t resolved her nanite’s sensitivity to burn frequencies.

Tovik headed for the engine room, while Qaiyaan took the catwalk stairs two at a time. He reached the small control room in time to see the pale blue lower atmosphere transition to violet and then black outside the view screen. Mek stood hunched next to Noatak, who leaned over the dashboard from the nav seat. Lisa sat buckled in the captain’s chair, her eyes squeezed closed. Someone had given her a loose shirt to wear over the bodice of her dress, but a long, sexy slice of leg still peeked from the side slit.

Noatak’s fingers darted over the command surface, guiding the ship to avoid incoming traffic. “Air control isn’t happy with us right now.”

Qaiyaan couldn’t read the screens from his position at the door, and there were already too many bodies in the cramped space. “How long until we clear the buffer?”

“Sixteen or seventeen minutes, assuming I can avoid any orbiting cartel.” Noatak tapped an adjustment into his controls as a spiny garan’uk pleasure vehicle slid past the view screen. “You have a destination in mind?”

“Any place but here.”

“If we find my brother,” Lisa’s voice could barely be heard over the engines. “He can reprogram my nanites.”

Qaiyaan put a hand on the door frame to steady himself as the ship rocked under Noatak’s guidance. “Let’s tackle one thing at a time, okay? We need to clear air control.”

The deck shuddered, and Noatak made another adjustment to his controls. “We’ve got a tail.”

“Anaq," Qaiyaan swore. A tail already? He squinted at the viewscreen, unable to tell friend from foe among the scattered couriers and cargo vessels coming and going from the surface. But Noatak had done this often enough, Qaiyaan trusted he was right. "Can we slingshot off the atmosphere straight to burn?"

“Lisa can’t take the stress unshielded,” Mek said.

Qaiyaan leveled him with a gaze. “I’m fully aware of that. We’ll have to stabilize her like we did last time.”

Mek said, “You can’t—”

“Don’t lecture me about over-using recovery stims,” Qaiyaan interrupted, acutely aware of Noatak’s addiction to the drug. Everyone generally tread carefully around the subject with him. “We don’t have time to argue. We can do this.”

“We probably can.” Mek pointed between himself and Tovik. “You can’t. You send her into a coma when you touch her.”

Air suddenly refused to enter Qaiyaan’s lungs. How could he have forgotten that? Because you don’t want it to be true. He met Lisa’s gaze. Her eyes had the same glazed look he remembered his sister having after her empathic suppression classes. “Can the two of you stabilize her?”

Mek glanced at Tovik and shook his head. “Not alone.”

Qaiyaan swallowed and faced Noatak, who remained facing the controls. His friend had been with him long before the planet's destruction and was as close to Qaiyaan as a brother. They'd enlisted together and served on the same task force with the troopers. They'd grieved together at the loss of their world. And Qaiyaan had been at Noatak's side every moment his friend had struggled to overcome his stim addiction. But he needed to help Lisa. They needed to help Lisa. She held the key to their future, Noatak’s included.

Before Qaiyaan could even form the words to ask, though, Noatak swiveled in his seat. “Take the helm. And watch your six for that tail.”

“Iluq, are you sure?” If Qaiyaan’d ever felt guilt in his life, it was nothing compared to this moment.

Noatak’s voice remained calm and quiet. “We don’t leave crew behind.”

Chest tight, Qaiyaan spared a final glance at Lisa as he slid into the nav seat. He wasn’t nearly as good a pilot as Noatak, but he’d get them out of here.

From the door, Mek said, “Give a shout when you’re ready to burn.”

"Keep her safe," Qaiyaan called back. But Mek and Lisa were already down the corridor. He felt their departure like a void.

* * *

Qaiyaan banked the Hardship starboard as he cleared Bolisare’s atmosphere. They’d been strafed by at least one laser blast during their escape, adding to the hull’s numerous scars, but he’d lost their tail by weaving between the thick stream of traffic coming in and out of the station. Luckily, the cartel didn’t appear to have a ship waiting in orbit, and Qaiyaan skimmed the planet’s gravitational pull while picking up speed. He planned to slingshot off the nearby moon—a highly illegal move in most populated systems—but this was Bolisare, not some Syndicorp-governed speed bump. He intended to use every advantage to get them as far away as possible.

He programmed the burn drive to aim for the Milicon quadrant, a parsec away from Alleigh. His constant tracking of Syndicorp CEOs and shipping activity gave him the gut feeling that the lab Lisa was looking for might be at that particular edge of Syndicorp space. While the burn drive pulled at every molecule of his being, he gripped the arms of the nav chair and stared at the holocube Noatak kept on the dashboard, the image of his parents a constant reminder of what Syndicorp had destroyed. A constant reminder of their mission as pirates. Stealing Lisa’s brother from Syndicorp’s clutches was going to be satisfying on so many levels.

The burn itself only took a handful of seconds, but it always felt like the event lasted hours. When the galaxy finally realigned itself, Qaiyaan checked his sensors for nearby ships. Unless a ship had been in his immediate wake and prepped for burn, he couldn’t have been followed. But he hadn’t lived this long by not being careful. Scanners showed nothing but empty space. Good. He needed to check on Lisa and the rest of his crew. Lifting himself on unsteady legs, he stumbled out of the control room airlock and down the stairs to the med bay.

Lisa was sitting up on the medical table, forehead pressed against her bent knees. Qaiyaan took a deep breath of relief. “Thank Ellam Cua you’re all right.”

She let out a shaky gasp in response, as if unable to summon anything more.

He wanted—needed—to pull her against him, to feel her heartbeat against his. To reassure himself she was indeed alive and whole. But touching her would definitely not accomplish that. A bone-deep sorrow filled him, knowing that his deepest desire might forever remain out of his reach. Instead, he knelt next to Tovik, who was slumped on the floor against the medical bay cot. Mek and Noatak were similarly sprawled around the bed. They must’ve all stood around her for the burn, holding her and then collapsing with exhaustion afterward.

Qaiyaan reached out to find Tovik’s pulse. Alive but unconscious. He rose and checked the other two, then stepped over the doctor’s body, opening the cabinet where they kept the recovery stims. Priming the stim gun with a dose, he administered it to Mek.

The doctor stiffened, eyelids flying open and pupils constricted to pinpricks. He sat up unsteadily, his voice thick and languid, but coherent. “The others?”

“I wanted you up and running first.” Qaiyaan primed the stim gun with a second dose.

Mek nodded. “Noatak wants to recover on his own. I’ll see to him. You handle Tovik.”

A lump filled Qaiyaan’s throat, and he moved to the young man. Much like Mek, Tovik awakened with a start, eyes wild. But he also had a grin on his face. “Whoa.” He twisted and pulled himself upright to peer at Lisa over the edge of her bed. “Wild ride, but we did it.”

Lisa looked out of the corner of her eye at the young man, a tiny smile tweaking the corner of her mouth.

Tovik’s enthusiasm was infectious as always, but Qaiyaan’s thoughts remained heavy. Mek was arranging a limp Noatak on the second med cot. The energy required to hold one’s self through burn was bearable. For some reason using it to hold another person steady was exponentially more exhausting. Noatak would take days to bounce back without the aid of stims.

Adjusting the gown around her legs, Lisa swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her attention also on the doctor’s activity. “Will Noatak be all right?”

Mek’s lips remained tight.

An inkling of fear settled in Qaiyaan’s hearts. “Will he?” He searched for Noatak’s ionic signature. His first mate’s hearts beat slowly, nearly undetectable, but steady. “Thank Ellam Cua.”

The doctor turned to gather supplies from the cupboards. His hands were shaking, full of erratic, stim-induced energy. “Give him some time.”

Lisa stood, her bare feet making no sound on the floor, and moved to Noatak’s side. The fingers of one hand fluttered over her mouth. “This is because of me. God, what if he dies?” She looked up at Qaiyaan. “You shouldn't have let him do this.”

Noatak’s voice creaked from the cot. “I'm not dead.”

An exclamation of surprise escaped Lisa, and she leaned down to press her cheek to Noatak’s.

Tovik, still sitting on the floor, let out what could only be called a giggle, his fingers waggling in response to whatever stim-inspired ideas were swimming through his head. “Noatak’s too bad-tempered to die.”

Qaiyaan turned to shove the stim gun back into its cabinet. He longed for Lisa’s touch, her cheek against his. The sensation of her voice in his head earlier could only mean one thing—she was his mate. Their resonances aligned. Yet in spite of the connection, in spite of his conviction that she was the one, he’d never be able to touch her. Never be able to truly make her his own.

The overhead lights flickered as if in response to his thoughts, and the hull groaned. Anaq, what else can go wrong? Qaiyaan spun and stepped over Tovik toward the door. "I should check our system. No telling what that guy in our cryo-pod did to the ship before this all started."

Noatak pushed Lisa away and tried to sit up. “I’ll help.”

Mek placed one palm flat against the prone man’s chest. “Don’t try to move. I need to check your secondary heart.”

“What’s wrong with his heart?” Qaiyaan paused halfway across the small bay.

The doctor and Noatak exchanged a glance. “It’s nothing, captain,” Noatak said. “Just let the doc do his job. You concentrate on finding this mystical magical brother who can fix Lisa’s nanites. I can’t hold her steady every time we engage the burn drive.”

Lisa snuck in one last flutter of her fingertips over Noatak’s brow. “Thank you again.”

He scowled and rolled his eyes, which was about as much of a “you’re welcome” as Noatak ever gave anyone.

Noatak grunted, ignoring the doctor’s orders, and sat up. His copper skin seemed abnormally dark, its satiny gleam dulled by a greenish cast. “I can get started looking for that secret lab. Where’d you eject us, Captain?”

“Milicon sector. Captain Kashatok’s been working the shipping lanes here since the Termination. He might know something.”

Mek let his scanner fall to his side and glared at Qaiyaan. “You’re going to trust that drunken excuse for a Denaidan?”

“He knows the sector,” Qaiyaan insisted in spite of the nausea riding low in his belly. Kashatok ran one of the seedier crews among the Denaidan pirates, but he was also the only actual cartel member among the fleet and a source of valuable intel.

“I can hack into the darkweb,” Lisa said. “I’m sure I still have contacts who—”

“No.” Noatak and Mek said simultaneously.

Tovik dragged himself onto the mattress like a nerelian ice slug. “You can access the dark web?” His words were slurred. “Can you track down the schematic for a pynergic quark converter there?”

“We have more pressing concerns, Tovik.” Qaiyaan tried to glare, but concern for his engineer weighed heavy on his already guilty-as-hell conscience. Two stim doses this close together could cause serious damage.

Mek sighed and plodded over with a scanner. “I’d better sedate him. Hold still, Tovik.”

Qaiyaan turned to Lisa. “The darkweb’s too dangerous. We have to assume your contacts have been compromised.” The lights browned out and flickered back up again, accompanied by a throaty vibration through the deck plating.

“I should check the hull.” Noatak attempted to rise but ended up flopping back down on the cot.

“I told you to stay put,” Mek said, leaning heavily on the edge of Tovik’s cot.

“You should rest, too.” Lisa pushed the chair from the nearby computer toward him.

“A doctor’s job is never done.” Yet Mek’s big frame collapsed onto the chair, bending forward to rest his head on the edge of the mattress next to Tovik.

Qaiyaan took a deep breath. Between Tovik and Noatak, Mek had his hands full. Yet the hull needed checking, which meant someone had to go outside. A diagnostic needed to be run to make sure the electrical system wasn’t going to short out life-support. He had a prisoner in the cargo bay who should be looked in on. Everything fell on Qaiyaan’s shoulders.

“You have an extra crew member now.” Lisa moved to within arm’s length, sexy as hell in that loose shirt over her gold, form-fitting dress, her charcoal hair in an alluring disarray.

“You know how to run a ship diagnostic?”

She raised an eyebrow and tapped her temple. “I’m pretty sure we can figure it out.”

Mek sat up woozily. “The synaptic equalizer I gave her could wear off unexpectedly. She should avoid using her nanites. Let me do it.”

Lisa crossed her arms. “I can run auto-checks without using my nanites. You need to stay here.” She moved to the door before anyone could deny her. “Besides, I know computer systems far better than I understand alien physiology.”

Qaiyaan couldn’t help checking out her perfectly rounded ass until she disappeared around the corner. If it took him the rest of his life, he’d look for a way to be together, starting with finding her brother. He snapped out of his lustful thoughts and dodged through the doorway after her. “Seal the airlock behind you. I’ve got to void the ship so I can work on the hull. I’ll be sealing off the cargo bay, but I’d prefer you behind double airlocks. I’ll let you know when it’s safe again.”

“Be careful, okay? I’m not talented enough to make this ship chase you if you go floating off into space.”

He chuckled and reached for her, intending to give her a kiss, then caught himself. They exchanged an awkward glance, then turned their separate ways.