Page 9 of Captured
I enter the ship, running toward the healing room. I just hope she’s still there and not wandering the hallways in a panic, looking for help. I surge into the room, completely clad in my exoskeleton. I know she’ll be terrified, she’ll be expecting the man she met when she woke up, but I have no choice. I need the protection of my exoskeleton to keep her safe.
But after a few minutes, my heart starts to flutter.
She’s gone.
I flip around. I won’t find her in time, not if she’s hiding somewhere, petrified. I find the engine room in no time despite the thick blackness of the smoke filling the hallway. My throat is scratchy from the noxious fumes, but I can’t spare a second. The female’s fragile human lungs can’t take it like I do. If she hasn’t escaped the ship, she could be dead by now.
The idea strikes me like a blow and for a second, my heart stops. No. She can’t be dead. I’ll never allow it.
The command room is so filled with smoke I can’t see a thing. I have to move with my memory of the place, but considering I actually engineered the entire ship, it’s not too difficult. I rapidly find the handle and pull, activating the emergency vent. Smoke billows out of the room, thick as death, black and angry. It doesn’t make much of a change, but it’s enough for me to see the origin of all the trouble.
The power cables going from the solar captors to the fuel cells have been short-circuited. I lose no time. My hands blindly find the shut off switch, and press it.
At first, nothing happens. Smoke still leaks from below the ship as the fuel cells burn but shortly after, it slows down. I know enough about my own ship to understand the only reason it didn’t explode into a million pieces is because I managed to land the belly in the water with its full load of gelatinous fuel cells.
Then it hits me.
There is only one person who could have cut and moved the cables from the solar captors and set them to short-circuit the fuel cells.
A person who can pit a small fighter ship against a Drakian royal cruiser. A pilot with nerves of steel and the aim of an eagle.
The female. The human female did this.
The cold veil returns over my mind as my hands move restlessly to salvage what I can from the fuel cells and stop the fire. It’s not nearly enough, but this is all I can do for now.
I turn and stalk the smoke-filled hallways, going from room to room, but I know what I will find. Nothing. I will find nothing.
Then I’m out on the shore again, my ruined ship behind me. I try as best I can to keep the cold veil in place, but the treachery stings like it should not. She’s my enemy. I shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t feel like this is a betrayal. But I do.
I will have her back. And when I do, I will show her what befalls disobedient females.
She’s my enemy all right. But she’s mine.
