Page 23 of Stealing Mercury
Drake straightened and started pacing. “Let her go.” He strode the length of the small pilot’s deck, then turned back to her. “And why should I believe you, Sam? Maybe you have us off course to rendezvous with a buyer. Maybe you want to steal my Dogs. They’d be worth a lot to the right people.”
Samantha shivered at the thought of anyone selling Mercury or any of the caged men.
“Yeah,” said Resler. “Maybe that’s why she was spending time in the cargo-hold. Checking them out for resale value.”
Drake pinned Resler with a look to freeze over a sun. “Shut up, Resler.”
Samantha breathed a sigh of relief. Dissent between them could only aid her. And they hadn’t realized the significance of their location on the Gollerra border. “Look. This job is a big break for me. No way would I intentionally screw it up. Not for any amount of money. This is my career on the line.” Stars, she hoped she sounded convincing.
Drake smiled, a grim tug of his lips. “Your denials might be more convincing if you were getting us back on course while you made them.”
She nodded. “Right. It’d be better, though, if I ran a diagnostic first.” There was still a chance that the rendezvous ship might find them if she managed to put out a beacon and stayed put.
“Just do it.”
Samantha turned to study the view screen. “First, I’ll have to maneuver us out of this system.”
Resler sneered. “I’ll fucking do it.”
The next thing she knew, he was dragging her out of her seat. The air rushed out of her lungs as she hit the floor. She looked up from where she landed but couldn’t get enough air to shout out a warning. Before she could stop him, he took the standard drive controls. The ship lurched. Samantha slid across the deck. She heard Drake slam against something and curse.
At the screeching of the proximity alert, she scrambled to her feet and leaped for the controls. She tried to reach across Resler, but his bulky shoulders blocked her path and he resisted when she gave him a shove.
Something wet dripped into her eye from her forehead. She blinked, trying to clear it. She’d been too panicked to notice, but she must’ve hit her head during her slide across the deck.
“Fuck me.” Resler leaped out of the chair. He picked her up and slammed her into the seat. “Fix it.” His voice shook.
She was still trying to clear her vision and when she did, she saw the terraforming platform taking up the entire view screen. “Hold on!” She flipped on the intercom to warn Mercury, Carnage, and Diablo. “Brace for impact!” Even as she shouted it, her hands flew across the controls.
“Turn us,” Resler stammered. “Fucking turn us.”
“I’m trying. This isn’t a shuttle. She doesn’t respond as quickly.”
In the view screen a bit of space opened up. They were turning. Resler sighed as if in relief. He clearly didn’t have a good grasp on the size of theDoveor how slowly she was turning. The nose of the ship might miss the platform, but her tail would never get clear in time.
Drake got to his feet behind her. Didn’t anyone understand what brace for impact meant? Samantha reached back for her safety straps, looped her arms through, then adjusted them across her shoulders.
An obscene scraping sound echoed eerily along the port side of the ship and everything from the floor to the control station to the hatchways shimmied. A sudden jolt rattled her bones and the realization that the hull had buckled clutched her heart in a painful grip. The doors of the storage bins popped open and Samantha put her hands over her head to protect it from the flying debris. Anything that hadn’t been bolted or lashed down bounced around the ship like dice shaken in a cup. A cacophony built and dragged on for what seemed like a lifetime but was probably about five minutes, then everything went dead silent.
The knot in her chest eased.
She could still breathe and nothing floated around the pilot station, so the environmental and grav drives had made it without critical damage. A quick check of the readouts showed the skipdrive at the far end of the ship wasn’t even sending up data and hull integrity on the port side was down by thirty percent. The emergency pods were on the starboard side, so they should be clear.
Her readouts streamed damage reports. One assured her life signs were stable for all six on board. She quickly weighed her options. She would either have to jump all-in on her determination to free the Arena Dogs or give up her plans and let them be killed. Decision made, she got to work setting things in motion.
It only took a handful of minutes to put her reputation, maybe even her life, on the line. The moment her fingers executed the last command, she used the view screen to check on her passengers in the cargo-hold then climbed out of her chair to check on Drake and Resler. They were on the floor out cold, but not showing any sign of serious injury. She grabbed the emergency med-kit and pulled out two doses of a restorative that would keep them under long enough for what she needed to do. Pulling the cord around Drake’s neck, she slipped it free of his shirt. The green code-key for the cage locks pressed coolly against her palm as she pulled the cord over Drake’s head. She administered the doses then left the men there and went back to work, blocking everything but getting the ship into orbit from her mind.
Chapter Seven
TheDove
EarthAllianceBetaSector - Gollerra Border
2210.157
Mercury choked back a growl as Sam darted through the hatch. His worry had taken him to a special corner of hell the moment he’d heard her shouted warning on the ship’s communication system. It seemed he’d been right to worry. A coppery tinge overshadowed her honey scent. Her hair was streaked with blood.
She stopped in the middle of the cargo-hold, her lips tilted in a half smile. “Everyone okay in here?”
