Page 23 of The Captain's Bounty
Or at least they didn’t, until he decided to go after this bounty.
Three hundred… the exercise wasn’t working. If ever he were tempted to beat the Rage out with Atonement Rods, this was it. He had to do something. His sight was going red around the edges.
The ship’s comm went off. “Bruwes, where are you?”
Doc Demin. Just the person he didn’t want to talk to.
His arms shook from strain, but he kept going. Pushup after pushup, he willed the redness to bleed back out of everything he saw and for the intoxicating scent of Lissa to get out of his system.
“Bruwes,” Demin said with a sigh, “you’re needed in Medibay.”
After a brief pause, the comm clicked back on.
“It’s about the bounty. She’s wounded?—”
Bruwes heaved himself up off the floor.
“—and in one of my isolation tubes.”
He hit the comm as he charged out the door. “Why wasn’t I told?”
“What am I doing right—” The Doc cut off with an annoyed growl and spat one of Cory’s favorite curses through the comm at him. “Fucking idiot.”
The comm went dead, not that Bruwes was still in the mess to hear it. A dozen long-legged strides took him down the corridor to the Medibay. Charging through the door, he stopped when he saw Lissa, floating naked in a tube of bactalplast gel.
His heart didn’t stop to see her like that.
He wasn’t about to let himself feel anything, not even that fluttering tinge of regret when he noted the rawness and burns on her wrists. The bactalplast had its work cut out for it, but this was not his responsibility and he wasn’t about to let himself think it was.
Still,as he watched her drifting in healing gel, his first thought wasn’t about the money he’d lose if Corporate didn’t like the condition she arrived in. It was on the twinge of selfishness that pinched his chest as he realized all he could think about was whether or not he’d ever get the chance to feel her under him again.
He shook his head, but the thought would not be dislodged. “What happened?”
Coming up behind him, Demin wiped his hands on a cloth. “Aldar found her in the ventilation ducts.”
Swearing under his breath, he turned and marched out of Medibay, all the way back to his quarters, where he took one look at the debris of her escape attempt and realized this would have to be the last time he left her alone.
His jaw clenched. She’d destroyed his chair, too. Like he had a million of those just lying around to replace it with, and sure enough, the grate to the air duct was lying discarded on the bed. He hadn’t thought she was small enough to fit in there, but she’d found a way. Her blindfold was on the floor. So was her gag.
Spying the linkcuffs not far from either, he bent to pick them up, turning them over in his hand. They were distorted, bent in a way he’d never seen anyone do before and that was saying something. In the short time he’d been collecting bounties, he and his crew had become known for bringing in some of the worst of the worst. Partly because bigger risks meant more money, but mostly because they were all of them ignorant and too stupid to learn the first time that if the money was too good, there might just be a reason for it.
Point in fact: Lissa. More powerful than he’d thought her capable of being, how the hell was he going to keep her from doing this again?
He felt the jarring rock of the ship almost before he heard the explosion and shattering glass. The rumbling force knocked him off his feet. He fell backwards over the broken remnants of his chair, colliding into the wall and then the floor. Everything that wasn’t attached in the room flew straight at both him and the wall. He barely got his arm up before his pillow and the metal grate plate hit him.
The ship’s alarms sounded, but even as he scrambled to get his feet under him, he knew that wasn’t the right feel or sound for the Raider firing on or being fired on by an enemy ship.
That explosion had come from inside.
He ran back to Medibay, almost colliding with the door because it didn’t open when he slapped the latch lock. He slapped it again, and though the door did finally open for it, it only did so partway before jamming again.
“Watch the floor!” Demin yelled when Bruwes grabbed the door. An electric shock zapped all the way up both arms, twanging in his shoulders.
Bracing his shoulder against the frame, Bruwes ignored the intermittent shocks that were starting to numb his hands. He heaved, forcing the powerless door to roll all the way open.
The isolation tube was shattered. Broken glass, breathing and waste hoses, and bits of distorted metal were scattered all over the room. Bactalplast gel covered everything, providing more than enough lubrication for crackling electricity to jump from the broken wall wires that had powered the tube to everywhere it wasn’t supposed to be. The floor grates sizzled and sparked with it.
“Watch the floor!” Demin shouted again, from on top of his chair.
