Page 43 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
To her surprise, he only nodded, as if he’d known she’d say that. But how could he, when she hadn’t known it herself?
Blasters out—because apparently he agreed with her assessmentabout bad luck—they raced through the silent, darkened station.
What had been creepy and ghostly before now felt a hundred times worse as she realized violence and death were lurking much closer than the singularity. She should’ve gone back to the shuttle. No, she should’ve never left Azthronos…
The engine room was huge, as it had to be to power a space station. The entry chamber towered threestories above them, a cathedral to engineering, although it took more than prayer to keep a ship suspended just beyond the black hole’s hungry grasp.
Nor pulsed a message from his dat-pad—Trixie felt it in hers strapped to her forearm—but there was no response from the missing crewmembers. She wanted to try an old-fashioned scream, but that probably wasn’t dignified in this futuristic universewhere she’d found herself.
“Otlok and Amanu were checking the neural gel that Jinn inserted into the engine’s data core,” Nor said as they strode through a slightly smaller hall, deeper into the compartment. “That will be at the center.”
Ofcourseit would. Farther away from a sensible escape. Trixie clenched her teeth on that scream she wanted to let loose.
A subliminal thrum vibrated throughthe soles of her boots and up her spine. The engine, she assumed, maintaining their safe orbit. But they weren’t safe, not at all. The tremor sank deeper, until every atom of her body was quivering like a jellyfish blob of fear.
Maybe Nor felt it too—the bone-deep unease if not the jellyfish part—because he dialed his blaster from stun to kill. After making sure the satchel was tight againsther body, she did the same.
They moved quickly through the engine compartment. The thrum was no longer subliminal; it thumped against her eardrums like it wanted to get into her head. As if she didn’t already have enough frantic noise going on in there.
She jolted sideways when the dat-pad on her arm vibrated too. Man, she was going to shake right out of her skin…
A text message appeared,strange alien gibberish. It took a second for the sensor to render in English for her.
Someone else is here.
The comm indicated the message was from Amanu.
The sleeting panic in Trixie congealed in a cold lump in her belly. Nor glanced at his wrist pad and sidelonged another look at her. She nodded to show she’d seen the message.
He tapped at the pad, and another message appeared on herscreen:Go back to the shuttle.
She shook her head hard, and he scowled, but he was already tapping again. Since no message came to her, she supposed he was contacting Amanu.
They edged past the huge central core of the engine room. Trixie hadn’t studied anything about alien space station engines—or Earth ones, for that matter—and since she didn’t have a translator, she couldn’t read the staticsigns, but the symbols of dangerous-looking wavelengths emitting from the core were an obvious warning even to a clueless closed-worlder. God, they couldn’t start shooting in here…
Beside her, Nor stiffened and gestured toward a recessed doorway set into a bank of multi-sensor panels studded with digital readouts and indicators, most of them blinking only intermittently with the station in hibernationmode. Since he kept moving steadily that way, she assumed they werenotheading toward Blackworm…
Slipping past the door into a narrow walkway, they found Ensign Amanu crouched over the older lieutenant who sagged against the wall, eyes closed. When the door closed behind her, the loud pulse of the engine was cut in half.
Nor was already on one knee next to the wounded man, peering throughthe hole in the leg of the lieutenant’s charcoal ships fatigues. “Howcertain are you that they didn’t see you retreat in here?”
This must’ve been the ongoing texting he’d been doing with Amanu, Trixie guessed.
“They caught us when we were on our way back to the shuttle,” Otlok said. “We ran, but they made no attempt to follow us.”
Nor grunted as he finished assessing the wound. “Already sealedover. You’ll make it back to the shuttle.” He glanced up at Amanu. “Fine work with the emergency aid, Ensign.”
The younger alien nodded, her eyes wide. Whether in shock or pleased at the praise, Trixie wasn’t sure.
But she knew how good the captain was at motivating his people.
He straightened. “I already sent our route to your dat-pads,” he said. “Lieutenant, I’ll give you the booster injectionwhen we open that door. It won’t last long, no matter how strong you feel, so don’t linger. Ensign, I know you ranked first in marksmanship in your class, so you’ll go first. Trixie, you’re almost as proficient as Amanu, but Otlok is going to need support on his wounded side, even with the booster. Will you stay with him?”
She stared at Nor, her pulse skittering. “Where are you going to be?”
“Right behind you,” he promised.
She squinted at him, trying to gauge his intent. “You’re not going after Blackworm to retake theGrandy?”
Maybe no one else would’ve noticed his infinitesimal hesitation. “Considering the odds against me, that would be reckless.”
Oh, so he was totally thinking about it.
She nodded. “Then let’s go.”
He removed a tightly rolled kit from a leg pocket of his fatigues—she’dknown that Earth troops carried their own first aid kits, which made her wonder what was tucked away in the pockets of her stolen uniform that she hadn’t found yet—and removed a small ampule of blue fluid. Otlok held his breath when Nor pressed the pointed end to his throat and then surged to his feet. Trixie reached out to steady him, and he nodded at her. They fell into line as Norhad assigned them and Amanu reached for the hatch release.
“Ready?” She hefted her blaster.
Trixie wasn’t sure about the others, but she said a quick prayer that consisted mostly of “Oh God, oh God,” and then they were on the move.
