Page 49 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
Realigning her blaster, she shotout one of the lights.
An uproar of voices speaking in tongues she couldn’t understand—not that she needed to—converged on her. But she was already moving. She demolished another light, plunging the atrium further into the darkness, except for the eerie light of dying photons whirlpooling around the black hole.
She led a deadly earnest game of hide-and-seek around the alien garden. To conservethe blaster’s energy, she dialed down to stun. As much as she wanted to kill the bastards, she’d tease them for as long as she could, giving the shuttle a chance to escape. Giving Nor a chance to save her.
At some point in her life, she stopped hoping anyone would save her. Not that she’d done a great job of saving herself. How strange that it was a rouge rake of an ex-pirate and his irresistiblekisses that had made her believe again.
But belief wasn’t always salvation, and hope wasn’t always enough. Kisses, even irresistible ones, couldn’t stop plasma fire.
She’d stunned three and tricked another four into poking through the small access panel slots she’d left open so they’d have to waste their time looking for her there. But that left five of the intruders prowling through the atrium,hunting her. One of them, a four-armed alien who looked like a very toothy praying mantis wearing Christmas mittens, carried a net—an actual net, as if she were an animal—that sparked intermittently, hissing and spitting. The same yellow light as her stun setting was like tiny lightning bolts in the gloomy atrium. She had no doubt if any strand of the net touched her, she’d be immobilized evenbefore those four arms engulfed her.
Ooh, she wanted to shoot that one next.
If she could sneak past them and get to the engine compartment, the radiation shielding would disguise her life signs. Although if they couldn’t scan for her bio signature, probably they’d figure out she’d gone to the engine room… How she wanted to shoot them all!
Righteous indignation replaced the fading effects ofthe booster drug, but as her brain seemed to settle back into her skull, she couldn’t help but acknowledge how unlikely this all was.
She was an Earth girl playing a deadly alien first-person shooter game of madman and mishkeet when she’d never even liked video games. And she knew there’d be no extra lives for her. She had to level up, now.
She crawled alongside a low concrete planter, keepingher head down. The shallow gutter was filmed with mud; no matter how high tech and tidy a garden was, it was still full of life that refused to be entirely contained. Like her. No matter what Blackworm did, she’d fight to be free.
Peeking around the end of the planter, she realized she’d sneaked behind the advancing line of aliens. The door to the escape. Was. Right. There.
With the insectoidalien in the way.
She gritted her teeth. The blaster on stun had worked beautifully so far, dropping the humanoid invaders silently in their tracks. Would it work the same on an insect?
Before she consciously finished considering, her thumb spun the selector dial. She had one shot to get to the door. Literally. The charge indicator on the weapon had been blinking a warning since she blew outthe last light.
She didn’t want to be a killer, but they’d pushed her to the edge and she was staring down into the void.
Not bothering with a last breath—she hadn’t felt this cold since she tumbled out of Blackworm’s stasis pod with Rayna staring down at her in horror—she aimed around the edge of the planter and fired. In the same motion, she shoved away from the muddy gutter and raced forthe exit.
But the mantid alien was faster. At the first glimpse of her gun, it leaped up and sideways on inhumanly jointed legs. It fumbled the net, but her blaster charge passed uselessly below it. It screamed out—a clattering shriek like silverware thrown into a garbage disposal—rage or alarm or rallying cry, Trixie didn’t know. Didn’t matter, since it brought the other intruders running.
They converged on her from all sides. She darted one way then the other and made it three steps toward the doorway when a beam of yellow struck her elbow.
Her arm blazed with a sun-bright agony then went numb from shoulder to fingertips. The blaster tipped precariously out of her palm. She grabbed with her left hand and didn’t even feel the brush of her own fingers in the anaesthetized limb.As if she were one-quarter dead already.
Grimly, awkwardly, she spun and raised the blaster toward the dome above. She wasn’t suicidal, but she doubted the remaining charge would pierce the panes. One good crack, though, would give them all pause…
She never got off the shot.
Another alien, big and ugly but anonymous in battle-scarred head-to-toe armor, lifted a snub pistol and fired. The yellowray caught her square in the chest.
Maybe her heart stopped, maybe the universe did. She tried to scream and it would’ve been for Nor, but the darkness that crashed down on her was irresistible.
