Page 39 of Crush
The muscles in her arms burned from exhaustion as she hefted the laser chainsaw and hurtled toward the robot.
“Adeline, go!” Though her head clanged like the struck ship from the wail of the chainsaw and a likely concussion when Dorn had broken into the apartment and knocked her to the floor, somehow Teq’s voice whispered past the cacophony. How could she even hear him?
She didn’t, she realized. Shefelthim.
Like echolocation, Ollie had said, but it felt like a touch. Almost a shove. Like Teq wanted to get rid of her or something.
Gritting her teeth, with all her frustration and what was left of her fear, she swung the chainsaw at the pincer holding the rock. She would take this place apart, piece by piece if she had to, dammit!
The saw squealed through the pincer. A chunk of metal and Ollie’s rock slammed to the floor, the crash lost in the howl of wind. Exactly how much air could a spaceship lose? It felt like all the oxygen was being forcibly extracted from her body.
Along with her strength and courage.
Dorn steered the robot’s tilt downward again, snatching at the crate she’djustfreed. She stabbed with the saw—
But the orc had obviously known she would do just that. He angled the swing of the arm right at her in a lethal sweep.
She stumbled backward, only barely evading the robot. The pincer clipped the edge of the chainsaw, wrenching it from her grasp and spinning her in a half circle. She dropped to one knee, bracing herself, and gasped as her palm skimmed the hot gash seared by the chainsaw through the floor plating.
In the robot suit, Dorn paused in a similar stance. Through the armor, the glowering orc bared his tusks and all the rest of his teeth at her.
No, not at her. Teq.
From somewhere, her crusher had found giant mechanical gloves that turned all four of his already big hands into monstrous weapons. There’d been a time that hands had hurt, but now they were being used for her, with her.
He grabbed the robot’s appendages, forcing it back from Ollie’s rock. Though the suit was twice Teq’s size, with its chainsawed leg, Dorn couldn’t get leverage against him. Dorn yowled out some orcish invective, but the sound was almost lost in the wind and the screech of straining servos as Teq’s powered gloves relentlessly smashed the robot armor.
Now she understood why he was called crusher.
Maybe Dorn was reminded too. In another moment, the robotic structure would be so bent around him, he’d be trapped there.
With a dexterous wriggle displaying how well orcs had evolved in the tight confines of caves, Dorn levered himself out of the suit. He bolted toward the torn hatch. Was he just going to—?
Beams of lights, a thousand times brighter than her little chainsaw, ripped through the hole in the hull.
Whoever Dorn had contacted was coming to get him—and presumably the rock.
Justwhathad the orcs found?
Not that it mattered at the moment, since the threat to theDeepWanderwas now so much worse. Teq grabbed her—somehow managing a non-crushing grip despite the robotic gloves—and yanked her behind a thin panel, one of several scattered around the bay. It wassothin, but the shiny pebbled surface scattered the laser light into a harmless glow.
“You have to get out of here,” he said. “I believe this is the ship that attacked us once before. The vreign of Luster Station frowns on piracy as bad for business, so if Dorn made a deal with pirates to deal with the Luster, they won’t hesitate to destroy us, erasing the evidence.”
“What do we do? Everyone on board is in danger. Don’t you have weapons too?”
“Yes, and I will use them. But I don’t want you in the way.”
Though they were in terrible trouble, his brusqueness bruised her. “How can I help?”
“Go.”
Just as she’d always done. That had been how she saved herself before.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly.
For just the briefest moment that somehow seemed to last forever in the midst of this chaos, he looked at her. And the shimmer in his dark eyes had nothing to do with the lethal light glowing all around them.
He handed her a long, narrow tube. “Aim that end at Dorn or anyone else who comes through the hole. Don’t aim it at me.”
