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I'm going to have a hell of a pain hangover later. For now, though, we have to finish cleaning house. I nod at Sophie, then look at my blaster. It's off at the moment—which means they were coming in for another round of torture instead of execution—and try to arm it…except I don't have another hand.
On the floor, my old prosthetic twitches, as if trying to respond. I hold my blaster out to my mate. "On, please."
She trades weapons with me, a firm look on her face. "I'm ready."
"You should stay back." I don't like that she's going to be in danger.
"You shouldn't have ripped your arm off and beat someone with it, but we'll talk about what we should and shouldn't do later," she tells me in a prim voice. "For now, we need to go kill another alien."
Despite the pain I'm in, I grin at her. How in all the galaxies in the universe do people think she's soft? She's the fiercest thing I've ever met. "Let's do this, then."
Sophie gives me a firm nod and puts a hand on my back. At least she's letting me take the lead. I head out of the rec room and down the hall, blaster raised and ready for action. Sophie is a step behind me, calm and cool, and I'm so keffing proud of her I could burst. We head toward the bridge in silence, and I try not to notice how much blood I'm dripping on the floors. It can be dealt with later. The Sister has a med-bay. I'll be fine.
We get to the bridge, the door tightly closed and sealed. I can't open the panel without tossing my gun aside, so I shoot it instead. With a sizzle, the panel shorts out and the door slides open.
The bridge is empty, though.
"How…" Sophie asks, just as an alert pings.
"Escape pod launched," the Little Sister's computer intones. "Flight path set."
I lower my blaster, fighting the irrational surge of anger rushing through me. I don't get to finish off my other captor. He's run away like a coward.
"What do we do?" Sophie asks, looking at me.
I thump down into the nearest seat, wincing at how much everything hurts. "We unlock the comms and ask the Jabberwock to shoot her down."82SOPHIEI hover over the med-bay tube, watching as Jerrok's wounds are stitched by a dancing needle that moves over his skin. His bruises are covered in a thick paste and bandaged, and his shoulder is a mess of bloody wires and torn skin. The stupid med-bay computer didn't do much for it, just slathered it with more paste and bandaged it, too.
Jerrok's arm is on a table nearby, the occasional finger twitching as if it's trying to respond to silent commands.
Jerrok, meanwhile, is sleeping peacefully, his big body calm as the needle stitches up his gut shot. Luckily it missed all vital organs, but he lost a lot of blood and a synthetic replacement is being fed into him through a tube in his good arm.
"He'll be fine," Alyvos reassures me as the ship “slides” and we both automatically reach for something to hold onto.
"I know," I tell him, but I'm not moving from this spot. Not until Jerrok wakes up.
The Jabberwock didn't shoot down our escaped pilot. Instead, they hunted down the escape pod, captured it, and forced the feathered alien to talk. I'm told it didn't take much “encouragement” to get him to speak, but I don't ask what that encouragement was. I don't want to know, and after what he did to my pet and my mate, I'd take a blaster and shoot him myself.
I glance over at Sleipnir, who's in the other tube, sleeping off the heavy dose of sedative they gave him. According to the avian alien, they hadn't been aware of Sleipnir's presence on board and had shot him full of their entire payload just to be safe. My poor carinoux's breathing is labored, but he's been injected with all kinds of medications to counteract the drugs, and I'm told he'll be fine in several hours.
"Can I get you anything, Sophie?" Alyvos asks politely, touching my arm. "I need to go back to the bridge and monitor things, but I can ask Iris to join you if you'd like company."
I turn and give him a faint smile. "I'm all right. I'm just going to stay here."
Iris and Alyvos—along with Sentorr and Zoey—have joined us on the Little Sister. Kivian and Tarekh (along with their mates) remained on the Jabberwock, and our two ships are currently “sliding” through space through some lesser-used paths to try and lose any sort of trail we might have inadvertently sent back to the V'tarrians. It's been a twisty ride for the last few hours, but with Zoey and Sentorr helming things, it's all under control. We've split up from the Jabberwock just in case and will rejoin them tomorrow on a flight path, but for now, we're on our own.
