Lily lifted the gun and aimed, just enough to satisfy him, and Horos turned to work at Vitro’s control panel.
Because Vitro was a valuable, rare cruiser, registration ran through multiple security steps and time locks. Most guests sent biometrics ahead of docking to avoid delays, but Horos was not taking even that risk with smugglers. When he finally managed to scan the giant’s data and the ship accepted it, both sides visibly relaxed.
Then the rest followed, one by one. Horos processed only a single registration at a time, and the procedure dragged on painfully.
Lily watched every figure in the hangar, cataloguing weaknesses, when Vitro’s alert sounded on her wrist, on Horos’s, and on the consoles of the three smugglers already registered.
“Cradle take it,” Horos rasped. “Intruders in Cargo Bay Two!”
Horos and the green-yellow boss stared at each other, frozen, both assuming the other had sprung a trap. But unlike Horos, the smuggler commander radiated calm, as if he had dealt with a hundred situations like this. Horos shook like a leaf.
“Saxum,” the leader said. “Go check.”
The golem moved at once, as if the order was law.
“Wait,” Horos snapped, trying to sound commanding and failing. “I’m not letting you wander alone while we’re not finished. Lily, go with him.”
Lily only shrugged and climbed down from her perch. The golem waited while she approached at her unhurried pace, then they set off side by side toward the cargo bay.
The hangar door slid shut behind her, and Horos’s voice crackled in her ear through the comm bead.
“Don’t forget, Lily, my life is your life. Don’t let those trash pull any tricks.”
“Even if I did,” Lily said, “that lovely gift around my neck would remind me.”
Horos grunted. He did not have the luxury of arguing. As he cut the line, Lily caught the smugglers shouting angrily at him, probably offended by being called trash.
The more he has to focus on them, the better.
As they neared Cargo Bay Two, Lily yanked a ballistic vest from the security wall locker, the same one Khar had shoved onto her the first time they lived through an attack on Vitro together. She gave a bitter little smile at the irony of it.
The golem watched in silence as she stepped to the display beside the cargo bay entrance and scanned the signals.
Lily frowned when she realized what she was seeing.
“Horos. Thermal reads vukri. What do you want us to do? Neutralize them?”
A beat of silence, then obvious shouting, and the smuggler boss’s harsh roar blasted through Horos’s console.
“No, invite them to dinner. Of course you kill them, and fast. I’m paying a fortune for this metal, and vukri chew through everything. Move!”
Saxum slapped the door control, but Lily raised the plasma weapon and stopped him before he could rush in.
“Not so eager. You take cover behind the first row of lockers. I’ll cover you from the back.”
The golem grunted agreement as if it made no difference either way and charged in.
The vukri stared at the massive rushing shape for one startled moment, then attacked.
Lily sprinted along the wall into cover, with no intention of getting pulled into the melee. She headed straight for the tool section and skidded to a stop beside a storage shelf hard enough that her boots slid on the deck.
With the locker rows between her and the fight, she was certain she had a minute or two before anything found her, so she got to work.
She grabbed a thick, fast-drying insulating paste and smeared it generously over the metal collar at her throat, especially where she could feel an uneven seam, likely where Horos had placed whatever “transmitter” he had bragged about. She waited a few seconds for it to harden and block the signal, then dug a pair of cutters out of the tools.
Jaw clenched, she set the jaws against the collar’s rim and squeezed.
This was the moment of truth.
