As she expected, the smugglers had not stayed put. They were closing in on Horos in a tightening ring, the way hyenas circle a wounded animal.
“You cheated us, Corvus trash. The price we paid was for an intact ship. Without shields this junk isn’t worth half.”
“What are you talking about?” Horos snapped. “It’s a minor service issue. My partner can fix it with her eyes closed.”
“Then call her back. I’ll send someone to deal with the vukri before they do more damage to the ship.”
“No. You can’t go on the ship unsupervised.”
Horos tried to shout, but it came out thin and squealing. The smuggler boss stepped close and poked Horos in the chest with one gelatinous limb, as if already deciding where to aim when things did not go according to plan.
“You don’t have much choice, bureaucrat worm. I accepted that the ship isn’t yours and you can only grant limited rights, but I’m not budging on this. Call. Your. Partner. Back.”
Horos tried to resist, but the snot-green alien did not care. He twisted Horos’s arm and used his wrist console to call Lily.
Lily had blocked him long ago.
The smuggler cursed and sent three of his men after the golem. Then he shoved Horos against the wall by the collar and forced him to continue registering the rest.
Lily backed away from the tunnel and followed the smugglers.
When they passed the maintenance channel, she shadowed them, waited until they opened the door to the vukri-infested cargo bay, then slid in behind the last one and pressed the restart rod against his neck. The smuggler dropped like a rag doll.
Lily looped cable ties around his hands and feet and dragged him into a storage nook off the corridor. Then she went after the other two.
The cargo bay door stayed open behind them. Lily peeked inside.
The golem lay on the floor, apparently unconscious, his body marked with animal bites from the vukri. Pinkish blood seeped weakly from the gray, rocklike skin, pooling into a wide slick that vukri and smugglers had tracked across the deck. The vukri bounced and darted like rabbits, vanishing into cover as the smugglers chased them.
Lily used the chaos to slip between the locker rows.
She had lost direct sight of her target, but she could track him through his own comms, because he kept reporting to the boss through his wrist console.
“Saxum’s hurt. Might be dead. The Corvus’s minion is gone too. Maybe the vukri got them. We’re chasing them, but without plasma weapons it’s damn hard to catch the little pests.”
“Selor,” the boss replied, “don’t tell me a few vukri are outsmarting you.”
Selor sounded more afraid of his boss than of the situation. He stammered excuses and ended the call, breaking into a run.
Lily heard his footsteps thudding and ran parallel behind the next locker row. He might have been taller and wider than her, but when he turned the corner and hit the restart rod she held out, he went down in a red-brown blur, bellowing in pain as he hit the metal floor.
“What in the void!” he gasped, staring up at her.
Without Horos’s black hood, he was clearly trying to make sense of who she was, but even the slowest alien would have understood one thing. She was not a friend.
Before he could move, she treated him the same as the first. Shock to the neck with the restart rod, loops on the limbs, stuffing in the mouth, then a firm kick to slide him out of sight.
Lily was almost proud of the efficiency, though in a cleaner moment she might have wondered when disabling smugglers had become routine.
“Selor! Where are you?”
Lily’s head snapped up.
Before the last one could spot her, she climbed onto the storage units and waited until he bent over his fallen partner.
“Cradle, Selor. Who did this to you?”
Lily brought the restart rod down hard on the crouching alien’s head. He did not pass out, but he toppled to his side clutching his bleeding skull. Lily grabbed the rod, cranked it to maximum, andpressed it to his back. The discharge ruined the tool, burned her palm, and left him twitching and helpless at her feet.
