It flashed, and bleeped in warning but she carried on, her grin widening. “Come on, give it up, you alien piece of shit. I can do this all day.”
The panel whined at her and started flashing, then it cut out and went dead. Eyes wide, she looked up at the door.
“Come on, come on…” Shit, the failure mode on this had to be to open, surely? Otherwise if the thing failed then the emperor would be locked in here, and they wouldn’t want that. Would they?
After a moment, the door gave an unhealthy buzz and slid open a hand's width. It groaned and stuck there, half-open, lights dead all down the frame.
"Ha." It came out shaky. "Ha. Dumbest connection in the machine. Every time."
Shoving her fingers into the gap, she pulled. It fought her for every inch, all dead weight and alien metal, but she put her shoulder into it. Pushing with her whole weight, she managed to get it open far enough for her to slip through sideways.
"Barns. With me."
She didn't have to ask twice. The cat poured through the gap ahead of her like he'd been waiting for the invitation his entire life.
The corridor was wrong. The warm low amber light she'd padded down barefoot last night was strobing now, a sick stutter of red along the ceiling, and the air had a taste to it—hot metal, an ozone bite at the back of her throat, something underneath it sweet and chemical and burning. The deck thrummed under her bare feet, a deep ugly vibration. And at the far end of the corridor, the door to the cargo bay was buckled and broken, its frame scorched black in a ragged ring. Her eyes widened; they’d cut clean through it. That was how they'd gotten in.
Noises came from the bridge, snapping her attention back that way. There was a wet heavy sound she knew; the sound of fists hitting flesh, followed by a pain-filled grunt. A voice she didn't know snarling words her new translator patch turned into sounds she could half make out…
“—stay down.”
“Where is he?”
“Where's the Emperor?”
She padded toward the bridge on silent feet.
She’d never considered herself particularly brave, and her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to go the other way, but she kept moving down the juddering corridor until she reached the bridge door.
And everything in her stopped.
Thyaar was on his knees, with a gun to the back of his head.
His hair was loose around his face, and one arm hung wrong. Blood covered the side of his face from somewhere above his ear down to his jaw. His chest heaved, his hands bound behind him as he stared at the floor.
Her hand flew up to cover her mouth.
His head snapped up and his gaze found hers. He gave a small shake of his head. The look on his face hit her in the gut. Fear, but not fear for himself… she'd seen a man afraid for himself, and this wasn't it. No, it was worse. It was fear for her.
Behind him stood a pirate, the long ugly snout of a weapon pressed to the back of Thyaar's skull. One twitch. One bored flex of a finger, and the man who'd told her his whole world reset around her would be gone, just gone, a mess on the Emperor's expensive carpet.
The cold thing in her chest cracked clean open.
She loved him. Of course she did. She'd been arguing with it for hours, telling herself it was adrenaline and proximity and that she wasn’t going to be that woman… the one who fell for her kidnapper. None of that mattered now.
He was hers, and if that pirate fired she was going to lose the one thing she'd ever decided to keep before she'd even told him he didn't get to leave.
Like hell.
She and Barnaby moved at the same time. She didn’t have a bat this time, or even a frying pan, so she grabbed the cylinder off the nearby wall that she assumed was a fire extinguisher and brandished it with a bellow.
Barnaby jumped up onto the console, tail swishing furiously as he yowled loud enough to burst eardrums.
The three pirates in the room turned to focus on them, just as she let loose a volley of fire-suppressant foam and Barnaby landed square on a pirate’s shoulders, all claws out.
White foam splattered across the bridge, covering everything, including the pirates. Swearing, they swiped at their faces, trying to clear the foam from their eyes.
Thyaar surged to his feet and slammed into the nearest set of legs before his brain fully registered the opening. His left arm screamed agony and fire, the shoulder joint aching where they'd wrenched it the wrong way when they’d beaten him. He ignored it. It didn’t matter… all that mattered was the half-second of confusion as Barnaby hit a pirate's face with all four sets of claws extended and Amelia sprayed foam into the bridge like a woman who'd done riot control in a past life.
