It was, I realized for the first time since my abduction from my dorm room, that I felt normal again. Normal meaning that I had hope, that it felt like I could actually have a future. One that didn’t include fearing for my life and scavenging for food from the trash bin in the galley. No, that was never happening again if it was up to Flack. That big pile of food was proof of that. It made me feel so warm and floaty inside that I knew I was in serious trouble of fixating on my future rescuer.
Perhaps it was this warm, cozy feeling that left me completely unprepared for what happened later. I napped, my body catching up on much-needed rest. Then I ate some more and began considering whether I could sneak through the ship to visit Flack in his cell somehow. I missed him, especially the warm, steady feel of his hand on my back, the safety I’d felt when he held me in his arms. I’d never take another hug for granted; that was certain.
A groaning sound warned me something was happening overhead. I froze and peered up, but there was nothing to see. Bracing myself to flee, I eyed the three options available but got caught up in indecision. To the engine rooms? Up toward the crew decks? Left toward med bay, where that awful, creepy doctor held court? None of those options were appealing, or safe, not like it was in here. Flack told me to stay, told me to hide, and he’d been very certain I was safe. That sound, it was probably nothing, wasn’t it? They couldn’t actually reach me when I was down here...
It came again—a deep, heavy groaning noise. It made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Instinctively, I searched for the metal pipe and held it up defensively in front of me. What was that? It wasn’t anything like the many FTL jumps we’d beendoing the past few days. Those often came with little warning and nearly smacked me into a wall or the floor if I wasn’t careful. This sounded like the engines were rumbling, a vibration that came through the metal pipes and the floors.
I hunched low, ready to move, just as something rolled into the junction toward me through one of the larger pipes. It was the pipe that led toward an exit by the engine room not far from here. I blinked at the spherical object for several seconds, surprised and confused. I’d never seen something quite like it before. Just as I began to think it kind of resembled a grenade and I should probably be alarmed, it began to hiss. Then smoke spooled out in long, white ribbons. It stung my eyes something fierce, and within moments I found myself coughing and hacking, struggling to draw air.
Blindly, I scrambled through the junction to the nearest exit. I had to get out of here before I passed out. The smoke was so thick it felt like the lantern had gone out, but the burning in my eyes was worse. I rolled into the pipe, banged my head against the sharp twist that followed, and, panting, scrambled around the corner. There, the air was instantly much clearer, and I could finally see that I’d taken the pipe heading toward the med bay exit.
My stomach twisted painfully; I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I did not kid myself into thinking that canister of smoke had rolled into the junction by accident. No, that had to be Xathena’s doing. I wasn’t safe—not here—and now that I knew she could find me even this deep in the bowels of the ship, where could I possibly run? The med bay was out of the question, but I followed the pipe anyway. As soon as it diverged,I’d split off, and then I’d make my way across the ship as far away from where Xathena was currently looking as possible.
With my heart pounding in my chest, I wondered if I should make it to the brig. If Flack was there, he’d protect me, I knew it. But if he fought now, they’d know he was free, and that might mean very bad things for us down the line. He seemed so confident about being able to rescue me—and himself—from this ship somehow. He had not shared his plan, however; we’d been too busy sharing other things last night. Now I had no idea what to expect. I just knew that if Xathena got her hands on me, I was as good as dead.
The pipe twisted left, then right, curling up through the ship for ventilation. There were several vents along the way, but only the one in the med bay was big enough for me to crawl through. It was a very tight squeeze to crawl into a less-explored pipe that branched off beneath the deck. I was pretty sure this one veered back toward the crew decks, where most sleeping quarters were located. Not good either, but the ship’s butcher-turned-doctor didn’t hold court there. I’d have to take my chances that everyone else was out.
I crawled out of the vent, chased by curling tendrils of pale white smoke. The quarters were abandoned right now, and in stinky disarray. Sweaty clothes were piled in a corner, food wrappers scattered across the desk, and crumbs of something sticky crunched beneath my bare feet. There was no panel or other exit for me to slide in from this room, so I had to brave the hallway. How long had it been since Flack left me that morning? Damn it, the passage of time was so hard to keep track of on a spaceship.
The hallway appeared deserted, but the camera up here was functional, and it would catch my presence and alert those hunting me. I didn’t have long; I darted through the hallway, around the corner, and back to the very same wall panel I’d used to slip Xathena away from before. Pounding footsteps chased me into the cramped space mere seconds after I’d slammed the panel shut behind me. Then I was beneath the deck, crawling along bundles of cables that stretched endlessly through the ship.
Above me, feet thudded loudly, and voices shouted commands. My ears filled with a rushing noise like the ocean, my vision flickering at the edges. I was breathing too fast, panic causing me to hyperventilate. If I didn’t get that under control, I knew I’d pass out. They were so close, and I wasn’t sure how they were tracking me—not until I twisted myself into a smaller junction similar to my favorite hiding space, and managed to pause for just a minute to get my breathing under control.
This junction was located at a crossing where at least five hallways split off, and the hunting party above me paused when I did. Xathena’s voice was easily recognizable as she demanded that I be found. It was the voice that answered that made my spine crawl. Oh, so that’s how they had found me.
I didn’t know what kind of alien he was, just that he was big, scrawny, and hairy in ugly patches. His face closely resembled that of a big rat, except it wasn’t even remotely cute and lacked whiskers. “Her scent is very thick here,” he snarled, followed by a deep inhale and lots of sniffling sounds. Scent. They were tracking me by scent somehow, and they were using that rat-faced crew member to do it. Not good. Iwaslucky that this wasa crossing I had traveled a lot over the past few days. It was probably making it harder to pinpoint my location.
When I pictured the rat-faced alien, I also recalled the big, disk-like ears. If I made too much noise, would he hear me? All these aliens seemed to have more developed senses than I did—how could I outrun any of them? I’d have to go somewhere that completely masked my scent, but the prospect of hiding in a waste processor was pretty awful. Still. Survival beat smelly things any time.
My panic seemed no less when I resumed crawling through the ship. It was a little cooler, perhaps, not quite clouding my mind, though my lungs and throat burned from my rapid breathing. Quiet. I had to be quiet as well as fast. Crawling beneath the deck toward the waste processor, it felt like I was two seconds away from discovery the whole time.
My mind rapidly came up with and discarded routes to get where I needed to go. I needed a path with few obstacles and even fewer places where I had to leave the safety of pipes, cable gutters, and junctions to actually enter a hallway. That didn’t give me many choices, and my path became circuitous and convoluted in a hurry. Perhaps that was exactly what I needed to get them off my tail. At first, I thought the crossing had confused the rat-faced tracker so much that I’d shaken them already, but then came the pounding of feet again.
I knew I wouldn’t last long before they actually got hold of me. They were so close, it was like they were breathing down my neck. “Hurry up!” Xathena demanded. “The second shuttle is returning now! I want her caught before they get here!”
“Hurry up, scrawny butt!” It was another crew member who yelled that, a brash female voice that probably belonged to their female Hoxiam. That was a species I knew, because even the hardened pirates had thought to warn me she liked eating the flesh of sentient beings. Her growled words were accompanied by a loud slapping noise and a high-pitched squeak.
“Too late,” a male voice responded. “That’s the shuttle docking right now.” He was right; we were close to the hangar bay, and I could hear the sound of the massive hangar bay doors opening. I crawled in the opposite direction, but I would have no choice but to surface and dive across the hallway in a bit to reach another set of ventilation pipes. I never got that far.
With a screech, a floor panel just ahead of me was abruptly peeled back. Xathena reached in with a green hand so fast it was a flash. Then she got hold of my hair and yanked me from beneath the deck with a snarl. “Got you now, vermin!”
Pain blossomed all over as I was tossed onto the deck, and my body rolled before colliding hard with the nearest wall. I blinked stars from my eyes, knowing I had to move yet unable to get my muscles to obey. Xathena stood towering over me, clad in menacing black, her green-and-gold hair up high in a ponytail, and bristling with weapons. She looked like a warrior goddess, ready to mount her chariot and ride into battle.
The Hoxiam was behind her, even taller, covered in blue fur and dressed in delicate straps of glimmering pink. They’d been hunting me in a party of four, but four was more than enough. Two males were standing on my other side. One was the rat-like alien, who was whipping a narrow tail back and forth behind him. The other was Vaka, the same alien who’d caught me thenight before. I didn’t know his species, but he had spiraling horns, a tail tipped with a blade, and a voice that rumbled with two bass layers twining together.
“You’re going to pay for this,” Xathena said, and her foot lashed out, the kick landing solidly across my stomach. I nearly vomited from the blow, landing on my hands and knees and heaving with dry, rasping sounds. “Do you know how much trouble you caused? I don’t like it when my time is wasted!” From the corner of my eye, I saw how she wound back her leg and readied it for another kick. I lunged out of her way and was caught against the legs of the two males. They’d caged me in, and I had nowhere to go.
Rising to my knees, I faced Xathena then, the panic falling away and an odd calm settling over my brain. So this was it, was it? I’d face her with my chin up, and I wasn’t going to grovel. It wouldn’t help, and I’d be damned if I surrendered now. I knew raising my face to her would expose the healed scars on my left cheek, but I’d already lost anyway. “Neither do I,” I said, my voice carrying a surprising hint of steel. Where had that commanding tone been in my former life? I’d never sounded authoritative before, but I did now. Who knew I had it in me?
“This has all been a massive waste of time. I’m over it.” Xathena’s scarlet eyes grew wide in shock when I said that, but I was on a roll now. Nobody stopped me when I climbed to my feet and planted my hands on my hips. I gave the second-in-command a glare that would have made Flack proud, channeling all that casual confidence he’d once displayed when chained on his knees in front of the captain on the bridge. If he could do that, so could I.
“How dare you speak to me that way!” Xathena snarled, her eyes wide with shock. I was ready for it when she raised her hand to strike me. An open-handed blow I managed to dodge, and the closed fist that followed failed too. That wouldn’t last, and when she lunged forward next, we crashed to the deck together. I closed my eyes as she pulled a knife and slashed toward my throat, then felt her weight abruptly vanish from my chest. My ears were roaring again, a sound like thunder crashing through my veins. I blinked my eyes open and was faced with a beast, a true beast this time.
Flack. His body was massive, the fox-like beast as big as a horse. He filled the hallway, and where he struck, blood sprayed and splattered.
I fled.
Chapter 14
