“Oh, but I will. I have this nice wall to hide behind. And if you don’t quit squirming, you’ll see how serious I am.” I jabbed him again with the gun.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Richard demanded. He walked into sight, his face furious.
The man should know better than to walk into a combat zone. But perhaps he hadn’t heard the blaster shots, just the shouting.
“My lord, get—” an anonymous soldier tried to warn him.
I took a potshot at Richard. It went wide, but it forced him into cover. The guard in my grasp spun, trying to pull me off-balance. Instead, I let him go and shot him point-blank.
I mentally boxed up the revulsion caused by my actions. I would mourn him later. I would mourn them all. But for now, I was still trapped. A half-full blaster was the only thing standing between me and a stint aboard Richard’s ship.
It would not be enough. I knew it even as Richard yelled for the soldiers with stun pistols to pin me down. Stun bolts slammed into both the wall I hid behind and the back wall of the room, sending sparks flying everywhere.
A quick glance out the window proved the guard commander was back and issuing silent orders via hand signals. The remaining soldiers fanned out. I jerked my head back as a barrage of blasts plowed into the wall.
There was no substantial cover between me and the soldiers. The second I went over the wall, they would stun me into next week. But the longer I stayed here, the more prepared they became.
“Richard,” I yelled, “call your men off. I do not want to have to keep killing them.”
“You have a single blaster and are trapped in that room. Give up now and I won’t let them beat you to death,” he yelled back.
It wasn’t a bad deal, all things considered, but if I was going down, I was going down in a blaze of glory. It might be a near-zero chance of success, but I’d been lucky before. Another glance showed me two soldiers on my left and three on my right. Both Richard and the commander were also on my left but they were now tucked out of sight. I pulled back before they shot at me again.
I took a deep breath, held it, then released it slowly as I mentally prepared myself to do something that I knew was going to hurt—a lot. Success rested on surprise and speed. Any hesitation due to fear of pain would guarantee failure.
I transferred the gun to my left hand. I wouldn’t be able to shoot worth shit but I needed my right hand to help me vault the window ledge. Without stopping to think too much, I launched myself out of the window while shooting at the locations I’d last seen the guards.
I made it far enough that I began to hope.
Then the pain hit in vicious waves as stun bolts slammed into my sides and back. I think I must’ve screamed but the pain was so intense my brain shut down for an indeterminate amount of time.
I slowly came back to myself. Several people nearby cursed angrily in loud voices. My sides from my shoulders to my ankles throbbed with a deep, bruising pain. Maybe they had tried to beat me to death after all?
“Enough!” Richard shouted over the general ruckus. “Sedate her then scan her for internal injuries. I want her loaded up and ready to go as soon as the ship returns. I do not want her awake causing trouble. She is valuable to the House. The next person who hits her dies.”
Something cool pressed against my neck with a short hiss. I didn’t fight the fall into blissful oblivion.
Chapter 21
I felt a hundred years old. My bones creaked as I rolled over and nearly fell out of the bed. I caught myself just in time, balancing precariously on my side in the narrow cot. Both my mouth and my head felt stuffed with cotton.
What the hell had happened?
It came back in bits and pieces. Richard had captured me; I’d become a liability to House von Hasenberg. Fuck. I only hoped Rhys and Loch had made it back to Father with Polaris so he would feel like rescuing my sorry ass.
I caught my balance and pushed myself up. The change in position sent shards of pain racing down my neck and back. I carefully tilted my head, working out the kinks. I felt like I’d gone a few rounds with my self-defense tutor on a particularly bad day.
My space suit was gone, as were my outer layers of clothes, but they’d left my undergarments on. The cot I sat on was not luxurious, exactly, but it had real sheets and blankets. I looked around. My room was rather large, as far as such cells went. It was wide enough that the cot spanned the back wall instead of the more usual location of lengthwise in the room. There was also a tiny, curtained-off en suite bathroom where I could shower and use the facilities in pretend privacy.
The cell walls were steel but they’d been painted a warm cream. A small white round table with two orange plastech chairs sat in the middle of the right half of the cell. The table was secured to the floor. The chairs’ honeycomb construction meant they wouldn’t have enough mass to be used as an effective weapon, so they were not bolted down.
My pants and shirt were folded neatly atop the table. If it wasn’t for the door with no handle or control panel on this side, the room could be mistaken for a normal—if spartan—room on any ship. Richard was playing nice. I had no doubt that if I proved too uncooperative, my lodgings would deteriorate rapidly.
I pushed myself up and pulled on my clothes. I felt better with another barrier between me and the world. I sat on the edge of the cot and contemplated where my life had gone wrong. Perhaps it was when Lady Louisa had thrown mud on me at a Consortium event when we were six.
Or, more likely, when I had retaliated by making her eat mud.
How was I supposed to know she was heir to one of the lower houses? She was a bully and I’d put her in her place. Only, because I was the child of a High House, it looked to everyone else like I was the bully.
And clearly whatever they had given me to knock me out was not entirely out of my system. I tried to pull my thoughts into some semblance of order, with only mild success.
A short while later the room’s only door opened and a soldier entered with a tray of food. He set it on the table without a word and left. The insistent growling of my stomach told me that more than a few hours had passed while I was unconscious. I got up to take a look. The food—waffles with fresh strawberries, eggs, and sausage—smelled divine.
It didn’t make sense to keep me alive just to poison me with food, so I shrugged and dug in. Besides, Richard knew I had House-level nanobots that would take care of most toxins. Unless House Rockhurst had cooked up some radical new poison, I would be okay. And while a hunger strike might make a nice political statement, hunger led to weakness, which meant a smaller chance of escape.
I could be practical when it suited me.
Once I’d finished with the meal, I rebuilt the walls of my public persona. It was an act I’d have to carry off for weeks or months, potentially. I hadn’t had to be on that much since I’d left home. And like a muscle, my ability to maintain the illusion for long periods had atrophied. Hopefully I wouldn’t be forced to endure Richard for more than a couple hours a day.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Richard waltzed into the room without warning. A different guard followed him. The guard took my tray and disappeared. Richard sat across from me.
“Ada,” he said, “I’m glad to see you’re awake. My soldiers got a little . . . overzealous in their anger. You’ve been unconscious for over sixteen hours.”
That explained the breakfast food. I’d lost almost an entire day. I smiled politely. “Thank you for your concern,” I said. “I feel much better.”
“Are you ready to discuss our upcoming nuptials? Or would you prefer to be moved into the general holding cells while I purge your friends?” he asked, almost casually.
I wasn’t sure why he still wanted the marriage. If it was for my dowry, he had to know that House von Hasenberg would not turn it over so easily in light of the new information. But perhaps he didn’t know I had worked out the details of the FTL drives.