Where did he find that? I’d searched the lab from top to bottom—with him watching—and found nothing but the thousands of false vaccines.
We both ignored the booming and sawing as Bridgebane’s lackeys worked on breaking through the starboard door. The Endeavor was a good girl. She’d hold them off for a few minutes more.
Luckily, the lab was connected to the rear door, which was the weakest of the three and disconnected from the rest of the ship by a series of air locks that made vacuum attaching easiest here. If the DW’s boarding cruiser had been able to latch on to the rear port, this would all have been over by now.
I grabbed a medical satchel stamped with the galactic government’s seal and started filling it with as many vials as would fit, excluding the test tube of blood, even though that was what I really wanted.
“Come with me if you want to live,” I said.
The man didn’t move, and I mentally gave him ten seconds before I turned on my heel and left. But I hoped he’d come. There was something about him that appealed to me. He exuded fortitude and calm, although I couldn’t tell if the impression came from physical traits, his age, which was easily twice mine, or something else.
I beckoned with my free hand. “Move it, Big Guy. We don’t have long.” It was time for my accidentally stolen goods to squeeze his big, bearded, and possibly enhanced self into an escape pod.
He stared at me with dark eyes. He stared as though he could see right through me.
“Look, I don’t care if you’re military or civilian or a scientist or a victim or whatever,” I said. “You came with the lab by accident. The Dark Watch is about to board my ship, so unless you’re one of them, you’d better get off it if you want to live.”
I watched him for a reaction. There was none.
“You think they’ll destroy the lab?” he finally asked, his voice gravelly and deep. It sounded like he didn’t use it often.
I shook my head. “They’ll do everything they can to avoid damaging it. But it might not remain fully pressurized. Or the Dark Watch goons could have really bad aim.” And there was another possibility bumping around in my mind. “Or I might just take it out of their reach forever.”
He didn’t react to that, either. Instead, he simply asked, “Are you offering me a pod?”
I was having trouble getting a handle on his accent, and I’d been around the galaxy more than once. Plus, the kids in Starway 8 came from all over the Sectors. I should have been able to place him, but I couldn’t.
“Yeah, I’m offering you a pod,” I answered. “Let’s go.”
As I turned to leave, the man lunged forward and snatched the medical bag from my hand. He’d moved fast. Super soldier fast.
I swung back to him with a glare. “I need those.” Well, Fiona did. If she opted for a pod and actually managed to escape, I had no doubt she could eventually figure out the organics and maybe use these samples for something good, like helping invalids left crippled by the war.
Shaking his head, he carelessly tossed the bag onto the metal table behind him and then blocked my access to it with his huge body. I tried twice to grab it again, but he was like a freaking building, incredibly quick, and impossible to get around.
“You’re wasting time,” I ground out, unable to ignore the pounding that was coming from the starboard door. It was getting louder. They were probably most of the way through.
“You don’t need those right now.” He jerked his hairy chin toward the exit in a get-the-hell-out-of-here type of way.
Metal cried out like it was in pain, and the Endeavor gave a sickening groan.
Fuck it. I didn’t reach for the bag again.
“Let’s go,” the man said, herding me toward the door.
I was pretty sure that was my line, but we were heading in the same direction anyway. It seemed pointless to argue.
We worked our way toward the bridge to a deafening chorus of hammers and saws. The bridge doors slid open and all four of my crew members looked over at Big Guy and me—even Shiori, who couldn’t see.
This was it. The end of the line. They’d chosen, and not one of them had gotten into an escape pod. I couldn’t tell if my heart soared or sank. It definitely swelled.
“Where are the vials?” Fiona asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” Not if she wasn’t getting into a pod.
She opened her mouth to argue, and I held up my hand.
“I won’t let the military take them back. If we stole their secret lab, hopefully that’s their only batch. They’ll need decades to figure it out again.”
Fiona’s brow furrowed.
I ignored her unasked questions and told them what I’d decided on the way back from the stolen lab. “I’m taking the Endeavor and the false vaccines into the Black Widow. If you don’t want to come with me, you need to get out right now.”
The crew all looked at me with little surprise. We were out of alternatives. Capital punishment or, if someone was feeling very generous, life in jail were our only options. It was really a no-brainer, at least for me.
The ship groaned again, and my console flashed to indicate an air lock breach at the starboard door. The Dark Watch goons still had to get through the safety lock, but that door wouldn’t last long.
Bridgebane’s voice barked over the com. “I’m taking the Overseer’s lab back, and you’re all going to be court-martialed in Sector 12.”
“Tell him who you are, Tess,” Jax whispered, the scar on his cheek whitening from the tension in his jaw. “Your name alone will stop him. Your father—”
I laughed. It burst out of me, awful. Then I squared my shoulders and told my best friend and first mate the one thing he still didn’t know about me.
“My father handed me over to Bridgebane when I was eight years old and only three days after my mother died, with strict orders to keep me in an air lock on Dark Watch 12 until the ship was out of my home Sector and then float me into space.”
Jax’s jaw dropped. Miko gasped. Shiori stayed silent.
“Who the hell is your asshole father?” Fiona snarled.
“Bridgebane took me to the Starway Orphanage instead. He said if he ever saw me again, he’d do what my father first asked.”
Jax cursed. “You mean Bridgebane is the good guy in all this?”
“Bridgebane is a bastard. And I mean that my name will only get us all killed faster than we’re going to get killed anyway.”
“Who the hell is your asshole father?” Fiona practically shrieked.
I wanted to shriek back what had always been in my heart. That man has never been my father!
“Who the hell are you?” Fiona demanded.
My pulse pounded hard, so hard I could hear it in my head. Tess Bailey was about to die along with the rest of us. “I’m Quintessa Novalight.”
My friend stumbled back against Jax’s broad chest. That was the power of a name.
The blood visibly drained from Fiona’s face. “As in Galactic Overseer Novalight’s dead daughter?” she choked out.
Clearly, not so dead after all. Yet.
Nodding, I owned up to the name I hadn’t used in years and the family I wish I didn’t have. “Daddy is the evil overlord of the galaxy, and Bridgebane is my uncle.”