There was no helping my nose, but my actions had the desired effect. They all froze.
Not that I would actually shoot her, and they might know it. I hoped that in the next few seconds they wouldn’t force us to go through a repeat of what I’d had to endure with Eton. I’d been lucky there, on a number of levels. One, while I’d been busy trying to hide my skill in hand-to-hand combat since I met this crew, he’d been telegraphing his at every opportunity to make sure I kept a respectful distance. As a result, I’d been prepared for his formidable abilities. Two, Eton had definitely trained in Dracorva, and I would have been willing to hazard a guess that I knew exactly who’d taught him. I also knew that had been several years ago, because he’d used at least one technique that had fallen out of favor thanks to the development of a counter.
I didn’t have to be lucky with the rest of the crew; they would have to get lucky with me. Unfortunately, that was always a possibility in a fight, so a full-on brawl would end up either with me trying to beat everyone senseless, or with them beating me dead. Neither was an attractive option.
I raised my hands, still holding the pistol but pointing it at the ceiling, and opened my mouth to yell for sanity.
The entire ship tilted sharply, and while the gravity compensator did its best to keep up, the jolt was so violent we all stumbled and went crashing.
Qole turned on me in a rage. “What was that?” she demanded. “What did you do?”
Her eyes were going black again, the discoloration creeping in around the edges, and that alarmed me more than whatever had just rocked the ship and sent off the warning klaxon with a resounding whoop.
We all paused as everyone recognized the sound at the same time. That had been the alert for a weapons systems lock, the kind of sound everyone knew but most lucky people living in the central subsystems never had to hear.
I shrugged and raised my eyebrows. “Not me. Really, not me.”
Basra was giving me a strange look from his crouch on the ground, his curly-crested head cocked, as if asking, Really?
Then it dawned on me. “I think that was a tractor beam,” I said. “We’re still trapped in it, and not only that, they’ve targeted us.” It was as good as having a gun held to our heads.
“No one has tractor beams,” Eton scoffed thickly. “That would take a destroyer. And not just any destroyer, either.”
Indeed. This was the “company” Rubion had warned me about, exactly what I had been trying to avoid. I pinched the bridge of my nose as hard as I could to stanch the blood and sighed, slumping farther down the wall into a sitting position. I draped my other hand, the one with the gun, over my knees. It didn’t really matter if Arjan or anyone else got the upper hand now, because things had just gotten much worse for all of us.
The inter-ship comm gave a tone, and a hard voice filtered onto the bridge, confirming what I already knew. “Attention, crew of the Kaitan Heritage. This is a destroyer-class vessel. We have you in our beam, a plasma rocket locked onto your bridge, and two photon turrets standing by. If we fire, you will be dead before you can scream. Allow us to board, or we will destroy you.” The comm went dead.
Much, much worse.
With a percussion that reverberated throughout the bridge, the ships docked. You could dock politely, but the grating vibrations of hull on hull made it abundantly clear that our company wasn’t being polite about it. In fact, it was positively hostile.
Telu voiced my doubts. “I think these guys might be dicks.”
“Just what we need,” Eton grumbled, “some more of those on board.” He glowered at me from underneath the dual layer of his eyebrows and a compress that Basra had fetched for him out of an emergency medi-kit.
Qole, tense as a kite string, stared out at the ship that dominated the viewport.
Made of smooth composites with no visible seams, its hull split toward the stern into three fins that were faintly visible from our position. Big, deadly, this was a full-on destroyer that could only be afforded by one of the royal families. There weren’t any identifying marks, but I knew one of them had to be pulling the strings.
Speaking of which, my family was going to be distinctly unhappy. I was most likely going to get taken hostage. At least I wouldn’t be killed—just ransomed for an astronomical amount of money. It would be a huge embarrassment, but the Dracortes could afford it. Far, far worse was the fact that Qole and I would be late getting back, and that my family couldn’t afford. I wasn’t sure how I’d bear failing everyone so completely, but none of the alternatives I could conjure seemed remotely sane.
“Well, then what do they want?” Arjan demanded.
“Me, I would imagine.” I gestured vaguely.
“Why? What did you do?”
“He was born wealthy,” Basra replied for me. “A Dracorte by himself is too valuable an asset to pass up. If they’ve been following him, they know he’s with us.”
I found the willpower to raise one eyebrow. “Before you all say this is what happens when you have people like me onboard, I’ll point out that had you just given me the chance to talk, oh, maybe twenty hours ago, or simply let me go like I suggested quite recently, then I would probably be well on my way.”
“Yeah, with Qole,” Eton growled.
“Quiet,” Qole ordered, her voice going husky with strain, knuckles whitening as she tightened her fists. She glared at me. “Don’t expect people to listen to you after you lie to them.”
Any reply I could have mustered was cut off by the docking hatch hissing open. Masked by the noise and distraction, I hooked the strap of my bag with a foot and quickly slid it closer, setting the plasma pistol on the floor nearby to make it more noticeable. My captors would never leave a gun that valuable behind, and I wagered they’d take the bag with it, in the hopes of finding something more.
Something more was what they would definitely find, if they opened it. Having it with me would give me only a slight advantage, which I might not even get the opportunity to use, but just in case…
Woven body armor and military-grade plasma rifles, all in gray, adorned the first two people on board. “Everyone on their knees with their hands in the air!” one of them barked as they ducked in, keeping their rifles trained on us and taking up positions on either side of the hatch. We all knelt obligingly. They couldn’t have been more generic security personnel, and I was just about to roll my eyes when a third person entered.
It wasn’t the oblong mirrored visor that masked the front of his helmet or the white rigid armor that added to the worry trickling through me. It wasn’t even the quiet, relaxed way he took his position next to one of the security guards and simply clasped his hands together in front of himself, waiting. No, it was the gleaming blade strapped to his hip—a Disruption Blade. Tapered and long, with a single line of white energy gleaming in the very center, it made it clear just how serious these people were.