“Shh, we’re going,” he said, moving forward and tugging me along behind him.
I was glad none of my crew could see me like this. Weak or not, dying or not, I most definitely wouldn’t still be holding on to his blasted shirt by the time I piloted us back to the Kaitan.
If we even made it that far.
After Nev used an ID card he’d gotten from somewhere, the door to the lab slid open. He poked his head out into the equally dim, red-flashing hallway. It was quiet except for the screaming alarm. Only then did he move forward with me in tow. So far so good.
…Until we turned a corner and almost ran into two crew running toward what had to be the bridge, or the engine room.
Nev lunged forward, breaking my hold on him, before I or the others could blink. With a few swipes of his blade, they’d crumpled to the ground. Smart, to use his sword, even though the pistol was a far more obvious weapon. Someone might have heard the blasts. The blade was silent.
“Did you kill them?” My voice came out higher than I’d intended.
“I hit them with the hilt. They’re just unconscious,” he said distractedly. With equal inattention, he passed his pistol to his sword hand, grabbed my hand, and directed it back to the hem of his shirt.
I spared the energy to scowl at a spot somewhere between his shoulder blades. But I didn’t say anything, because we were creeping down the hall again, in the direction the crew had come from. Nev moved quietly, far quieter than me, even though he had heavier footwear—boots to my blasted slippers. Walking stealthily was a skill I had failed to cultivate while captaining the Kaitan. I’d built up the opposite: stomping.
I regretted that now, especially as I stumbled into Nev’s back when he stopped at a juncture. I had to steady myself with both hands, one on his waist, under his shirt, and the other, holding the plasma pistol, on his shoulder. He was lucky I didn’t blow off his head.
I whipped my hands away as soon as I was steady. He waited, listening.
And then he flattened me against the wall, tucking both of us deep into the shadows. About five more crew ran down the hallway we’d nearly crossed, shouting about a pressure leak in a bank of valves.
They didn’t stop. But I didn’t even take a breath once they were gone, because Nev’s arm was mashed across my chest, his elbow digging into my ribs, his other palm pressed against my hip. I felt both unbearably self-conscious and buzzingly warm, which had nothing to do with the temperature. It had been so long since I’d been touched, and never like this. I was usually too busy fishing, never mind that most people wanted to stay away from me. And even if the rare, desperate individual didn’t, my brothers and Eton had been too much of a deterrent.
It didn’t matter that Nev probably wasn’t aware of what he was doing, and that we were running for our lives. The effect was the same. My heart took off faster than a starfighter, and blood pounded in my ears.
Well, at least I didn’t have to be so embarrassed about touching him now.
He moved away from me, not as quickly as I had from him, slipping up to the junction to make sure the coast was clear, the red-alert lights flaring in his eyes as he glanced back and forth. When he’d apparently determined it was safe, all he whispered was “Hand.”
I grabbed the back of his shirt again. This time I didn’t scowl at him. I even braced my fist against his lower back, only half trying to ignore how firm he was, and fixated on the Kaitan in my head. Please, Nev, I thought, if you get me home I swear I’ll never call you a piece of scat again.
When he was sure I was ready, we continued to slip forward. It took only a few more hallways and turns, and stepping over one more newly unconscious form, before we arrived at the airlock that led to the starfighters. A swipe of one of Nev’s ID cards—where had he gotten them all?—took care of the seal on the doors.
The bay was as shadowy as everything else, with the usual periodic sweeps of red light illuminating the looming shapes of the fighters. But the siren was quieter here, probably so anybody piloting in an emergency would be able to hear themselves think. No one seemed to be paying much attention to the small spacecraft with the much larger vessel foundering.
Or else I was wrong again. Nev cursed only loud enough for me to hear, and a voice echoed from the other side of the bay:
“Yes, they’re shooting at us. That grubby little fishing vessel!” The revolting little man who’d hit me appeared, striding out of the shadows with someone dressed as a fighter pilot. The disgusting man was likely a vice captain, or else he would have been on the bridge right now. I wanted to leap forward and attack him, until his next words made me freeze: “Even if our ship’s cannons are offline, these starfighters aren’t. I want to see chunks of that heap drifting by viewports in less than ten minutes.”
My ship. My crew. I realized my hand was now digging into Nev’s back like a claw. He turned and touched my face, just for a second, to bring my eyes to his.
I could never in a million years have imagined a situation in which Nevarian Dracorte would have either touched my face, or touched my face without me punching his. But apparently this was one. He held my gaze and nodded, communicating everything he had to in that simple gesture:
It’ll be okay. Wait here.
I waited. Because, for some unfathomable reason, I still trusted him.
He strolled away from the doors with the pistol at his side, swinging his deadly blade almost jauntily, as if it were a cane…and whistling, of all things.
Both men halted midstep. Their eyes were mag-coupled to the Disruption Blade. They knew what it meant that he had one.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Nev said.
The disgusting man reached for what was likely a comm at his ear. Before his hand even made it halfway, Nev’s pistol was up.
“No, you know how this goes,” Nev said. “That’s it, drop your hand.”
He strode right up to both of them, pistol pointed. He stood for a moment, as if considering them, and then cocked his head at the disgusting one.
“You really might want to reconsider that facial hair. And hitting other captains.” He leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “You never know when they might outrank you someday.”
And then Nev backhanded him across the face. He hit him like the man had hit me, except Nev was holding the pistol and so the blow was a lot heavier.