I did hate knowing how he smelled. Probably because I liked how he smelled.
All my anger and embarrassment was replaced by shock, though, when my face appeared on the infopad screen. “Why…?” I swallowed. “Why is there a very large sum of money listed under my picture?” It wasn’t a picture, but a three-dimensional composite, likely from the video footage they’d recorded of me on the destroyer.
…A destroyer belonging to the Treznor-Nirmana family, who were, according to Basra, now richer than the Dracortes. The family that wanted to surpass the Dracortes in every way. The family whose planet we’d just left.
I knew the answer to my own question before I’d finished asking it.
The sum listed under my picture wasn’t enough to buy a moon or anything, but several ships at least. Gamut’s villagers—hell, my own kin—would probably turn me over for that much money. Not Arjan, so maybe it was good he was the only kin I had left.
Nev seemed to understand this, because he said, in his softer tone, “I’m sorry.” That was why he was apologetic—not for something as stupid as recoiling at the sight of my Shadow-clouded eyes, like I’d been hoping. “I just want you to know that my family isn’t behind this. They only wish to protect you—”
“And their interests,” I added, but my voice was empty of any anger. I was too stunned to even remind him that the Dracortes were the reason I was in this situation in the first place. Their attention was what had drawn everyone else’s.
“And those,” he conceded. “Which is why they wouldn’t want to broadcast your unique importance to every last system like this. As unfortunate as it may be, my family citadel in Dracorva is truly the only place in the galaxy you’ll be safe now. I wouldn’t even trust your safety to anywhere else on Luvos.”
His words wrapped around me like his arms couldn’t. I’d been captain of the Kaitan since I was fourteen. Taking care of our little crew for so long. And every single one of them had my back, but this was the first time I’d been powerless to protect them myself. Even if he only wanted our safety for his family’s sake, I held still in that embrace for a moment, until he spoke again.
“I just wanted to emphasize this,” he continued, “in case this caused any second thou—”
The rest of what he’d been about to say was drowned out by the now-familiar whoop of the weapons lock alarm.
“Blast it all,” Nev finished.
I’d already launched bolt upright, scanning the feeds. “One ship locked on…not a destroyer, at least, but a trade vessel of some kind—”
“A weaponized Orbit freighter, retrofitted for privateering,” he said, peering over my shoulder. “Obvious bounty hunters.”
“And two more following.”
“Posting a ransom through discreet channels is one thing, but at least Treznor-Nirmana isn’t moving more openly, yet.” He was trying to sound reassuring.
“A Treznor destroyer is taking off from the planet now, too,” Basra added from below, several comms held to his ears at once. “How’s that for open?”
Nev and I exchanged grim glances. Unlike the smaller ships, the destroyer would be able to employ its tractor beam to keep us from escaping.
Arjan burst onto the bridge. This constituted enough of an emergency, I supposed, to risk my presence. “Eton’s already headed for the turret,” he said.
“It won’t be enough,” I muttered. “They’re better equipped than we are, and gaining on us. We might be able to reach a safe distance to engage the Belarius Drive ahead of the destroyer, but not these three. They’ll catch us and disable us.”
It seemed inevitable. We couldn’t outrun them, and we couldn’t activate the drive right now; we were too close to a planetary body, and we’d risk tearing holes in space-time where they shouldn’t be torn. Or, as far as I understood it, we’d die, and maybe take a lot of people with us.
Nev grimaced. “They’ll want to secure their bounty before anyone working for the Treznor-Nirmanas gets here. You’re going full speed,” he said, with only the hint of a question. At least he didn’t take me for a total idiot. “How long until we’re at the distance we can engage?”
“Five minutes.”
“We won’t make it,” Arjan said. It had only taken him the barest glimpse at the screens over my other shoulder to come to such an accurate conclusion—proof that it was by his choice alone that I sat in this chair instead of him.
For half a second, I almost wished he were in my place. Then I realized how cruel that was as the terror filled me like freezing water, seizing up my lungs. There was no way Arjan could take this, not when I barely could.
Or so I thought until he straightened, glanced through the floor at Basra, and said, “Qole, I need to do something, and you have to let me.” It wasn’t a request, more a statement of fact.
“Do what?” I asked.
He faced Nev and his jaw flexed with tension. “You promise that you will cover any damages to this ship?”
“Presuming we survive capture, torture, and possible explosive dismemberment, then yes,” Nev said, summoning his dry humor from somewhere, even at a time like this. I had to hold in a hysterical laugh.
“Good. I have an idea…but I’m going to need our net.” Before I could ask what in the systems he was going to do with it, he clapped Nev on the shoulder. “If I don’t make it back for whatever reason, I just…Please, take care of my sister.”
And then he was off the bridge before I could argue. Nev looked oddly winded, as if Arjan had punched him in the stomach instead.
Basra called after Arjan without getting a response, and there was something in his voice I’d never heard before, though I’d heard it in all of ours at one time or another.
It sounded a little like fear.
The glinting triangle of the skiff jetted out of its small docking bay in the upper midships of the Kaitan a minute later. The cables of the mag-field net whipped out behind it, unspooling along the boom. I wasn’t entirely sure what Arjan was planning, but I had a hunch.
I commed him. “Arjan, don’t tell me you’re going to do what I think—”
“Be ready to cut loose on your end of the net as soon as I say.”
“Those ships aren’t Shadow, Arjan! They’re a lot more solid—”
“And therefore way easier to catch,” he said with a hint of a smirk in his voice.
“It’s too dangerous!”
“Less dangerous than a Shadow run, probably.” He paused. “And far less dangerous than doing nothing.”
“Shadow doesn’t shoot plasma rockets,” Nev said behind me.
As if triggered by his ominous words, a flare went up from the closest ship, leaving a bright arc of white across the blackness.