Page 14

Almost as soon as she’d said it, there was a bang, and the entire ship shuddered. It was punctuated with a whine right at the outer limits of human hearing.

I rubbed at my ears. It was irritating, but for the Drakes’s sensitive hearing, it would be excruciating.

It only took ten minutes for a heavy fist to hammer on my door. Yani stood, as though she’d been prepared to leave anyway.

She cued it to open, and Senaik stood there. He had one hand clamped over an ear, and an expression that fluctuated between rage and agony.

His discomfort satisfied something deep inside me that I didn’t want to examine too closely. I had no issues hating this particular Drake.

“What is that infernal sound?” he demanded.

Yani straightened. “The slipstream drive has a malfunctioning actuator. It gave us some trouble on the last voyage, but I thought I’d fixed the issue. Sometimes it resolves itself.”

“Repair it, this instant.”

“I cannot do that while we are in the slipstream,” Yani stated with an appropriate level of angst. “I’d have to shut down the drive.”

He glared at her. He knew as well as she that shutting down in mid-slipstream could be disastrous and cause a terrible pileup.

Even if the authorities managed to get to you in time and tow your vessel, the hassles involved meant heavy fines and exactly the kind of attention we were pretty sure these guys wanted to avoid.

“The drive won’t fail,” Yani continued. “It just makes a helluva noise. I can try to buffer it…”

As Yani had assured me, most Drakes knew nothing about the mechanics of slipstream drives. They relied on Drolgoks for those things.

Senaik glared at her and snarled, “This sound is intolerable. It is even louder in the storage bay. Buffer it, immediately.”

“I will work on it,” Yani promised. She shot me a look as he backed up to let her out the door.

Senaik stared at me, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled. What was it with the inhaling thing?

His eyes narrowed. “How long ago was the serum injected?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to answer. But then another voice did. “Five days ago. She won’t be evaluated for another sixteen days.”

Kurt hovered across the hall. He met my hostile glare with one of his own, and added, “What the fark is going on?” he complained. “That sound is awful.”

Fortunately, Kurt was better at intimidating thieves than he was at fixing slipstream drives. I gestured down the hall. “There’s hearing protection in the medbay.”

Kurt turned and half bowed to the Drake. “If you come with me, sir, I can get earplugs for both of us.”

The Drake ignored him and continued to stare at me. I had a hard time avoiding his glowing gaze as it moved to my eartag, and then it narrowed. “If I had known your evaluation was not yet completed, I would never have allowed you on this mission.”

I gaped at him, and then glared. “Why would that make any difference?” I asked.

He hesitated. “This mission is not without its risks,” he said. Then he tilted his head. “Perhaps having you here will prove—fruitful.”

The anger that surged through me was welcome. It gave me the courage to glare at him. “I’m a better pilot than anyone I know,” I said. “And where we’re going, you are going to need that.”

“I am a good pilot myself.” The moment he said it, his jaw clenched, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that.

When he turned away to follow Kurt toward the medbay, my stomach twisted tighter. His assertion proved that they really didn’t need us on this voyage—and now I knew, that if it was left up to them, we wouldn’t be going back to Earth.

Yani had been right , damn it. We were just scapegoats, set up to take the blame for those Drakes vanishing.

Our plan had swiftly taken on life-or-death implications…

I gave Yani thirty minutes before I joined her in the engine room.

The door was locked, but I had the key code. When I entered, there was no sign of her amid the maze of conduits and machinery. The noise in here was powerful enough to vibrate right through me—I doubt the Drakes could have stood it at all.

Sookie sat on the counter. The hedgegopher seemed oblivious to the sound—but when I peered closer, I saw that she was wearing a little cap that fit over her pointed ears. She was outfitted in her camera harness, and Yani’s datapad lay beside her.

She sat up on her hind end and chittered at me hopefully. I dug into a pocket and emerged with a gumdrop. Not exactly her usual healthy fare, but she snatched the offering and carried it to the corner to nibble, while I continued on to the supply room door along the back wall.

When I coded that door open, I looked in at a jumble of parts and equipment, most of which had been piled on the floor. Yani’s head popped up from behind it.

She was wearing a welding helmet, and now she flipped up the visor. “Send Sookie through again to the aft storage bay,” she said. “The sound is worse there, so I doubt the Tazier Drakes have stayed inside, but we need to be sure.”

I nodded and withdrew. The air duct cover had just been pushed into place, so I stood on the counter and removed it, before placing Sookie inside.

“Aft bay,” I told her.

She twitched her nose and then scampered inside. I dropped back to the floor, picked up the datapad, and peered at the little screen.

The hedgegopher got to the first opening quite quickly. I only got a glimpse before she moved on, but it was enough to show me that the area around the cage was empty. The Tazier Drakes were not in the bay.

The three prisoners were in distinctly worse shape, though. I felt physically sick. And they were trying to shield their ears with their arms, which, as they were suspended by them, looked very painful to achieve.

Ripping my gaze away, I moved into the supply room. Bright light reflected from beyond the debris pile. Yani broke off with the laser cutter and looked up at me.

“We’re good,” I said, watching the screen. Sookie had just made it to opening number two .

Yani nodded and resumed cutting. The engineering bay’s supply room shared a wall with the aft storage bay. Which had meant nothing, so long as the Drakes could hear.

Between the shrieking noise Yani had caused in the slipstream engine, and the earplugs, the Drakes couldn’t hope to hear us cutting through. But that was a long way from success. The second part of our plan was even riskier.

The light cut off. I edged around the pile to see her attaching two suction handles to the cut section of the wall. Yani then heaved on the panel. With a crack, it gave way.

She froze. “We still good?” she asked.

Sookie had reached the third opening. Still no sign of the Taziers. I nodded.

The handles enabled Yani to guide the section quietly to the ground, rather than let it fall with a clang. She dug another, smaller, laser cutter off the shelf beside her, and handed it to me along with a pair of goggles, before pushing herself through the opening.

I followed her.

Three sets of intense Drake eyes tracked us. They widened in recognition as I straightened.

Two of them knew me. The third merely stared.

I met the emerald eyes of the middle one, and everything spun to a halt.

Stubby fingers snapped in front of my face. “Hey. I’ve told you never to match stares with a Drake.” Yani’s orange gaze scanned me.

How long had I been standing there? But now that they were right in front of me, the brutality of what had been inflicted on them wrung my heart.

Why did I have the urge to run to them? Yet I did, standing with my hands on the bars.

“We’re going to get you free,” I said.

All three of them kept staring at me and I had a very hard time not meeting their eyes. The massive, heavily tattooed Drake shook his hair—it flowed in every shade of red that existed—out of his eyes, and said in English, “I was correct about her tasty ass.”

“I see your point,” the middle one replied. The ship’s lights reflected gold with only hints of ruby in his long locks, and for an instant, I admired it as well as the planes of his handsome face…

Wait a minute. I stiffened. “What was that about my ass?”

“It is tasty,” the redhead repeated.

Mr. Golden-Movie-Hero rolled his eyes. “We are not eating her. Her ass is lovely. Shapely. Luscious. Not tasty.”

Nothing about me had ever been called luscious before.

Mr. Redhead-Tatted-Action-Man grinned at me. “I meant what I said.” And then, he winked.

He wanted to— wowsers . As my face flushed and warmth spread through to my core, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response.

Drakes, Drakes, Drakes, they are asshole Drakes, Jaz… I chanted to myself, desperate to keep my head in the game.

The one on the other end had dark hair that shimmered crimson, a leaner frame, a formidable scowl that radiated menace, and, apparently, wasn’t interested in eating my luscious nether regions.

“Will you two quit?” Mr. Menace snarled in Drakonian. I thought that was what he said, but the next bit was harder… “Her ass, no matter how attractive, cannot get us out of this mess.”

Pretty sure that was what he said. Yani confirmed it when she came up beside me and replied in English, “You might be surprised.” Then she shot me a glance. “We need the command security lock placed on the main door.”

Lock. Right. Focus, Jaz. I wrenched myself away to run to the doorway, where I tapped at the keypad, overriding the code the Drakes’ used. When I hurried back, Yani had matched gazes with Mr. Golden-Movie-Hero.

Clearly she wasn’t worried about being mesmerized. Maybe Drolgoks were immune…

“We need to escape, and we will free you in exchange for you taking out the Taziers,” she said. “Do we have your word that you will help us?”

Oh, yes. Of course. The plan . What was wrong with me?

All I could think of was getting those shackles off them.

The veins stood out and every impressive muscle in the golden Drake’s arms quivered with strain, but his gaze moved from Yani, to me.

His nostrils flared as if he were drinking in my scent.

Then he answered. “If you free us, we will help you.”

Relief swept through me. They were only words, but I believed him.

Mr. Redhead-Tatted-Action-Man’s eyes gleamed a vivid blue. “Apparently, her tasty ass can get us out of this mess.”

The dark-haired one snorted rather derisively. “We are still hanging here,” he pointed out in Drakonian. Or something like that.

“We need the ladders along the back wall,” Yani told me as she moved to the cage gate and raised the cutter to the lock.

It didn’t take long before the gate swung open. By then I’d retrieved a small stepladder and a longer version as well. I handed the bigger one to Yani.

Which was when the door to the storage bay beeped as someone tried, and failed, to gain access.