Page 59 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

The ship was a maze, and she was the stupid mouse trying to speed run the thing for her piece of cheese. She cursed under her breath as she took another wrong turn, doubling back so abruptly she nearly bowled Rentir over. His hand fell over her comm, vanishing the holomap.

“Let me lead,” he said gently. “I know the way from here.”

She nodded, refusing to show her relief.

“It seems to go on forever.” Thalen fell into step behind her as she trailed Rentir.

“Strange that I agree with you. There was a time it felt so suffocatingly small to me.” Rentir turned right and then quickly scrambled back, knocking her into Thalen a moment before plasma bolts sailed down the hall. “Two of them!”

Cordelia ducked low, aiming blindly down the hall and firing off several shots to buy Thalen time to dart to the other side of the corridor.

The guards returned fire. Thalen leaned around the corner and squeezed a single shot off. A dull thud followed. Someone spat a curse, and more shots rang out.

She took the distraction and leaned out, aiming her blaster at the snarling auretian soldier. He never even saw the bolt coming. She was back on her feet before he’d finished crumpling, and she urged Rentir along.

“It’s not far,” he told her, stepping over one of the males. “We just need to take two more rights, and then—”

The lights flickered out and then popped back on in an ominous shade of red as a wail of warning filled the air. All three of them cringed at the sudden blaring. Doors slammed shut around them, sealing off whole corridors.

“The security system is back online,” Thalen called, his voice dimmed by the noise. “We must move quickly before—”

The door on their left sealed shut with a pressurized hiss. They all moved at once, rushing toward the other end of the hall, but another door slammed shut in their faces just as they reached it.

“Shit!” She kicked the door fruitlessly, the answering throb in her toes only heightening her anger. “Do you think the others made it back to the hangar?”

“I’m sure they did,” Rentir said, but the way his tail twitched made it clear he was lying.

She sighed, shoving the strands of hair that had escaped her braid out of her face. Opening her comm, she pressed the symbols that she recognized as Fendar’s name.

“What?” he barked. “I told you to stay off the comms! They’re listening!”

He cursed, and the connection was briefly filled with the sound of blaster fire.

Nyx whooped in the background. “Suck it, alien fascists!” her garbled voice called.

“Where are you on getting these security measures back under control? We’re locked down!” Cordelia began to pace.

“I have my own problems at the moment!” Fendar replied tersely. There was more blaster fire.

“Timeframe!” She glanced at the time on her comm screen.

“Twenty minutes,” he snarled, and then the line went dead.

“Twenty minutes. Could be worse.” She looked around, realizing the vulnerable position they were in if one of those doors opened. “Could be better. Shit.”

“Cordelia.”

She turned toward Thalen, who was kneeling beside a panel he’d pulled off the wall. It must have been seamless, because she’d never seen it when it was sealed.

“What is that?” she asked, moving to kneel beside him.

“A passage for the ship’s cleaning drones,” Rentir answered. “I did not think of that.”

“Ven and I were separated in our tenth cycle. They thought we had grown too dependent on one another. But we were only one room apart, and there was a passage just like this one between us. We used it until we were too broad across to fit, visiting each other at night.”

She looked back at the narrow passage, then at the two males. Too broad across… they would never fit, but she would. Tapping her comm, she brought up the map of the ship. The bridge was one floor above them, about a hundred feet to the right.

“Is there a way to shut these security measures down from the bridge?” she asked, looking up at Rentir.

His tail flicked hard, expression hardening, but he nodded tightly. “But you would need the clearance to do so, and you do not have it. Only those high-ranking officials on the ship can do such a thing.”

“And they’d be on the bridge, right? Someone who can shut it off must be.”

Again, he nodded stiffly. His eyes were wary.

“Describe them to me.”

“Cordelia…”

She stood up, cupping his face in her hands. “We can’t stay here waiting for someone to open that door and shoot us like fish in a barrel. I haven’t come this far to die like that. Have you?”

He sighed heavily, briefly closing his eyes. “I do not like this.”

“I know. You don’t have to like it. You just have to trust me.”

His eyes opened again, filled with an anguish she understood all too well.

“I’ll get the security system taken down, and the two of you will come meet me on the bridge. Yes?”

A muscle ticced in his jaw, but he nodded. “Yes,” he rasped.

“Tell me what they look like.”

And, however reluctantly, he did. She kissed him hard, ignoring the way Thalen cleared his throat, and lingered with her lips a hairsbreadth away.

“I will come for you,” he murmured.

“I know.”

“Take this.”

She looked down at the object he was pressing into her hand. The armor disruptor.

“Rentir, I can’t—”

“You must. Please. I cannot bear the thought of you without it.”

Her throat tight, she stowed the puck in the pocket of her jacket. “See you soon.” She dropped to her knees and crawled into the service tunnel.

Cordelia’s jaw ached from carrying her blaster between her teeth, but if she tried to tuck it anywhere else, it clanked damningly loudly against the metal walls of the service shaft.

As it was, her shoulders and hips barely fit, dragging with a soft scraping noise she hoped wouldn’t draw any undue attention.

She glanced down at the holomap over her wrist, then up at the shaft that would lead her to the right floor.

She’d been hoping for a gradual ramp-up, and that had clearly been wishful thinking.

This was a sheer climb straight up. There was a seam running down one side of the shaft, just big enough to stick her fingers into.

She tore off her gloves and stuffed them into her pockets, then wormed her way into the shaft.

Claustrophobia pressed in on her, making her vision waver momentarily, but she forced herself to breathe deep.

The shaft was at least wider than the horizontal section had been, giving her the little bit of room she needed to leverage her weight. Hand over hand, she used the crack to pull herself up a few inches at a time, forcing herself not to think about how far the drop was as she approached the top.

This is taking too long. What if they’ve already caught up to Rentir and Thalen? There’s nowhere to hide. No armor, not like those auretian soldiers. What if they…

Shut up.

She gritted her teeth around the blaster, bracing her boots against the shaft as she let go of the crack in the wall and scrabbled with clammy palms over the horizontal tunnel that would lead her to the bridge.

How much time had passed? It could have been minutes or an hour. She’d lost all sense of such things in the darkened tunnels.

Cordelia slowed when she heard muffled voices, feeling along the wall until her fingers skimmed over the scantest imperfection. A panel, it had to be. She pressed her ear to the seam, straining to hear.

“…never seen him so agitated,” a muffled voice said.

“He is on the precipice of failure,” someone answered.

“And does he mean to take us all with him?” the first voice demanded. “What have any of us done except precisely as he commanded? Must we all be punished for his shortcomings?”

“You there!” someone else shouted. “With me! They need reinforcement on level three.”

Her blood ran cold. Level three was where she’d come from.

An imaginary clock ticked in her ears, each second as loud as a bomb.

The sound of footsteps receded. She burst out of the panel, springing onto her feet and snatching the blaster out of her mouth. The auretian tech barely had time to turn toward her before she cracked the butt of the weapon across his face. He staggered back, sagging against a control panel.

He was too young and lean to be the male she was looking for. Frustration stung at her. Of course, she hadn’t been lucky enough to stumble across one of the aliens she needed. He looked up at her with wide amethyst eyes, clearly horrified as she leveled the barrel of the blaster at him.

“What’s your name?” she demanded.

He blinked at her.

“Your name!” She squeezed the trigger a little, just enough to spark the whine of the weapon powering up.

“K-Kliath!”

“Kliath, do you know Urien or Vamir?” Those were the names Rentir had given her, the only two who override the lockdown aside from the Lord Commander himself.

He blinked again. “U-Urien is my supervisor.”

The head of security—High Sentinel, Rentir had called him. That would work.

“Comm him and tell him to come to you. Lie. If you tell him I’m here, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

He nodded slowly. The comm at his wrist was substantially more elaborate than the one she wore, set in filigree with ornamental bits that the male used like buttons.

“What?” a voice barked over the link.

“There’s something you need to see, sir. Urgently.”

“I’m busy, you fool. We’re under an invasion, and you have the nerve to waste my time with more of your ridiculous talk of calibrations. I will throw you to the hybrids as fodder!”

Kliath’s expression turned stormy. “You must come, sir. It is not a matter of efficiency. I need to speak with you at once.”

“You squid-humping little jiatan, if you’re wasting my time, I will space you!”

The line went dead. Kliath and Cordelia shared a look.

“He sucks, huh?”

Kliath sighed.

She gestured to the security screens behind him. “What the fuck is that?!” she cried, eyes widening.