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Tyelu woke to a glimmering twilight, prone against a cold, hard floor. A devil danced merrily in her head and a sonorous bell rang in her ears. The overwhelming stench of unwashed flesh and rotten organic matter did not help.

She closed her eyes, gingerly prodded the ache, and located a gash on the back of her skull. Kraden Sweeper had probably dropped her from a height. They were strong, but callous. Ryn bore the scars proving it.

A gentle hand stroked her free hand, easing the pain. “A-dommoro fyel?”

Do you speak Domorian?

“Niya,” Tyelu whispered. Not enough . In Galactic Basic, she said, “Where are we?”

“The Sweepers have gathered us into a hold.”

Tyelu relaxed a little despite the circumstances, relieved that whoever sat beside her also spoke GB. “A child ship?”

“I believe so. There are fewer…childbearing ones.”

“Females?”

“As you say.”

A thud sounded nearby. Tyelu risked opening one eye and nearly winced at the pain caused by the dim lighting. Still, that one peek had been enough. A leather-coat bedecked male Sweeper plodded down a corridor lined with cages, one of which held her and the Domorian. Most of the cages were empty, but a few held other prisoners. All women, she noted grimly, which did not bode well for any of the captives.

Slowly, carefully, she slid her hands down her body, probing for weapons. Her blasters were gone, the extra battery packs were not. Her fingertips grazed the hilt of Jos’s knife, and she smiled despite the pain.

One weapon wouldn’t be enough to take on a whole ship of Sweepers, child ship or not. But she had an ace up her sleeve, her very own pet Q’Mhel. True, he might still be pissed at her for kidnapping him, but he wouldn’t abandon her to the less than tender mercies of Sweepers.

The Sweeper approached, its beady eyes jerking from side to side. Tyelu allowed her own eyes to slide shut and squeezed the Domorian’s hand as a silent reassurance. She needed to conserve her energy, wait for the proper moment to present itself.

And when she struck? This motley nest of Sweepers would discover exactly how dangerous a Lady Warrior could be.

When the Sweeper curled a tentacle around Tyelu’s leg and triggered a jump, Jos’s heart dropped to his knees. “Tyelu!” he screamed as he leapt for her.

Too late. The two blinked out of the cargo bay as more Sweepers surged toward Jos and Ryn.

Raw rage throbbed through Jos’s veins, dimming his vision to only what lay ahead of him. With ruthless efficiency, he stepped into the first Sweeper and punched it hard over its heart. The Sweeper staggered back into its companion, sending them both stumbling into the scrap metal stuffed into the cargo bay.

“Blaster!” Tyelu’s brother yelled.

Jos turned and caught the weapon Ryn threw at him, swung it around, and pressed the tip against the first downed Sweeper, right where he’d punched it. One shot killed it. A second shot fried the next Sweeper’s skull matter.

Half a dozen more shambled along the narrow pathways winding through the cargo, ignoring the Sweepers embedded in the valuable scrap. Jos faced them head on, eager to cut them down. The quicker he cleared Yarinska , the quicker he could go after Tyelu. The longer they had her, the harder she’d be to find. And Magda didn’t know she’d been taken, so she wouldn’t be looking for her. Wouldn’t know not to fire on the Sweeper ships. Wouldn’t know that when that Sweeper had taken Tyelu, it had taken part of him with her.

Stars and firmament. He’d gone and fallen in love with her.

The shock of realization tempered his rage, draining some of the bloodlust clouding his vision. The cargo bay came into sharp focus as he slaughtered the last of the mobile Sweepers. They were stacked two high all around him, the stench of their hot blood a rank sting in his nostrils. Ryn moved among the scrap, grimly delivering a kill shot to each of the trapped Sweepers.

A tremor ran through Jos’s hands and he realized he only had half his armor on. The other half, the torso where his meds were stored, lay on the other side of the cargo bay where he’d dropped it when Tyelu had been taken. The important half, he realized numbly, the half that delivered a steady flow of drugs to counter the effects of adrenaline and battle fatigue. The adrenaline was the problem here. Mixed with terror and love, it packed a doozy of a punch.

He limped toward his discarded armor, heard Ryn’s quiet footsteps behind him.

“Kraden Sweepers,” the other man muttered. “Gonna be a mess to clean up. You’re going after Tyelu?”

Jos nodded. “I have to. We’ve got a date at the next Choosing, and I aim for us both to be there.”

Ryn huffed out a half laugh. “Never thought I’d see the day when Tyelu dragged a man onto the Choosing grounds.”

Jos grunted, all he could manage around the urgent rage lingering in his blood. He’d already formulated a rough plan. Contact Magda, rescue Tyelu, kiss the ever-loving stars out of her.

Now, if he could just get into his armor.

Tyelu waited in the near darkness of the Sweeper ship’s hold, one hand wrapped around the hilt of Jos’s knife, the other clutched to the bosom of Kresl, her Domorian cellmate. Once her headache had dulled, Tyelu could focus well enough to recognize the tiny female as one of Domor’s junior diplomatic attachés. Coaxing a name out of the young female had taken more patience than Tyelu had to spare, but she’d gritted her teeth and persisted. The poor girl hadn’t managed to get more than a few tense words out before fear shut her down.

Now, Kresl huddled beside Tyelu, raw terror leaking out of her mind, infecting the hold’s other occupants. When Tyelu realized that the fear knotting her gut was coming from the Domorian, she’d fallen back on years of discipline, shutting her mind and emotions to the tiny female’s influence.

Domorians were not warriors. Tyelu tried to temper her patience in light of that simple fact.

The hours wore on. A Sweeper plodded dully between the cages, its beady-eyed gaze sliding over every woman there, regardless of species or beauty.

Tyelu didn’t bother wondering why the Sweepers had taken only females. Some species could interbreed with the menacing alien species. Woe unto those females. They would be forced to mate with a Sweeper until they grew large with child, if they survived that long. Giving birth to a monstrous hybrid might kill them anyway. If not that, then Sweeper females certainly would, after stealing their newborn away to raise as a slave or a breeder.

Tyelu steeled herself against the revulsion shuddering through her. The rare human could interbreed with a Sweeper. Domorians, on the other hand, were highly compatible with Sweepers, but often too fragile to survive the brutality of a Sweeper mating.

She smoothed her hand over the knife’s hilt, watching the guard beneath lowered lids. Where was Jos? What was taking him so long?

The thought had not fully formed in her mind when an armored Q-merc popped into existence not three ceg away, blaster up.

Jos . Thank Fryw.

The Sweeper guard turned ponderously on its trunk-like legs, growling menacingly. Its tentacles swept out, thrashing against Jos as he fired point-blank into the guard’s chest. One tentacle brushed Jos’s hands, the blaster fire hit the guard’s coat and ricocheted off, and a chorus of frightened screams rose above the ship’s grunting engines.

Tyelu rolled into a crouch, landing near the cage’s lock. The sudden movement sent a wave of dizziness through her skull, threatening to drown her. She clenched her eyes shut, forced the dizziness back. When she opened her eyes again, Jos had dropped his blaster and was attacking the Sweeper guard with a wickedly sharp dagger.

The hold’s hatch creaked open. Two additional Sweepers crossed the threshold. Beyond them, Tyelu caught a glimpse of blaster fire and armor-clad Q-mercs amid the chaos of close quarters combat. As she worked on the cage’s locking system, one of the new Sweeper’s froze, then was dragged backward through the hatch by a Q-merc. The merc turned a blank-faced helmet toward Tyelu and nodded, then dove back into battle before she could respond.

Jos materialized in front of her. “Stand back!”

Tyelu scuttled out of the way as he raised the butt end of his blaster and pounded it against the lock. Electricity sparked, then the door clicked open. As soon as it opened, Jos whirled and jumped straight into fending off the other Sweeper.

Tyelu grabbed Kresl’s hand and shoved her out the door. “Get the rest out!”

The Domorian stumbled through the cage while Tyelu weighed her options. Knife against Sweeper. How much use would she really be?

With a vicious curse, she vaulted the downed Sweeper and started hacking away at the locks for the cages across the aisle. Two or three hits with the knife’s hilt did the trick. The room held only ten cages, but some were stuffed with females of all races, sizes, and shapes. Tyelu pointed them to the back of the room against what she thought might be the outer hull, away from the fighting in the room beyond.

Jos had taken down the Sweeper he was fighting and was countering a trio of younger males who’d somehow lumbered through the battle raging outside the prison hold. In a break barely long enough to take a breath, he kicked a small bag her way. She ducked a stray tentacle thrown at her and picked the bag up. It jangled in her hands, and when she opened it, she saw why: it held a few dozen loose transport chips.

She whooped and tossed the closed bag to the Domorian, shouting, “One each. Take them and go!”

Jos finished off the third of the trio with a dagger to its rancid heart, then backed toward where she stood halfway down the hold. “You, too, princess. I want you well out of danger while we mop up here.”

“Forget it, spacer,” she retorted. “Give me a blaster and I’ll help.”

His helmet retracted, baring his scowl. “Don’t argue with me, Tyelu. You’re wounded.”

She lifted her chin and stared him down. “So are you, or did you miss the tentacle-sized hole in your armor?”

He glanced down and swore roundly. “It’s just a scratch. Barely hurts at all.”

“That’s because your armor’s pumping meds into your bloodstream.” She edged closer, close enough to cup his jaw in her hand. “Sweeper at hind left, spacer.”

“Frekking Sweeper.” Without looking, he swung his blaster around one-handed and shot it squarely in the chest. “I can’t concentrate when you’re in danger.”

“Yes, I can see how well you don’t concentrate by the way you dropped that one without looking. Sweeper at demi-hind right.”

He whirled and shot the entering Sweeper twice, then turned back as it swayed, dazed, and stumbled into the hatch’s frame. “Look. I didn’t even kill that one. See how much of a distraction you are?”

“Forget it, Q’Mhel. I’m not leaving you to fight alone.” Never would she do so, though she certainly was not sharing that thought with him.

“I’m not alone. We’re two dals strong here.”

“Sweeper at—”

“Fine,” he growled as he turned and took out the approaching Sweeper. “But when we get out of this, you owe me. Stars, I love that bloodthirsty gleam in your eye.”

Abruptly, he pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, then pushed his spare blaster into her hands and jumped back into the fight, his helmet covering his head as he walked.

“Tyelu?” Kresl called.

Tyelu bit her tongue against a curse as she whirled on the cowering women. “What are you waiting for, a gilded invitation? Go!”

The women murmured among themselves, casting nervous looks at her as the first among them accepted transport chips and popped away.

She ignored them as she checked the blaster and waded into battle herself. Not for every star in the universe was she letting Jos have all the fun.