Page 28 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

Grabbing her shoulder, Bruwes flipped her onto her back, his frantic face popping into her darkening view. His mouth was moving, but her ears rung so loudly she couldn’t make out the words.

It’s okay, she tried to say, but her mouth refused to obey her and Bruwes just grew darker and more distant the harder she tried to focus.

She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t do anything but listen to the chaos of voices and movement around her. They say hearing is the last sense to go , she thought, her last clear thought, as it all went quiet.

There on the tech bay floor, she died.

“Lissa!” Scooping her into his arms, Bruwes heaved her limp body off the floor. He cradled her, rocking her in his panic, jostling her, searching for any signs of life. She wasn’t breathing. He knew the beating of her heart, but he couldn’t find it no matter where on her chest he pressed his hand.

“Doc!” he bellowed over his shoulder, aware of nothing but the unnaturally heavy weight of her in his arms. “Doc!”

A shadow fell over him, and he looked up into the shiny faceless helmet of one of the scav bounty hunters. His hand snapped back for his gun, but it was six feet out of reach, lying on the grate among a scattering of parts he’d abandoned in his scramble to get to her. It was over. All was lost.

Clinging to her lifeless body, fury exploded through him. The pulse and pressure behind his eyes gave proof of how wildly he was reddening. The berserker in him, fighting now to be free while the whole of him clung to Lissa’s body, shaking.

“I will hunt you,” he growled. “I will find you, and I will make your slow, painful death last for days.”

“I am well beyond your primitive concept of death,” the scav replied indifferently, but he didn’t secure his victory by blowing a hole through Bruwes’ head. He wasn’t even armed, Bruwes belatedly noticed. And for that matter, hadn’t he been dead on the floor in a halo of red lightning a moment ago?

As these thoughts tumbled through the churn of Rage, the scav hunkered down where he stood and if Bruwes could only make himself drop Lissa, he could have easily lunged and fought this out, one unarmed man to another, but he couldn’t.

He just couldn’t. All he could do was shake and hold her, watching through pulsing eyes as the scav stretched out his hand to touch two fingers to her chest.

Bruwes grabbed at him, but the moment they touched, a shock of electricity surged through him.

It rocked his head back onto his shoulders and, perhaps as was the intention, knocked Bruwes’s restraining hand aside.

His entire body tingled. The scav simply bowed his head, and suddenly, in his arms, Lissa’s whole body bucked upward.

Her eyes flew open, so did her mouth. She sucked air into her once motionless chest, and then coughed, gasping and grabbing wildly at Bruwes’s hugging arms for something to hold onto.

He yanked her away from the scav, but already the other was retreating out of reach.

“Who are you?” Bruwes snarled, very aware of how far behind him his gun was and how easy it would be to get it. He just had to put Lissa down first.

His arms instinctively tightened, holding her closer.

“My name cannot be spoken with your inferior mouth,” the scav somberly replied. “But we have met.”

It was the tone, that impatient disdain, more than the vocabulary and terse enunciation so uncharacteristic of scavengers that finally brought recognition through the Rage. “You’re the thing that was inside Lissa,” he accused. “What are you doing to her now?”

He couldn’t see it through the mirror-mask, but he could sure feel the withering stare of the entity when it turned its faceless head toward him.

“Saving her life. I have left this husk before my presence could destroy it completely. Some residual effects may surface. It was unavoidable that I should leave some… echo behind, but it will pass in time.”

Bruwes looked down at Lissa who was only now getting her breathing back under control.

“W-wait…” she gasped, but the scav stood up.

“There is no time for waiting, and you are all still in danger. If you think this is the only ship chasing you, then you are very much mistaken. They have a description of you, they know where you are heading, and they are coming for you.”

“You can’t leave,” Lissa gasped, blinking as if she were having a hard time seeing things clearly.

Bruwes didn’t like that, and he definitely didn’t like that she kept struggling to sit up, despite the tightening of his arms. He gritted his teeth—humans—and grudgingly helped her to sit up, since she was going to keep trying anyway.

He pulled her closer, though, resting her head against his shoulder while she lolled weakly, struggling to see the scav standing over them.

“I must,” the being now occupying the scav told her with the thinnest thread of sympathy humming through its cold voice.

“As I say, you are known to them, to the Corporation that will forever hunt you. If they take you, it means one regrettable death.” The helmet turned to take in the watching crewmen and the scav’s shoulder rolled in an awkward, first-time shrug.

“And perhaps a few others. But if I am taken, it means death and suffering on a truly universal scale. I must leave you.” It paused again and added pensively, “I’m a little sorry. ”

“So am I,” said Lissa with a puzzled frown, as if she herself couldn’t believe it.

“But I think I leave you in good hands.” Yet another pause, and when it spoke again, Bruwes could hear a smile—distant and unpracticed, but genuine. “Good, stern hands.”

Lissa’s eyes widened and her cheeks turned a bright pink.

“Take her,” the scav said, once more aloof as it addressed Bruwes. “She is quite infatuated with what you do.”

Bruwes glared, his eyes narrowing as it suddenly occurred to him exactly what the other was hinting at.

Because of course this parasite knew about his exertion of dominance and every time she’d yielded to it.

Every spanking, every bond he tied her into when he bent her over the end of his bed, spreading the plump lips of her quivering sex and pushing himself inside her—this thing had been there.

He was decided. He didn’t like his private time with Lissa intruded upon, and he especially didn’t like it when he didn’t know it was happening.

“You’ve been inside her from the beginning,” he stated.

“No. Only since our encounter at the… Your words are insufficient,” the being huffed in frustration.

“Suffice to say, I’ve been inside her for as long as you’ve known her.

It was an interesting experience.” It looked down at itself, one hand rising to prod at its chest. “I do not have great expectations for this one, but at least it is comfortably androgynous.” It looked in its faceless way back at Lissa.

“I have been too polite to mention it, but we would have made much better progress if you weren’t engaging in hedonistic carnality at every opportunity. ”

“Do tell,” said Vullum, raising his spines.

“Shut up,” Bruwes growled.

“You c-can’t leave,” Lissa weakly gasped again. “They’re coming for you too!”

The being looked from her to Bruwes. “She must eat and she must rest, or she will die again and I will not be here to revive her.”

Done coughing, Lissa was still sucking air when she heard that, and stopped. Her eyes widened. “Again? When was I dead?”

The faceless helmet turned toward her, and it was everything Bruwes could do not to shove the other back at least a step. There was something so silently intimidating in the quiet with which it studied them both.

“You were dead before I entered you,” it finally admitted, the intimidation of the scav’s stance definitely not carrying over into the softness of his blunt confession.

“And you were dead again once I left you. As will this creature be,” he touched his chest, “once I leave him. I have never left a host alive before. But you have been… interesting company. You even tried, in your own ineffective way, to help me. You are the only one who ever has. I am not accustomed to that.”

In his arms, Lissa shook her head and Bruwes understood why. He was struggling to follow this and not let the blindness of his growing fury take control.

“You killed her?” Bruwes repeated, just making sure he’d heard that right.

“The servo-security bots protecting my prison did that,” the being corrected.

“I simply occupied the empty husk that was left. I may have been a bit premature about my forced occupation. Her mind was still quite active.” He gestured to Lissa in Bruwes’s arms. “This husk,” he said, spreading his arms and looking down at himself, “is delightfully silent. At last, I can do as I wish without constant protest or complaint.”

“You kept trying to kill people,” Lissa mumbled, her eyes no longer open, but closed. She’d turned her face toward Bruwes’s chest. He could feel the weight and heat of her limp hand, resting on his forearm. “Killing people is wrong.”

“And leaving an enemy alive to pursue you again is foolish and ultimately self-defeating. I will admit that you possess the potential to become a true intelligence, perhaps even equal to that of my own kind, but you are as yet an egg. An unhatched egg, who cannot imagine the world beyond the shell enclosing it, or the universe existing beyond that world. But you will grow, and perhaps, in time…” Lowering himself once more, the being reached out with the scavenger’s hand, this time to stroke sweat-damp hair away from Lissa’s brow.

“Perhaps I will meet one of your kind again, in some distant day. I will remember you to them, Lissa Blackwood, and they will know of all you have done to make their future possible.”

Fine words, but Bruwes really didn’t like that lingering touch.

However, his attempt to slap it away caused a jolt of near-blinding electricity to slam up his hand, arm, spine, and into the back of his head.

He whacked into the corner of the part’s rack he was leaning against, damn near breaking his nose.

From the other side of that faceless helmet, the being regarded him. “Do not strike at me again, and do not hunt me. It will not end the way you think it will.”

The two glared at one another, or presumably the alien glared. Bruwes couldn’t be sure because of the helmet, but he was mad enough to do the glaring for them both.

It was the being who looked away first, turning to regard its deceased companions. “You should go now. These aren’t the only hunters on your trail. There will be more.”

“G-go?” Lissa said.

“This ship isn’t going anywhere,” Kelys spoke up.

“Not without a jump coil, at least four new hull plates, not to mention recharging the nav-thrusters and, oh, about a hundred other small but vital repairs, and right now, I don’t even know how we’re going to get to a garage, let alone pay for it, or didn’t your superior brain think of that? ”

Ignoring him, the being once more fixed his attention on Bruwes. “Take the other ship. It has no more crew to contest you and no one will be looking for you on a scavenger vessel. I will take this one.”

“I thought your whole thing was not wanting to get caught,” Cory broke in with a half-laugh. “How are you not grasping that the ship is broken? It does not go. It is one loud fart away from hull breach and implosion.”

The body of the scav drew back its narrow shoulders and tilted its helmet back to a haughty angle. “I,” said the alien, “do not… fart.”

“Of course you don’t.” Cory rolled her eyes and planted a hand on her cocked hip. “Do you shit out new ships?”

“No,” it answered coldly. “I animate dead things. And since I do not have to care about this vessel’s integrity, I will have little difficulty moving this ship, if not as fast or as far as I would prefer, and even less difficulty defending it from the attacks that are surely coming while you stand here and babble out your infantile worries. ”

Cory put a hand over her heart with exaggerated remorse. “Pardon me for expressing concern about the guy who said his capture would mean the end of the known universe.”

“ All the universe, known to you or not,” the alien corrected. “The consequences of my capture cannot be overstated, and yet here I stand while you squander the head-start I have given you!”

Six pairs of eyes stared at him: Bruwes was sure his were still burning red, while the rest gazed on in various states of confusion. Lissa’s eyes, the only eyes that mattered, were still closed.

Slowly, Vullum raised his hand. “I’m lost. You… gave someone head and that’s going to save us how?”

Cory silenced him with a gesture. “It’s not that kind of head. It’s an expres–never mind. I’ll explain later.”

Bruwes could not have cared less about translating colloquial sayings between species.

Hefting Lissa in his arms, he stood up. Glaring from the alien to his crew, he already knew he wasn’t going to argue.

The last ten minutes had taught him enough to know he could not beat the being, not head-on and perhaps not ever.

Not when the price of retribution might mean his death.

Leaving Lissa completely undefended? Not for all the bounties in the known universe.

Like a burlican pup with its tail tucked, he ordered his crew onto the scab vessel. “Kelys, find ops and get me a status on the ship. The rest of you, grab only what we need, food, supplies, medical.”

“You don’t want a sweep first?” Kelys asked with a frown.

Bruwes nodded at the alien inhabiting the scav’s body. “It says it’s clear.”

Kelys’ frown deepened and he lowered his voice, as if that would really keep his words private from the entity standing between them. “And you trust it? It could be sending us straight into a galley full of scavs, making us its start… ahead… starter. Whatever! It could be a trap!”

Bruwes looked at his reflection in the scav’s mirrored helmet. “It’s not. Get moving, all of you.”

Obedience was not immediate, but after a few glances and some Cory-grumbles, his crew went to work.

Bruwes supposed he owed some word of thanks to the alien who had saved their lives, but he was still pissed and nothing felt very saved while Lissa still lay limp and scarcely conscious in his arms. He managed a terse nod that went entirely unacknowledged, took one last look around at the belly of the beast that had been The Raider—his captaincy, his home, an extension of his soul and self after all these years—and then turned away.

Careful of the precious load he carried, he boarded the other vessel in search of the old captain’s chambers.