Page 19 of Trusting Warik (Hissa Warrior #9)

Chapter 19

Nisha

The alarm brought Malk and Warik rushing to her. After a quick explanation, Malk looked determined.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

Warik’s reaction to the news was far more emotional than any of them expected.

“No!” Warik roared.

She watched his expression go from cold and remote to enraged. “Warik?”

Ignoring her, he turned and punched the wall repeatedly until there were dents, and he was breathing hard. She and Malk exchanged a look and kept their distance.

Someone’s not taking this well, Shift noted with heavy sarcasm in Nisha’s ear before speaking through the nearest droid. “Are you done with your tantrum? We have work to do.”

Warik turned on the droid and bared his teeth, then stomped off.

“That wasn’t helpful,” Shift grumbled through the same droid, sending a different one after Warik.

“Why is he so angry?” Malk asked, looking both hurt and scared.

“Because he feels helpless,” Nisha guessed.

No sooner had she said that than Warik came stomping back into the room with Shift’s droid right on his heels. There was blood dripping from one of his hands where he’d split his knuckles open hitting the wall.

“What can I do? Tell me what to do!” Those questions were delivered so loudly, they were almost a shout.

“Not helpful!” Shift said, steering a droid between Warik and Nisha.

Nisha didn’t think Warik would ever physically hurt her, but he was being intimidating even if he didn’t realize it.

Warik shut his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter but no less intense.

“I need to do something. Tell me what to do.”

“You could start by pulling all the furniture out of the hat,” she said, thinking about the worst-case scenario. “We can sleep on mats on the floor, but every chair, table, and bunk are spots where a vat could be stored.”

“Done,” he agreed, turned on his heels, and sprinted out of the room.

“Should I go help him?” Malk asked, although he didn’t look like he wanted her to say yes.

“Absolutely not,” Nisha said. “You and I are going to check all the emergency pods and see if any of them work.”

“I don’t have high hopes,” Shift said.

“What about contacting Tulsin I?” Malk asked. “Couldn’t we ask them to help us?”

Nisha shook her head. “The reason the company decided to circle this planet is because there aren’t many laws, and it’s easy to do things without reporting them. The flip side is that if we ask for help, we’re basically telling them we can be exploited. After they reestablished our orbit, they might come in here and claim everything to sell, including us.”

“This is really bad, isn’t it?” Malk asked.

Nisha wished she could reassure him, but she couldn’t lie. “It’s bad, but not hopeless. All we can do is keep working and do our best. One thing I know for sure is that the Ardent is burning hard to get here. I have more faith in the Hissa than anyone, and that includes the Earth Government and other humans.”

“Your people are like mine,” Malk said softly to Nisha. “I love my family, but I don’t trust my people."

“Well said,” Shift commented. “I have good news and bad news.”

“What?” Nisha said. “Please don’t say we’re about to be flung off into the sun.”

“No, nothing like that,” Shift said. “But we just got a message from Ardent. They’re at least another day and a half away.”

“That’ll be close, but we should still be in orbit,” Nisha said. “What’s the bad news?”

“A wave of government ships is preparing to launch from the planet,” Shift explained. “I think we dropped below the claim line.”

“What’s a claim line?” Malk asked.

“It’s the point where you go from being in orbit to being considered part of the planet. It’s different for every planet, but this one has a very high claim line, and we crossed over it a few hours ago,” Shift said. “That’s one of the reasons I’ve been monitoring communications traffic so closely. After the explosion, our orbit went elliptical so we’re below the claim line only part of the time. I’d hoped they wouldn’t notice.”

“How bad is it if the planet claims us?” Malk asked.

“Beside the fact that they’ll sell all the children to the highest bidder,” Shift said, “they'll be really unhappy when they find eight fellow Diniki are being held prisoner. It'll be a very quick trial and the three of you might even be executed on the same day.”

That’s very bad,” Malk mumbled.

“How long?” Nisha asked Shift.

Shift didn’t have to ask what she meant. “Only a few hours. Their launch technology is old so we got lucky, and it’ll take them four hours to get here.”

“Let’s see if there’s any way we can help our luck along,” Nisha said and headed out to find Warik.

***

Warik

“How did you think of this?” Warik asked as he and Nisha sat in the command room watching Shift produce lines of calculations on the display in front of them.

“I figured an explosion got us into this, maybe it could help get us out,” Nisha said before tapping the display. “Shift, there’s too much acceleration on that last notation, you need to drop it by .2 or you might hurt the kids.”

“I can’t drop it,” Shift argued through a small speaker in the display as figures rapidly changed on the screen. Warik couldn’t keep track of the shifting numbers but both Nisha and Shift seemed to be able to read and understand them at that speed.

He could see how Shift could do it, but Nisha shouldn’t have that capability. It was impressive and humbling to watch.

“I see it now,” Nisha said. “You’re right, we have to keep it at that level. It’s at the edge of what the grow vats can handle, but they should be fine.”

Nisha looked up at him. “You need to sit down.”

He almost refused. The nearest seat wasn’t within touching distance of Nisha, and he felt a pressing need to be close enough to reach out and grab her if necessary.

Common sense won out, and he moved to a workstation to sit down. “How soon until you—”

His question was cut off when the entire ship shook violently, answering his unfinished question. Although the movement wasn’t enough to knock him out of the seat, he gripped the armrests tightly. Who knew how much abuse this ship could take before it basically disintegrated around them.

“Frame integrity is still good,” Shift announced even as the ship still trembled slightly. “Determining new orbit path now.”

“I’m going to reset the dock for another blast in case that wasn’t enough,” Nisha said.

“We can do that again?” Warik asked. It was his understanding that Nisha and Shift had filled Assist’s only dock with atomized fuel, then set it all alight and let it build pressure before opening the outside hatch and letting it explosively decompress. The decompression was what caused the violent movement and hopefully changed the orbit enough to take them above the claim line. “Didn’t the explosion destroy the door?”

“There are two sets of doors,” Nisha explained. “I kept one set open and now I’m closing it.”

“If we can do it again in the next ten minutes, we’ll be in the right orbit,” Shift announced.

“Working on it,” she answered, her hands flying over the display. “No!”

“What?” Warik asked even as Nisha made an aggravated sound and jabbed repeatedly on the same spot of her display.

“The door isn’t closing. Something must’ve gotten lodged in the track from the first explosion.” Before she could say anything else, Warik was up and running. They were all wearing biosuits in case the worst happened, and the entire ship decompressed. All he had to do was activate it, and he’d have air for his trip into the dock.

Warik, be careful! Shift said. The entire room will be red hot. If you stop moving, your shoes will melt. If your biosuit touches anything, it’ll melt. Please be so damn careful, we don’t want you to die!

This was the first time she'd spoken directly to him since he’d been so cold to her in the hallway outside the grow room. It was good to hear Shift in his ear again, even if her voice was full of frantic worry.

“I will,” he promised as he ran. He got to the dock air lock and jumped in. While the air lock cycled, he activated his suit. The helmet deployed around his head and ion gloves covered his hands. His ears popped as the suit pressurized. It was good that these suits were fast to deploy because the air lock was quick to swing open into the superheated bay.

He could feel the heat even through the suit as he moved as quickly as he could across the bay. There were some sections that still glowed red from the explosion. One of Shift’s droids was dead at the center of the room. None of the droids they’d bought were fit to handle any kind of extreme temperature. Nothing was obviously wrong with it, so something inside must’ve melted, causing the whole thing to brick.

Ignoring the droid, he rushed to the outside door. As he got closer, he saw what the issue was. The blast had ripped the outer door off its track while it’d been opening. Part of the primary door’s track had gotten embedded in the secondary door’s track. It wasn’t a large piece so he didn’t think it would be hard to pull out.

Grabbing it with both hands, he hissed in pain as it burned through the suit. The seals deployed around his wrists to keep the rest of the suit pressurized so he didn’t lose all his air.

Ignoring the pain, he heaved at the track fragment. It gave slowly and if there’d been any atmosphere in the room, he probably would have heard the metal shriek. Because he had to stand in one place, heat built up in his feet as the soles of his shoes started to melt. He pulled with every last bit of strength he could.

The piece of track started to move more quickly and then finally came loose. He was straining so hard that he fell back when the metal released. His suit hissed and pain lanced through his back.

He could hear the inner door closing even as he tried to function through the agony. Even though it was painful, he was forced to put his hands on the floor to get to his feet. Staggering, he moved as fast as he could. His suit was failing, and he’d die in this bay if he wasn’t in the air lock within the next minute.

He was almost there when one of his feet wouldn’t move, and he fell to his knees. There was no more air in the suit, and his shoes had melted through and started sticking to the floor. He tried to pull his foot free, but it didn’t work. He was going to have to unlatch the boot and run bare footed the last few steps to the airlock.

His vision started to blacken at the edges as he hit the latches on his boot with useless fingers. Nothing came undone. Was this it? Was he going to die?

“Shift, tell Nisha to blow the room,” he wheezed with the last of his air. If she hesitated because his dead body was in here, then all of it had been for nothing.

Fuck that! Shift cursed as the airlock door cycled open. His eyesight was failing so he couldn’t tell what was happening until Malk was there, grabbing him with all four arms and pulling hard. The sole of the boot tore from the floor. All four of Malk’s arms held him close, showing an incredible amount of strength in the Hakmin’s lean body.

Hold on, Warik , Shift said as Malk carried him the short distance to the airlock. Two things happened the moment the airlock door shut. Sweet, cool air filled the small space, and the bay exploded again, causing the familiar violent shaking.

Damn that was close, Shift grumbled. But we’re above the claim line now so we’re safe.

“Close only counts when you're talking about cluster bombs,” he said with a chortle. He felt oddly euphoric. He was still in pain, but it was distant, as if the injuries were old.

“What’s wrong with him?” Malk asked. That’s when Warik noticed the Hakmin wasn’t wearing a biosuit.

“You could’ve died,” Warik gasped, trying to reach out and grab onto Malk. That’s when he realized his body didn’t want to do what it was told. That was strange, usually his body did everything he asked. “My body is being willful.”

Your body needs a little time to recover , Shift said soothingly. If you stay still, Malk will take care of you.

“How is Malk alive?” Warik asked.

Hakmin are resistant to vacuum for limited amounts of time, Shift explained. I think you might be in shock. Try to stay still, and we’ll get you fixed up. Thankfully, I don’t think your lungs were affected, otherwise you’d be in big trouble. If it’s only your skin, we have all the supplies necessary to fix your burns.

“That would be nice, thank you,” Warik said politely as the inner door to the air lock opened. “You know it’s only fair that I get burned too. Nisha shouldn’t have to do everything by herself.”

“I don’t think that makes sense,” Malk murmured as he carried Warik to the med bay.

Warik’s mind floated as Malk set him on a bed and stripped what was left of the biosuit off him. That hurt enough to pull him out of the nice floating place.

“Ouch, stop that,” he told Malk who stopped and backed off immediately.

“I’m sorry, Warik. I need to get the suit off you to treat all your burns. There are a couple of places the suit melted into your skin.”

“Let him work,” Shift said through a droid that came winging into the room only moments after Malk set him down. “He’ll make you feel better.”

“Still don’t like it,” Warik grumbled as he let Malk continue to work on him.

Malk finished getting the suit off, in some cases taking skin with it. Then he treated Warik’s feet, hands, and back with a salve that took away the pain and brought back the lovely floating feelings.

“That’s better,” Warik mumbled, letting his eyes drop shut as Malk applied layers of skin growth on all the burn spots. It wasn’t long before he started to feel itchy as they bonded to his body.

“Those look good,” Shift commented.

“Itchy,” Warik complained, sitting up.

“You need to drink this,” Malk said, pressing a full glass of something dark into his hands.

Warik almost spilled it while trying to scratch a spot on his back. “Itchy!”

“Malk will give you a good scratch once you drink it all down,” Shift said.

Warik grumbled but did as Shift and Malk wanted. The thick liquid was soothing as it slid down his raw throat. He was finishing the last of it when Nisha charged into the room.

“Warik!” she cried, rushing to his side.

“He’s fine,” Shift said even as she rolled her droid out of the way. Malk stepped back to give Nisha room to stand close to him. She started to open her arms to hug him but stopped mid-motion.

“Oh no!” she said, taking in his body.

“It looks bad now, but the skin growth will integrate in an hour, and he’ll be as good as new,” Shift said.

The drink Malk gave him must’ve been full of medications including a nerve suppressant and stimulant. The itching went away along with the last of the pain, and he suddenly felt energized and clear-headed.

“I’m fine,” he announced, jumping off the table. He was relieved to find he felt steady and could move without pain. “Are we clear of the claim line?”

“Just barely,” Nisha answered. “The orbit will disintegrate again, but not before we have help. I already sent our current orbital coordinates to the Diniki officials so their military shouldn’t bother launching. I also got a message from Ardent. They’re aware of our predicament. They have a nearby gunship that was retrieving a Decanted woman on the Fielden homeworld. They’re not far away.”

“I have bad news,” Shift said.

Everyone turned to look at her droid.

“No,” Nisha said, looking close to tears. “No more bad news.”

“The Diniki officials are still heading toward us,” she explained. “And they're demanding to speak to the Assist’s captain or owner. We might’ve fixed our orbit, but they’re worried that we’re damaged and could possibly end up in an uncontrolled atmospheric entry.”

Warik couldn’t help it, he laughed. Everyone looked over at him with surprised eyes.

“Did he hit his head?” Nisha whispered to Malk.

“I don’t think so,” Malk whispered back.

Warik held up a hand. “All we need to do is figure out how to lie to the officials until the gunship gets here. I’m very good with lies.”