His voice warbled.
he commed, fear riding through each word.
A man’s thickly accented voice shouted down the hall. “Give us the kid, and we’ll let you leave.” I knew that accent, that voice. It was the New Earther stable hand from the Cosmic Spectacle.
“Put down your weapons. There is no way you’re getting off this ship unless you release the child.” The next voice was even more familiar. So familiar that I found myself creeping closer to the airlock in time to hear a boomingthwumpwhile Makenna and the stable hand flew through the air, the New Earther’s blaster shooting in a wide arc that burned a hole in the ceiling, straight through to the deck above us. They landed hard against the wall, suspended there in some sort of sticky, black webbing.
Makenna was one of Sonia’s security officers. For so many reasons, I hissed, “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
“In the shuttle. Now,” Tano commanded while—in an act of pure, blind absurdity—I held my breath, raised my hands into the air, and skirted past the wall where Makenna and the stable hand struggled against their webbing.
“Sunny,” Makenna slurred against the sticky black strands covering her mouth. “Don’t.”
The airlock I stepped into was smaller than my pod, and I found myself face-to-face with four heavily armed Kravaxians and one terrified ten-year-old.
“Sunny,” Axel said, his wide-eyed shock giving way to his signature amused expression—although this time there was an edge to it—as he holstered his web-shooter. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you were leaving,” I said, lowering my hands,attempting to give them a smile. “And I never let my guests leave the ship without a personal send-off.”
Completely unamused, Tano raised his web-shooter and aimed it directly at my chest.
“No need for that, darling,” I said, resisting every life-preserving urge that screamed at me to run. “I’m unarmed and harbor no secret military training whatsoever. I’m as threatening as a cleaning drone. Cross my heart.”
“What do you want?” Marisia demanded.
“Well”—my laughter was one note shy of shrill—“it can get pretty boring on this ship. And why take only one hostage when you could have two?” I knew attempting to get them to take me instead of Sai would have been pointless; they needed the senator’s son for leverage. The best I could do was make sure he wasn’t alone—and hope that the rumors of Kravaxian cannibalism were baseless.
“She’s got a point,” Axel said with a roguish grin.
I let myself take a breath. I’d only had a second or two to come up with this plan, and it pretty much hinged on Axel’s tendency to flirt.
“Fine,” Tano bit out. “We’ll take her too. But we must leave now.” Grabbing Sai by his cuffed wrists, he hauled him into the shuttle.
Axel reached out for my arm.
“I’ll come willingly,” I said. My voice was inexplicably calm, considering the river of panic rushing through me. They might harm me. They might kill me. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t leave Sai. “But I do get jumpsick, FYI.”
Shaking his head, he secured a set of mag-cuffs around my wrists. “I thought you were smart,” he said low into my ear, nudging me forward into the shuttle. “This is not a smart move.”
“What are you doing?” Sai asked me after Axeldeposited me in the jump seat beside him. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Probably,” I replied. My hands trembled as Axel secured a second set of mag-cuffs around my ankles, connecting both sets with some sort of elastic cable that gave me only enough rein to scratch my nose.
“My moms?” Sai’s eyes were huge. “They’re okay? You promise?”
Squinting up at Axel while he rose to nearly his full height, having to duck a little in the small shuttle, I asked, “Will his moms be all right?”
He looked at the boy and said, somewhat sympathetically, “They’ll be fine after an hour or two. Just a little tired.”
“See, your moms will be fine.” I arched a brow sharply at Axel, daring him to disagree. “And you will be fine too.”
