“How’s that feel? Huh!” she yelled at the closed door. Steam lifted off the metal before it was instantly cooled and fused together. Aphrodite kicked the door, crying at the same time. “Fuck you! Fuck you! And this stupid trap! Fuck this mission! Fuck you!Fuck you!”
Aphrodite wheeled to face Danny, jabbing a finger at his face. She smudged his visor with the blood on her gloves. “Fuck you! And when we get back to the station…ifwe get back to the station, I never want to see you ever fucking again.”
Danny nodded quietly. Aphrodite stumbled over Max’s body, sobbing, and gasping for air. She kicked his feet away from her before she walked to the hole. She summoned her drone, closing her eyes for a long moment. There was nothing she wanted to do more than to curl up into a ball and cry herself unconscious. Panic and terror made her nerves a frayed wire. Her hands trembled as she opened her eyes. A wavering breath, she jumped into the open space, her thrusters pushing her out through the hole. She grabbed onto the torn open pieces of the ship and propelled herself between the two vessels. There was enough room for her to fly. She went from hand hole to hand hole, her drone a foot ahead of her, scanning the way around the ship. Her screen was kept on live feed.
His haggard breathing in her comms was the only clue that Danny was even following her. She didn’t give two shits if he didn’t. If he wanted to stay back and fist fight the hunter again, she would let him.That’s what he wants, really, a good fight.She wanted to make itto the ship. Her heart was weak and racing to keep up with the blood ripping through her veins.
The ship came into view. Of course, the line was cut. She saw it dangling beneath their vessel. All the lights were still on.Thank fuck for small miracles.She stopped her crawl to have her drone fly out and light her way to the ship.Please…just one more…oh for fuck’s sake.
Aphrodite lay flat against the side of the dreaded ship, Danny to her left, and the hunter ahead of them. They stood, feet against the ship like their boots were magnetized. The helmet was back on and there was a large knife in their hand.
“Fuck me,” she breathed, laying her visor against the metal of the ship.Maybe if I beat my head into the side of the ship, I’ll die from the vacuum of space and not the hunter.
“This time! He’s mine!”
Aphrodite let him fall for the bait again.Fuck. This. Crew.
Chapter Four:
Xexis
Clever.Everystep,everymove, every counter was carefully calculated.Very clever. Supplying her own bait, fighting him at every turn… Words escaped him. With each leap, each battle, she proved herself more.She is my mate.It was simply the truth. There could be no other.
What a glorious hunt.
Chapter Five:
Aphroditepeakedupfromthe ship and watched Danny, thrusters engaged and bloody knife in hand, run at the hunter.Just go for the ship while he’s taking the bait.She knew the smart thing was to save herself. That’s what everyone else had been so concerned with instead of getting out together. Aphrodite scowled, watching Danny and the hunter tango. Thrusters pushing left and right, Danny swung for all he was worth.
That’s when Aphrodite realized something. The way the hunter moved…they were moving strangely. She crawled along the ship, recalling her drone. It zipped to her location. She switched it to analysis mode. An orange beam shot out from the center of its orb face. A grid appeared on the pair of men. Watching her screen switch to a breakdown of their movements, she furrowed her brow. “Their armor, it’s…there’s no way they have command of the suit and are able to…”
She looked up at the hunter’s seamless reaction and fight with Danny. The protection specialist, who was trained to fight and engage thrusters at the same time since he was a child, was still jerky in his movements. It’s hard to use the hand controls on the inside of his gloves and strike at the same time.
“It’s like their armor is a part of their skin, like it can think and change magnetism and thrusters, like it’s plugged into their brain,” she gasped, clawing her way up to her feet.
Engaging her own thrusters, she kept her feet as close to the ship’s metal as possible.There’s no way.She sent her drone closer, keeping her distance as best she could. The drone scanned her hunter again. With a massive smile on her face, and a flutter in her chest, she spotted it. Just under the helmet, a sliver of a cord—a connection.Itisplugged in.Aphrodite dug in her pockets and found the pocketknife she kept in her suit.Just in case something small needed to be stabbed or a screw was being belligerent…or sometimes you just needed a tiny knife.It wasn’t a big thing, but it’d do the trick.
She turned off her drone’s lights and dropped to the outside of the ship as the hunter tossed Danny away from them again. Creeping along the metal, keeping as low and quiet as she could, she focused solely on getting to them.Just keep them distracted, Danny.She was inches away, hunkering behind a ripped-up piece of metal, her drone bobbed beside her. Like a lioness in tall grass, she watched her prey.Just…a little…further.She waited for Danny to go hand to hand with the four-armed hunter again before she launched.
She wrapped around him, a leech on their back, she latched her legs around their torso, grabbed at the connection blindly, and ripped her knife through the chord.
Space seemed to grow still, and everything stopped. Aphrodite blinked, staring over the head of the hunter to Danny. His helmet was in the meaty hand of their attacker. His eyes were wide, staring at the cracks forming on his visor. He was inches from burying his knife in the space between the hunter’s armor and mask, held back by stronger arms than his. Then all the hunter’s armor fell off.And the red lights began.
“Warning, oxygen low,”Danny and Aphrodite’s suits cried out.
Wait…fuck…how long had they been out here?Aphrodite stole a glance down to the screen on her suit and felt pure fear claw at the inside of her belly. The screen flashed a dull red with the words ‘Warning’plastered on it.I’ve been sucking down air like a hyperventilating newbie.Her attention flickered to Danny.
The hunter tossed him into the open space between ships while Aphrodite still clutched to them, backpack style. Danny reached for his grappling hook, a small device meant to connect their suits with a small, metal line. It was for when the terrain was bad, and they could get lost. Aphrodite reached an arm out to him, her drone bobbing its head above them.Strange, the hunter didn’t move.All the Hunter’s armor fell away, leaving their skin exposed to the space around them.
“I’ll catch it!” she called out, thrusters engaged. As she scrambled to detach from the hunter, two large hands wrapped around her ankles and kept her locked in place. Aphrodite screamed, panic pitching her voice up an octave. “Danny! Send out the line!”
But it wasn’t the line that Danny grabbed. It was the anti-vacuum gun that he whipped off his belt and aimed at their attacker. Aphrodite saw her life flash before her eyes.
Small Aphrodite, cute and chunky, wandering her tech wonderland of childhood. Her mother was a database specialist; she had computers and wondrous code everywhere. Her father, an engineer, taught her how to hotwire a data pad by the time she was six. Her brothers, just as adorable and wide eyed, helped her build tiny robots and made all their inventions fight in their playroom. She saw her life at the station, growing up. Best friends she’d never see again or write emails to, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends she regretted not making amends with, old colleagues she wished she’d kept in touch with…all of them, she saw their faces and how hurt they’d be to learn she’d died.
Died because her asshole crewmate chose to win the fight over saving her life.
Honestly? He had better not miss…She inhaled sharply, closed her eyes, and hunkered around the hunter. As the gun went off and the hollow of space was filled with its crackling boom, she waited for the pain. She’d been shot before; it hurt like a son of a bitch. But the hurt never came. Aphrodite waited, eyes clenched shut and fingers locked around the flesh of the hunter. Nothing hit her.
