She crouched down, edging along the side to get a better view of the person hiding, and when she peered around another console, she saw Sylvester, his back to her, laz in hand, slowly raising his head to look for her.
She considered having a conversation with him—about where they were, what his plans were, and then realized she couldn’t trust a word he said.
She shot him and rose to her feet.
Then she ran toward the bridge doors and crouched low, looking through the narrow gap.
Ethan was nowhere in sight, but a head suddenly popped up from behind the food bar in the lounge.
It was a Caruson, bulky in his protective gear.
He had obviously not taken a bad hit, to have recovered so quickly.
He studied the lounge, and then, like Velda, heard the sound of fighting from down the corridor.
He moved toward it, keeping to the side so he could see down the passage and still have cover.
She couldn’t let him come up behind Ethan.
She got even lower, her laz at a difficult angle, and tried to work out which shot would keep him down. Eventually, as he began to creep down the corridor, she chose his head.
He went down silently.
She’d most likely killed him, but he was carrying a curved blade in each hand, and Ethan was not expecting an attack from behind.
She suddenly realized she could hear buzzing and she turned, laz up, and saw one of the consoles was shorting.
She walked over and switched it off, and it began to emit a thin wisp of smoke that smelled sour.
That was on her, using the big Caruson laz with abandon.
She’d have been shot herself if she hadn’t, but she suddenly wondered if the Caruson had chosen blades not only because of their usefulness in close quarters fighting, but also because there was much less damage to the ship that way.
She hoped whatever she’d destroyed hadn’t hobbled them.
She turned back to the doors. She wanted to follow after Ethan, but she needed to hold the bridge, and she couldn’t see a way to get the doors open anyway.
She just hoped he’d be back soon.
40
Ethan slid down the passage,pausing to look back at the doors to the bridge.
Through the narrow gap he saw the flash of laz fire, and hesitated. Velda was in there?—
A flurry of movement and another shot forced him to dive for the opposite wall. He came up firing, but Brink had already ducked back into the room she was using for cover.
She had taken advantage of his indecision.
He needed to trust Velda and deal with the problem he’d taken on.
“How did you get back onto the Raptor?” Brink called. “I saw the Caruso towing you back to their ship.”
He ignored her, edging toward the room—the med bay, he realized— and pressed up against the wall right next to the open door.
All the doors except the bridge were open, he realized. Maybe as a result of the power failure the Caruso had engineered.
Brink moved—he could hear the rustle of her clothing—and he worked out he had a good idea from the sounds she was making where she was in the room.
