Velda straightened, and he saw her posture change—firming, adjusting, so that she was in a fighting stance as someone started forcing the runner’s door open.
“Ready?” she asked, glancing at him, and he realized he was already in the same stance.
“We’re coordinating.” He didn’t know how he felt about it.
She studied her own stance, flicked a look at his, and shrugged. “I’m taking it as a benefit, to be worried about afterward.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
There was danger coming through the door right now. Whatever was inside him, manipulating him, was a problem for another time.
The sound of a laz cutter, and the glow of heat from the crease in the door, forced both of them to the back, to stand beside Linao.
She was trying to sit up, and Ethan hesitated, then decided not to release her.
There was no good explanation for how he could do it with just the touch of his fingers, and he refused to give Linao any hint that Ritter’s little experiment might have worked.
“Who is it?” she asked them.
Ethan shook his head. “No idea. Could be your people, could be the Caruso.”
“We’ll know any moment,” Velda said. “Looks like they’re nearly through.”
Ethan lifted the laz in his hand, and Velda did the same, and the door finally gave way, bending inward.
A mechanical claw grabbed one side, and the whole thing was pulled outward, ripping the door off its hinges, and then a Caruson soldier stepped into the ship.
That solved that mystery.
Ethan set his laz down as a second Caruson stepped in.
There was no good way out of here, no quick and easy escape, so no need to end up shot again.
One soldier headed for his friends, the other turned to them, laz raised, and then he grunted when he saw they weren’t armed.
He said nothing, just watched them, laz pointed at them, while the dead and injured Caruso from the front were hauled out and carried away.
When it was just them left inside, the soldier moved back a little way, giving them room to exit. “Out,” he said.
“I’ll need to be released,” Linao said, and the guard threw Velda a small device which she studied for a moment before she touched it to Linao’s restraints.
They fell away, and Linao slowly got to her feet, putting her hand out to steady herself.
The Caruson held out his hand and Velda dropped the release into his palm.
There was definitely something about her that made the Caruson more inclined to trust her. So far, she’d managed to be in their good graces without fail.
Whereas they looked at him and saw a threat.
Which he was.
22
Velda didn’t havemuch time to study the Caruson ship as they were marched down a passageway.
She had a feeling they were the first Verdant Stringers to ever get a look so deep inside a ship—not that it would be useful if they didn’t make it off the ship alive.
Linao was struggling, and Velda slowed, waiting for her and then bending a little to get her shoulder under Linao’s arm. Ethan was walking up front, a laz very close to his head.
