He sent her such a look, absolutely incredulous.
“Please. Trust me. Please.” They were almost out of time.
With a disgusted grunt he collapsed on the ground, curling around his laz, and she crouched beside him, hand on his shoulder, just as the door opened.
Linao stepped in, four Cores guards and five Caruson behind her.
“He got hit,” Velda said. “He’s barely hanging on.”
Linao blinked, and Velda could almost see the tension drain out of not just her, but the whole group.
“He’ll recover if he isn’t already dead.” Linao dropped her laz to face downward, and so did everyone else. “How did you get him in here?”
She hadn’t really thought about that. “He was just able to stumble in before he collapsed. This is his third hit since the start of the week. There’s only so much a body can take.” She didn’t have to try too hard to manufacture some outrage.
Linao gave a laugh at that. “Who hit him?”
Velda sent her a filthy look. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask their name.”
Linao laughed again, and came forward to take both laz off them, and handed them to someone behind her. “You certainly keep things from being boring,” she said. “Whatarewe going to do with you?”
26
Velda hadsome kind of magical ability to make people see things her way.
Ethan wondered if the silver balls took the strengths of the person they were absorbed into and bolstered them—working with the abilities that were already there.
That would explain why he was a better fighter, and Velda was a better negotiator.
As Linao said, the Caruso liked her. They listened to her when she spoke, and she handled them just right.
As the head of defense for Aponi for the last couple of years, Ethan guessed her powers of persuasion were already pretty well honed.
And he was absolutely sure she’d just saved him from being hit with laz fire. No doubt about it.
They had been about to open up with their weapons when they saw him already down, and Velda tending to him.
The temperature had come down almost instantly.
Now he played injured as they were taken back to their cell, hunching over a little, making himself smaller.
“While I was getting the door codes, we saw on the system that the med bay doors had been opened, and it wasn’t any of us,” Linao said. “It was honestly too easy to track you down.”
“I wanted to find the med bay,” Velda responded. “Ethan had been hit and I hoped there was something there that could help him.”
“There wasn’t. Caruso med care doesn’t work on us, and they only have the basics anyway. They have a very callous disregard for their injured crew.” Linao shot a sidelong look at the Caruso soldiers behind her, but he guessed they didn’t understand the standard VS dialect she was using. He wondered what the story was with that—it was almost as if she was poking at them, just like she seemed to poke at everyone.
When they came to the cell, Linao opened the door and gestured to the food spilled over the floor. “At least you’ll have something to eat.”
Velda put her arm around Ethan and ushered him in as if he could barely stand. “At least there is that,” she agreed.
Linao shook her head as the door closed.
“I don’t think she knows what to make of me,” Velda said.
Ethan guessed it was because Linao’s default was to distrust and dislike everyone, and something about Velda interfered with that. She couldn’t help but like her and that disturbed and unsettled her.
He pretended to stagger to the bed, in case Linao checked the visual comms to make sure he really was injured.
