His fingers twitched against the floor, digging into the metal under his jacket. When his nails punctured the surface, it only fueled his anger. But since he feigned unconsciousness, no one would know. He could feign death but he didn’t want his body shot out into space, not when he had no leads.
The pirates neutralized his ship and invaded theBlessedwhile he’d been rebooting. He vaguely recalled several men trying to lift him, unsuccessfully, and later the zap of energy when multiple androids gripped his skin.
He’d been kicked, beaten, and shocked, all of it having no effect on him except to wake him up further. Men had torn through his pockets, taken what they could find off his body, stolen his guns, and tried to wake him again. By that point he was fully aware—and fully aware that his ship was no longer in reach.
Gunner dug his nails a little harder into the floor, breathing in the smells of the unwashed masses.
Pirates had him. A chance attack from a passing fleet had knocked him out cold. They had taken his ship, his property, and had made the fucking mistake of taking him as well.
His nostrils flared, pressed hard into the metal, and he was aware of others eating low-grade space rations. He took another deep breath as something else hit him, something intriguing, buried under weeks of brig filth.
His lips twitched into a brief smirk when he realized that what he smelled were his joints. The pirates missed his fucking joints. Gunner could almost forgive the transgressions against him based on their stupidity alone.
Almost.
There was another smell, also alluring, but he couldn’t place it and let it fall back into the prevailing stench that surrounded him. His attention returned to the ship he was on.
The prisoner he faced shuffled and sighed, the noises soft, and Gunner had the urge to open his eyes to get a visual.
Someone tugged on his jacket.
“You think he’s dead?”
“This piece of shit is heavy.”
The death count rose in his head. Everyone who touched him earned a place on his list.
His nose twitched again and that same interesting smell coaxed him to investigate it. But the hand on his jacket let go and so did his curiosity as he pressed back into cyberspace.
The security barriers he came across were high-end but not unbreachable and he began the process of breaking down their encryptions.
The ship he was on was privatized, the systems it held were not governmental. To him, it felt militarized and upgraded, probably built and bought in the lurid trade markets on Elyria. The tech was Earthian-based and although he couldn’t discern any Trentians onboard, that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
His cyberself codes slithered across the parts of it he couldn’t easily access, gnawing away at it like flesh-eating bacteria. He could break in, but that would set off alarms, and he didn’t want his puppets to know he was there. Not yet.
Gunner scanned the immediate perimeter, counting twenty-six other humans in the brig with him, with at least eight guards in the nearby hallways. He expanded his search until he had a figurative blueprint, bolstered by what he had learned being dragged through the ship on his way in.
Eighty-three occupants, including the prisoners, myself, and forty androids, currently powered on. No other life force aboard, no animals or creatures.The pirates took him but not the EPED acquisitions he’d collected.
His thoughts shifted to Stryker and how he couldn’t wait to beat the Cyborg’s fucked-up face into a bloody pulp. If he lost his acquisitions, someone else was going to pay the price.
“Ely! Boy-o,” said a voice, breaking his concentration and grounding him back into his body. “Check the fucker already. Staring at a corpse isn’t gonna make it move.”
Gunner knew they were talking about him.
Yes, Ely, check my corpse.
But whoever Ely was didn’t make a move to do so.
“Fucking hell, just feel his pulse. He’s closer to you than him,” the same man hollered.
Gunner assumed thehimwas the shit who tried stealing his jacket. He waited to feel hands on him, but nothing happened.Stay smart, Ely.
“I’ll make you a goddamned bargain,” the man persisted. “You check his pulse, and if he’s dead, get his jacket for me, and I’ll give you half my water rations for the next week.”
Don’t do it, Ely.He heard movement before the man spoke, the subtle sway in position that the proposed bargain had on this middle-man.
“Like I’d ever trust you.”
