Thatcher
Ysa was kissing me. It was fierce as a kitten, her hands tangled in my hair to yank me close, the faintest tug of pain prickling across my scalp. Her mouth was soft, her taste exactly as I remembered—only better, because I had it right now. She was soft as I hauled her into my arms and bent her so I could deepen the moment. Her tongue was sweet and tentative, her gasps like music.
My mind spun because dropping from worried rage directly into lust was a hard shift to keep up with. I wasn’t often scared—not for myself—but I’d been consumed with fear when I realized Ysa wasn’t where I thought she was. Fear had morphed into rage because I knew I’d given her specific instructions and she hadn’t listened to them. She never did.
Now, she blew all that anger away and replaced it with confusion and… a softness I wasn’t familiar with. Didn’t recognize. She kissed me, and she didn’t end it either, letting me tangle with her silky mouth over and over.
I knew we had an audience, a dozen eyes on us, staring with avid curiosity. The captain and his mate, our gladiator guest, and the guard Asmoded had assigned to Ysa. Even the twins had turned in their seats, forgetting they were in the middle of prepping our departure, just to stare. I could hear Aramon chuckle as if he thought this was the greatest entertainment. I didn’t like the thought of Ysa being entertainment to anyone but me, and that finally made me lift my head and stare at her.
Why had she done this? The last time, when I’d kissed her in the elevator, I knew I’d never get enough of her. That was no different now, but her response definitely was. She’d been furious then, shocked by my attempt to claim her, refute her denial that I had any say in her fate. This time, she smiled softly and lifted her hand to cup my cheek like a lover would. Our eyes clung, and I still couldn’t pull away.
I’d sworn I’d protect her even from myself, only to discover how impossible that vow was. I’d known since that moment she’d slept in my arms that I’d never let her go, never let her have another. But she’d come to me, stakedherclaim on me this time, and that… I didn’t know how to deal with that. It was like she’d made my processor go haywire, and my brain just kept going in loops. She wanted me; she’d changed the game on me. How could Ysa possibly want a damaged, broken male like me?
Something beeped stridently and broke the silence on the bridge, broken only by Aramon’s obvious amusement. “Ah,stars. Ysa, hate to interrupt this no doubt meaningful moment but, ah… it’s suddenly changed location.” Mitnick sounded very apologetic, but that didn’t lessen the intensity of the glare I shot him. Damn right he should be sorry for interrupting this. I never wanted the moment to end.
Ysa, however, jerked in my arms, twisting, and the braid around her waist slipped against my hands. “What? How much did it jump? Captain, permission to go for it myself? With Thatcher, of course?” Asmoded inclined his head, and that was all Ysa waited for. She grabbed my hand and pulled, urging me to follow her off the bridge and down the hallway. Her comm was already raised in front of her face, with a small map of the ship projected above it.
“Keep me posted, Mitnick!” she shouted over her shoulder. I followed, because I would follow her anywhere. As confusing as the situation was, I would figure it out in a moment. A threat of a fight would be pretty welcome right now, actually. That was black and white, and this thing between Ysa and me definitely wasn’t. I could hear a commotion erupt on the bridge, and Asmoded demanding that the Sineater be updated on the situation.
“What’s going on?” I asked as the bridge doors slid shut behind us, plunging us into silence. Ysa still held my hand and dragged me with her at a rapid pace through the ship. Her eyes were fixed on a red dot on her map, which had to be our target. Her boots thudded rapidly on the deck, far from quiet, and the beads at the tip of her long braid clicked together harmoniously.
“I found a way to track the entity. We thought we had it, but it’s changed locations. This is our chance to kill it, Thatcher!” she explained, uncharacteristicallybloodthirsty. She had taken a vow of non-violence, and skirted those rules on a day-to-day basis just by being the engineer of a mercenary vessel. I had no doubt she did not intend to kill this thing personally, though, that’s why she was bringing me. Victory soared through my veins because she had turned to me for help. I was equally excited to finally kill the thing that had stalked my little engineer for months. It deserved a most painful death, if it could even feel pain.
The shipwide announcement prevented, or perhaps saved, me from answering. “Disconnecting airlock in three, two, one. Leaving Strewn. Strap in for the ride, brothers. We’re on the hunt now.” As always, Aramon’s announcement was colorful, but it worked. It got every male, including myself, eager for the next fight. It was smart, too, leaving Strewn now, because it would prevent the creature from escaping onto the massive space station.
We did not feel a thing as the ship moved, courtesy of our pilot’s excellent flying skills. “If you’d look to starboard,” Aramon continued, “you’ll see our companion for this ride, theVagabond, cruising along. We’ll be coordinating our FTL jumps with them. Over and out.” Of course, that transmission ended because we could all hear Asmoded telling him to, with a good dose of amusement. I caught the tail end of a sentence that sounded suspiciously like: This isn’t a pleasure cruise, you dumbass.
I glanced at Ysa, but she had her head down over the map projected by her comm device. She did not appear to have noticed a thing. This was exactly why she needed a guard at all hours of the damn day, not just when there was an actual threat. She could get so lost in her work that she wasn’t aware of her surroundings. Her vow to do no violence also madeher a soft target, and I worried, especially with some of the less savory types we hired on a temporary basis. Like that Tarkan with the grabby wings a few months ago.
At least we were leaving Strewn, which meant no further interference from that useless engineering crew. They’d lost track of our targets somewhere on Rumcas, and I knew that was the work of the Shadow Unit soldier. He’d managed to make them vanish, despite their high-profile murder spree. Now they were takingmyadvice, and both theVarakartoomand theVagabondwere headed for the nearest Kertinal planet to Rumcas. As powerful a military force as the Rummicaron were, the Kertinal were better. I was willing to bet good money that this pair was testing their mettle on increasingly difficult targets. What better target than a Kertinal base?
“We’re almost there, Thatcher. Are you armed, or should we swing by an armory?” Ysa asked me. It made my thoughts spin away from the hunt and Ysa’s protection and toward the task at hand—the hunt for the threat under our own roof, the shadow that had stalked my sexy little engineer for months now. Armed? What a ridiculous question. I shot her a look, and her mouth twitched before breaking out into a full smile. I liked that, liked that she was not at odds with me and my presence, but working together with me. “Right, of course you are. You’re never unarmed, are you? Even when you sleep…” I thought I heard her mutter under her breath, Does he even sleep? But it was so soft it barely made a sound at all, and I decided that didn’t require an answer.
“Here, it’s here,” she said, and came to a stop in a hallway just like any other. We’d gone down a few decks and were far to the back of the ship—closer to the engines than the bridge was, but also not all that close. This lookedlike the least important place you could possibly pick. She indicated the black wall to my left, then pressed against one of the panels. It popped free, revealing a hatch she had to open manually, which she did with a quick turn of one of the tools dangling from the belt at her waist.
I watched, entranced, because she was so pretty and so confident as she did all that. I couldn’t explain it, but there was something extremely appealing about watching a small, dainty little woman handle a big wrench like that with such confidence. My brain wanted to conjure up all kinds of other phallic-shaped objects I’d like her to handle instead. Her body was lithe, her braid giving me all kinds of thoughts. But even painfully aroused and distracted, I was not so stupid as to let her crawl into the narrow passage she’d revealed first.
I halted her with a hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her back and pinning her with a stare. Stay, wait here, I silently conveyed, and she raised an eyebrow like she was telling me hell no. I pulled the laser pistol from the holster at my thigh and a knife from the sheath on my belt. It was tempting to give her the blade for protection, but she wouldn’t take it because of her vows.
The passage was extremely narrow and dark, but my eyes quickly adjusted. “What is this place?” I asked as I crawled, my senses on high alert for any sign of danger. “And how deep do we have to go?” I could neither hear nor see any sign of the threat, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It would try to trick us, cause a blackout, possibly worse, and I needed to be prepared for that. If only Ysa would have done as I wanted and waited in the hallway. If only that meant she’d be safe, but I didn’t really believe that.
“Just a maintenance shaft for the water recycling plant and the life support systems for the cargo bay,” Ysa responded. I could not see it, but I knew just from the sound of the air moving with her hands that she’d pointed. To my left, I thought, which was indeed in the direction of the biggest of our cargo bay areas. They could each be separately controlled to their own temperature, depending on what supplies we carried, and as far as I knew it was not a system that had been on the fritz. I’d know, because I’d been with Ysa pretty much every day since this started.
“The scans indicate it’s still there; it has not moved. About thirty feet ahead. This space should widen into a junction around then.” A junction. Good. That should give me more space to fight. What would I do if I could end this thing right now? I’d no longer have an excuse to haunt the hallways in Ysa’s wake, and I didn’t think I could handle that. The truth was, I wanted to do that even if she wasn’t in danger.
A soft whisper of a noise reached my ears then. It wasn’t much—not breathing, not movement—but a sound all the same. My senses went on high alert; we’d found it.
The junction Ysa had mentioned was not nearly as big as I’d hoped for. Just a spot where two narrower passages met in a square, boxy area. Bundles of cable ran through two of them, thick, black, and pulsing with energy. A few panels appeared to be access points, computers, but that was far above my pay grade. What wasn’t was the black tendrils clinging to the hub of cables. It was like a fat spider sitting in a web: its round belly pulsing, its many legs spread wide.
There were no eyes, not so much as a face, but it felt like it was looking right at me anyway. The feeling that washed over me in its presence was hard to describe, almost fanciful. It felt like I was in the presence of true evil. Coming from a person who’d seen some of the most evil things in the history of the UAR, and received orders from men corrupted to the core, that was saying something. I knew evil, and this felt worse. Like that soulless, faceless thing wanted to devour me just for the sake of it, and it wouldn’t stop at me. No, it wanted to devour the whole crew, the ship, and the galaxy next.
I did not hesitate, firing my weapon and scoring a direct hit deep in that fat, pulsing belly. My reflexes were fast, and that was all that saved Ysa from the corrosive liquid that exploded. She had already been shielded by much of my body in the narrow passage, but I spread myself wide to prevent the spray from splashing over my shoulder and striking her in the face. My armor absorbed much of it at first, but whatever corrosive liquid it was, it began burning through far more rapidly than it had damaged my hand last time. It had learned, and it had made its defensive system more deadly.
With a snarl, I lunged forward, firing again now that the sack of liquid was empty. And again. And again. The air filled with fumes and writhing black tentacles, as deadly as the acid it had sprayed. I ignored the pain as it ate through my armor and into my flesh. I fought each of these writhing arms, cutting, slicing, burning with laser fire. I was winning, which was almost a surprise, given the tight quarters and the shocking size of the thing. Perhaps we were lucky that the Sineater had forced it to retreat from the first location it had been hiding in. Perhaps that meant it was weakened, unprepared. Whatever the reason, I found myself slicing it to ribbons after that first nasty surprise.
It made no sound as it fought, which was eerie, and the darkness in the junction and passages made it incredibly hard to see. It was driving me back with each attack, even as it cost it greatly. It knew I would not leave that passage and expose Ysa behind me. That was my vulnerability, and it was trying to exploit it, and failing. When a lunge nearly made it past my head, it sizzled as it slammed into a force field. Clever Ysa had erected it right behind me, shielding herself and trusting me to win this fight. I did not look, though, because I could not let down my guard; the foe was too dangerous, even wounded.
With that avenue closed, the creature finally began to retreat—blackness turning down one tunnel to slide across a cable. It was fast, but I was a faster shot, my pistol firing and burning the sneaky tendril to a crisp. It fizzled, hissed, and smoke began to fill the junction, whisked away almost instantly by some kind of automated fire suppression system.
