“I think the entity managed to pull down all the bulkheads across the ship. Everyone is trapped wherever they were when it happened. That means no backup is coming, Thatch.” She pulled out her datapad and hunkered down on the ground so she could cradle it in her lap. Her mouth pursed as her hands flew over the touchscreen, doing all kinds of technical things that went far beyond my understanding. I saw schematics of the ship, but far more often there were diagrams with data or lines of code. It looked like the kind of shit Mitnick liked to stare at in his free time, like it was fun.
“Yup,” Ysa said. “It managed to trap everyone before it went into that soldier’s body.” She lifted her head and cockedit to the side, her elfin ears twitching even more. “Do you hear that?” she said. “The engine’s tone has shifted. I think we’re speeding up.” She swore. “I need to get control of our helm, and I need to see if I can reach Mitnick. If a manual override doesn’t work, he’s our best bet.”
I paced the cell in front of her. “Okay, what do you need? How can I help?” The cell next to us was suspiciously quiet, and I was beginning to think that was because the entity hadn’t gone into the soldier at all. It had just tricked us into thinking so. I hated that Ysa was the one who had to solve this puzzle, and I knew the entity knew it too. The longer we sat here, trapped, the more I feared it would do something to try to kill us.
“We need to restore comms, but I need to access that panel over there to do it,” Ysa said. She pointed, and of course it was a panel directly across from us,outsidethe force field that trapped us. “I’ll need to disable the shield first,” she muttered, and got up, pulling out the multi-tool dangling from her belt. She glanced once at the box of tools I’d left at the entrance to the brig, but she did not comment on my failure to bring them.
I contemplated whether I should tell her I might be able to get through the force field even when it was up. In the end, I held my tongue, simply because I didn’t want to leave her alone, unprotected in this cell—especially with the entity on the other side of the hole in the wall. She seemed focused on a panel in the cell, so perhaps she knew of a way to deactivate it from here. It was probably tamper-proof, but that wouldn’t stop her.
I crouched next to her where she worked, the laser rifle cradled in my lap and my back to the wall.Her long braid kept tempting me to reach out, tug on the end decorated with black wooden beads. At the very tip, her hair was a very light blue, but it grew much darker at the roots. I was fascinated by how long her hair grew, and how she kept that braid neatly out of her way by looping it around her slender waist. It was a very typical thing to do for a Ulinial. Since she was the only one I’d met of her kind, I didn’t know if it was her braid in particular that turned me on, or if blue braids around slender waists did it, whoever they belonged to. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, because Ysa was the only one I wanted.
“Damn it,” she swore as something fizzled and fried inside the panel. A small waft of noxious odor filled the air but quickly dissipated—the scent of wire coatings and burning metal. “I know you hate it, Thatch, but talk to me, please. I need a distraction to calm my nerves.” She gave me a look with her huge blue eyes; they glittered like sapphires and barely masked her panic.
I hated talking about anything, but most of all I hated making small talk. My brain just didn’t know what to say, going blank as soon as I was expected to be social. For her, though, I’d bare my fucking soul if it helped. My tongue felt thick, stuck to the roof of my mouth, all moisture gone until I roughly swallowed. When I started talking, it became easier with each word. It was the strangest discovery in the heat of a crisis to realize talking to Ysa was easy, natural. And she did not judge me for my past.
“I had a sister,” I said. That was the hardest admission; everything that followed was a piece of cake. I had loved my big sister so much that it had torn me to pieces when she was killed. “She was ten years older, and she raised me from thetime I was little. Our parents died in a factory accident, and then she did too, when I was sixteen.” I had not been old enough to sign up for the military when that happened, but a few fake papers later, and a recruitment officer who cared only about filing his quota, and off to basic training I went.
“I joined the military, thinking I’d do good, back when I still knew what that was, believed in it. Then I fought year after year on one desolate world after another.” My mind flashed with images of the rebellions we were ordered to squash, and the deaths I’d caused. Sometimes, I woke up at night and remembered what it had felt like to follow those orders: a slow tainting of my soul until I had none. It was easy to pull the trigger now, but it hadn’t been at first.
Ysa didn’t say a word, just kept working on the panel and disabling the force field. She was growing a deeper furrow between her brows, so it probably wasn’t going her way yet. I shifted a little closer, made sure everything was still safe, and then reached out to grab hold of the tip of her braid. My fingers ran over the wooden beads, and they clicked together in a pleasing manner. Her hair was so soft; it soothed a bit of the rawness inside me. I might be a dark, morally tainted mess inside, but I still knew what was worth protecting: her.
“I was recruited for the Shadow Unit after I was mortally wounded, after ten years of service,” I said next. Recruited was a loose term for it; I’d simply woken up altered, drafted into the unit without much of a choice. At that point, being stronger, faster, and healing better seemed like a great idea, and I had been so numb inside I didn’t care about anything but survival. I did as ordered, killed whoever they wanted me to kill, and either drank or fucked until I found oblivionin my downtime.
Ysa made a little growling noise, which I thought was purely to express her frustration with the force field. Except she put her multi-tool down with a clang, then turned to look at me. “From what I heard of the UAR, I’m willing to bet you had very little choice in any of it. I’m glad you’re here with me now, Thatcher.” She reached out to pat my knee, her expression filled with empathy. The kind of empathy they’d burned right out of me during my years as a soldier and assassin.
“I don’t know much, Ysa,” I said in response, and I tugged a little on her braid. “But I do know this: you are my light, my compass. Ysathea, you hold my heart, what little is left of it.” Her smile was a little sad, like she didn’t believe me. The moment had gotten heavy far too quickly; this was exactly why I didn’t do the whole talking thing.
Yanking her close, I pulled her between my thighs and crushed my mouth to hers. She yelped, and I swept my tongue into her mouth, tasting her sweetness, her warmth. Her moan followed, and I drank it in, soaked it up. I had tried and failed to stay away, and now I’d never let her go. I still couldn’t believe that Ysa didn’t want to get away. She was mine. Her rear pressed against my groin, soft and warm, and my cock was eager for another taste of her heat. To sink into her core, where I belonged.
I rose with her in my arms, her curves pressed to each inch of my hardness—my cock, my armor—and the laser rifle trapped between our bellies. “I’ll fix this, Ysa,” I said. Then I put her on her feet, turned toward the force field, and strode through it.
Chapter 22
Ysathea
When Thatcher declared his love for me, it was both poetic, beautiful, and sad—because he said it like it weren’t good enough. As if it were a tattered thing all smudged and dirty, barely worthy of being seen, heard, or felt. It wasn’t though, it was a gift so priceless, I didn’t know how to cherish it enough. I wanted to wrap him in my arms, my braid, my own love, and declare over and over that he was exactly what I needed. On a ship of dangerous mercenaries, he was the one that had seen me, and seen the danger I was in. He was the one who kept me safe.
I was still reeling from what he’d revealed, how bravely he’d bared his soul to me, when all I’d asked for was a little distraction. The truth was, I’d already made peace with the fact that Thatcher would probably never truly let me in, andthen he did it anyway. Not easily, with a voice as gruff and harsh as gravel, and his pain so badly masked it was no wonder he hated talking. I was honored.
Then he walked away. I knew it was because he’d gotten overwhelmed and needed to protect himself, deflecting toward the passion so easily ignited between us, then toward literal distance and space. I gaped after him, shocked, confused, and a whole lot hot and bothered. The last was most inappropriate, considering the crisis we were currently smack in the middle of. “You can walk through a blazing force field?” I demanded after him, staring at his broad back and wondering if I’d somehow done something to the shield or if I was hallucinating.
He turned his head, and a hunk of black hair fell over his shoulder, partially shielding his face. I saw the smirk that curled the corner of his mouth, though, saw the twinkle in his eye. He was amused? Now? Of course he was, after pulling a stunt like that. I was pretty sure not even the Sineater or his symbiont could walk through a force field as easily as Thatcher had.
“I can generate a field with my nanobots that seems to briefly counteract a force field,” he said. Then he shrugged like it was no big deal. His big hand slapped against the panel thatshoulddisable the force field blocking my cell, but it didn’t respond. Clearly, the entity hadn’t just activated it; it had prevented me from tampering with it in any way. I cast an uneasy look through the hole into the other cell but saw no sign of either the entity or the Shadow Unit soldier supposedly trapped in there.
“Can you tell me what to do from there?” he asked. When I’d been distracted with the entity possibly still on theother side of the wall, he’d fetched my toolbox and taken up a position by the panel I’d indicated I needed. I nodded, quickly explaining to him how to open it. “I see the cables,” he said after a short moment.
I walked him through how to hook up his comm to it so he could amplify the signal and perhaps get through to the others. As he worked, he kept a very careful eye on the cell next to the one I was trapped in. “Turnabout is fair play,” he said. “Tell me how you ended up on a mercenary vessel when you’re a pacifist, Ysa. I can work and listen, too.”
I swallowed roughly, surprised by the request. Then I rose to my feet, multi-tool clutched in my hand like it was a good luck charm. I didn’t like remembering the past anymore than he did, but I liked to think I had processed it a little better. I’d had years to absorb the trauma, and friends to share it with, other Ulinial who had gone through the same. My eyes stared at the tool in my hand, and not for the first time, I wondered why some things were unfixable.
“There’s something else I want to say first, Thatch,” I said. If he could do it, then I could too. Thatcher shrugged, but I knew he was listening intently. His big hands moved capably as he worked through the process I’d outlined for him, splicing cables and connecting them to his comm. He cocked his head my way when I didn’t immediately say it, like he was urging me to keep talking without words.
“I love you, Thatcher,” I said. “You’re annoying, overbearing, and you’re exactly what I need. I love you because you’re flawed but so protective, and I need that. I love how you make me feel safe.” Once I told him my past, he would understand how well the two ofus fit together. Like broken halves of the same whole. Our scars complemented one another.
He snorted; that was his response, like he didn’t believe me. I was going to ignore it, because I was determined to have plenty of time after this was over to convince him otherwise. I had to have hope like that; I refused to give up. Thatcher had struck that entity a good blow; it wasstillquiet, even if ithadsprung a pretty big trap on us and was now flying theVarakartoomto stars-knew-where.
I paced in front of the force field as I began telling my story, as promised. “Ulinial live on colony ships. Our world was destroyed by the wars Baltaz and Ultaz caused, and the survivors fled into space and swore never to commit violence again.” I didn’t go into depth about the mythical twin brothers who, according to our history, had torn our world asunder with their fury and greed. It was, at this point, not even certain if we everhada world or if these brothers existed; it was enough that most of my people believed it.
