His left arm hung heavy at his side, the shoulder throbbing. Blood still ran down the right side of his face and the grind when he breathed too deep warned him that he had at least two cracked ribs. His hands were slick and red, some of it his, most of it not.
Amelia stood two meters away, fire suppressor still clutched in both hands, knuckles white on the cylinder. She was shaking and wild-eyed as she looked around for her next target. Her chest heaved and her bare feet were splattered with foam and blood.
The breath punched out of him. She was alive.
There were three pirates on the deck and two more in the corridor behind Amelia, visible through the doorway, both of them with the kind of wounds that came from claws, not blades.
Barnaby had taken down three of them. On his own.
"What," Thyaar said roughly, "is wrong with your cat?"
Amelia laughed. It was high and cracked with the edge of hysteria, and she couldn't seem to stop, the sound hitching out of her as she finally lowered the suppressor.
"I have no idea," she managed between gasps. "Emily found him in an alley. He’s just a cat."
Barnaby looked up at both of them, slow-blinked smugly, and went back to washing himself.
Thyaar stared at the animal.
"The Emperor," Thyaar said, "is never going to believe any of this."
Then his knees buckled.
He caught himself on the navigator's console before he went down, his good hand slamming into the cracked display, and held on while his vision grayed at the edges.
Draanth. He'd pushed too hard, run too long on nothing, and his body was done waiting for permission to fall apart.
"Thyaar—"
Amelia was there in a heartbeat, her hands on his good arm as she propped him up. Her face was tight with concern.
"I'm fine," he lied, reaching up to push her hair away from her beautiful face.
She batted his hand away, frowning as she used surprisingly gentle fingers to push his head to the side and look at the wound in his hair.
"Shut up. You're bloody well bleeding, and you about passed out. What part of that is ‘fine’, you idiot?"
9
“I noticed.” He tried to straighten up, and his face went gray. Actually gray, like old concrete, the blood across the side of his face almost comical in contrast.
“Oh, sit down before you fall down,” Amelia ordered, looking around. Fancy ship like this, there had to be a first aid kit around here somewhere.
He ignored her, trying to stand on his own and reach for the console at the same time. “No, I need to bring the weapons back online. The other ships?—”
“Can wait thirty seconds while you stop bleeding everywhere.”
She got her shoulder under his arm and half-walked, half-dragged him over to the co-pilot’s chair. He was heavy. Sheesh, what did the Imperial Bodyguard group… whatever it was called, feed these guys on?
“I can walk.”
“You can barely stand. So shut up and let me help you, okay?”
He shut up. He actually shut up. That scared her more than the blood.
She got him into the chair, and he sat with a thump that rattled it in its mooring. His head dropped back against the headrest, his eyes closing, and for one horrible moment she thought he’d passed out… or worse. Then he winced and opened his eyes, and she could breathe again.
She looked around. The bridge was an utter disaster. Half the panels were dark or flickering randomly, the deck was slick with foam and blood, and there were bodies. Like… actual bodies. She didn’t want to think about the bodies. Not right now.
