Page 58

Blythe didn’t. She looked at Stevie. Where the hell had Rann gone? The cockpit was barely big enough for him to sit down without knocking something over. There wasn’t anywhere in there big enough to conceal him.

The scarred man touched two fingers to his earpiece.

“Report.”

Static crackled. Then a voice came through, tinny and bored. “Forward bulkhead open. Galley open. Crew quarters open. Engineering open. All emergency seals disengaged.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

One of the men jerked his weapon toward the open ramp.

“Walk,” he ordered.

With no other options, they did as they were told, stepping over the blackened edge of the breach and past the cutter still fused to the hull. The boarding tunnel was a thick ribbed tube clamped against the ship’s side, its interior lit by strips of ugly white light. Every step made it flex beneath their feet.

The boarding party packed in behind them, keeping them moving in a tight, stumbling group, and she risked a glance back.

Engineering was beyond the tunnel mouth, her tools scattered across the deck. Her breath caught.

All the emergency seals had been disengaged. Which meant that if they detached the cutter tunnel⁠—

Shit. The ship would be open to space. The air would rip through every open corridor, dragging anything not bolted down with it.

Rann.

“B?” Stevie said quietly, but she was already moving. Throwing herself sideways into the nearest boarder, she drove her shoulder into his ribs hard enough to make him grunt. His rifle swung away, and she took the gap to run.

“Close the bulkheads!” she screamed, every bit of air in her lungs behind it. “Close the emergency seals!”

A hand caught the back of her coveralls, and she twisted, throwing her elbow back wildly. Her elbow cracked into a face, and somebody swore. Good.

Another man grabbed her arm, wrenching it behind her. Pain flashed white across her shoulder, but she stamped down on his foot and heard him howl.

“Close them!” she screamed again, fighting like a wildcat.

Then a fist slammed into her cheek, and the tunnel lurched sideways. She hit the floor on one knee, blood filling her mouth, and three men piled on her. One dragged her upright by her hair while another pinned both arms behind her.

“Stupid bitch,” the scarred man snarled. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

She grinned and spat blood at his boots.

“Must be someone else aboard, boss,” another one grunted. “Want me to go look?”

The scarred man shook his head. “Nah, they’ll be dead soon anyway. We got what we came for.”

She fought every step of the way as they hauled her through the rest of the tunnel and dragged her across the threshold into the other ship. The airlock sealed behind them with a heavy clang, the deck shuddering beneath her feet as the cutter tunnel began to retract.

“No,” she whispered, yanking herself away from her captors. Racing across the airlock, she plastered her face against the little window. Through it, she could see right the way through to their ship and the interior of the tunnel as it began to pull away. For a second, nothing happened, then the air started rushing out.

Loose wires whipped through the breach. A tool case shot across engineering hard enough to smash into the far bulkhead, spilling sockets and drivers in a glittering cloud. Papers tore free from the galley table. Bedding, clothing, bits of food, all of it dragged through the open corridors toward that ragged hole in the hull.

The ship had been old. Temperamental. A patched-together heap of bad decisions and low funds.

But it had been theirs.

She sagged sideways, her knees giving out beneath her. Stevie caught her around the shoulders before she hit the deck, holding on with surprising strength for someone so small.

“Keep your chin up, love,” Stevie murmured into her hair. “He knows what he’s doing. Like us, he’s a survivor.”