Tristan hesitated before heading into the corridor.
“What is it?” Nalini didn’t see any obvious danger, not yet.
“I would have felt better if it had been locked and we’d had to force our way in. This feels too easy.”
Since they’d already been ensnared, Nalini didn’t know if she expected further booby traps, but she agreed it was unlikely their captors would assume they would stay quietly in the yacht and not make escape attempts.
“Maybe because this leads to the latrine and nowhere important.” She waved, wanting to keep exploring, especially since it might take forever to find what they needed on the great ship.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Tristan said, “though if the crew is all robotic, a latrine seems an unlikely amenity.”
“A lubing station?”
Tristan snorted, then strode forward. She followed, and they soon reached a bank of massive cargo elevators. They appeared to be powered down—the control panels were dark. The slide-up doors did not open when Tristan waved his pertundo at them.
“We’ll come back if this is a dead end.” Tristan nodded and continued down the corridor.
They reached another big metal door, this one also rising at their approach. An open chamber dozens of meters wide and twice as long stretched ahead of them, the high ceiling barely distinguishable from the dark shadows above. At the far end, a bank of computers hummed, a few displays activating to show data related to smelting and breaking down ore.
A row of large robots on treads sat against a side wall, defender models, unless Nalini missed her guess, with cannon-like arms down at their sides. There were also hover drones in racks on the wall, each one almost as big as a man. They reminded her of qidi—shark-jellyfish creatures native to Oceanus’s deep seas. They had pointed noses, an airplane-shaped body, and long tentacles for grasping and sorting ore. Right now, all of the robots appeared to be dormant.
“I suppose those will all activate and start shooting at us if we try to walk up to the control station.” Nalini waved at the cannon-arm robots rather than the drones, the latter looking like they were for mining work rather than defense.
“That’s a possibility.” Tristan pointed toward the shadows in the back, at some kind of rack hanging from the ceiling. “Can you make that out?”
Nalini shook her head. The mixture of light from the computer displays and deep shadows in the rest of the chamber vexed the night vision in her helmet display. “Just that there are vertical bars. Maybe it’s a cage full of more drones or robots.”
Tristan leaned out of the corridor without setting foot in the chamber and peered above and to the sides of the doorway. Searching for more traps?
“No other exits that I can see.” He gazed back at her, his eyes thoughtful behind his faceplate. “I can walk out, see if that activates the security robots, and if so, try to lead them on a chase back to that big bay. Ideally, I can run around and keep them busy while you see if you can find controls for the forcefield.” He nodded toward the computer station.
Nalini grimaced at all the robots—there were eight of the big ones on treads—and imagined them firing cannons at Tristan en masse. “Are you sure you want to play the role of hay bale on the practice range?”
“If it buys you time, yes. And if Jenna sees me, she might be able to fire some of your yacht’s weapons at them to help.”
“I wish we could communicate with her without going all the way back.” Nalini waved at her chip, which was useless, other than as an off-line personal computer, until they regained network connectivity.
“I’ll run past the yacht’s forward camera so she can’t miss me.”
“Take your shirt off too.”
Tristan blinked. “What?”
“You’ll be more likely to attract her attention that way.”
“Ah.” Tristan prodded the one-piece galaxy suit. “Since the shirt is attached to the pants, I’d have to take everything off.”
“You say this as if it’s a problem.” Nalini smiled and touched his shoulder. She had reservations about this plan, and wondered if they should go back and try to force open the elevator doors to climb to upper levels, but that bank of computers over there did look like the control center for the entire ship. It might be exactly what they needed. “I’m ready, but be careful. I’ll hope we get lucky and those are decorative security robots.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what they were purchased for. Decoration.”
Tristan smiled and bowed deeply to her, like the knight he had tried to become, and turned and walked into the chamber.
Had he truly only tried to become a knight? The mantle of hero was such a good fit for him. It was hard for her to believe he’d lied his way into the knighthood—or been kicked out. From everything she’d seen so far, he seemed like a real knight, willing to risk his life—and keep risking his life—to protect her. She couldn’t believe her father was paying him so much that the money was a big motivator. He struck her as someone who would protect a woman simply because he’d been conditioned to do so. Or born to do so.
As Tristan drew even with the quiescent robot defenders, Nalini gripped her stunner and readied herself to do her part. The weapon would be useless on mechanical constructs, but she felt better with it in her hand.
Tristan kept glancing toward the dormant robots, but he also looked all around the chamber, watching for danger from any direction. That was good, because the threat came from the ceiling shadows, behind those hanging bars they’d noticed.
A flock of drones streaked straight toward him from that back corner. They were identical to the tentacled shark robots in the rack, but these were very much activated. An ominous buzz filled the chamber as they swooped down.
Tristan sprang to meet the first one, stabbing with his pertundo. The long point above the axe head pierced the body of the drone, but others swarmed him, mechanical tentacles beating against him with startling power. One aerial attacker flew low and tried to wrap one of those tentacles around his waist. Tristan sprang to the side and slammed the blade of his weapon down. It cleaved the appendage in half, and something like lightning streaked up the severed tentacle and crackled around the drone’s body. Was that from his weapon?
More and more drones swooped down from the ceiling. Fifteen? Twenty? They descended on Tristan with rabid ferocity, like mythological creatures sent by the gods to derail the hero’s quest.
“The computer,” Tristan barked from within the swirling mass.
Nalini flinched, unrooting her boots from the deck. He couldn’t run and lead them away while she stood in the only exit to the chamber.
She hurried along the wall, hoping to avoid the notice of the mechanical creatures. Tristan started backing toward the corridor, but two swooped in and tried to wrap tentacles around his waist again. He was fast enough to slash through one of the limbs, but the second one caught him from behind.
He twisted, trying to cut through it, but more tentacles grabbed him, one curling around his wrist and keeping him from swinging his pertundo effectively. With their combined might, the drones lifted him from the deck.
Nalini had been halfway along the wall to the control panel, but she lurched toward him now, terrified that they would carry him away and drop him in a vat of molten ore. She yelled a battle cry and raced toward the cluster, waving her arms, hoping to distract them enough for him to break free.
But there were too many. Even though several lay in pieces underneath Tristan, their bodies cleaved in half by his blade, there were enough to continue carrying him upward. Several others veered toward her.
Nalini fired the stunner at the lead drone, but as she’d feared, its metal carapace deflected the blast. Wishing she had a pertundo—or even a club—she dove to the side, barely evading its grasping tentacles. She rolled across the unforgiving metal deck, but she wasn’t quick enough to avoid the fast-flying mechanical monsters. A tentacle wrapped around her ankle, and she was hoisted upside-down into the a
ir. She fired again, uselessly, and swatted and punched, but even when she landed a blow with a fist, it did nothing to stop her attackers.
They carried her higher and higher above the deck. They didn’t swoop toward the corridor and those vats of molten ore as she’d imagined, but up toward the shadowy ceiling in back. As they flew closer to the corner, she glimpsed their destination between the metal bodies.
What she’d thought was a rack turned out to be a cage dangling on a thick chain hanging from the ceiling. There were vertical bars on the sides, a solid floor, and a solid ceiling. Like a giant birdcage.
As the group of drones carrying Tristan approached it, a beep came from the control console, and part of the roof to the cage opened. He struggled, and a crunch sounded as another drone fell to his halberd, plummeting to the deck, pieces flying as it struck.
Nalini loved how he fought, but it only made the drones more determined. Four more flew off the rack on the wall below, arrowing toward him and slamming into him. The galaxy suit had to be protecting him somewhat, but it wasn’t in the same league as combat armor, and she wasn’t surprised when he cried out in pain for the first time. They’d struck hard enough to break ribs. One of the drones smashed his arm against the roof of the cage, bending his wrist against the joint, and he gasped and let go of the pertundo.
Tristan fought less after that—was he losing consciousness?—and they succeeded in forcing him into the cage.
Nalini groaned, slumping in her captors’ grips and giving up her own struggle. There was no point. She couldn’t hurt them, and they could hurt her. Being injured wouldn’t help their chances of getting out of here.
They shoved her through the opening in the cage and released her. As she fell, she tried to fling herself to the side so she wouldn’t land on Tristan, but there wasn’t enough time. She came down hard on his torso, and he groaned weakly.
Another beep came from the computer console, and the roof door slammed shut, a click sounding as a lock activated.
Nalini rolled off Tristan and collapsed on her back. She still had her stunner, but what did it matter? There was no way out of the cage.
10
Tristan woke up on his back, his ribs sending stabbing pain through him with each breath and the side of his head throbbing in time with it. Even worse was the pain from knowing he’d failed in his duty. He’d failed Nalini.
He hadn’t come close to doing as he’d said he would, leading those drones away. What an idiot. That trap had been so obvious, but in his arrogance, he’d thought he could handle all those robots.
Something warm touched his cheek, running gently down the side of his face to his jaw.
He experienced a moment of confusion, because he’d been wearing his helmet when he lost consciousness. He opened his eyes and picked Nalini out of the shadows above him. She sat cross-legged, cradling his head in her lap and stroking his face. She had also removed her helmet, and her ponytail hung free over her shoulder. Under other circumstances, he would have found their closeness and her touch delightful—he felt the urge to reach up and touch her thick hair. Even now, he admitted that there were worse ways he could have woken up.
Her fingers stilled when she saw that his eyes were open.
“Sorry. I was afraid you had a concussion, so I retracted your helmet to check.” Nalini’s mouth twisted ruefully and she pulled her hand away. “Not that I have a first-aid kit and could have done anything to help. My emergency pack is on the deck over there. And yours is even farther away—it looks like those drones ripped the straps right off.”
“My pertundo?” His voice was raspy—one of the tentacles had been wrapped around his neck at one point, and his throat ached. Everything ached.
A part of him wanted to be strong and take charge of the situation in a manly way; a part of him wanted to close his eyes and make encouraging sounds in the hope that Nalini would go back to stroking his face.
“It’s on the deck directly below us. About ten feet down.”
So close but too far for them to reach. The gaps between the bars of the cage were too narrow for them to fit anything larger than their arms through.
Tristan closed his eyes so they wouldn’t broadcast the defeat he felt. Sebastian’s face came to mind, the memory of a training session where Tristan had dropped his blade and Sebastian had told him that a knight never ever lets go of his weapon. His mentor had rarely lost his temper. That had been one of the few times. It was a lesson Tristan had thought he’d learned well, and yet, his blade was out of reach below.
“How did I get a concussion?” He reached up to probe a lump on the side of his head. “My helmet should have protected me.”
“Your helmet looks worse than your head. It’s only partially retracted into its niche, because it’s too dented to fold nicely away.”
“Ah.” He closed his eyes again. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that your pilot will show up to rescue us, and that it’ll work?”
“Probably not.” Nalini let her hand rest on his chest, well above what he was sure were broken ribs. “You never did take off your shirt and run past the forward camera. That might have gotten her more invested in your welfare.”
“I was going to try, but the drones wouldn’t let me get away.”
“That was rude of them. Denying my pilot a look at a beautiful male chest.”
Tristan opened his eyes and looked up into her smile. She was clearly joking to try to make him feel better, but he wondered if she did find his chest appealing. She, unlike the pilot, had seen it before. Albeit from a distance when he’d been in that arena. It was nice that she was sitting here, holding his head and touching him. Did it mean anything? Or was she, underneath the determined businesswoman persona, simply an empathetic person?
Either way, he liked it. He knew he shouldn’t, because this was Prince Jorg’s future wife, but he couldn’t help it. He could have woken up with his face mashed against a bar as she paced on the other side of their cage. This was far superior.
Tristan should have rolled away from her, but instead, he brought a hand up to rest atop hers. “Could you do me a favor?”
“Go back to caressing your face?”
“Call it a handsome chest instead of a beautiful one. Beautiful isn’t a manly word.”
“If you say so. I think it nicely conveys an aesthetically appealing quality. It’s like the Duat Library on Oceanus, functional as well as elegant.”
“Did you just compare my chest to a building?”
“A beautiful building, yes. You should feel honored.”
“Very well. I shall.” Tristan needed to get up, to prowl around the cage and test all the bars, to figure out how to escape, but his aching body wanted to remain right where it was.
Nalini brushed her fingertips along his jaw. Even through the pain, that aroused a pleasurable tingle.
“That’s very nice,” he murmured.
“I want to apologize to you, Tristan.”
“Why?”
“I knew this whole setup was fishy back at the palace, before we flew out of the ship bay. I should have refused to let Jenna take off, and I definitely should have kicked those hoodlums off my yacht. But I was worried about missing my asteroid being delivered and the official start of my big project. I’ve worked so hard on it for the last year and couldn’t imagine not being there for the drop. I made a poor choice, and now, you’re injured and we’re in a birdcage without food or water or any way out.”
“It’s understandable to be passionate about your work.” Wasn’t he here, deceiving her, because he wanted nothing more than to be a knight for the rest of his working life? “I have no trouble understanding taking risks to achieve dreams.”
“What about when your risks get other people hurt?”
“Don’t worry about me, Your Highness. My job is to get hurt on your behalf, remember?”
“Call me Nalini, please.” She brushed her fingers down his jaw again.
“I don’t think I sh
ould. I appreciate this very much…” He released the hand on his chest to wave at her lap—at her. “But your future husband wouldn’t approve.”
Her lips twisted. “I haven’t even met my future husband yet. I’m disinclined to worry about his approval.”
“I…” He kept himself from saying that he had no choice but to worry about Jorg’s approval, since he couldn’t do that without blowing his cover. “I can’t come between you.”
Her fingers paused, falling away from his face, and the disappointment in her dark eyes made him realize that she likely had been flirting with him.
“I do hope he appreciates you,” Tristan said softly, though his heart ached because he feared Jorg wouldn’t. “I didn’t expect that a princess would have a job and do work, you know. I assumed… Well, I don’t know why I assumed that. Some of the nobility on Odin work. They oversee their estates, putting varying degrees of effort into running their family businesses. But a lot of them are useless and just burn through their parents’ money. It’s been my experience that more of them do nothing than something.”
“Most of my brothers and sisters fall into the burning-through-the-family-money category. My father has several wives, and I have so many siblings that I learned early on that I wouldn’t get any attention from him unless I stood out. He’s so business-minded and loves working on expanding his empire and making money for the family. I wasn’t interested in mining, but when I was young, I loved building things with blocks. And reading. I read everything I could find, fiction and non-fiction.”
Tristan held back a grimace at the mention of reading, something he could never enjoy with her. Not that he was supposed to be enjoying things with her. He had to rescue her from this situation so Jorg could enjoy being with her. A depressing thought.
“Early on, I found books about real estate and loved the idea of building something out of nothing and also of making money being useful, by giving people a nice place to live. It seemed, I don’t know, more noble than simply making money trading stocks on the exchange and not creating any value in the universe. My father likes creating value, too, mining the ore that’s used to build all manner of useful things. He supplied all the materials for my first development project.”
Knight Protector: a Star Kingdom novel Page 10