by Layla Nash
He was just relaxing enough to enjoy the warmth of the rejuvenator when the sick bay door opened and Faros strode in. Wyzak bit back a groan and a curse and instead waited for the captain’s latest plot.
Faros didn’t disappoint. “You done yet? We need to review the information we took off the bounty hunters’ ship.”
“Thought you wanted me to rest?”
“You felt well enough to box with Nokx. Now you’re not well enough to sit on your ass and look at information on a screen?”
Wyzak pushed up on his elbows to scowl at the captain. In reality, he wanted to wander by Gemma’s quarters to see if another hint of her scent or a long look at her would clear his thoughts. He needed to focus on the issue at hand: what was the Sraibur’s next mission, and how quickly could they get after it before the Tyboli tried to kidnap him again? “Boxing with Nokx may have decreased my overall well-being.”
Faros snorted. “And you’re in a reju pod, so you should feel even better than before. Hike up your big boy pants and get back to work.”
Wyzak growled as he let his head rest on the mattress once more. “I’ll meet you on the bridge as soon as this is finished.”
The captain grinned and slapped Tvox on the shoulder on his way out into the hall. The medical officer shook his head as he went back to preparing another rejuvenator. “You want a little ‘malfunction’ in the machine to buy you some time off?”
“How painful would it be?” Wyzak asked, more than a little tempted to fake an injury.
From Tvox’s grin, the pain probably wouldn’t have been worth the time off or the bullshit he’d catch from Faros. So when the reju pod completed its cycle, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. Wyzak made his way to the bridge, though he lingered longer than necessary at a cross-corridor that would have taken him back to where Gemma sat—waiting for news of her fate, maybe.
He didn’t expect Faros to pursue selling her off to other bounty hunters or some of the nefarious types who would have wanted vengeance, but he braced for the very worst as he approached the bridge. Violet’s presence had softened the pirate captain’s previously caustic and mercenary outlook, though there were still moments when Faros took a hard departure from where the rest of the crew thought he was going.
Wyzak found Faros in the captain’s chair on the bridge, frowning out at the empty expanse of space on the viewing screen, and eased into the navigator’s terminal next to where the other Xaravian sat. “Izyk went through the data from the ship already?”
Faros grunted and gestured at the screen; the comms officer, Izyk, loaded up the information taken from Gemma’s ship onto the viewers in front of them. It took a long moment for Wyzak to recognize the columns of numbers that cycled across the screen. The numbers almost looked like coordinates, and it was a while before he realized they were actually prices linked to specific bounties. He blinked. “Huh. That’s…interesting.”
“Interesting isn’t quite the word I’d use,” Faros muttered. “Fucking unbelievable is more like it. Twenty thousand credits for your ass, thirty thousand for me, and forty thousand for two or more other crewmembers. Over a hundred thousand for the whole crew, and a hundred thousand more for taking the ship in a mostly-functional condition.”
Wyzak didn’t quite know how to process the scale of the payments the Tyboli were willing to make to get back at the Sraibur crew. “And we’re sure this is Kryken and his backers wanting to even the score? Could it be the Fleet? Or the rebels?”
He didn’t like the idea of the usually cash-strapped rebellion wasting those kinds of resources tracking down some escaped criminals, but stranger things had happened when the Sraibur was involved.
Faros shook his head and pointed at a separate column of numbers. “There are unique identifiers for the person or organization providing the bounty. So far we haven’t cracked the code on these, but Izyk is working it. So we can’t say for certain who is offering those prices, other than to guess based on the Tyboli crew who tried to purchase you. I doubt very much the Alliance would waste time on us when they’ve got bigger marks like my brother to chase after, and the rebellion doesn’t have the credits to even pretend to pay out those numbers. It’s got to be the Tyboli.”
“Which means we’re fucked,” Wyzak said finally. “Because they’ll wait as long as it takes to get us.”
Faros grunted and leaned back in his chair. “So we either spend the rest of our lives running or we take the fight to them.”
“We can’t convince Kryken to just suspend his death sentence for us,” Wyzak said. He shook his head and folded his arms over his chest, still contemplating the massive numbers rolling by as Izyk played with the data. “You destroyed whatever chance there was of that when you broke the contract.”
“Technically I fulfilled the contract,” Faros said. He even managed to sound convincing. But he broke into a grin and shrugged like a little kid who’d been caught stealing his naming day presents early. “Not that the Tyboli are likely to agree. But maybe we can make it painful enough they reconsider evening the score with us.”
Wyzak had once considered Faros’s disregard for risk a valuable trait in a captain and a pirate, but he figured it was time to reevaluate. The Sraibur might have been better served by continuing out into ungoverned space and just guarding against possible bounty hunters in the future, instead of running headlong at the bastards who wanted them dead in the first place. “How the hell would we ever get enough leverage to make Kryken release the bounties?”
“We take something he cares about and hold it hostage.”
Like it was that simple. “He’s Tyboli. He doesn’t care about anything except his pride and his money, and you’ve put a dent in both.”
Faros grinned. “I know.”
“Maybe we should give him you, and the rest of us would be off the hook.” Wyzak’s head started to ache. Maybe the captain already had a plan and was just fucking with him for the entertainment value. Not that Faros needed much entertaining since he’d convinced Violet to mate with him.
The captain shot him a dark look. “Don’t even joke about mutiny, first mate.”
“Stop talking crazy, then,” Wyzak said. “We won’t be able to convince the Tyboli to rescind the bounty.”
Faros got up to pace as Wyzak watched. Neither of them turned as Violet appeared on the bridge. She looked as unruffled and unimpressed as ever, and deliberately took the captain’s chair while Faros kept up his pacing. He gave her a dirty look but she didn’t budge, and Wyzak counted it a sign of Faros’s personal growth that he didn’t insist that only the captain sat in the captain’s chair. Wyzak would have laughed at him if it wouldn’t have meant another round of boxing and fighting in the gym. And Faros wouldn’t go easy on him.
Violet watched her mate pace for a while, then glanced at Wyzak. “What’s got him all worked up?”
“The impossibility of surviving bounties that large,” he said, and gestured at the screen.
Her eyebrows rose as she surveyed the numbers. “Hell, for that kind of money, I’d consider turning you all in.”
They both gave her a dirty look, and Violet smiled a touch. She leaned back in the captain’s chair and waggled her eyebrows at her mate. “So what are you going to do about it, big guy?”
The captain’s gaze lit up as he stalked toward her, and Wyzak traded a look with Izyk. They needed to plan a quick escape if the pair got amorous. Violet kicked out her foot to brace against Faros’s abs, keeping him at leg’s length, as the captain got closer. Faros eyed her. “I proposed finding something that the Tyboli care for and holding it hostage, but those two disagreed.”
“That’s not a viable plan and you know it.” She smiled more as Faros caught her booted ankle and squeezed her calf. “You won’t change the Tybolis’ minds about getting even with you, pirate.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Wyzak asked loudly, hoping to distract them from whatever weird-ass flirtation had begun.
Faros wouldn’t be distracted, but Violet craned her neck to study the first mate. “Dissuade the other half of the contract. Just because the Tyboli offer a hefty price doesn’t mean that anyone can or should be available to take it.”
Wyzak sat up. “You mean...”
She used both legs to shove Faros away, though the captain wasn’t distracted for long and yanked her to her feet. Violet rolled her eyes and managed to keep talking as Faros slung her over his shoulder and stalked toward the door. “Figure out how to send a message to the bounty hunters out there—the price for coming after the Sraibur is too high. Forty thousand credits, a hundred thousand credits... Is that kind of payment worth their life? Who knows. But make it clear that their life is forfeit if they try and take you, and—would you just let me finish?—and maybe the Tyboli won’t find any takers for their bounties. By Newton’s spectacles, you are so damn impatient.”
She kept arguing with Faros as he slapped her ass and stalked off the bridge, and left Wyzak and Izyk frowning at each other in thought. Wyzak rubbed his chin and considered the massive bounties still flashing on the screen in front of them. Raise the price for coming after the Sraibur. It was an idea crazy enough that it might actually work. And luckily enough, they had someone on the ship who knew how bounty hunters thought.
Chapter 19
Gemma
Gemma didn’t sleep well, although she didn’t know whether to attribute that to the copious liquor or her changed circumstances. Being in any kind of a brig wasn’t generally restful, and she’d been in her share of jails. She wasn’t sure what time or date it was when she woke, feeling more disoriented than normal, and even a hot shower in the water closet didn’t make her feel more human.
She watched the water running down her metal fingers as she stood in the shower. It had taken forever to figure out how to wash her hair with the metal hand without ripping out great chunks. Half the time she couldn’t remember what it had been like to have two normal arms, and the other half... she couldn’t remember anything but. Even having the nerves solidly entangled with the metal pieces didn’t protect her from phantom pains from the limb that had been severed, so she ended up in pain with no way at all to relieve it.
She redressed in her old clothes, though she wished she had something with less blood and stunner exhaust on it, and started pacing the confines of her cell. She couldn’t just wait for the pirates to decide what to do with her. She needed a plan, like Violet had said: first for how to get off the ship alive, and then for what the hell she was going to do with the rest of her life.
Gemma studied the panel by the door where Violet had ordered food, and tapped at the screen in an effort to either unlock the door or find some breakfast. The first part of any good plan was always sustenance. Plotting on an empty stomach never went well, and escaping on an empty stomach went even worse.
She was in the middle of deciphering the Xarav words on the panel when the door zipped open. Gemma jumped, clenching her fists, and half the panel crumpled in her left hand. Her heart sank as she pried her fingers free of the twisted metal and attempted to place the mangled device back in its cradle. “Sorry.”
Wyzak, standing in the hall next to another Xaravian, didn’t blink. “Happens all the time. Do you require food?”
“Uh...” She glanced between them, suddenly uncertain. But since the panel wasn’t likely to give up its secrets while only marginally functional... “Yes. I require food.”
“Come.” He turned on his heel and started down the hall.
Gemma glanced at the other pirate, then steeled herself and dug deep for some courage when the stranger remained expressionless and unmoving. She strode after Wyzak like she owned the ship, and kept her shoulders back and her chin high. Faking confidence was one way to manufacture it, at least that she’d found. And she sure as hell didn’t want Wyzak to think she’d been thrown off by his kiss.
Even if that had been one of the reasons she hadn’t slept. Imagining it, reliving it, wondering whether he would try again... There was something about the tall Xaravian with the scars on his face that made her feel foolish and girlish and completely unbalanced. Maybe it all went back to the way he’d smiled at her in the bar, before the drugs kicked in and he realized she’d betrayed him.
Gemma had to stop herself from snorting at her own ridiculousness. It hadn’t been a betrayal. She couldn’t betray a stranger. It was just a job. Just business.
Or maybe it was just infatuation borne of stress and adrenaline and the extreme circumstances they’d found themselves in. Danger made people do all kinds of crazy things, as did grief. There had been both in spades since she’d followed Wyzak into Hashem’s Pub. That was all it was—Wyzak had kissed her and the adrenaline from the fight with the Tyboli reared up and made her lose her mind over it. She didn’t actually want him, regardless of what she’d felt and sensed in the pub and in the brig.
She just wished she believed it, which was harder still as she followed Wyzak into what looked like the officers’ dining room. Faros and Violet both waited inside, the table already piled with food, and Gemma hesitated in the doorway. Prisoners typically didn’t sit down to break bread with the captain and his mate, or whatever they were.
Wyzak frowned at her. “What’s wrong?”
Gemma ignored the Xaravian who stood behind her in the hall and didn’t budge from where she waited. “Trying to figure out what this is about.”
“A proposal,” Violet said. She tilted her head at the empty chair that Wyzak had pulled out. “And a meal. Come and sit down and we’ll explain.”
Gemma eyed all of them but decided to trust—just a bit—the “we” that Violet proposed earlier. So she edged into the room and around the wall to slide into the chair, tensing as Wyzak sat next to her and she found herself flanked by enormous Xaravian shoulders. The guy in the hall introduced himself as Harzt, the security officer, and promptly turned all of his attention to a pile of meat so spicy that it made Gemma’s eyes water from across the table.
The Xaravians started eating immediately, consuming great piles of meat and what could have been cabbage, while Gemma watched in disbelief and Violet picked at some kind of soufflé or quiche. Gemma hadn’t seen anything like the filled pastry since the last time she’d left Earth, before the accident that claimed her arm, and waited to see how Violet ate it before she ventured to take a taste herself.
It wasn’t long until the other Earther sat back in her chair and draped her arm across Faros’s shoulders as she studied Gemma. “We find ourselves with something of a problem, Gemma.”
She braced for the bad news. Maybe she’d misjudged and Violet was the truly dangerous one on the ship, with all the Xaravians acting as bluster and muscle. Gemma rested her hands on the edge of the table and waited. It would be just her luck if her one potential ally on the pirate ship turned out to be the biggest obstacle to her freedom.
Violet didn’t blink. “We looked through all the data on your ship about the bounties posted for the Sraibur and her crew, and the numbers are... impressive. And dangerous. Eventually someone will be ambitious and reckless enough to try again, and they might be successful.”
“We were successful,” Gemma said. She didn’t want to sound petty, but with Milo dead and their ship destroyed, she wanted at least a little bit of credit to show for the disasters that had gotten her where she was. “We got Wyzak and would have handed him over if there hadn’t been... extenuating circumstances.”
Wyzak snorted. “Extenuating circumstances? The Tyboli were never going to pay the bounty. It wouldn’t have mattered how successful you were; it wouldn’t have lasted.”
Violet ignored him and kept her attention on Gemma. “We certainly can’t go about our business being chased by bounty hunters and hounded across ungoverned space. So we need to ... resolve the situation. The Tyboli won’t rescind the bounties, at least not in a timely manner. Which leaves us with the option of convincing the bounty hunters that the bounties would cost too much
for what they pay out.”
Gemma’s eyebrows rose and she dropped her fork with a clang. “Are you nuts? Do you know how many credits they’ve offered?”
“That’s the problem,” Violet said, half her mouth quirking up in a smile. “It’s a lot of money. Enough to set someone up for life, if they do things right. And if it doesn’t get them killed.”
“So you want to go around killing bounty hunters preemptively?” Gemma asked. Her voice went flat with disapproval. There wasn’t honor among thieves, but bounty hunters tried to be a little considerate at least. She wasn’t going to set up others to be killed. Even if she never caught another bounty and didn’t get back into the business, she wasn’t going to purchase her freedom with another’s life.
“No,” Wyzak said. He paused in inhaling the pile of meat in front of him and fixed her with that eerie silver gaze, so intense it made her stomach clench. “We want your help to send a message: if a bounty hunter comes after the Sraibur, we will destroy them.”
Gemma looked between the four others, wondering if she were missing some vital piece of information. “Why do you need my help for that?”
“We wish to make an example of you,” Faros said finally. He arched a dark eyebrow and lifted his glass of that horrible liquor in salute. “Since we’ve already made an example of your ship and your partner, we just need to... stage things a bit, and publicize it so that the rest of the bounty hunter community realizes what will happen if they choose to target us.”
Her insides went cold and her heart cracked. They’d make an example of her ship and her partner? Use Milo’s death as a cautionary tale to save themselves some inconvenience? Like that was all his death was good for, and all that he would be remembered for—dying in some ill-considered venture to capture Xaravians and turn them over to the Tyboli? Gemma shoved her chair back. “I’m done here. I’m not helping you with shit.”