Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1
Page 78
“As long as they mean to,” Corajen replied again. The elder sibling was laying back on the hard bunk, examining her claws on one hand. They’d fallen into a predictable pattern over the long days stuck in this metal box: Saiphirelle would start bellyaching about their situation, and Corajen would placate her with meaningless platitudes. The younger sibling would stalk around their tiny cell and wear herself out and then crawl up on the top bunk and lay quiet for a while. Then she’d hop down and the cycle would repeat. Corajen felt it was a waste of time and energy but she knew her sibling; Saiphirelle would go absolutely insane trying to keep herself down and seated for any length of time and Corajen had no desire to come to blows with her sister when there were still plenty of real enemies to fight.
There was a bang from behind them as the main door to the brig opened. The brig aboard Grania Estelle was not huge; it was capable of holding six occupants in three cells. The cells themselves were secured by solid metal door with two small openings, an inch-wide opening six inches wide at regular eye level, and a feed slot that opened at the bottom so that a bowl or tray could be slid inside the cell. The rest of the door, and the walls, floor and ceiling, were solid metal, reinforced so that even the mightiest lupusan (or two) couldn’t tear through.
Corajen remained on her bunk, but Saiphirelle flew across the tiny cell, her face pressed to the door, eyes peering through the slot. “What is it?” the elder asked mildly, though in truth, she was craving information about the world outside this tiny room just as much.
“Guards,” the younger rasped, her hackles starting to rise. “And they’re dragging Tamara between them. She looks like hell.”
“What?” Corajen demanded, getting up. Elbowing her sister out of the way, she took a look through. Sure enough, there they were, two burly bastards wearing the same police-style body armor, each outfitted with a sidearm and between then was the limp form of the battered Tamara Samair. Corajen’s sensitive nose detected the tang of Tamara’s blood and she could see that her feet and legs were festooned with scrapes and cuts. She also had some sort of device attached to her neck and a slight trickle of blood was seeping out from under it. The wound there wasn’t terribly serious, it looked as though whatever that circular device was it was preventing her from bleeding more seriously.
The guards opened up one of the cells and tossed her inside, completely uncaring, it seemed where she landed, or for that matter, how she landed. They exited and one of them closed the door behind them, securing it. Then the two thugs simply left, the outer door to the brig slid closed with another bang.
“No, she doesn’t look good,” Corajen breathed, stepping away from the door. “But there’s nothing we can do for now. We need to come up with some kind of plan, ready to go at a moment’s notice once we get out of here.”
Her sister, in a sober mood for the first time, nodded, a wicked gleam in her eyes.
The mess hall was busy, as usual. The lunch rush was in full swing, though now that they were in hyperspace, the frantic workings of the majority of the crew had slowed somewhat. The engineering teams were still running full blast, though with first Quesh and then Tamara out of commission, there was an amount of aimlessness among the teams. Ka’Xarian, Cookie noted, was in the process of assigning new team leaders to try and move forward with the large amount of repairs.
There were pirate soldiers in his mess hall, the cook noted sourly. For the most part, the soldiers were keeping to themselves, doing little more than being a firm presence in the background. Though judging by the looks they were starting to give the various members of the crew (mostly the female ones) Cookie guessed that the time of stalwart indifference was coming to an end. And with Corajen and Saiphirelle in the brig, these men and zheen would have very few impediments from indulging their urges.
This was no longer a happy ship. Normally, the mess hall was ringing with conversations and laughter. Now, people came in, ate, and any conversations they held were in hushed whispers and conspiratorial glances. Crew tended to move in groups, fearful of being caught alone in any of the corridors.
Even the Captain had been conspicuous by his absence. The man had been known to make tours around every area of the ship, to make his presence known and to keep apprised of the inner workings of the various departments on his ship. Not so lately. Ever since the ship had made the jump to hyperspace, the captain never left his cabin. He took his meals there, had meetings with Armsman Jax and the heads of his departments, but he never came out. People wondered what was going on. Had Jax taken over the ship? Was the man a prisoner? There were also whispers that he might have some other reason for being there. It was well known that Tamara had been dragged through the corridors of the ship to the wardroom, then a few minutes later she was tossed into the brig. The captain and the Armsman had been in there at the time. Something had gone down then, but no one knew what. Speculation was rampant.
“Bad business,” Cookie muttered to himself. He shook his head, as one of the guards started to move in his direction. Clearing his head of the cobwebs, he refocused his attention back on the lunch service and put those other thoughts away for another time.
Grania Estelle sailed on through the void between star systems, the wash of tachyons causing vibrant red splashes of color to appear on the shields. Anyone looking through a window or through a sensor display usually found themselves slightly hypnotized by the phenomena, similar to staring into a fire. At her current speed, it would be just over three months travel time to reach Amethyst, far longer than either she or her crew had gotten used to.
An outside observer would see the ship, cocooned in its shield bubble, fly past at a very sedate pace and disappear from view into the deep dark.