He tucked the comm into his pocket. The cruiser would detour to check out the Finatar. As long as they caught up before the Finatar accelerated into a wormhole and left the Sicar system jurisdiction, he had a chance of rescuing her.
Of course, he’d had to message Kalfa for a copy of Ella’s sale. She was legally his due to the fineprint of territory law. Enslaved out there and you were a slave until you died, bought yourself free, or were freed by your owner.
Try that here in Besk, enslaving a girl, and a man would be in jail damned fast.
Technically she’d run from him. The cops were willing to chase after a legally bought runaway who belonged to a Sicar lord, but not so keen on chasing after a ship that may or may not have kidnapped an Earth girl against her will.
He shifted across the booth’s seat and stood, gesturing to Dresdek.
“Time to go get our ride on a police cruiser.”
“Truth?”
“Truth. Just don’t tell them I’m not precisely a Sicar lord anymore.
They threaded through the patrons toward the entrance where the bouncer had already registered their intention to leave. He hefted the box with their weapons onto the counter top beside him.
“Thanks.” He nodded at the bouncer and reached in for his pistol and knife. For the last time, he would use territory law to his advantage. For the greater good.
“Also.” He turned to Dresdek. “Don’t say to anyone that she isn’t quite mine anymore.”
“You’ve reclaimed her?”
“For now.”
Dresdek wrapped his gunbelt around his waist and clipped it on. “Do I also not tell them why in all the black hells we are going to all this trouble for a girl?”
He sucked on the inside of his cheek, thinking. Anger? He was that – at her, in an illogical way, as well as angry at the men who wanted her when technically she was his? Because Mimi liked her? Childish reasons. “Nope, don’t say. I have no idea why.”
“Great. If pushed, I’ll say she has a pussy made of irillium.”
“Hahaha.” He slammed his palm onto Dresdek’s back. “You do that and I’ll tell your next girlfriend your cock’s made of steel.”
Dresdek grinned slyly.
“Pumpkin. I meant pumpkin.”
The police cruiser, a Malev 073NT, was efficient, shiny black, and fast. From the guided tour the Captain gave him, she had adequate ship-to-ship weaponry and a crew of almost seventy, with half of them well trained at boarding in transit. They took off an hour after he and Dresdek arrived. Now all they had to do was catch the Finatar and somehow convince them to hand Ella over.
Chapter 5
Ella awoke slowly, to find herself sitting in a chair in a cabin that was larger than her own bunkroom. A blurred desk appeared and came into focus, then a face that resolved into the bearded features of Captain Lyet. Her hands were tied at her back by something metal, her ankles to the legs of this plas-g chair by something softer. Not metal. Plas-g ties there? The glass plastic alloy was something new to her since venturing into the ’verse...and why was she thinking dipshit stuff like that?
She swayed in the chair, swallowed phlegm.
Her mind cleared.
“Ahhh. At last. Our little Earth girl is awake.” The captain winked. “Do you know how precious you are? Someone out there.” He jerked his head sideways. “Wants you a lot. So much that I’ve been tempted. I’m sending you to them.”
He rose to his feet and came to her, standing over her so she had to squint upward. Ella licked her lips. She was still in her tank top and shorts. How much time had passed?
“But, they want to see you alive and thinking before they will pay. So!” He swept his hand toward a blinking camera on the desk top. “Talk, my sweet bird. Say some words.”
“Fuck you,” she croaked.
He chuckled and grabbed her face in his fist. “Was that one of your petty Earth curses? Tsk. You know you have some friends in the crew but none of them are willing to stand up for you. Cowards. They all like the money more.”
He stepped back and switched off the camera.
“There. We are done. Now to package you up.”
“What? Wait. What are you doing to me?” Her heart had finally sped up as she registered the gravity of this situation. They were selling her? Again? Oh crap. She couldn’t get out of this one. Her palms began to sweat while her throat turned dry.
Calm, be calm. No use panicking.
“Doing? Once we get near the wormhole, and they pay us, we’re leaving you there in an escape capsule, all tied up and sedated with the beacon broadcasting your location. You’ll be fine.”
Was there anyone else in here? She screwed her head around. Seemed not.
“Garrett?” He spoke into a wrist comm. “Here now. Bring her dose.”
“No, oh no. Wait! Please. I can pay you.”
He eyed her, skeptically. “How much?”
“Um.” How much did she have left? Eighty? “Sixty thou.”
“Pfft. I get seventy from them.”
Desperate she blurted out, “Eighty! I have eighty.”
“Truly? That much?” He sat on the edge of his desk. Beyond it she saw his bed, a large double-sized one.
“Yes.” Oh fuck. Please let it be enough.
“I like this.”
The door opened behind her and someone walked in.
“Garrett, our Earth girl has money she wants to give us.”
She nodded, smiled weakly. “Yes. Please. I’ll pay if you let me go.”
“Let you go? No. You tell us, transfer the money, and we then still get to sell you.” His smile widened.
Bastard. “No. Fuck you fucking sideways. I will never do that.”
“I think any fucking sideways will be done by us. Garrett?” He looked over her head. “Get this done, please.”
“Sure.”
As her heart accelerated, a darkness rushed in and engulfed her. Garrett. She remembered him. Handsome man, if you liked sterile, over-muscled idiots.
Her anger faded to nothing.
Tick. Tick. Things clicked into place. Plas-g was breakable, with the correct applied force.
She thrust into a standing position, snapping the legs of the chair away from the base, and kicked backward, spearing Garrett somewhere with a chair leg that was still attached to her. His scream was loud. Unfortunately, with her hands still cuffed and the subsequent inrush of two helpers, she could only manage one weak kick to the captain’s leg. It fractured somewhat, from the crack, but she was pinned under the men’s weight.
At his instruction, they gave her a reduced dose of the sedative then tied her ankles together.
“Good,” he gasped, half-collapsed against the desk. “Send in the doc.”
By the time her dead minutes had faded, the captain had been injected with what must be a painkiller and bandaged. He shooed out the doctor while glaring at her.
Through the fog of the drug leeching into her, she realized he hadn’t stopped glaring since she’d cracked his bone.
“Now. Your turn.” He chuckled, though his face was taut.
Curving one hand under her arm, he dragged her to his bed and threw her down, face first. From the pains around her ankles, and the wetness, she’d cut herself and almost broken her own legs with that maneuver. With some effort, she turned her face from the bed cover so she could breathe. Ella coughed then tongued out the fold of cover under her mouth. She heard a noise and spotted a blurred man standing beside the bed with something long and thin in his hand.
“They want your head intact? I can leave that. The rest of you I’m going to beat until you scream. Tell me if this qualifies as fucking you sideways.”
She shut her eyes and tensed, shivering as she waited for the first blow.
The man didn’t curb the force of his blows. He didn’t seem to care what he hit.
The bite of whatever he used striped her ass, legs, and back with ag
ony. No matter how much she writhed and sobbed, he shoved her back into place and flogged her again.
She’d been screaming for some time when she heard a thump, as if he’d tripped and landed badly.
The blows had stopped, though the fire of them remained. Almost frightened to look, she managed to lever her head up off the bed, enough to see a spreading pool of blood on the rug beside her. The room spun around and around then settled. Though her vision blurred, fading in and out, the source of the blood was obvious – the captain. He was sprawled facedown on the floor. Sitting where his head should have been was a rust-red furry blob.
“Mimi?” She laughed once, before groaning at the pain and lowering her head. What a pity she was stuck here, tied hand and foot. “Go away, Mimi. Before they see you. Go,” she whispered. The world was drifting away. “Go...”
Chapter 6
The police cruiser was faster, better armed, and skulking about under stealth. The approach to within striking distance of the Finatar might have been anticlimactic if not for Torgeir imagining all the ways this could go wrong.
He was a civilian, even if thought a lord. They kept him away from the main control deck until the last half hour. He walked in, heard the doors zip shut behind him and was treated to a busy, but softly lit, arch-shaped room. The big, curved holoscreen showed the Finatar, zoomed in, with the light of the distant sun making one side of her glow. Her hull was red and a pair of pulse drive engines bracketed the circular maw of the warp engine – the thin tendrils of blue radiance reaching out into space spoke of an imminent warp jump.
The seated crew ran through their procedures without fuss. The captain sat at the center, observing the screen, with a smaller holoscreen to his left. Torgeir took the observer’s seat, to the right, that was offered him.
Normally he could flow through what occurred around him, reacting smoothly. Not now. Sitting, watching things happen that he couldn’t change, made the situation seem fragile and sharp. One wrong move and this would shatter.
“They’ve ejected a single escape pod, captain. One occupant. Female human.”
“That’s her,” Torgeir blurted.
“Your slave?” The captain spoke without turning. “I agree. It’s likely. And very suggestive of illegal activity,”
More commands and information rattled out.
“They’ve detected our presence, sir.”
“Hail them.”
“Finatar, this is an SSP Police vessel. Cease acceleration. Shut down your drives and prepare to be boarded. This is a legal requirement.”
Silence reigned.
“Try again.”
After three more attempts at communication and a warning that the Finatar would be treated with deadly force if they didn’t comply, they pinged the ship with a coded message. It showed the Finatar AI automatically receiving it. A single missile flare was sent; it scorched across their bow and still no answer came. The captain leaned forward.
“Take out their fuel system, if you can, without breaching their hull. Prepare the team for boarding.”
At last Torgeir ventured a question. “The escape pod, Captain?”
“In due time, Lord Rakkel. We must first disable the Finatar.”
With his elbows on the side arm rests, he clasped his hands before him. If that was Ella, he hoped she was unaware of what was happening.
“They’re still accelerating. Trying for a jump, sir. We have an estimated two minutes to do this before they leave our jurisdiction.”
“Proceed.”
The small battle was brief and unremarkable, except for a distant brightness as micro-missiles struck and burrowed in before exploding. One mis-struck and blew a hole in the hull.
The air in the control room seemed to tighten but after a second or two, routine returned.
“They’re tumbling, sir. Engines are off. They’ve lost air to forty percent. Life signs...we see thirty-two deceased. Four lost to space via the breach.”
Despite Torgeir’s curses, they mopped up the Finatar first, synching flightpaths then sending over a police boarding party. After that, they rendezvoused with the escape pod and retrieved it.
They shooed him away from the main airlock, though he could hear it cycling. The first of the people would be returning from the Finatar soon and they had armed teams ready to take charge. He retreated and headed for the medical bay and emergency room, figuring they’d at least check her over when she came in. The doctor had about three medics and several others roped in to handle an influx of casualties, as well as robotic nurses. Four beds. Pallets on the floor. This place would be chaos soon.
They brought Ella in first and he joined the men pushing the hover stretcher, pretending he was supposed to be there. A lot of blood stained her shorts and top, and also her legs and her feet. Her eyes were shut and her head rolled from side to side when they moved her. Unconscious or drugged? Bad cuts too. Many bruises. He felt himself grow cold then hot. He clenched his fists. Frack them.
“Who did this to her?” he snapped.
The medic’s eyes widened. “Sir?”
The doctor gave him a searching look. “Lord Rakkel?”
“Yes? This is my slave, Ella.”
“You need to leave, lord. I have multiple wounded coming and little time to get her assessed. Cut her clothes off, Gedda.”
The medic brandished a safety cutter. Torgeir frowned at the man and he blanched.
“Lord.” The doctor nearly growled the word. “Leave, please.”
He sucked in a breath and decided glowering and shouting was not the best route. “Bring her to me, soon as she’s okay. If there’s anything bad, tell me, immediately.
The walk back was a sober one. Again he was trapped into doing zero.
An hour later, a man in the navy-colored uniform of a medic delivered her to his room.
Ella lay curled on her side on the hovering stretcher. Her unplaited hair cascaded over her shoulders like spilled night, tangling with her hand where it rested beneath her chin. She was covered with a single white sheet that was dotted and splotched with blood.
“Lord?” The medic looked at her then at him, peering from beneath his eyebrows. “She had mostly bruises, a few cuts. All repaired. The deep lacerations at the front of her ankles seem to have been from some thin restraints, possibly self-inflicted.”
“Okay.” He nodded, holding back the storm inside him.
“She’s still sedated with what they gave her on the Finatar. The doc thinks it best to let it wear off naturally. It’ll take up to twenty-four hours. We’ve done scans and found no internal damage. Right now we’re swamped with casualties from the Finatar and I need to get back. If you have any worries, message us.”
“Okay. Who did this? Who can I hurt?”
The man cleared his throat. “The crew said the captain beat her. He’s dead. They said it’s why they didn’t fire back. They were just running. Stupid, but there it is. I have to go.” Some thumping and scraping sounds made him turn to the doorway. “One last thing. Is this yours?”
Mimi leaped into view, making a clonk as she landed on the deck. Her little ears tweaked eagerly forward and she pattered into the room. She found the far corner between the end of the bed and the wall and splattered herself down, changing color to match the whiteness of her surrounds before she shut her eyes.
“Uh. Yes, she’s mine. Where did she –” But the medic was gone.
The door slid across, only to be halted by a hand. Dresdek appeared. He glanced at Ella then up. “Are you okay? Do you need my help?”
Slowly, he nodded. “I’m fine. No, I don’t need help.”
The twitch at the corner of Dresdek’s mouth said he was worried, but he backed away. The door shut.
Ella.
After swallowing once, he slipped the sheet down her body, revealing more and more of her naked body, all the way to her thighs, where he gently laid the bunched sheet. Bruises and blood patchworked
her skin. Most of the injuries were on her back.
Torgeir towed the stretcher over beside the bed then carefully lifted her and shifted her over. Her small moans made him shush her while he stroked her forehead. He covered her with the bedsheet, after one last heartfelt study, then brought over a chair. This way he could sit beside her without accidentally hurting her.
All those bruises made him want to make them go away. The captain was lucky he was dead.
Strange, perhaps, how proprietary he felt looking at her. He’d wondered why he’d been so anxious, watching the battle play out, waiting for her to be rescued. Now he knew. His feelings and thoughts had crystallized. He wanted Ella to be his. How long that would hold true for, he didn’t know. He’d never bondmated and expected he never would, since he’d left Sicar. This would just be an infatuation. Surely it would.
After a while, he rested his head in his hands and thought about the plan he’d made. It could work, as long as she was well enough. The one certainty from this was that she was coming with him. For now, she was registered as his slave and he was going to use that as leverage.
Dirty tactics. He didn’t care.
Torgeir stood and looked at her. The mess she’d gotten into when left by herself. One day, she’d thank him.
The police cruiser was packed with wounded and prisoners and needed to return to Sicar before going on patrol again. The Finatar was a floating wreck until it was towed away, dismantled, or repaired. This close to a wormhole and this far from the nearest solar system, no one was going to try salvaging it, for a week or more, except him.
All he needed to figure out if this would work, was the agreement of the captain, the damage specs, and a ride over to the wreck.
The captain was preoccupied when he walked in.
The police cruiser had halted almost alongside the slowly tumbling Finatar. Every few seconds, on the control room’s holoscreen, the side with the breach from the missile rolled into view. Twisted metal decorated the edges and small debris floated loose. There was still one body out there.
“Lord Rakkel? What can I do for you? I hear your slave has been slightly injured. But not ravaged?”
Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe Page 4