by Juno Wells
The human engineer jumped the last fifteen feet to the floor and landed hard, though she immediately skidded to his side as Vaant held Isla. She pulled the emergency oxygen pack from the suit and strapped the mask to her friend's face before giving Vaant a hard look. "Get her back to the ship. Maisy can treat her. Fast."
He didn't like taking orders from anyone. But he wasn't about to put Isla down or trust her recovery to anyone else. He shared one look with Frrar and said, "Get the ship stable and we can tow it to one of the waystations. I'm —"
"Take her back. I'll keep an eye on that other one." Frrar shouted at the other woman to stop showing off and get away from the dangerous stuff, but he used High Xarav so there wasn't much chance she actually understood. Not that the human engineer would have obeyed even if she had.
Vaant didn't spare it much thought. He checked the oxygen mask on Isla's face, wishing he knew more about what it meant that her lips turned blue, and shoved through the crowd of squids near the door so he could get her to safety.
He held her tightly to his chest as he picked up speed, nearly running, and muttered under his breath. "You have terrible judgment. Terrible. Regardless of how intelligent and capable you are in an emergency, you need to think of yourself when an entire ship is coming apart around you. Don't ever endanger yourself like that again."
Her lips moved and her eyelids cracked open just enough for him to see a hint of her blue eyes, and she whispered something into the oxygen mask.
Vaant stopped to move it, leaning down so he could hear. "Again."
"You're not the boss of me," she said, wheezing each word out with difficulty. "You can't tell me what to do."
"I —" he started, then couldn't think of anything else to say. The unbelievably stubborn woman. "I'm the captain. You follow orders."
"This isn't your ship." Isla coughed and blinked watery eyes, then her face relaxed and she slipped back out of consciousness.
Vaant wanted to laugh and shake her and curse at the same time, and started his near-run back to the Galaxos. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. It wasn't his ship. He wasn't the boss of her. Cursed sandworms, he had his work cut out for him convincing her to stay.
The docking bay had been cleared out a great deal, so it wasn't too difficult to get through to where the triage station remained. The young human doctor, a sudden confidence about her, took one look at him carrying Isla and pointed at one of the stretchers. "Put her down."
"I'm taking her onto the Galaxos. You can follow if you like." He didn't even pause before heading into the tunnel.
The doctor shouted something about her needing a helmet and him needing a pressurized suit before they could move between the ships, but Vaant didn't care. He could make it. Her light footsteps pursued him on the long haul to the Galaxos, but Vaant didn't care. He didn't stop moving even when they reached the docking bay on his ship and he took a moment to tell Isla they were back on his ship and she had to damn well listen to him, and kept moving until they reached the sick bay.
The doctor, Maisy, huffed and puffed as she caught up, her face red, and she scowled fiercely at him as she stormed over to the one empty bed. "Put her down, you big dumb worm."
Vaant's eyes narrowed. "Watch your tone, human."
"Listen," she said, and her lips compressed in a thin line as her chin wobbled and her hands shook. She wrenched Isla away and started cutting the survival suit off so she could attach sensors and devices to the still-unconscious interpreter. Maisy kept talking, though she didn't meet his gaze. "So far today, I've been kidnapped, locked up, yelled at, saved a few dozen lives with really awful injuries, held half a dozen hysterical babies while we searched for their mothers, and tried not to die on a ship that's coming apart and could have released us all into space at any second. I'm not having a good day. And you just brought one of my best friends in here, unconscious and injured and maybe dying. You don't get to be mean to me."
She managed a fierce look by the time she finished, though Vaant was too flabbergasted by her diatribe to react with more than a stunned silence. Maisy's eyes reddened and a few tears escaped, and she pointed at the door. "So please leave."
Vaant didn't know what to do. He sure as hell wasn't going to walk away from Isla when she was still unconscious, but he didn't want to deal with an angry and emotional doctor. Vaant reverted to Earther, since he didn't know if the doctor would truly understand him if he went with a universal language, and dragged a chair up to the bed where Isla lay. "I am not leaving. This is my ship. But I will not interfere with whatever you need to do to save her. I can assist, if you need help, but I will not leave."
She turned her attention to the monitors and medical gadgets, scanning Isla before she hooked some sort of filter to the oxygen mask. "What happened? Her lungs are burned."
"She took her helmet off in the engine room. There was a great deal of smoke and fumes, probably fuel and antimatter everywhere."
Maisy shook her head and wiped at her cheeks. "Typical."
Vaant remained in his chair, though he reached out to gently grip Isla's ankle over her boot. Such a strange turn of events. He hadn't expected much when they docked with the Argo, or at least just the regular Alliance corruption and illegal activities, but he certainly never thought they'd end up with six independent, maddeningly determined Earther women on the ship. He didn't know whether to be thankful or to hail the Argo and try to give them back.
One thing he knew for certain — he needed Isla in his life. On his ship, by his side. As his interpreter or his mate, or hopefully both. As Vaant pondered the possibility of a future with her, the door to the sick bay whooshed open and Trazzak strode in. "You're back? Why aren't you on the bridge?"
"The interpreter was injured."
"You're not a doctor," the second-in-command said. "That one is. We need you on the bridge."
Vaant gritted his teeth. He didn't want to leave Isla's side. And his hesitation worried him more than he thought possible. He was still captain of the Galaxos, still responsible for his crew, their passengers, and now a damaged ship as well. If they were going to tow the civilian transporter anywhere, they needed to get moving while the engines still worked and the other ship could maneuver when necessary.
He shoved to his feet and loomed over the young doctor. "Call me if anything changes."
She barely looked at him, still working on her friend, and said something under her breath about dialing him up right away.
Vaant resisted the urge to roar at the girl and instead turned on his heel and stormed off, almost knocking Trazzak off his feet as he shoved past. Maddening. That was the most appropriate word her could find in Earther to describe those women.
Chapter 9
Isla
It hurt to breathe. Something covered her face and made it difficult to move or think or speak. Isla tried to pull it off, but her arms didn't work. She gasped, struggling for air despite the sharp pain in her chest, and lurched upright in the darkness.
"Stop it before you hurt yourself," someone said, and a dim light revealed Maisy next to her. Her eyes looked bruised with fatigue, and she moved slowly as she got up and adjusted what turned out to be a mask over Isla's face. "You almost damaged your lungs permanently, and if you don't want a great deal of scarring and recurrent pneumonia, you'll let the breathing machine clear all that crap out."
Isla frowned, trying to remember what happened, but everything blurred and skipped as if the smoke obscured parts and pieces of her memories. She remembered climbing the engine and handing Rowan tools, then taking her helmet off and reading squiggles carved into the metal, and then... a whole lot of nothing.
She managed to croak, "What happened?" before a coughing spasm ran through her and she almost inhaled half of Maisy's equipment.
The doc leaned forward to adjust everything, holding up a small bowl as she patted Isla's back. "Spit it all out."
Gross. So gross. But Isla managed to hack up most of her lungs before she collapsed ba
ck against the bed in complete agony, sweating from the pain and effort of sitting upright. Maisy put the breathing apparatus back on her, her movements so precise that Isla knew she fought back tears.
"Apparently you took your helmet off like a complete and utter fool, and breathed in antimatter and Newton only knows what. But you and Rowan fixed the engine enough that we're towing the ship to a space dock in the next quadrant."
Isla nodded, closing her eyes as dark splotches obscured her vision anyway. She hurt everywhere. And she desperately wanted a shower. She still felt all the grime and smoke and dust from the alien ship all over her skin, gritty and rough when every movement hurt.
Maisy's eyebrow arched as she patted Isla's hand. "And that big Xaravian, the captain, carried you out of there like some kind of movie star hero. He wouldn't put you down in the docking bay, where we had triage. No, he carried you all the way through the ship to the infirmary so you could have a private room."
Isla rolled her eyes. Silly Maisy. She had to be reading something into the captain's behavior. He'd been so furious with Isla for taking off her helmet and climbing the engines, no doubt he intended to arrest her and throw her into the brig. She shook her head at Maisy and motioned for something to write on so she didn't have to talk and risk another coughing fit. She managed to scribble a simple message: Doesn't mean anything.
"Right," Maisy said. "Like it doesn't mean anything that the other big guy, with the scowly face, took Griggs to the gym and has been letting her whale on him for the last hour. I've treated him for broken bones twice already, but he keeps going back."
Well, that was interesting. Isla frowned as she thought. For the little time they'd been able to rest in their quarters and try to plan their next move, Griggs had been confident they could find a way to escape. Maybe she changed her mind already, if she'd finally found a sparring partner who could keep up with her. Isla wouldn't miss that at all — she'd been Griggs's punching bag all through the academy, and she still had the scars to prove it.
Maisy adjusted something on the tablet connected to the breathing machine. "Rowan is working in the engine room, and Jessalyn is trying to interview some of the squids we took onboard with a machine translator. It's not as effective as you would be, but I told her in no uncertain terms you're out of commission for at least a couple of days."
Isla sat up and wrote, Days?
"It should be at least a week," Maisy said, and gave her one of those arch doctor looks that usually quelled her patients. "But since we have bigger fish to fry and a rebel ship to escape, I'm giving you a pass. Just no strenuous activity for a couple of weeks."
Isla smacked her forehead. How the hell were they going to escape if she couldn't do anything strenuous? There would be a fight, or they'd have to flee, and that would take a ton of energy and effort. She couldn't fight anyone, and definitely not Vaant, in her condition.
Maisy leaned closer and whispered through the hum and whoosh of the medical equipment. "Violet is trying to map out the ship and learn more about the schedule and organization. Rowan is using the time with the engineers to figure out how fast this bucket of bolts can go so we know if we stand a chance of outrunning it. If we can get a ship or a pod, that is. So we're working on it. We need you to get better, which means no talking and no taking stupid risks with your health. And keep your damn helmet on next time."
"I couldn't read," Isla whispered. It didn't hurt as much when she kept her voice soft, since she got tired of writing. "Saved the engines."
"I don't care if you saved the engines." Maisy's words wobbled and she scowled fiercely to disguise the fear in her eyes. "We can't afford to lose you."
Isla smiled and squeezed her hand. "We'll be okay. Everything will be okay."
She shivered as she realized Vaant told her almost those exact words as he carried her off the Argo. Strange, that the alien spent most of his time carrying her around. He'd been so angry. The memory of his expression when she gave him the slip and climbed the engine to help Rowan made the beeping of the heart monitor jump, and Maisy's forehead creased in concern. Isla tried to think happy thoughts, but she dreaded seeing Vaant again. She didn't want a lecture about the purpose of survival suits and how removing part of one kind of defeated the purpose. Even though every time he touched her, she shivered all the way through and could see nothing else in the room but him.
Isla sighed, her eyes growing heavy. "How are the civilians?"
"A lot of injuries," Maisy said. "No one died, though, so that's a miracle. We have most of the women and children on board with us, and the rest are on their ship maintaining and repairing what they can. We should get to the space port in about a day, I think. They didn't want to push the engines on this awful ship, so they're pacing themselves."
Isla nodded. Good news all around. Hopefully Vaant's ship had enough food and rooms to keep everyone calm and content. She didn't want to know what happened when a bunch of squids threw a riot. It probably sucked. She wanted to laugh at her own joke, but instead she sighed and slipped back into darkness as a feeling of safety and calm rolled over her.
Chapter 10
Vaant
Vaant stayed on the bridge for a few long hours, overseeing the tethering and towing of the damaged ship, though his thoughts wandered back to the injured interpreter more often than he wanted to admit. She'd been hurt under his protection, and the Xaravian warrior code was very clear about what that meant — he owed her a life-debt for not sufficiently protecting her.
He slouched in the captain's chair, staring at the viewing screen without really seeing the stars and asteroids that whirled past, and debated actually telling her about the life-debt. No doubt her first demand would be for her freedom and to return to the damn Fleet, maybe straight back to the Argo. He couldn't have that. It would imperil her safety even more. If she and the other women returned to the Argo, they would return with the knowledge that the captain allowed them to be traded to an alien rebel ship. They would be within their rights to file serious misconduct charges against the captain, as the lawyer among them clearly knew, and the captain wasn't likely to stand around while that happened. Which meant he would offload the women somewhere else as fast as possible so no witnesses remained — and in this quadrant, anyone who would take six unwilling Earther women was not anyone Vaant trusted to care for them.
He gritted his teeth and tried not to think about all the violent things he wanted to do to that Earther captain. His skin swirled red and orange with rage and Trazzak started to frown. Xaravians wouldn't ask why his skin turned a certain color, but it gave the rest of his crew an idea of his mood, which had saved lives on at least three occasions when Vrix sent everyone away until Vaant worked through his anger.
Turning blue and purple while he held the Earther woman, though, opened him up to all kinds of ridicule. Vrix had a field day with it. Vaant drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, forcing his mind back to the serious matters at hand. As they gathered more information from the squids, using an imperfect machine translator that only made him miss Isla more, it was clear the Argo played a part in the damage to the ship. Multiple officers from the civilian transporter provided details about the hull markings and overall shape of the Argo, and given that they were the only ship the Galaxos saw in that particular sector, it was easy enough to make the leap and assign blame right to the Alliance and its damn Fleet.
For all its crimes, though, Vaant wondered why the Argo would deliberately damage but not destroy the ship, and then leave it adrift and desperate as it hailed any ship within the sector. Unless...
Vaant sat up and nearly ripped the arms off his chair. Unless the Argo intended to distract other ships in the quadrant, including ships like the Galaxos that might have been following them. Maybe the Galaxos hadn't been far enough away and the Argo identified their pursuit. The Earther captain must have heard of the Xaravian code, and knew the Galaxos wouldn't bypass a damaged civilian ship.
He growled until even Trazzak lo
oked alarmed, and Vaant tried to rein back his temper. The squid captain remained on his ship, but some of his crew stayed on the bridge of the Galaxos in order to relay information about speed and heading, and all of them started to dribble ink as Vaant's grumbling set off their survival instincts. He lurched to his feet and headed for the door. "Trazzak, you have the bridge. I'll be in my quarters."
Vrix found him before Vaant made it more than a few turns into the ship, and the captain looked at his friend in irritation. "What?"
"Trazzak called me fifteen minutes ago and said you were getting edgy. What's the issue?"
Vaant finally noticed the masses of new scars and bandages the other Xaravian had, and the puzzle distracted him from wanting to immediately find the Argo and massacre everyone on board. "What the hell happened to you?"
The corner of Vrix's mouth turned up just a touch in the closest thing to a smile Vaant had ever seen on his face. "Sparring with that security officer."
"What, did you just stand there and let her beat you with a mashgal hammer? Sandworms below us, Vrix, you look like an army of Brxxin ambushed you." Vaant stared at his friend in disbelief; he'd never seen so many wounds on the warrior, even during training. It was a banner day when any one of the crew managed to touch Vrix, much less draw blood or leave a scar. The security officer allowing that much damage to himself without beating the opponent into the floor simply didn't happen. Which made Vaant pause and turn orange again as he considered the consequences. "You better not have hurt the woman."
"Of course I didn't," Vrix said, irritated at the implication, and slapped Vaant's shoulder. "Let's get a drink and you can fill me in on why you keep going red."
They walked slowly through the halls crowded with squids, and Vaant found himself surrounded by grateful civilians. He smiled and nodded but kept walking, since trying to communicate with them only reminded him that Isla lay unconscious in the sick bay. He rubbed the back of his neck as they finally made it into the mess hall, and Vrix let himself into the galley where they locked up the liquor. "How did you end up sparring with the woman? Did she try to escape?"