I went to the wall and slid open the cover to reveal the control panel. A password prompt greeted me, but I pulled up the hidden diagnostic panel and entered the default Yamado override codes. I didn’t even blink when they worked. No one changed the default codes, because only a couple dozen people in the ’verse even knew they existed. And while Yamado changed the codes every so often to try to keep rival Houses out of their ships, older ships often weren’t updated to the new codes.
I shut down several of the warning systems and unlocked the escape ship hatch. I pulled up a video of the docking bay. John and another merc lounged against the wall. The captain hadn’t arrived yet. No one seemed armed.
A glance confirmed the Rockhurst transport shuttle was nearing our ship. I pulled up voice control and added myself as a captain. “Mayport, this is Ada von Hasenberg, authorize.”
“Welcome, Captain von Hasenberg. You are authorized.”
“Mayport, close the docking bay port.”
“Unable to comply. An inbound ship has already started the docking sequence.”
“Mayport, unlock the captain’s weapon locker.”
A panel to my left slid aside to reveal a neat array of weapons that looked new. I strapped on a blast-pistol holster and loaded my pockets with knives and extra energy cartridges. Finally, I slung a blast rifle over each shoulder.
The vid screen revealed that the captain had made it to the docking bay, as had the shuttle. The docking process was under way.
“Mayport, unlock the captain’s quarters.”
I heard the lock disengage. I closed the weapons locker and moved back to the control panel, weighted down by my weaponry. I wanted to see what would happen in the docking bay. My own exit depended on how Richard planned to play this.
The docking door opened and Gerald moved toward the shuttle with a smile and extended hand. A blast caught him in the chest. The two mercs didn’t even have time to raise their weapons before they were cut down. A squad of eight emerged from the shuttle with military precision. They were in full combat gear, including full-face helmets.
On the control panel, I quickly requested a copy of the surveillance video be sent priority to my House account. It would be a good bargaining piece against Richard.
Now, it was time for me to go.
I exited the captain’s quarters and stepped out into the hallway. The ship went dark.
“Mayport, switch to auxiliary power.”
I got no response. The Rockhurst soldiers had taken out the lights and ship’s computer, but left the life-support systems, including gravity. And they did it in less than a minute. If they had some sort of plug-in override, that would almost be worth risking certain death to retrieve.
Sometimes even I couldn’t outrun my von Hasenberg genes.
Shouts erupted from the hall that led to the crew quarters as the mercs tried to figure out what was going on. I needed to move before they decided to come this way, but I was frozen in the dark.
Luminescent eyes glinted in my memory.
I headed to the holding cells, counting doors and following the schematic in my head. Once I reached what I hoped was the right door, I fumbled until I found the manual release.
“Loch?”
“Been having fun, darling?” his voice rumbled from the dark.
“A squad of eight Rockhurst soldiers just took out the captain and the power. A Rockhurst battle cruiser is pacing us off our starboard side. I’ll pay you a hundred thousand credits to get me safely to a planet or station with an interstellar port and let me go. You can have the escape ship after that. I’ve already unlocked it, but the mercs might have the same plan at this point. You have five seconds to decide.”
I was met with silence. “Marcus?”
“What are you waiting for?” he said from directly in front of me.
I froze as he lifted one of the rifles from my shoulder and pulled a pair of knives out of my pocket. Holy shit, he was loose, and I couldn’t see a thing. How had he gotten out of the chains?
I fell back on my training. “So we have a deal?” I asked coolly.
“Yeah, we have a deal. Wait here,” he said, pushing me just inside the cell. “If you see anyone, shoot them.”
I laughed quietly. “I can’t see shit,” I admitted.
“I know. But I won’t be carrying a light, so if anyone is, shoot first, ask questions later. I’ll be back in three.”
I didn’t hear him leave, but I had the sense that he was gone. I pulled the pistol from the holster and flicked off the safety, grateful, for once, that my unconventional childhood had included weapons classes. I wasn’t a sniper by any measure, but if someone came down the narrow hallway with a light, I’d have good odds of hitting them somewhere fatal.
Time stretched thin. Distant yells and blaster discharges echoed strangely through the ship. The docking bay was past the crew quarters. So was the escape ship. The overhead access tunnels would get us close, but the firewall between the bays and the rest of the ship meant we’d have to go through one of two main hallway hatches to reach the escape ship.
I began to wonder if Loch had left me behind. The credits I’d offered him were a fortune by any standard, but if he’d decided I’d slow him down, he could’ve realized that being alive was better than being rich.
A boot scuffed on the floor from the direction of the crew quarters. My heart sped up. Whoever it was didn’t have a light, but Loch had not made a sound either time he moved. And I was loaded down with items that would make noise the second I shifted a centimeter. I barely breathed.
“Where are you, you little bitch?” a female voice whispered from just down the hall. If she had night vision, I was so screwed. The air shifted in front of me and a hand or arm brushed against the doorway.
“Ah—” Her quiet exclamation was cut short on a wet gurgle, followed by a soft thump a little farther down the hall to my left.
“Don’t shoot,” Loch whispered. “It’s me.”
I reengaged the safety and holstered the pistol. “About time,” I hissed.
“Ah, sweetheart, did you think I’d leave without you?”
I didn’t bother to confirm what he already knew. I tried not to think about the woman’s body just down the hall. It turned out the darkness was good for one thing, at least.
“I couldn’t find you any goggles, so you’ll just have to trust me and follow my lead. The soldiers have three mercs pinned down in the mess hall, and for the moment they’re at a standoff. We’ll have to take the access tunnels to come down behind them.”
I was not looking forward to crawling through the access tunnels in the dark. Even with lights they were claustrophobic. In the dark, one wrong turn could mean endless hours spent finding the correct path again. But the other option was a much longer route through potentially locked-down maintenance areas, so I swallowed my fear and focused on the next problem. “I need to rearrange my gear. I jingle loud enough for them to hear on the Santa Celestia,” I said.
Before I could protest, Loch rifled through my pockets, rearranging knives and ammo to his liking. It was quick and professional—his hands didn’t stray. My pockets felt lighter and I wondered if I’d been left with any weapons. I checked my holster; I still had my pistol.
Loch must’ve been watching me. “You have your pistol and a knife in each back pocket. Your side pockets each contain an extra energy cartridge. I have both rifles and most of the rest. Good job, by the way. You’ll have to tell me how you managed to raid the captain’s private stash—nothing else worth having on this heap.”
“I knew Captain Rockhurst wasn’t coming over for tea,” I said. “I thought it best to be prepared.”
He chuckled and the sound wrapped around me in the dark. “How well do you know this ship’s layout?”
“I found you in the dark,” I said. “As long as the access tunnels still match the reference schematics, I know where to go.”
“Good, you lead. The ladder is just in front of you and
the hatch is open. But if I say, ‘down,’ you flatten yourself to the deck, no questions, understand? And wait once we get to the other side. I’ll go down first. If you can lead us to the farther hatch, that would be better.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered. I stepped forward with my arms out until I found the promised ladder. I mentally pulled up the schematic for this ship. This tunnel should lead back over the cell we were in for fifteen meters or so, then it would branch left and right. The left branch would take us over the crew quarters. The right branch led deeper into maintenance areas and then, after a few more turns, to the second bay access door.
“I’m right behind you,” Loch said as I hesitated.
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be comforting or intimidating.
Chapter 4
With nothing but the map in my head, I crawled through the dark, cramped tunnels until I was sure I was lost. When Loch hissed, “Down,” behind me, I flattened to the floor. I didn’t know what he saw, but since I saw nothing, I deferred to his judgment.
He crawled up beside me, though he was mostly over me in the small space. “There’s an open panel ahead,” he whispered in my ear. “Is this our exit?”
This wasn’t the first open panel we’d encountered. So far, we’d been able to cross them without incident, though not without a lot of unflattering flailing and wiggling on my part. I thought about our route. We should’ve dead-ended into the firewall. “Does the tunnel go left and right, but not straight?” I whispered back.
“Yes.”
Hallelujah. I’d somehow managed to find the exact exit I was looking for. “This is it. You’ll drop into a hallway that runs left and right, same as the tunnel above it. The hatch into the docking bay and escape ship bay will be directly in front of you. There’s no cover in any direction.”
“Stay put, and I mean it,” Loch whispered. “We have a deal, and I don’t want my payday getting shot. But be ready to haul ass.”
“I can’t see, remember? Unless you get some lights on, the only thing I’ll haul ass into is a wall.”
“Leave it to me. Just be ready.” He crawled over me toward the access panel. For such a big man, he moved nearly silently. “Guards down the hall,” he whispered after a moment. “You are just over a meter from the access panel. I want you to very quietly move up until you can feel the edge of it and then wait for me.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I heard the faint scrape of cloth on metal and then silence. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and crept forward. I wasn’t as silent as Loch, but I was quiet enough that I doubted anyone down the hall could hear me.
I slid my left hand forward and my fingers hit open air. I traced the edge of the opening. This was definitely the access panel. The ladder should be on the near side, but I wasn’t going to risk exposing my hand to check. Now I just had to wait.
I hated waiting.
The silence echoed until I wasn’t sure if the soft footsteps I heard were real or imaginary. I flattened myself to the floor of the access tunnel. The footsteps became clearer. Someone was approaching from the hallway to the right. Had one of the mercs made it through the maze of engine rooms?
The steps were quick—whoever it was could see. Distance was hard to judge with the way sound bounced down metal hallways, but the unknown person had to be getting close to the final turn that would dump him or her directly into the Rockhurst soldier’s line of fire.
A few seconds later, the footsteps slowed, then stopped. For a brief moment, the ship seemed to hold its breath. Then the hallway erupted in blaster fire and curses.
A high-pitched scream from down the right hallway proved that at least one shot had found its target. The left hall reverberated with another round of blaster fire until it abruptly cut off with a scream.
“Oh God, oh God, oh please, oh God.” The soft, moaned litany came from the right hallway. It was hard to tell with my ears ringing from the blaster fire, but it sounded like the kid, Chuck. Had he been shot? I pushed myself up, even though I knew looking would do no good. It was still dark as pitch.
Warm, wet hands gripped my wrists and pulled me headfirst out of the access panel. I flailed, trying to find something to anchor my feet before I broke my neck on the floor. The hands shifted to my waist and hauled me down and forward.
I went for the knife in my back pocket.
“While I do love to watch a woman with a blade,” Loch drawled as he set me on my feet, “we need to move.”
“You could’ve warned me that it was you,” I hissed.
“Now where’s the fun in that?”
I huffed at him and tried to move right, only to be blocked by his arm. “I think I heard Chuck. We need to see if he’s okay,” I said.
“He’s dead.”
I paused. I could still hear the kid moaning. “It seems your definition of dead and mine aren’t the same,” I said, trying again to push past him.
“Trust me, he’s dead, he just doesn’t know it yet.”
“But—” A shoulder in my abdomen prevented me from continuing. Loch lifted me so that my torso hung down his back. He clamped a hand around my legs and took off at a quick jog.
I wrapped my arms around his waist to keep my upper body from flopping around. “What happened to the rifles?” I asked when I realized they should’ve been bashing me in the face.
“I left them in the cell,” he said. “Too much trouble to hump them through the access tunnels.”
Clearly, my observational skills were on point in the dark.
We lurched sideways with a loud curse from Loch. An energy bolt passed close enough that I could feel its heat. The world spun and jostled as Loch moved quickly. He stopped and dumped me off of his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I hit hard on my left side. Pain lanced up my arm, intense enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“You said there were eight soldiers,” Loch snarled in my ear.
“There were eight!”
“Now there are eleven. And three of them are between us and the ship. And no doubt calling for backup.” He pulled the pistol from my holster. “Don’t die.” His presence faded.
“Lady von Hasenberg,” an unfamiliar male voice called, “Lord Rockhurst sent us to rescue you. Are you well?”
“No, I am very much not well, you idiot,” I muttered under my breath. Louder, I called back, “How do I know you are Richard’s troops and not more mercs trying to steal me for the bounty?”
“Are you alone?”
“I have no idea. My abductor dropped me here. I think he broke my arm. I cannot see anything.”
A light clicked on in the distance, as bright as a dying star. I could see the door to the room outlined against the light, as well as make out the dark, bulky shapes surrounding me. My mental map had failed after Loch’s dash through the cargo bays, but this looked like a storage room.
The light drew closer. I curled up and cradled my left arm. I let the tears fall down my cheeks. It wasn’t really acting because my arm hurt like the devil. I didn’t think it was broken, but I had no doubt that the bruising would be epic.
The light bobbed into the room. They’d sent a video drone—I could hear the low whir of its motor. I shielded my eyes as they adjusted. The blocky shapes in the room resolved themselves into storage containers. Loch had dumped me on top of a waist-high container, and I’d landed on the latch bar with my arm.
I pushed myself up with a groan. This was not how I’d planned for today to go.
The drone floated around the room. The soldiers must’ve been satisfied with whatever they saw on the video because a few seconds later, two big men in combat armor entered, guns first. They swept the room before coming over to me. One kept lookout while the other attempted to pick me up.
I slapped away his hands. “I have had enough of being carted around like so much baggage,” I said in my iciest voice. “My legs are perfectly functional.”
He backed up with a murmured “Yes, my lady.
”
I slid off the container and almost made a liar of myself when my left knee buckled. I fell into the soldier I’d just yelled at. Fantastic. My high-and-mighty, untouchable lady routine was certainly off to a good start. He held my arm until I’d regained my balance then let go without a word.
“I need a light stick,” I said. “I cannot see anything.”
“My lady,” he started. I hit him with my mother’s favorite expression. He reluctantly pulled a short light stick out of a cargo pocket and handed it to me.
I clicked it on and the room became clearer. “Thank you,” I said.
With only one soldier between him and freedom, I assumed Loch was already on his way to the escape ship while I served as a distraction for these two. I had a knife, but the odds were better that I’d stab myself than do any damage to two trained—and armored—soldiers. I was a decent shot because shooting guns was fun; knife lessons were grueling, dangerous, and best avoided whenever possible.
“This is Bravo Team Lead. We have secured Lady von Hasenberg,” the soldier next to me said into his mike. “We are in cargo bay six. At least one active threat. Please advise.”
I couldn’t hear the response through their helmets, but both soldiers nodded. “We’re evacuating you to the transport shuttle, my lady. Please stay close,” the team lead said.
The two soldiers shepherded me out of the room, one in front, one behind. We moved slowly as they scanned for threats. I thought up and discarded plans with blazing speed. While I would love to defeat two soldiers, who each weighed twice as much as me, in unarmed combat, I didn’t think it was entirely feasible. Thanks, brain, for imagining some alternate reality where I was infinitely more capable.
But if I stepped foot on that transport shuttle, I became—at best—a political hostage. At worst, my abduction would set off the long-simmering animosity between our Houses and plunge us into war. And somewhere between the two was the possibility that Richard would insist on going through with the marriage I’d been avoiding.
Polaris Rising Page 4