by S. E. Smith
“He’s not on board,” the borian said. “He, uh…he backed out at the last moment. Other business. Above our paygrade. That’s why I was confused for a second.”
Volcair frowned and dismissed the projected screen at his wrist. “Oh. That is unfortunate. I will have to have my team contact the owner to straighten this out. That can take some time from this deep in space. If I could have you and your fellow crew members disembark…” He stepped backward, turning so he stood perpendicular to the borian and the volturian, and gestured to the bay floor behind him.
Neither crewmember moved; their gazes were hard and calculating, the gazes of people who regularly faced death and no longer knew how to flinch away from it.
A familiar calmness settled over Volcair. He’d been here before, many times. For a long while, he’d thought he liked this state because it was simple—either you survived, or you didn’t—but he knew better now. It was the emptiness he had appreciated. He didn’t feel that emptiness now; Kiara would not leave his thoughts, and a thousand what-ifs spiraled through his mind.
Volcair slowly shifted his right hand to his blaster, keeping his gaze locked with the individuals before him. “We will get this sorted out as quickly as possible.”
Everything moved in a sudden burst of speed. He drew his blaster as both crewmembers—pirates, undoubtedly—reached behind their backs to pull blasters of their own. Volcair fired the first shot, hitting the borian in the chest in the same instant that Cypher, scales shifting to form long, wicked spikes, leapt at the female volturian.
She screamed as Cypher slammed into her back and fired several wild shots that hit the floor, ceiling, and wall. Volcair stepped back and squeezed the trigger of his blaster again, hitting the borian—who was still on his feet—in the neck.
The female fell, writhing and thrashing to dislodge Cypher.
An alarm blared in the docking bay.
“Alert! Shots fired in docking bay nine near gate fourteen,” declared a computerized voice through the overhead announcement system.
With a choked grunt, the borian dropped. Volcair turned his blaster toward the downed volturian, intending to fire, but she was already still. Her blood glistened on the metal floor paneling.
Cypher reverted to his prior form—that of Kiara’s favorite animal, the fox—and looked up at Volcair.
Releasing a heavy breath, Volcair activated his commlink. “We have hostiles on the Starlight with a potential hostage situation. I need a strike team down here immediately.”
As the comms lit up with chatter, Cypher stepped off the dead volturian and hurried to the borian, pawing open a pouch on the pirate’s belt. Keeping his blaster ready and an eye on the corridor, Volcair crouched beside the inux.
Cypher backed away, tugging something out of the pouch with his teeth.
It was a white gold chain with a familiar pendant attached to it.
Volcair held out his hand, and Cypher lowered the balus stone necklace onto Volcair’s waiting palm.
If Cypher hadn’t been evidence enough, this was all Volcair needed to see to know Kiara was here. Was she safe, or had she been harmed?
He closed his hand around the necklace. Under different circumstances, he might have wondered why she still carried the necklace after she’d chosen a path separate from him years ago. Why would she still have it when she’d already taken another male as her mate?
But with Cypher and the necklace here, all he could think about was Kiara’s safety. There were undoubtedly other pirates on this ship. Kiara had to be somewhere on board, too. There were soldiers inbound, but it would be at least a minute before they arrived, and that wasn’t soon enough. Not when Kiara was in danger.
“Take me to her, Cypher,” he commanded as he rose.
Cypher stalked forward, and Volcair followed the inux through the interior airlock door, taking a two-handed grip on his blaster.
Fear roiled in the back of Volcair’s mind—fear for Kiara, the girl, the woman, who was supposed to be his mate. The woman he’d taken too long to go back to.
“How many more pirates?” he asked as they neared the end of the corridor, where a doorway opened into a perpendicular passage.
Cypher’s scales rattled, his color darkening for a moment. While most of his scales reverted to their normal silver, one section remained dark for a few seconds—in the shape of the terran numeral seven. Cypher flattened himself on his belly and shimmied forward. He paused just before the entry into the next hallway and raised his ears.
Heavy footsteps sounded from around the corner, and someone shouted in a gruff voice, “Brazzik! Falka! What the hell’s going on out there?”
Volcair halted several paces from the entryway and dropped to one knee. He aimed his blaster at the opening.
“Moerg,” a voice called through the ship’s overhead comm system, “there’s a soldier in the aft entry corridor!”
At the same instant, a burly azhera with a tangled mane and an auto-blaster in his hands stepped into the doorway.
The azhera—presumably Moerg—met Volcair’s gaze as Volcair fired. The blaster’s high whine was amplified in the relatively tight corridor.
Moerg grunted, flinching back as the first bolt sizzled through his shoulder. Volcair’s immediate follow-up shot struck the left side of the azhera’s chest. Maintaining a one-handed grip on his auto-blaster, Moerg squeezed its trigger and sent a burst of plasma bolts into the wall. Flecks of molten metal splashed at Volcair, who thrust himself aside to avoid the stinging debris. He fired again as he fell against the wall.
Volcair’s third shot landed between the previous two, and the azhera crashed to the floor.
“Commander?” Lieutenant Beltheri said through the commlink. “Commander, the boarding team is inbound. They will breach in two minutes. Please fall back to await reinforcement.”
Volcair glanced down at Cypher as the inux walked around the fallen azhera and entered the next corridor.
“Get the merchandise out of storage,” said the voice on the ship’s overheads. “We need some meat shields.”
If the pirates were allowed the chance to hide behind hostages, this would become a prolonged incident almost guaranteed to end in the loss of innocent life; Dominion protocol did not favor negotiation with criminals, outlaws, and terrorists, even in these circumstances. It was a desperate move on behalf of the pirates—which meant Volcair needed to make his own desperate move, no matter how stupid or dangerous it was. He had to press on alone.
Not alone. Cypher is here.
Cypher looked back, meeting Volcair’s gaze, and nodded.
Volcair shoved himself to his feet and advanced, hesitating only long enough to fire another bolt into the azhera’s head before he followed Cypher into the left branch of the next corridor. They soon arrived at a recess in the hallway’s corner which contained a ladder leading down to a lower level.
The inux halted at the edge of the opening and glanced over his shoulder at Volcair, producing a series of soft clicks. Then Cypher bounded forward, scales flickering as his front paws elongated into hook-like talons to grab hold of the rungs. He descended out of Volcair’s sight.
“Open the door and get them out,” someone said from below. “You heard Yaril. We got company.”
“Knew this was a bad idea,” another person said. “Should’ve just towed this thing.”
There was a loud, reverberating clang on the lower deck, followed by a deep rumbling. Volcair knew the sounds well—a heavy-duty cargo hold door was being opened below. The noise was an opportunity—it could mask the sound of his movement—but it was also a dire warning.
He was running out of time.
Volcair didn’t bother with the ladder; he dropped into the opening and landed heavily on the metal floor three meters below. The jolt of the impact shot up his legs and clacked his teeth together, jarring his balance. He caught himself against the wall. Cypher brushed against his boot, coiling slightly around his shin. Volcair had forgotten how rea
ssuring the inux’s presence could be.
The voices from the corridor—which was at least twice as wide as the one above—were made indistinct by the sound of the opening door.
“Only six left, right?” Volcair asked. He stepped into the corridor before Cypher could respond.
The wide passage was divided into several sections by partially closed, sliding double doors—the sort that would automatically close to seal compromised compartments in the event of a hull breach. It was a standard safety feature on many space vessels. Each section had its own large cargo bay door, all marked with terran letters and numbers. The bay door closest to the ladder was rumbling open now.
One pirate—a green-skinned vorgal—stood at the door’s control panel, his left hand on the switch while his right aimed a blaster into the widening gap. Two more pirates stood between the door operator and Volcair, one of whom was watching the bay door.
The other was watching ladder access from which Volcair had just emerged.
The pirate made eye contact with Volcair and shouted, “Spawn of a skeks!”
Volcair fired; his enemies did the same. Plasma bolts zipped down the corridor in both directions.
Diving into the only available cover—the recess containing the ladder—Volcair flattened his back against the wall. Plasma pierced the metal around him and darted past the opening. With such limited cover—and so outgunned by his enemies—it was only a matter of time before he was hit.
And it was potentially a matter of moments before the pirates dragged out their merchandise to use as living shields.
The bay door clanged again and went silent; it had opened fully.
Volcair sank down into a crouch, and Cypher moved up to nuzzle his thigh. Volcair showed him the control unit on his wrist. “Can you interface with this?”
The inux’s eyes flickered; he nodded.
“Do it. And climb up on my right shoulder.”
Cypher hopped nimbly onto Volcair’s shoulder, his paws creating almost painful focal points through which his weight pressed down on Volcair’s flesh; though small, Cypher was heavy.
Shifting his grip on the blaster, Volcair opened the projection screen on the wrist unit. “I need you to patch through a camera feed from one of your optics and extend that optic along the barrel of my weapon.”
Several plasma bolts burst through the wall overhead; Volcair muttered a curse and ducked lower.
Cypher laid himself over Volcair’s shoulder with a series of low buzzes and clicks, stretching himself along Volcair’s arm. His scales rippled, and those around one of his optics peeled back. The electronic eye extended outward on a thin, segmented tristeel wire, trailing over Volcair’s forearm and the back of his hand to settle on the rear sight of the blaster. The control unit’s projection changed to a two-dimensional video feed—a view from Cypher’s perspective down the barrel of the blaster.
Keeping low, Volcair turned to face the wall. He extended his right arm to move the blaster into the corridor, watching Cypher’s optic feed.
Two of the pirates had moved behind the large compartment doors, leaving only their heads and arms exposed to shoot in Volcair’s direction.
Volcair wasted no time; he fired rapidly, adjusting his aim to correct the trajectory of his shots, which were made more difficult by his skewed, indirect perspective. Whether they thought Volcair was firing blindly or couldn’t resist the tiny target he’d presented them, neither of the pirates ducked behind the blast doors to protect their heads.
The pirate on the left caught a plasma bolt in the face and dropped. The other went down when his weapon was struck by one of Volcair’s shots and its power cell detonated, causing a small but powerful explosion that blasted the pirate’s smoking corpse backward.
Volcair stood up and cautiously emerged from his cover, slowly advancing along the corridor. Only the vorgal remained unaccounted for, and there was only one place he could have gone.
Ice flowed through Volcair’s veins.
“Hop down and give me eyes in that room, Cyph,” Volcair whispered as he neared the opening.
Cypher slid down and, despite his weight, landed silently on the floor. The inux kept low, nearly crawling on his belly as he crept to the open bay door. Volcair split his attention between the optic feed and his immediate surroundings.
One of Cypher’s optics snaked around the doorframe and into the bay to reveal a huge chamber filled with neat rows of crates and transport containers of varying compositions and sizes. A group of aliens with bound arms was kneeling amongst the smaller crates not far from the door—a male azhera, a female borian, a female volturian, and three terrans.
It was one of the terrans who commanded Volcair’s attention—a tall, brown-skinned female with dark, curly hair and big, brown eyes. Though he hadn’t seen her since she was a near-fourteen-year-old girl, he couldn’t ever have mistaken Kiara for anyone else. He recognized her like they’d only said goodbye yesterday. She was more beautiful than he remembered, more beautiful than he’d imagined possible.
And the vorgal pirate stood behind her with his arm around her neck and the barrel of a blaster against the side of her head.
“Vanguard team has entered the aft airlock,” said someone over Volcair’s commlink. “Commander, what is your location?”
“Cargo hold, aft cargo bay. Secure the upper deck,” Volcair replied.
The pirate holding Kiara stared at the bay door with wide, panicked eyes.
A last, desperate move, Volcair reminded himself.
“Sending a squad to assist you, Commander.”
“Negative,” Volcair replied. “I have a delicate situation here. Secure the upper deck; we have at least three hostiles at large.”
There was too great a chance of the nervous pirate harming the hostages if he was confronted by a Dominion strike team.
Volcair lowered his left arm and tapped on the wall lightly. When Cypher looked back at him, Volcair switched off his commlink transmissions, sank into a crouch, and beckoned the inux closer. Cypher retracted his extended optic and padded to Volcair.
“Have to move quickly. Use the containers as cover to get behind him,” Volcair whispered.
Cypher nodded.
Volcair advanced to the edge of the doorway with Cypher directly in front of him. “I am the commander of this space station,” he called.
“I’ll shoot her,” the vorgal shouted.
Glancing down, Volcair watched through Cypher’s feed as the inux peered around the corner again.
Baring her teeth, Kiara struggled against her captor’s hold. The vorgal pirate shifted his attention to her as he wrestled her back. Volcair tightened his grip on his blaster, forcing himself to remain in place, and nudged Cypher’s flank with his boot.
The inux darted into the cargo bay, crossing the small open space to take cover in the rows of crates and containers.
“I am your only chance to negotiate a way out of this,” Volcair said, monitoring Cypher’s progress on the feed. “Harm any of these hostages, and you will not walk away.”
“You think I’m afraid to die?”
“No. But I think you do not want to die, which means we can work this out.”
Kiara was in the next room, only a few meters away, but Volcair couldn’t see her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t know she was okay. The thumping of his heart resonated throughout his body.
Hurry, Cypher.
“Think I’m going to fall for that? I agree to any deal you give me, and there’ll be a Dominion hit squad waiting for me at the other end.”
The images on the control unit’s screen shifted wildly as Cypher went through a series of turns. When it stabilized, the inux was looking down a long row of crates—the pirate stood at the end, still clutching Kiara, his left side in profile to Cypher.
Cypher crept to the right side of the aisle—where he was most likely to remain outside the pirate’s field of view—and stalked forward.
“That does not need to be the
truth,” Volcair said. He held his breath as Cypher closed to within a few meters of his target.
“You Dominion worms are all about honor until it comes to dealing with anyone outside your system. Then you lie through your damned teeth.”
“I promise you,” Volcair said as Cypher’s feed wobbled and drew back slightly, “there will be no hit squad in your future.”
Cypher leapt at the vorgal, front legs outstretched. His claws sharpened into four-centimeter-long talons an instant before they sank into the back of the pirate’s thigh.
The pirate screamed, and Volcair, blaster raised, rounded the corner.
Cypher dangled from the back of the pirate’s leg, kicking his back paws to shred the pirate’s pants and the flesh of his calf beneath. Blood streamed from the open wounds. Kiara wrenched herself out of the pirate’s hold and fell forward. The female borian shifted aside, breaking Kiara’s fall with her own body.
Volcair pulled the trigger three times as he advanced. Each bolt found its mark in the center of the pirate’s chest. Cypher disentangled himself from his prey just before the vorgal collapsed backward.
Switching his commlink back on, Volcair hurried to the bound hostages. “I have secured the hostages in the cargo hold, aft bay. Vanguard, you are free to sweep the entire ship.”
He meant to survey the Starlight’s crew for injuries, meant to ask if they were hurt, if anyone was unaccounted for, but his eyes met Kiara’s first, and he froze. Warmth blossomed across his chest and swept along his qal—a sensation he’d not felt in nineteen years, a sensation part of him had hoped wouldn’t come if he ever met her again.
It was the answer to a question that had haunted him since he was sixteen years old, and it was the answer he’d feared.
He couldn’t move on from Kiara.
Chapter Five
A torrent of emotions swept through Kiara—surprise, disbelief, joy, desolation, abandonment, regret—as she stared into those familiar, faintly glowing white-blue eyes. Years of heartache flashed through her memory one at a time, each more impactful than the last.