She drew back. Had she conveyed that? She hadn’t meant to; she was impatient because what she wanted to know was if he could manipulate the guards, or, even better, the operator up in that control room.
“No, sorry. I mean, yes. I mean, I can care later. It’s just not what I was asking about now.” She rubbed her face, feeling the heat in her cheeks. Why was this flustering her?
Fortunately, he looked more amused than hurt or annoyed. “I can’t believe I’m making this huge confession about my past and who I am, and none of it fazes you. Most people would be jumping off the bunk and thinking me a mutant by now. And a threat.”
McCall snorted. “Like I’m going to judge someone for their genes. You should see all my mutations. My dad was a scientist and spent ten years studying oceanology on the toxic-sludge-filled planet of Umbra before going off to fall in love with and marry my mom. That’ll hork up your genes for a couple of generations. And he wasn’t even normal to start with. He was like me and my sister. My poor mom was so confused by all of us.”
He seemed taken aback by her deluge. Maybe she shouldn’t have shared it. But he’d been sharing his life story. Hadn’t it been her turn? This was what people did when they were stuck together in prisons, wasn’t it? She was positive it happened in all the action-adventure holovids.
“At least your genes give you useful powers,” she finished.
“Hm, yours seem to, too.”
“Hardly.”
“That’s them,” a deep voice said.
Dash tensed and ducked his head to stand up between the bunks.
McCall grimaced. She had expected trouble when those thugs had approached them earlier in the day. She wished she had some more of those grenades she and Scipio had jury-rigged. Though those would kill people who weren’t in combat armor, and that was never her goal. They had only wanted to concuss Axton, at least daze him for a minute, long enough to get back onto the ship and escape.
“Law enforcer,” the voice said as McCall stood up behind Dash. There wasn’t room enough for them to stand side by side in the aisle between bunkbeds.
She peered around his arm and didn’t think she recognized the speaker, but she couldn’t be sure. She struggled to tell people apart when they all wore the same uniforms and were all covered with the same black coal dust.
“This isn’t a good place to be a law enforcer,” someone else said.
The people in the nearby bunks slunk away while others from elsewhere came closer, joining the big man making accusations.
“Law enforcer?” Dash asked. “You’ve got the wrong person. I’m just a pilot.”
McCall backed toward the narrow aisle between the wall and the heads of the bunks. She looked both ways, groping for inspiration. She was accurate with projectile weapons but a klutz when it came to hand-to-hand combat, despite the numerous lessons she’d paid for over the years. Early on in her career, she’d learned it was wisest to just find the criminals and leave the apprehending of them to others.
“A pilot law enforcer,” the big man snarled, then laughed. Pleased with his wit, was he?
McCall spotted Rose Akerele. She sat several bunks down, talking to the two men who’d collected her from the guard earlier. She didn’t seem to have noticed the people gathering around Dash, or maybe she wanted to stay out of trouble.
Though she hated to leave Dash with nobody at his back, McCall hurried toward the woman. If she could get help, that would be more useful than her own meager fighting skills.
“Rose,” she blurted, skidding to a stop in front of her bunk.
The two men surged to their feet. As if McCall was the threat.
“Yes… Captain?” The professor recognized her from the ship, but McCall didn’t know if that was a good thing. They had never spoken. Axton had been protective of his prisoners and kept her away from them. “Richter, I believe I heard?” the woman added.
“Yes. It’s Dash—Arjun Deshmukh. He needs help. He’s one of you.” McCall waved to include all three of them, though she could only assume the men were in the Alliance. Why else would they have drawn Rose aside earlier?
“One of us?” the man who’d carried the toolbox before, a mechanic presumably, asked.
“Alliance,” McCall whispered by habit. It was a curse word in most of the empire. Whether that would be true here or not, she did not know.
An indignant shout came from farther up the bay, from where McCall had left Dash. It wasn’t his voice, but she had a feeling any attempts he was making to manipulate minds wasn’t working.
“Are there more of you here?” McCall asked. “Enough to help him?”
The mechanic leaned out into the main aisle to look at the growing crowd.
“Uh, no. Not against that many.”
“We would be risking our necks to help him, regardless,” the second man said.
“He’s a pilot. Your people need pilots, don’t they?” McCall tried to think of an argument that would sway them to help, since she didn’t have a backup plan. If those men attacked en masse, Dash wouldn’t have a chance at surviving, and he was her only ally here. She touched her bracelet. The only person who cared about helping her.
“He’s nothing here,” the mechanic said. “The same as the rest of us. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to escape for months, but there are forcefields that block the exits or doors that require a retina scan or palm print. As much as we’d like to, we can’t knock out the guards and use their palms.” He twitched a frustrated hand toward his temple. “The only tech in this place, and it’s in the locks.”
McCall waved away the detail for later consideration. “I can get us out. But I need Dash’s help. He’ll pilot us out of here once we get to a dome and find a ship.”
“Aren’t you listening, girl?” the second man asked. “We can’t get out of the facility.”
“Yes, we can. But we need his help.” McCall barely resisted the urge to grab their arms and forcibly propel them into the aisle and toward the fight. And only because she doubted it would work. “We’ll take you with us when we go.”
“How noble of you,” the mechanic said.
A smack drifted to them. It sounded like the smack of a fist striking flesh. Shouts followed, drowning out further fight sounds. McCall clenched her fists.
“Will you join the Alliance if we help?” Rose asked.
What?
“No,” McCall said before she could consider if a lie might serve her better here. But she couldn’t lie, not about this, not when she would be held accountable later. “But I’ll pay you, make a donation. Whatever.” Even that seemed blasphemy, but if she had to promise something, she could make a monetary gift untraceable. “And Dash is already in it. Don’t you care about your own people? How are you going to win against the empire if you don’t stick together? It’s not like you have the numbers.” McCall was almost yelling to be heard over the chaos of the increasingly loud fight. Was everyone down there against Dash?
Rose looked at the mechanic. “Do you have any more people you can get to help?”
“I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “Walters is the only one who would jump at the opportunity, and he has those broken ribs from the last time he jumped.”
“Check.”
He sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
A scream of pain echoed from the walls. McCall winced. That was Dash.
“Hurry,” she urged the Alliance people, then ran back the way she had come.
Bunks skidded, and bystanders cried out in alarm as they scrambled out of the way. McCall could see people, lots of people, through the posts of the bunkbeds, but she couldn’t tell if Dash was in the middle of it all. Not everybody was engaged in a skirmish. Some of the people on the outside were waving their hands and goading but nothing more.
McCall edged as close as she could and climbed onto an upper bunk. She stood, legs bent for balance since people kept ramming against the posts. It was a precarious perch, but she could see over their heads now.
And she winced again.
Dash was in the middle of the writhing mass, surrounded by thugs. Three men were on the floor at his feet, clutching injuries and groaning, but far more were on their feet and throwing punches.
Two men lunged at Dash from behind and grabbed his arms. He kicked backward, taking one in the gut as the big man who’d originally spoken lunged at him from the front. Dash bent low enough with his kick to avoid the leader’s grasping hands.
Without putting his foot down, he whipped a hook kick toward the second man who’d grabbed him from behind. He twisted his hips and somehow found an angle to pull his foe off balance with his leg. The man released him, wobbling, and Dash grabbed his arm and tugged him further off balance. He heaved his assailant toward the leader.
Unfazed, the leader punched his own cohort in the face and shoved him aside.
Dash jumped back, attempting to give himself space to maneuver, but the crowd closed in, pushing him forward. Someone threw a homemade club, and it struck Dash in the back. For a second, it distracted him, and the leader roared and sprang in, grabbing him by his tunic.
“You’re dead, law man,” he roared.
There was nothing McCall hated more than being useless. Before she knew what she was doing, she leaped off the top bunk, over a man’s head, and landed on the leader’s back.
She squished her boobs and knocked the air from her lungs in the process, but she hung onto the bastard, wrapping her arms around his throat. That was as much to hang on as to choke him, but she realized she was in a position to do the latter and squeezed hard.
Dash blinked in surprise at her sudden appearance but didn’t hesitate for long. He lunged in and rammed a palm strike into the leader’s face. The thug’s head whipped back, almost smashing McCall in the nose. She jerked her face to the side, but his rock-hard skull still caught her in the temple.
Frustrated and hurt, she took out her aggression by choking harder.
The man reached up and grabbed her arms, and with his chest now exposed, Dash rammed an elbow into his sternum. Bone or cartilage crunched audibly. Dash struck again. The leader’s legs buckled. He went down so fast, McCall couldn’t let go in time, and she collapsed on top of him.
Dash hefted her to her feet but released her immediately, balling his hands and spinning to meet another attacker. McCall lifted her own fists, trying to fight down her sheer terror at being in the middle of a writhing, angry mass of people, people who would willingly trample her to get to Dash.
Someone lunged at her, and she ducked, batting the arm away with a wild block. Her adrenaline made the movement so rapid, she almost missed her target.
Before she had to block a second time, shouts came from behind the crowd. The thud of wood or metal striking flesh sounded, and a cry of pain rang out. Some people turned toward the noise. Some people kept fighting.
“Back to back,” Dash barked, pressing his shoulder blades against hers as he squared off with two new opponents.
Another homemade club spun over the crowd toward Dash’s head.
“Down,” McCall ordered.
Instead of crouching, he turned and caught it in midair. He promptly gave it to her even as he blocked a punch from one of his attackers.
She took it, glad to have more than her fists to use against these people. Fortunately, nobody was focusing on her. Most of their assailants had turned toward the new threat from the back. Rose and her Alliance friends? McCall hoped so. She’d hate to think it was another group of belligerent thugs mowing down everyone in their eagerness to reach Dash.
It took a few more minutes, but the fight slowly abated, with people either dropping wounded or unconscious to the floor or shuffling off, abandoning the cause as lost.
McCall found herself facing the mechanic and five other men gripping hammers and wrenches. Rose stood several meters back, watching with a worried expression on her face. She probably feared she’d made things worse for her and her friends by siding with McCall and Dash.
McCall silently vowed that she would make good on her promise, that they would all get out of here soon.
Ragged breathing came from behind her—maybe it had been there the whole time, but the bay had been too loud for her to hear it. Dash. His shoulders were heaving, blood ran from both of his nostrils and a split lip, and his left eye was already swelling shut. But he wore a triumphant expression. There were eight people on the floor around him now.
“You’re not a half-bad fighter,” McCall observed, thinking that would please him.
“Thanks.” He grinned, then wiped his face and looked down at the blood smeared on the back of his hand. “So, is this serum or plasma? Or pus?”
“That’s blood, you loon.” She almost added that technically there was serum in it, but he spoke again.
“So nothing too bad? Good.” His grin widened.
McCall shook her head, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Thanks for the help.” He squeezed her and let go before she could decide if she wanted to inform him that she didn’t like hugging. Scipio would have assured her that this was one of those cases where human touching was appropriate. Besides, it hadn’t been that bad.
“Captain Richter? Deputy Dash?” Rose said, coming forward, her allies flanking her. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dash said. “I was planning to look for you, so it’s convenient that you came to my assistance.”
“Assistance?” the mechanic asked. “We saved your hairy ass, man.”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure McCall here did that.” Dash looked at her, his grin wider than ever. By the suns, had he found this experience exhilarating?
McCall was shaking—from pure terror, not exhilaration.
“That is true,” Rose said. “She’s the reason we came to help.”
“She is?” Dash looked like he was thinking of hugging her again.
McCall decided she wouldn’t mind. She was surprised at how delighted Dash looked, and it made her feel good to know she had been useful. Even if her boobs and her temple hurt. She decided flinging herself onto a man’s back from six feet up wasn’t advisable.
“She’s also the reason why we might all be dead by morning,” the mechanic grumbled.
Dash’s grin finally faded. “Oh? We better talk.”
“That’s what we’ve been saying.”
McCall trailed Dash and the Alliance people to their bunks, wondering if maybe she hadn’t been as useful as she’d thought.
9
Dinner, if one could call a bowl of gruel such, had been served shortly after Dash’s fight and had distracted everyone for a time. Thankfully, the lights had been dimmed for the night soon after. A couple of bulbs burned in the halls to either end of the bay, so Dash could make out the faces of the Alliance people, a group of nine including Rose, as they sat together and spoke.
Rose wasn’t saying much since, as a newcomer, she didn’t know any more than Dash did. He, McCall, and the Alliance people sat facing each other on two lower bunks. A young man with bandaged ribs sprawled on one of the upper bunks kept leaning over the side to look down at them. His blue eyes gleamed with keen interest, and Dash thought he looked familiar, but nobody had introduced him yet, unless telling him to relax and let the higher-ranking officers figure things out counted.
McCall sat on the end of the bunk next to Dash, perched on the very edge and looking like she would rather not have been dragged over to this meeting. She had approached these people but only to help him. And damn if he wasn’t grateful for that help. He had sensed that the big brute wanted to kill him simply because some other law enforcer had put him in this place.
A lot of the people here wanted to kill him now that they knew about his law-enforcement career. Even in the dim lighting, Dash could feel their stares coming from bunks up and down the bay. He’d had to wall off his mind the best he could because he could also sense the loathing emanating from them.
“There are cameras,” the mechanic—
Jae-yoon, Dash had learned his name was—said. “We can’t sit here and plot for long or someone will come in to break it up. Tell us what you need to know. She—” he thrust an accusing finger toward McCall, “—said you could get us all out of here if we helped.”
“We would have helped one of our own anyway, if the odds hadn’t been so far against us,” a burly, broad-shouldered man said—James. Dash had met him on the floor earlier where he’d been loading coal at one of the other furnaces. “But we’re in the minority here, as you may have noticed. And by helping you… Like Jae-yoon said, we could get jumped in the morning and be thrown in the furnaces now that we’re associated with you. It’s happened to people before.”
“The last law man ended up in there,” Jae-yoon said.
“I don’t suppose it helps that I’ve been a deputy for less than a year and only got into the job to help the Alliance,” Dash said.
“We like that, but it won’t matter to them.”
“I would have helped,” the young man on the upper bunk said. He had shaggy blond bangs that hung in his eyes. “But nobody came and got me.”
“Because you’re injured.” Jae-yoon gave him an exasperated look.
“I still would have helped one of our own. I’m Walters.” He tried to extend a hand down toward Dash but winced in pain and thought better of the gesture. “I’m going to be a lieutenant soon. I just finished school, and I’m going to become a pilot. Like my uncle. I’m going to be a hero!”
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