A’tem’s departing “Yes, ma’am” was a point in fact. His tone and manner stated he knew what she’d said was true; too bad Royce had never accepted her feelings as they were.
* * * *
Galanti Engine room
“Wulf, get over here!”
Iolyn’s voice roused him from a light nap. Wulf approached the station where his two brothers had been working on the tunnel trap overrides. Maren now stood with them.
Concern—and something akin to fear—etched all three men’s faces.
“What’s the problem? Another pirate in the tunnels?”
“No, your gemate is in the tunnels!” Iolyn said.
“What?” Wulf shoved his brothers out of the way and stared at the screens.
Muttering all the gutter Prime he knew, he glared at the monitor. A slender, raven-haired female clothed in a tattered Alliance Military Command flight suit with a breathing unit covering her face emerged from one of the deceptively milder traps. She approached a dead pirate, an Erian. She had a knife in one hand and a laser pistol in the other. An Erian’s bile-colored blood dripped off the knife.
“What does she think she is doing?” he growled, slamming his fist on the desk. “And why is she carrying a bloody knife?”
She looked so small, so fragile—so easy to kill. This was not how he wanted his first look at her to be.
“She’s doing her job,” Maren said, cutting through Wulf’s shock and anger. “And the cameras seem to be out in the earlier sections of the tunnel. We don’t have surveillance on the docking bay and any of the tunnels leading into it. She must have entered there.”
Wulf ignored Maren’s calm tone. His tunnel vision could not get past Maren’s earlier words. “Her job?”
The older man clarified his earlier comment for Wulf as if he were an infant learning his numbers. “Coming to the aid of a ship attacked by pirates. Her job.”
“You think this is funny, Maren?” Wulf all but growled at his mentor, the man who was more a father to him than his own. “Your niece. My future wife. The mother-to-be of my heirs, who will in turn be future leaders of the Prime people, is crawling through a death trap and you are smiling?”
Maren’s eyes glinted. “You need to see Melina this way. This is her job. She is a warrior just as you or your brothers. Watch and observe. It may give you insight into her character.” Maren turned to leave, then hesitated. “You might think about how you will aid your warrior gemate in doing her duty.”
“Why is she the one in the tunnel? Where are her men? And why in Balcon’s balls don’t we have communication with her? I am sure she must’ve tried to hail us once she reached the ship.” Wulf beat on the blackened monitor that should’ve revealed the docking bay and its maintenance tunnels. The battle or the traitors had knocked out all eyes and ears in that strategic zone.
“She is sacrificing only herself,” Huw stated. “It is what she would do. She wouldn’t allow her men to fight the bastard Parker on Tooh 2—and he was your size, Wulf. The top of her head would only come to your mid-chest.”
“That’s supposed to make sense—or make me feel better about this situation? She is a woman,” Wulf said, then muttered, “and my gemate.”
“Brother, you are thinking as a Prime male with a traditional Prime female. Melina is not typical anything,” Huw offered.
Easy for his brother to say, it wasn’t his gemate in the deadly tunnels.
Muttering dire imprecations, Wulf shoved his brothers out of the way once again and shut down all the traps he could control between her current position and the engine room. The three most deadly, the last three in the final approaches to the engine room access, were still active and would be until Iolyn programmed around them.
“Huw, rearm the traps as she goes past them. We don’t want anyone chancing into the tunnels behind her.”
“What about shutting off the countdown?” Maren suggested.
“Yes. She is here. I will not risk her dying, not after she has come this far.” Wulf’s lips thinned. She has to live so I can blister her ears for endangering herself. “Iolyn, how far have you progressed in reprogramming the final three traps?”
“I almost have the one immediately outside the engine room back under control. But haven’t even started on the other two,” his brother admitted. Iolyn’s face was pale with dread for Melina.
Wulf smothered his fiery fear and anger at the situation under a layer of icy control.
He would not lose Melina. Not now. She was here on his ship. So close.
“Get communication back on in the section right before the first of the uncontrolled traps. She is small enough, she might be able to slither through those two traps with help.”
Wulf knew that all the traps on the ship were aimed at larger male bodies, probably short-sighted of his people, but they had never expected women warriors. The traps were a matter of timing and balance. He could talk her through them if he could contact her.
His brother followed his train of thoughts. “But what about the last one? No one could shimmy through it, not even Melina.”
“I’ll throw my body in front of the laser-array if I have to,” Wulf growled. “She will not die.”
“But you would,” Maren stated.
Wulf stared at his mentor. “And she would live. That’s all that is important.”
* * * *
Mel paused to catch her breath. The first two levels had had no traps, but she’d killed an Erian pirate who’d heard her crawling through the tunnel over a hallway. The only thing that had made the kill easy was the fact the pirate had gotten stuck trying to crawl into the tunnel. She slit the main artery to his brain and left him bleeding to death, hanging half in and half out of the tunnel access.
She kept her knife close at hand after that. Her laser pistol was in her other hand for the non-Erian brand of pirates.
A hissing sound ahead slowed her approach. Eyeing the camera lenses that were spaced every fifty meters or so, she saw that the one just ahead of her indicated a live feed. Finally! She breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe now she could communicate with the Prime. She had a sneaking suspicion her luck on finding no trapping mechanisms would run out sooner rather than later.
“Can anyone hear me?” She repeated the message in Prime just in case the ears on the other end were not multilingual.
Some static came across the speakers in the tunnel. “…watch … not…” Well, that was damn-frigging-fabulous. They had internal communications issues, also.
Approaching the turn in the tunnel with a great deal of caution, she stopped right before the junction. The hissing noise now sounded as if a dozen snakes had made a home in the maintenance tunnel.
Peering around the corner, she spotted a large Erian. The hissing came from him.
He’d been severely injured by the trap. Too bad he wasn’t dead.
Damn, she really hated Erians! They reminded her too much of Antareans.
She eased around the corner and remained just out of his reach. And Erians had very long arms. Just another black mark against them in her book. How was she going to get past the bastard?
“What are you looking at, human bitch?” hissed the injured male.
“You, lizard-bastard,” she stated in a calmly dismissive manner. “Looks like you got caught in the trap.”
“Yes-s-s-s,” he slurred in a low, ugly sibilant tone. “They turned it off right before you approached.”
“That was nice of them.” She smiled at the camera and gave them a finger wave.
“Guess I’ll just have to put you out of your misery then.”
“Try it.” The Erian flicked his long forked tongue over the seam that served as his mouth. “You look tasty. I could use some blood and protein—I heal faster that way.” Damn. Some of the pseudo-reptilian species, pseudo since they walked upright like humanoids, replicated injured body parts if they could stay alive long enough. She would have to make sure that this one failed in the basic biological feat.
Mel examined the Erian, who stared at her with menace in his slitty yellow eyes. The trap had cut him in many places in a cross-hatch fashion. Timing and size would have gotten her through, but she was glad she didn’t have to chance it. Now, she just had to get to the Erian and slit his throat before he touched her. Even bleeding and weak he could overpower her.
“What do you think, human bitch?” The Erian struggled to get up, but only made it to his hands and knees. He still presented a large obstacle. “You think you can get past me?”
She held up her dripping knife. The blood on it was yellow-green. “I just took care of one of your brethren. He’s dead. So, yeah, I think I can.” The Erian smiled, which made his already ugly face look downright monstrous. He flicked his long tongue across his lipless mouth. “I’ve always wanted to taste me a human bitch. Too bad you won’t live long enough to be my pet. I fuck really good.” He thrust his pelvis forward, his spiked penis fully aroused.
“Watch what you let hang out, lizard,” she snarled. “It’ll get cut off.” To demonstrate, she aimed her laser at his sex organ and seared it off. He would not live long enough to regenerate it. Lasers might not work on their thick epidermis but soft tissue was fair game.