Handsome Devil (16 page)

The ship rights itself again.

The alarm starts to screech.

No fucking way.

Betty and I lock gazes. “Pirates,” we say together.

Chapter Ten

Shit. Fuck. Damn. Hell on Earth and a twisty pretzel Mother Theresa to boot. Pirates again?! What is this, a drivethru for larceny and kidnapping?

This is really not what I need. I run to the computer and access it with a few taps. Betty already has one blaster out and firing at the armory lock. Ships are built with blasters in mind—if they weren't we'd have been sucked into space a long time ago. The lock, however, is more for precaution than real security, its flimsy plastic form melting before you can say 'shake rattle and roll'. The burning odor fills the air as I rapidly flip through image after image. I growl in frustration—this screen is too tiny! I spread my hands out and with a motion enlarge the view two thousand times, giving me a scale insight into what's happening.

I scan the readings. “They're docking already. Nine life forms total boarding. Three still back on their tub. They must have scanned us before linking up; they're heading this way.”

Betty tosses me two pistols and straps a double barrel over one shoulder. “How did they get through without us noticing?”

“
M'anu's security isn't worth shit,” I grouse, tucking one gun into the back of my waistband. “If we get out of this alive, I am bulking this system up like the Hulk.” I swear it on my freakin' life this time.

She flips a knife and slides it into her boot. “Use your magic, babycakes.”

I'm already on it. I access their control panel—pitifully easy, by the way—and disable their internal communication. No transmissions will go in or out without my say so. They'll have to rely on sight and training. Hopefully there won't be too much of the training part. I can't get their ship to go into red alert. I'll give it to them; that much of their partitions is rock solid. “Load up the weaponry into transportable portions,” I tell her over my shoulder. “Get it as near to the main portal as you can.”

“
What am I, three? I taught you this shit, Jules.”

“
Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I don't have time for this. “I'm letting M'anu out of the brig. Even up the numbers.”

“
Go for it. Lover boy will come in handy.”

Hopefully he's awake by now. I bring up the prison screen. The viewer will appear on his wall, and it only takes seconds for him to come into focus.

He's already waiting. “What happened?”

“
We've been boarded,” I tell him without preamble. My fingers are flying through the necessary codes. “We're near the bridge and there are nine headed this way.”

The growling started before I even finished the first sentence. It almost overpowers anything I have to say. I'm not going to nitpick though. “I'm releasing the field so that you can—”

The screen disappears. Totally. Not the prison screen, the entire thing on my wall. “M'anu?” I slap the smooth surface. Nothing. My heart starts to pound as dread fills my gut. “Shit!”

Betty's crouching beside the main doorway. “What?”

“
They froze the goddamn system!” How the hell did that happen? They can't even keep track of their communication links! “I can't do anything remotely! The only way M'anu is getting out is if we   go down there and manually release the field.”

“
Shit,” Betty swears viciously. “That's not good.” She throws another gun at me, which I catch without thinking. “Get your ass down here, babycakes. We can't do anything for him now. The field will absorb any blasts. He'll be protected.”

I position myself quickly, taking up my share of the impressive payload my sister managed to compile. “Yeah, until they bring it down and shoot him where he stands.” My hands are steady as a rock, but my voice is shaking like a leaf on the wrong end of a snow blower.

“
He's tougher than that, Jules. Now shut up and stay alive.”

I press my shoulders flat to the wall and nod, closing my eyes. She's right. We're here, he's there, and there's nothing I can do about either situation if I don't get my head in the game. My shirt bunches up at my waist, the lifeless plastic of the molding sticking to my skin. I'm not scared. I'm freaked out, but I'm not scared. If there's anybody I have to be in a firefight with, it's Betty. M'anu would chew these jokers up and spit them out, but believe me, Betty is no one to fuck with either.

I open my eyes and glance at her. She's listening to the approaching footsteps on the catwalk. Sounds like a fucking army is on its way to get us. Her brows pinch. I know exactly what she's thinking—these guys can't be stealthy to save their lives. Sure, the hit to our ship gave them away, but getting the drop on us would still be a good idea.

Or do they seriously not know who they're dealing with?

She slashes bright green eyes my way, her hair already escaping her teeny tiny pony tail. She's got the medium sized blaster primed and ready to go, tucked against her torso as she balances on her combat boots. I'm a little higher up but not standing. Funny how we fell into that old familiar positioning without thinking about it.
High road and low road, but sure as hell not head road
.
 

Mom would be proud.

After she blew everybody and their brother away.

They're coming closer. I flip the switch on my blaster and pull out another, armed to the teeth.

We're as ready as we're ever going to be, and they're clattering up the stairs. Betty raises her blaster in one hand and holds up a finger.

Ready.

Two fingers.

Set.

A pause.

Go.

I swing around the doorjamb, both blasters firing in succession. Betty is right under me, belting out big blasts of energy that feel like she's killing air and sound at the same time. I see the figures of humanoids before I make out things like hair and faces, but I'm too busy pulling the trigger to give a damn about details like that. The more people that fall the better.

There are screams and strangled cries. Three seconds into the assault, there's a projectile that clips me hard in the shoulder and then falls on Betty's head, clattering to the side in her abandoned corner. It's a canister, designed to explode in a burst of light that will trigger the neurosensors that induce sleep.

“
Eyes!” I shout.

We both duck at the same time, covering our heads.

Zeeen!

The release of energy is high pitched and disorienting. We dodge back into our corners. I shake my head to clear it. Jesus, I can barely hear out of the left. Not good.

The firing has stopped and there's a voice that rings out over the walkway. “We've come for the Agmoiria!”

Duh. “Which one?” I shout back, still rubbing one eye. It's purely to buy time. Damn, those bright spots really stick with you. I blink rapidly, trying to focus on the handle protruding from the wall a few feet from me.

A pause. “The one with a bounty on her head.”

What, like that is specific?

“
Must be new,” Betty remarks, already loading up the next blaster.

Yeah, seriously. There are two of us and eight more at home. For all this guy knows, he has Belle and Jenna on his hands, and all they ever get is petty larceny stuff. Hardly worth priming a ship for.

Shoddy work, I say.

And you know what? More than a little insulting.

Apparently Betty thinks so too. “Listen, dickweed, if you don't know who you're here for, you might as well get the fuck off of our ship and stop wasting our time.”

Preach it.

Now he's acting like
we
boarded
his
tub or something. “Does it matter which one? You're both worth money, so why don't you stop shooting the shit and get your pretty asses out here?”
 

I don't wait for Betty's take. I just hook my gun around the corner and fire.

There's a howl. “FUCK! You shot my toe, you bitch!”

Hey, that was lucky! I was hoping to scare him, maybe make him stumble down the stairs or something. Sweet.

Betty smirks and holds up a surprise. Ooh, a flash bomb. The old fashioned kind too. I give her a thumbs up.

She pulls the pin and swings back, sending it bowling down the aisle. She's good at that.

We stick our fingers in our ears.

Boom.

We don't have to communicate much after that—this stuff has been drilled into us since we were kids. Other girls played with Barbies and dolls. My mom gave me a toy blaster and a codebreaker. We used to pretend we were breaking into Fort Knox.

It's not as impenetrable as you would think.

Betty takes point and dashes onto the walkway. I'm right behind her, my blasters up, one extended further than the other. My torso is twisted, keeping my abdomen protected as I pick off the stragglers. There is no 'set to stun' up in this mug. I have had enough of pirates this week, and so I go after these fuckers with no mercy.

It's bloody. It's messy, but it's not cruel. I'm here to put these assholes in their place, not draw out their suffering.

Betty leans left and I lean right, squeezing out shot after shot. They start to fire back, but there's not that many still alive. I twist behind one of the naked columns to dodge return blasting and keep on going, bringing up the gun and getting off a shot to the chest. Boom. Dead.

I might have nightmares about this later, but I doubt it. Some part of me that gives a fuck has shut down. Maybe Betty isn't the only psycho in our family.

The blasters are going off like a Gatling gun. Right hand squeeze, left hand squeeze, repeat. I rarely miss a shot.

Metal tings. Lights flash. Smoke is filling up the walkway. It's starting to smell like roast pig. Betty has somehow lost her blaster and is duking it out hand to hand with some squat little man with orange skin. I adjust five degrees and fire, and suddenly half his head is missing.

Betty shoots me a dirty look but keeps going.

Way to thank me, big sister.
 

There's a pause in the commotion. I keep my eyes and ears peeled, looking for any signs of life. I pick my way through the carnage. There are corpses strewn over the catwalk like a scene from a sci-fi movie, sightless gazes staring at nothing. My head hurts like hell, and I've only just recovered from a dislocated shoulder, but all in all I think Betty and I did pretty well.

Betty pauses in checking one of the bodies, her hand half around the pistol butt she was swiping. “Jules.”

“
Yeah?” I barely spare her a glance.

“
I only count seven.”

Something in me goes cold. “What?”

“
Seven. That's it.”

There were nine life readings. I pale.

Betty starts pocketing weapons like crazy, tucking stuff into every available loop and cranny she has. “They could be hiding.”

“
Or they could have found something they weren't supposed to.” I won't say what. I refuse to. I can't go there in my head. My brain actively rejects any attempt at thought other than getting through the next few minutes. The millisecond Betty tucking away her last gun, I kneel and ditch the mini blasters for one the next size up. It's not the same kind Betty had earlier—I'm all about versatility. She's the one that blows them away with one pull of the trigger. I do pull a knife, though. Fuck what I said earlier about blades in a gun fight. If it gets dirty, I'm going to be prepared.

I wipe an icy bead of sweat from my neck. “I don't suppose you have sleeping powder stashed away in your bra, do you? We could pump it through the system and wait for them to drop.”

She snorts, getting up and taking point again. “Sure, right after I pull the gas masks out of my ass. Get real, Jules. The only powder that gets near these babies is the kind that makes you see hot men doing the tango.”

“
I'm telling Mom you said that.” It's banter, pure and simple. Anything to keep going.

“
It was a joke, you tattletale. Sniffing stuff from my tits. What am I, a contortionist?” She descends the stairs one step at a time, going backwards so she can see under the deck. I stay on the catwalk to keep the vantage point, prepared to blow anything non-Ferissian away. So help me, if we find M'anu damaged in any way other than the way I left him...someone is going to find out just how stupid it is to piss a Jenner girl off.

Except for the hum of the ship still pumping out life support, things are quiet. Way too quiet. Itchy goosebumps course down my spine. M'anu wouldn't be sitting pretty in his cell while his ship was attacked. I should be hearing roaring.

Please don't let him be dead.

He's not. He's just being quiet. He knows better than to draw attention to himself.

There's just the slightest trembling in my hand.
Get it together, Jenner
, I snap at myself.
Head in the game.
 

The hangar is like a ghost town. There's a good chance someone could be crouching behind one of the half dozen cages M'anu has sitting around. That's another thing we're going to have to change. Too many hiding spots. I want open space, where I can see what the hell is going on.

I scan each and every crevice, wishing we had at least one more person on our team. I'm dying to get down there and brush past Betty. I want to see for myself that M'anu is alright. Doing so might get one or all of us killed, though. Betty is the one trained take point. I'm the eye in the sky, the one that keeps everybody's asses from being fried. Mom always said that I could be an enforcer if I wanted to.

I just want to be the tech geek. Hell, I just want to be naked in bed with M'anu and have a week's worth of rations sitting within arm's reach.

I glance down. I can see Betty through the grating beneath my feet. She's creeping along, dodging the blood dripping down. She's ready to dance.