Daahn Rising (26 page)

He glanced at the doors to the cells, nodding his agreement, grinding his teeth in frustration. “You’re right. Let’s go. With this many, we’d better come in armored.”

Her heart skipped in fear. She looked to the lights, thankful that the Xxan wouldn’t be able to leave their cells without being blinded.

Jacks punched in the code to unlock the cell block door, and the attack came. Miri smelled the Xxan coming from the two closest cells before she saw or heard them. She grasped Jacks’s sidearm and whirled around, thumbing the weapon lock and cutting down the three closest.

The return shot hit her upper arm, sending Miri falling into Jacks. They went down together, the human grasping at the gun as it slipped from her tingling fingers.

The unlocked door opened, spilling them into the main corridor, just as the security doors slammed shut, isolating the combatants from the rest of the ship.

Jacks started to bring the gun up. He stopped halfway.

Miri stared up at him, noting his shifting eyes in terror. She turned her head, her mouth going dry at the sight of the two Xxanian males. One was a young Dominant. The other —

“
Master Haauulen,
” she breathed.

The human martial master lunged for her, dragging Miri up by her injured arm, nearly bringing her feet entirely off the floor. She panted back a scream of pain, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

“No!” Jacks brought the gun up.

The Dominant did the same.

“
No,
” Miri ordered. She switched back to English. “Put it down, Jacks.”

“They’ll kill us,” he protested.

“Faster if you do this than not. The security doors mean they know?”

“Fuck.” His gun clattered to the floor.

She met Haauulen’s eyes through both sets of dark glasses
.
“
Where are the other guards? Are they dead?
”

“
They were more trouble than prize.
”

A sob rose in her throat, and Miri swallowed it down. “Dead,” she whispered. “They’re dead already.”

“We are completely screwed,” Jacks said decidedly.

Haauulen propelled her past Jacks and toward the security door. “
Open it. Open it, or you both die.
”

****

“Welcome back, Daahn,” MacNair greeted him. “I understand congratulations are in order.”

Aleeks smiled, all-too-aware of the pleasant aches of an extended mating frenzy.

“Damn, but you all get that same look on your faces afterward, even Evan after Zondra.”

“You’ve read the file?” Aleeks asked.

“Completely. She’ll be a good ally, especially now that we’ve got prisoners.”

Aleeks’s smile faded. “Xxanian warriors?” Just the thought of them on the same ship with Miri made him want to fight.

“Yeah. Five tough customers. A Grea Elder, two Dominants and two Subdominants.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me they were on board?” He’d have to warn Miri. Maybe he’d have a guard assigned to their door, until the Xxan were transferred.

“You were busy at the time.”

Aleeks’s retort was preempted by the screaming of alarms and the bark of speakers. He dimly noted weapons fire in the primary cell block. If their men were firing, the situation was pretty bad.

“Security doors?” Aleeks shouted, knowing a Xxanian threat meant his team was in charge.

“Door seven open. All security doors shut tight,” the recruit at the board reported smartly.

The chief at his side nodded, confirming it.

“Get me a visual,” Aleeks ordered. The corridor door was open? That was bad news. One of theirs would have had to enter the code. With any luck, all five Xxan were still inside the lockdown that surrounded the primary cell block.

“Coming up,” the recruit offered. “Camera one.”

Three dead Xxan lay on the floor.

“Down to two,” Aleeks noted. That was good news. He’d much rather take down two than five.

Sounds of a scuffle whispered from the speakers — a shout of “No!” in English, then something he didn’t catch.

“Get me the other view, now,” Aleeks shouted.

“Camera two online now.”

Jacks lay half collapsed in the corridor, his jaw clenched tight, in an armed standoff with a Dominant. He glared at the Grea Elder, then the lesser Dominant, throwing the gun at the latter with a clear “fuck.” His eyes flicked back to the elder, a move Aleeks was certain meant the Xxan held one of their own hostage behind his larger body.

“What the hell is Jacks d —”

The voice emitted from the speakers stopped his heart for a few beats. He listened, firmly rooted in disbelief, numb to all but the most basic information. The guards left on duty had been killed without a shot. Miri was inexplicably in the middle of an uprising, trapped by those ordered to kill her.

Aleeks’s gaze locked on Jacks.
I’ll kill him.
He didn’t question that the lieutenant had done this. Miri knew better than to approach another Dominant without her mate.

The elder shoved Miri through the door and into the corridor. A burn mark on the white of her tunic caught his eyes before she disappeared.

“Corridor view,” Aleeks ordered. He had to know how bad her injuries were.

“Camera ten,” the recruit offered.

Miri laughed, a manic sound, cradling her injured arm.
“
I cannot. They aren’t controlled from here.
”

“Ah, shit,” MacNair breathed.

The elder grasped her by the arms, pulling Miri up and to him, until her toes barely touched the floor. “
You will
—” He stopped, scenting her, burying his face in her throat.

Aleeks tensed.

Miri brought her left hand up for a blow to his unarmored chest. The hand faltered, then fell short; she screamed in agony. By the blood streaming down her right arm, Aleeks deduced the elder had purposely reopened her blast wound.

A hand settled on his shoulder, and Aleeks shook it off with a growl. He dimly heard MacNair warning the interloper away.

On the screen, Jacks lunged for them, shouting out an order to halt. The younger Dominant threw him to the wall and pinned him there with a rumbling and a head movement that warned Jacks was exceeding the amount of trouble the Xxan would put themselves to in order to keep him alive as leverage.

“What is he doing?” Jacks asked, clearly horrified, probably believing the elder meant to rip her throat out.

She shied from the elder’s examination, choking on another cry of pain.

“Talk to me, Miri Daahn,” Jacks ordered.

The Grea Elder dropped her. Miri backed away from him, trembling hard, her jaw clenched and her hand clamped over the open wound. She didn’t look around at Jacks. Her gaze stayed locked on the greatest threat... the elder.

“
Where is your mate, Mirienne?
” he inquired.

She shook her head, glancing to the active camera and then away, as if she knew Aleeks was watching.

“
Is he Xxanian?
”

She hesitated for a moment. “
No.
”

“Miri, what is he saying?” Jacks demanded.

“Quiet,” she cautioned him.

Cruel laughter escaped the elder’s lips.
“
A human, but he will come for you. He will come for your Zhigaaah.
”

Miri straightened. “
Yes. He will.
”

Aleeks nodded. “Good. He thinks I’m human. That will make killing him —”

The words stuck in his throat at the sight of the younger Dominant handing one of the captured weapons off to the elder.

He shook his head in sick disbelief. They couldn’t mean to kill her. Aleeks’s killing rage wasn’t something the Grea Elder would want to fuck with while he was still in the midst of —
They think I’m human.

Miri tripped away from him, colliding with the wall, her knees buckling as the weapon came up.

And farther up. The first light bank flashed, then went dark. Miri covered her head with her uninjured arm.

Jacks surged against the Dominant holding him, going down hard around the fist planted in his chest. He landed next to Miri, a grimace of pain on his face and his arms wrapped around ribs that were likely broken.

The elder shot out the second light bank, then the ones in the cell block, plunging the corridor into darkness.

A cry of pain from Miri ended on a strangled gasp. Jacks rasped out her name.

The elder’s voice broke the near silence from the speakers. “
Let him come.
”

Aleeks pushed away from the console, marching toward the lockers in tight-lipped fury. MacNair fell in beside him.

“I’m going,” Aleeks informed him.

“I know it. She’s your mate.” He shot a dangerous smile at Aleeks, the same one Aleeks had seen MacNair shoot his
gran-seir
many times. “Let me come along.”

“No. You’ll give my position away.”

“That could come in handy,” MacNair pointed out. “More to the point,
I
could give my position away, at the right moment.”

Aleeks considered it, weighing three trained men, one injured, against Miri’s life. “No. Too risky.”

“I stood with your
gran-seir
.” And fifty years later, MacNair still took pride in it.

“Against humans.” Aleeks coded his locker open and started suiting up.

“May I remind you that I brought your
gran-seir
down myself? Alone? Without your high-tech armor?”

That did factor in favorably, Aleeks had to admit. “Can you be invisible?” he challenged. “If you give me away before I’m close enough to —”

“Boy, I trained at it before your
seir
was born. I taught every unit commander, including you, and as I recall,
you
couldn’t find me.”

Aleeks felt his lips twitch at the reminder and fought the smile down. He’d been a recruit, but he remembered how good MacNair was. “If you cost me Miri — if you even endanger her — I’ll leave you for dead, my
seir
and
gran-seir
be damned.”

MacNair grinned widely. “Understood,” he offered, Aleeks’s typical reply to that threat.

Aleeks coded him into Arris’s locker, noting the similar body type and height. “If you get yourself in it, you’re on your own.”

“Your mate is your only goal,” he translated.

“My primary goal.” That was a lie. The fact that protecting his mate meant doing his military duty of eliminating the Xxanian threat to the ship and crew was a coincidence he’d happily exploit. Miri came first; the ship and crew could be damned for all he cared.

MacNair swallowed down what looked suspiciously like a chuckle. “Of course.”

In less than five minutes, they were suited up and ordering the chief at security to let them through one door at a time. It was nerve-racking, but with the lights out in the cell block corridor, they couldn’t be certain where the Xxan were. Though it was unlikely, they had to assume the prisoners were outside the containment area. Only updates of silence over the mics kept him sane. No weapons fire, fighting, or screams meant Miri was safe for the moment... and likely precisely where he expected to find her.

At the final door, things were more complicated. The two guards trapped between the doors were evacuated, and the door behind them closed them in again. Using the punch pad on his wrist, Aleeks ordered the lights extinguished and the air normalized between their section and the section they had to enter.

While they prepped for that change, Aleeks removed his glasses and set them aside, sealing his face mask to still his air and hide the last of his scent. MacNair’s mask was already in place. Though Aleeks had taken Miri down without the mask, he wouldn’t take that chance with a Dominant who was using her as a shield. This time, involuntary sounds were a real possibility.

A tone in his earpiece let Aleeks know the conditions were ideal. He tapped an order to unlock the door. Using his fingertips, Aleeks eased it open, using the ventilation flow to hide the shifting barrier.

That accomplished, he flowed toward the elder on the pad of sound-absorbing boot soles. Aleeks tried not to fixate on the weapon barrel planted beneath Miri’s chin, on the streaks of dark blood on her white tunic and hand, on her trembling.

While MacNair needed his light-gathering goggles to see what was happening, Aleeks, Miri, and the Xxan could see as well in the near-total darkness as a human could on a lightly starlit night. In short, the only reason the Xxan couldn’t see them was the uniformly black clothing and gear blending into shadows in darkness, shades of black on black that rendered them invisible.

The Xxan weren’t similarly protected. Nor were they stilling their air, believing they were facing a single human.

In a few tense moments, Aleeks was situated behind his prey. He met MacNair’s eyes through the masks and nodded slightly.

The admiral kicked the young Dominant’s weapon away from Jacks, following with a fist to the Xxan’s unarmored heart, taking the hulking reptile to the deck plates. The elder’s gun left Miri and swung toward MacNair.

Aleeks didn’t waste a moment. He grasped the elder by the wrist and wrenched, snapping the bone. He let the weapon fall, noting Miri landing on her knees as the elder twisted around and went for Aleeks with his uninjured hand.

It was the wrong answer. With his mate endangered, the killing rage had his blood boiling to avenge her. Aleeks hissed out his intentions in Xxan, cursing the face mask that compressed his extending ridge plates.

The elder’s eye slits widened in surprise, his gaze panned to the misshapen hood of Aleeks’s uniform, and he faltered in attack. Aleeks didn’t. His punch crushed his adversary’s windpipe, and the elder’s head rocked back.

But the Xxan was still a threat to Miri. There were any number of attacks the elder could use before lack of oxygen incapacitated him.

As if in confirmation, the bastard made to grab for her. Aleeks grasped the elder’s jaw and snapped his neck, pushing him away to die silently.

The remaining Dominant and MacNair were in motion, their weapons swinging toward each other. MacNair got a shot into the Xxanian warrior’s shoulder, as Aleeks took him down with a head shot.