Silver's Captive (7 page)

He looked down at the woman lying on the med bed, her skin a pallid white, her natural glow leeched out of her.

“What other options are there? She could have taken it herself. Do you keep Philiris in your quarters? I don’t think so. Besides, she’d have to know what it was. Someone had to slip it to her, probably in her food. That’s the best way to use it.”

The half-eaten meal on the table! Tarnee hadn’t even finished the food. Only two people on his ship could have tampered with her meal—the man he’d asked to deliver the meal to her, and Ceska their cook.

“Can you counteract the poison?”

“Yes, but it will take her a while to recover. The poison has worked its way into her system, and the agent I’ll use to counteract it will take time to take effect. Don’t expect her up and around for at least a few cycles.”

“Just make her well,” Tor’Arr said as he turned to walk away, sure of the fact that Manik would look after Tarnee. He was just as sure that when he found who was responsible for poisoning the woman Destiny had decided was his, he was going to kill that person. Slowly, he was going to squeeze the life out of them after he beat them senseless.

“Where are you going?” Manik asked him as he crossed the room.

“To find who’s responsible,” he replied as he walked out the door.

Striding down the corridor he knew who he was going to search for first—he just had to find him. Engineering was his best bet. Rakaal had been on his way to the dining room when Tor’Arr had asked him to deliver a meal to Tarnee. He’d be back at his post by now.

A sudden jolt sent him flying into the solid panelling of the corridor wall. Grunting at the impact, he pushed away from the wall and raced for the lift.

“Computer. Report!”

“A vessel has docked with the ship. There are hull breaches on decks seven and nine.”

Deck Nine was engineering. Tor’Arr swore. The first thing most attackers would do was to take out the engines.

“Bridge,” he told the computer as he stepped onto the lift.

The lift shot him up, and less than a minute later, he was striding onto the bridge.

“Who is it and how much time have we got?” he demanded of Kesh.

“None,” his Second in Command told him, “There are Delarians on decks seven and nine. Engineering is already gone. We’re dead in space. Even if we could fight our way out, that ship must have three hundred crew. We’re out-numbered.”

So, this was what it had come to. He could force his men to fight to the bitter end, and most of them would happily die trying to liberate their ship, or he could give in and his men would survive, with them having a chance of escaping at some later time. He had no doubt that they would be escaping. He had no intention of watching all of his men die, or spending the rest of eternity rotting in a jail cell when they discovered they couldn’t kill him.

“Open a channel to the Delarians.”

“What are you going to do?” Kesh asked him.

“I’m going to surrender.”

Chapter Eight

The cold, hard surface I was lying on slowly brought me awake. I felt terrible. My stomach was a hard knot of pain, and I would have done anything for some water. A smooth metal ceiling, soft blue-grey, greeted me when I opened my eyes. I frowned up at the ceiling, confused as to where I was. Confused as to why I was so cold.

A small noise made me look to the side. The woman from Tor’Arr’s kitchen was sitting across from me. Her back was pressed up against a wall, her legs drawn up with her knees bent. Her wrists rested on the top of her knees. Delicate hands hung down, relaxed and casual. Those grass-green eyes bored into mine.

I sat up and looked around. The room we were in was small, barely big enough for the two beds, a toilet and a basin, the walls constructed out of the same blue-grey metal as the ceiling. Shiny and smooth, they reflected the light shining down from a white square set into the ceiling. There were two small vents up high, one on either side of the room above the beds. The floor was made out of the same blue-grey material.

The front of the room was an energy field, the quiet hum telling me that I didn’t want to put my hand anywhere near it. The shock wouldn’t be enough to kill a person, but the pain would be tremendous. The force field tinted everything a soft blue, its light bathing part of the room in a soft glow.

More rooms like the one we were in were visible through the force field. There were people sitting on bunks, one standing near the force field looking back at me. A wide walkway separated the rooms.

“Where are we?” I asked the woman sitting opposite me. I knew we were in a brig, but where and who had us, I had no clue.

She replied in that same guttural language she and Tor’Arr had spoken in the dining room. I couldn’t understand her, my interpreter chip not recognising the language. If we got out of whatever mess we were in alive, I’d have to have Tor’Arr add their language to my chip so I could understand his crew. He’d spoken to me in English, but I was sure he spoke to his crew in other languages.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, intent on stretching the tight muscles of my back. The woman opposite me climbed off the bed at the same time and said something in that alien language.

“I don’t understand you,” I told her.

She said something else, a deep growl of sound that made me look at her closely. Her green eyes flashed in the low light as she stepped towards me. I shook my head at her, and before I could blink, she’d backhanded me.

Pain exploded through my cheek and a sharp cry of shock ripped from my throat. Holy hell, had hurt.

I heard Tor’Arr’s voice coming from one of the other cells. “Tarnee?”

The woman in front of me grabbed me by the front of my blouse and pulled me off the bed, a low growl of sound coming from her throat. My heart started to race, a frantic beating that I could feel in my chest. I stared into the angry lines of her face, too shocked to say anything.

A harsh shove, and my back hit the force field, the pain agonising as the field’s energy arced through my body. I screamed, the pain unbearable. Unable to hold myself up, I slumped to the floor, my body twitching with the after effects of hitting the force field.

Shouting came from the other cells, deep male voices, languages I didn’t understand. The woman standing over me snarled something before kicking me. I grunted at the sharp impact of her hard boot into my stomach and then she was on me, punching me in the face, pain exploding through my nose before one hand wrapped around my throat, squeezing.

I tried to gasp in a breath. My heart hammered in my chest, but I couldn’t get in any air around the squeezing of her hand. I grasped her wrist trying to get her to let go, my fingers scratching at her skin. Shouting filled my ears, those male voices sounding urgent.

She was going to kill me. I could see it in her green eyes, the harsh snarl that curled her lips away from sharp pointed teeth. What on earth had I done for her to want to kill me?

Movement behind her made my gaze flick over her shoulder. Something was happening behind her, but as spots danced before my eyes, I couldn’t see clearly enough to tell what it was.

Something dragged the woman off me, her sharp nails scraping across the skin of my neck with a burning pain. A low growl filled the room as I rolled over sucking in harsh breaths. Everything went quiet, the slight hum of the force fields the only noise.

I looked up to see a silver shape holding the woman up with an arm around her neck, her body limp, her head hanging at an odd angle. Tears started to sting my eyes as I gasped in breaths. Somehow, Tor’Arr had come.

He dropped the woman to the floor with a thud and stepped over her to crouch down beside me.

“Are you all right, Tarnee?”

His deep voice shivered through me. Not trusting myself to talk, I nodded up at him. I didn’t trust myself not to climb into his arms. I needed him to hold me. I needed him to comfort me.

“Thank you,” I rasped, my throat feeling raw.

“I will not have you harmed, Tarnee. I will protect you.”

Gentle hands helped me to a sitting position and I was careful not to lean back against the force field.

I looked up into Tor’Arr’s face, the silver of his eyes shining in the soft light. All of him shone in the soft light. I couldn’t help the tear that ran down my cheek. A gentle hand cupped my face, his thumb stroking my cheek.

“Why did she attack me? I couldn’t understand what she said.”

“She said that you had stolen something from her.”

“What? I didn’t take anything. I didn’t even know her. When could I have taken something of hers?”

A look crossed Tor’Arr’s face, a look I didn’t understand.

“She was talking about me, Tarnee. She said that you had stolen me from her, but she was wrong. I was never hers, and I will not have my people harming you.”

He’d said that twice, and I believed him. He’d killed someone for me, protected me. I reached up and trailed my fingers along his cheek.

“Thank you.”

He caught my hand in his and pressed a gentle kiss to my palm.

“We will get out of this, Tarnee, I promise you. It won’t be long before we can escape.”

His words settled inside me, relieving at least one worry.

“What happened?”

“The Delarians snuck up on us. They have some kind of cloaking mechanism, and they evaded our scans. We were still attached to the freighter we’d taken and couldn’t break away before they had docked with us.”

“Where are they taking us?”

“Back to their home world. I’m sorry, Tarnee, but you’ll be even further away from your station.”

I looked up into his silver eyes and thought of what I’d wanted to ask him to do for me. It now seemed irrelevant, considering our current predicament, but I wanted to know what he would have said.

“I wanted to ask you something before we got captured.” I looked into his swirling silver eyes.

“Ask me, Tarnee. I would give you anything.”

“Would you have helped me look for my parents... if I’d asked you?”

His gaze roved over my face for a long time before he said, “Yes, if that would have made you happy, Tarnee.”

A shout from further along sent him springing to his feet.

“I have to go,” he said before he moved quickly to the wall, and then he was sliding up towards the vent in a liquid flow and slipping through it to disappear.

My first glimpse of the Delarians sent fear spiking through me. I shrank back against the wall as they lowered the force field, but all they did was place a tray on the end of the hard metal bed and leave again.

Their faces would give anybody nightmares, and they were huge—great hulking shapes that moved with surprising grace down the wide walkway between the rows of cells.

I was greatly relieved to be alive, but felt very unsure about the future. Tor’Arr telling me that we would escape had only momentarily relieved me. As soon as he’d left, I’d started to worry. All I could do was hope that he had a plan, and knew what he was doing, but I felt confused about Tor’Arr himself.

What had happened to me between passing out on the floor of his quarters and waking up on the Delarian’s ship was still a mystery. I assumed Tor’Arr had taken me to his ship’s medical bay and I’d been treated. He’d saved me twice. For a man who claimed to be a pirate, I thought it said a lot about him—that he hadn’t just left me to die.

Going back to the station seemed less and less possible, but I wasn’t as worried about it as I had been. Tor’Arr’s assertion that he would have helped me find my parents had me thinking of a different future—a future where we were together, where we lived on his ship and he did... I didn’t know what. That was where my fantasies came to a screaming halt, because I couldn’t see him being anything other than a pirate, and I didn’t know whether I could live with that.

Time dragged by interminably, the light never changing, just a constant soft glow that made it hard to sleep until two of the Delarians came to my cell and lowered the force field.

They indicated I should move forward, so I hesitantly hopped off the bed and walked towards them. The body of Tor’Arr’s cook was no longer there. Shortly after Tor’Arr had slipped out through the vent, the Delarians who delivered my food had looked at me with their huge red eyes but hadn’t said anything. Men had come not long after to remove her body.

One of the Delarians now grasped my arm in his huge hand and started to lead me down the wide walkway.

“Tarnee!” Tor’Arr’s voice came from one of the cells, but we moved past him before I had a chance to see him, the Delarians dragging me along at a rapid pace.

“Where are we going?” I asked the men leading me. I assumed they were men. They were armed to the teeth, with long swords strapped to their waists and weapons strapped to their thighs.

No answer was forthcoming as they continued to drag me through their ship that teemed with men. I didn’t know how Tor’Arr planned to escape, but they’d have to fight a lot of men to get free.

The inside of the Delarian’s ship was as different from Tor’Arr’s ship as night to day. Built entirely out of that blue-grey metal, the ship was uniform and military in the precision of its corridors and sharp angles of its doors. There was no colour anywhere, no carpet, no panelling, no life. Just endless corridors of blue-grey and the men that called it home. Men who looked at me with huge red eyes, making me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.

The two Delarians leading me finally took me through a round portal and out of the ship. A human man and another Delarian stood on the other side. The men leading me stopped me just near them and released me.

The Delarian spoke to the man that I recognised as the head of station security. I was home. They’d brought me home.

“Thank you for returning our citizen,” the head of security said.

The Delarian inclined his head and turned to leave.

“Wait!” I cried. “What’s going to happen to the men you captured?”

The Delarian looked at me and spoke in a language I didn’t recognise, his voice a harsh rasp of sound, his red eyes boring into mine before he turned away and walked through the portal, followed by the two men who had led me through their ship.