Her mouth drew tight, lips ruby red, closing over perfect teeth.
Yul took a quick look around, dragged the corpse out of the locker, stripped it down and donned the dead man’s grey uniform. He stuffed the limp form back into the locker. Cloye seemed startled at Yul’s impressive physique and muscled body. He remained entirely oblivious to her scrutiny of his near nudity.
He crouched, thinking furiously. What to do?
Capture the bridge, take over the ship? No, too messy and risky. He doubted he could safely make it back outside and over the fence. Better to stay put. When they were docked at their destination, he would make his move. If it came to that. As for what that move would be... that would depend on what was there. The risk of staying here was too high. Huddled in the dim murk like a rat, he squeezed his temples in thought. The female... He looked over at her.
“How did you get in?”
“Same as you. You were easy to follow. I came in with a fake ID no different than yours. I could track you with a device Mathias gave me.”
“Let me see it,” growled Yul, thrusting out his hand. “I wasn’t expecting tails.”
Dutifully, she reached into a slit at her spandexed hip, a barely perceptible smirk on her face as she handed it over to him: a flat blue triangle, no larger than an oversized Namith coin.
“It must work off local frequencies,” Yul mused.
She swung her pale-blue cat’s eyes left without comment. A movement in the shadows? Yul ventured a glance. No, just the instinctual reflexes of a seasoned spy assessing the situation.
He could not help but feel attracted to this assassin-spy. She had a lithe, feral energy to her and was more than a shapely bit of eye candy: muscular, but feminine, curvy in all the right places, just the way he liked a woman. But the eyes. Something mysterious and bewitching about them. This was an extremely unpredictable vixen.
He couldn’t stay alert every second or watch her constantly while foes roamed the ship. Sometime, somewhere he would falter and she would pounce. A minion of Mathias he couldn’t kill. He tossed her gun back her way. She snatched it out of the air with a look of surprise; she would need the weapon to get off this ship.
A heavy tramping of steel-toed boots rung off metal.
Cloye’s eyes widened. In reaction, she threw her arms around the startled mercenary who couldn’t see the figure coming up behind.
“Here, what the hell is that?” called a voice behind Yul. “Is that you, Lequin? What the hell are you doing stowing a broad here for? Stifford will have your balls for that.”
While the man’s attention was diverted, Cloye moved from her embrace and brained the man with her pistol.
A take-down in seconds. He fell like a log.
Yul stared, blinking at the motionless man. “Good thinking. I mean with the amorous advance.” He turned toward her, his face wary.
“Don’t mention it.”
He did not like the edge of insolence underlining her tone. But he didn’t have time to complain. A sudden spasm of pain ripped through his spine and he sagged, arching in pain, falling to his knees.
Cloye blinked in bewilderment.
Yul groaned. The ship’s light drive function. Of course—it was the carrier that had allowed Mathias to send him pain across the light years. One of the bastard’s little reminders he was not keeping his mind on the job. Yul gasped for breath, staggering for the wall.
“What is it? Mathias?” she hissed.
“Who else?” Painfully he regained his balance.
She gave a disapproving scowl, reaching out a hand to him.
“Just hope you don’t fall on the snake’s wrong side, like me. It’s easy to do.”
“Let’s just focus on staying alive,” she said, ignoring his outburst. “If we get Mathias the info he wants, then we both get paid.”
“Maybe you do,” Yul scoffed, “but I’m getting nothing out of this deal. The man says I owe him a debt.”
She paused, toying with her blaster. “Then that’s your problem, Yul, not mine.”
He swayed on his feet. “What do you know of this Biogron we’re looking for?”
“Some glass container hooked up to some electronic gizmos and computers.”
“You saw it?” he croaked.
“When I was in the lab and Mathias was explaining this mission, the top was open enough to take a peek inside. I saw some ferns growing in the sand which Mathias’s lab monkey Dez, claimed had grown from some pod creature. A moth flew out and landed on my arm.” She chuckled. “Grey-winged thing with red spots on it. Cutest little thing.”
Yul felt a cold shudder run up his back. “No more talk of Mathias and his bugs.” He winced as he staggered down the hall, jerking open the companionway door. His nerve ends pulsed to the torment in his aching joints. His mechanical fingers flexed, ready to take his wrath out on someone’s neck. The ship’s towering outer cargo door clanged shut somewhere behind them. Yul turned, glaring, hearing an annoying buzzer as the ship was finally sealed. A female countdown voice announced departure in T minus 5.
The headset of the prostrate man on the floor crackled. “Captain Lorde here. What the hell is going on down there, Rourke? You high or something?”
Yul cursed. He scrambled back, picked up the receiver, his fingers itching to crush it. The man was out cold, maybe with a cracked skull. Cloye had hit him hard, perhaps too hard. Yul spoke into the com as unruffled as he could. “No, sir. Checking for stowaways, sir.”
“And?”
“False alarm. Falling crate near took my head off. Some fool piled it too—”
“Take care of it, and be seated and strapped in within five minutes. Hresh is a stickler for orderliness,
