However, halfway down the hallway, I freeze.
I can’t quite do this.
I turn to Theme.
“Listen - Chris is a grade-A asshole, but technically, he’s still my crew. I need to give him and the rest of the men a chance. Set the doors to his prison cell to open in ten minutes, as well as a path to the airlock. They’re unarmed, and if they’re lucky, they’ll make it to the loading bay. Then, they can take the Wayward Scythe and go wherever the fuck fate takes them.”
Theme hesitates.
“They… they were laughing at you, Captain. While we were waiting for you to get spanked they were all looking forward to it – making jokes.”
Anger flares up in me. No matter how pissed off I am at them, they’re still my crew. For one last moment, I’ll be their captain. I don’t owe them a certain escape, and I’m not going to risk my most loyal crewmembers to help them out, but I can at least give Chris and the others a fighting chance.
“Set the timer,” I growl, absolutely resolute. “I’m done with them – but I won’t leave them to rot.”
Especially not with a pissed-off Captain Aelon, who’ll no doubt grill them brutally on where I might be going. I don’t think Aelon would stoop to torturing them – I have to believe he’s better than that – but I don’t want to test how far he’d go to recapture his Fated Mate.
“Alright,” Theme nods. “I’ll set it for ten minutes. The Aurelians might get back control of the ship by then, but at least they’ll have a chance.”
Shit. We’ve got less time than I’d thought.
Theme tinkers with the controls, setting the doors on a timed delay. “Let’s go.”
The three of us run down the empty hallways of The Instigator. We must look ridiculous. Two women in skimpy dresses and one geeky guy. I keep expecting us to turn a corner and run into a triad of Aurelians – and if we do, we’re fucked; perhaps literally.
At best, we’ll be captured for sabotaging The Instigator. The worst-case scenario would see us run into the same sort of Aurelians as Kit and his triad had been – the kind that would use the opportunity of having the other Aurelians locked away in order to take advantage of two women.
Theme would be no use against them, and I don’t like the odds of Sawoot and I since we’re dressed in thin slips of dresses and totally unarmed.
But fortunately, the majority of the Aurelians are on the surface of that moon, and Aelon’s probably sending frantic messages to them right now.
We’re running out of time, and it’ll take all my skill for us to escape with our skins. We’ve got no weapons, no backup, and if a single Aurelian is blocking the hallways, we’re screwed.
We rush back past Sawoot’s room. There’s a hard banging against the door. “Open up!” Garrick’s voice is booming with command. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him raise his voice. He must be incensed to have been betrayed by the same humans he’d so gallantly protected.
Sawoot stops for a moment on the other side of the door. “I’m sorry, Garrick! I’ll miss you!”
She’s not mocking him. I can tell she had affection for the warrior – but she was the one who’d told me to never fall for an Aurelian, and if Sawoot does one thing right, it’s follow her own advice.
Soon, we’re running again. Our path is easy, and I don’t even need my mental map to chart it out. We simply follow the open doors.
We beat the odds and burst into the loading bay without having encountered another soul. The air in the huge bay is thin, but it’s already recharging and thickening from the venting earlier. In any event, there are no Aurelians passed out from asphyxiation or waiting to confront us.
So far, this escape plan has caused no casualties. Tools litter the ground where Aurelians dropped them in their haste to escape the deadly loading bay – but, apparently, they all did so.
The bay’s doors are now wide open, ready for a ship to leave through them. I can see through the haze of the air-field that locks the oxygen inside, and it looks like our escape route is still clear.
The moon that orbits Tarrion is pale and huge in front of us. I expect to see tiny dots as Reavers launch from the surface to pursue us, but if they’re taking off, the moon is thankfully too far away to see them yet. We’ll have just enough of a head start to give us a fighting chance.
Behind the moon and the planet of Tarrion is the endless emptiness of space.
It’s familiar. I’ve been living in the emptiness of space for the last decade. Three of those years have been under my own command, as captain of the Wayward Scythe – my loyal little ship that still rests on the opposite side of the loading bay.
I gaze out into space for a moment. It feels like… home. I’ve barely felt solid ground beneath my feet in years, except on space stations where I’ve unloaded both my illicit and legal wares. The loneliness of space yawns in front of me, but I welcome the sight of it. Soon, I’ll be swallowed up into that nothingness – never to be found.
The loading bay is huge. I remember how scared I was when I first faced Captain Aelon here. At the time, I’d never thought he’d have such an effect on me. My life will never be the same again – and nor will his. The three aliens are scarred onto my being until the day I die, just as I am on theirs.
It feels like a lifetime ago that we were sucked into the belly of this ship – and, indeed, it’s like I’ve transitioned from one life to another while I’ve
