Sureblood Read online

  “Aye,” Val said perkily. “Nezzie’s pet pirates.”

  Hervor bit back a snicker. Everyone glared at each other down their weapons, waiting for an excuse to use them. Tension crystallized in the air and threatened to shatter. All it would take was one itchy trigger finger and all that would be left of them would be a smoking pile of flesh pudding.

  Clearly, Sureblood was used to generating fear and awe in others—especially other clans. Even his dog reacted to Val’s contempt with a skeptical tip of its head. Ears flicking with curiosity, it started over to sniff her when the Sureblood commanded, “Merkury—stay.”

  What kind of raiders brought their pets along? The same kind of clan who’d stoop to the unspeakable, busting into a ship knowing another clan’s raid was already under way.

  The rest of the Surebloods swore, their weapons rattling. “Ain’t ya gonna teach these Blues some respect, boss?” one of the hulks asked.

  “Not with a dozer to his head, he ain’t,” Reeve told the rival raider.

  “He’s aimin’ at her also, Blue, if ya hadn’t noticed.”

  The Sureblood quieted his man with a sweep of his hand, his gaze flicking from Reeve to her, as if he were sorting out whether the man’s defense of her was due to their being merely skiff mates or there was something more between them. “Well, well, Blue girl,” he said finally. “It looks like we’re going to have to come to an agreement on whose raid this is.”

  “I’m not agreeing to anything a Sureblood says.”

  “Actually, I predict that you will.” His dozer shifted to Reeve. The arming light flickered. “Because I’ll make it easy for you. Now, allow us Surebloods to escort you off this ship.”

  Val swallowed at the sight of the weapon aimed at Reeve. It was a bluff. Pirates took prisoners from other clans, yet rarely was there a killing. But then, when did two clans end up on the same ship? Did she take the chance he wouldn’t shoot?

  Don’t give in because of me, Reeve urged with his eyes.

  She hesitated.

  “Too much fear paralyzes you, Valeeya,” her father would have cautioned in that moment. “But too little makes you reckless.”

  Arrogant.

  Risking a skiff mate’s life for any reason was arrogant. She was a skiff leader, the one who called the shots for her team, literally. The responsibility was on her to end this without loss of life, and without dishonoring her clan. Feeling sick as she gave in, she started to lower her firing arm when a distant, resounding boom echoed down the long corridor.

  The floor vibrated beneath their boots. Reacting with shocking similarity and speed, both groups flew back against the walls, in the shadows, their dozers tracking in both directions up and down the corridor. The vulnerability of being trapped on someone else’s vessel knew no clan boundaries.

  “What the hells was that?” a now-familiar, rich voice demanded.

  Dake Sureblood had taken up a position next to her. Her senses filled with the sounds of unfamiliar armor, the smell of distinctly foreign leather and the faint tang of male sweat mingled with other, exotically unfamiliar scents that were not at all unpleasant. At this close range, she could see a lot of details she didn’t want to know, like a small scar or two on his face, one bisecting his brow, the other a small nick on the outer corner of his mouth. Probably gotten while out raid crashin’, she decided. He’s a Sureblood. You’re a Blue. She wasn’t supposed to feel any awareness of him as a male. Not even a specken.

  “I sure as freep don’t know,” she replied carefully, realizing his aim was no longer on Reeve, offering a window of opportunity to turn this ambush around—if the chance arose.

  “Malizarr,” he ordered one of his thugs. “Go see what the hells that was.”

  “Aye, boss.” The man dashed off.

  Dake Sureblood watched his man disappear down the corridor, his weapon steadied in two hands. He’d forgotten all about her. Or he trusted her. For an agonizing moment she was torn, feeling it was somehow wrong to take advantage of a man who cared more about their joint safety than his clan’s glory, enough to turn his back to her. Then she whipped her dozer around and pressed it to the side of his head. “Surprise.”

  The Sureblood went still. Val could tell by the sounds around her that every one of his clansmen had swung their weapons back to her. “Did you forget about me?” she murmured, almost giddy to see his throat move with a hard swallow.

  His gaze slid sideways, a mix of surprise, amusement and reluctant respect. “That’s the last time I ever will, I reckon,” he said.

  They weighed each other’s resolve and deadly intent. She was shaking inside. She wondered if he was.

  Another explosion boomed, closer this time. They jolted. “Raider leader, this is Six,” she said into her comm, trying to raise Warrybrook while she kept her weapon pressed against the Sureblood’s skull. Her comm barked with static but no voice. “Blast it.” Warrybrook, where are you? I’ve got my hands full of Surebloods.

  The muzzle of her dozer remained buried in Dake Sureblood’s sun-streaked brown hair. Even the spikes of his beard were touched by gold—where the bright paint hadn’t obscured his jaw. “I’m not your enemy,” he murmured.

  “You haven’t done much to convince me of that.”

  “Do you think these ore haulers care if our clans can agree on anything or not?” he snapped, finally losing his temper. “Our differences don’t mean a thing. To outsiders we’re pirates, period. We’re all the same. You know I’m right.”

  An explosion rocked the freighter. They all ducked. Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. On the metal floor, bits of dirt and dust were crawling by.

  The hair lifted on the back of her neck. “A breach,” she said, knowing the others noticed what she did. Somewhere on the massive ship a section of the hull now gaped open to the vacuum of space. The freighter was losing pressure and air. She thought of the raider she’d seen get sucked overboard. Cursing, she lowered her dozer as their situation once more trumped the contest to see who would get the other to surrender.

  Even the most terrifying Surebloods looked worried. Val pulled her breather over her face, a move mirrored by Hervor and Reeve. Oddly, the Surebloods had no masks. Why? It left them vulnerable to oxygen starvation. Maybe they’d pass out and make her job easier.

  “Boss!” Malizarr, the Sureblood scout, had returned. Out of breath in the thin, cold air as he staggered to a stop. “It’s the skiffs, boss. Someone’s blowin’ them up.”

  No skiffs meant there was no way home. Hopelessness spread amongst the two groups like camp cough in rainy season.

  The raider bent over, his hands on his armored knees. His struggle to breathe wasn’t a good sign, Val thought. Hypoxia would bring mental confusion, unconsciousness and death. With holes in the hull, the old ship’s environmental system was working overtime to keep the cabin altitude at a survivable level. How many more passage ports punched open would it take until the freighter could no longer keep up? Even the breathers her team wore wouldn’t help any then. Without spacesuits, they’d be just as dead as the Surebloods.

  Again she tried to raise Warrybrook. “Raid leader, this is Six.” More static and interference. Tell me what to do, Warrybrook. “Advise your orders. Advise your location.” The comm was dead. Were the other Blues? Reeve’s and Hervor’s eyes found hers and reflected the dread she felt in the pit of her stomach.

  The Sureblood called into his comm. “Tokotay. Do you read? Tokotay—report.” Then he turned to her. “They could be jamming us. We’ve got to get to the bridge. From there we’ll take control and fight off who’s fighting us.”

  Us. The concept shook her. But what choice was there? They faced an unknown enemy intent on killing them all. A glance at her skiff mates revealed their agreement.

  She wondered if her clan elders would feel the same.

  “Move out!” The Sureblood attached his dog to a leash with a sturdy harness and set out in a steady lope.

  Another flash
of energy outside turned the portholes on the starboard side of the ship into blinding disks. The explosion was deafening and set off wailing alarms.

  They didn’t slow. Slowing would only prolong their escape to safety. But running the corridor had turned into traversing a deadly gauntlet. Every time they lost a skiff, the ruptured drill hole would turn into a human-size vacuum.

  Val blinked away the memory of the doomed raider: the dying man’s gasping mouth and glassy-eyed surprise as he drifted away into space. It would be quick, as deaths went, but that horrific fraction of time before blacking out would seem an eternity.

  She was aware of the Sureblood’s regard. Under different circumstances, those eyes could easily ensure a more susceptible female. As if his absolute self-assurance wouldn’t be enough enticement, or his impressive frame. Luckily, she was immune to all of it.

  Hiding her fears, she’d show him that the “little Blues” were just as formidable as the hulking Surebloods. Today she’d bring honor to her clan.

  She ran faster, taking the lead. In the misty, frigid distance were the double doors leading to the bridge. She began to allow herself to believe that the worst that awaited them was shooting their way onto the protected bridge.

  To her left, a fighter craft streaked past outside. Too close. “Get down!” she cried. A brilliant flash filled the corridor just as she screamed the warning.

  The shock wave threw everyone like toy soldiers. As she sailed forward, her eardrums filled with pain, fleeting but agonizing. Mist steamed into the corridor, and the terrible, otherworldly shrieking of sucking air overwhelmed all other sound.

  She was tumbling, spinning over the slippery floor, trying to grab hold of something to stop her slide. She heard a yell as the Sureblood lunged for her, realized the scream for help had come from her. The blast illuminated the etched sea snake on his armor, turning it into a mystical, avenging creature brought to life as he dived for her, arms outstretched, seemingly oblivious to his personal safety. “Got you,” he gasped. “Hold me.”

  She clawed at his armor, the belt or sleeve, she couldn’t tell, but her fingers began to slip as they hurtled toward a hole open to space. The roar of wind…bitter, bitter cold. Both of them spinning, locked together.

  And then he let go.

  No, you freepin’ Sureblood bastard! The scream never left her lips, but it reverberated in every outraged cell in her body. She was too shocked to think about what would come next. Too angry. Hands grasping, fingers sliding, scraping over the floor, she plummeted toward oblivion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WARM…WET…SUPERHEATED BREATH…

  Val woke, dazed and angry. The roar of wind…tugging at her mask…bitter, bitter cold… It was as if she’d been roused, punching mad, from a nightmare with one foot still caught in the netherworld.

  Someone was licking her jaw and neck.

  No. Something. She tore open her eyes to black-and-white fur. A smooth tongue lapped at her. Round brown eyes focused warmly, intently on her face, then the dog angled his head and tried to lick her again.

  She moaned and moved to get up.

  “Merkury—give her a chance to catch her breath.”

  Then the silky fur was gone, replaced by broad shoulders, unyielding armor, and another clan’s scent. The Sureblood. His gloved fingers were as rough as sandpaper as they lifted her breather, but his touch was gentle as a rag was pressed to her nose. “Hold it there a minute to stop the bleeding. Merkury thinks he’s a better nurse, and maybe he is, but if I used his techniques, your clan would lop off my head in a Parramanta second.”

  “Freepin’ right,” someone said.

  Hervor? Her brain was so sluggish. The voices around her were muffled as if coming through layers of cloth as she came up on her elbows. “Reeve?” If anything had happened to him, and on her watch—

  “Still here.” Reeve stepped into her field of view. He gripped his blaster rifle, his gaze scanning the corridor every few seconds. Other than a bloody nose, he looked no more shaken than when he lost a game of dice. “Val, that was freepin’ close. I thought you were gone.”

  Fury ignited in her gut as the horror rushed back: Dake Sureblood’s hands opening, her fingers slipping down, down, down his body, it played over and over. Except she hadn’t been sucked to her death, her blood boiling as fast as it froze. Somehow she was still here with stuffy ears and pulsing anger.

  “Hold the rag over your nose, I said.”

  She angrily did as the Sureblood said, but only because she could feel the warm blood. “You let go,” she accused, sitting up.

  “I did what needed to be done,” he mumbled.

  Hervor came down on one knee next to her. “Val, we were all on our way out that hole. If the Sureblood hadn’t hit that control panel and closed the door, we’d all be dead.”

  The door he referred to was massive, yet she had no recollection of it slamming shut. A questioning glance at the Sureblood caught him frowning as he busily untangled some gauze from a med kit and Hervor finished the story.

  “Lucky for us, he had the mind to grab hold of that coolant pipe, there, and it stopped him. For a second there, he had you and the pipe. But he couldn’t hold you both. He had to make a choice, or he wouldn’t have been able to activate the door.”

  Reeve nodded. “Val, it’d stick in my craw to call a Sureblood a hero if it weren’t the bloody truth.”

  All the raiders nearby grumbled their agreement. Dake Sureblood made a dismissive sound in his throat and shrugged off the men’s admiration, not even pausing to embellish the deed and turning it into the colorful kind of raiding tale camp minstrels loved to sing around the fire. Even around Sureblood fires, she was sure.

  In an act of selfless courage, he’d likely kept all of them from going overboard. Val met his unsettling, multicolored gaze as the realization of his heroic deed sank in. “I didn’t realize…”

  “Of course you didn’t. That’s what it’s come to, between our clans,” the Sureblood said, packing up his treatment supplies and shoving the sack into his thigh pocket. “Expecting the worst of each other.”

  He was right. A day ago—hells, an hour ago—she’d have sworn a Sureblood would have helped her overboard, not stopped her. Her face burned with embarrassment. “Let me up.” Reeve bent down to grab her upper arms and hoisted her the rest of the way to her feet. The Sureblood started to protest, seeing her sway dizzily, but her skiff mate was only helping preserve her honor. Raiders didn’t lie on the floor unless they were dead.

  “I owe you,” she told the Sureblood.

  “You owe me nothing,” he argued brusquely. “I did what I’d have done for any raider on my team. Let’s move out, raiders. They haven’t stopped firing, and we’re losing air.” He turned away to check the condition of his clansmen, all bent in various positions trying to catch their breath. The masked Blues had the benefit of oxygenated air over the other clansmen, who were now clearly flagging.

  She followed. “A life debt can’t be refused.”

  His frown made for a fearsome image on his painted face. “Life debt?”

  “You saved my life, now I’ve got to save yours in order to be released from the debt.”

  He coughed out a quick disbelieving laugh as he harnessed his dog. “Check your weapons and let’s go.”

  “It’s what we Blues believe,” Reeve explained as they started toward the bridge again. “She can’t be released from that debt until she saves your life.”

  The Sureblood threw her a glance. “You’ll die of old age before that happens. Now, is that the fastest you can run? If they blow another hole, we may not get a second chance to plug it.”

  Stung, she glared at his back as he ran ahead. No one treated a life debt so cavalierly.

  “We Surebloods don’t look at it the same way you Blues do,” one of the Surebloods confided as they jogged side by side. “We don’t believe in basking in great deeds. Your giving thanks is like hurling an insult.”

  A pro
longed rumble echoed through the freighter. The thing was creaking now, a hollow metallic moaning as if it would come apart. Dake Sureblood circled his gloved hand and pointed to the sealed pressure doors protecting the bridge. In an adjacent alcove, they took up new positions. So much for divisive words, as one group, as one people, they prepared for the next stage of the raid.

  The next moments were going to either win her a permanent skiff commander slot or strip her of raider status forever. She remembered thinking this would be an easy raid, and then listening to Grizz say: “Not everything that looks easy always is.” If only he hadn’t been so bloody right.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TWO RIVAL CLANS PLANNING an assault. Together, Dake told himself. Nothing like this had happened in a generation. Fate had handed him a potentially failed raid. He was going to turn it into something worth living for.

  Dake pushed all musings of historical significance aside to focus on the job. He’d stormed bridges before, countless times, but never had it put him on edge like this. Could be because it’s your last chance. If they failed to break through the doors, they’d be stuck out here and all but doomed. His raiders would die first. Fortified by the nitrox in their breathers, the Blues would have the delightful opportunity to ponder the Sureblood’s corpses until they, too, succumbed.

  Like hells if he’d let that happen.

  Crouched head to head with the Blue leader, Val, he drew his plan with a gloved finger on the floor between them. It helped him think. “Your plasma grenades will melt that pressure door like butter, nice and quick.” He drew a slash. “But we have to limit collateral damage. There’s fragile equipment. Personnel.” He traced a circle on the floor. “We’ll make a passage port and cut our way in.”

  Her face was animated as she nodded, reflecting what he felt whenever a good plan came together. Things had thawed since the near-fatal encounter with the ruptured passage port, but her wariness was palpable. “Hatch bustin’ is one thing we all know how to do,” she said.