Broken (12 page)

“So,
what’s the story with this place?” she asked, walking around Cori. She examined
every inch of the cell and found nothing that would help her escape.

“There
is no story,” one of the women said bitterly. “Our camps were raided, and the
Xyrans
grabbed us.
The end.
That’s
how we all got here.
Doesn’t matter where we came from.”

Sky
sighed. That attitude was why she had to get away from the refugee camps when
she was young. The pervasive hopelessness of the people there made her want to
hit something.
“I meant, do we get fed?
Do the
Xyrans
come in here for anything?” She glanced at the girls
and hoped the woman would understand what she was trying not to say out loud.

“You
mean, do they come in here and rape us?” Core asked bitterly.

Sky
suppressed the urge to yell. “Yes,” she replied evenly. “Does that happen?”

“No,
thank God,” a slightly older woman said. “Only Alice was taken, the one time.”
She gestured to the woman with the bruises.

“One
of the soldiers was going to do it, but some big
Xyran
lord made him stop.” She touched her cheek. “He said it would damage the sale.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned away.

“We
get fed once a day. That won’t happen until tomorrow,” Cori said, walking away.
She stopped near the wall and sat down.

“Did
anyone try to escape?” Sky had to ask.

“Are
you joking?” Cori asked incredulously. “They’re over six feet tall!”

“They
have balls and a dick, too.” Sky was sick of the girl’s smart remarks.

“Yeah, so what?
Even if we could hurt one, where would we go?” The girl waved her
hand. “You’re on a space ship.
In
space.
”

Sky
gave up. The other women seemed to have lost interest in the conversation and
huddled together for warmth. The little girl had been shushed by her mother.
Clearly, they weren’t going to be much help. She walked to the door and
examined the blank plate that would have held the door controls if this weren’t
a cell.
Hmm, they probably retro-fitted a regular scout ship to carry human
cargo. That means I can access the ship’s computer from this, if I can just get
it open.
She was about to peel the tape holding the knife to her leg, when
someone began to open the door. One of the women grabbed Sky and yanked her
back, shoving her to the rear of the huddle.

What
the hell?
Sky stayed down, not sure
what was happening.

“The
Lord likes to check on the new women personally after every raid,” Cori
whispered.

Sky
blinked. They were hiding her for her own protection? She couldn’t believe it,
but then the door swung open and she decided to take whatever help she could
get. The women may not have a lot of information, but they were nice enough to
shield her, and this way she could check out her captors without being obvious
about it.

“Where
are the new ones?” a tall
Xyran
asked. He looked
strangely familiar, but she chalked that up to being around
Jaxt
so long. His face was heavily lined with age and scars, but he didn’t seem
weak. He stood easily in the same armor as his soldiers. Sky wouldn’t even have
picked him out as a leader if it hadn’t been for the weird badge of horns
tacked to his chest.

Whoa,
those are
Alphan
horns,
she realized after a moment. Her stomach roiled.
Eww
.

“There,
in the back,” the soldier who’d wanted to rape her said. He waded into the
women, shoving until Sky and a couple of the others were exposed.

The
older
Xyran
looked at them, his expression unchanging.
His skin was slightly off color from human normal, looking
more
green
in this light than flesh-toned. Sky’s survival instincts screamed
at her—
get away—
but she forced herself to breathe slowly and calmly.
There was nowhere to run.
At least not yet.

He
sniffed, nostrils widening. Then he opened his mouth and tested the air with
his tongue. For a moment, Sky thought he would say something about being able
to smell her, but then his expression flickered into extreme disgust for a
split-second. She remembered
Jaxt
explaining about
how rare it was to swear blood-oath and realized that the
Xyran
lord was truly appalled. He hid it very well.

“Lord
Kaxt
, are you satisfied?” one of the soldiers asked
formally.

Sky
stopped breathing. This creature was
Jaxt’s
father?
The monster who’d cut off her lover’s horns was standing in front of her? She
struggled to keep herself still when what she really wanted to do was grab her
blade and sink it deep into his heart. She must have made some betraying
movement, because he abruptly strode forward and grabbed her by her vest.

“Abomination!
You stink of betrayal,” he hissed, skin going a mottled red.

She
ignored her terror. “You stink of corruption,” she said calmly.

He
roared and flung her across the room. She flew through the air and hit the
wall, hard. It knocked her breath away. Dimly, she saw him pivot and stomp out
of the cell, his soldiers on his heels. She shook her head, blinking to clear
her vision,
then
took a deep, cleansing breath.

“Oh
my God,” Cori said, rushing to her side. “Are you okay?”

“I’m
fine.” Sky stood up, still reeling slightly.

“You
should be dead,” Alice said, touching her shoulder. “You hit your head.”

Sky
frowned. The woman was right. In fact, the headache she’d had when she first
woke in the other part of the ship was also gone. She felt battered, but okay.
Is
this part of the bond?
she
wondered, tempted to
touch her neck where the bite marks surely showed.

“I
can’t believe you spoke to Lord
Kaxt
like that.” Cori
touched her arm. “Weren’t you scared?”

“Terrified,
actually,” Sky told her. “But I never let that stop me.” She sat down and
pulled up her leather pants leg. Cori gasped when she saw Sky start to pick at
the tape. Sky smiled wryly at her. “I also try to be as prepared as I can be
for any situation. Weapons are good.
Xyran
nano
-blades are excellent.” She held up the knife. “Let’s
go see what I can pick apart with this, hmm?”

****

“Her
signal is two
klicks
toward galaxy center,”
Zoen
said, tapping the screen of the receiver.

“Modifying
course,”
Jaxt
replied, programming the new
coordinates into the ship. He leaned back in the pilot’s chair and glanced
around. “You could not clean some of the blood up?”

Zoen
shrugged.

“Sky
will not like the mess,”
Jaxt
continued, trying to
prod a reaction from his kin.

Zoen
flicked a quick look at him, but said nothing. He’d shifted his eyes back to
Xyran
black again.
Jaxt
missed
the gold, though he’d die before he’d admit it.

“Two
minutes,”
Zoen
said, his skin rippling through a
dozen colors. He finally settled on black, and
Jaxt
wasn’t even a little surprised. If red was the color of rage, black was the
color of death.
Zoen
meant what he’d said earlier.

“Copy
that,”
Jaxt
said, also shifting to black. He glanced
at the walls again. Dried
Xyran
blood spattered the
metal in abstract patterns.

“Sky
will approve of the blood,
Jaxt
. She is a warrior,”
Zoen
said, unexpectedly.

Jaxt
looked at his
bondmate
. “I hope you are right.”

“I
am.”
Zoen
bared his teeth. “She knows we are coming.”

Chapter
Ten

“How
did you do that?” Cori asked, leaning over Sky’s shoulder.

“
Gotta
have the right tools for the job,” Sky murmured,
concentrating. She’d managed to pry off the blank panel and pull out a computer
node. The
Xyrans
hadn’t anticipated one of their
prisoners knowing anything about circuits, but she’d picked up a lot of strange
information in her years at the smugglers’ settlement. She picked a cluster of
wires apart,
then
followed one to the node.
If I
short this one out, it’ll let all the oxygen out of the ship, at least on this
side of the main corridor.
She sat back on her heels. “Have to be a last
resort, though,” she muttered. The thought of trying to fight with no air
didn’t really appeal to her.

“Did
you hear that?” Cori asked.

Sky
looked up. “Hear what?”

“
Shh
.”

Sky
listened. Instinct told her that
Jaxt
and
Zoen
were close, and she couldn’t control a surge of
longing. She’d been sensing them for the past half hour, but hadn’t wanted to
believe it.
You should know better than to ignore your instincts,
she
thought. Knowing they were here made her feel strange. Was she actually happy
about it? She’d never wanted anyone in her life that could control her, and now
she had two aliens intimately bonded to her psyche.
And all you want is to
hug them, you twit. Ugh.

A
shudder ran through the metal floor, and then the entire ship lurched to the
side. She grabbed onto the hole in the wall where the panel had been and hung
on. Cori grabbed her around the waist, and Sky hooked her foot around the
girl’s ankle for extra stability. The other women were being tossed around like
ping-pong balls in a bucket. “Hang on,” she said, shoving her elbow into the
conduit more securely. “We might lose gravity.”

“Oh
God,” Cori whispered, but she listened. She tucked her head down and didn’t let
go. Sky glanced over the room. One of the others had managed to grab the little
girl and had wedged them both next to the commode. A low boom reverberated
through the cell, and then another shudder. Gravity disappeared for a moment,
then
came back, slamming the ones who hadn’t managed to get
a grip on anything into the floor.
Jaxt
and
Zoen
are here, right now, on this ship,
she
thought, triumphant for a moment, and then reality set in.
They have no idea
Jaxt’s
father is the head honcho. Shit!

“What’s
happening?” Cori asked, voice wavering.

“We’re
under attack,” Sky said harshly. “And we have to get the hell out of here
before we get caught in the middle.”

She
pulled out more wire and another node,
then
sat
waiting. She had to time this just right.

“Attack?
Alphans
?”

Sky
shook her head. “No. My
bondmates
are here.”

Cori
stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Hang
on, right here.” Sky showed the girl where to put her hands. “I’m going to need
to move fast. You just sit tight, right there,” Sky said, then yanked the wire
from the node. Alarms went off, and emergency lights clicked on, a lurid
orange. “Hang on to something! We’re losing oxygen!” she called out to the
other women.

Another
clang shook the ship, and then the door to the cell slid open. Lord
Kaxt
stood in the doorway with a breather mask over his
face, two soldiers similarly attired just behind him.

Sky
smiled at him and held up the loose wire. “Your time is up, abuser.”

His
skin flashed red as he lunged for her, but Sky ducked to his right and shoved
Zoen’s
knife into his armpit with a quick, sharp punch. She
backed up as he roared,
then
sliced his cheek,
severing the flexible membrane of his breather. “Do you know whose blade this
is,
Kaxt
?”

He
ripped off the remains of his breather and spat blood to the deck. “You will
not survive long enough to complete the bond, slave.”

Sky
laughed. “It’s already complete.” Just behind him, she saw movement in the
hall. The sense of her
bondmates
grew stronger, until
she could almost taste them. Unfortunately, the air in the ship thinned even
more. She had to do something before she passed out. “Do you wear your son’s
horns on your chest, too? Breeding with an
Alphan
,
that’s pretty foul.”

Sky
saw the exact moment
Kaxt
lost it completely, and she
wasn’t fast enough to evade him this time. It didn’t matter. She’d given
Jaxt
and
Zoen
a distraction and
enough time to get to her.
Kaxt
grabbed her by the
arm and lifted her up, twisting her shoulder cruelly. His skin pulsed red to
black and then red again. She kicked ineffectually at him.