He heard Torin grunt, more an exhalation than an actual sound as though, just for that moment, she were breathing inside his helmet with him.
Then he felt her grip fall away.
She'd never have let him go were she still able to hold on.
"Torin!"
He saw stars, the attacking ship, his poor wounded lady, debris flying off in every possible direction, Torin caught up in it-the bright orange of her HE suit, visible then obscured by wreckage as he pinwheeled. He reached out. Stupidly. She'd absorbed more of the blast. Was moving away faster than he was spinning. Red lights flashed around the edge of her helmet.
Red lights…
Air leak!
Craig tasted blood as he slammed against the mesh of a cable net, jaw impacting with the hard edge of his suit's collar. His faceplate, crossed by four cables, creaked but held. He couldn't turn his head, but if they'd netted him, they planned to haul him in. The ship he'd seen while spinning had to have been two kilometers away, minimum. Two kilometers of cable gave him time…
His charges were gone, but he had a cutting tool on his belt. Much smaller but the same basic principle as the Marine's bennies.
Don't think about Marines now.
Right arm trapped between two loops, he shoved his left between his body and the net.
Torin's trained for this, he reminded himself. Situations like this.
Fumbling the magnetic clasp out, he managed to shove his first two fingers into the tool pouch.
If Torin were conscious, she'd have her suit patched before she lost enough air for it to matter.
With the charges gone, it wasn't that hard to hook out the cutter.
If Torin were conscious, she'd be talking, implant to implant, to keep the pirates from overhearing. If she'd been hit hard enough to damage her implant…
The cutter was harder to use with his left hand, and working so close to his body, there was always the chance he'd hole his own suit.
Didn't stop him from aiming it at the net and turning it up to full burn.
All he could hear was his own breath. In. Out. A little too fast. A little too hard.
Three strands through.
Four.
One more…
A sudden shadow caught his attention. Craig turned his head to see the edge of a cargo door go by on his right. He'd barely been pulled over the threshold when the gravity generators kicked in and slammed him down hard onto the deck, the edge of his tank driving into his kidneys with enough force to ensure he'd be pissing blood. Teeth clenched, he flopped over onto his side.
And saw…
He wasn't sure what it was, but it was fukking huge and explained why they'd dropped him so close to the door. There wasn't room to drop him any farther in.
A siren wailed as the doors started to close, and he fought the weight of the net to raise himself up onto his hands and knees. Promise still had power. Craig could see her lights flashing in the distance. If he could get to her, he could get to Torin.
Then the door closed, the halves coming together hard enough he felt the vibrations through his gloves. Through his knees. As he watched, still crawling forward, the telltales turned green.
He kept crawling. Inching forward. Muscles screaming.
That was the way out, and he was Goddamned well going out it.
Suddenly, the floor receded as the net lifted about half a meter into the air. He grunted as his weight drove the cables into his chest, making it hard to breathe. His right leg slipped through the gap he'd cut, but his left remained hung up.
When they came to get him out, he'd get one chance.
He went limp, cutting tool hopefully hidden behind the curve of his gloved fingers. With luck, they'd think he'd taken damage and was a little out of it.
With luck, they'd be quick about it because he didn't know how long he could overcome his need to move, to get free, to get to his ship, to get to Torin.
The net started to swing almost immediately.
Maybe his luck was changing.
He turned his head inside the helmet, the polarizing making the movement invisible from the outside, and saw boots approaching. HE boots. They hadn't pressurized the cargo bay, then.
As the wearer of the boots peeled the net away, and he could feel himself begin to fall, Craig flicked his cutter on. Letting gravity win, he dropped free of the net, landing back on his hands and knees.
He made contact, that much he knew, but he had no idea how much damage he'd done. No idea if he'd bought himself enough time to get to the door.
Surging up onto his feet, he'd taken only two steps forward when something jabbed his thigh, and the jolt snapped his head back, driving the edge of the suit's collar into the back of his neck.
Torin would've made sure the bastard stayed down, he thought as he pitched forward, slamming face first into the deck, mouth filled with blood from where he driven his teeth through his tongue. Next time… "You had to fukking knock him out?" Cho glared up at Almon, who glared back, the ends of his hair carving short choppy arcs over the collar of his suit.
"The ablin gon savit tried to take Nadayki's leg off." Almon jerked his head toward the deck where Doc had the gash sealed and was working on getting the younger di'Taykan out of his suit. "I didn't have time to fukking mess around being pleasant."
The problem was that not everyone reacted well to the tasik-where not well could be defined as turned into drooling, brain-dead meat. Originally developed to control the large, flightless birds that were the main source of animal protein on the Taykan home world, they were a cheaper "personal weapon" to acquire than black market military guns, and Cho had two on board. "If you've broken him…"
"Then he's broken," Almon interrupted flatly, most of his light receptors closed, his eyes pale yellow, lid to lid. "And we'll get another one. And if that one tries to kill my thytrin, I'll break them, too."
He wasn't going to back down, Cho realized. Not when it came to protecting his thytrin. If Almon hadn't been already suited up and on his way into the cargo bay, Nadayki would have bled out and Almon would likely have ripped the helmet off their captured CSO and spaced him. Pushed now, he'd push back and he was still wearing the tasik clipped to his suit. Lucky for him, Cho knew that the trick to turning the kind of people who were willing to do the things the job required into a functioning crew, was knowing when not to push. And when to shove the offender out the air lock.
Stretching out a foot, Cho poked the body slumped against the bulkhead. Everyone looked bigger suited up, but Craig Ryder was clearly not small. "Get your suit off," he snapped at Almon. "Then get his suit off and get him secured to the chair before he comes to. Doc, how will we know if Ryder's still functional?"
"Functional is usually pretty fukking obvious," Doc grunted without looking up, his hands leaving bloody prints all over the ruin of Nadayki's suit.
Head lolling forward, too heavy for his neck to hold, Craig felt like he had the worst hangover in the history of hangovers. Worse than that time back when him and Kurt and Nicole had grabbed the first bottle they could get their hands on out of Nic's dad's liquor cabinet and gotten stupidly drunk on creme de menthe. Only a drongo could have decided that that particular green poison, of all the many ways the Human species had created to get shitfaced, needed to go with them into space. Took months before Nic had stopped puking at the smell of mint.
He remembered a card game. Except he never drank to excess when he was playing.
After?
He tried to move his arms and legs. Couldn't. How fukking drunk had he gotten that he couldn't…
Couldn't because there were bands around his arms. He could feel the pressure against his skin. Bands around his ankles, too. Warm liquid pooled on his right thigh, but it was his left thigh that hurt. Blood?
Hospital?
No. He was sitting up.
Station lockup?
No. Torin wouldn't…
Torin!