Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3) Read online

  Rayna shook her head. She had no answers for him. When she looked away from his interrogation, she saw they had arrived at her cabin. Her bunk, thank God, was empty.

  “I’ve found another place for your bunkmates.” He swallowed—embarrassed? “For a couple of days, anyway. I thought you could use the extra rest.”

  She found she was genuinely grateful. “Thank you.” Her throat closed up then, taking any more words, as she looked up into a stare that had become much too intimate.

  It seemed as if he stopped breathing at the same time, equally robbed of speech. Instead, one corner of his mouth lifted, and he nodded. Then he turned away and strode off down the corridor, leaving the guards behind at the hatch of her cabin.

  And Rayna, of course, watching him and wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Mo towered over the desk in his command room, a frown worrying his dark face.

  Sam refused to do more than glance up from the datapad he’d been staring at—and not seeing—for the last half-hour. “Why should anything be wrong? I’ve got an assassin on the loose, 800 LO’s crowding two ships, a gimpy jump drive and a pain-in-the-ass XO to deal with. And this is a good day.”

  “Customarily, the captain of a ship is found on the bridge. With his crew.” The Pataran crossed his arms over his chest, his usual sign of displeasure. “You stomped in here over an hour ago without a word to anyone, and you’ve been in here ever since.”

  “Is there an emergency on the bridge that requires my attention?”

  Mo glared, but said nothing.

  “Then I have work to do. Here. In my command room.” He waved a hand. “Which is why I have a desk and everything in here.”

  “You’re not in the habit of working in your command room. At your . . . desk and everything. Makes me think you’re hiding.”

  Sam abandoned the futile effort to go over the fuel reports. “If you’ve got something to say, Mo, spit it out. I don’t have time to trade riddles with you.”

  “Okay.” The big man dropped his arms and took a step toward the desk. “You haven’t been yourself since that woman came aboard.”

  Irritation flamed into anger. “What woman are you referring to, Mo? The one who got herself beat to shit trying to protect my ship? The same one, by the way, who might be an assassin’s target because she’s the only one who got a look at him?”

  “The one who seems to know more about this shit than anyone else and has you tied in knots,” Mo shot back. “That one.”

  Sam jumped to his feet, all the wrong words on the tip of his tongue, but thankfully he didn’t have a chance to say them. His desk comm interrupted with an urgent buzz before he could take the argument to a darker place.

  He took a breath and answered. “Murphy here.”

  “Patel, Cap. I have Captain Manneh onscreen from the Fleeflek. She says it’s important.”

  He’d put Manneh in charge of the slaver not only because she was smart, but because she handled just about any emergency with calm and efficiency. If she said it was important, things had gone to Portal’s Hell.

  “Fatou? What’s going on?”

  “Cap. Not urgent, but I thought I’d give you a heads up so you’d have time to prepare. We’re losing power in the Environmental Control system—down 18 percent now and falling. Cause unknown so far. I’ve already closed off nonessential areas, but soon I’m going to have to start shutting down sections where we’ve got people living. That means we’ll have to shift some more bodies over to you unless we get the problem fixed.”

  Sam swallowed a curse. “I’ll have Kwan send a team to look at it. What’s the rate of loss?”

  “Currently at about one percent every ninety minutes. But it seems to be accelerating.”

  “Not good. Let’s hope Kwan can do something quick.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Sam signed off with Manneh and called Engineering to explain the situation to Stephen Kwan. The Chief Engineer said he would go himself at the head of the duty team.

  By the time Sam had finished, his XO was standing poised to leave his command room. “Was there anything else, Mister Maatik?”

  The Pataran shook his head slowly. “No, Cap. I’m done for now.” The big man ducked out the hatch and went back to the bridge.

  But Sam hadn’t missed the questions that remained in his friend’s dark eyes. Questions he himself had yet to answer.

  Rayna spent the better part of a day and night close to her bunk in the crowded crew cabin. She got up, walked the corridors, ate in the mess hall, took a shower, collapsed again. On the second day, she braved a limited workout on the treadmill in the PT deck, but the ribs couldn’t hack much pounding. She cut it short, showered up and headed back to the cabin. At the open cabin hatch, she pulled up when she saw the teenager sprawled on the bunk across from hers, scowling over a datapadd.

  At least the knife is sheathed this time.

  The kid looked up. Sat up. The expression on her face was . . . not hateful. “Oh. Hi.”

  Rayna came all the way into the cabin, greeting and stepping around two others who filled the space until she reached her own bunk. ”Hi, back.”

  Lainie considered the deck between them, her dark hair falling across her face. Then she hit Rayna with a bright blue gaze. “I heard you beat the crap out of a couple of guys trying to sabotage the ship last week.”

  Rayna’s lips quirked. “More like they beat the crap out of me. If it hadn’t been for Javin Darto, I’d have been dead meat.”

  “Yeah, Javin’s a good one to have at your back.”

  “None better.” Where is she going with this?

  The girl looked her over. “You had to go under the light in Sickbay?”

  “Yeah. But I’m getting around okay now.”

  “Good. That’s good.” The deck again. After a long moment, she looked up. “I, uh, I just wanted to say I might have been wrong about you. You might be okay.” She tried out a smile. “At least Cap seems to think so.”

  So she had worked around to an apology of sorts. Rayna smiled. The kid had more edges than a Scithian throwing star, but maybe there was something solid at her center, something that guided her and held her up straight. If Lainie judged others by that internal yardstick, apparently Rayna had measured up.

  She kept it short and to the point. “Thanks.”

  Still, she wasn’t so sure the girl had it right about Sam Murphy’s opinion. The guards still hovered outside the cabin and followed her wherever she went. The captain might say he was protecting her, but the constant surveillance made her feel like she was the criminal. That was going to have to stop.

  Sixteen hours later the Captain’s command room was full to capacity, everyone talking at once. Sam held up a hand and blessed silence fell.

  “Kwan, you first. How bad is the EC on the Fleeflek?”

  “That mulaak Ninoctin let his ship fall to pieces under his ass. Environmental Control is limping along at about 50 percent. I can’t do any better, but at least I stopped the slide. Damn system is missing so many parts it’s a freaking miracle it’s working at all.”

  “Impact, Mo?”

  “Manneh’s doubled up all she can over there,” the Pataran said. “We’ve got to take on at least another 75 people here.”

  A groan ran through the room; Sam ignored it. “Make it a hundred and find a way. Do it today.”

  Mo stared at him. “Cap!”

  He raised his hands. “What do you want me to do? Leave them gasping for air in the companionways over there? We can put a few more in the cargo hold; clear out the PT deck.”

  Kwan moaned. “Seriously? The PT deck? I can’t get a TREX machine as it is.”

  “Double-time the stairs in Engineering. That should get the blood pumping.” Sam gave him a wry grin. “Come to think of it, maybe I’ll join you.” He turned to his Security Chief. “What about you, Chen? Any luck with our prisoners in the brig?”

  “No, sir, the
y’re still refusing to talk. But I do have some new information.” Despite the good news, Chen’s face gave away nothing. “We’ve had reports of unauthorized activity all along the starboard side of hull space over the last 24 hours. I waited to confirm that it wasn’t the cats or just crew being spooked, but it looks like these are for real. Somebody’s in there.”

  Sam’s pulse accelerated. “Not a bad place to hide—it’s where I’d go if I had to, even with the zero G. Pull in all your people and set up search teams. We’ll go over hull space with a flea comb. And if we don’t find that shalssiti pultafa today I’m going to start ejecting those assholes in the brig out an airlock one by one until they tell me something.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rayna stood staring at a body-sized access hatch to Gravity Lock 7a in a quiet section of Auxiliary Maintenance, preparing to violate the regulations posted in bright yellow. She certainly wasn’t “authorized.” She wasn’t even “personnel.” She was, however, the “only” person planning to use the access—at least, she hoped she was.

  She was sore, but nearly three days after leaving Sickbay, the broken ribs had knitted and any sign of bruising was gone. Still, her core muscles and those damaged ribs needed a workout, but she wasn’t ready to do it with the added pull of gravity.

  For some reason she couldn’t fathom, Captain Murphy in his infinite wisdom must have also determined it was time for her to stand on her own two feet. Her guards had disappeared from outside her cabin an hour ago, leaving her on her own without a word of explanation. Either he’d found the assassin from Sickbay, or he’d finally come to the conclusion she could take care of herself. Suited her purposes, so she wouldn’t complain.

  According to the schematics she’d found behind several layers of security in the ship’s computer, GL 7a would take her between the inner and outer hulls of the ship. This space between hulls was a zero-G dead zone of mechanicals and equipment back doors, of coolant panels and plasma tubing and nano-matrix cells that only showed their faces on the inner hull. The place she had chosen, through this pressure lock, was in the waste-processing area of the ship, a big, interconnecting series of tanks that relied on interior pressure and was best serviced in zero-G.

  Rayna took a last look around the deserted maintenance room and opened the hatch. She was fully prepared to ignore the red sign above her head that shouted “Warning! Low light conditions, confined space, egress at zero G!” But below that some pirate comedian had scribbled, “Weight limit 150kg. This means you, Darto.” She recognized the name of the big man who had saved her ass. If she’d had a pen she would have added an appropriate response on his behalf. Instead she grabbed the handle on the hatch and yanked it a quarter turn at a time until it swung open. Shit, that hurt, the pain like rivets in the contracting muscles of her torso. She paused at the open hatch, breathing until the pain faded, then she stepped inside and pulled the hatch shut.

  It occurred to her that if she got in real trouble in here, there would be no one to help her. No one knew where she was; even the sardonic Lainie had been out of the cabin when she’d left. Rayna laughed a little and scanned the inside of the chamber for controls. Doc Berta had pronounced her “completely recovered” when she’d left Sickbay, right? So she had to be even better today. Not like she was going to pass out from the pain of a few zero-G exercises.

  It was a tight squeeze inside the chamber, dim and confining and nearly airless; whoever had scratched that graffiti about Darto wasn’t so funny after all. Rayna focused on initiating the sequence. She didn’t want to spend any more time in GL 7a than she had to.

  The pads on the panel by the hatch were backlit in white: Sequence A: One G to Zero G; Sequence B: Zero G to One G. Current Status: One G. The letters “One G” were lit in green. Minimal instructions below the pads told her to grab a handle before she made her selection, then press a pad. There was just enough light in the tiny square of space to find the grab bar. Then she hit the pad for Sequence A, and the computer counted her down. She felt her feet slowly lift off the deck. Her stomach lurched as her inner ear tried to adjust to the lack of gravity. Within seconds she was floating free and the computer informed her the sequence was complete.

  She grabbed the release for the exterior hatch and turned, trying to ignore the catch in her ribs. As the hatch came open, she pushed through into the empty space on the other side. Rayna wasn’t an engineer. She wasn’t sure exactly how you zoned AG for one part of the ship and turned it off in another. She knew doing so saved you a shipload of energy, though, and made some things easier—like repairs on equipment that backed up into hull space. And she’d been on enough ships to know hull space was a fine place for certain kinds of workouts—physical and, uh, otherwise.

  Like that time she and her ex-partner had found their own zero-G paradise on a transport home from Sector Nine. A fond little smile crossed her lips. She missed Daniel sometimes, though God knew there was no reason to deny herself. He was still there for the taking anytime. She blew out a breath and cut off that line of thought before it could sprout branches and tangle her up in distracting emotions. She was here in this hull space so she could test herself where no one would bother her.

  She pushed herself all the way out of the hatch and hooked her legs around one of the many grab bars bolted into the metal skin of the hull. She dogged the hatch shut and turned to survey the space, floating as she took note of how much room she had to move, of where the sharp edges were (clearly marked in red), of the sensitive equipment (in orange). Sam Murphy’s pirate ship would pass a Confederated Systems Fleet standard inspection, which was more than Rayna could say for quite a few Fleet cruisers she’d been aboard. How could a man who had chosen a life outside the law—stealing, hijacking, smuggling, God knows what else—captain a ship with such discipline and order? Damn, the man was such a mystery!

  Okay, that’s it! Her mind had called up two men in as many minutes. She really needed this workout. She exerted the barest pressure against the wall to move into the open center of the hull space and began with simple starfish movements, pulling her arms and legs in and tucking into a tight ball, then extending everything out wide. She adjusted to account for her drift and managed to stay roughly in place while she repeated the exercise until the sweat was rolling and her ribs were screaming.

  It didn’t take long. Dozens of tiny stabilizing muscles came into play in zero G that had little to do under normal conditions. Those little muscles had been battered and bruised, too. Not to mention the fact that her body had been relatively immobile for days and, well . . . shit. Gasping for air, she was forced to stop and just hang for a minute. Her pulse pounded in her temples and joined the symphony of whoosh and hum from the waste processors that shared the space with her. The breathing of her lungs, the breathing of the ship, the stuff of life in space.

  But as she lifted her head to begin again, something cut through that background noise—the clang of metal against metal, like a tool being dropped. Rayna curled in on herself and oriented her body so she could get a look around at the cleanout cages on the filter tanks. She didn’t see anyone; the cages were clear, as were the maintenance and repair stations for the massive recyclers. The hair rose on the back of her neck. She was exposed here in the open. Anyone in the section could see her and remain hidden. She stretched out and “swam” back to one side of the central space where there was some chance of cover. Then she listened.

  Nothing came back but the whoosh and hum and the thump of her heartbeat, louder than ever. Fuck it, she told herself. Imagination. Or one of the crew’s secretive cats.

  She eyed a spot on the opposite hull wall and launched herself toward it, tucked and rolled in the middle of her trajectory, and came out of the roll in time to extend, grab the bar on the other side and land gracefully. But, God, it hurt! Something she could have done in her sleep two weeks ago had become awkward, slow and painful. Christ!

  Though every muscle protested, she turned and gathered herself to do it ag
ain. This time as she pushed off, she felt the pressure of compaction from her thighs to her collarbone. As she extended out across the open hull space, the stiff, scarred connective tissue between her ribs stretched and twisted, sending agony through her torso. The tuck-and-roll was like folding herself in on broken glass—she barely came out of it with enough consciousness to reach for the grab bar in front of her face.

  She wrapped arms around the bar, aware now that uncontrolled drift was a serious possibility. Black spots were stealing big parts of her vision, and her head was throbbing.

  “Okay,” she admitted out loud to herself. “Maybe this wasn’t your best idea.”

  “You think?”

  Well, shit. Didn’t that just put the icing on the cake.

  “Captain.” Her greeting didn’t come out with the smartass twang she was hoping to put in it. Not enough breath.

  He was suddenly very close. How had he gotten so close, so fast? He had an arm around her to keep her attached to the grab bar, and he felt . . . warm.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is a restricted area.”

  She shrugged off his arm—she was fine now, thank you very much—and glanced up at his face. His expression didn’t match the censure in his words. The furrows between his brows didn’t look like anger, but she couldn’t quite interpret their true meaning.

  “For a pirate ship, you sure have a lot of rules.”

  “Discipline is necessary no matter what kind of ship it is.” His lips curved upwards. “Now answer my question.”

  Sam Murphy really was a fine-looking man, a dangerously fine-looking man, with those green eyes and a face that belonged in holovids rather than on the deck of a real ship. But damned if he was going to back her up, even in zero G.

  “You saw what I was doing; I was working out. On most of the ships I’ve been on, that’s been okay unofficially. I didn’t think I’d have to ask for permission, especially since I was back here in the sewer.”