Luckily I had expected to have company. The first Starfighter was a novelty. A specimen to study. They had to dissect the enemy’s weapon. In this case, that weapon was a beautiful human woman.
I ignored the two guards as I took the long way to get to the bowels of the asteroid base and back to Jamie. Leading the two guards exactly where I needed them to be was part of the plan.
Twenty paces into the long corridor, the lighting went out in this section. It wasn’t pitch-black, but it was a surprise. For those who weren’t expecting it.
The queen, in her continued lack of trust, had not given me a weapon. I turned on my heel and struck the elder guard on the side of the jaw with a closed fist. He went down like a felled tree.
Fuck, that felt good.
His companion barely registered the movement before a perfectly aimed knife flew through the air to hit him in the center of his chest. His eyes widened as he leaned over and gripped the hilt of the blade. I took the weapon from his limp hand and pulled it free, ending his life. A knife was an ancient weapon, but it was silent and dispatched the enemy to hell without drawing attention. Blasts from a laser pistol would not only be heard, but the heat of it detected through the base’s sensors.
With the knife, I quickly dispatched the elder guard, who appeared to be rousing.
“Nicely done, old friend.”
I turned at the familiar sound of Trax’s voice. I was in fighting focus, but I was glad to see his familiar—and friendly—face. “It’s good to see you. Your timing was perfect.”
“If you two lovers would stop making eyes at one another, we need to get these two out of the corridor.” Nave stood in the now-open doorway of a maintenance chamber. Trax and I each lifted a dead man by the shoulders and dragged them inside.
“Good.” Nave touched a control panel on his wrist, and the lights in the corridor came back on. “That was less than a ten count. Maybe we won’t die today after all.”
“No one is fucking dying.” I leaned over both guards and searched them for weapons and comm units, taking everything I could and dividing it among the three of us. I wiped the blood from the blade on the dead guy’s uniform, then handed it back to Trax. “Here. Take these weapons.” I kept one for myself. “We have to get Jamie out of here alive.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get your bondmate off this rock,” Trax assured me.
“I will not leave without her.” Meaning if she died, I would as well.
“We know. We know, Starfighter.” Nave slapped me on the back. This time the gesture was given, I didn’t want to kill. “Move your ass. We’re wasting time.”
“One more thing. The traitor is Delegate Rainhart. Remember that fucking name. Rainhart.” If I died, I needed to make sure the information made it back to Velerion.
“A fucking delegate?” Trax sounded as furious as I had been.
Nave punched the wall with his fist. “All this time and you find out? How?”
“The queen bragged about him at dinner. How he’d helped her take down the entire fleet and destroy the Starfighter base.” I checked the energy charge on my newly acquired laser rifle. Full charge. Excellent.
“Fuck me. That bitch.” Trax was fuming now, his skin darker, his pulse pounding out a visible rhythm at the base of his throat. “We wasted months, and she just fucking tells you his name at dinner?”
“Yes. Now let’s go.”
I lifted my hand to the controls and opened the small door. Once it slid wide, I moved quietly down the corridor toward Jamie’s holding cell, my two friends behind me. If seen, nothing would seem amiss. We were known on the asteroid base. Everyone knew I was the one who’d delivered the infamous Starfighter, knew the queen had ordered me to torture her, and knew I would have to get her to agree to join the Dark Fleet or watch her die.
We reached Jamie in a matter of minutes, but Trax and Nave peeled off and disappeared. As planned, I walked into the area like I was expected to be there. Which I was. The guards at the entrance to the prison area nodded at me as I passed. “Where’s your escort, Alexius? Or should I say Elite Starfighter?” They enunciated the Velerion title as if it were poisonous. A joke to them. They were taunting me. It only made me eager to kill them, which I refused to do before the proper time. Not now. Not when I was this close to getting Jamie free.
I moved forward to walk past them, but the guard on the left lowered his weapon to block my passage. “I said, where’s your escort, Starfighter?”
Maybe they weren’t as stupid as I’d hoped. “The queen decided she needed a couple extra men in bed tonight,” I lied. It had been known to happen, not just tonight.
The two guards looked at me in silence. I stared back until one of them cracked a grin. The other one, put at ease by his fellow guard, chuckled. “We’ve heard about our queen’s appetites.”
“And seen the results,” the first guard agreed with a shudder.
Leaning in closer to whisper, I truthfully sympathized. “I would not want to be invited to her bed. I prefer to keep my blood inside my body.”
“Go on, then.” The second guard stepped aside. “And don’t take all fucking night, either. We’re on guard until you’re done with her.”
“You two? Why? Don’t you change shifts?” I asked.