She felt it, then.
Something connected as she felt a rush of power through her. The bio-tech burned as hot metal corded over her arm and down her hand, ending in massive metal claws that extended beyond her fingertips. The sound of metal hitting rock squealed in her ears, and she reflexively anchored her fingers, curling her new claws into the stone.
Her plummet stopped so suddenly she felt as if her stomach hit her throat, but it was overpowered by a rush of relief. She hung there for a moment, allowing endorphins to flood through her.I’m alive!
Terri lifted her head and stared at her hand. The bio-tech had formed an armored glove clear up to her elbow, the green center of the symbiont pulsing with energy. She had activated it. Twice now, she had managed to activate it when overcome by a powerful desire. There was a key somewhere in that. A way to connect to the bio-tech and utilize it.
“Anastha… Terri!” Veral shouted up, relief unmistakable in his voice, as was the bite of anger.
“Yeah, I’m coming down!” she shouted back.
Intently ignoring the sound of Azan’s breathless laughter, Terri lightly swung herself until her other hand curled around another cluster of vines. That particular cluster had some terrible smelling plant twined within it, but she wasn’t in any position to complain. Instead, she tried to view it as a sort of penance as she made her way down until she reached a point where she could transfer to another vine.
Twice more, she repeated the process until she dropped down beside Azan, the black metal beneath her feet surprisingly silent with the exception of a light, muffled thump. The female wrapped an arm around her and squeezed briefly in a tight hug before letting her loose.
“You may be a little, soft thing, but you are certainly crazy,” the Blaithari female chortled. “It scared a half-dozen revolutions off my life. I cannot believe you made it,” she pronounced with a grin, her eyes gleaming as they settled on the clawed glove.
Terri flexed her hand self-consciously as she grinned back at Azan. The smile, however, turned sheepish as she met Veral’s regard. Immediately, her skin cooled as the bio-tech disengaged and uncoiled from her arm, leaving her bare and exposed beneath her mate’s glower.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said quickly.
A heavy brow lifted speculatively. “I was not aware that telepathy was part of human physiology. But perhaps you are speaking of the numerous times I have instructed you during training to take the predictable and logical route. To not overextend for no other reason than that you can.”
“You are angry, aren’t you?”
“Furious,” he growled. “We will address this matter with considerably more training… repeatedly, once we are finished here. The simulation on scaling down foreign walls and vertical surfaces until I am satisfied will suffice.”
Terri frowned at the thought of hours and hours scaling the cliffs of Abzorra Thranal, Veral’s favorite training programing. One he had drilled her in for weeks until he felt satisfied, despite his displeasure with her antics. Just that quickly, his anger dissipated, and he drew her against him, nestling her within his embrace.
“I am very pleased, however, that you have come back to me safe, anastha,” he whispered against her hair.
A low purr rumbled around her from his vibrating mandibles, and she instinctively melted against him. Her endorphin rush finally bottomed out as she sagged against him, a tremble working through her muscles as he held her close. She was distantly aware of the sounds of feet hitting metal as the rest of the pirates joined them, but she pushed it away, relishing her moment with him.
Unfortunately, the captain wasn’t the patient sort who took well to being ignored.
“Enough with the loving reunion. Your mate is safe, and the crew is all here with theEvandraherself beneath our feet. No more delays,” Egbor snapped impatiently.
As Terri pulled back from Veral’s arms, she noted that the captain had a feverish light to his eyes as he stared down at the dark hull of the starship. His pupils were blown wide as his gaze twitched with a sort of frantic restlessness that could only be obsession.
She lusted over whatever the ship held as well, but that half-mad look on his face made her draw deeper into Veral’s embrace, reluctant now to set foot inside. She didn’t even want to touch the thing, and would have crawled up onto her mate if there wasn’t a risk of making herself appear even more foolish than she had already managed.
Whatever dwelled within there couldn’t be worth that.
Her opinion didn’t change when Veral led them to where his scans indicated the entrance hatch was located. It opened with little effort from him, seeming to respond to him in a similar manner to how the medical unit had. This time, however, the ship didn’t power down when he disconnected from the door. Instead, the interior lit up.
A voice echoed from the ship’s interior. It took her translator a moment to catch up since she hadn’t studied the Elshavan texts as much as Veral. She sucked in a breath when the words finally sorted themselves out in her mind.
“Welcome, Captain.”
21
“Captain? This salvager is not captain. I am the only captain here,” Egbor bellowed, his head craning around as he addressed theEvandra’sAI.
“Negative,” the cool voice responded. “Scans indicate that you do not have starship interface implants required of those with captain-level clearance. There is only one being present with such implants who has initiated uplink with theEvandra.”
Egbor turned on Veral with a savage expression. “Keeping secrets from me, were you Argurma?”
“Not secrets for those who know anything about the Argurma species. That you are ignorant of our implants for tech interface is no fault of mine,” Veral replied.