Captured and Captivated

Chapter 7

SARHEN

Okay, I may have royally karked this up.

All of my focus should have been on getting us out of here. It wasn't. My little human was highly distracting. She equally clung to me and cringed from me. Sometimes she would tighten up under my grip as if she was about to run away, but then she never did. In most any other situation it would have been a delight to hold onto her. Maybe even to chase her.

Ah yes, chasing her might be fun. I immediately shelved that thought for another time.

Right now though? Right now we were in a whole new world of trouble. I'd meant it when I said we weren't alone here, but I hadn't realized how bad the situation really was until now. Another ship had gated into the system immediately after the auction ended. When I had sabotaged the station's comm array it had been to prevent the Krynn from calling for backup. It was a cocky, short-sighted little move that sure as kark just bit me in the ass.

No comms meant that, by the time we'd heard about the ship gating through, the Alconis had already docked. Of all the ships in the Behl it just had to be that one. The Alconis was the personal vessel of Reyus, High King of the Satu Empire. Considering that I had just bought myself a mate by impersonating one of Reyus' head generals... yeah, big problem.

My ship had instantly been put on lockdown. I could get around that, but first we had to get to it. Hard thing to do when pure chaos had erupted as soon as my fake line of credits was traced and my identity had fallen apart.

When my onboard had caught my human on a lower level camera I'd sent out a shadow drone to distract the Krynn. Those things were ridiculously rare and expensive – not that I had actually bought it- but oh was it effective. If anything it had maybe worked too well. My onboard had picked up so much Krynn laser fire from behind us that it had to mute the audio feed before it gave me a headache.

The Krynn I could handle. The real problem was whoever King Reyus had sent. I knew there had to be at least two Satu agents on board looking for us. Or, more specifically, looking for her.

Get in line, Origins. The whole Behl wants a human . This one was mine.

We were both hidden and moving fast, working our way through corridors as we narrowly dodging guards and security drones. That was the good news. The stealth suit I'd bartered from Gehn was doing all it had promised, but the odds were still racking up against us. A single slip up could bring my whole plan crashing to a very messy end.

And I wasn't the only one distracted. My onboard was diverting precious resources to finding out what else the Alconis was up to. The Satu ship had breached into the Krynn's network systems through the same backdoor exploit like I had. If they were just looking for the human they wouldn't have bothered such a deep attack. I had a sinking feeling they were going after the exact thing Banedon was, so I let my computer give them a hard time. They couldn't take information that we stole first.

Data was currently streaming at a jagged pace from the Krynn's network to my ship with my own head as the middleman. The feeling was disconcerting to say the least, but there was no time to argue. I clung delightfully tight to my human and let my onboard choose the fastest path to my ship.

Fastest also meant riskiest, but we were getting close. Only a few more twists and turns were between us and the hangar now. The next area lead out into one of the more open and inhabited areas of the station and there was a set of double doors we had to remotely unlock first. The second they began to open my onboard buckled my legs, dropping me and my human into a low crouch. Two stun shots flew right over our heads, zipping past so near to us that I felt their heat scorch the air. I kept us low and rushed forward, pushing quickly into the open space and darting behind a cargo crate. Three more shots fired in an open pattern above our heads.