Chapter 174: Back Against The Wall
174
Midnight yanked me away just as the Sisalik guard pulled the trigger. I turned my head to look at the hole in the opposite wall as GA grabbed the blaster away from the guard and flung it toward Midnight.
My wolf plucked the blaster out of mid-air and turned it back toward the guard as he pulled the trigger.
The body dropped to the floor, a bloody stump at the top of its neck showing very clearly the cause of death.
"Did I forget to mention that a few of the higher-ranking lizards have their own PBD?" asked Jun Li, his voice echoing through the hallways.
"Must have slipped your mind," growled Midnight, clearly not impressed with Jun Li’s oversite.
"It’s not that big of a deal," muttered the AI, not realizing how unimpressed my two males were.
"Not that big of a deal?" growled GA, slowly turning his body so that he was looking at the camera inside the medical room.
"She has the ability to reflect blaster fire," answered Jun Li. I think that the AI should be extremely happy that he was not a human right about now. GA looked like he wanted to rip someone’s spine through their body, and I had a feeling I knew who he wanted to do it to.
"Still," growled Midnight, pulling me possessively into his embrace as he lowered the laser blaster. "I would rather not take chances with my mate."
There was a brief silence before Jun Li came back. "Understood," he answered softly. "There are roughly 50 some-odd Sisalik’s still remaining on the ship. They are attempting communication with their military, requesting assistance, but I have blocked them."
I smiled at his words. "So, they sent out an S.O.S to come save them from the people that responded to their first S.O.S?" I laughed as I patted Midnight’s arm. I needed to go check out the rest of the ship, just in case I wasn’t their first human on board. However, Midnight simply tightened his grip on me, picking me up off my feet as he stepped over the body in front of us.
"Pretty much," deadpanned Jun Li, clearly as impressed with their actions as I was.
"Maybe they should have been more discerning about who they were contacting in the first place," I said as Midnight adjusted me so that I was now sitting on his forearm. He continued to stroll through the hallway, looking back and forth for any threats.
"Well, leave enough dead bodies around, and they will learn their lesson quick enough," mused Jun Li. "I have indicated the rooms with living beings in them with a red light on top of the door. They have been locked in and won’t be able to get out any time soon."
"Thank you for that," I answered Jun Li, knowing that this was his way of making up for what happened earlier.
"Of course," he grunted. We continued down the hall, making note of the rooms with a red light blinking over top of the door. Life was much easier when you had an AI on your side.
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"Open the doors. All of them," came a female voice from the darkness. The only light in the room originated from a monitor in front of her.
"But then they will know that someone is in the system," came a cautious male voice from somewhere overhead.
"Ask me if I care," sneered the woman, clearly not impressed about being questioned.
"Do you care?" asked the male, not sure why he was commanded to ask such a question.
"Ahhh!" screamed the woman, and the sound of a glass shattering echoed throughout the room. "Get some brains! I wasn’t actually asking you. I was implying that I really didn’t care if they knew that we were in the system. I want that bitch and those males brought over here!"
The male voice was silent for a few minutes while the woman tried to bring herself back under control.
"Pippa," came the voice of Stargazer again, but before he could say anything else, the woman lounging on the couch in front of the monitor turned to glare at the camera in the corner.
"You do not call me that name, ever."
"I am sorry, Mistress. I will do better in the future," responded Stargazer quickly as he watched her playing with the red crystal drive around her neck.
"See that you do," she snapped back, not at all worried about offending her ship. As far as she was concerned, the AIs were there to serve their masters.
"I have disengaged the locks on the doors containing the officers," said Stargazer, his attention turning back to the empty hallway that the human Ethawainian and her mates had just walked down.
"Then why aren’t they out there kill—capturing them then?!?" Pippa demanded, coming to her feet and getting herself another glass of what passed for sweet wine in this part of the universe.
"Maybe they don’t know the doors are unlocked?" suggested Stargazer.
"Fucking dumbasses," growled Pippa, once again wrapping her fist around the red crystal hanging from her neck. "Open the doors then," she continued after a moment. "Since they clearly need an invitation."
Stargazer watched through the monitor as Pippa continued to play with his crystal... with him.
"Yes, Mistress," he said before turning his attention back to The Noronha.
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"Someone is overriding me," came Jun Li’s hurried voice in my ear. I looked around to see if any of the others had reacted to his words but then quickly realized that they had not.
"Stargazer?" I asked softly. If there was someone in the system, then they would have access to the same thing that Jun Li did, including audio and video.
My voice might not have been loud enough for whoever was in the system to pick up, but that didn’t mean that GA and Midnight couldn’t hear me.
"He is trying to open the doors that I have locked," growled Jun Li.
"Then let him," I said quickly. "Get Da’kea and Ye’tab over here; warn them about what they will find," I continued, activating my armor.
"The air in these ships is always so weird," I said in a louder voice.
"You’ll get used to it," replied Jun Li over the speakers, following my lead. There was no reason to startle the snake in the grass. "Your other two mates have been notified, and they are on their way," he informed me from the earpiece.
My brain was spinning, trying to think of a way to spin this around in my favor. Stargazer was the only one that I could think of who could access the system. Since he was an ally, he wouldn’t need to jump through the same hoops that Jun Li needed to. However, if he was in the system, why did he let Jun Li kill all the Sisaliks that he had?
Midnight’s roar cut through my thoughts, and I watched as he sprinted forward, ripping the lizard in front of us in half. The white walls were decorated in lime green blood as my wolf bared his teeth at the three Sisaliks racing down the hallways, their blasters drawn.
"Midnight!" I shouted, breaking out into a sprint. He was the only one of us not to have any nanos, and yet, for some reason, he still thought he was invincible. I made it just in time to take the blaster hit that was meant for his chest. It reflected off of me, and there was a strangled scream as yet another body hit the floor.
"Use your brain," I growled at him as I called up my shoulder laser cannon. I shot the other two lizards quickly, not letting them have any time to regroup.
GA’s voice came behind me as a head was sent flying my way. Midnight grabbed me in his arms and pulled me to the side before anything could hit me. "Watch where you are throwing shit," growled Midnight as the other male came over to me.
"Sorry," grunted GA.
He spun around so that his back was to me and Midnight just in case there were more threats. Luckily for us, there wasn’t any more... yet.
We continued down the hallway, looking for signs that there might have been other humans here when it all of a sudden occurred to me. "Jun Li," I said softly and in French. There was a chance that Stargazer learned to speak English for Pippa, but I doubted that he would have learned any of the other Earth languages. "Turn off all the feeds."
"But if I do that, I won’t be able to watch you either. What happens if you run into trouble?" he asked in my earpiece; the concern in his voice made me smile.
"I will be fine. I have three of the scariest species in the Universe, plus my own personal werewolf. But if you don’t have eyes, Stargazer won’t have them either. And I need him blind."
"Why?" asked Jun Li, more than a little confused.
"Because I think he is watching us to learn our secrets. More things come out when your back is against a wall than when you are calm and in control."
"Like what?"
"Like I have nano armor that can deflect laser fire," I answered seriously, no longer in the mood to joke around.
