“What does it explain?” Her breath is warm against my skin in the darkness.
“Zebah didn’t set the trap,” I tell her. “She’s being held hostage. They’re forcing her to lure us in.” This means things just got a whole kef of a lot more interesting. Zebah might not know anything, but the fact that she’s in this situation means that someone knows we’re sniffing around. It’s a good sign.
Helen makes an unhappy sound in her throat. She points a finger at the two moden. “Those are bad guys?”
“Yeah. Zebah’s a good kid. Cocky, but most corsairs are. I didn’t think this was like her, and now we know it’s not. She’s just in over her head.”
“And they’re going to hurt her?” Helen’s voice is full of sympathy. “Because we’re not playing along?”
“Hopefully she’ll manage,” I tell Helen. “I’m sure she’s been in worse scrapes in the past. She’ll figure something out.”
“You think they’re going to pinch her?” she asks, her whispered words full of outrage.
Pinch her? That’s a random thing to say. But then one of the moden leans in and tugs on Zebah’s jewel-studded ear. I watch as Zebah clenches her jaw, unmoving, too aware of the blaster being held to the back of her head.
Helen shifts against me. Before I can register what she’s doing, she’s got her blaster out and kicks the safety off of it. She pushes it into the viewing slit and fires. The moden standing behind Zebah goes down, red blooming between his wide-set eyes. A split second later, Helen fires again and the second one collapses.
My jaw drops. “Helen…”
“I don’t like pinching,” she says, her tone vicious. “It’s mean and bad.”
I stare at the scene below, stunned. Helen didn’t even think or pause to aim. She just pulled out her blaster and shot…and hit each moden perfectly between the eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it. When Adiron said she had enhanced reflexes, I thought maybe she was just fast…but this is incredible. My pretty, innocent qura’aki is a keffing sniper to boot.
Zebah gets up from her chair, a look of confusion on her face as she touches her long hair. She immediately glances around the room, looking for her saviors. “Who’s there? Is that you, va Sithai?” She scrambles toward one of the moden and grabs one of their blasters, waving it around the room. “You should know that this wasn’t my idea.”
“She’s scared,” Helen says, full of sympathy. “Let’s go hug her.”
“She’s a pirate, love. We shouldn’t hug her. We need to be wary of her, too.” But I get what Helen means. We need to reassure Zebah before she panics and starts shooting wildly.
Just as I open the grate a bit wider to show Zebah our presence, something slams at the main door to the control room below. The other party has bypassed my program and is about to break in.
This could get ugly.
CHAPTER 48
MATHIRAS
I open the chute a little wider, just enough to show my face, and call out to Zebah, “Want a ride out of here?”
She turns, her eyes widening, and grabs both of the blasters from the dead moden. Racing toward me, she stuffs both into her belt. “Kef yes I do.”
“Great, come on. It won’t take long for them to figure out why they can’t find us.” I gesture for her to climb into the tunnel and then look over at Helen. “Back the way we came, love.”
“Going backward,” she sings out, and starts climbing back up the sloped chute. I’m glad Helen doesn’t ask questions or demand to fight. I know her aim is amazing but I also don’t want to test it against a half-dozen blasters at once, and we don’t know how many people are on the other side of that door.
I hold a hand down to Zebah to help her up the wall, and then she moves into the chute ahead of me. I take up the rear, barking out quiet directions when she pauses or her tail swats in my face. Funny how I didn’t mind being in close quarters with Helen, but with Zebah in the mix it’s just slightly annoying. Not Zebah’s fault, though. She’s just not Helen.
Helen is the first one to slide back out of the chute, and I hear her gasp. Of course they left someone in the hall. I curse our bad luck, and when Zebah tumbles out a moment later onto the belt, I watch as she slowly puts her hands up, staring at someone off to the side. All I can see are a pair of legs in uniform. I hesitate inside the tunnel, running through scenarios in my head. The guard below might not know how many people are here. He might think it’s just Helen, or he might think there’s ten of us hiding in the tunnel. The program I installed scrambled the signals, but I don’t know for how long.