Page 80 of Aurelian Prisoner

I outline my scheme:

“We land on Salcus. Check into a hotel and wait for Dantus and his triad to land. Then, we arrange the prisoner transfer.”

I turn to the first of my battle-brothers:

“Kitos – you’ll stay and guard Allie in the hotel.”

Then, the next:

“Hadrian, you’ll come with me.”

I tap my knuckles against the side of the ship. This plan will be a betrayal of everything I’ve ever held dear – every vow of duty to the Empire I’ve ever taken.

But I’ll do it all for her.

“We’re bringing stun-guns only,” I tell my battle-brothers. “With the element of surprise, they won’t be a match for us – but we’renotgoing to kill them. We arenotgoing to hurt them.”

There are some lines even I won’t cross. Dantus and his triad have done nothing wrong. Nothing except hold the standards of an Empire I’m rapidly losing faith in.

“We’ll deliver swift, clean knockouts from the back,” I tell them. “They won’t know what hit them. We’ll even knock out the smugglers and leave them tied up – so at least Dantus and his triad will still get credit for their arrest when they wake up. In the meantime, though, we take their Reaver. Then we’ll grab Allie, and get the fuck out of there.”

Kitos cocks his head. “You’re forgetting something, Daccia. Our eyes. I can still see the diamond in yours.” He turns to the other gunnery station. “Hadrian, yours are as brown as a mare – and I know mine are as green as fucking grass.”

My battle-brother snorts bitterly.

“Dantus might be a novice, but he’s not stupid.”

I nod. “You’re right – but I have a solution for that. Goggles.”

The eyebrows of my battle-brothers lift.

“We tell Dantus and his triad that when Allie disabled our Orb-Drive, she also ruptured the coolant circuits – and we all got hit with poisonous gas. Our eyes are burning up. It makes sense – shedidfuck up some of our other systems, like our food replicator.”

Speaking of which…

“Hope you guys are happy with rations, because that’s all we’re going to eat until we steal another ship.”

“Just like old times,” grins Hadrian. It’s hard not to get nostalgic for the simplicity of our hundred years of service. Back when you didn’t expect to survive the rest of the day, you didn’t have time for tough, philosophical questions.

A wave of tortured shame suddenly transmits through the Bond from Kitos. He slams his hand down against the console.

“Fucking hell. How far have we fallen, Daccia? Stealing a ship from our own people?”

“What do you suggest?” I counter. “Where else are we going to get a fully functioning Reaver before we’re found out? We’velostour honor, Kitos. It’s hard to hear it, I know, but it’s already gone – and it’s not coming back. We’ve only one thing left…”

“…her.”

Hadrian finishes my sentence with his low rumble.

Kitos looks down, cowed. “Where is Allie now?”

“Sleeping. Restoring her weapons was…painful.”

I take a deep breath.

“There’s more. I’ve found the key to binding her to us –willingly. Allie has a little sister who was taken from her.” I look up. “AI – bring up everything we have on Allie’s family.”

The AI scans the Aurelian Law Enforcement database. It takes time – there are billions of active and cold cases on file.

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