Page 65 of Taken to Kor
Quintenanrret beams and my heart swells with pride. I step up behind my mate and place two hands on the center of her back. “You will monitor her every step of the way,” I say, maintaining Quintenanrret’s gaze, “But this is the pirate who will lead us this solar. Follow her.”
We hurry down the streets, Deena opting to allow me to carry her, for once, so that we make better time. As we board the mothership and I issue orders to pirates to clean up the mess made by the mercenaries and Erobu, and for Quintenanrret and his apprentice healers to assist Gerannu and the others who’ve fallen, Deena heads directly to the control room, takes the primary seat and begins tapping into the controls. I kneel before her as the ship rises up into the sky, away from Kor’s surface.
She wears a grim expression that unsettles me. “What is it? This is sure to be a shroving good time. You should be pleased.”
Deena meets my gaze. Her eyes dazzle in their intensity and their verve. I place one hand on her knee, another on her belly, and then skim her jaw with a third. She takes my fourth free hand in between both of her palms and says to me quietly so that no one can hear, “Rhork.”
“Deena, my mate.”
“Why didn’t I kill her before?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I had a chance. One single chance just now when she took me captive. I didn’t know about the shield you gave me and I thought she was going to kill me and our kits, but I still hesitated. I had my finger on the trigger, but I hesitated. And then when I shot her, I missed.”
I bring her hands to my mouth and kiss all the knuckles. The ten of them that there are. “You are a pirate, Deena, not a killer. Pirates are still able to feel. Still able to love. That is something that killers can’t do — killers like your kinswoman.”
She sucks in a breath, looks deep into my eyes, nods once and then again with more conviction. “So, it isn’t wrong that I want to blow her out of the sky?”
I grin rakishly and squeeze her every place that we touch. “Centare. She is a female who has long outlived her welcome in this lifetime.”
Deena releases a shaky laugh, then nods resolutely. “Pogar, too.”
“Him perhaps even more than her.”
Deena turns to the controls and begins drawing up coordinates that will take us to the human’s moon. Not her human moon, to be sure, because her place is always, has always been and will always be with us. “Let’s blow them both to dust.”
“I follow your lead, pirate.”
“Good.” She swivels in her seat, releasing me everywhere and rising to stand, one hand on her belly and the other on her lower back. “Nikkowerranorru!” She shouts across the command center. From the chaos, the pirate appears at her side.
“What is it?”
“I need you to show me to the controls for the cannons. The biggest ones you’ve got. And can you break through the life drives and access the communication tokens of the Voraxians?”
He makes a face. “Cannons, I can do. Communications, I can’t from here. They’re better protected than that.”
“Can you send a signal of any kind?”
“I can get you through, but only when we’re in range.”
“Good. Then get me through.”
“Whose communication token should I try for?”
“The queen’s.”
16
Deena
“Shrov! There are so many of them!” Banging hits the outside hull of our ship for the bagajillionth time. Quintenanrret has strapped me into the command seat, refusing to allow me to get up and storm around the command center like the other pirates are doing, but limiting me to the controls built into the armrest of my command chair.
Rhork streaks past one way, shouting, “It’s the most frustrating feeling in the world, being fired on with my own shroving ships!”
Gerannu shakes his fist at him from the seat across from me. “Those aremyships! I built them!”
“This ismyship, I built this one! Don’t you know of any way to override them from here?”
