Page 57 of Alien's Challenge
Alice descended into the maintenance passage, blaster in hand. He wished he had a light to give her. It was clear she did not want to escape via that route, but there was no alternative. Rand would breach the ship any moment, and there was only one exit from the helm.
Foolish. Short-sighted. Greedy.
He listed his faults and there were many.
How did he fail to notice that the ship had been disturbed? They had been away for days, and Rand knew their location. A quick scan of the security logs revealed all. He had been too distracted to notice.
Now his mate was in danger and his friend was bleeding on the snowy ground. Perrigaul, Faris knew, would crawl away to protect himself. Now that he was injured, Rand would forget about his existence.
But Alice? No. Rand would not lose interest so quickly.
Faris activated a security protocol, releasing a pair of security drones. They would shoot at anyone who got too close to the airlock but would be easily destroyed. A few more commands activated the turrets. They would hopefully take out a few of Rand’s minions. Anything more held the risk of disturbing the explosives that Rand planted.
He grabbed a blaster and headed down the corridor to the airlock, pausing where the corridor narrowed to create a chokepoint. Outside he would quickly be outnumbered, but here he could hold them off for a time.
He did not have to wait long before the first target emerged from the airlock.
Chapter 17
Alice
Heavy footsteps pounded on the flooring grates above her. Alice kept her face tucked down, in case they could see her in the passage. No one gave any indication that they saw her. From the sound of fighting and gunfire, they were busy.
She counted the junctures, taking the right branching path. He said right. She felt confident about that.
Continuing on, the noise overhead diminished. All she could hear was her own hyperventilating. She didn’t like tight spaces. She had this recurring dream of trying to get into her attic crawl space, but the hatch kept getting smaller and smaller, a laAlice in Wonderland. Yeah, she didn’t need to analyze that nightmare too hard.
Fortunately, Faris was truthful about the passage being wide enough to accommodate her. In one spot, she got stuck, but that was because her coat got caught on a valve.
The passage came to an end. This had to be the place.
She listened to determine if the room was empty. Not a sound.
Sitting back on her heels, she pushed against the floor panel. It was heavy, and her arms shook as it lifted. She heaved it to one side, then pulled herself up. Her arms burned from the effort. Damn her wimpy upper arm strength. She’d go to the gym and pump iron or whatever people did to build muscle. Her knees hurt too. Thirty-three was apparently too old to crawl around on the ground without consequences.
Cold metal pressed against the side of her head. Alice froze.
“On your feet, female,” Rand said. “Faris is so predictable. His cabin. No creativity. That is why he is still a petty thief and I control a region.”
Alice rose to her feet, her knees and back protesting.
“Now walk.” He waved the blaster to the cabin’s door, and she walked.
They traveled down the corridor into the workroom. Her body froze when she realized what he meant to do. Rand tugged on her arm, dragging her toward the loathsome stasis pod. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
“In you go,” he said.
She shook her head. She remembered everything in a terrible torrent, the cold, dispassionate gray-green faces that snatched her, the screams of other women being shoved into pods, and the pleading. So much pleading.
“No,” she said, her voice little more than a croak. The past felt as if it were happening again, and she could not break free. She’d go back into the pod and be torn away from her life. She’d lose Faris and even prickly Perrigaul. She’d wake up at some distant point only to find that years, perhaps decades, separated her from the man she loved.
Her heart ached.
“Female—”
“What are you going to do, shoot me? You won’t get a good price if I’m damaged.”
He slapped her across the face. “A good pet obeys her master.”
