Vitalis Omnibus (2 page)

“Aren’t the ‘cargo monkeys’ your men?”

He nodded, looking miserable while he did so. “I was going to tell you but you just got naked in front of me and I couldn’t think straight! Then you left and I realized I had to tell you, but before I could the Captain ran into me and asked me about a repair I’d told him I’d finished up, except I hadn’t really finished it yet. So I had to bust my ass to get that fixed, and then I was going to come and tell you. But”

“But I run faster than you thought,” Kira finished for him. She shook her head and poked him with her finger in the chest. “I’m the new girl, I know. I’m going to catch some shit, I know. You can fuck with me all you want. You can make me run stupid errands and give me the shit work. But don’t act like my friend unless you mean it!”

Kira turned, still royally pissed off. She didn’t know what else to say or do. She’d hit him and she’d yelled at him; everything should have been fine. But it wasn’t. With a growl that threatened to turn into a sob, she started to walk away from him.

“Kira!” She hesitated, but kept walking. The door was only a few steps away. “You’re beautiful!”

She stumbled, stopping at the door.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll say it every day to you for three months while you sleep and I do nothing but stare at your hibernation chamber if you want. I don’t rattle easy, but the confidence and the sexiness you showed me just knocked me on my ass. I couldn’t believe it. And yes, I’m shallow, but you’re the hottest thing that’s ever set foot on the
Rented Mule
– even better than the girls the Captain’s brought back from time to time.”

Kira grabbed the hatch and slammed it shut,
and then turned to stare at him. She walked back over, her feet landing heavily as a message of her mood. “You fucking with me again?” He shook his head so hard she thought he might bruise his brain. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. “Because if you are and I fall for it, I’ll shove your ass out an airlock first chance I get. Got it?”

This time Eric nodded with equal fervor.

“Good, now shut up.” Kira stared down at him for a moment, her tall figure all the more imposing for her anger. Then she leaned forward and kissed him. He gasped, giving Kira the opportunity to press the kiss deeper and move in for the kill. She crushed herself against his muscular body until she could feel his interest pressing against her leg.

“You like confidence?”
she asked rhetorically. He nodded but she had already started talking again. “Take your clothes off.”

He had to lean against the machinery to keep his balance as he stumbled to obey her. Kira removed her own clothing at a calmer pace, though inside her heart was racing. She’d never tried the dominant thing before
; it was exciting. Seeing him proudly on display again made her mouth water and her thighs clench. She was tempted to toss the dominance out the window and beg him to take her, but she wanted to make sure she did it right.

“Oh Eric, I may be the bottom of the ladder around here, but I’ve got a lot of things you’re going to be doing for me.”

Eric’s answering groan was silenced by her mouth.

Chapter 3

“Kira!” The navigator groaned as the words filtered through the disturbing images of her dream. She’d been reliving some very pleasant aerobic activity with Eric one moment,
and then felt as though she’d been sucked through the wall of the ship to be immersed in the absolute zero temperatures of deep space the next. She coughed, feeling like her lungs were coated in ice water. Somebody grabbed her, helping her up and over a metal ridge that pressed painfully into her ribs. She gagged some more, dry heaving until she could hear straight. Spittle hung from her lips and chills racked her body.

“Kira, we’ve been dumped out of cold sleep
. Your prox warning is going off! What’s going on?” Captain Sharp demanded.

Kira looked up slowly, wincing at the pain in her chest, throat, and head as she did so. He looked pale and miserable, but his actions spoke otherwise. She nodded and forced herself up, fighting back a wave of nausea. “C..c…cold,
sir!”

“Walk it off, damn it!”
he snapped, perhaps a concession to his own condition.

Kira nodded and pulled herself out of the pod she’d been in. The others were either doing likewise or were standing around in robes. She felt a tug and looked down, her head clearing as she realized she was still fully integrated with the hibernation chamber. The light blanket that had covered her nude body was still on her, but she’d given the Captain quite a show in spite of it. She glanced up when she heard a scuffling sound and saw Eric was struggling into a robe and trying to join them. He brought a spare robe for her. That’s nice, she thought,
and then her view of her recent lover was blocked by the Captain. “Kira, snap to!”

“Sorry, Captain,” she mumbled. “Never been dumped before.”

She reached down and removed the catheter, grimacing as she did so, and then slipped off the sensors that were adhered to her body and head. She held the blanket tight and forced herself to climb up and out of the cocoon-like bed, taking the robe from Eric with a grateful smile and slipping it on. Her feet were cold on the steel floor but she could tell from the Captain’s tone she had no time to worry about that. “Prox alert—gotcha, sir!”

Sharp and Eric followed her as she walked stiffly out of the hibernation room. Her body warmed and began to obey her as she walked, allowing her to pick up the pace. By the time they reached the bridge, only a few short minutes later, only a faint headache persisted. She touched the data port on her palm to the matching port of her station,
and then proceeded to mentally send the navigation system commands. The large display at the front of the bridge responded almost immediately, allowing them all to see what had transpired.

“That’s not an asteroid!” Sharp growled. He turned to Eric. “Get Tarn up here now!”

Eric took off with barely an, “Aye, Captain!” tossed over his shoulder.

“That’s why the dump from cold sleep,
sir,” Kira said. “The autopilot adjusted course but so did the other ship. It’s closing with us fast. ETA is less than ten minutes. It must be accelerating,” Kira muttered to herself as she fed more commands via the cybernetic link into the computer. “I don’t understand. Even a cold dump takes hours – this hit my outer threat range seventeen minutes ago.”

“Had some modifications done to our chambers,” Sharp explained. “You’re going to feel like hell for a week or so because of it, but most of the time it’s only temporary.”

“Most of the time, sir?” Kira turned to look at him.

Sharp shrugged. “Guy who
done it said he only had one case of somebody suffering permanent brain damage.”

Kira swore.

“Hey, you prefer to let them board while we’re still snuggled up in dreamland? What happens then? Pretty thing like you might get raped a few dozen times before they sold you as a slave. The rest of us most likely get our throats cut – if we’re lucky.”

She nodded at the Captain’s logic. He said no more until Eric returned with a grumbling Tarn behind him. “Tarn, where’s your threat sensors? And the plasma defenders? Why aren’t they on
line and tracking?”

Tarn ignored him, staring at the screen and deciphering it. “Fuck
! Must be bugged up,” he muttered, and then turned away to head over to the security station.

“Don’t give me that
; you said everything was fixed!” Sharp roared. “Get them up and running now or I’ll shoot you at them!”

“Sir, we don’t know who it is,” Kira pointed out. “It could be another transport or even a naval vessel.”

“Uh-uh,” Eric said, slipping up quietly beside her chair and pressing his hand against her shoulder. Kira glanced up at him and smiled. This proved he wasn’t the kiss-and-tell type and that he would still respect her in the morning. Then again, after the things she’d made him do in the heat of the moment, she wasn’t sure she could respect herself.

“Free agent would be steering clear of us,” Sharp confirmed. “Naval vessel would be broadcasting to us. This ship’s silent. You tried hailing?”

Kira nodded. It was standard procedure on seeing another ship, especially one with an intercept vector. “No response, sir.”

“Tarn?”

“Hang on,” he grunted. “Must be a bug in the activation code. The program’s in there but it never executed properly.”

“What about our guns?”

“Enemy ship is out of range. They’ll be ready when it gets closer though!”

“What’ve they got to use on us?” Sharp asked.

Tarn laughed bitterly. “This is a transport! No sensors worth a damn on here. Mining rig’s got better eyesight than this thing does.”

Kira looked at the Captain and saw the muscles in his jaw flexing. She felt Eric squeeze her shoulder again. Her own free hand went up to rest on top of his. “Are these
pirates?”

“They’re not a welcoming committee,” Tarn muttered.

Kira stared at him, eyes narrowed. Eric gave her shoulder another squeeze, forcing her to relax. She looked at the display again. Even though they could all see it, she felt the need to announce, “Seven and a half minutes, sir.”

“Tarn, how long until they’re in range?”

“Four minutes.”

Sharp swore. “Glad I spent so much on the weapons you recommended!” The ex-Marine wisely chose to stay quiet. “Kira, what’s our position? How long were we under?”

“A little over a month, sir.” Kira had already figured that much out from the data on the display. She input several more commands to analyze the stars and compare their position. “Otherwise we’re on course for the mining region, roughly two months out. The rotation of this system’s planets and stations are further from us than a return to the jump station would be.”

Sharp swore again. “No outrunning them either
, I bet.”

The display popped up a new frame with calculations and text within it. The answer was clear seconds later. “No
, sir,” Kira parroted the system’s visual display.

“You better hit those sons of bitches so hard they get turned into a
wormhole,” Tarn grunted as he sat sweating over his chair.

Kira stared. She could see the sweat running down the side of Tarn’s face. She was still chilled to the bone and only the adrenaline of the moment was keeping her from falling to the deck. She glanced up at Eric again and saw the misery in his eyes. He smiled in spite of it when she caught his eyes, which prompted a strange flutter in her own stomach. Her first real relationship and he was an engine jockey on a
dead-end tanker in the middle of nowhere. She bit her lip to fight back the tear, and then smiled back at him. It wasn’t his fault that she’d fucked her own life up so badly that a desperate shot at running away on the
Rented Mule
was her only way out.

“Five minutes,
sir,” she croaked loudly.

Sharp’s hand rested on her other shoulder, squeezing so firmly it hurt. Then it was gone. Kira felt her heart thundering in her chest, something she had read was next to impossible after being dumped out of cold sleep.

“Where are Jeff and Kevin?” the Captain asked.

“I told them
to get suited up and stand by for emergency repairs,” Eric said. “They can handle pressure leaks and basic electronics. I’ve been showing them a few things.”

“Might need you in the engine room.”

Kira felt Eric’s hand stiffen on her shoulder. It might have been because she was suddenly squeezing his so much harder. “Aye, sir, I’ll keep an eye on things. Call me if I’m needed.”

He pulled his hand away but the warmth of it lingered on her shoulders. Kira set her jaw and blinked away the tears. After everything she’d done and all the sacrifices she’d made
, this did not seem like a fitting way to die.

“Sir!”
She screamed, looking at a fresh readout on the display. “We’re being—”

Lights flashed and an alarm went off, even though nothing seemed amiss. “We’re under attack
, sir!”

“Damage?”

“It was a relativistic projectile. No breech but it definitely hit us on the port side.” The inertial suppressors eliminated the shock from spreading throughout the two-thousand ton ship. It was neither graceful nor pretty, but the
Rented Mule
could certainly take a beating.

A few second
s later another alert sounded, followed by fresh damage indicators. This continued for several more rounds, each spaced a few seconds apart. “Sir, they’re firing something large enough to clear our avoidance field but not big enough to do any serious damage.”

“Tarn!”

“Just a damned minute!” he growled. Then he slammed his finger on the panel, triggering the plasma defenders.

Sharp stared at display that showed the star field in front of them, watching a green mist streak out so quickly it was barely identifiable. It disappeared into the blackness, giving no indication of what had transpired. “Well?”
he asked, his voice overpowering the steady chirps that indicated fresh hits from the enemy vessel.