“Yes, sir,” Jaten quavered.
Raia stiffened when Maradash’s gaze locked on her. Sweat beaded on her brow as he continued to stare at her in silence. She forced her hand to remain on the outside of her bag. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was going for a weapon.
“Clean up this mess,” he ordered before he turned away and continued down the corridor.
Raia waited until the group reached the end of the corridor and turned out of view before she made a decision that she hoped she wouldn’t regret. Opening the lid of the container, she peered over the edge at Behr. He stared back up at her, his eyes narrowed against the sudden brightness.
“Change of plans, General,” she said.
“Chummy, I need Hanine’s popper,” she instructed.
Chummy groaned. Raia felt like groaning along with him. She had only used Hanine’s portable transporter once before, and the resultant after-effects weren’t pleasant. The process had left her nauseated and with a lingering case of vertigo that took weeks to fade. She had brought it along as a last resort.
“What…? Maradash— I would recognize his work anywhere,” he grimly remarked as he stared down at the deceased woman lying in a pool of her own blood.
“Yeah. I don’t want to be here when he discovers you’re missing,” she said.
He climbed over the top of the container. “You should have brought more than one laser pistol. Where in the hell did Mieka find you?” he snapped.
Raia glared at Behr. “In a bar. Where else would they find someone crazy enough to bust out a Marastin Dow General from a Marastin Dow Prison on the Marastin Dow home world?” she sarcastically retorted.
“A bar,” he repeated doubtfully. “What exactly is your expertise?” he asked.
“Blowing things up and disappearing,” she replied, grabbing his arm and activating the transporter device as the Tirrella power crystals she had placed in his cell detonated in a fiery blast.
Behr swayed. He reached out and steadied himself with a hand against the wall. It took a few seconds for his brain to catch up with what his eyes were seeing. They were no longer in the prison corridor. From the interior, he would guess they were inside a freighter.
He scanned the area, turned to face the Dregulon, and did a double-take, wondering if he was hallucinating. Stunned disbelief held him frozen. Instead of the ugly male, a beautifully exotic woman stood beside him with her eyes closed. She was breathing deeply, while keeping one hand pressed against her stomach. After a few seconds, she opened her almond-shaped, dark-brown eyes and looked back at him with a wry smile.
“So far, so good,” she said in the Dregulon’s deep voice.
She made a face, reached up, and removed a thin patch pressed against her throat. He followed the movement with his eyes, fascinated by her slender fingers. She gripped the strap of her bag and pulled it over her head.
“Time to go,” she said in her normal, slightly husky feminine voice.
All he could do was nod. He stepped aside as she pushed past him and strode across the bay to a corridor entrance. He followed her, his brain still trying to assimilate what he was seeing.
“Who are you?” he demanded, following her.
“Captain Raia of the Explorer’s Adventure II, at your service,” she replied, flashing him a crooked grin over her shoulder.
She paused by a door and lowered the bag in her hand. Two furry creatures scrambled out of it and into the room. She glanced at him again before she headed farther down the corridor toward the freighter’s cockpit.
He passed the room she had stopped in front of, looking inside. The two creatures had scrambled up onto a table where a basket of fruit sat. The tan and white one looked at him with a wide grin while the spotted black and white one merely stared back at him with soft, dark eyes. He shook his head, wondering if he was going crazy when he heard a voice whisper we keep him, too, inside his mind.
“Hey, General, do you want to get out of here or not? If that blast didn’t kill Maradash, he is going to be pissed as hell. Personally, I don’t want to be here if he survived,” the woman called.
Behr turned toward the front of the ship and strode down the corridor. The alarms outside were muted by the ship’s hull, but he could see the flashing red emergency lights through the front glass. The ship’s deck rumbled under his feet as the woman powered it up. He climbed the steps and slid into the co-pilot seat.
“Is there anyone else on board this ship?” he asked.
She shook her head as her hands flitted across the controls with a sureness that spoke of long experience. She pulled up a navigation screen and tapped a spot on it before sweeping it away with a swipe of her hand.
“Triavarian Trader 519, you are not cleared for lift off. Power down your space craft,” the bay tech ordered.
“Not likely,” she murmured. “You might want to hang on to something. This might get a little bumpy,” she suggested.
Behr gripped the armrests as the freighter lifted off. His attention moved to the airspace above them. A lattice-work of energy beams formed a dome over the bay.
“Watch out, they’ve activated a restraint shield,” he warned.
“I’ve got this,” she stated calmly.
She pulled up another screen. A diagram appeared depicting the bay’s controls. She disabled the restraint shield for all bays. As they rose through the opening, Behr could see dozens of ships also lifting off. Smoke billowed from the prison section where the woman had set off the Tirrella power crystals. The roof over that cell block had collapsed.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked, fascinated by everything the woman had accomplished so far.
“We’re going to get lost in the crowd,” she said.
“General Maradash, are you hurt?” a medic asked.
Reynar Maradash stiffly rose from the floor. Around him, small fires continued to burn. The air was thick with smoke and debris particles. The bodies of his entourage lay scattered like broken twigs after a fierce storm.
He pushed the medic aside as he surveyed the damage. He would have died with them if he hadn’t stepped into the control room a split second before the explosion. He had been protected by a tall cabinet that fell during the blast. Even so, he could feel a burning pain on the side of his face that had been pressed against the overheated metal.
“Where are the guards that were in charge of this prison corridor?” he demanded.
“We found them in one of the cells further down. One is dead, the other is wounded but still alive,” the medic replied.
“Take me to him,” Reynar ordered.
“This way, sir,” the medic said.
Reynar waved off the man’s hand when he reached to assist him over a section of debris. He paused when he saw a pale purple hand sticking out from under a section of the collapsed ceiling. Stiff, pale purple fingers were loosely wrapped around the hilt of a blood-stained blade. He bent over and retrieved the blade, wiping the blood off with the dead woman’s sleeve.
When he straightened, the medic stood in expressionless silence, watching and waiting for the General. Reynar stepped down off the fallen section of the rubble and walked over to a stretcher where the injured guard lay. Another medic was talking to the man.