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THE CELL SHOULD HAVE smelled worse. There should have been rats crawling around and an unidentified source of dripping that was too annoying to sleep through. Instead, all Andie smelled was the stale scent of circulated air and a slightly sweaty crew. Frankly, it didn’t smell that much different than the Seventh, which made her heart clench. She wanted to go home, not to be stuffed in a cell being taken to Mebion’s planet.
At least that was where she assumed they were going. When she’d woken up no one had bothered to explain what was going on, but she knew the feeling of a ship cutting through space. And since the cell seemed pristine, she had to assume she was on a ship that rarely took prisoners. Or they were so used to cleaning up after prisoners that they could perfectly disinfect the place without leaving a trace of previous occupants.
“Ugh,” Sayevi groaned and sat up clutching her head. She, Dr. Hayk, Kiran, Malax, and Taryn were stuffed together, but Sayevi was the only other one awake. Andie had no idea where Keana and Xandr were, but she hoped they were okay. They had to be.
The vestiges of Andie’s headache had drifted away as she rose to consciousness, so she hoped the pilot recovered quickly. Her mind reeled with escape scenarios, but even if they got out of the cell, the place had to be crawling with guards. Besides, everyone in this room was expendable. The duke had wanted his brother and he’d gotten him. There was nothing stopping him from killing the crew if they offered a bit of trouble.
Now it was Andie’s turn to groan.
Sayevi looked over and offered a weak smile. “When we get out of here we’ll celebrate the occasion.”
“Occasion?” Was her translator malfunctioning? There was nothing about the situation that called for celebration.
“It’s your first time being taken prisoner by mysterious forces! We can get cake.” Sayevi breathed shallowly and her normally golden brown skin had a sickly undertone. An ugly greyish bruise covered one of her temples where she must have been struck. Andie wanted to find whoever had hurt her friend and give them payback.
“It’s not my first time,” Andie muttered. That was how she’d gotten off Earth all those years ago, kidnapped by slavers and sold on the planet of Ixilta, where she’d eventually met Xandr and escaped.
“First time with the crew, then.” Sayevi was clearly determined to get her cake.
“And the forces aren’t mysterious.” Andie hated to disappoint her again, but everyone needed to know. “I’ll explain what I know once everyone’s up. No need to repeat it five times.”
“Mebion?” Sayevi asked with a wince.
“And more,” Andie responded. How would the crew take it? Keana had to know, but she wasn’t there. Did anyone else? Andie didn’t think so, but she’d only been a member of Xandr’s crew for a couple of months. Barely. Sayevi was the only one besides Xandr that she’d truly call a friend. Taryn didn’t like her at all, Keana tolerated her, and Andie didn’t have a read on the rest. Would they believe her when she told them the truth?
She didn’t need to wait long to find out. Malax, the engineer, woke first, his tentacles twitching before the Zusotid snapped to consciousness. Hayk, the crew doctor who looked human but wasn’t, didn’t show any signs of wakefulness until he sat up so swiftly that Andie flinched. Kiran, their Detyen head of security, followed shortly behind him, and finally Taryn, the Oscavian quartermaster, woke once Malax gathered her close, wrapping her up in too many limbs to count.
The crew of the Seventh had an impressive career as outlaws, but stripped of their weapons and tech they didn’t have much hope. “Where are we?” Kiran was the first to ask. “And where are the captain and Keana?”
All eyes turned to Sayevi, and when she looked at Andie the rest of the crew followed. Sweat clung to Andie’s skin, the temperature in the room rising uncomfortably. She just had to do it quickly. They couldn’t blame her for the bad news. Right?
Ha! They would blame her in a heartbeat, but that couldn’t stop her.
“We’ve been taken by the Duke of Mebion,” she said. There was no surprise on the crew’s faces. “And he’s Xandr’s brother.”
That got a reaction out of them. Stunned silence, followed by a cacophony of questions that Andie couldn’t pick out. “One at a time!” She had to yell to be heard over them. It only distantly occurred to her that they should keep their voices down if they didn’t want to attract the attention of a guard. A solid looking door stood between them and freedom, and she couldn’t hear any noises from the other side. She didn’t know if that meant they were somewhere hidden in the bowels of the ship where there was nothing to hear, or they were in a soundproof room.
“His brother?” someone said. They were all asking a variation on the same question so it didn’t matter who was speaking.
“His brother,” Andie confirmed. “Xandr is the brother of the Duke of Mebion. And I guess his real name is Karday. I think we’re being taken back to Mebion’s stronghold, but I’m not sure. He cornered us and ranted a bit before blasters knocked us out. I assume Mebion is keeping Xandr and Keana somewhere else. I don’t—I hope they’re okay.”
The crew broke down, talking more, until Kiran held a hand up and made a quelling sound. He pointed to one of the lights recessed in the ceiling. “Eyes,” he said. “And they’re sure to have ears. Watch what you say.”
Of course the cell was under surveillance. The duke wasn’t a fool.
Kiran pushed up from where he was sitting and prowled around the room, inspecting the door and the vents. There was no furniture, nothing but the crew of the Seventh to decorate the room. They didn’t have to worry about a chill, their bodies keeping the place nice and toasty, but there was nothing to use to get them out. Andie shuddered to think of what would happen once they ate or drank. There was no space to perform any bodily functions. No amenities at all.
“We’re stuck in here until they let us out,” Kiran finally said with a defeated slump to his shoulders. Whatever hope the crew had been clinging to deflated at those words. They all slumped on the floor, Andie right along with them. They were caught in the duke’s trap and a long way from home.
***
XANDR FELT THE MANACLES first and realized that his entire left arm had gone numb from the way his hands were bound behind his back. His body stiffened as he tried to feel out every place he was bound, but doing it blind was no easy feat, and if he was under surveillance whoever was looking at him was sure to realize he was no longer unconscious. His eyes snapped open to darkness so deep he thought for a moment he’d been thrown out the airlock. There wasn’t even a memory of light, and if he hadn’t been breathing and relatively warm he would have been sure he was on the edge of death.
“I can hear you thinking.” Keana’s voice was a welcome distraction from the smothering darkness. He couldn’t tell which direction the sound was coming from and his senses were all out of whack from the lack of light.
“Not much else I can do, is there?” he shot back. He and Keana had feared this moment for a decade, and if he let himself dwell on the fact of their capture he’d go mad.
“I assume they have the girl, too?” Keana asked, ignoring his sarcasm. She sounded in good spirits, all things considered, and he hoped she wasn’t hurt.
“I think they have us all,” he replied. “That’s what he said before he knocked us out.”
A curse wrapped around him, but his first mate had nothing to add. Her breathing was loud enough to deafen, but that was a side effect of the darkness. Xandr tried to block it out, tried to focus on their surroundings, but other than the distant sound of an air filtration system there was nothing to give away their location. From the way his body sagged against his bindings, he thought they were in a synthetic gravity field on a space ship or a space station rather than a planet.
On their way to Mebion. On his way home.
“I’m sorry.” The apology tore out of him, long overdue.
“For what?” Keana scoffed.
A lifetime of regrets washed over him. “I shouldn’t have dragged you along.”
Her laughter rang out, but it was tinged with bitterness rather than mirth. “I made my own choices, captain. Every single time. You didn’t drag me. And if you dare give up now just because your bastard brother has us, I am going to get myself untied and beat your ass until you start thinking like the man you are and not the scared boy you were. Got it?”
The smile on his lips might have been out of place given the situation and the threat, but that was the Keana Xandr knew and loved, the one who was more of a sister to him than Mebion had ever been a brother. “You’ve always had a way with words.”
“Does the crew know?”
“If Andie’s with them, I’m sure she’s told them.” What did she think of him? When they’d been cornered, horror at the situation had frozen him in place, and he’d long since thought that he’d trained himself out of such suicidal instincts. But he’d been running from Mebion since he fled his home, and he’d hoped never to see his brother again, never to face the horrors he’d run away from rather than fight.
“Your wom—”
Xandr coughed, doing his best to smother whatever Keana was about to say. He’d bet whatever credits were left to his name that Mebion was monitoring this conversation, and he didn’t want to tip the man off to the reality of his relationship with Andie. If he still had a relationship with Andie. Would she have him knowing who he was, what he’d hidden from her? If he’d had an opportunity to beg for forgiveness he would have fallen to his knees and done so, but Mebion hadn’t given them a moment and now Andie was on her own, or possibly with the crew.
What would the crew think?
Keana got the hint and let whatever she’d been about to say go. “I’m not getting out of these bindings anytime soon,” she groused.
Xandr tugged at his manacles but was forced to agree. “Whatever he’s planning, he’ll take us home first.”
“You think he’ll risk that? After all he’s done? Why wouldn’t he kill you now?”
“He had the chance, and given that he didn’t take it I have to assume we’re going home.” Home. That word had stopped applying to his birth planet a decade ago. And yet that was the word that his tongue called up when he spoke about the planet of Mebion. He could remember the estate and the green fields; he could almost smell the sweet air that flowed through the hallways, a mix of incense and greenery that reminded him of his mother.
“That’s risky.” Keana’s tone turned calculating. “The longer he keeps us, the more chances we have to escape. Or turn someone against him.”
“The victory is worth the risk.” Xandr had turned away from everything and humiliated his brother in the process, not that anyone but the two of them would remember that. Mebion would need his revenge to be public and final. There was no way he would let Xandr perish silently on some border planet, not when he could execute him outside the halls of justice. “He’ll take us home,” Xandr repeated.
“Are you ready?”
No. But there’d never been another choice.
