her feet, dagger in hand. Not a moment too soon because her enemy, the biggest damn Lathar she’d ever seen, was already up and charging again.
“Witch!” he hissed. “Cast not your wiles on me! They will not work!”
She grunted as she blocked a solid swing. Her arm and shoulder threatened to go numb. Dagger against sword wasn’t good odds.
“Nah, honey,” she threw back, slamming a solid roundhouse kick into the side of his leg. “You mean bitch and the only thing I got for you is a shitload of pain. Street-style.”
She switched the blade to her left hand as he attacked that side and swung. Her uppercut caught him by surprise and he staggered back a few steps.
She grinned. “Gotta be quicker than that, handsome.”
He snarled and attacked again, wildly. She was forced to defend rapidly, backing up against one of the sofas. With nowhere else to go, she turned and ran, clambering over it and running along the back as he chopped at the leather behind her.
“Help!” she bellowed, her voice pitched to carry. These walls weren’t that thick. Someone would hear her and come running. She hoped. “Help! FIRE!”
She’d been brought up on the streets. A woman screaming was an everyday occurrence, but shout fire? That got people running.
He swore a stream of what she assumed were Latharian profanities as he hacked at the back of the couch behind her. She felt the air part as she leapt clear, her heart singing with exhilaration. The path to the door was almost clear. If she could just get out to the corridor, she was home free.
A hard hand wrapped around her ankle mid-flight and she was yanked backward. With a scream she crash-landed in the middle of the coffee table, the glass and metal structure shattering into a million pieces. He was on her in a heartbeat, casting his blades aside as he loomed above her. She’d lost her dagger mid-flight so she had nothing to defend herself as he pinned her down, wrapping huge hands around her throat.
His face was a rictus of rage as he looked down at her, squeezing harder and harder until she couldn’t catch her breath. She lashed out, fists flailing as she tried to make him let go. But it was no good, he was bigger than she was, his strength far greater. She tried to get her feet under her to buck him off but he was too heavy. She gasped, reaching out with questing fingers for something… anything.
Her vision started to go gray around the edges… this was it. After years of surviving on the streets, she was going to buy it in a luxury fucking apartment on an alien ship.
Her fingers caught on the edge of something hard. Desperately, she grabbed for it and held on tightly as she brought it up through the air like a scythe. The broken twisted end of one of the table legs sliced into the side of her attacker’s throat, driven deep by her desperation.
He froze, mouth dropping open and a clicking sound coming from the back of his throat. Surprise filled his eyes as blood fountained over his teeth and then over her hand. She pulled her makeshift shiv back and stabbed again, and again, screaming at the top of her lungs.
She barely even noticed that he wasn’t breathing anymore. Or that she was on top of him now. His throat and face were nothing more than an unrecognizable mash of flesh and blood, shredded to chum.
Strong arms closed around her, lifting her bodily as the bloodied table leg was gently plucked from her hand.
“Shhhh, it’s okay. I have you. You are safe now,” a voice murmured.
Deep and familiar, it pulled at all her senses. With a small cry, she wrapped herself around him, burrowing as close to safety as she could get. She didn’t want to think, didn’t want to see. All she wanted to do was hide away in the comfortable darkness of his presence until it was safe again.
6
The alert had sounded as Nyek left the training hall after his daily diraanesh, a warrior’s training regime. It wasn’t the strident, to battle stations shriek of the red alert, but instead the lower, deeper tone that warned of an intruder on board. He’d broken out in a run, heading for the human sector. He’d made it even before the combat avatars, making the humans emerging from the doorway of their quarters jump.
“Get back inside,” he ordered, blades already in his hands