Home Front (Star Kingdom #7) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,15
anyway, Bonita didn’t know. A faint buzz sounded as the force field vanished.
The armored soldiers remained in the corridor pointing their rifles at Qin. Lieutenant Croix came in and sat on the edge of Bonita’s bed.
“How old are you, Captain?” she asked.
Bonita bristled at the question. Nobody would ask Qin that, she was sure. Or even Bjarke, if he’d been captured alongside her. Just the frail-looking woman with the braid of gray hair hanging limply over the edge of the bunk.
“Too old to get the snot beat out of me by crushers.”
“Is there any age where that’s fun?” one of the soldiers muttered.
The nurse glanced at Qin as she ran a diagnostic scanner over Bonita. “Are you injured, uhm, ma’am? I’m not sure how to treat genetically engineered… soldiers.”
Had she been about to say freaks? Bonita would clobber her if she did.
“I’m fine,” Qin said, though she’d been beaten up as badly as Bonita and still had bruises under her shirt. The kid had a high tolerance for pain. She must not have cracked any bones, though, or she would have struggled to do all those exercises.
“Good.” The nurse sounded relieved, probably more because she wouldn’t have to figure out how to treat Qin than because she cared. Or so Bonita thought. Then Croix added, “I’m from Zamek City on Odin. I was on leave when all the terrorist stuff was going on, the bombing of the Jewish temple. I saw on the news that you and your ship helped out with that, even though you didn’t get much credit.” Her lips wrinkled in a self-deprecating smirk. “The Kingdom is insular. We don’t like to give praise to people from other systems.”
“Yeah, we helped,” Bonita said. “And we’re being rewarded so generously.”
Croix winced. “I’m sorry, Captain,” she said quietly, putting away her scanner and pulling out a jet injector.
“Sorry enough to forget to put the force field back up when you leave?”
“I can’t do that.” Croix glanced toward the ceiling.
Whatever security camera was up there wasn’t visible, but Bonita had no doubt the cell was monitored.
“How about having that meal-delivery robot send some painkillers and coffee?”
“I might be able to manage that.” Croix held up the injector. “This will help with pain and inflammation in the short term. Your lip is fatter than the neck of a geoduck.”
“A what?”
“You may not have them in your system. They’re clams with long, thick siphons or necks that stick out. We dig them up on the beaches outside Zamek City.”
“I grew up on a space station. I only know vaguely what a clam is.”
“I’ve never seen one with a neck.” Qin sounded curious.
Bonita didn’t think she wanted to see a necked clam. Especially one that had been brought to mind by her split and puffy lower lip.
A shudder coursed through the ship.
The nurse leaped up, and Bonita rolled off the bed, not sure what was happening but immediately on the defensive. Another shudder rocked the brig. Bonita wobbled, and Qin lunged forward to steady her. The soldiers must have thought she was trying to escape. One grabbed Croix, pulling her out, and the other whipped up his stunner and shot Qin.
Bonita swore, but she wasn’t strong enough to keep her tall and muscular friend from crashing to the deck.
An alarm wailed, and the soldiers and nurse backed out of the cell.
“Battle stations,” a computerized voice came over the speakers. “All hands to battle stations. We are under attack.”
“I’ll come back later, Captain,” Croix promised, as the soldiers ushered her out.
As Bonita knelt beside the unconscious Qin, the deck shuddered again.
“Just our luck,” she muttered. “We got captured by the guy who’s annoyed everyone in the system and probably all eleven others.”
What if they died here on this Kingdom ship? Stuck in a cell for no good reason?
Bonita shook her head. She’d gotten the distraction she’d hoped for, but with Qin unconscious, she couldn’t take advantage of it.
4
“It looks like you’re missing a couple of files.” Casmir pointed to the display.
He was in the ship’s programming section of engineering with Lieutenant Grunburg and a couple of crewmen who worked with him. The office wasn’t posh, but it was better than that server closet Casmir had started out his stay on the Osprey in.
“Why would that be?” Grunburg wondered. “I copied everything we got from that android.”
“Tork,” Zee said from his self-appointed guard spot by the doorway.