Nokx (The Sraibur Crew #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,103
up his spine. “Somewhat.”
“That’s Bula,” she said quietly, nodding at the second gray-blue alien as it bristled and a crest rose on the back of its head. “She saved my life and so I started helping out where I could. Since I didn’t have any real plans of my own, if Bula needed me to go somewhere and leave a message, or pick up a package, or rent a warehouse or something, I did it.”
“Or if you needed to steal ships? Sabotage vehicles?” Nokx had difficulty concentrating on anything except EJ as irritation bloomed into slowly burning anger. So he sat before the puppet masters pulling the strings and endangering EJ under the guise of some cause. He didn’t know any of them, obviously, but EJ didn’t either. He couldn’t assume the aliens before him or the Earther meant well when they sent his mate off to dangerous ports and planets when they were not brave enough to go themselves. “These creatures sent you out to commit crimes on their behalf and then stood by while you were sentenced to exile?”
Pyix’s expression darkened immediately. “That is not —”
The three avians puffed up and the Xaravian silenced. Bula or Mirti — he couldn’t really tell them apart — almost doubled in size as the feathers expanded and stood out. The thin necks tensed as all three aliens studied him, and talon-like claws on their feet that he hadn’t noticed curled against the alloy floor with scale-prickling whines. Their black eyes, hiding all emotion and intent, blinked rapidly. One stretched and took up a lot more room at the table. “Have a care, have a care. Actions to free the innocent are not really crimes. Not really. We are fighting a war. Fighting those Slasu. Freeing the slaves. We will destroy the slave-takers and their allies. Destroy them all.”
“Destroy them all,” the other two echoed, rattling beaks and talons at the same time.
The other Earther, Estelle, watched Nokx without expression. “We all know what we signed up for, just like EJ did. She might not have met all of us in person but we know each other. We trust each other. And that’s it. We can’t rely on anyone else in the universe, Xaravian.”
Message received. She definitely didn’t like him. The ache pounding in the back of his head intensified.
EJ linked her arm through his and Nokx held tight to her. He didn’t want to ever let her go. He’d do whatever it took to get off that ship, too, and somewhere safe. Maybe he could still signal the Sraibur and Faros would intervene. If the Sraibur had survived the confrontation with the Slasu and this ship hadn’t hightailed it out of that sector to avoid being caught. He wouldn’t stay on the Lovelace when they’d had such careless disregard for EJ’s safety, putting her in a position that she was arrested and tried for their crimes.
But she leaned her head on his shoulder and kept her voice low. “They planned to intercept the Hollbrd to free everyone and to get me out. They were waiting for a better spot before they engaged.”
He didn’t believe it. He would have a word with the Xaravian captain later to determine where the warrior had gone wrong to end up in the middle of a scheme like that, but he didn’t trust the space birds even a feather’s width. “How long were they going to wait? Would they have helped you if you’d escaped on a spaceport?”
EJ frowned as she leaned back, her arm slipping away. “This wasn’t the first close call I had, and it probably won’t be the last.”
“It will if I have anything to do with it,” he said. His hearts thumped out of time. They would find somewhere safe, together, where he could build a citadel to protect her.
A shadow crossed her expression. “Maybe we talk about that later.”
“Yes,” Estelle said. She waved her hand in the middle of the table and summoned a hologram of the surrounding quadrant. “Since you decided to wake up, you may finally be of some use.”
Nokx’s eyes narrowed and he tensed, despite that the room began a slow whirl around him. He had to grip the table when EJ popped up to retrieve a tray of food from the delivery chute. He didn’t trust himself to speak and still make sense. Getting up had definitely been a mistake.
Pyix cleared his throat and gave his first mate a sideways look. “The Hollbrd began traveling toward the