he was off-balance. He didn’t have time to fix his stance. I put my shoulder down and plowed him through the open door and into the wall across the hall.
I spun for the armed soldier but instead found a blaster in my face.
“Move, darlin’,” a familiar voice drawled.
I looked past the blaster. Loch was dressed in the same uniform the soldier behind me wore. When I remained frozen in shock, he pushed me aside and shot the soldier point-blank.
“I’m happy to see you, too,” he said drily.
I opened my mouth but the words were stuck. I finally got out, “What?”
“I’ll explain later. Rhys and Veronica are already on their way. Best case scenario, we have about twenty minutes until the next shift takes over and notices something wrong. We have to move.” He picked up the soldier he’d shot, along with another I hadn’t noticed, shoved them into my cell, then closed the door. He handed me a blaster. “You good?”
I shook myself out of my daze and focused on the important part—escape. “I’m good. You know where we’re going?”
He nodded and started off.
“Wait,” I said. “Do you have a com? I’m probably tagged and geofenced. If I leave, it’ll set off alarms. And I’d rather not have to strip naked.” He grinned but pulled out a com and scanned me for trackers. I only had one, in my back pocket. I took it out and dropped it near the door. “Thanks,” I said. “Now I’m ready.”
He led me down the hall to an alcove with ladder access to the maintenance tunnels. On a ship this large they would be seemingly infinite. They were also less likely to be empty than on the Mayport because ship maintenance was a never-ending job.
Loch slid the access panel closed behind us. The tunnel was sparsely lit, narrow, and short enough we couldn’t stand up straight. But at least we didn’t have to crawl. “If we make good time, it’s eight minutes to the landing bay where Polaris is. You okay to run?” He looked me up and down, as if he could see any injuries through my clothes. His gaze snagged on my feet. “You’re not wearing boots.”
The steel grating of the tunnel floor dug into the soles of my feet, but it was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. “I don’t know what happened to my boots; I woke up without them. But I’m good to run,” I said. “I want off this pile of scrap.”
Loch took me at my word. He nodded then started off in a ground-eating jog. After sitting idle in the same six square meters for the last two days, it felt nice to move.
We twisted and turned through the tunnels, sometimes going up or down a level. Loch never hesitated and never slowed down. My feet ached from the abrasion against the grated floor, but they hadn’t started to bleed yet so I kept my mouth shut and my body moving.
Loch stopped at the next corner and turned back to me. “We’re almost there,” he breathed into my ear. “The next part is tricky because it passes a maintenance crew supply room they’ve converted into a break room. There’s no other way unless we want to take twenty minutes to go around. Stick to me. If things go sideways, shoot to kill.”
I nodded. The blaster felt heavy in my hands. I hadn’t properly mourned for the last people I’d killed and now I was likely going to add to my total.
We rounded the corner into a fully illuminated tunnel. As we approached the door in the middle, I could hear conversation—at least three people. Loch moved silently. I shadowed him. When we reached the door, he held up a hand and crouched down to peek into the room.
He stood and held up four fingers—there were four people in the room. Using hand signals, he relayed that two of them were facing the door. We could either try to cross unnoticed or shoot them now.
The hallway continued uninterrupted for fifteen meters past the door. We would have no cover. But shooting innocent people in cold blood didn’t sit well with me, either. I indicated I wanted to cross.
Loch looked like he would argue, but finally he nodded. We synced our stride and walked past the door, Loch closer to the people inside, me hopefully hidden by his body. We sped up once we were clear of the door.
“Michaels, is that you?” someone called from inside.