Tamed By the Alien Pirate by Celia Kyle Page 0,46

incisor into the indentation on the bolt.

What is it that Thrase says? Eureka? It fits perfectly. Kilgari teeth evolved to be quite tough, so there’s no concern of me breaking it. But the blood slickened roots make for a poor handle indeed. I solve this problem by ripping a bit of my shirt off and wrapping it about the twin curving roots.

Twist, twist—drop, curse. Repeat. For nearly half an hour I work on the bolts, until I have all four of them off. Then I gently pry the panel away, wary of making too much noise.

The pain in my mouth has faded somewhat by the time I get to work. It is indeed an illumination control panel, and while I can’t affect any vital systems it does give me something to work with.

Extracting the small power matrix cell, cutting the wires with my tooth, I get another nasty shock and the lights go out completely. Now it’s pitch black in here, but I have a great memory. I manage to assemble a makeshift taser from the materials gleaned from the panel.

Here goes nothing. I press the trigger stud—which happens to be my tooth—and then the room lights up with a blue arc of electricity. Oh yes.

Even better, I can access the servos, which control the door holding me inside this tiny cell. Taking a deep breath, I activate the opening sequence and prepare for battle.

The door slides up, taking the two IHC “marines” guarding the door by surprise. I jam my taser into the crotch of the closest, and he spasms about before falling to the floor in a crumpled heap, awake but unable to move.

His fellow reaches for the comm on his belt, no doubt to raise and alarm, but I bash my horned head right between his eyes. The guard’s nose explodes into shards of bone and a spray of blood, and I give him a jolt from the taser for good measure.

“You boys don’t mind if I take these off your hands, do you?”

They have those cheap, mass-produced IHC assault rifles, the ones that overheat if you do more than a short three-round burst. But they’ll do for now. There’s no point in trying to steal one of their uniforms. I’m the only Kilgari on board. What I wouldn’t give for a holographic image inducer at the moment.

Alas, I don’t have one of those. Working from memory, I head down to their armory, which is blessedly unguarded. The retinal scanner won’t let me in, so I smash it loose and jury rig the wires to create enough current to get the door open. Then I put the door in maintenance mode so it will stay open and not trap me inside.

Here it is, my gear. Once I’m suited up and armed, I take some of their goodies too. They owe me for my tooth.

Then I step out into the corridor, my weak force pistol in one hand and a spread shot pulse rifle in the other. The first humans I come across aren’t soldiers but scientists. They gape at me, horror reflected in their tiny eyes.

I can’t risk them raising an alarm, so there’s no time to take them out with non-lethal means. Deciding the spread shot is too noisy, I squeeze the trigger on my pistol and strike the first in the chest. He opens his mouth to scream before dissolving into a pile of red goo.

His fellow tries to beg for mercy, but I shoot him before he gets more than a syllable out. I’m not a blood-thirsty man, but it feels good to finally be able to fight back against these cretins who have robbed me and my jalshagar of our freedom.

I have two objectives—one, find Thrase, two, find a means of escaping this ship, be it an escape pod or a shuttle.

Make that three objectives. I also want to kill as many Star Crushers and Project Blue Dawn shortspans as I can. They want a war?

I’ll give them a war.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Thrase

Once I had been left to my own devices, my first order of business was to render the Modine virus inert. A short burst of microwave radiation from the dehydration unit in my borrowed lab space does the trick nicely.

Then I make sure to put the computer console in “training” mode so I can make it produce any figures I want. If Dr. Mal or anyone else cares to check my progress, they’ll discover some promising, but not too promising so as to