Page 9 of Fought and Found

“Portside airlock breach in thirty seconds,” Sprout announces, orb blazing white. “Starboard breach in Fifty-five. They are attempting a pincer formation, which I would describe as ‘ambitious’ given the size of this corridor.”

Hands steady. Good. The rest of me can shake later.

The portside airlock blows.

The first merc comes through at a dead sprint and I put him down before his boots clear the threshold.

“Atta girl, Bets.” Stun bolt, center mass. My wrist is steady and Betsy’s aim is true and the merc hits the deck plating with a sound like a sack of grain dropped from a shelf. His partner is three seconds behind — I can hear the mag-boots on hull metal, the clumsy rhythm of someone who learned to board in atmosphere and never quite adaptedto the magnetic pull. Betsy handles him too. Two shots, two down, and Morrison’s voice in my head says good, again, don’t think yet.

“Two more incoming starboard. Fifteen seconds.”

The Xarthian is already moving. I don’t know when he drew a weapon — the motion was there and then it was finished, the way a card trick resolves itself before you’ve worked out what happened. He covers the starboard approach, back to me, every line braced.

Third merc. Starboard. Coming fast.

Morrison trained the thinking out of me years ago — crisis mode is all muscle memory and geometry, the angles of the corridor mapped in the time it takes to exhale. The merc clears the junction and the Xarthian is in my line of fire and I shoot over his shoulder.

The stun bolt passes three inches from his jaw. Maybe less. Close enough that the discharge ripples through the fine down along his neck and cheek — dark fuzz standing on end in a wave, then settling. I can see the individual texture of it from here. Velvet-short. Dense at the jaw, thinning where it meets the geometric markings below his ear. The kind of softness that has no business existing on a man built like a siege weapon.

The merc drops.

The Xarthian handles the last one before I’ve reacquired. A sound from the starboard junction — brief, percussive, the particular noise a body makes when it meets a wall at speed — and then silence. He’s not even breathing hard.

The corridor goes quiet. That particular kind of quiet that follows violence — ringing, charged, the air tasting of ozone and heated metal.

My hands are still steady. I notice this the way you notice something wrong — they should have stopped, should have had the half-second of tremor that comes after a stun bolt passes two and a half inches fromthe jaw of a man standing directly in front of you, but they didn’t, and they won’t, and Morrison’s voice says “good” again from somewhere in the back of my skull. Good. Later I will find somewhere private and let them shake.

He turns his head. Not his body. His body stays oriented toward the starboard approach, combat-ready, every line of him braced for more. But his head turns, and those gold eyes find me over the ridge of his shoulder, and the look on his face is —

Not surprise. Not anger. Not gratitude.

Assessment. Complete and total. Like I’ve been reclassified in a filing system I don’t have access to, and the new category doesn’t have a name yet.

“Good shot.”

Low. Even. Two words, delivered with the same flat precision he uses for everything, except there’s a fractional drop in register that settles somewhere at the base of my spine and stays there.

I’ve been complimented on my aim before. Morrison, who never complimented anyone unless they’d earned it three times over. Dock workers. Other couriers. A customs officer on Relay Station Voss who asked me to dinner afterward and was very polite about the refusal.

Nobody who said it before was seven feet of crimson predator looking at me like I’m the most dangerous thing in the corridor and he can’t decide if that’s a problem or something else entirely.

“Betsy did the work.” I pat the grip. “I just point her.”

His gaze drops to the blaster — the daisy sticker, the etched barrel, my fingers resting easy on the grip — and something shifts behind those gold eyes. A recalculation he didn’t want to make. His pupils are wider than they were in the cockpit. The gold is darker at the edges,amber bleeding into something warmer. I notice this because I notice things. That’s all.

“You fired within three inches of my jaw.”

“Two and a half, actually. I had room.”

The silence that follows is a full second longer than tactical assessment requires. His jaw works once, the muscle shifting under the dark edge of a marking, and I watch him decide not to say what he was going to say. Whatever filing system he’s using, the new category just got a footnote.

My grip tightens on Betsy. Not from fear. From the warmth spreading across my collarbones that has nothing to do with combat adrenaline and everything to do with the way he saidshotlike it was the most interesting word he’d encountered today. It needs to stop. It does not stop.

“All contacts neutralized,” Sprout reports. “I would like to note that the Xarthian’s tactical suit has sustained significant damage and his ship is currently venting atmosphere from three separate hull breaches. For the record.”

Right. His ship.

I saw it happen. Watched the breaches open through the viewport while his tail was around my waist and Sprout was counting down the minutes. Three clean hits from professionals who knew exactly where to aim. The ship is listing now, power grid dead, the kind of damage that doesn’t get fixed with a patch kit and optimism.