Page 79 of Fought and Found

"My scent has been changed since this morning,and you know it."

"Since the chair," he agrees. "The chair required exceptional restraint. I would like it noted that I have been restrained for an unreasonable span."

"You'll be compensated."

"Tonight."

"Tonight."

The word does what the word does. He moves — the liquid, too-fast-for-his-size thing — and I am off the corridor line and into a maintenance alcove with my back against his chest, seven feet of Xarthian folding around me in the half-dark like a door closing.

"Xor —"

"A tease." His mouth finds the bite mark through the collar of the cardigan, breath hot, lips pressing the tender crescents until my knees do something embarrassing. "You permitted teasing. I checked the terms."

One arm crosses my body, palm spanning my belly, and pulls me back against him — against the hard ridged length of him through tactical fabric, the knot-swell pressed against my spine like a promise with a schedule — and his other hand slides beneath the hem of the cardigan, beneath the shirt, thumb hooking just inside my waistband. Not lower. Nowhere near where every nerve I own is filing petitions. Just the thumb on bare skin, drawing one slow line from hip bone to hip bone, mapping a border he intends to cross at length, later, with the clock owned.

"Tonight," he says into my neck, the purr inside the word, "I am going to lock us. And then I am going to be very, very thorough."

My head has fallen back against his sternum. I am a competent professional woman in a public thoroughfare. I am also wet and furious about the number of hours between now and tonight.

"You," I manage, "are a menace."

"I am good at everything. The menace is included."

I turn my head to say something I will not be held accountable for —

The corridor lights go red.

Not station-red. Not docking amber. Emergency red — and the pressure door ahead of us is falling, and the one behind us is falling, and Xor moves.

He is fast. The doors are faster, because they are not malfunctioning — they are timed. He is through the alcove gap and lunging toward the sound his ears have already found, boots on deck plating somewhere past the junction, and I am two steps behind him when the door between us hits the deck with a boom I feel in my teeth.

Sealed. Fifty tonnes of emergency polymer. Xor on the far side.

Me on this one.

Morrison's voice, twelve years old, at the base of my skull: an ambush that separates you has already told you what it's afraid of.

"Sprout."

"Two hostiles, this segment." Battle-white. No sass. The tactical stripping I have heard exactly twice before. The orb peeled off his shoulder the moment the lights went red, and it is on my side of the door, which means the AI triaged us and chose me, which tells me everything about what this is. "Lockdown was triggered from a maintenance node using dock-worker credentials. Station security is alerted. Response time: four minutes."

Four minutes. The maths does itself. This was designed to take less than four.

They come around the junction together — matte-grey gear, no insignia, moving the way Saar moved, professionals in a corridor built for their kind of work. The first carries a capture loop. The second carries a military-grade stunner. So that's the story: the courier, alive. A lever sized to move a Xarthian and a container both.

Behind me, something hits the sealed door so hard the corridor rings like a struck bell.

I draw Betsy. Two-handed grip, feet planted, blood running combat chemistry and leftover arousal and twelve years of Morrison. "Boys," I say, in the warm voice, "you have terrible timing."

The stunner comes up. I am already moving — going down is dying — and my first bolt takes the loop-carrier in the shoulder seam and spins him into the bulkhead. The stunner tracks me, faster than I can slide —

Sprout takes the shot.

The orb drops into the bolt's line like a small amber planet committing suicide. The discharge cracks blue-white against the chassis and Sprout hits the deck plating and rolls, casing scorched, light guttering — and the voice that comes out of the damaged orb is nothing I have heard in twelve years. Flat. Cold. Mechanical.

"Hostile action against Flossie Knight logged. Countermeasures unrestricted. Nobody touches my human."