Shifting my hold, I hook one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back to hoist her fully into the air. The movement is swift, catching her off guard. She lets out a startled gasp that quickly turns into a high-pitched bellow of outrage.
"Put me down! You giant, rusted bucket of bolts! Put me down!"
I turn away from the column and begin the march out of the core chamber. My stride is long and relentless, eating up the distance of the hallway. Behind me, the massive blast doors of the chamber begin to slide shut, the heavy metal grinding together with a finality that makes Nyra flinch.
"My suit! My helmet!" she shouts, her head whipping around to look at the retreating doors, then back at the drone still hovering in its stasis field. "You left them there! And K-Seven! You can't just leave it!"
"The ship is bringing them." I keep my pace as we pass through the archway into the primary transport spine. "The drone is being relocated to your quarters. Along with the rags you call clothing. Your cutting implements and oxygen cells have been recycled—my ship has no use for human scrap metal. Your sidearm is secured. You will not need it."
"Recycled? Those were industrial-grade—hey! Stop carrying me like I'm a trophy!" she screams, her fists drumming against the alloy of my shoulders. "I can walk! I have legs! I will kick you in the face if you don't set me on the ground right now!"
Virex Primeanswers my earlier directive before I can give it fresh voice. The deck plating along the corridor shudders, and the remainder of her suit begins to peel away from her in long, deliberate strips, the synthetic weave separating cleanly at every stitched seam. The left sleeve goes first. Then the right. The bulk of the torso, already unzipped, slides down and back over her shoulders like a second skin being shed. Her boots release last, the mag-seals popping with a softclackI feel through thetwitching of the plating. The ship absorbs the suit fabric into the deck in a measured ripple of alloy, but the sidearm at her thigh resists, the dense polymer refusing to bond with the deck substrate.Virex Primeextracts it separately, a recessed panel in the corridor wall folding open to receive the weapon like a hand closing around a coin. She watches it disappear into the bulkhead and makes a sound in her throat that is pure, distilled fury. Within the span of six strides, I carry her in my arms in nothing but the thin, sweat-damp tunic and loose salvage-pants she wore beneath the suit, her bare feet dangling above my forearm.
Her shriek reaches a new pitch. "Are youkiddingme? Are youkiddingme right now? I am going tomurderyour ship, you hear me? I am going to pull every wire out of its guts one at a time and tie them into a bow on the bridge?—"
"The clothing was not clean," I rumble, untroubled. "You will be cleaned, and then you will be clothed in what I provide."
"Oh, I willnot?—"
I find myself tightening my grip, the sensation of her small, trembling body against mine sparking a primal satisfaction. She is a prize, though she is unaware of it. She is the first victory in a new era, a piece of the universe I have claimed while the rest of the galaxy still thinks I live as a ghost.
Virex Primejudders in time with my stride, the lights in the hallway turning a deep, bruised purple as we approach the Holding Wing. The ship feels alive again, its systems singing with the proximity of the marker. Every door we pass slides open with a whisper of hydraulic fluid, welcoming the Commander and his prize.
Nyra continues to yell, her insults becoming more creative and her kicks more desperate, and the sound of her voice is merely background static to the triumph rising in my chest. Ihave led legions. I have conquered worlds. I have never felt a victory as visceral as the weight of this one woman in my arms.
She thinks she is fighting for escape. She thinks she is a prisoner awaiting a chance to run. As we reach the threshold of the secure corridor and the doors hiss open to reveal the fortified, obsidian-lined sanctuary prepared for her, I know the truth.
The void failed to take me, and it will fail to take her. She is my claim. She is the spark. I exist as the Reaper who has just secured his greatest asset.
I step into the tactical ward, the bio-mat beneath my boots cushioning the impact of my heavy stride. Ozone bites through the warmth, chased by the faint, sweet scent of the ship’s filtration systems. I reach the middle of the living area and finally set her on her feet, though I keep my hand on her shoulder for a moment longer than necessary.
Nyra stumbles, her bare feet catching on the soft mat as she spins around to face me, her chest heaving and her eyes burning with a hatred so pure it radiates a palpable, blistering heat. She looks at the room—the clean lines, the reclamation alcove where the steam is already beginning to rise—and then she looks back at me.
"You're going to regret this." She forces the syllables out through a throat constricted by fury, the delivery flickering with an erratic, dangerous energy that refuses to settle.
"Only humans have regret." The violet shimmer at her sternum catches the dark of my eyes. "I am a Reaper. I only know results."
I back away toward the door, watching asVirex Primeslides the heavy panel into place, sealing the corridor with a crackle of unbreakable stasis fields. I pause in the hallway, listening to the muffled sound of her slamming her fists against the door and screaming for her drone.
Silence leaves the ship as her presence fills it with beautiful, chaotic noise. I turn and walk toward the bridge, the weight of the crown feeling lighter than it has in a thousand years. I have my victory. And the conquest has only just begun.
CHAPTER 5
NYRA
Sealing shut, the door makes a heavy, terrifying sound that I feel all the way in my teeth.
A slam would be honest. Slams are what doors do when someone's angry, and angry I could work with; angry I've negotiated with my whole life. This is worse. Secure stasis fields emit a low, satisfied whisper as they merge across the seam of a panel that refuses, quietly and without my consent, to open.
Standing in the middle of the room with clenched fists and ragged breath, the violet mark sears through the thin fabric of my tunic. I scream exactly once, loud enough to draw blood from my throat, purging the sheer panic so I can finally think.
The scream dies in the warm, ozone-sweet air of the ward. And nothing answers. I wipe my mouth with my shaking hand. "Right. Okay. Think, Nyx.Think."
I turn in place. Slow. Measured. I have done a hundred salvage jobs, and the first thing you learn, the very first lesson anybody bothers to teach you, is that a sealed room is only sealed until you find the seam. Every room has a seam. Every room. Air gets in. Power gets in. Water gets in. Find the feed, find the feed's housing, find the housing's access panel, crack the panel, and you're halfway home.
I take stock.
The tactical ward, or holding wing, or whatever the hell the big bronze-plated monster called it, is bigger than my entire bunk on theHarrow. The floor is that soft bio-mat he stepped on, and it gives slightly under my bare feet, a faint breathing yield against the soles of the shoes. My skin crawls. It feels like walking on something alive, but my eyes automatically catalog the sheer wealth of it. The bio-mat alone would fetch fifty thousand credits on the Mid-Rim markets.