One Between the Stars

Chapter 31

 Though Carson knew it was hopeless, he kicked and fought all the way to his cell.

"You're not going to get away with this!" he shouted, grappling for Tao's iron grip on his arms.

Tao merely growled like some feral animal in response.

In a last ditch effort, Carson bit the giant man's fangers. He howled, but only allowed the gallivanter a few feet before picking him up and hauling him over his shoulder.

Well, great, Carson thought through the blood rushing to his head. Now I'm a prisoner and I've humiliated myself.

It wasn't long though before Tao stopped in his tracks. Carson wondered what had stopped him.

"Hey! What're you doing outside your cell?"

He blinked. Art? Carson swung himself around, straining to see past Tao's broad back. He caught a glimpse of a familiar, skinny form. He didn't look panicked, as Carson would have thought, but rather the squire merely looked intrigued by an unforeseen inconvenience.

"Huh," Arthre said. A moment later Tao buckled and fell, bringing Carson down with him. The gallivanter shouted as he was squashed by the mountain of a man. Arthre was there to help left the hulking mass off him.

"You alright?" the squire asked.

"Fine," he said, wobbling to his feet. "Crushed lungs, but fine."

"I can't believe I ran into you here."

"Yeah, well, consider it our one breath of luck for the universe to taunt us with." He frowned, looking into the hall beyond leaning to the main deck. "We've got to find Ionia."

"You know where she is?"

"Yeah." He looked down at the unconscious Tao. "You kill him?"

"No. He's a cyborg; I fritzed his hard drive."

They stood there, staring at Tao for a few moments, taking in their new reality. Then Carson nodded stiffly. "Yep. Let's go." And they were off to find the princess.

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It had taken Ionia fifteen minutes to find a way out. The thing that she was starting to realize about people was that, fortunately for her, they tended to underestimate her. Especially Starflare, it seemed.

She started with walking around the room, accounting for every object she had at her disposal. The screen, the stool. She emptied her pockets; a few disposable unit chips, a discarded hairclip, and her pocket knife, which she now carried with her everywhere. Her brain clicked, and she set to work inspecting the door. it was bolted on thick metal hinges, screwed into the wall. Good, but she would need something more than a small knife if she came across anyone in the hall. So first she started the painstaking process of unscrewing the legs from the stool, praying to the stars that Starflare or some other crew member wouldn't come in the door.

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Carson and Arthre fled through the halls, darting down every corridor, peaking in every door to find not only Ionia but also the location of the loading dock. The Wolf-Rayet was enormous; how in the stars were they supposed to find one cell and one room?

It wasn't long before they were halted by a crew member. This one was the woman with the spines on her skull, and at the sight of them she pulled out the gun strapped to her side.

Carson tensed by his side, but Arthre didn't miss a beat; in the amount of time it took the woman to send the bullet flinging toward them, he already had control of the gun. The air itself paused as Carson and the woman took in the image of Arthre with his hands up, inches from a bullet, frozen in the air. He sent it speeding back, and it found its home in the woman's stomach. She fell to the floor with a look of supreme shock on her face. He grabbed a frozen Carson's hand and slapped a gun in it, and they continued on.