Page 27 of Nita’s Bounty
The Pizat on my left jerks and then drops, nearly landing on top of me, just as an arm snakes around my waist, pulling me to safety and then hauling me up against a solid chest.
“No!” I scream, fighting against the strong hold.
The Pizat on my right swings his blaster at me, but whoever is behind me fires first, and he is knocked to his back with a seared hole in the center of his forehead. My head swings around, and my knees go out as I sag with relief.
“Shuvo! Oh my god,” I cry, turning so I can fling my arms around his neck.
He grunts, and I quickly let him go but not before he crushes me against him, burying his face in the side of my neck. I feel him draw deep, greedy breaths, all while the Pizats and Negura continue to exchange fire.
“Stop her!” Ojal’s sudden shout pulls us back to the present, and we both look over to where Madame Althea is hurrying for her ship.
Shuvo lifts his blaster and fires once, the laser hitting her in the back of one of her legs. Her scream as she crumples to the ground is far more satisfying than it probably should be.
Despite her injury, she still tries to drag herself up the ramp. With his arm still wrapped around my waist, Shuvo strides over to her. The fighting around us has mostly ceased now, and the Pizats who are still alive have given up or been captured and bound. The Madame is making small whimpering sounds as she tries to scoot away from us, but there’s nowhere for her to go.
Finally letting go of me, Shuvo lunges forward and traps her bleeding leg under his foot, eliciting a shrill scream and stopping her attempted escape.
“Please!” she begs. “I’ll go. You can keep her, and you’ll never see me again.”
My head swivels, looking from the terrified Madame to Shuvo. His face is hard and tense, without a single hint of mercy in his flat black eyes. Very slowly, he raises his blaster.
“I don’t believe you,” he rasps. It’s so quiet, I’m not sure if it carried enough for the Madame to hear him.
My heart starts to pound, and I raise my hands to cover my mouth, but I don’t stop him or even make a sound in her defense, except to jump at the sharp sound the blaster makes when he fires.
When she collapses face down and doesn’t move again, all the tension in my body melts away, and I’m overcome with a kind of calm that I haven’t felt in… maybe my whole life.
It’s over.
Everything. All my worries and fears are no longer. When I take my next breath, my chest expands without its usual tightness. It’s over, and I’m truly free.
***
CHAPTER 18
***
SHUVO
I take Nita back to my parents’ home, where I wash her trembling body and bandage her arm before dressing her in one of my warm shirts and then tuck her into bed. She clings to me when I try to leave, so I stay with her until she eventually falls into a deep sleep. I only leave her side to help sort out the mess we inadvertently brought to Vuloria.
I join Ojal, along with the other villagers who came to help as they finish overseeing the Pizats who are loading their dead onto their ship, including the Madame.
As one of the green brutes walks past me, I reach out and grab him by the collar of his tunic. “How did you know to find her here?” I snarl, dragging him close enough that he can hear me without my communicator.
Small, beady eyes round until the greenish orbs appear to be rolling around like pebbles. “I—I’m not?—”
Ojal comes up behind me and introduces his blaster to the Pizat’s temple.
“Tracker!” he quickly admits. “The Madame had a tracker implanted in her. It was easy enough to follow at a distance and wait to see where she landed.”
I let go of the Pizat with a shake, and he hurries up the ship’s ramp to disappear inside.
“We’ll be blasting exactly what happened here across all channels,” Ojal hollers as the last of the Pizats make their way back onto their ship. “Our military will be waiting for you just outside our atmo to escort you out of our system, and if any of you ever return, none of you will be leaving here alive.”
I stay to watch their ship disappear through the cloud cover.
“I’ll let the healer know what happened. He’ll be able to find and remove the tracker,” Ojal assures me.