She didn’t move her head but she side-eyed Stag. He had his back to the soldier, still crouched at the opening of the cleansing unit. Nala focused on the soldier again.

He released the weapon with one hand, touched his ear, and spoke. “Come in. Someone answer me.”

“Your team won’t respond.” Stag’s voice came out calm and cold. “I take it you boarded after the first seven. They are all dead.”

Nala clenched her jaw. She wanted to yell at Stag for being a dumb shit. The soldier had what looked like a small cannon weapon pointed at him and Stag was taunting the man.

“You’ll die too unless you lower that weapon and surrender,” Stag continued. “I’ll let you live if you do what I say.”

The soldier visibly paled but that passed quickly, his cheeks turning red. Nala figured that was rage. The guy dropped his hand from his earpiece and gripped the large weapon with both hands. She feared he’d fire.

“Thank God!” She kept her voice low, afraid to startle the guy and make him twitch his finger on the trigger. “You’ve come to rescue me! I was transporting diamonds the size of baseballs from the mines on Rigger Planet. There’re four crates of them hidden on some moon they stopped at. Don’t kill him! That cyborg is the only one who knows where they stashed them. They’re worth millions of credits.”

Nala took a hesitant step forward. The other soldier had been a dirtball who’d willing admitted to wanting to rescue women just to victimize them. She hoped this one had morals just as low. “Our transport was attacked and the entire crew killed except me. They’re slavers; they were planning on selling me. My father was Manny Vestria. He served twenty years in the military. I know how little they pay you. We can split it fifty-fifty. Think of all those credits.”

The soldier glanced at her. He didn’t fire or adjust the weapon to aim at her, so she took a few more steps.

“We could be rich.” She made it to the man’s side, still holding his gaze. “They aren’t very smart, and the cyborg won’t move as long as you keep that weapon trained on him. Look.”

He glanced at Stag.

It was the opening she was looking for.

She attacked, plowing into his arms and grabbed hold of his chest, fisting his uniform. She hooked one of his calves with the back of her heel, shoving as hard as she could with her other foot planted on the floor.

The man stumbled to the side and back, Nala stumbling with him. The weapon he still held fired, hitting something, but she knew she’d knocked into him hard enough that it wasn’t Stag or Maze.

He flailed and Nala saw his fist coming at her. She winced in that split-second, but kept hold of his uniform and one leg, knowing it would be harder for him to fire the long weapon with her so close to his body and clinging to him.

Pain exploded in the side of her head and it dazed her. The sensation of falling registered before she hit the floor hard.

Someone yelled, a male, and that cannon blasted again.

Something hit her back, a sharp pain, but she couldn’t move.

Then her body seemed to shut down from the agony inside her head, and she welcomed it.

Chapter Thirteen

Stag paced. “Why isn’t she waking up?” He glared at Maze.

The medic wore a sling, his right arm out of commission until he healed. “She suffered a severe concussion.”

“What about her back where that beam fell on top of her?” He worried it might have caused major damage. The soldier had managed to fire the weapon again when Stag had tackled him, hitting the ceiling with the blast. “It was heavy.”

“I’m getting there.”

“Hurry up! She could die because you’re not treating her fast enough!”

“Stag.” Hellion stepped between him and the medic. “He’s doing his best. He had to stop the bleeding on his arm and stabilize the break in his wrist. It’s left him one-handed. Nala is alive. Let him do his work without snapping at him every five seconds.”

The lights came on and Stag clenched his teeth.

“Got it,” Veller stated in his earpiece. “Life support is functioning. We didn’t lose that.”

“What did the soldiers do?” Stag resumed pacing.

“They blew a coupling to computer control, which shut it down, including power. I’ve managed to reroute around the damaged area. It will hold until we reach home but it’s a mess. We’re going to be grounded at least a week for repairs.”

Stag wanted to hit something. “Kelis? Did you get those bodies off my shuttle?”

“Yes, Stag. Yammer and Parqel just returned. There’s a group of pods attached to the rock wall about four thousand meters deeper inside. They used suits to float over and breach our hull. It’s why another ship didn’t register.”

“What in the hell?” He was furious.

Yammer said, “Six pods, linked together. We accessed their computer. They were monitoring traffic in this solar system.”

“How? The metals in his asteroid mess with sensors.” Stag stopped pacing, watching Maze frown as he scanned Nala’s stomach and pelvis area. He wanted to ask what was wrong but Yammer continued his report.

“They blasted two straight holes through the rock to the exterior and placed a direct link there to receive data uploads. There seems to be a small opening in the belt that allowed them to receive drone communications every three days, in fourteen-second intervals, before the signal is disrupted again. The drones are small, not easy to detect by any vessels. They stored all traffic information and forwarded it to the pods.”

“Hold.” Stag muted the coms. “What is wrong, Maze? Did you find something? You’re scowling.”

The medic glanced at him. “I don’t have a full med bay here so I have to go over every inch of her carefully with a portable scanner. I haven’t found any internal bleeding, nerve, or bone damage.”

Stag spun around and turned on coms again. He couldn’t stand to look at Nala lying on the bunk, looking so helpless. “Resume, Yammer. Did they have mission logs? Were they looking for us?”

“No. At least not officially.”

“They believe they were tracking pirates, illegal traders, and possible Markus Model sightings,” Parqel said next. “I accessed their personal journal logs. The one in charge assumed Earth Government might want to resume mining operations and they were sent to assess the threat to any miners sent here. Which means he wasn’t too intelligent. They mined this section out years ago.”