Rashka

“Holy fucking shit! Boss, how much did you say we’re paying these assholes?” I couldn’t stop laughing.

Boss said these guys would figure something out, but fucking hells, I wasn’t expecting them to… Honestly, I still don’t even understand what they just did. But it was fucking cool, and it shut Rossi up, that’s for damn sure.

“Not enough,” boss said. “Message Rossi, tell her we’ll be boarding and if she tries anything, then we’ll just kill her from out here.”

“Yes, boss,” Daria replied. She was so sexy while she was working. “Their main communication emitter has been destroyed, but they can still receive.”

“Aleric, bring us to their less damaged airlock and prepare to dock.” Boss said.

“Yes, boss.”

“Everybody else, prepare to board,” boss said. “Assume they’ll be hostile. Rossi is just that kind of bitch.”

We all fell in behind the boss as we marched through the corridors towards the airlock on the lower deck. I found myself suddenly curious about our new allies, so I kept pace with Dezra as much as I could. As usual, she was walking with Nikko.

“Hey Dez, you met these guys, right? What’re they like?” I asked.

“You were there when we picked up the crates, you met them,” Nikko said.

I scoffed. When I went with Nikko to pick up the boxes, the only two there were the foxes. Neither of them seemed very impressive. “I don’t think either of the ones I met did what we saw back there.”

“That was probably the captain,” Dezra said.

That made sense. Of course, their captain would have to be the scary one. “Okay, so don’t piss off their captain? Got it.”

We reached the armory, just outside of the airlock, and started gearing up. I opened my locker and sifted through the contents.

Combat aboard a ship was different from in the city. In the city, you wanted good armor and better guns. If you planned things right, you could shoot a guy from three blocks away and would never have to worry about anybody knowing who did it.

On a ship, though? Only an idiot used guns. Anything that was strong enough to pierce decent armor would pass right through an unarmored person and could damage an important system or even breach the hull, and even the most basic armor could shrug off anything that wouldn’t.

That’s why when we fought on a ship, we used blades, and why I loved fighting on ships. Shifters were built for close-quarter combat. We were still dangerous in a firefight, but up close? We were unstoppable.

I pulled out my favorite daggers. They had a crescent blade that wrapped in front of their handle and would allow me to attack at nearly any angle.

“Their captain isn’t the dangerous one,” Dezra said from beside me.

I snorted, sheathing my daggers as I pulled on the modified body armor that the pack used. “Are you trying to tell me that more than one of them could do that?”

We walked over to where everybody was lining up in front of the airlock, waiting for Aleric to secure us to the other ship. The light turned green, and boss held up a fist, signaling us to wait. I could feel my wolf pacing just below the surface. She was hungry.

“Leave Rossi to me, kill the rest,” the boss growled as she transformed.

“Yes, boss!” a chorus of growls and howls rose in affirmation as all eight of us unleashed our own wolves.

I heard, as well as felt, my bones crack, elongate, and shift, giving me another half meter in height. My muscles were bulging, fighting against my body armor, while my fingers grew into razor-sharp claws as I reached for my daggers. My jaw dislocated, forming into a snarling maw of pointed teeth.

This was the hybrid form that was only attainable by the most powerful members of the pack. Only those who had accepted and become one with their wolf could do it, and every member that the boss had picked to come along with this mission was capable of this transformation.

Well, everyone besides Daria, who was now staring at me with a manic lust in her eyes. I had to fight every instinct, as well as my wolf, to not just run to her. Thankfully, the opening airlock freed me from her trance.

Gunshots rang out as the Syndicate opened fire down the narrow hallway. In any other situation this would have been a killzone, but the ship-safe guns were a low enough caliber that I barely felt their impact.

The boss ran past the firing line. She killed a woman who was unlucky enough to stand in her way, leaving the rest for us to clean up. I was more than happy to oblige, leaping over Dezra and using her shoulders to spring myself forward, pushing her to the ground.

She growled and snapped at me, but I was already gone. The dagger in my right fist impacted a man’s throat, and he was already dead by the time I threw him into two of his companions. I leaped after them, spending the time to properly crush the skulls of the prone pair.

I pivoted to the left, dodging Nikko’s swipe and pushing him into a woman who was readying a shotgun. The gun went off, and I laughed as Nikko killed her. I looked around to find my next target, but the dozen Syndicate were already dead on the floor.

“It’s her girlfriend,” Dezra growled from beside me before transforming out of her hybrid form.

“What?” I asked. My voice sounded guttural to my own ears.

“The captain’s girlfriend. She’s the dangerous one,” Nikko said. He was already back to his human form and rubbing his chest where the shotgun blast had hit him. Hopefully, it would leave a bruise. “You’ll understand when you meet her.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Daria stepped over a corpse, smiling while she wiped blood from her mouth. She lifted a hand to my snout, pulling it low enough to kiss.

A low hum reverberated through my chest as my wolf sighed at the touch. She felt content and was urging me to transform so that we could return the affection.

I held Daria as I shrunk back to my human form, kissing her deeply once my fangs wouldn’t get in the way.

“Don’t underestimate them, my love,” Daria said. “The captain is calculating and dangerous in her own right, but offending Thea could be deadly, even for you.”

“Fine, I’ll be careful,” I said. If Daria thought this Thea was dangerous, then she was dangerous. “Let’s go find the boss.”

Boss wasn’t hard to find. We just followed the trail of blood and bodies to the ship’s cargo hold where we found a dismantled mech covered in claw marks, along with Rossi tied up and gagged.

“What now, boss?” Dezra asked.

“Take Rossi back to our ship and have Aleric contact the captain. They’ll have to do a few repairs before this thing can fly again,” boss said.

~~~~

“Well, captain, thanks to you, the engines are scrapped. They’ll need to be completely replaced before we can move with any real speed, and Sora’s shit aim took out the diagnostic system. So, I’ve had to interface directly with the ship to even learn that much.”

The little fox was being really disrespectful, and I was looking forward to when the captain beat her.

“Look Samira, I’m sorry, alright? Can you fix it?” Captain Virra asked.

This captain was a major disappointment and the boss had sent Daria back to our ship with Rossi to extract information. I was stuck here alone.

Kill one prisoner, one time, and all of a sudden, I’m forbidden from ever helping interrogate. It was complete bullshit.

“Fix it? No, I can’t fucking fix it. If we’re lucky, I might be able to get us moving, but landing is going to be a bitch.” The small fox visibly calmed herself. “Captain, this was a brand-new Torment class corvette and now it might as well be scrap metal.”

I inched closer to where the devil was leaning against the wall. I figured if the captain was boring, then her girlfriend had to be more interesting. Thea was the only person in the room that even registered on my danger sense. But I could still take her.

“Is your captain usually this much of a pussy?” I was trying to push her. If some random asshole called Daria something like that, I would kill them on the spot. I wanted to see if the rest of the crew was as soft as their captain.

She grinned, revealing the sharp incisors of a predator. “Yeah, she’s a big softie when it comes to Sami. Isn’t it cute?”

“It shows weakness. Your captain should put the little fox in her place or she won’t get any respect.” If somebody in the pack talked to boss like that, then she would kill them. If she didn’t, then the pups would never stop challenging her.

Thea shook her head. “She wouldn’t hurt Sami. Besides, even if Bryce were that type of leader, Sami isn’t the type to respond to threats, so we’d be out an engineer and our navigator would leave with her.”

“Bullshit. If she was a powerful leader, she’d make them stay.”

“Is that how it works in the pack?” she asked.

“Yeah, our wolves won’t let us follow a weak alpha, and ignoring your wolf for too long can make you go rabid.”

Thea looked at me with a frown and a raised eyebrow. “But you’re stronger than Lysc. I can tell.”

I felt pride radiating off my wolf, and I embraced it. Thea must have something similar to our danger sense if she could recognize my strength.

“I don’t follow her. I follow my mate.”

“Daria?”

I nodded. “I outgrew the boss a while ago, but my mate told me not to challenge her.”

“Why is that, I wonder?” she asked.

“Not sure, didn’t ask. She’s my mate, so I trust her.”

“Your mate sounds like a smart woman. Do you think she saw that leadership takes more than just strength, and thought Lysc had whatever that other thing is?”

“I… hadn’t thought of that.” Daria was a smart woman, easily the smartest in the pack. She was strong too. If she were a wolf, then she’d definitely be the alpha. She had to have some sort of reason for not wanting me to be, even though I was the strongest. Wouldn’t she want to be married to the alpha?

“Tell me, Rashka, does Lysc always solve problems by beating people?” Thea asked.

“Yeah, it’s…” I thought back to when I met Daria all those years ago. Sure, boss had just beaten me, but it was because I kept challenging her. When she realized I was just doing it to get closer to Daria, she forced me to propose. It was one of my favorite memories.

I had failed to beat her every day for a month. She should have just killed me. Instead, she found out what the problem was and solved it without violence. Well, with limited violence. She was pretty angry with both of us.

“No, I guess you’re right. Sometimes, actually most of the time, she tries not to kill people when she doesn’t have to,” I said.

“Bryce is the same way. If she doesn’t have to kill, then she’s not going to, but she can be pretty ruthless if you piss her off. So don’t piss her off,” Thea said. “Or I’ll probably be the one who has to kill you.”

“Now that’s a fight I’d look forward to.” I smiled at the shorter woman. It would be a good fight, but Daria already told me not to piss her off, so it’d have to wait.