Stupid to trust the guy who’d jerked him up a wall on a cable.
But Christian dug a key-card out of his pocket, and used it on the cable lock, just took it off, and rubbed his wrist and pulled at him. “I’ll give your regrets to Cook. Come on. Up. Up.”
He didn’t know what he thought. Didn’t understand the game, but he hurt, he couldn’t see, and up on his feet was where he wanted to be, except the whole room was tilted. Christian kept him upright—kept him from falling on his face—he was seeing blurry tables in a vacant galley, now.
And Tink came back.
“What’s going on?” Tink asked. “I just stepped out to storage, sir, I was with him all the time—”
“Six, seven fools,” Christian said. “I got him, Tink. He’s all right. I’ll fix him up.”
He wasn’t sure about that proposal. He wasn’t sure he wanted Christian taking him anywhere, and he wanted Tink to stick with him, but Tink didn’t raise any objection as Christian steered him past the tables and out the door—what could Tink do anyway? Christian was an officer on this ship.
It was up to him, then. He made a try at walking on his own, but he still couldn’t see anything but shapes, and he wasn’t, it turned out, walking straight. Christian threw an arm around him, hauled him away from impact with the wall.
“Don’t be an ass,” Christian said, “difficult as that may be for you.”
“Go to hell.”
Christian jerked him hard enough his head snapped. “I can beat up on you. They can’t. That’s the rules.”
Seemed perfectly clear. He got a breath as they walked. “Where’re we going?”
“My cabin.”
He planted his feet. Tried to. He wasn’t at all stable, even standing, and Christian dragged him along anyway. By now his vision was clearing, but a headache arrived with it, and he thought a bone in his forearm might be cracked, where Christian was pulling on it.
Another jerk. “Don’t give me trouble.”
Hurt, being hauled on like that. Didn’t have the brain operative enough to argue otherwise, and he thought for a moment he was going to throw up, right there in the corridor. He didn’t want to do that. Wanted a bathroom, wanted to sit down, and if Christian had a place closer than he could otherwise get to, fighting wasn’t worth it yet, wait-see… hope the rescue was a rescue and not an ambush in itself.
Christian steered him for a blurry door, opened it, on a wide cabin with real carpet. Chairs. Bunk. Lot of pillows.
“Don’t bleed on the bed. “ Christian dropped him onto it. “You hear me?”
He wasn’t trying to. He was looking for somewhere to lean his hand, but it was bleeding or bloody, his nose was bubbling, and Christian went back to the bath and ran water while he considered whether he was or wasn’t going to heave his gut up.
Not, he decided after several breaths and a wait-see. He propped himself with his hand on his knee, mildly tilted, on the edge of the bed, while Christian brought him a wet towel and insisted on going at his face with it, mopping his nose and his mouth, his eye. He was shaky. The cold towel obscured his vision and he wasn’t sure where up was. The tilt warned him.
Christian shoved him backward, flat, and said catch his breath.
Good idea, he thought. But it rode his thoughts consistently that Christian wasn’t his friend, the captain of the ship had ordered him to be in the galley, and if there was a set-up for blame possible, Christian wasn’t necessarily the one going to catch hell—he just couldn’t think through the haze and the headache to figure out what the game was.
“Listen,” Christian said, settling, a weight on the mattress edge beside him. “The guys made a mistake. I don’t want it blown up into an incident that can sour this trip, you read me clear? Mad crew can make a lot of trouble.”
It sounded like an actual honest reason. A serious reason. He wasn’t brought up a total fool—a ship in space was wholly vulnerable. This ship in particular was vulnerable to its hire-ons or any total crazy they happened to get aboard. Was Christian saying they were already running scared of the crew, or what, for God’s sake? And was Christian in some kind of personal bind about what had happened?