Free Pirate Nemesis (Telepathic Space Pirates Book 1) by Carysa Locke

Blood. Mercy tried to speak, and found she couldn’t make her lips move, couldn’t make her tongue obey her commands. For a moment, she was grateful for the gravitational field holding her bound to the chair. She was pretty sure it was the only thing keeping her upright.
    Then the world lurched and came into focus. The ringing in her ears had either stopped or faded, because she could suddenly hear noise all around her. People were talking all at once, something about an airlock and a ship. A woman’s voice said she had the samples, asked Willem what he wanted to do. And Willem? He was laughing, sounding just a little bit drunk and a lot crazy. But over all of that, one sound had Mercy’s blood running cold, adrenaline chasing the last of the muddled feeling from her system.
    Atrea was screaming. Screaming like someone in untold amounts of pain, like the sound was being ripped from her forcibly, raw and keening. Someone lifted the scanner away from her, and it just made the screaming louder. A man rushed in and jabbed a capsulet into her leg. Atrea slumped into her bonds, all the tension leaving her body at once.
    “What are you doing? Help her!” Mercy found her voice, forced her mouth to shape the words. They came out much weaker than she intended, barely audible even to her own ears. She was afraid that using telepathy right now would send her spiraling into burn out, and she couldn’t afford that. She strained against her bonds, her vision still colored with spots, painting people as shadows outlined in light.
    “Willem.” She focused on him, said his name louder. “Willem! Help her, damn you.”
    He leaned against one of the tables, his expression a strange mixture of triumph and something like fear. A woman grabbed his arm, shouting at him. Three other people were running to the door, disrupters in hand. A man moved with them, no weapon in his hands, his body moving with a strange, stiff gait that looked unnatural. He was athletic, arms and back corded with muscle that he must have worked to build. More than anything, that identified him as some kind of soldier, one who didn’t rely purely on his Talent. He wore supple, armored clothing that wouldn’t do much more than slow down a knife blade. Then Mercy realized she could see a faint shimmer around him, a shield of some kind surrounding his body.
    It occurred to her that something more was happening, that something beyond what she had just done to Atrea was behind this chaos. She didn’t care. Whatever it was didn’t matter right now. Only Atrea.
    “Can you take them both, Octavia?” Mercy heard Willem ask the woman beside him. Focusing back on them, she was startled to realize the woman was no more than a young girl, maybe seventeen at most. Her eyes were wide and frightened. She shook her head.
    “I can take the samples, and you. Unless you want to stay behind, sir.”
    Willem’s eyes narrowed, his mouth tightening. Mercy had seen the expression often enough to recognize when an answer displeased him. So did the girl, apparently, because she flinched before she caught herself, the smooth pallor of her ebony skin taking on the ashen undertone of fear.
    “I—I could try, but if I’m not strong enough, we will all be lost. Sir.”
    Willem appeared to consider before shaking his head.
    “No, that is too great a risk.” He cursed softly.
    Over by the door, the man with the strange walk had stopped. The others moved to either side, waiting, but he stood directly in front of the hatch. A sudden blast of heat washed from him over Mercy, and she realized he was doing something with his Talent, something big. It built inside of him until he outshone everyone else in the room, a beacon that called to her and made gooseflesh raise along her arms at the same time. Then the pool of power burst out of him in a bubble she could see. It filled the doorway, a shimmering wall of telekinetics, giving a pearlescent sheen to the empty doorway. It was more than just a