This is taking too long. What if they’ve already caught up to Rentir and Thalen? There’s nowhere to hide. No armor, not like those auretian soldiers. What if they…
Shut up.
She gritted her teeth around the blaster, bracing her boots against the shaft as she let go of the crack in the wall and scrabbled with clammy palms over the horizontal tunnel that would lead her to the bridge.
How much time had passed? It could have been minutes or an hour. She’d lost all sense of such things in the darkened tunnels.
Cordelia slowed when she heard muffled voices, feeling along the wall until her fingers skimmed over the scantest imperfection. A panel, it had to be. She pressed her ear to the seam, straining to hear.
“…never seen him so agitated,” a muffled voice said.
“He is on the precipice of failure,” someone answered.
“And does he mean to take us all with him?” the first voice demanded. “What have any of us done except precisely as he commanded? Must we all be punished for his shortcomings?”
“You there!” someone else shouted. “With me! They need reinforcement on level three.”
Her blood ran cold. Level three was where she’d come from.
An imaginary clock ticked in her ears, each second as loud as a bomb.
The sound of footsteps receded. She burst out of the panel, springing onto her feet and snatching the blaster out of her mouth. The auretian tech barely had time to turn toward her before she cracked the butt of the weapon across his face. He staggered back, sagging against a control panel.
He was too young and lean to be the male she was looking for. Frustration stung at her. Of course, she hadn’t been lucky enough to stumble across one of the aliens she needed. He looked up at her with wide amethyst eyes, clearly horrified as she leveled the barrel of the blaster at him.
“What’s your name?” she demanded.
He blinked at her.
“Your name!” She squeezed the trigger a little, just enough to spark the whine of the weapon powering up.
“K-Kliath!”
“Kliath, do you know Urien or Vamir?” Those were the names Rentir had given her, the only two who override the lockdown aside from the Lord Commander himself.
He blinked again. “U-Urien is my supervisor.”
The head of security—High Sentinel, Rentir had called him. That would work.
“Comm him and tell him to come to you. Lie. If you tell him I’m here, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”
He nodded slowly. The comm at his wrist was substantially more elaborate than the one she wore, set in filigree with ornamental bits that the male used like buttons.
“What?” a voice barked over the link.
“There’s something you need to see, sir. Urgently.”
“I’m busy, you fool. We’re under an invasion, and you have the nerve to waste my time with more of your ridiculous talk of calibrations. I will throw you to the hybrids as fodder!”
Kliath’s expression turned stormy. “You must come, sir. It is not a matter of efficiency. I need to speak with you at once.”
“You squid-humping little jiatan, if you’re wasting my time, I will space you!”
The line went dead. Kliath and Cordelia shared a look.
“He sucks, huh?”
Kliath sighed.
