It had made a noise before, so I braced my shoulder against the cold metal to ease it open gently. Even through my pale fur tunic, I felt how cold that metal was. It stung thefiner scales on the palms of my hands, but that was a small price to pay when the interior of the ship opened up to me just like that. A gust of stale air slipped out, and with it, the scent thathadto be that of the ugly creatures my hunters had seen shooting Vakarsa last fall. They were definitely inside. The question was, how many of them remained? They must have tussled with Haven’s dragon and hunters, the evidence of that outside was obvious.
Before I could think better of it, I slipped into the darkness and made the choice to shut the hatch. Though it was tempting to leave the exit open, I could not risk giving myself away in such a manner. With the hatch shut, it was only marginally warmer inside the skyship. Nothing hummed or buzzed, and nothing crackled with power, either. This skyship was truly dead. Hunters had hopefully suggested that it might fly off again, as it was so whole compared to any other wreck we’d seen, but I doubted it. The lack of sound and light inside proved me right—this ship was not going anywhere.
I was inside a dark hallway, having crawled into it through the floor. It was a strange place for an entrance, which was perhaps why the red and black creature had used it; for stealth. It was to my advantage, too. There was nobody inside this shadowy place, which helped me stay undiscovered. The metal floors made it hard to track movement, but sight was not my only option. These hallways trapped the air; it didn’t move on a current or get circulated by metal blades, like I’d once seen in a skyship. I could now track the red and black stranger by scent.
Sticking close to the walls, my ears wide open, I set out to do exactly that. Every twist and turn through the black interior made me twitch with unease, but it also reminded me of the past. Of the adventures that Kusha and I had gotten up to when we were young. She’d changed so much over the years, hardened until I did not recognize her. Fearstruck me that this was going to be Nisha’s fate too, and I didn’t want that.
Focus, I told myself. Complete the mission: find out what this red thing is, moving around our border and in and out of this skyship. Then go back home and hug Nisha for as long as she’d let me. I could do that.
Chapter 4
Jolene
I was starting to think there was something seriously wrong with the ship the more hallways I wandered in utter silence. There was no one here, and nothing worked, as if all the power were out. It reallywasa ghost ship, and I would have believed they were all asleep if I hadn’t seen the strange alien with the two Krektar. That made me extremely cautious, tiptoeing to every corner before peering around it. I only flicked on my little light at intervals and traversed the rest in disorienting darkness.
This ship was dead. There wasn’t even the hum of an air treatment plant or the faint glow of emergency light. I was pretty sure both had been there before; I had even heard the low hum of the engine. Now, nothing. I tried to remember if the sounds of the ship working had disappeared before or after this last stint in stasis. I wasn’t sure. It had been such chaos when everyone fled from the fire-breathing dragon.
It appeared, the farther I wandered, that the only functioning tech inside the ship was that of the pods themselves. They were fully shielded systems, self-sufficient by design, and built to last hundreds of years if needed—even against something like an EM pulse. Was that what had happened? Some kind of electrical interference? Or had the engine exploded?
Whatever it was that had struck the ship, it meant all the doors weren’t functioning. I didn’t know enough about spaceships to operate the manual overrides, and I’d been stuck wandering these dark hallways, searching for options. I’d also been freezing my toes off this entire time, and I was beginning to get seriously worried that I’d lose them to frostbite if this continued. Things were absolutely freezing in here, so they had to be even worse outside.
When I came to a ladder, I debated whether I should go up it or not. Up didn’t seem like the right direction for “out.” If anything, it would lead me farther away from the exits. I was pretty sure I’d wandered in several circles at this point, though, and both the airlocks Ihadfound hadn’t just been shut but welded closed. There was no way they would budge unless I had a very serious laser cutter of some kind. Those were exterior doors, too; they wouldn’t budge for just anything, they were meant to withstand extreme heat and damage from asteroids.
Okay, up then. Maybe I could find the bridge or some other vantage point and see what was going on outside this lump of metal. I didn’t want to think of it as a coffin, but I was starting to think that it was. A frozen tomb with thousands of sleeping ghosts. My palms stung on the rungs of the ladder, but I pushed through it. No gain without pain, or something? I remembered the sleepless nights and endless hours on my feet from my hospital shifts all too well. I could do this.
I tucked the light between my teeth and turned it on, a risk, but I didn’t want to slip and fall to my death either.Each step up was heavy and growing progressively colder, though that was the exhaustion from the climb more than anything else. It felt like an endless ladder, though it was probably only a dozen or so rungs I had to climb. When I stuck my head through the opening onto the next floor, I saw a glimmer of light in the distance. Better yet, it was a little warmer on this floor.
My body had stopped shaking a while ago, but I trembled as the marginally warmer air wrapped itself around me. The ladder went up even higher, but I wanted to check out that light first. Could that be where the Krektar and that strange alien had gone? I flicked off my light and wriggled my toes, settling my blankets and supplies more evenly around my body. Then I tiptoed down the hallway toward the light, ears wide open for any noise.
There was no one here, not even the sound of breathing, as far as I could tell. I dared to stick my head around the corner, heart pounding in my throat. I was startled by what I discovered: a large room with a domed gray roof and the faintest hint of light filtering down. Furniture was scattered about—lush, opulent pieces—and no doubt expensive artworks adorned the walls.
The biggest light source was at the center of the room, and it was also the source of the heat. Some sort of alien space heater that spread warmth and light. It was very tempting to rush toward that light source, most of all, to rush toward that heat. My toes were going numb, and I knew how bad that was. I had just enough presence of mind to take another look. Why would someone leave a heat source unattended like that? They wouldn’t, not when the ship was already out of power.
Good thing I had. What I’d taken to be a chair piled with pillows shifted suddenly, and dark eyes blinked open. Then, hands raised toward the heat source, and a low sigh rattled through the air. How had I not heard someone breathe? Howhad I missed that? I jerked back, pressing my back to the wall and considered my options rapidly.
That room held promises. It had a heat source, and quite possibly, it had a window. The ceiling was such a weird shade of gray and light that I suspected it was actually plexiglass covered with snow. When the sound of someone smacking and chewing reached my ears, it also became obvious that whoever was in there had food. Too bad I didn’t have a weapon; I’d have no issues shooting a Krektar if it came to it. Those smelly, evil bastards had harmed enough of us and treated the rest as slaves. They didn’t deserve my mercy.
I didn’t know what Iwasdealing with, though. It didn’t stink here, so it might not be a Krektar. I didn’t see any red glowing lines, either, so it wasn’t that strange alien from the hold. Not unless he could turn that off when he felt like it. If itwasthe strange alien with the red, I might have risked it. He had covered my tracks; he might not be hostile. This unknown? I was too afraid to try, so I had to try something else: go up further, hope to find the bridge.
Turning around, I gasped in shock, caught completely by surprise when I discovered I was not alone. The strange black-and-red alien stood just behind me, towering over me in the dark. We stared at each other, his red eyes glowing at me from a fairly humanoid face. Black horns spiraled up and back over his hair from his forehead. Compared to the Krektar, he was extremely handsome, but that didn’t mean he was good, despite what I’d been thinking moments ago.
“I’ve been looking all over the ship for you, little human,” he drawled. Those words sent a chill down my spine. They held nothing good, only the darkness of someone thoroughly annoyed by being sent on a wild goose chase. Well, that wasn’t my fault. He was the one who left the hold without thoroughly checking it. If he knew I was there, why hadn’t he called out?
I opened my mouth to reply with something sharp; fear always did make me reckless. He held up a hand, and hisfingers glowed with faint lightning bolts of red across his dark skin. Fascinated by the bioluminescent glow, I froze. “You need to get back into stasis, right now. Do you want to freeze to death?” He clicked his tongue in distaste, as if the thought offended him, and my body lost some of its ready tension. Was he actually worried about me now?
When a voice suddenly called out loudly from behind me, I shuddered. I’d forgotten there was a stranger back in that room with the heater. He had barked something roughly, and in an entirely alien language. It was the contrast of that strange, foreign noise that made me realize this weird, scary alien dude had spoken to me in heavily accented UAR Standard. He spoke my language. So far, nobody here had done that. The Krektar barked orders in their strange, crude tongue, and I hadn’t understood a word of Nala’s native when he hissed and growled at her, either.
The strange, English-speaking alien lifted his gaze over my shoulder toward the corner where the light spilled into the hallway. Then he raised his voice and said things in a language I definitelydidn’tknow. The alien in the other room did understand, though, and the two started in on a slightly shouted conversation. All the while, I was pinned in place by a red gaze and blocked from slipping away by his big body and the whipping back and forth of his tail.
I wasn’t ready for him to move. I didn’t even realize his shouted conversation was over until he suddenly snapped out a hand and grabbed me by the arm. Surprised, he managed to drag me down the hallway several steps before I started to struggle. “Don’t, he’ll discover you’re here if you make a noise!” my captor warned with a hiss, his words twisting more heavily in his foreign accent with his anger.
That briefly derailed me, and I wondered if it would be a good or bad thing if that other alien discovered me. Considering the opulence of the room, I had to assume he was in charge, or at the very least, important. I didn’t have faith in the good behavior of the rich, so I stopped strugglingand let the red and black alien guide me down the hall at a quick pace. At least all this adrenaline had my blood pumping; it might just save my toes.
“Better,” my companion drawled, and his grip on my arm shifted. Less painfully tight, and more a simple hold. “Now, back to the hold, quickly. You won’t survive in this cold.” He wanted to put me back in stasis, and whether that was motivated by the desire to protect me or not, it was the last thing I wanted. I might have entertained it as an option before, to protect myself from the icy cold, but with that suddenly becoming a very near reality… I felt claustrophobic, utterly paralyzed with fear at the thought. No, he wasn’t putting me back in one of those sleep coffins. No way. I had to get out of here.
We’d turned several corners, and everything was dark again, save for the red glow coming from my jailer. Far enough away from that other alien to make a noise? I wasn’t sure, but I hardly cared. I struggled in his grip. “Let me go! No, don’t take me back.” He hadn’t expected me to wrench my arm free, but even though he briefly lost his grip, he was too fast. His tail lashed out to catch my wrist, and his hands hauled me back by the front of my improvised blanket coat.
“Do you want to die, female?” he snarled in my face. Viciously sharp fangs snapped at me from far too close. This guy was a predator through and through: big and strong, with far too many parts of his body that were lethal. Like those fangs, and the sharp knife that tipped his tail.
