He raised his head from the shadows, stared at us, and roared. A sound that was low and deep, like the roaring of the ocean, like a wave crashing onto shore with all the raw force of nature. Then he charged. Ysa screamed, I screamed too, and both of us began running. I was extremely grateful the ship’s engineer kept hold of my hand. She seemed to know the ship better than anyone and was the better choice at picking our direction. Surely she knew where the backup was, or, at the very least, the weapons?
When we thundered into the hangar bay, I knew it was a dead end. There was no exit, just a handful of small shuttles and land vehicles still parked inside. The rest were all down on Xio with the rest of the mercenaries. “Now what?” I asked, my eyes frantically searching for a way to fight this thing, a weapon, anything. Where was Val? How badly hurt was she? I had not been without her constant shadow in so long that it felt wrong not to see her near me—like she was already dead. The silver strands around my wrists and neck were still there, though, lying warmly against my skin. How diminished could a symbiont become before it perished? My literature hadn’t mentioned that.
“Circle, distract it. It’s fixated on you, so I’m gonna send you to safety, okay?” Ysa murmured, and she gave me a little push to the left. Suddenly, I was standing all alone in what felt like a massive spotlight. Davidson’s eyes tracked me, locked onto my form like I really was the only thing he cared about. This wascrazy. Why did he fixate on me? Why had he let me live but not the others?
Ysa had darted to the left, but it really didn’t care where she’d gone. Davidson did not even look in her direction, and when I shuffled further to the left, it tracked me and began to follow, mimicking my steps across the bay, circling with me around a pair of hovercycles, and then slowly closing in until I was practically backed up against the wall. “Ysa?” I called out. “Are you ready?” Ready for what, I had no clue, but she’d acted like she had a plan. She better have a plan, because I didn’t fancy being a snack for the Davidson creature. I had far too much to live for, I hadn’t even convinced Sin to tell me all his secrets yet. I hadn’t even told him how desperately in love I was with him.
“Almost! Come this way!” her voice shouted from across the hangar bay. This way? I had no clue, so I just followed the sound of her voice and hoped for the best. “This way” turned out to be toward a small spaceship, barely big enough to hold two—smaller than the ship Sin had once flown down to the water world I’d been slumbering on for over seven hundred years. It did not look like a safe place to hide, and Davidson was far too close. I feigned going left, leaped right, and ducked under the rim of a low cart of some kind. Sliding along the floor, I rolled back to my feet on the other side in what was possibly one of my most acrobatic moves ever. Adrenaline was funny that way.
I was definitely not graceful or acrobatic as I tumbled over some cables next, but by then, it didn’t matter. Ysa was right there by the hatch of the ship, waving frantically. “Get in, get in!” So I did, diving headfirst into the shuttle and slamming to a stop against the pilot seat. The hatch hissed and slammed shut behind mewithout explanation or warning. It shut out the Davidsonthingtoo, and for that, I was grateful.
When the shuttle hummed and moved, I scrambled to my feet and crawled into the seat, my eyes scanning frantically over the foreign console. The implants the ship doctor had given my eyes allowed me to navigate the ship; they also allowed me to read the alien scripts common to the Zeta Quadrant. It didn’t help me one bit, not when I was completely lost as to how to interpret what I was seeing. Takeoff? Some kind of countdown? A status update on the hangar bay doors?
And then a whimper came, and none of that mattered anyway. That was Val, somehow. She was curled in a tight ball in the navigator’s seat, and I hadn’t seen her because black stained her silver coat. “Oh no, how bad is it, sweetie?” I asked, hunching over her, my hands hovering but not quite touching. I didn’t know if that would make it better or worse; she hadn’t wanted to be touched in some time.
She rolled onto her side, her belly going concave to avoid my hovering fingers. I did not see any wound, but there was an inky spot swirling across her silver fur. It hardly looked big enough to cause any harm, but blink, and it had moved; blink again, and it seemed just a fraction larger. It did not take a genius to leap to the conclusion that something from the Davidson thing had been left behind when it struck her.
“Hold on tight,” Ysa’s voice announced over the soft humming of the small ship’s engine. “I’m sending you to the safest place, given the circumstances: to Sinny.” Sinny. The way she called my big, badass Sineater “Sinny” would have made me laugh if the situation weren’t so dire. My guy was down on a planet,supposedly fighting creatures more cunning and deadly than he was. How was that safe? But I was infinitely relieved by the idea. Surely, the Davidson thing couldn’t follow me through space. Or could it? Because how the fuck had it gotten onto theVarakartoomin the first place?
The ship was moving, the readings were changing, and then the viewscreen at the front changed. The planet filled the view—green jungle and swirling white clouds. My eyes caught the comings and goings of many ships, and one huge, sprawling city glowing like a jewel of white, red, and gray among the green. Where was Sin in all that?
“By the way, pretty sure that slinky creature crawled in there with you, licking its wounds. So you’ve got company,” Ysa added, just as the nose of the small ship began to dive down. Heat shields activated as it caught in the friction of the atmosphere. I clutched at my seat to stay in place, struggling to secure the unfamiliar flight harness around me. I was barely secured when all sense of gravity failed, and I began floating up.
Next to me, poor Val mewled when she drifted up, her body limp, eyes wide and fearful. It was not a look I thought she’d ever worn before. Given her ability to withstand nearly anything, she had probably never feared at all. I reached for her, and, though I was worried I would harm her by touching her, I curled her tightly against my chest. If not, she might slam into the hull or the viewscreen as the shuttle braked and gravity reasserted itself.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I told her. “I’m going to take care of you now, sweetie,” I cooed when she whimpered and curled against me. This was my fault; she would not be injured if she hadn’tvaliantly defended me from that creepy thing. As if thinking about it summoned the feeling, a sense of dread washed over me so hard and fast that I couldn’t stop myself from looking over my shoulder. I was certain he was there, but the ship was empty.
Val stretched against me, slinky silver shifting shape, a lick of black through soft Riho fur. Her ears were round and cute, her eyes huge and sad. She wasn’t making pained noises now, but staring at me as if I held all of life’s answers, or maybe just a little bit of hope. The strands of silver that had been around my throat and wrists all this time finally moved. They slid over my skin, beneath my clothing, until they reached Val and, for the first time, merged back into her shape. She sighed, blinked, and closed her eyes.
For a heart-stopping moment, I was terrified she’d just died, but she’d only gone to sleep. My breathing sawed out of me in a rush, and my whole body went briefly limp in the flight harness. Now what? The ship was leveling off, shooting straight past the huge, sprawling city, soaring over a building shaped like the Colosseum and into the jungle beyond. How long before we reached Sin? And did Ysa expect me to land this thing, or was the autopilot going to take care of it? I didn’t know, and I didn’t know if Ysa was listening. What if she was still fighting with the Davidson thing aboard theVarakartoom?
It was nightfall on this part of the planet, and shadow abruptly fell over my little ship. I saw lights in the distance, bright and clear. Another shadow flickered, and then the interior lights of the shuttle followed suit. A chill shot down my spine—what was that? It wasjustlike the power fluctuations aboard theVarakartoom. Something on the screen was warning me about the upcoming landing, telling me to stay strapped in.
Another, deeper shadow crossed the viewscreen, briefly blocking out the approach lights. Cold fear filled me, and Val stirred against my chest, strengthening—healing—as she absorbed my feelings. What was that shadow? I was pretty sure I knew the answer, and it wasn’t good. How? This shouldn’t be possible.
The shuttle began blaring with an alarm. The comm on my wrist started buzzing then, but we were still going so fast that I was pressed back into the seat. I couldn’t lift my hand to answer the call. All I could do was clutch Val tightly to me and hope for the best. This was not going to be a soft landing.
A thick tree branch struck the ship first as we sank too low over the jungle. The lights in the distance were still too far away; they beckoned with safety, but we weren’t going to make it. Then another branch hit—this one was thicker—just enough to alter the path of the ship. I saw black, flashing light, a dozen alarms screaming and blaring, and then, for one brief second, the rapidly approaching trunk of a massive tree. After that, darkness enveloped me.
Chapter 21
The Sineater
“This way,” I said to Jaxin. We had been down on Xio for three days straight, and every day this continued was too much. I was so certain something was about to go terribly wrong that Val was constantly forced to remind me that she was up there, too, watching over my mate. I knew things were rocky between us when I left, that it wasn’t settled, because Val’s feeding needs meant… well, what did they mean? That we couldn’t be happy, because that would kill her.
The Weaponmaster had been part of theVarakartoom’s crew almost as long as the twins had. He was a seasoned veteran of hundreds of missions and known for both his level head and his bold stunts when it came to saving the hides of his men or his beloved laser cannon. He was, like Asmoded, a male I respected, even if he’d never been a male I could feed from. There was good reason why I avoided Rummicaron space if I could help it: too many suppressed, emotionally stumped individuals.
Our particular Rummicaron in charge was different, though—not in a good way, at least not to me. No, he was far too cheerful, grinning widely with his way-too-many fangs, and clearly enjoying my situation with Frederique. Far too gleeful about reminding me at every turn that I had fallen for a lady, like the rest of the crew, one by one. The mighty Sin, down on his knees for a female.
“This way?” I snarled at him, pointing in the direction he had indicated. That was back the way we’d come, and it wouldn’thelp us find the Shade Stalkers terrorizing this building site. The smart bastards had left sign after sign that they were there: broken trees, tracks in soft dirt, and half-eaten corpses of some of the local bovine-like creatures. That last—a threat so clear it was chilling—reminded us that they were not stalking us because they were hungry; they were stalking us because they could.
“Yeah, we should report back to Asmoded that this grid is clear tonight. The last section of fence should have gone up by now.” The fence wasn’t going to keep these Shade Stalkers out, for that, the Xionians needed more powerful measures, ones they couldn’t power until after the power plant had been built over this steam vent. It was a conundrum, one that could only be solved by killing the Shade Stalkers inside this territory.
“Call him,” I said. “I’m searching the next grid.” Val, at my side, nodded her large Gracka head. She’d fed well over the past few days on the nerves and tension that came with facing this dangerous threat. It was very good at terrorizing even our most seasoned crew. Even Aramon was not his usual loud and cheerful self, and Mitnick was staying awake far too many hours to use his drones for the search.
Then I froze. Something was happening, something big. I sensed it through Val, who was picking up something major. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happening on theVarakartoom?” I was asking her, but she couldn’t vocalize much, just share her fear with me.
I slapped my hand to my comm and hailed theVarakartoominstead, ignoring Jaxin as he came back to my side and demanded to know what was happening. Mandy answered, her voice a little breathless and definitely fearful. “Sin, something’son the ship. It’s after Freddie.” Jaxin was the one to respond, leaping into action while I froze in horror. On the ship? Frederique was in dangeronthe ship. There was nothing I could do, and that feeling of helplessness was utterly paralyzing.
