“We call that adrenaline.”
“Is that what it is?”
“Fun, huh?”
“Not quite how I’d describe it,” Jin grumbled.“My body doesn’t know whether it wants to faint, flee, or fight something.”
“You’ll get used to it.Eventually, it might even come in handy.”
“Doubtful.”
Kira grinned.He’d learn.
“When we get comms back, see if you can leave a message for Selene,” Kira instructed.
They might be close enough to Consortium space to access some of the comm relays.
“You think that’s a good idea?”Jin asked with a frown that was more thoughtful than troubled.“These children don’t exactly meet the profile of those she takes in.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
Selene’s expertise lay in traumatized children.If anything was likely to traumatize a child, it was witnessing the death of your entire circle of loved ones.
Moreover, it was unlikely there would be anyone willing to take them in once rescued.
Kira had seen their rooms.They were all too young to survive on their own.Selene was their best—and possibly, only—option.
“I’ll let her know she might be getting a few new friends,” Jin said.
Dylan rejoined his charge as Kira left Jin alone to see what else he could find out from the logs.
A tomblike silence enveloped her as she traveled in the direction Bez and the others had taken.The dead might not speak, but their presence was inescapable.
Feeling whimsical, Kira bowed her head as if to pray.“We’ll finish as quickly as possible so you can get back to your rest.Don’t worry about your children.I give you my word that if they’re still alive, I will find and save them.They’ll grow up in peace and safety.”
Maybe it was her imagination, but the oppressive silence seemed lighter as Kira retraced the others’ path.
Before long, she caught the murmur of voices from up ahead.
Hurrying toward them, Kira stepped into the large chamber that had once served as the enclave’s shipyard.Dug into the base of the mountain at the back of the enclave, there was a set of untouched blast doors on one side of the bay that would have allowed their ships to come and go at will.
Someone had collapsed part of the ceiling and a good chunk of the mountain’s base to create an unsanctioned skylight.The immense weight of dirt, trees, and rock had crushed whatever was below.One side of the shipyard was entirely gone, buried under many tons of debris.
Some ships had managed to survive.They’d been caught on the very edge of the cave-in and had been pushed off to the side.A few had rolled onto their backs.Others lay half buried, their nose or tail wings poking above the debris.
Even with the destruction before her, it was easy to see that the chamber had been breathtaking at one point.The immenseness and discipline required to carve out such a massive cavern was admirable.
It made Kira sad to realize that the people responsible for such ingenuity were now gone.
Without examining them, Kira didn’t know how thick the metal for those blast doors was, but she could guarantee that it was at least several meters.The enclave had taken its security seriously.They would have made sure those doors could stand up to anything but a nuke.
Hence the DIY skylight.
Probably flew a ship through it before the dust even settled.
Scanning the chamber with an experienced eye, Kira spotted the pirate’s likely landing spot a moment later.She searched the ground in the vicinity.
Sure enough.Those were boot prints.
