As they ran, Arin started to become breathless. Rykal glanced at her with growing concern, noting her increasing respiratory rate. She was fit and well-conditioned; he could tell that much from his brief explorations of her magnificent body, so this pace shouldn’t be an issue for her.
Something was wrong.
As they neared the docking bay, she activated her comm and engaged in a back-and-forth conversation with the humans who were supposedly responsible for managing operations on this dilapidated behemoth of a freighter.
“Your brother-in-arms just saved the lives of hundreds of people by killing that Xargek,” she gasped, her chest heaving. “One of the transports is out of action, but the other has made it safely to theMarcia.They just need to make one final retrieval and-” She broke off, coughing.
But even though she was struggling, she never once slowed her pace.
“Just one more retrieval and all personnel will be—” Arin coughed again. Impatience flashed across her face, and she tried to take a deep breath, but that only triggered another coughing fit.
Still, she ran, even though her breathing was becoming more and more labored. Hers was the behavior of one who had trained their body to push through all kinds of discomfort, no matter what kind of pain they were in.
Rykal wrinkled his nose as a strange chemical smell reached him.
Humans were much more sensitive to fluctuations in the environment, but now the bad air was getting to him as well. They weren’t far from the third docking bay, but Arin had been forced to slow her pace.
A fine grey vapor had appeared. It clouded their path, spewing out from the ceiling above, where a network of pipes, cables, and lights ran along its length. The gas smelled harsh and chemical, stinging Rykal’s eyes and making them water.
He said some very choice words in guttural Kordolian, grateful for once that Arin didn’t understand his native tongue.
“What now?” he snarled in exasperation. If he didn’t know better, he might almost think there were second-stage Xargek swarming around the pipes and vents, trying to sabotage their escape.
With their strange hive-mind intelligence, he wouldn’t put it past them.
He cursed the humans for building such a flimsy vessel as he stared into the thickening smoke, his eyes burning.
Arin was in a bad way. The skin on her face and hands had turned red, and clear liquid streamed from her nose.
“Enough,” he barked, grabbing her by the wrist. He turned back the way they’d come, not wanting to risk running through the smoke, or vapor, or whatever it was. “There’s bad air here. We’ll have to find another route.” He started to drag her in the opposite direction. There must have been some sort of gas leak, or oxygen leak, or both.
Rykal cursed humans for navigating the galaxies on such flimsy, primitive, unstable vessels. Such problems would never have occurred on a Kordolian ship.
“But…” She began to protest, but she was silenced by her own distress. Her eyes started to take on a glazed look, sending a ripple of cold fear through Rykal. “O-okay,” she gasped, as Rykal dragged her away from the suffocating area.
She was growing weaker with every passingsiv, and Rykal couldn’t tolerate that. He watched her face carefully and saw pain. She was trying to conceal it beneath a stoic expression, but Rykal had inflicted enough suffering on others during his bloody lifetime to understand what he was seeing.
He could not tolerate seeing her in such a state. He couldn’tstandit. Seeing her hurt tugged at something deep within him. Wretched fragments of memories threatened to surface.
Vivid images entered his mind, unbidden.
He saw the abyss again, saw hismother’shand slip from his, and froze.
He knew who she was now.
He knew that soft, loving hand. He was falling, and then he wasn’t. Because she’d let go of him.
Because she’d wanted him to…
Live.
Please live, my son.
“Rykal?” Her voice was weak, but her grip was firm as her warm fingers entwined with his. “Rykal, you need to be here with me.”
The sound of her voice was potent, even though her words came out as a hoarse whisper. Her hand tightened around his. “Rykal, I need you.” Those simple words dragged his flailing consciousness kicking and screaming back into the present.
She was still struggling to breathe. She was hurting, and yet she’d managed to pull him out of the abyss.
