Chapter 1
Jaxin
Biting back the groan of pain that wanted to rattle from my still-healing chest, I forced the weights up and back down for another repetition. Ihadto get stronger. Ihadto improve, and fast. I refused to sit out another mission on the sidelines like an invalid. My failure to be there when the guys tackled clearing out a mine on Planet Thirty-Seven in the Rummicaron Empire had meant Flack and Raukesh both got hurt.
Now we were heading for Radin, a world of waterways and slick, wet jungles inside Kertinal territory. Two weeks, and we’d arrive; that meant two weeks to get back in shape. It wasn’t enough—I knew that—and I was pretty sure Dravion knew it too, with his blasted empathic senses. That didn’t matter; I just needed to fool everyone long enough to get aclean bill of health. If there was one thing the Rummicaron were good at, it was hiding what they felt.
“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Aramon asked from where he was standing, hands hovering to catch the barbell should I let it slip. I wasn’t going to. Tilting my head back, I gave him my fiercest look, all teeth and growl. He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay! Just, you know… there was a gaping hole in your chest three months ago. Remember that?”
Like I could think of anything else. Three months ago, a Xionian Shade Stalker had taken a chunk out of me. Not only had I nearly died, but the bastard had also destroyed Bex. My laser cannon had been with me since… No, that was even more painful to think about than the destruction of my trusty companion. People laughed, but they didn’t understand the bond between a male and his cannon.
Now, Bex was in a million pieces, and some of those pieces were still stuck inside my chest. Not only had I lost the one companion I could always trust, but it felt like she had abandoned me. Dravion claimed that Bex’s bulk between me and that powerful claw was the only reason I was alive today. I knew differently. I knew it wasmyfailure that had caused her death. Again. No, no, no, not again. This wasn’t the same, and I wasn’t thinking about that.
I drew in a deep breath, then ran through a Rummicaron mental exercise that was supposed to mute my feelings. It didn’t work the way it was supposed to, because I was too far over the edge to let full calm wash over me. What it did do was offer me a semblance of calm. I wrapped that calm around myself and let it mute the pain inside my still-healingchest, letting it wash away the fatigue in my burning muscles.
In a moment of clarity, I recognized that I had already pushed my body further than it could go, and to do more would be foolhardy. I needed rest. Blazing stars, I hated rest so much that it sparked a buzzing of anger and frustration in my veins. Deep breath, another round of soothing, feeling-muffling exercises. “Thank you, Aramon. Now, why don’t you run off to your Evie and fuss over her instead?”
Aramon was always a wildcard, but now that he had a mate, he was so much easier to manage. Shooting me the widest, happiest grin in existence, he dropped his protective hover and bolted from the gym. At the door, he jerked to a halt, bare foot poised on the threshold, and glanced back at me—an attempt by his brain to remind him of his responsibility. “You’re done, right? You’re done with your workout?” he asked.
Sitting up slowly masked, I hoped, how much pain I was in. Nodding once was all it took to send him running again, and he did not seem to remember that he’d left his boots by the sparring mat two hours ago, when he’d sparred with Flack. Of course, despite getting injured on that damn Planet Thirty-Seven mission, Flack was already back in fighting shape.
I felt like an old man when I rose from the bench and shook out my arms and the fin along my back. What I needed was my saltwater tank and at least a dozen hours of shuteye, but that would mean missing tomorrow morning’s mission planning. If I did that, I was never going to be part of it. I needed the action; they needed my protection,so I had to go.
My steps were slow and plodding as I exited the gym and headed down the hallway to the nearest elevator. I’d set my alarm for eight hours; that was still a very decent amount of sleep. I could compensate by eating a few extra rations; my belly was always rumbling. Healing took energy, so I needed to keep myself fueled.
“Busted,” Dravion drawled from behind me. Had I been in shape, I might have jogged to the elevator and slipped his grasp. I was not, and Dravion was damn fast when he wanted to be, anyway. He followed me to the elevator with a stern glare on his typically Aderian features, except for the third eye at the center of his forehead. “You know you should not be at the gym yet, Jaxin. What are you doing? You risk rejecting the cybernetics.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I cycled through the various emotion-dampening exercises I knew. They suppressed the pain just as well, and I felt much better, my shoulders lowering as they relaxed, my fin perking up. It was key to make Dravion believe I was doing well, so I spun and offered him my most casual grin. “I’m feeling great, Doc. There’s nothing to worry about.”
I touched the black shirt stretched tight over my chest to feel the newly healed, grafted patch of skin. It hid metal bones and a sternum that had replaced what had been shattered by the talon strike of the Shade Stalker. It still didn’t feel quite natural, but my lungs expanded as they should with each breath, and my heart pounded strongly behind its safe, new cage. I lived, and with a little more time, I would be stronger than ever. I had to believe that.
Dravion’s expression shifted, but though I’d spent the past ten years of my life living almost exclusively with beings whoexpressed everything they felt, it was still hard for me to read the finer nuances. Was he mad? Did he believe me, or think I was lying? I had no clue. Executing a precise turn on the heel of my boot, I stepped into the elevator. “Are you going this way, or headed back to your lab?” I asked, with a tilt of my head that I had learned indicated inquisitiveness.
Since I felt nothing right now, I couldn’t care less if he followed me to my quarters or not. If need be, I’d detour to the mess hall to eat there and pretend to be merry with the crew,thatwould get him off my case in a heartbeat. Rationally, I knew that would tax my healing body more than it should, so I was going to tactfully try to avoid that if I could. Usually, pushing Dravion out of his comfort zone did the trick, and I ruthlessly employed that tactic now. “Want to grab a pint of ale before turning in? I was heading to the mess hall for some company. You’re welcome to come.”
His tentacles flicked across the floor, and that was definitely a nuance I didn’t know how to translate. I knew I’d won when he shook his head and backed up a few feet. “No, no, I have other engagements, I’m afraid. You go on, Jaxin. Just… promise me you won’t push yourself too hard. You’re not responsible for everyone aboard this ship. You know that, right? Let the captain and the Sineater worry about that for now.”
He slipped down the hallway then, without a backward glance and as if his ass were on fire. I grinned wide, not in a nice way, but in a display of satisfied aggression. That round was firmly mine. The elevator doors closed, and my expression reflected back at me in the sleek black metal: wide, angled jaw, blunt snout, and rows of jagged, triangular teeth. The humans on the ship likedto compare a Rummicaron like me to an Earthen creature called a shark. I’d looked it up in the database; it was an apt description.
The elevator zipped up three decks and spit me out in the hallway with the officers’ quarters. The Sineater had his rooms here, as did Mitnick and Flack. Ysa, too, though she also kept a bunk in the engine room, and our paths rarely crossed. When I caught Thatcher lurking by one corner, I knew she was in now, though. Poor bastard just couldn’t seem to leave her alone, what he thought he was protecting her from, no clue.
Shewasa pacifist, though, and that made her weak. But in the safety of the Varakartoom’s hull, nothing could harm her. I bared my teeth at the male in what I thought best approximated a human smile and felt a thickening curl of satisfaction shiver through my gut. It was a sure sign the emotion-dampening exercises were beginning to lose their effectiveness. I liked that the sight of my sharp teeth made the human male uncomfortable. It was Rummicaron instinct to discard emotion, but if one did feel any, to value only the powerful ones: aggression, anger, intimidation, and satisfaction over an enemy conquered. Or a friend, we weren’t all that picky about it.
My quarters were dimly lit with a blue glow when I entered them, and more of my feelings surfaced. With the door as a shield between me and the rest of the ship, I had less need to act strong and powerful. Weariness seeped through, then pain, and I stumbled as my chest began to throb. My limbs were exhausted after I’d worked them to the bone with the weights and machines in the gym. Perhaps they were right, perhaps Iwaspushing for too much, too fast. I just couldn’t shake the sense that this upcomingmission was going to change the world, my world. That it was going to shatter something huge, and I needed to be ready.
The tank took up half my living room, but it was well worth the space. Blue glowed from within, and the stairs beckoned me to climb to the top and slide in. The saltwater would soothe me, the coolness curling around my sore muscles like a balm. This was better than any cure Dravion could have prescribed.
I yanked my shirt over my head with a growl, then kicked off my boots and pants. The stairs seemed a mile long, each step up making my thighs burn, but then I was at the top of the tank. I slid in with a sigh so deep and heartfelt that it made the new metal bones in my chest creak. Not really, but it felt that way, as if they weren’t quite right. It was just hard to feel like they were a part of me, natural, like they belonged. I hoped that wasn’t a sign of them failing to integrate, but I was just numb enough, still, that I couldn’t worry about it.
Then I was submerged in the cool water, perfectly balanced to mimic the chemical makeup of the waters of my birth world: Planet Twenty-Two, also known as Rumcas. I floated beneath the surface and closed my eyes, trusting that the alarm would wake me in time for tomorrow morning’s meeting. Then I let sleep sweep me away, and with it, hopefully, the rest I’d need.
Rummicaron weren’t supposed to dream, or if they did, they were not supposed to recall the nightscape images in the morning. It was one of the ways in which I’d always been faulty, and perhaps the reason I struggled to keep my emotion-dampening conditioning in place. Ihad always had vivid dreams, but had I known what they would bring me tonight, I might not have surrendered so casually to them.
I dreamed of Bex; I always did. Tonight, Bex was a sleek metal woman with a delicate fin arching from her slender back. She sat at the edge of my tank and stared at me with soulful eyes that shifted to fierce accusation when I surfaced to reach for her. “You killed me,” she warbled through a mouth filling with blood. It painted the water red and kept gushing until my tank overflowed, and the bloody water began to fill up my room.
Bex, the silver woman, lost her shape when she floated to the ceiling, flickered as if she were my trusty cannon, and then became my sister, fragile and delicate. Bexlin, dying and floating away on a river of darkness, waves roiling and crashing over me, spinning me, tossing me, and I was too small to fight it, my fin aching with pressure, my gills struggling to pull in enough water with life-giving oxygen.
Memory and dream collided in a violent mixture, a nightmare of terrible darkness and aching grief. I woke, gasping for air, treading water, my maw opening wide at the surface of the tank. Everything was placid now, as if I had not been fighting for my life in my sleep. As I clung to the edge, I saw the water that had spilled on the floor next to the tank. It was transparent, silvery in the blue light, but for a brief moment, it seemed red as blood.
