“They all appear to be retreating into the Kowri ship,” Vk said.
Another Gavd ship blocked Regi’s ability to see the conflict, but her words drove him to start running again despite the pain in his chest. The Coalition should require a higher standard of physical endurance for their security officers. Regi planned to write a strongly worded report on the subject as soon as he managed to escape the clutches of the gods' twin blessings.
As Regi came closer, he spotted a cluster of individuals near Bekdi’s ship. Dante and Ter were too close to the open door. The hair on Regi’s arms stood on end. He slowed to a walk but strode across the hard-packed ground with a confidence he didn’t feel. He would need to bluff his way through this situation.
Regi was planning the brilliant verbal attack he would soon launch when the spaceport alarms rang. The cluster of individuals near Bekdi’s ship surged toward the open hatch, and Dante vanished inside.
“No!” Regi roared. The hatch closed and the outer structures of Bekdi’s ship began to vibrate with the force of the engines.
No. No. No.
Fury rushed through Regi’s veins. Regi was tempted to sprint for the ship and beat on the outer hatch until Bekdi let him in or let Dante and Ter out. However, he knew what happened to flesh exposed to a launching ship. His death would benefit no one except Bekdi, and Regi would not give that godless, earless, son of a hairless mother any advantage in this fight.
Instead Regi ran for the Coalition ship. As soon as he caught his breath, he would endure the humiliation of asking for help from the most terrifying exalted he knew. His mother.
Chapter Seventeen
Dante was gone. Ter was gone. The place where Bekdi’s ship had been standing was empty, and Regi stood at the hatch and watched a small group of hovers speed across the hardpacked dirt between the spaceships. At his side, Vk shifted. It was a nervous gesture he had seen a dozen times before.
Once, they had been trapped behind a deck breach on station after a workers’ riot. They had spent three days watching each other's backs and waiting for the Coalition to send additional troops in to secure the area. Part of him hated that she saw Kowri as a threat, and part of him was beyond grateful he had someone he trusted at his back.
His Coalition communicator chimed and Captain Cota's voice interrupted his thoughts. “We have Kowri incoming.”
Vk snorted. Perhaps if it'd been the two of them, she would've said something disrespectful about the captain's grasp of the obvious.
“Acknowledged,” Regi said. “Are we still tracking the fleeing ship?”
“Fleeing implies a legal culpability which has not been established,” said Captain Cota in full diplomatic mode, but Regi didn’t want to be diplomatic. He wanted to chase Bekdi down and pull his intestines out through his nostrils. For the first time, he appreciated Ter’s creative use of language.
“Do we still have a location on the ship that left the planet?”
The captain took a long time to answer, either because he was asking one of Ter's subordinates for information or because he intended his silence to express his displeasure at Regi's tone. None of them had any illusions about the Coalition communication being private, but Regi did not have the emotional energy required to control his anger.
“We are still tracking the most likely energy signal,” the captain said, which appeared to translate as “maybe.” The lives of Regi’s crew rested on a “maybe.” He thumbed his communicator off before growling low in his chest. Once again, Vk shifted her weight, but this time moved closer to the hatch so she could watch the approaching Kowri.
“Do you know them?” she asked.
Regi didn't answer, and Vk accepted that silence. Neither Dante nor Ter would have. They both would have demanded information. They would have challenged Regi and engaged in illogical profanity with explicit references to physically impossible acts. But Vk waited in silence.
His di-father was in front, and Rel stopped his hover so close to the ship he could lean the machine against their hull. Rel then turned his back to Regi and observed the shipyard. Not a single Kowri waited at the edges of the yard seeking to catch sight of an outsider. No Kowri-polished ship exteriors. No Gavd followers found excuses to ride their pebafri past the shipyard. This part of the town appeared abandoned. No doubt many Kowri knew what had happened and feared Regi’s temper. Either that or they expected outsiders to be so illogical as to trigger a lethal response and they hoped to avoid getting damaged in the crossfire.
Pertin and Minait reached the ship at the same time and Pertin held both his own and his wife's hover handles while Minait climbed off.
Regi had a distant sort of floating feeling like he sometimes got right after a firefight when his brain couldn't quite process. But he forced his limbs into movement, walking down the ramp to meet his mother near the bottom. “Were you able to contact Bekdi?”
Regi forced himself to breathe. In and out. In and out. His nose ached from the force he was exerting to control his breathing.
Minait grimaced. “He insists he has acted in accordance with temple mandates.”
Anger crawled through Regi's soul.
“The temple granted him custody,” she said.
“And you hid this?” Regi demanded. “Hiding a temple discussion from those exalteds most affected by it is not honorable, Mother.”
She stood taller. “I hid nothing.”
“Nor did you seek to warn me that Bekdi sought custody of my crewmember,” Regi snarled.
