“I must go. So many stories to record.” She disconnected the communicator, leaving Dante and Ter staring at each other.
“Is it that bad?” Dante asked.
“Yes.” Ter grabbed the tools Optol had left on his desk and the rough map a nameless assistant had provided them and stomped toward the door. They weren’t supposed to leave Optol’s quarters without an escort, but it did seem like the Kowri had bigger problems than two rogue passengers.
“Where are we going?” Dante asked as he followed.
“Ships must be logical, even if Kowri possess less logic than the bacteria that inhabits their inadequate gut,” he snarled.
Dante didn’t dare ask more. He followed Ter to a lift leading to a far less decorated section of the ship. Ter stalked the corridor ahead of Dante, ripping open every door they passed. Most of them weren’t locked, but maybe Kowri didn’t have to lock each other out. Or maybe these doors were monitored and an exalted would come charging out of some side corridor.
“What are we looking for?” Dante asked as they passed another junction and Ter started pulling more doors open.
Ter jerked on another door, this time a locked one. “There has to be a local control room. If it’s behind one of the locked doors, the chances of us emerging from this with our lives intact is abominably low.”
“We survived a black hole,” Dante said. The ship shuddered again.
“A black hole is not malicious. It doesn’t not seek out ships, latch onto the hull, and siphon off energy. A black hole would not coordinate an attack, and the ship that is our current source of oxygen and heat would not be dying faster with each new minethat latches on!” Ter was shouting by the end, and a cluster of impacts made Dante clutch the wall to keep from falling down.
Ter whirled about, his scarecrow-like limbs flailing in every direction. “If your goddess has led us into a trap, I will find a way to identify whatever she calls a body, gut her, and leave her incorporeal entrails for others to view with disgust and horror.”
“Disturbingly specific.”
Ter returned to his self-appointed task of searching this corner of the ship. He punctuated each jerk on a door handle with another muttered curse, each more vivid than the one before. They’d been searching for fifteen or twenty minutes before another shudder rolled through the decking.
“Found it!” Ter’s voice sounded like a battle cry. He dashed into the room and ran his skeletal fingers across the controls with the same reverence another might touch his lover. Dante blushed watching.
“Now to figure this out so I can secure this level. If the rest of the ship dies, I refuse to die with them.” Ter pulled a chair over and perched on the edge as his hands danced across the controls. Dante didn’t dare ask if the Kowri left their systems unsecured or if Ter was breaking into their computer. He wasn’t sure which was worse, but he wasn’t dumb enough to interrupt Ter long enough to ask.
“Or we could save everyone.”
Ter scoffed. “Unlikely. You would need to disrupt each mine with an electrical weapon in close quarters.”
Dante stood next to the open door and watched the corridor. The plain narrow passage looked more like a human-built ship than a Kowri one. Most Kowri passages were large enough for sacred animals to wander the ship with decorated trim and enameled colors depicting scenes from nature. People could have picnics in the hallways without impeding the flow of traffic, but this section was different.
It was colder, and the lack of decoration made it feel dangerous. Either that or Ter’s dire warnings had left him paranoid and anxious. That was possible.
Dante heard footsteps pounding down the corridor before a young Kowri came running. “Hey!” Dante shouted.
The boy jerked, startled enough that he slid on the floor–not an easy task given the textured surface–and then hit the far wall. “What... Who?” He stared at Dante. “What is ‘hey’?”
“A term used to get the attention of others,” said Dante. “Why are you running?” If he was on some critical task, he didn’t want to distract him.
The Kowri hunched his shoulders, which made him seem even younger. He was as large as an adult, so Dante guessed he was the equivalent of a teenager. “I dislike this section. It’s the shortest path to my family’s area, but I like to get through it quickly.”
That sounded more like a kid. “Do you know where the emergency supplies are?” Dante asked. The first thing the pirates had taught each slave was where to find emergency supplies and how to secure the dops. They didn’t value human life, but they wanted to ensure the dops survived any crisis. The dops. Crap. Peaches had been too sleepy and lazy to come with him this morning, so she was still tucked into a corner of his quarters. If he lost his girl, he was going to kill every blasted exalted on this ship... right after letting Ter use his most creative profanity on them.
“Of course I do. I’m not a child,” the Kowri said in such a universal tone of indignation that Dante was transported to his own childhood. He’d perfected that exact voice as a young teen determined to make his father miserable.
“Can you show me?”
The Kowri eyed him with suspicion. “Shouldn’t you know where they are?”
“I don’t remember,” Dante lied. They should have been shown, but the Kowri were too arrogant to fear disaster. Dante was going to make them read about theTitanic. Kagiy would probably love the story. “I need you to show me where I can find supplies, weapons, anything of that nature.”
“Space suits!” Ter shouted. “If the ship loses atmosphere, your lungs will rupture and you will die in minutes. Even if you are smart enough to breathe out to prevent the pressure differential from killing you, oxygen breathing species all have membranes for oxygen transfer that will hemorrhage the vital gas when exposed to vacuum. That generally leads to death within seconds as your membranes fail, so if you go in search of supplies, search for a space suit first. You will be of no help lying in the corridor writhing in pain as you die with bodily fluids leaking from every orifice.”
The Kowri boy stared at Ter in mute horror.
