My eyes stung with tears, but fury that echoed that pained scream rode me hard. “I hate you,” I snarled at the entity clinging black and menacing to a good deal of the shuttle’s interior. It had rushed me as I’d raced to pre-program the shuttle’s course and then lock out the systems, throwing itself into the shuttle behind me and blocking my exit. It was so fast, it had to have been waiting nearby, listening in on what Thatcher and I said, hiding behind a nearby wall panel. If I didn’t finish locking it out, this plan wouldn’t work at all. So I’d stayed.
The entity had already begun rapidly trying to take control of the shuttle, so I’d had no choice but to launch it. Get it away from theVarakartoomand hope all of it had boarded. “You’re not going to get away with anything,” I said. My hands found the right set of cables beneath the piloting console and yanked. “Now you’re trapped.”
Blood trickled from my ear into my hair, but I ignored the pain and the sticky sensation to focus on Thatcher. I’d managed to mute his scream of pain after that first burst caught me by surprise. Now I discovered there was only rapid, frantic breathing on the other side—rough, pain-filled, and panicked. “I’m not giving up, Thatcher,” I whispered to him. “I love you, and I’m not giving up. I’m coming back.” I barely believed that myself, but I clung to the faintest glimmer of hope anyway. Save the ship, save Thatcher, save myself.
The entity spread across the wall, appearing to ignore me as I spun to keep it in view. It was spreading, but it was not giving up its control of the hatch, like it knew keeping me trapped was its best way to survive. It hooked itself into the console, and I watched as it began taking control. Too bad it couldn’t control what was broken, and I’d made damn sure I’d ripped out everything it would need to alter the course. No engine control, no thrusters, it could do nothing.
“Ysa, turn that ship around, right now.” Thatcher’s voice was so broken in my ear that I trembled. I was like Grunn now, with half my hearing gone, but that was still enough to hear his pain. I shook my head and bit down hard on my lower lip to hold back a sob. I refused to let him hear how scared I was, and how much Ifeared losing him.
“You’re going to fire, Thatcher. You have to fire.” I said it as much for myself as for him, but I didn’t think he’d do it. “I can slip out…” My back hit the shuttle’s wall, and my stomach swooped with fear when the entity swept a tendril of black through the air that nearly struck the faceplate of my closed helmet. My hands scrambled and found the ace up my sleeve I’d decided to take with me at the last moment. I’d have to use it, and using one was far different from repairing one.
Thatcher roared another denial, but this one was not nearly so loud as the first. Perhaps simply because my hearing had already been damaged; nothing Dravion couldn’t fix, I hoped. It was not Thatcher who responded, but the entity. I’d been wrong to think there was nothing it wanted to control left functioning on the shuttle. It had tapped into the communication system somehow, and in a synthesized voice said, “Your mate will not fire. His programming leaves him unable to harm you. Repair the flight controls. I will let you live if you land this vessel on Home.”
My skin crawled listening to the emotionless, synthetic tones the entity had created to speak to me. Let me live? I knew that for the lie it was. Perhaps it would let my body survive, but the moment I’d done what it wanted, it was going to try to control me the same as it had the Shadow Unit soldier. Unless I got off the shuttle, I was doomed, but I wasn’t going to doom theVarakartoomwith me.
“Thatcher, now,” I breathed. “You don’t need to blow it up, just take out the engines. Trust me. I love you. I believe in you.” I did not ask him to promise the impossible, that he’d go on without me if I didn’t make it, or that he’d stophimself from spiraling into self-destruction. What I did ask of him was already impossible enough.
“I love you, Ysa,” he responded after a pause that tingled with expectation, like the entity was waiting with bated breath to see what he’d do, just like I was. Not that it needed air, but the air was definitely heavy with expectation. Thatcher’s voice was a husky, raw whisper that barely penetrated my bloody ears, but I heard it anyway. Heard it, felt it sink deep into my bones.
The blast rocked the little shuttle, threw me off my feet, and nearly straight into the black embrace of the entity. My heart thundered, my head spun, but adrenaline surged. He’d done it. “Blasting my way out, I’m coming,” I said. Rolling, I brought up the heavy laser cannon that had weighed me down. It was too big for me to carry any other way than strapped to my back. Firing was impossible while I held it, but sprawled across the shuttle’s floor, that did not hold me back.
There was a screech and then an explosion of light. My hearing went completely numb, the cannon blasting a hole in the side of the shuttle, cutting through blast-resistant metal like it was butter.
Chapter 26
Thatcher
I stared in horror at the way the screen in front of me lit up with the explosion. I’d caused that. I’d fired at the shuttle that had mymateaboard it, the woman I loved, the woman I would die for. We should have traded places; it should have been me, blown to bits in the wreckage of that tiny vessel. The roar of pain that burst out of me was louder than the first, louder than the second, too. It tore through my throat until I tasted blood.
Yanking the visor I’d used to aid in targeting from my face, I slammed my fist through the screen before rolling out of the seat and hitting the hallway at a dead run. She was out there, alive or not, I didn’t know, but I’d retrieve her either way. The last she’d said was that she loved me, that she believed in me. I’d fired on those engines because that’s whatshe wanted, and I’d known it was a mistake even as I squeezed the trigger. I’d killed her. How could I consider myself her protector when I was the one who’d taken her last breath?
The hangar bay doors were locked tight. Even with all the extra strength at my fingertips, I could not budge them. I whirled, frantic with fear, and aimed myself toward the nearest airlock. I’d throw myself out of one and search for Ysa with just the boosters in my damn boots if need be. It was better I perished out in the cold of space if she was lost to me anyway, better for everyone.
I reached the airlock before I realized there hadn’t been any bulkheads in my way. When I tried to open the first door, an alarm went off, loud and strident. I didn’t care if I’d caused it, but I focused on getting through that door. She was out there, floating in space—lost, hurt, running out of air. Or worse, already dead or bleeding out. There was nothing that was going to stop me from reaching her. Nothing.
With a growl, I engaged every bionic joint and forced all of my nanobots to flood my muscles with strength. There was a rushing in my ears that matched the tidal wave of fear crashing in my chest. Pain exploded across my ribs, crushing the air out of my lungs. I thought it was just more pain from losing Ysa, but when my head collided with the deck, I discovered a white, snarling maw above my face. Glacial blue eyes pierced me like ice, and the growl he let out rattled through my chest.
Flack had tackled me in his hybrid-form, a massive, fox-like monster on two legs. He crushed me into the deck and prevented me from reaching the airlock.I clawed, metal pushing through my skin and reaching deep into his fur. “Let me go!” I snarled at the howling beast. “I have to get to her. I have to get her!” I kept shouting that, bucking and fighting, but Flack would not let up, even when his blood spilled hot down my wrists, soaking his flanks.
A moment later, it was the Sineater that ended my struggles. He came bolting through the hallway so fast I felt his approach vibrate through the deck. He hauled Flack off me and piled on, not like a human, not in any shape I could fight. Sleek black liquid, hard as metal, coated me, pressing me down into the deck, restraining me until all I could do was rage and breathe and feel the terrible pain of knowing I’d lost the only person who truly mattered to me.
“Shut up!” the Sineater demanded, leaning down to snarl it in my face with eyes like pools of darkness. Darkness as black as space, as black as the entity. All I could do was think of Ysa, trapped in that darkness, killed by it. Killed by me when I pulled the damn trigger. It was beyond me to obey that command the Sineater—and Flack before him—had given. My body, my mind, locked back into the familiar rage that the pain of the past had created. It drowned me.
“TheVagabondapproaches. They’ll find her,” Flack panted through the pain of his bloody wounds. “Listen to me, Thatcher. They’ll find her!” Find her… they’d be too late.
***
Ysathea
My comm had broken. It must have happened when I was tossed against the shuttle’s floor afterthe engines blew up. Thatcher had never heard me say that I was getting out, and he couldn’t hear me when I tried to tell him I’d made it, either. It had been a close call, a very close call, but Ihadmade it out of the shuttle. My lungs still struggled to draw air, my ribs bruised, and my back aching.
The laser cannon still hung from a strap around my body, but it floated weightlessly just in front of me. My arms trembled from the force of the blowback and the frantic scramble through the hole I’d created. It was really a miracle that the cannon had come with me and nothing else. My pulse still raced as I searched around me to confirm it.
In space, everything looked different, confusing. My body did not know what was up or what was down, and the three suns that lit this solar system seemed massive and too small at the same time. The shuttle was speeding away, rapidly vanishing against the blinding light of the purple one of the three stars. Iknewthe entity could not change its heading, especially with the engines broken beyond repair. All that ship would do was hurtle on in the same direction, at the same speed it already had. At some point, the gravity of that small sun would grab it, and then it was all over.
My helmet’s visor had tinted itself dark to protect my eyes and skin from the radiation. It also made it much harder to see if anything was approaching, and I screamed when something thumped into my leg. Debris from the engine exploding. My head spun as I tried to get a look, and I saw the shape of the Varkartoom in the far distance. Barely visible, she was black against black, with a tiny, dreary waterworld below her. I’d saved that ship—though I couldn’t be certain until after I’d scanned and maderepairs—but I was beginning to think she’d been rescued. Now… if someone could just rescue me…
My breath hiccuped, my heart still pounding. I had to slow this down, had to get myself into a calmer state, or I’d run out of air way too quickly. I’d managed to escape the shuttle unhurt, and I would hate to then die by running out of air because nobody could find me. With a broken comm, itwaskind of hard to tell anyone where I was. Each suit came equipped with a tracker, though; I had to hope that still worked.
