It was fine. The Humility was just a piece of junk. A hunk of metal well past its lifespan. It didn’t matter at all. The only thing that mattered was the crew. They knew about the explosives. They would have gone into the shelter room. The captain would have made sure they were all inside. That’s where they were. Safe and alive and-
“Life form scan complete,” the male from the other side of the room called out with a hard finality. “No life readings detected.”
“Do it again,” Kldyn giggled, waving his hand as he looked at Vytln. Drinking in the sight he made down on the ground, broken and stunned. “Make sure you do a really good job. Be thorough.”
Vytln couldn’t look away from the wreckage. From the shattered remains of their ship.
“No life readings,” the other male said again. “No electrical activity. They’re dead.”
Gone…
It was all gone.
His whole life. His crew.
His mate.
His youngling.
The broken sound that escaped Vytln’s mouth wasn’t intelligible. It wasn’t a word. It was a formless cry of agony. Ofdespair. It wracked through his body as a gaping maw of horror opened under him.
Everything. His everything…
No. It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t true.
Even as he had that thought, something thudded, hard, against the glass. His gaze honed in on the twisted, melted hunk of metal. To the unfamiliar, it could have been another piece of debris from the wreckage, but it wasn’t. That was what it was supposed to look like.
His trap. Haven’s nest. Their home. Bouncing off the glass walls of Kdlyn’s viewing deck. The metal body completely intact but fully exposed to the void.
Vytln coudn’t breathe. The sight of it, more than the ship’s destruction, struck him. Because it shouldn’t be there. That was his Haven’s place of safety. Her place of security. His trap, once again violated by his brother’s interference.
He was only vaguely, distantly aware of Kldyn crouching down beside him.
“I can see this is really affecting you,” he said, the mocking condolence of his tone like needles stabbing into Vytln’s ear. “I can’t imagine how much it must hurt to lose everything you have not just once but twice. You must want to be alone in this tragic time. I’ll leave you to your grief.”
Kldyn couldn’t stop himself from laughing as he stood and began walking away. The hammer he tossed carelessly aside landed with a hard clatter. Both sounds echoed together in the empty room, long after he had left. The viewing window remained open, giving him an unobstructed view of the shattered remains of his life, drifting meaninglessly out in space.
And his trap, empty and hollow, spinning slowly in place.
Chapter 44
Haven
Oh, this ship wasnice. Very nice. Clean and spacious and extremely easy to navigate. Probably because the species that built it was so big compared to her, but all the little crevices she was used to wiggling through seemed so open around here.
Compared to the Humility, Kldyn’s ship was luxurious, bright, open, and organized. No patchwork metal walls. No chaotic tangle of wires. No rusted corners. The outside was so smooth and sleek, she almost didn’t even find her way in.
Getting here hadn’t been the hard part. They knew Kldyn would need a moment after dropping out of subspace to put space between them. Not much time, but just enough to do what they needed.
The second they dropped out, Alred opened the door into main storage. Haven, in her envirosuit, ran through, grabbed the metal cutter that was exactly where he told her it would be, then launched herself into the void. She had just barely grabbed the trailing end of the boarding tunnel they detached from their ship.
But she caught it, and it pulled her away from the ship. It even helped bring her along as they pulled the tunnel back in.
The tunnel folded back into the ship, but only into a small compartment. Not a place she could climb into or that would give her access.
However, the fancy envirosuit she had insisted to Vytln she didn’t need had magboots. Boots that very helpfully let her run along the outside of their ship. She knew most ship types after living and learning in Hir-Fallow and there was always a certain Standardization to the designs. It was necessary so that all doors could connect regardless of where a ship was from.
Including to do things like empty the trash chute.
