Chapter Thirteen

A hand clamped over her mouth.

Edie slid.

An arm circled her ribs and scraped her backward along the edge of the precipice. A belated shower of internal sparks whispered V’kyrri.

“More bugs,” he said into her head. “And miners.”

Edie sagged. They couldn’t catch a break.

The spill of light from the light bar V’kyrri carried illuminated the slope they’d come down and the hole that had nearly consumed her.

V’kyrri hauled her upright, and took her hand, but said nothing. Unfamiliar data trickled into her head, tracing her nerves, setting them alight, and then settled into an uncomfortable itch behind her ears. Edie flinched.

“What is that?” Her head spun. Nausea clawed her esophagus.

He set her down on what looked like another trail.

She swayed. If this was what he called hearing, her brain had no means of translating it.

He jumped to the ground beside her and yanked her off the other side of the path into the deep shadow beneath a massive structure. The stone folded and draped like petrified cloth. He drew her behind one of the folds and shut off the light.

“Listen,” he commanded.

The cascade of meaningless information scraping her nerves redoubled. Edie jerked out of his grasp. Peace. Emptiness. The intolerable, unfathomable itch behind her ears quieted. Edie breathed a sigh of relief and caught a glimpse of bobbing, swaying light. At least one set of incoming.

V’kyrri took her arm. “What’s wr—”

Pins stabbed through her skull. She scuttled away and held up a hand to forestall him when he reached for her again.

“No.”

He pulled her close and cupped a palm over her lips, his own pursed to shush.

Wishing she could dismiss the flare of heat in her blood as easily, she batted his hand away.

He grabbed her wrist. Things crawling her nerves and stinging above and behind her ears came back. “What is wrong with you?”

She sucked in a breath between clenched teeth and flinched out of his grip. She gave him the crooked finger sign for pain. His frown deepened. Of course he couldn’t know what it meant. Who’d have taught it to him?

“Hurts,” she whispered.

He reared back, eyebrows high. Scowling, he set fingers to her skin once more. Edie shivered. Good-shivered. Except for him being Claugh.

“Don’t try to talk. Think at me. I’ll catch it.”

She pressed fingertips into her skull above and behind her ears. It did nothing to assuage the discomfort crawling like bugs inside her skull.

“I don’t understand. Stop,” she begged. “Make it stop.”

Silence.

Edie sagged.

V’kyrri caught her.

“Is this painful?” V’kyrri whispered into her head as he craned his neck to survey the approaching light.

Edie shook her head.

“But this is?”

Nerves fired the itch inside her head to life. Edie stiffened. Gasped, “Yes.”

It died.

“I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. I can’t hear for you.”

“Fine.” She’d cope. Anything was better than feeling like her head had been turned into a star drive overflow valve. Overflow valves were tough. Had to be. They vented radiation overboard in an emergency. But she’d never seen one that had survived being used. At the moment, her head felt pretty pocked full of dings and holes.

She shook off the impression and focused on reaching V’kyrri via his instruction to think at him. “Miners and bugs. Run or fight?”

He wiped his expression clear as if he’d been chiseled from Isarrite. The light in his eyes hardened. He smiled.

Her blood ran cold.

“I want this base turned into a pile of smoldering rubble.” V’kyrri drew his weapon and brushed past. “My ship, my crew, my show.”

By all means. Edie breathed anticipation into her bloodstream. Marvelous anodyne for the withdrawal headache stretching the bones of her skull.

A dozen UMOPG soldiers, silent, and bristling with weapons, rounded a stone formation that looked like a waterfall turned to stone.

V’kyrri picked his way through a dried-up ripple dam bed, looking for a better sighting picture on his approaching slice of revenge. He welcomed the burn of his body’s own stimulants. Adrenaline heightened his senses, sharpening his vision and steadying his hand.

Edie took cover behind the shattered teeth of stalagmites.

The miners rounded into view.

V’kyrri brought his pistol up, supported by both hands. Braced against a broken off stalagmite, he pulled the trigger, hard.

Soldiers shouted and fell. At least two of them had the discipline to return fire that struck and melted stone before V’kyrri burned them down.

Silence, except for the drumming of his pulse in his ears.

Edie set two fingers against the back of his hand. A palpable tremor moved through her.

His pulse changed tempo in response. Sensual anticipation proved as good as a stim shot. He shifted to loosen the tight seams of his trousers. Side-effects nearly as uncomfortable.

“Who the Three Hells taught you to shoot?” She flung a gesture at the scene, then turned a look at him that sped his blood. Admiration lit her face. “Not a single melt mark on the rocks. Are you sure you want to go back to a life of rules and regulations? Think of the credits we could make with your aim and my bang.”

“Oh, I’m going to want to hear more about that,” he whispered, making certain he faced her, and that she was looking at him.

Her grin lit his system.

Chekydran hum sobered him. Even the stone beneath his feet resonated with the damnable, unending vibration.

Edie winced.

V’kyrri held his breath, listened, and scanned the darkness beyond what the light bar cast. The distant thunder of rock cascading over rock caught his attention. It moved. Came closer.

Beside him, Edie’s breath rasped. “They’re coming.”

He frowned. His brain rearranged noise.

Chekydran. Not rocks falling. He was hearing countless chitin legs on stone.

Adrenalin thumped his heart to a gallop. V’kyrri spun.

Edie grabbed his wrist.

The first glimmer of weird indigo fluorescence poured into the cavern above them.

V’kyrri and Edie ran.

Chekydran swarmed after them. Hum, and the weird, scratch and clatter of insect legs on rock reverberated off the walls.

A rock turned beneath his boot. His ankle twisted. Biting off a cry of pain, he wrenched sideways.

Chekydran spilled into the path behind them.

“Baxt’kal hells,” Edie barked and pulled him into a jumble of shattered rock.

Limping in her wake, he bent double to keep stone between him and the bugs firing at them.

Gun fire and screams, Autken and Chekydran both, echoed from the deep dark before them. V’k reached for Edie.

She set her fingers against her bare temple, wavered, and stepped in a hole. Edie vanished without a sound.

V’kyrri gasped and dove to catch her. Her grip on his wrist twisted away, leaving friction burn on his skin.

Heart clamoring against his ribs, he stared into the opening in the floor.

“Jump!” she ordered.

He rolled headfirst into the pit. A tentacle wrapped around his injured ankle. Pain stabbed his leg. He wheezed.

Like a goddess materializing in the depths of the lowest Hell, Edie’s upturned face swam out of the gloom. She stared past him, eyes narrowed, and lips twisted.

She lifted a tiny gun. Fired.

Nothing happened.

Suspended head down in the gloom, V’kyrri kicked at the tentacle.

A flash. A noise like a child’s balloon popping.

He fell and hit water. Surprise sucked it straight into his lungs. He floundered. Something caught him by the scruff of the neck and heaved. He broke the surface, choking.

His knees touched bottom. V’k crawled slippery rock out of the water and collapsed to his side, coughing.

Edie moved into his line of sight and shot a leery glance at the ceiling. “We gotta go.”

“Stim,” he croaked, praying she could read the words. “Hip pocket.”

Lips pressed to vanishing, she shook her head, then seemed to catch herself. Her expression didn’t change. She knelt close. Her body heat entwined with his. She set one hand to his shoulder, giving him access to the tremor rattling her and shoved her hand in his pocket.

Edie gave him the dose.

His blood turned to fire. Gasping for breath, he curled into a fetal position while the approaching pressure of Chekydran hum lashed him. He forced his hands and knees under him.

Edie left off casting surreptitious glances at her handheld screen. She shook her head, hooked an arm through his, and levered him upright. Their run deteriorated to a shuffle.

He glanced over his shoulder.

A writhing mass of glowing indigo monsters swarmed the dark at the far end of the cave.

In the miserable heat, cold gripped his chest. They couldn’t outrun the bugs. Edie. He shoved what he’d seen into her brain.

She snarled.

His own lips curled in response. Fear exploded to rage within her. Images flickered through his head. Edie, flashing through options and scenarios. Coming up empty.

Light rushed up from behind his right shoulder. It exploded against an exquisite chunk of white stone hanging in folds beside him. The light seared an image into his head. A fissure. He lurched off the path for it.

Edie pressed close. Another shot struck rock above them, sizzling.

V’kyrri shoved Edie into the break between stones. She shucked her pack. It splashed when it hit the ground. She turned sideways and sidled deeper, dragging her pack. He followed, his boots sliding in the thin trickle of water tracing the stone.

V’kyrri lost the individual thumps of his pulse to the erratic crackle of pain pounding through his chest. Air weighed heavy.

On his fifth hurried step, the floor shattered beneath their feet. He fell.

“Oof.” He hit a smooth surface and slid. He clawed for purchase. Found none.

CRUNCH.

Edie groaned.

V’kyrri landed on a bed of thorny stones. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to not breathe. He forced himself to move, to put aside cataloging new cuts and bruises. He had to find Edie.

Distant thunder rumbled into the chamber. He had no means of identifying the source. It went on and on.

He frowned and set aside trying to make sense of it. He tapped the light bar.

Nothing.

The fall had killed it. With shaking hands, he fumbled for his pistol. With a minor adjustment, the energy chamber could be repurposed as a wan, blueish emergency light. Dangerous. The weapon couldn’t be fired without being switched back, and they had a swarm of enraged Chekydran hunting them.

A tiny flush of light from his gun. The weak glow grew, flashing, reflected from shining crystal facets gathering and amplifying the light until he squinted, dazzled by the shifting play. He gasped.

They’d fallen into a massive crystal deposit. Translucent crystal bristled, glittering. Mammoth specimens as thick as his personal command shuttle crisscrossed the chamber. A thin fall of water tumbled from the hole they’d fallen through.

It heightened sweltering heat by introducing humidity into the equation, but at least they had water.

V’kyrri spun, looking for Edie.

She stood, staring up the broad slide of the crystal between them. V’kyrri detected fresh blood tracking the side of her face. Edie shivered and wavered on her feet, her face gray, and her lips blue-white in the ghost light.

SEM withdrawal.

Parqe had been right, after all.

“V’kyrri.” The tremor in her over-loud voice jerked him to attention. He followed the line of her gaze. Shards of dark stone pattered from the ceiling. His breath caught on a glimmer of indigo.

Chekydran. The source of the sound rolling through the caves. Chekydran tentacles flailing the stone. Chipping it away. Carving a new, Chekydran-shaped tunnel.

“They’re breaking through,” she said.

He slumped against crystal. His pistol-turned-flashlight came into contact. With a sound like a forest of string instruments all striking a single note, light exploded into the cavern.

V’kyrri reeled and stumbled, eyes shut tight. His hands slipped free of the crystal. Darkness settled. He cracked an eyelid, then blinked his eyes open on deep dark marred by round after-images of his seared retinas.

The pounding of Chekydran tentacles on rock had stopped.

“Three Hells,” Edie croaked.

Thud. Chekydran attempts to reach them resumed.

He blinked his eyesight clear. Light flickered in the matrix of the crystal in front of him. His brain buzzed. It hurt. More distinct noises of tentacles on stone overhead. Chips of rock cascaded down.

He gritted his teeth.

“Light the place up again,” Edie said, “so we can look for a way out of here.”

In the spirit of experimentation and hope that he wouldn’t blind them, he touched the supposed-to-be-sealed energy chamber of his gun against a smaller crystal.

Light suffused the crystal and bloomed down the base and across the matrix to spill around the chamber, setting the walls, floor, and ceiling aglow. Where the crystal bed had fractured or broken, the spread of light stopped.

“Wild,” she said and spun, presumably searching for an exit. “Energy amplification.”

“Usual thing for crystal,” he said. Not that she’d hear him or read what he’d said. Not while she was busy looking for an escape route and unable to see him. He scanned his side of the cave. Gleaming crystalline structures glinted.

“No good,” he said. “Cravuul dung. We have to get you a heads-up display at the very least.”

“Why?” She’d faced him and stalked closer to the center broad slab. “To assuage your discomfort over being stuck with a deaf SEM addict?”

“You’re Firestorm,” he snapped. “If we want to rank discomforts, that, combined with the color of my uniform, goes right to the top of the list.”

To his surprise, she grinned.

A bigger chunk of rock fell between them. Edie ducked, smile dying.

“No exit,” she said. “You?”

“No exit.”

She paled and clambered across the massive crystal dividing the chamber. She cased his side of the cave.

“Baxt’kal Hells,” she breathed.

More rock bounced down.

Edie plopped her backpack at his feet, crouched, and began digging in it.

“Edie.”

He scowled and crouched, careful to keep his gun in contact with crystal. With his free hand, he gripped her wrist.

“Edie. Energy amplification. You said it yourself. We can’t risk explosives in here.”

“Dead is better than captured by Chekydran,” she replied, voice wavering.

He shot a glance at the ceiling. The hole was visible now, both because of the light in the chamber and because of the glowing Chekydran steadily carving out access. “Capture isn’t in the cards.”

She froze, gaze searching his face. Pulling out of his grasp, she rocketed to her feet. He opted for contact with her booted foot.

“There has to be a way out of here,” he said.

“Through them,” she said, jerking her head to indicate the bugs. “You’re using up the only weapons charge left between us.”

A tentacle unfurled from above. It slammed into her, knocking her off her feet.

V’kyrri growled and instinctively jerked his gun up, trigger pressed. Light died in the room and the gun, notably, did not fire. He slammed it back to the crystal which blossomed back to life.

Edie yelped.

The tentacle grabbed her ankle and jerked her airborne. Her pack slid. Things—he could only assume explosive things—rained from her tool belt.

Another tentacle whipped around her throat.

A dam burst within him. Rage. Grief. A clawing, biting, wild impulse to rend and tear exploded through him. Two bugs jockeyed for position in the opening they’d beaten out of the stone. They held Edie between them. Her eyes bulged. Her lips were tinged blue. Her mouth was open on a shriek he couldn’t hear above the roar inside his head.

Snarling, he released the useless pistol, clenched his fists, and reached for his most familiar, innate weapon. He advanced two steps and bumped against the massive crystal slide.

Water dribbled down his face. He ignored it.

It had been years, decades, since he’d turned his ability to harm. Memory lingered, though, as did the know-how. He flung out a trembling tendril of awareness, speared in through an eye stalk of the first monster. Then it was a matter of feeding a bubble of power into the creature’s brain stem before detonating it.

One brutal click, and it would be permanent lights out.

But he couldn’t muster the mental steam. Power flickered and dribbled like the water falling from above.

V’kyrri’s knuckles brushed crystal. Agony and power burst into him. Maybe burst his skin. Heat consumed him. Light, too, as if he’d become the path a bolt of lightning took. Lightning he turned straight at the pair of Chekydran strangling Edie.

More of the monsters crowded in behind the two he could see. Lit up the way he was, he felt them, the endless roil and scrabble of ravening Chekydran touching the matrix of the planet, as if the world was tuned to them. Their hatred and rage beat at him.

Mutual.

He jabbed every ounce of frustrated vengeance at the aliens killing Edie.

Let. Her. Go.

They screamed.

V’kyrri welcomed their pain, became it, and, finally, lost himself to it.