Chapter Fourteen

Edie groaned. Every part of her ached. Her throat. Her body where she lay against pointy crystal. Her head. All Twelve Gods, her head. She was in the middle of a thunderstorm named V’kyrri. Full-body percussion rattled her creaking skeleton the way spring storms had rattled her childhood home. She’d been afraid of them and of the pressure that had always felt like it might crack her bones.

This one threatened to explode her skull. She shifted, opened bleary eyes, and squeaked.

Blazing light rippled in waves through the crystal room. It threw knife-edged shadows and illuminated a pair of Chekydran reaching from a hole in the ceiling. Light and power pierced her brain. Her eyes watered.

The bugs slumped.

Adrenaline all but levitated Edie upright, and she scrambled out of the way. The Chekydran fell, first one, then the other—an obscene cascade of awful. Yellowish fluid sprayed in all directions. Hot spatters hit her skin. Edie flinched and threw her forearm in front of her face too late to shield her from bug blood, but the move offered her a glimpse of V’kyrri.

He stood rigid, one hand planted on the big crystal slicing through the room.

Weird, visible energy pulsated from him in waves that rang against her skull and breastbone. The massive crystal gleamed like a cold sun, engulfing him in the glare.

Motion at the hole in the ceiling caught her eye. She gasped and recoiled.

Another Chekydran swung grasping tentacles at V’kyrri. The tips curled and quivered. The bug writhed and strained as if reaching for the Claugh captain. Pleading. Begging, maybe.

It, too, slumped and fell.

Edie trembled at the raw power pulsing from V’kyrri.

Bloody shadows streamed off his face, his arms, his legs, and his torso, as if the light pounding in the crystals were blasting bits of him away. He twitched.

Her headache built. Nausea pressed the back of her throat. She staggered, desperate to haul him to safety. There wasn’t any to be had.

Not to mention that with the telepath radiating menace and pain, she couldn’t bear to get within a meter of him.

He swayed, pulsing rage, fear, and cutting hatred. It hacked at her bones. Edie clutched her aching head.

As far as she could tell, he was slicing the Chekydran to ribbons with his thoughts. A pair of Chekydran swarmed through the hole in the ceiling, rushing to attack.

Edie dove for the gun V’kyrri had abandoned. Crystal cut into her skin as her fingers closed on the weapon. She pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Despair clogged her throat. Breathing hard, smearing moisture from her face with an impatient swipe of her sleeve, Edie flung the gun into one bug’s eye stalks.

It reared back, tentacles swiping its eyes.

“V’kyrri. What’s it going to take to get you to stop crushing my skull?” she yelled.

He blanched. The flow of blinding light beating around the room eased but didn’t die. “Edie?” His knees gave. V’kyrri crawled to her side. “We aren’t going to make this.”

He didn’t need to touch her to be heard. Edie swallowed hard. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

He dialed up power. His eyes clouded over, the pupils expanding.

Edie shuddered.

The Chekydran, two in the chamber with them, and the ones pressing into the hole in the ceiling all froze. One by one, they collapsed.

Edie wrapped her arms around her throbbing head and swallowed hard. Beside her, V’kyrri jerked and gasped.

Light and color in the chamber winked to black.

“V’kyrri?” Edie shrilled. Quaking with adrenaline, she sat up, but couldn’t see a godsdamned thing.

“S’okay. I’m okay.” Faint words inside her skull.

Sea green glimmers, as if the room had found V’kyrri’s eye color as attractive as she did, ran through the crystals, shedding enough light to see. She cast a glance at the ceiling.

No bugs. No living ones, anyway.

V’kyrri planted a shaking hand on her ankle. The knuckles paled. “Something’s happened.”

Besides finding out he could murder with his mind?

“The Chekydran are scared. They’re running away.”

Edie climbed to her feet a centimeter at a time. She gathered resolve along with her scattered gear. “Then we have a hole. Time to get out of this death trap.”

She glanced at him. Shadows like dark bruises beneath V’kyrri’s eyes rocked her. Apprehension snagged in her ribs. She couldn’t draw a full breath. “Are you okay?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. The laugh he uttered twisted his expression in a way that made her glad she couldn’t hear him. He didn’t answer, just levered himself upright to stand swaying for several long seconds while he watched her pluck up belongings and hook them into her belt. Her morale recovered with every familiar piece she put in place.

She abandoned several explosives and tools trapped beneath the dead bugs. At least she still had her pack. For all the good it would do. Grinding resignation between her teeth along with gritty rock flour, Edie flung her Skeppanda line tied to a hook. It caught in the body of a dead Chekydran.

“Can you climb?” she demanded of the Claugh telepath.

“I’ll climb,” he replied. “Go. I’ve got your back.”

She distinctly recalled lobbing his useless gun at a bug. He had her back without a weapon of any kind. Her gaze caught on broken, dead Chekydran bodies. Right.

Her dreams would be so pleasant if she ever got to sleep again.

Edie tried to moisten cracked lips with a dust-dry tongue. Grabbing her line, she climbed slick crystal with green light flaring beneath her every step. She scaled the bug corpse and turned back.

V’kyrri climbed. Light and shadow swarmed up the crystal room in his wake, as if begging him not to go. Whether he was infected by the odd pleading impression filling Edie’s chest with the mad impulse to jump back into the chamber, or whether it was injury and exhaustion, V’kyrri’s climb took longer. She finally hauled him free.

They hobbled into the pool chamber.

Edie spent precious seconds filling water containers and treating the contents. Then they climbed a wending path toward the main base corridors. She kept scanning the empty air, searching for data that would tell her where the UMOPG and Chekydran were.

The ground beneath her feet rolled.

Edie sprawled to the rock. Debris pelted her. She covered her head with her arms and curled into a tight, quaking ball. She couldn’t get her breath. Couldn’t separate memory from the present. Terror shrilled, cold and sharp into her body, crushing her.

“Edie. Open your eyes. Look at me.” V’kyrri had hold of her.

Gasping, she obeyed. She wasn’t buried. Could see light, in fact, bright, burning daylight. Perspiration popped on her forehead. Frowning, she struggled upright. Confusion flushed her system. “Daylight.”

He pointed.

Someone had blown a hole in the rock fifteen meters above them.

Edie gasped. “A way out.”

“The base is gutted. You took down a third of their ships. The Chekydran are busy slaughtering miners while running for their lives.”

“What the hell makes Chekydran run in fear?”

“Don’t know. Don’t want to find out.”

Amen.

“If the Chekydran left any of the UMOPG alive, the miners will be bailing in the ships that do remain,” she said between gulps for breath. “If they’re smart.”

“No ship for us to steal?”

“No. We’re stuck making the run to my boat.”

“In daylight.”

“Yeah. Here.” She dug into the dwindling contents inside her pack and handed him a package. “Open that?”

Edie extracted her Skeppanda silk line.

“What is this?” V’kyrri asked when she glanced at him. He hefted an open box containing a little flier and remote control in his hands.

“Our way out,” she answered, taking them. “You’d be surprised how much can be accomplished with a child’s toy when you pull the battery pack and replace it with a miniature fusion core.”

He rubbed his palms down the seams of his pants.

She grinned and secured an anchor system to her line. “Want to do a wire job on the anti-gravs from your ship?”

“Got another power supply?” he countered, pulling a pair of the units from his belt.

“Last one.” She handed him the spare mini reactor core she kept for emergencies. To her mind, a base full of Chekydran running scared and fighting miners for control of deadly weapons counted as an emergency.

V’kyrri pulled tools from her belt, lighting off her system with every innocent brush of his hand.

She attached her line to the flier and, using her handheld, sent the tiny toy to the surface. “This’ll be a gamble.”

“That the Chekydran and UMOPG are too busy to pay attention to us?”

“Exactly.” Using the flier’s sensors, she found a boulder on the surface and fired an anchor into the stone as V’kyrri finished powering up the anti-gravs.

“Fix them to my harness,” she said.

“Good. That’ll put us well inside the field.”

“Let’s go before we find out what scares Chekydran.”

He grabbed her pack.

She stepped into the main part of the harness and held his open. Hand on her shoulder for balance, he stepped in. They straightened and Edie pulled the harness into position. A perfectly innocent excuse for her hands on his backside. Taut muscles twitched.

She clipped the anti-grav to the line. “Going up.” She switched them on.

Their feet left the floor. Their bodies came together, supporting one another as they hung in the harness. He set a hand to the ascender and looked at her. Looked hard, willing her to meet his eyes, to process and accept what she’d begun to believe she’d find there.

Edie couldn’t. She shivered. Want and anticipation coated her insides. Totally rational while waiting to get shot down.

She turned on the ascender and left her stomach behind.

V’kyrri craned his neck, a grin on his face.

They made it out of the caves in seconds, then rose past a thin layer of bedrock. Heat rose with them.

Squinting in the over-bright sunlight, she stopped shy of her anchor and let V’kyrri climb out of the harness. Edie grabbed V’kyrri’s hand to haul herself up. She retrieved her gear.

Surveying the sweltering landscape for new threats, V’kyrri stuck a hand in his pocket and fingered his last stim dose. Rise to one side. Hole in the rock to the other. Nothing but battered stone casting knife-edged shadow as far as he could see. He triggered the stim dose.

Crushing pain took his breath. His knees buckled. The distinctive shriek of a ship launching gave him adequate excuse to pretend he’d been taking cover rather than falling. He shifted into the dubious cover of the rocks.

Edie seemed to register the vibrational shift and dove to join him.

Two bulbous shuttles crested the slash in a hangar roof.

One slowed. The other angled for the blue-sky boundary. It climbed, abandoning its partner which dipped, spun, and fired at them. Plasma blew rock and soil into the thin air, working steadily closer.

V’kyrri bolted to his feet, pulling Edie with him.

They ran into the sunlight. Scorching heat slammed him. He couldn’t get his breath. Every sip of air burned.

The Chekydran ship dogged them, not firing. It drove them, shooting when they approached the least bit of shade, playing hiztap and tezwoul. Laughing, if the bugs laughed, while he and Edie baked alive.

Edie broke free and squinting, spun to face the ship.

V’kyrri stumbled.

She rocked back and forth in her quest for oxygen. Every trace of moisture had evaporated from her skin. Bad. Wasn’t it? Not being able to sweat anymore.

She threw her pack to the ground and withdrew the tiny pistol she’d used in the caves.

The Chekydran ship hovered, sliding back and forth in the sky. A grinning bully dancing in glee at having cornered its prey. The forward atmospheric gun glowed hot. Ready to destroy them.

V’k straightened.

Fine. Killed by Chekydran was better than captured by Chekydran.

Edie sighted, feet planted wide, one hand supporting the other.

V’kyrri snorted. His fire-haired goddess, spitting in the face of death.

She fired.

A tiny projectile arced out of the weapon. No way could it hit. A laser rifle might have. Her little gun shooting antique physical bullets didn’t stand a chance.

The projectile reached the apex of its arc, far short of the shuttle.

V’kyrri grabbed her arm.

Edie tossed a vicious grin over her shoulder.

He froze.

The projectile sprouted wings and launched at the Chekydran ship.

Edie cackled.

“What the Three Hells is that?” he breathed.

The shuttle darted sideways and fired.

He yanked Edie out of the way. They tumbled to the dirt and into the shade of an overhang. Clasping Edie to his chest, he rolled her to protect her for a split second with his own body.

The Chekydrans’ shots never came.

Edie lifted her head, hand braced against his chest, lighting his nerves with an avid smile, anticipation in her wide, brown eyes.

The Chekydran ship exploded.

V’kyrri ducked.

Edie laughed. Debris and sparks showered out of the sky.

V’krryi wrapped his arms around her, ignoring the sharp-edged stones digging into his bones. He planted a quick kiss on her nose. “You scare me.”

“Why, Captain, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she chirped, her face waxen.

“Your bar is too low,” he countered, digging into her pocket for hydration. He medicated her and took one himself.

Some of the tension ran out of Edie’s muscles, and she softened against him as the color returned to her face. Within seconds, moisture appeared on her skin. As his own misery faded, heat that had nothing to do with solar radiation and everything to do with Edie dove straight to his gonads.

Even as the seam on his trousers tightened, he rolled Edie away and struggled to his feet. How could he be attracted to someone who’d killed thousands of Claugh?

He shook off recrimination and glanced at her a she rose. He waited until she looked at him. “Got another one of those things?”

“Nope.”

Great. “We’d better get moving.”

“The only way to survive this is to go from shadow to shadow,” Edie said. She pointed. “That’s our next stop.”

He led the way into the sun. They made maybe ten meters, possibly fifteen. He collapsed into the shade, weak and shaking.

Edie sank to the sand beside him and tipped her head back, eyes closed, gulping for air.

He checked his fingernails. Blue. Hypoxia and heat. He shoved himself to his feet and led the next charge. And the next. He lost count of how many times they forced themselves into motion.

Lips white, blue tinging her pale cheeks, Edie finally pointed.

A glint of metal caught his eye.

A ship.

Gray enough to blend into the stone and shadow of a rock wall.

Edie shoved a water container at him. She took the other. Her throat worked exactly three swallows. She capped the container.

He followed suit. Hot, stale water, tasting of antiseptic hit his tongue. He forced down a trio of gulps and frowned as a weird buzzing chur sang in his ears.

Edie started down slope, skidding and sliding. He followed, the noise in his ears pressing deep into his bones.

The sound burst from inside his head to palpably audible. A swarm of massive, iridescent insects flew into the sky, rising from the opposite rim of the crater.

V’kyrri grabbed her arm.

Edie blanched.

They ran.

The massive insects swung to follow.

Their wings. It was the sound of their wings in the thin air driving into his skull. For a split second, the noise resolved into whispery, pleading voices.

“Save us. Save you.”

He shook away dizziness. Panting for oxygen the world didn’t have to give, he locked his gaze on Edie’s ship.

Edie stumbled. “What the Three Hells are they?”

He hooked arms with her but couldn’t say who supported whom. Much less identify where the shivers of dread originated. With him or with her. A glance over his shoulder showed the massive insects dipping into the crater, wings a blur.

His pulse tripped and his throat closed before his brain registered how slowly they moved despite their frenetic wing motion. A trill brushed him.

It said save.

He slowed.

Edie yanked.

He fell and hit deck plating.

The hatch closed. A cool breeze touched him. Sweat coalesced on his skin, soaking his hair and his clothes.

V’kyrri looked at Edie.

Relief swept her, leaving her weak and shaking. She swiped a sleeve across her stinging eyes, then her damp forehead. She met V’kyrri’s gaze. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Gasping, Edie scrambled backward until she came up hard against her hull.

His pupils shrank to pin pricks. Sea green expanded until it took over the entirety of his eyes, obscuring even the whites.

Though his gaze lined up with her face, she detected no hint of V’kyrri in it. His mouth moved. “Out,” it said. “Emerge.” V’kyrri’s green gaze turned to the hatch. He went on repeating “out” and “emerge” over and over.

“Out of what? What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

The chant didn’t stop. It struck her that he wasn’t blinking. Edie shuddered.

“V’kyrri,” she snapped.

He crawled to the hatch, began striking it with the heel of his hand.

“Stop it.” She couldn’t get a full breath. This wasn’t run-of-the-mill Mad Claugh. It was as if someone or something had hold of him.

The ship trembled. Overhead lights flashed a ship-under-attack sequence. Edie clenched her fists.

The massive flying things. Imagination supplied a mental image of the creatures prying her and V’kyrri out of the ship.

She clambered to her feet and stumbled for the cockpit. She needed weapons. Shields. She needed off this thrice-damned rock.

“V’kyrri. Snap out of it.” She climbed into her command sling, the biomechanical mesh that allowed her to control her vessel from one place. It folded around her, providing data via tactile and visual feedback. The mesh popped her with a double dose of hydration therapy, one in each leg. The treatment spread through her system. Atmospheric controls lowered ambient temperature. Cool air brushed her sweating skin. She shivered.

V’kyrri’s core temperature had to be as high as hers. Not good and nothing she could do about it while he was possessed.

She flipped on the cabin mic.

Data flowed down her screen. V’kyrri, still pounding on her sealed hatch like he couldn’t figure out the control, repeated “out” and “emerge” over and over.

Affording a cursory glance at the vital stuff, containment and life support both doing their jobs without a hitch, Edie fired engines and popped the shields.

The tremble in the ship ceased. She probably hadn’t hurt the creatures with the energy fields. Probably.

“Edie?”

The cabin mic picked up the word and pasted it on her heads-up display.

“I’m in the cockpit,” she said. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Open the door.”

Gritting her teeth, Edie lifted in answer. The ship shuddered off the surface. Irrationally, she hoped the big things out there had cleared off before she’d sprayed superheated exhaust all over.

“No. No.” Flashed on her screen, punctuated by what she guessed were fists on hull plating. It was the only logical translation of the sound data her system fed her. Edie sucked in a half-breath. Hell of a thing, finding out she needed shields for the inside of her hull. If she made a career out of hauling crazy Claugh, she’d look into it.

The ship thundered into the sky.