TSC-H PREVENIRE, KURU SYSTEM
Exhaustion was a formidable enemy, clogging his thoughts. “Five mikes to Kuru Sentinel.” Marco struggled to keep his head clear and stay conscious. “In your crash couches.”
“Seriously?” Jadon’s answer was sharp, but he was already moving, cradling his injured arm. “Why does it matter, since we’re the bomb?”
“Harness in,” Marco said over the comms. “This will hurt.”
“Can’t hurt much more than extra-crispy dead,” Jadon commed as he jogged through the hatch.
“In death, you don’t feel anything. But this you’ll feel . . . then you’ll die.”
“Aww,” Jadon said. “You trying to cheer me up, Kynigos?”
Marco smirked, shuttering his eyelids as he focused on the trajectory. “Eija . . . ready for hard-g flip and burn. Check Eng—”
She touched his arm. “We’re sure we should do this—take it out with the Prevenire?”
“No choice. We fail, everyone we know and love dies.”
“But . . . you have a wife to go back to.”
“I’d rather die . . . and my family live . . . than for everyone to perish because . . . I feared death.” He gave a nod. “Go. Check Engineering.”
She pursed her lips as if holding back more arguments, then turned and walked out of the bay, the Draegis thudding behind her like an obedient pup.
“Should we be worried about that thing?” Jadon commed.
“No,” Marco grunted. “It’s going to burn with us.”
“And the leeches on our back?”
“Like you said—extra crispy.”
“Think I’m going to like you.” Jadon’s grin carried through the comms. “At least for the next five minutes.”
Humor. A good attempt, but Marco had too many things pulling on his mental and physical resources. “Pilot, be ready.”
“Every day in every way,” Jadon promised. “What about you? Doing okay?”
Stay on mission. “Verify course. Systems check. Watch Eija. If that thing isn’t protecting her . . . or if his self-preservation kicks in . . .”
“I’ll vaporize him.”
Marco wasn’t sure that’d be necessary. Using his receptors with deep breaths, he noted the ship’s readiness. Jadon and the girl in position. The former in pain, both of them stressed but focused. Nothing at all from the Draegis.
Eyes closed, he verified the course, felt the thrum of the ship gliding almost effortlessly through the stream. Almost because they had a parasite attached to the hull, the Draegis ship. The added mass was devouring fuel reserves.
Oh no. Hard burns ate up fuel like nobody’s business. He calculated the distance, worked through the flip-and-burn maneuver. There’s not enough . . . The fuel would be depleted. He should’ve reduced acceleration to compensate, come in on the inertia of previous burns.
No. Mayhap it was a mistake. His calculations wrong. Surely.
But it wasn’t. Once they cleared the Sentinel and flipped, there wouldn’t be enough fuel for a hard burn.
Reek! That’s why the Draegis had attached to the hull. That’d been their intent. It hadn’t been to follow them or kill them in here. They knew. The Draegis knew he intended to destroy the Sentinel using the Prev. And they intended to prevent it.
Marco’s gut churned. “Ancient, help us.” Mayhap he was wrong. It was a fool’s hope, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. Nudging the trajectory before they cleared the rings could pitch them anywhere in the ’verse. They had to go through. And by the Fires of Pyr, he’d try that burn. Use up every cell of fuel and energy on the slim chance they could smash that thing into oblivion.
Either way, they were as good as dead.
Isa . . . Grief clawed at him, his thoughts flinging back to her. Their last night together . . . She was a gift he’d never expected or wanted. Not at first. Loving her, being loved . . . being pulled away even as he spotted the twin lights in her eyes—hers that pure blue, and another, softer. My daughter . . .
His throat felt thick, raw.
Isaura . . . my kyria . . . I am always with you. Love her well. I would have preferred to be there. To see her born, know her, raise her, protect her . . . Forgive me, my love. I would have been there . . .
“No! Stop!”
Shouts echoed through the Prevenire, pulling Marco back to the present. To the timer. Two minutes. “What’s wrong?”
More shouts. Eija’s panicked efflux reached him in the sanitized air.
Comms! Marco keyed it. “What’s going on?” A waft of something cool and minty hit his receptors, forcing him to suck in a breath. “What was that?”
More yelling.
“Jadon! Eija! What—”
“I . . . it’s scuzzed,” Jadon finally reported in, his voice thick with the alarm that drifted on the ship’s recycled air. “We’re scuzzed!”
“What?” Marco probed the system for errors or failures. “What happened?” A claxon sounded, grabbing his attention. “Countdown. Brace yourselves.”
Awareness speared Eija as she stared at Daq’Ti from the security of her crash couch. He’d done something to the controls. They still had access, but the console wasn’t responding as it had before. Things around them were heinously scuzzed, but there stood the beast, those crimson slits unblinking—does he even need to blink?—as they approached the Kuru Sentinel.
From the Command deck, Reef shouted epithets, cursing the recalcitrant systems.
The ship vibrated in terror, as if the Prevenire knew it hurtled toward destruction.
Cheery thought.
For a selfish moment, Eija wished it’d been Gola on this ship, which Marco was using as a self-guided nuclear device to prevent the Draegis from fast-tracking their way to Kedalion. That was . . . if they could get it to respond better. Eija was working furiously and getting nowhere. “What did you do . . .?” She skated a glance to Daq’Ti, still freaked she’d figured out his name, his language.
“Calibration adjusted,” Daq’Ti chortled.
“Cali . . .” Gaze tracking the glowing array of instruments, Eija chided herself for not fighting Marco more on this mission he’d undertaken. Argued that there had to be another way. That she should’ve done something, anything to stay alive. But what were their lives compared to the billions back in the Quadrants who would die if the Draegis—she eyed the beast again—followed the coordinates from the Prev back to the Chryzanthe?
Reef appeared in the hatch between Command and Engineering, something strange in his expression as he strode toward her.
She started. “What’re you doing? Get back there!”
Daq’Ti rotated toward Reef and let out a subtle thrum, his hand reaching back ever so slowly. Like an Eidolon with his finger going to the trigger.
“You should pilot us in. Go.” He climbed into the other crash couch.
“Seriously?” She wasn’t going to leave the Prev without a pilot at the helm, so she freed herself from the couch. “Why?”
“The controls . . .” He shrugged beneath the straps, hissing between clenched teeth as he slid the harness over his injured arm. “He did something to them. I can’t get a bead on what. The ship isn’t responding like normal.”
She almost smirked. “It’s never been normal to me.”
His brown eyes seemed tortured. “I know . . . But it’s even worse since BeastieBoy did something to them.” He swiped a hand over his olive face. “I was just thinking . . . Maybe all those times when you said it was off . . . maybe you were right.”
Her heart thumped a little. “You said I was crazy.”
“Yeah, and who thought we’d find a man hardwired into the ship? This whole thing is straight out of the insanity training manual.”
“Still, with Lavabeast’s changes, I don’t know what I can do.” Once harnessed and PICC’d up, she marveled at the difference with Marco controlling most of the ship’s systems. She hadn’t really noticed it before, but it was obvious now. It could also be a combination of Daq’Ti’s recalibration and Marco’s . . . connection. Engines were running smoother, not trying as hard. Controls weren’t as sticky—not that they were bad before, but now, they were like . . . an extension of herself. She could sense Marco and the finesse his abilities brought to the mix. It made no sense, but it worked. And well.
She relaxed, eyed the countdown, and commed, “Sentinel in five . . .” Head back, she studied the HUD where the convergence of their ship and the blue dot of the Sentinel appeared. “Four.” Sweaty palms betrayed her fear. “Three.”
Right here. This was when that off feeling happened. Just like in training when she’d done everything by the book. Obeyed like a good little candidate. But this time . . . it was real. What if she was wrong and killed them right here—too soon to take out the Sentinel? As Chief had repeatedly said she’d done in the sims?
Trust your instincts, Patron had admonished.
Yeah, but Bashari had said, You’ll get us all killed.
Well, that was a closed book, anyway.
“Do it, Ei,” Reef’s preternaturally calm voice sailed into her ear.
Here goes . . . everything.
“Two.” Eija drew in a breath and with a subtle nudge of her finger made the correction. She held that breath. Exhaled. “One.”
Blue light haloed around them. The drop from the slipstream this time felt like a punch in the gut. She coughed a breath as searing white light expanded through Command. Her split-second thought was that there’d been an explosion. She focused on the routine, the familiarity of it as the ship vibrated with fury. Bulkheads popped open. Cables dangled. Sparks hissed.
At the convergence of the dots . . . she tensed for the explosion. Braced for . . . something that never came. Her gaze hit the array. Saw something that didn’t make sense. As if they flowed through a wall that should’ve smashed them to bits.
Alive. We’re alive.
Why are we alive?
Djell! That meant—
Snapped back to the reality that they now had to flip and burn to hit the rings, she fired reverse thrusters. Even as they flipped and she keyed the sequence to restart the forward propulsion, Eija spied a new dot on the radar.
Then three. Five. A lot more.
“Oh no.”
The Prevenire roared against the strain exerted against the hull.
“Hold for hard g’s.” She spun up the engines and tapped in the target of the . . . “Holy Voids and Ladies,” she muttered, eying the massive ring that gave off the glow.
No, not one ring. Several. All embedded within each other. Not a long baton like the Chryzanthe. This was massive, sophisticated, with many individual stations. If the Chryzanthe was a metal flower, this was a whole djelling bouquet tethered around one colossal station.
Daunted by the size of that thing, she started the hard burn.
The Prev shifted, hard. She strained against the blackness encroaching on her vision, bit down on the mouthguard, fought to stay conscious. The ship screamed . . . then whined. Her vision cleared as the crushing weight of acceleration lessened.
Vibrations fell silent, along with her hopes. Their hopes.
“No,” Eija whispered. Fuel! She gaped at the tank readouts.
“What’s wrong?” Reef commed.
“We’re out of fuel,” Marco breathed. “They planned this.”
Daq’Ti thudded toward Nav.
“What’s he doing?” Reef asked.
“No idea.”
“Stop him.”
“How am I supposed to stop him?” She tried recalibrating the tanks. Maybe that’s what was wrong. No good. She eyed Daq’Ti working the panel with his hand—fingers, claws, whatever. A console at his eye level slid open. The strange thing had a depression, three holes, and readouts.
“Djell,” Eija whispered, staring at it.
“Stop him! Don’t let—”
Daq’Ti pressed his appendage against the black console. It fit—perfectly. That’s why he’d stayed—to do this. It’d all been a trap!
“Get away from that!” Words still on her lips, Eija felt the ship shift—shudder, something strange. Something she hadn’t felt before. “No,” she breathed, scanning the array of readouts as they went from green to orange to red. “No no no.”
“We’re powerless.” Marco’s voice was strained. “That’s why they piggybacked us—to drain our cells faster. They knew what we were trying to do. Eyes sharp. They’ll reboard us now.”
“Think Big Guy here is helping them?”
A series of thumps sounded against the hull. Sparks flew from the open bulkhead.
Pop! Boom!
The Prev shuddered. Whirred. Lighting flickered off and emergency beacons along the inner hull activated. A subtle vibration wormed through the ship.
“What’s going on?” Eija balked, watching the various ship’s systems go offline, then some come back online.
“Auto-firing!” Marco shouted. “The rings are firing on us!”
The Prev lurched to port, then stern, back to port.
“What the scuz! Eija, what’re you doing?” Reef grunted.
“It’s not me! The ship,” she said, bracing against the jarring motions. The incoming barrage … missing. She eyed the Draegis, who hovered over a similar readout. “It’s Daq’Ti—whatever he did to the Prev gave us a chance against their proximity-based firing system. I think.”
“That’d makes sense with what I’m seeing,” Reef said.
“Won’t last forever,” Marco muttered. “But maybe long enough.”
As if in answer to his words, the ship silenced its defense.
The cold vacuum of space was murder on his receptors. Yet Marco detected the half dozen ships surrounding them, Eija and Jadon’s terror. Strangely—terribly—he couldn’t smell those beasts, except when they fired their weaponized arms.
The girl hurtled through the hatch with the Eidolon close behind her. “We’re dead in the water—no thrusters or nav. They just took out comms.”
Marco slumped against the lectulo. If they were going to be boarded again, he couldn’t stay in this contraption. These beasts were primal—they’d see him as wounded prey, primed for the kill. “Get me out of the lectulo.”
“How?” Eija came forward, eying the contraption. “Shad said if we do, you—”
“If I stay here, I’m guaranteed to die.”
“But if I take you out, you die.”
“Then I’ve got nothing to lose.” He reached back and caught the cable feeding into his nape. He’d seen Eidolon with these PICC-lines, and every member of the Prevenire had them, too. That the device protecting Eidolon on hard drops was the same device that enabled him to tap into a ship with his senses made him wonder where it’d come from. He had a bad feeling he knew the answer.
Eija’s hand closed around his. “What about your wife? Your baby—a girl, right?”
A pang struck his chest and he struggled against it. “Staying tethered to this thing doesn’t get me back to them.”
“But you can barely talk. How do you expect to fight—”
“I’ll figure it out.” He ripped the IV out of his forearm. Fire flashed through his veins, but he gritted past it.
A chortling roar came from behind the girl, who glanced back. The Draegis thudded closer, focused on Marco.
“He doesn’t look happy,” Jadon said.
A stream of unintelligible words warbled as the beast drew alongside the lectulo and those slits glowed—glowered. Pulsed with meaning.
Eija looked slowly from the Draegis back to Marco with an expression and efflux of confusion. Did she not understand the thing this time?
“What’s wrong?”
“He . . . he wants you to stop. I think he’s saying extricating yourself will kill you.”
“Convenient.” But Marco detected nerves in her efflux, too. There was more to the beast’s words. “What else?”
She chewed the inside of her lower lip. “I think we should listen.”
“I can see why he’d say that,” Jadon said. “If we listen, we make their next culling easier.”
The guy’s anger mirrored Marco’s. “I’m not letting them take me alive—the intel is in my head and this ship.” What he anak’ed from her redirected his anger. “Already giving up on me?”
“No,” she said, startled.
“What aren’t you saying?”
“He . . .” She deflated. “He said help is coming.”
“Help for him.” Glancing at the weapons lockers, Jadon balled his good fist—he’d used a strap to anchor his broken arm to his chest. “Remember phase-blaster for arms? Bashari being reduced to ashes?”
A loud clank reverberated through the ship, and with it came a noise that drilled the air, driving their gazes to the hull.
Marco felt the explanation in the lectulo, in his senses. “Another ship docked—starboard.”
The Draegis chortled again.
Eija balked. “Why another?”
“There’s no good answer to that.” No matter what ship had mated with the Prev, Marco wasn’t going to take the new arrivals sitting down. He ripped off the nodes attached to his temples and from behind his ear. More fire zinged his neck. He grimaced but reached for the ones on his chest.
“No!” Eija’s command came in a tone and decibel that drew Blue closer, his arm weaponizing. She lifted a hand to the beast and stilled him before refocusing on Marco. “Stop. Please.”
Wondering if he should be concerned that the black monster obeyed her so readily—surely the girl wasn’t a traitor—Marco hesitated. The thoughts grew louder, more pervasive. What did he really know about this crew? How had they not known he was stitched into the ship, just as these cables were stitched into him?
No, he wouldn’t stay down like a dog beneath a master’s boot. He pushed up from the steel slab—but wobbled. His arms trembled from disuse.
“Please.” Eija pressed a hand against his shoulder.
He glared up through his brows at her. “If I die, you will answer to my family—my wife, my daughter, my kingdom, and the Brethren.”
She swallowed. “You won’t die. Daq’Ti will protect us.”
“He’ll protect you because you marked him. He bears your mark. We are nothing to him. And if there are dozens of his kind coming through those airlocks, even he can’t stand against so many.” Making another attempt to stand, he went slower to give his muscles and limbs time to adjust. Reached for the chest cables.
A deafening sound erupted, like the howl of wind through a lonely cave. Marco saw a black blur rush him. Knew he’d been right—that thing didn’t care two scents about him. He threw up an arm for defense as a wave of heat struck. He careened into a fathomless void.