CHAPTER 12
Raena came out of the shower finally. Her skin had gone a weird reddish shade, like a sunburn beneath her normal coloring. She’d gotten the coughing somewhat under control, though.
She skinned into one of Ariel’s extra dresses, a loose green sundress that hung to her feet. Tricky to fight in, Mykah would have said, although Raena’s boot heels would have helped somewhat. They’d have to retrieve her boots from the Veracity later. Until she stopped coughing, though, she didn’t need to be fighting.
Breakfast came while everyone rotated through the shower. Mykah had ordered a spectrum of food: eggs, pastries, crunchy beetles for Haoun, stir-fried vegetables and rice, something that would pass as miso for Raena. She smiled at him gratefully as she settled down over the thermos to eat.
Glancing at her comm bracelet, Coni said, “Oh, the curfew is over now.”
“About time.” Ariel took Raena’s face in her hands and kissed her good and hard. Then she grabbed some of the pastries and headed out the door. Mykah and Coni stared after her, waiting for Raena to let them know if they should worry. She didn’t put her miso down.
“Where’s she going?” Haoun asked.
“To check on her daughter,” Raena rasped.
“Should we worry?” Mykah asked her.
“If she wanted us to worry, she would have said something.”
Mykah shifted, more bothered than Raena appeared to be. It seemed out of character for Ariel not to have told them whether she got through to the Veracity or not.
“What should we do about the gray soldiers’ gun?” Coni asked at last.
“Maid cart?” Haoun suggested.
“Don’t get anyone else in trouble,” Raena said. “Is there a trash chute in the hallway? A window to a light well?”
“No, the hotel has concentric circles of rooms,” Mykah said. “The outside circle has balconies and windows. The inside rooms, like this one, don’t have any connection to the outside.”
“Before we dispose of it, we should go clear out Ariel’s other room,” Raena said.
Coni said, “I could hack into the hotel’s security system and see if anyone had been in there.”
Raena nodded. “That’s a good start. It will help us know if they came through the hotel, but not if they came in from the balcony.”
“You think they actually messed with her stuff?” Mykah asked.
“Don’t know. I can’t figure out what they were doing last night.”
* * *
When the security video turned out to be clear, Raena led Mykah and Coni upstairs. They let themselves into Ariel’s room, but as far as Coni could tell, it was in the same shape as the night before. Ariel wasn’t one to live in military tidiness, the way Raena did. Clothing and jewelry lay scattered all around the room.
Raena checked the balcony door and poked around halfheartedly. After that she helped collect up Ariel’s stuff briefly, before lying on the bed while Mykah and Coni finished up. Her breathing had gotten more ragged.
“All right?” Mykah asked.
Raena laughed softly. “I think I broke something with the coughing this morning.”
Coni looked at her sharply.
“Kidding,” Raena said.
Coni wasn’t convinced.
On the way back to the elevator, Raena detoured into the room at the end of the hall that housed the vending machines. When she stooped to collect her bottle of water from a machine, she gently unwrapped her skirt from the bulbous gun, placed the gun on the floor, and nudged it under the machine with her toe. The movement would have been too smooth to see, except that Coni had been watching for it.
“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Mykah asked.
“Hospital,” Raena rasped.
“I’m coming with you,” Coni said.
“Good.”
They went back down to the other room to drop off Ariel’s stuff. Haoun was waiting to let them in.
“Ariel’s at the Veracity,” he said. “Mykah, she wants you to meet her there.”
“Will do.” He gave Coni a big hug, then slipped out the door ahead of them.
* * *
Raena found the walk through Kai City eerie, like the morning she had walked in from the underground river. Was the stillness a function of the early hour or had people frightened themselves with the previous night’s rioting and Planetary Security’s enthusiastic response?
In the jail, she’d worried that Haoun, with his head up higher than hers in the smoke, would damage his lungs. Now it hurt to draw a deep breath. The cough didn’t seem to want to leave her alone for long.
She was grateful for Coni and Haoun walking on either side of her, but she knew if it came to a fight, they would be less than no help. She’d seen the limits of Haoun’s bravery, and Coni . . . Well, she knew Coni could run away. For her own part, Raena decided to simply lie down and take her punishment. Last night, the grays had proven how little they cared about collateral damage—but her own surrender might give the others enough time to escape. At this point, she would rather lie down and take a beating than stand up, doubled over and coughing.
The area around the hospital seemed especially quiet. Raena hoped that meant the doctors had processed everyone who’d come in before curfew took effect, so she’d be able to waltz in and waltz out.
The waiting room gave the lie to that. Raena hadn’t known there were so many people on Kai.
Coni gently led the way through the crowd to the intake window. Raena heard her cough echoed throughout the room. The clerk had ceased being sympathetic.
While Coni checked her in, Raena looked over the waiting room. The people looked thoroughly miserable: eyes streaming from smoke, heads aching from Doze gas, completely traumatized by Planetary Security beating them back, compounded by the nightlong wait for treatment. Raena sympathized. She wondered if she could find a little patch of floor to curl up on and pass out.
To placate the people trapped in the waiting room, several screens played news from around the galaxy. One screen showed Raena fighting the Thallians’ soldier in court yesterday. Raena watched herself, noting how she could have done the takedown more elegantly. Just like Corvas’s video of her fight against the Thallian abduction squad, this video counted the amount of time between when the soldier launched himself from the witness stand at her and when the courtroom guards finally stunned him. It took longer than she expected.
After Coni finished the intake process, she occupied herself by making calls on her comm bracelet. Raena leaned against Haoun for support as much as for comfort. The lack of oxygen made her woozy.
A knot of young humans, followed by their disapproving nonhuman chaperones, came to encircle Raena, Haoun, and Coni. Haoun positioned himself protectively in front of Raena. She smiled up at his back, even though he couldn’t see it.
“You’re from the Veracity, right?” one of the boys asked eagerly.
Haoun nodded skeptically.
“We’ve been watching the trial.”
About the same time as her crewmates, Raena realized that the kids wore “Free Raena Zacari” T-shirts.
“Have they dropped the charges?” one of the girls wanted to know.
Raena shook her head. “Out on bail.” Her voice sounded alien to her own ears.
Others in the waiting room began to recognize her. The crowd around them grew denser. People wanted to congratulate her for killing the Thallians or ask where she’d trained. One guy wanted to hire her, either as a bodyguard or as a companion, Raena wasn’t clear. Not all the attention was approving, but Raena had trouble tracking it. The kids closest to her all babbled at once, something about role model and standing up to anti-humanists and what an honor. Raena wondered if they were breathing up all her air. Haoun kept a grip on Raena’s shoulder, holding her upright.
Then Corvas appeared, wading through the crowd. Even though the slim lizard was much smaller than Haoun, he knew how to command space. He cleared a margin around her. The kids stared at him, starstruck. Security cameras buzzed around, getting a good view of Raena being supported and protected by Haoun, Coni, and Corvas. She wondered if that would make it into the broadcast of her trial.
A human doctor showed up, flanked by a couple of hospital security guards. They cleared a path for Raena into the treatment area.
Raena whispered to Corvas, “What just happened?”
His eyes rotated to regard her. “Exactly what Ariel hoped would happen.”
* * *
The doctor asked Raena to sit on an examining table. Luckily, Haoun was there to boost her up. Her skin looked even more sunburned now, the reddish tone brightening under her usual color.
“You need the soot suctioned from your lungs,” the doctor said. “It’s filling the alveoli and making it hard for you to get enough oxygen. The suctioning process is uncomfortable. You need to hold absolutely still or there’s a chance that we could puncture your lungs. Sedation is not optional.”
Raena reached out and Coni took her hand. The blue girl said, “Haoun needs to be treated, too, but Corvas will stay with you.”
“Where are you going?” Raena rasped.
“Something has happened on the Veracity. Mykah wants me to meet him there.”
Raena’s vision went black around the edges. She felt her body going away.
* * *
“Everyone out,” the doctor ordered.
“I’ll stay,” Corvas said calmly. “You know who she is.”
The doctor nodded.
“I’m losing count of the number of attempts on Raena’s life on Kai,” Corvas said. “I know you will do your best for her, Doctor, but for your safety, she needs a guard. I will be it.”
“All right. Everyone else . . .”
Coni took Haoun’s arm and tried to nudge him away.
“I’m staying, too,” he growled. “She didn’t leave me last night. I’m not leaving her now.”
“I don’t care who stays or goes,” the doctor snapped, “but I need to help her now.”
Coni led the other two back out of the doctor’s way. “The Veracity was attacked in the night,” she said quietly. “Ariel wants me to pull up the video. I need to go.”
“Go,” Corvas said. “We’ll watch over Raena.”
* * *
Coni wasn’t sure what she expected as she walked across Kai City, but the strange and frightening silence that filled the morning wasn’t it. Most shops remained shuttered. Most tourists seemed to have kept close to their hotels. She was almost the only person loping through town.
She watched for the soldiers in gray, but they didn’t seem to be lurking around. She tried to remember if they’d ever attacked Raena in the daylight.
Coni had never particularly worried about her own safety before. On the scale of people in the galaxy, she was average size. Her teeth and claws were sharp enough to make most creatures think twice about getting too close. She’d taken some self-defense classes in school, but now she wished she’d sparred with Raena aboard the Veracity. More fight training might have made her feel more confident this morning.
That spun her thoughts off into another direction. She didn’t know what to expect aboard the Veracity. Mykah had locked Ariel’s daughter and the two Thallians aboard last night. Coni hoped that Raena’s mistrust of Jim Zacari was unfounded. She kind of liked the boy.
* * *
Unlike the rest of Kai City, the spaceport bustled this morning. The party on Kai seemed to be over. Ship after ship powered up around Coni, taking off in search of a good time elsewhere.
When she reached their docking bay, Coni found the Veracity locked. She commed Mykah, who didn’t pick up. As she left him a message, he opened the ship from the inside. He glanced over her shoulders before stepping back out of her way.
As soon as she crossed the threshold, Coni smelled blood. Death. “What’s happened?”
“Someone got onto the ship last night.” Mykah’s voice quavered with fury.
“I thought you locked it,” Coni said, before she thought better of it. She realized it sounded like an accusation.
“I did. It looks like Jim opened it from the inside. We need you to access the Veracity’s recordings to see if you can figure out why.”
“Who is dead?” Coni heard a flutter in her own voice. Mykah turned back to take her in his arms, holding her close.
It was comforting, but she couldn’t see his face when he said simply, “Eilif.”
A little noise escaped her.
“It’s bad in the cockpit,” he said. “Can you work in our cabin?”
“Is Jim all right? Gisela?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Mykah promised. “Let’s get to work first. I want to know what happened, too.”
As she followed him down the passageway, she caught a glimpse of Ariel on her hands and knees in the cockpit, mopping the floor. Shuddering, Coni closed her eyes and tried to wipe the image away.
“Is Planetary Security on their way?” Coni’s voice still had the shrill flutter to it. The sound made her hackles rise.
“We didn’t call them.” Mykah opened their cabin door. Coni let him usher her in. She collapsed onto the desk chair. Everything looked normal inside. “Ariel says that they have completely failed to protect us at every opportunity so far. If they find out that we were sheltering another Thallian, beyond the one they already knew about, they will spin Eilif’s death into more charges against us—or against Raena, since she was out of jail last night. Ariel wants us to find out who killed Eilif, so Raena can avenge her.”
Coni’s hands trembled as she reached out to wake the screen. She realized he hadn’t told her about Jim or Gisela, but she was afraid to ask again.
* * *
Last night’s recording from the cockpit’s camera showed Gisela, Eilif, and Jim gathered together to stare down at the view screen. It was impossible to see what they were looking at, but the argument was easy to hear.
“You know he’s dead, Jimi,” Eilif said. “You’ve seen the video.”
“We’ve seen all kinds of videos,” Jim argued. “I know everyone believes Raena killed him. What if it was one more cover-up? What if Kai couldn’t admit that they had him? That he was injured, but they patched him up and let him go?”
“At least set a test for him. Ask him something only Revan would know.”
Coni sat back from the screen and stared at Mykah. “Revan?” she echoed.
“Can you pull up last night’s recording from the exterior cameras?” Mykah asked.
“Do you want the Veracity’s cameras or the security cams in the docking bay?”
Mykah hugged her, amused to have been given a choice. “Let’s see what they saw in the cockpit first.”
Coni typed in the right commands and triggered the playback. On their screen, the docking bay filled with a squadron of soldiers in gray, their heads covered in mirrored helmets. They all looked similar in size and shape. “Human, do you think?” Coni asked.
Mykah shrugged. “We can rule out a whole lot of people they’re not.”
In the video, one of the soldiers stepped forward and stripped off his glove. He popped open the cover on the Veracity’s palm lock and laid his hand on the screen. The Veracity chirped as if it recognized him, but the door remained locked, waiting for Mykah’s passcode.
The soldier stepped back out of the hatch alcove. He reached up under his helmet, unfastened its strap, and pulled it off. Then he gazed at the Veracity, silver eyes stormy with displeasure. It certainly looked like Revan Thallian.
“Are there more of them?” Mykah asked. “More Thallians than we knew about?”
“Gods, I hope not,” Coni said. She toggled back to the cockpit’s camera.
Jim walked out of frame. Eilif leaned over to Gisela and suggested quietly, “Hide.”
Coni pressed pause on everything. “I’m not sure I can watch this.”
“I need to see,” Mykah said. “Why don’t you ask Ariel to come, too?”
Coni was only too happy to get up from the desk chair. Fear swirled around in her blood. She took a couple of steps toward the cockpit, before deciding she didn’t really want to see what Ariel was scrubbing up.
“We’re watching the video,” Coni called down to her, “from the external cameras. Do you want to come see it?”
“I do,” Gisela said quietly from inside her cabin. “I can’t remember what happened.”
Coni was so relieved the girl was still alive that she felt lightheaded.
When Gisela came to her cabin door, her face looked even paler than normal, her dark eyes even darker. Coni offered a hand to steady her. Gisela took it gratefully. “Are you all right?”
“I hit my head last night,” the girl said. “I don’t remember how. I was out almost all night.”
Ariel joined them in the passage. Around the edges, her clothes were damp and stained with pink. Her mouth clenched in a grim line. “You’re supposed to rest,” she told Gisela.
“I’ll rest better when I know what happened.”
Ariel didn’t argue with that.
They crowded into Coni and Mykah’s cabin. Coni stood near the door, so she could duck out if she needed to. Mykah unpaused the video.
In the recording, Gisela slipped inside one of the lockers in the cockpit. Eilif closed its door after her, then stood in front of it, blocking it with her body. Coni was startled to watch the transformation that came over Eilif, once she heard the gray soldiers board the Veracity. Her posture shifted. Her head sank so that her gaze focused on the floor. She reverted to being a slave, not the free woman she had become.
The Revan soldier came into the cockpit.
Eilif said quietly, “Raena Zacari found the message you left for me.”
“You followed it, of course,” Revan snarled.
“Of course,” Eilif answered.
“Pause it again,” Ariel said. Mykah complied.
“That’s not really Revan Thallian,” Ariel told them. “Raena found a photograph of Eilif in that military coat of Revan’s. It had no message, except as evidence that Revan secretly loved Eilif as much as she secretly loved him. Eilif was testing this guy. She just proved he was an impostor.”
“That doesn’t help us know who he is,” Mykah pointed out.
“It narrows it down. He looked enough like Revan that Eilif wasn’t sure and Jim was fooled.”
“The ship recognized him,” Coni observed.
“Then he’s been altered or manufactured in some way to pass for a Thallian,” Ariel said.
“Why would anyone do that?” Gisela asked.
“The question is,” Mykah corrected, “who would have the technology?”
“Let’s see some more,” Ariel said. Mykah set the video to play again.
Jim followed his uncle’s doppelganger into the cockpit. He glanced around for Gisela, then focused on his mother. Eilif didn’t look up from the floor.
Revan rounded on Jim. “Can you fly this ship?”
“Not alone, sir.”
“Then we’ll scuttle it.” Revan turned to his men, waiting in the passage out of view of the camera. He nodded sharply but didn’t issue any order aloud. Then he asked Jim, “Do you know where they’ve hidden their weapons?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Help my men confiscate them.” He turned on Eilif. “Gather anything you want from this ship.”
“Where are we going?” Eilif wondered quietly.
“Home.” He glanced up at the Veracity’s recorder and smiled. Sharpened teeth filled his smile.
“Pause it again,” Ariel said. “I’ve got to sit down.” Rather than get her bloodstained clothes on Mykah and Coni’s bedding, she sank to the floor. “It’s a trap for Raena.”
“We have to watch the rest of it,” Gisela argued. “I want to know how Eilif died.”
“You can tell me later,” Coni said. “I’m going to call Corvas and check on Raena.”
* * *
After Coni had retreated into the lounge, Ariel asked, “Is she okay?”
Mykah nodded. “Coni’s visual memory is very sharp. She remembers things from news programs she watched as a child that still trouble her. It’s better if she doesn’t see this.”
He looked to Gisela, leaning against the wall by the door. “Please sit down,” he invited.
Moving languidly as if not to rattle her brain around, Gisela settled on the floor. She leaned against Ariel’s shoulder. Mykah started the playback again.
Eilif waited until all the gray soldiers were occupied elsewhere. Silently, she eased open the locker where Gisela hid. “You have to get a message to Raena,” she whispered. “Tell her the Veracity is compromised. Don’t tell her where we’ve gone. It’s a trap.”
She spun around half a second before Revan strode back into the cockpit. He held a bulbous gun like the one Raena had stolen the night before. “I’m sorry, my dears,” he said. “We want the boy. We don’t need you.”
The second before he fired at them, Eilif flung herself in front of Gisela. The blast caught her squarely. She toppled back into Gisela, who struck her head on the locker door. Revan stood over them, gun ready, but neither of them moved. Eilif was already hemorrhaging onto the deck.
“It’s a sonic weapon,” Ariel said. “What a horrible way to die. You are lucky you didn’t catch any more of the blast.”
“She saved me,” Gisela said, awed. Ariel put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. Gisela hugged her tightly.
Mykah turned away. He toggled through the other cameras, watching the soldiers empty the gun lockers and place the Veracity’s weapons into a crate. He reversed the recordings to watch them a second time.
“What did you see?” Ariel asked.
“They only took the weapons I got out to offer Vezali,” he said. “Only the things that Jim had seen me put away. I didn’t bother to haul everything out that night, because I knew there would be more than Vezali could carry, more than Kavanaugh would want. So that really wasn’t Revan. He would have known where things could be stowed on his own ship.”
“So we’re not completely unarmed,” Ariel echoed.
In answer, Mykah got up and pushed in the wall panel above the bunk. It clicked and dropped open. Two Sharpshooter rifles, a matched pair of Stinger pistols, and the weapons Vezali had bought them on Lautan were still hidden there.
“That’s a relief,” Gisela said with a sniffle.
Mykah handed her a Stinger and gave another to Ariel. Both of them ran through the same sequence of checks as they examined them. Mykah took his own Stinger, checked its power pack, then slipped it through the back of his belt. He wouldn’t be able to carry it if he left the ship, but it comforted him now.
Once they were armed, Ariel asked, “Have you seen what they did to sabotage the Veracity?”
“Coni will have to search. She knows where all the cameras are stashed on the ship.” He shook his head ruefully. “I wish Vezali were here. She’s worked over most of the ship already. She would be able to see anything out of place.”
Ariel didn’t offer advice, which Mykah puzzled over. Then he realized it was a sign of respect, her way of allowing him to make decisions about his own vessel. “Let me talk to Haoun,” Mykah said. “He had some other friends that we considered taking on as engineer, if Vezali said no when we left Kai the last time. Maybe one of them is familiar with old Earther ships and can help us get out of here.”
“We can’t leave right yet anyway,” Ariel said. “Not until this stupid trial is settled.”
“Let’s watch the rest of the video,” Gisela said. “I want to see what happened to Jim.”
Mykah toggled back to the Veracity’s exterior camera. Once Revan replaced his mirrored helmet, he was interchangeable with the other gray soldiers.
Jim came down the Veracity’s ramp, followed by more soldiers. “Where’s my mother?”
“She’s not coming with us.” The Revan replica’s voice was strangely modulated by his helmet.
“I want to say goodbye,” Jim insisted. He started back up the ramp.
“It’s too late.” The closest soldier jabbed him in the back with something. Jim collapsed with a groan. The grays doubled him up and dumped him into the crate atop the stolen weapons. Then they carried him out of the docking bay.
“So the whole attack on the prison last night was a subterfuge so they could kidnap Jim?” Ariel asked. “How many people are dead, between the fires and the riot, just so the grays could snatch the Thallian boy?”
“You think it wasn’t really about killing Raena?” Mykah asked.
“I don’t know. That Revan thing was sending her a pretty clear invitation to come after them. We may not know why until she gets back to the Thallian homeworld.”
“My head hurts,” Gisela said.
“You and I are off to the hospital, my girl,” Ariel said. “Mykah, keep Coni out of the cockpit until everything dries. We need to get everyone back up to fighting trim and get the Veracity checked out, before anyone goes anywhere else.”
* * *
Raena woke to find Corvas standing beside her, poking at his comm bracelet. Raena realized she’d never seen the lizard sitting. She wasn’t sure if he could. She also realized he wore the blue and aquamarine caftan he’d had on the previous day in court.
“How’s your arm?” Her voice sounded ragged, but it no longer hurt to speak.
His eyes swiveled to her and he flexed his hand. “Good as new.”
“You haven’t been back to your hotel room yet?”
“The curfew was still in effect when they finished with me last night. Then Coni called to say you were on your way to the hospital, so I stayed to meet you.”
“Thank you for all you’ve done for me, Corvas.”
One of his eyes turned toward a camera mounted in the corner of the room. Raena followed his gaze, then looked back at him.
Corvas dug around in the satchel slung over his shoulder. He pulled out his handheld, clicked around silently, then handed it to Raena. The screen showed a video of two teenagers: one human, one whatever Corvas was. “These are my boys,” he said. “Ariel helped me adopt Saul when Tarash was an infant. They’ve grown up together. You’ve never seen such friends. Anything I do for Ariel, I am really doing for Saul.”
Raena typed onto the screen before she passed the handheld back: Are they safe somewhere?
“Yes,” Corvas said aloud. “Thank you.”
“When can I get out of here?”
“Now that you’re awake, we’re waiting for the doctor to give you your walking papers. Unfortunately, Dr. Fishawk is the only human doctor in the emergency room today, so it may be a while before he can get back to you.”
Raena wriggled herself into sitting up. The effort winded her, but nothing seemed painful. “How is Haoun?”
“They’re treating him now.”
“Is Coni with him?”
Corvas met her eyes. “No.”
Raena exhaled hard. Corvas was even more paranoid than she generally was, but she had to believe—after all she’d been through on Kai—that he had his reasons. “What are the odds that I will miss my time in court?” she asked.
“You’re right to suspect that being hospitalized is not an acceptable excuse for missing your trial. The court was still closed when I checked in with them just now. However, since you were injured by the smoke in the jail—which apparently does not have a functioning fire-suppression system and so is not up to minimal galactic safety standards—the Business Council of Kai has agreed to cover the cost of your treatment here. Haoun’s treatment, also.”
Raena gave him a lopsided smile. “How is he?”
“Apparently, in better shape than you were. They were able to use some less invasive treatment on him, something that would help him to expel the soot. Didn’t sound pleasant, but it also didn’t require sedation. He’s supposed to find his way back to the waiting room and wait for us there.”
* * *
Kavanaugh concentrated on flying through the Thallians’ minefield. Most of the mines had been deactivated when the big rescue ships had come to collect the Arbiter’s survivors six months ago. Still, he didn’t want to bump up against anything the minesweepers missed.
The planet ahead certainly looked dead. Kavanaugh flew them up on the nightside, where not a single artificial light gleamed in the blackness. It made him think of the Templar tombworld, another ghost world that memorialized a lost people. Both planets were little more than tombstones now. In a way, he supposed, they were bookends: the victims of genocide and their killers.
“Were you on Drusingyi’s surface before?” he asked Vezali.
“Yes. We landed to pick up Raena and Eilif after they’d destroyed the Thallians’ city. The planet is pretty much a wasteland. Its surface is freezing cold, covered in poisoned snow. No surface vegetation. Not much surviving native wildlife, either, except in the oceans. The Thallians grew everything they ate inside their domes. Those farms must have gotten contaminated when the seawater crashed in.”
If ships hid somewhere on the planet’s surface now, their engines were cold and their life support systems shut off. Kavanaugh couldn’t read any energy signatures at all. He set the Sundog to orbit, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything, but it really didn’t look as if there was anything to miss.
Vezali got up to fix them something to eat, which meant popping two readymades into the warmer. Still, Kavanaugh appreciated the gesture. He wasn’t any sort of cook, especially not compared to Mykah. Generally, he let his passengers fend for themselves. Rarely did they think to feed him while they were at it.
The planet offered no surprises. Like the Templar’s tombworld, it was pretty much just a rock, albeit a rock mostly covered with a slightly toxic ocean. “Are you sure you want that water on your skin?” he asked.
“Things pass through my system fairly quickly,” Vezali assured. “Maybe I’ll treat myself to a spa afterward, to make sure I detox.”
They strapped themselves down for the trip through the atmosphere, still turbulent seventeen years after the galaxy bombed the planet into permanent winter. Vezali fastened her comm bracelet around one of her tentacles like a garter. She tested to make sure it linked to the Sundog.
Kavanaugh aimed for the coordinates Mykah had given him. No one but Raena and the two surviving Thallians really knew where the city lay under the ocean, but Kavanaugh triangulated between the spot where the Veracity picked up Raena and Eilif and the snow caves where the Arbiter’s survivors had holed up. That narrowed down the range of Vezali’s search a little. “Do you want me to let you off on solid ground?”
“No, I might as well just dive in and get it over with,” she said. “Can you hover?”
“Sure.”
Her skin had turned a cloudy grayish blue. Kavanaugh wondered if she meant that as camouflage or if it signified nerves. Vezali looked very small compared to the planet’s big ocean. Kavanaugh hoped that the weapons Ariel had chosen would be enough protection for the tentacled girl.