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A SLIVER OF LIGHT APPEARED below him, and Tyce sent up a prayer that he had found another exit. The slope of the spiral ramp was steep enough and the wall slick enough that he worried about his own balance. Then there was his sheer terror at the idea that the ship could buck again. If gravity shifted for even one second, he was going to slide into the abyss in the center of the spiral and he didn’t want to find out how deep that hole was. If he was lucky, the hole was so deep that it would reach through to the other side of the gravity well, leaving a zero gravity zone. However, he didn’t feel particularly lucky. And he didn’t want to end up floating helplessly in the dark.
That might be one of his nightmares.
He ran a finger over the sliver of light. With a slurp, the sphincter opened onto an empty corridor. Tyce pulled his knife and eased into the new space. He should’ve been low enough to be outside the Command perimeter, but he couldn’t be sure. The lights were low and the ship silent, outside a low rumbling that reminded Tyce of the Dragon.
“Another fine mess,” he muttered to himself as he stripped off his shirt. His pants were equally vile, but he didn’t want to run around enemy territory with his dick hanging out. So he would do it with a Ribelian soul tattoo guaranteed to drive every Command soldier into a homicidal rage.
The first door he came to was closed, but Tyce ran his finger down the side the way he’d seen his guards do. When he touched a small indent at about waist level, the door slid open and vanished into the wall. Tyce quickly shifted his knife to his right hand and braced, but the new corridor was equally silent, although this one had more light.
“I’ve seen horror films that started this way.”
Only silence answered. Tyce wandered three more corridors and found another balloon elevator that took him lower into the belly of the ship before he found his first sign of humans—a ration wrapper. Command had been through here. But this was far below the level John claimed as his. Tyce added that to the list of mysteries clanging around in his head.
Two more levels and a staircase later, and Tyce wondered if he would starve to death wandering a ship that had to be the size of a small city. But then he heard a distant whisper, like a crowd talking at some great distance. He followed it until a shot nearly took his head off.
“Hey!” he yelled as he leaped back.
“Who the fuck are you?” a woman demanded.
“Tyce Robinson. Now maybe you can stop shooting at me.”
“Tyce?”
Tyce peeked around the corner and spotted Jela cautiously edging out from cover. Tyce moved into the center of the corridor. “How many times have I told you to protect your own position?” He finger scolded her, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
“Considering that you’re the idiot who keeps throwing himself at the enemy while unarmed, I’ve decided to stop listening to you,” she teased back. She turned to whoever was behind her. “Go get Amali .” Footsteps pounded down the corridor. Then she opened her arms. “Come here, you idiot.”
“I’m not a hugger,” he protested, but he knew it was a lost cause. The Dragon crew were hopelessly affectionate, and she caught him in a huge hug, but at least she ended it before it got too uncomfortable.
“How did you get away? We’ve been trying to blast our way through to the upper levels, but everything is locked down.”
“Not everything. This place has hidden passages,” Tyce said. “So hidden that I’m not sure I could find one again if I tried.”
She grimaced.
“Yeah, exactly,” he said, since she understood the danger. Hidden passages meant that their people might not be safe behind the lines. And Command soldiers had already proved that they would use civilians and children as hostages to get their way. Tyce had to hope that John wouldn’t let his guys get that out of hand.
He heard footsteps and a few seconds later, Ama came around the corner. Wisps of gray hair had escaped her ponytail and had tangled near her hairline, as if she’d been shoving her hair back thoughtlessly. He moved toward her, his arms open. She ran at him, punched him in the side and then hugged him so hard he couldn’t breathe.
“Mixed messages there,” he muttered in her ear.
“How dare you almost get yourself killed.” She sounded genuinely angry, so Tyce didn’t mount a defense. However, he wouldn’t apologize, either. The Command crew had been hunting for him, so his surrender had been the only logical choice. It gave John an excuse to retreat back to his territory. Finally she backed out of his embrace. “I thought those bastards would kill you.”
“A few of them tried,” Tyce admitted. The back of his head still ached from the damn alien probes, and he kept having a sensation of cold that skittered across his nerves.
Her expression grew hard. Tyce had seen that look before. He rested a hand on her arm and said softly, “The sub-commander stopped them. They’re scared idiots, not the monsters from before.”
Her anger didn’t soften in the least. “You are sometimes too charitable.”
“Says the woman who took in a Command lieutenant and made him her captain.”
She sighed. “I have a soft spot for idiots.” Jela laughed and gave Tyce a shoulder bump.
“Great, now you’re ganging up on me,” Tyce said. Both women caught him in yet another hug, which Tyce considered a great act of sacrifice considering how he smelled.
“Take patrol out the length of another door,” Ama ordered Jela, and she nodded and moved toward the door Tyce had come through. It had already slid closed again, but considering they were in space, Tyce had expected that. Secured hatches were the only defense against decompression in case of a hull breach.
“Ama, this door was open earlier,” Jela said.
Ama frowned. “How?”
“I opened it,” Tyce said. “Command soldiers figured out the latch. It’s on the side.” Tyce went to open the door, touching the spot. The door slid open easily.
Ama and Jela shared a concerned look.
“What?”
Ama cleared her throat. “Tuch found the latch mechanism, but none of them work from this side.”
Tyce’s arm hair stood on end. “All the latches work on the upper level, and when I was coming down, every door opened easily.”
“And we have to blast each one.” She blew out a breath. When Tyce had gone from being a prisoner to being a member of the Dragon crew, Ama had asked him to be first an advisor and later the captain because she respected his strategy and military training. He understood Command strategy in a way she couldn’t, and so she saw his as the more valuable mind. However, she was brilliant in her own right. No doubt she was already considering all the possible reasons why the owners of this ship would have guarded the upper decks from anyone coming up-ship.
“We need to secure this passageway,” she said softly.
“Yes,” Tyce agreed. “But we have bigger worries than Command. The ship is putting out a signal—”
“Was that the engine tremors we felt?”
“Maybe,” Tyce said. “I wish I had answers, but Command is as confused as we are. We need to get our shuttles ready to launch. If the owners of the ship show up, we need to get clear and ask forgiveness from a distance. And hopefully they’ll give us a ride to some inhabited part of space.”
Ama glanced toward Jela. “I’m going to secure the next corridor,” Jela said before she walked through the door.
Catching Tyce by the arm, Ama urged him to retreat deeper into Dragon territory. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Then we have a larger problem than you know.”
Cold fear ran up Tyce’s spine. “Ama?”
“The ship’s skin has infiltrated the shuttles and integrated into the hulls so we can’t launch, although we can still access them.”
Tyce leaned against the wall and tried to ride out the wave of helpless fury that assaulted him. “Fuck.”
“Given the intertwining of this ship with our shuttles, copulation would be one description,” she said dryly.
Her humor threw fuel on his anger. “How can you joke about this?”
“Because there is no other option,” she said easily, but then she sighed and put a hand on his arm. “I love your ability to scheme, but sometimes the universe has its own plans. And this ship does not wish to be left alone. She has been alone too long, so she holds onto us. I don’t see this as threatening and even if it is a hostile gesture, I have no control over it.”
“Could we burn the biological material away?” Tyce asked, ignoring his own discomfort. No spacer liked damaging a ship, especially one he was standing in.
“That would leave the shuttle hulls too compromised to fly. It gains us nothing and hurts her.” Ama patted the ship’s wall.
Tyce tried calming his emotions and thinking about the problem logically. Unfortunately, hunger and the stench of his own body made that hard.
“You can’t control the universe. The best you can do is find solid ground in the storm.”
Tyce glared at her. “You’re laying the whole Ribelian philosophy on a little heavily.”
“And you’re not paying attention to the obvious. This ship is a living creature. I don’t think it requires religious belief to think that a living creature might get lonely.”
“Yeah, but you thought the same of the Dragon,” Tyce said. Sometimes he wondered how a woman could be such a deadly gunner and clear thinker on one side and so damn superstitious on the other.
“The Dragon was a creature of metal, built by human hands, so I can understand your reluctance to recognize her consciousness—”
“Hell yes, and considering that I used the ship to draw enemy fire, I will never consider your point of view.”
Ama sighed. “She loved us. If she had not consented, her engines would have failed and our shuttles would have been exposed to the enemy.”
“I find your religion disturbing,” Tyce said. Even after living with Ribelians for years, he didn’t understand them. He didn’t understand the fatalism that allowed some to become suicide bombers and others... well others ended up like Amali , endlessly annoying and full of pithy sayings. He preferred solid fact and historical comparisons to religious belief.
“And yet you wear the mark.” Ama touched his tattoo. She hadn’t yet decided whether to get one, but when she looked at his, Tyce could see the longing in her expression.
“Maybe I don’t believe in it,” Tyce said.
“Maybe you are less of a skeptic than you would have me believe. But know this, the Dragon gave herself for us because she believed in your plan, and you have lived up to her sacrifice. I have equal faith in you to come up with a plan for any new threat, even with the ship holding tightly to our shuttles.”
“Fuck.” Tyce whirled around and punched the wall. Only the softness of the material saved him from broken knuckles. “Ama, I don’t know what the hell I should do. Don’t look to me for answers because all I have are questions.” When she opened her mouth, Tyce held up a finger to stop her. “No. No, I know that look and I’ve gotten the lecture about questions being answers. My questions are questions. Right now, I’m pretty sure the universe hates me, and that’s answer enough.”
She lifted her arms as if she might hug him, but at the last minute, she shoved her hands into her pockets. “I know how much you hurt, being around Command soldiers again. If you need to step back, if you truly have no answers, I won’t push you to take the captaincy up again.”
The sheer relief caught Tyce off-guard. “Yeah. That would probably be good. I don’t feel much like a captain.”
She gave him a sad smile. “You have been a monster, a savior, a soldier, and a captain. You are all of those, even when you feel like none of them.”
Tyce had no idea if she meant that as a comfort or a criticism.
“Come. Let’s get you back to crew quarters. You stink, so it’s straight into a shower for you.”
That was one order Tyce fully intended to follow because she was right. He stank.