by Bex McLynn
His gaze roved over her as his chest heaved.
Then his concern flushed away, replaced with a far more acceptable look of irritation. "Nothing. Not a damn thing."
He twisted away from her, shaking his head and muttering curses. As he gathered himself, the familiar sounds of a retracting extractor chute drew her gaze upward. She watched as the ass-end of the extractor sank back into the mining hub. Other than the pile of orange rocks that cushioned their landing, the cavernous hold echoed with tumbling rock slides. Considering the size of the space, the rock heap they sat upon looked no larger than a cairn. Nowhere near full to capacity of the hold.
This materials barge far exceeded the one she used to call home.
"It's all raw sard here," she said, staring down at the rocks and hating the silence that had spread between them. "It's worthless. Hell, worse than worthless."
He flicked his eyes over the rocks. "Looks like caro."
She shook her head. "It's sard. All miners know what a pain sard can be. Hardstone through and through. Burn out a cutter tryin' to get through a crust of sard to reach the barium underneath."
"You deal with sard often?"
She just shrugged. "Sometimes it's just better to dig around it."
"Right," he said. He inhaled and then released a heavy sigh. "Can you connect to any systems?"
The barge twanged through her technopathy, as if abraded and battered. The systems throbbed worse than bruised knuckles, so unlike any systems she had connected with at the Athela Academe. Her technopathic connection weakened her physically, leaving her aching and nauseated, clashing with the faint, ill-conceived arousal created by the stimulant.
"Aye." She slid down the rock pile, aiming for firmer footing. "Feels... off."
"Off," Rastur said on a huff.
They stood in silence, and she'd bet they shared the same dismal thought. Someone operated the extractor and had dumped them into the hold. So, now what? Where were their captors?
The ship-wide comms activated, blasting the hold with a dry bark of laughter.
"There was this perfect Athela," said a brittle voice that matched the mirthless chuckle.
Then silence again.
Vedma's stomach clenched as she turned toward Rastur. He'd gone still, his body tense as if ready to strike out.
The dry laughter came through the comms again. "There was this perfect Athela."
The comms transmitted the same male voice. He spoke the same words in the exact same way. Just a recording.
Dry laughter. "There was this perfect Athela."
She wasn't perfect, though. Knew she paled at being perfect. She barely passed her exams. Bombed at social niceties. Failed to garner even one house suitor. Piping a taunt over the ship-wide comms didn't terrify her. It pissed her off.
Vedma snarled and spun around, already knowing that the hold had surveillance tech. All materials barges transmitted feeds directly to a control room, where a foreman would monitor workers and equipment. She reached out with her technopathy, seeking the offending system.
The sound of scattering gravel had her snapping her attention to Rastur. He slid down the rocks as if surfing a wave and jumped down before her. His green-gold eyes flashed at her.
"Don't, Vedma," he said in a rush. "Don't turn it off. I see that look on your face. You want to ram those words right back down someone's throat."
She scoffed. "Ram 'em up their damn ass."
"You'll tip them off, just like the alarm."
He had a point, dammit all, and she hated that in the short time he knew her, he'd already become acquainted with her rashness.
"Hey." He dipped his chin, trying to capture her gaze. "We don't even know if they're talking about you."
"Don't coddle me. Ain't some ratka pup."
He raised his hands toward her, but at her snarl, he pulled them back.
"Objective is the same," he said, his tone perilously close to patronizing. "Get to the bridge, then the mining control room."
"So you're still thinkin' we're up against a handful of Gwyretti?"
She tried to not ground her assumption in far-fetched hope. She assumed that the Gwyretti pipe came across the materials barge, began to salvage it, and somehow encountered two cryo-bins. Of course, her summation of the situation didn't account for how she and Rastur ended up in those cryo-bins, floating around space in a materials barge.
"Even less than that." He looked pointedly toward the hold's arched hatch. "No one's here to collect us. Good chance, it's just one person operating that damn tentacle."
"Ore extractor," she snapped. "Not a damn tentacle."
"Fine. Ore extractor. And just one person, that's all."
She wanted to believe him. Things would be so much easier if his guess proved true. Secure the bridge. Comm the Academe. Get her tucked back into her dorm soon after that. Then on to rescue her da. So damn easy.
"Vedma." He spoke to her softly as he shifted closer. "It'll be all right."
Her hackles raised at his tone. So solemn. So committed. So damn earnest.
Her heart kicked in her chest.
Godsdamn antherless idiot visibly braced—squared his shoulders and straightened his spine—readying to swear himself.
"Vedma." His voice dropped. "I am—"
She drove her fist into his chest, knocking him back a step. "Don't you say it! Don't say it! I don't need some shit oath from you."
Her panicked words bounced off the bulkhead of the hold, ricocheting inside her ears alongside her thrumming heart.
She didn't want a man's oath. Didn't need it. Once they left this barge, she damn well didn't want to be tethered to a Teras Ero snot who thought clade tattoos—the name he stamped on himself, rather than a name he earned—remade the man. House always came first. She could smell the privilege on him, and it stung like nasal-pinching vapors. He had ties to a Great House—had to with that clipped accent—and she wanted nothing to do with those snide bastards. Nothing but boneless sacks of useless shit. The whole lot of them bloated with excuses when pressed about her da's imprisonment.
Rastur growled at her as he rubbed his chest. "Was going to say, I am not going to leave you."
"How the hell was I supposed to know that?" She puffed her chest out and deepened her voice, mimicking him. "You jabbered on like you got somethin' oath-worthy to say."
He laughed, a bitter bark that had her snapping her mouth shut.
"You really thought I was going to swear myself to you after knowing you less than a day?" He arched his brow at her. "Hell, less than a few hours?"
Chided, she broke his gaze and hated that her cheeks blued. "Wouldn't be the first time. Got no use for pretty words here."
He laughed again, sounding so damn superior. "A very sard-like thing to say."
The recording chimed in. "...there was this perfect Athela..."
This time, Vedma just shook her head in disgust. "Ram those words so hard assward, I'm gonna wear 'im like a damn glove."
"Not as a boot, Vedma?" Rastur asked as he headed toward the hatch. "You like to handle things with a personal touch?"
Dyr crept into the mining control room exuding caution only for pretense. He'd already used his technopathy and tapped into the barge's surveillance feeds. No one located in the control room posed a threat. The feed displayed two bodies on the deck that hadn't so much as twitched in the past half hour. He also picked up six additional WristCunes—personal comm devices—pinging the local AthNet, but couldn't locate the wearers on the surveillance feeds. He suspected the feeds were corrupted and not showing all areas of the ship. Fortunately, though, until they reached the control room, every corridor and compartment they passed remained empty.
Dyr paused over the Gwyretti bodies, debating if he should have Vedma wait in the corridor. No sense pushing the limit of her fortitude by tossing more death in her face.
"Not the same wounds," she said, standing at his side.
Her voice sounded clinical. Her expression st
aid. Her observation astute. All three surprised him. He'd expected whimpers, tears, and some mild fainting.
The two Gwyretti lay face down on the deck, and other than filthy clothes, they bore no wounds. "They're not like the body on the pipe. That poor soul looked like he had his back ripped open as he stumbled into the maintenance bay."
She snorted. "His back looked like it met the business end of the ore extractor."
Dyr's own back tingled at the thought of the ore extractor, with its hook-like protrusions, shredding flesh like it tore through the metal hull of the pipe.
Looking about, he noted that the control room had been stripped down to the console casings. System components clustered together on the deck, as if ready to be hauled away. The disarray matched perfectly normal activity for Gwyretti, who subsisted in the Tendex by legally salvaging, and sometimes criminally pilfering, abandoned ships.
He shook his head. "Doesn't make sense. These two were salvaging systems components. So why use the ore extractor to attack one of their own and damage their own pipe?"
Vedma frowned and turned around, a grim look on her face. "This ain't right, Rastur. With the consoles all torn out, how did the extractor even operate?"
Needing more answers, he consciously reached out for the AthNet. His technopathy only connected to the ship and its repetitive stream of alarms and reports of offline systems. No greater access to the Tendex and its vast bytes of data. He agreed with Vedma. This sure as fuck wasn't right.
As if to underscore his unease, that maniacal cock pimple from the ship-wide comms spoke up. "There was this perfect Athela."
Vedma shook her head and grumped, rumbling like a dark cloud.
He had to give her credit. Since waking from the cryo-bin, their lives had played out like a horror story whispered amongst cadets at bunk time. Hell, they'd only encountered corpses thus far, and other Athelas would have whimpered and cowered to hear such a deranged voice threatening them on an abandoned ship. Her mettle impressed him because even he had to rein in his own skittish impulses. His skin pebbled and rippled with apprehension as though thousands of insects scurried over his flesh. Should he attribute this unease to the stimulant amping up his adrenaline, even stirring up sexual arousal? Or to a valid sense of foreboding that he should heed?
He turned to Vedma, who now knelt over one of the Gwyretti as she inspected his back.
"There's a dart in him." She reached a hand out.
"Don't touch it!" He lunged for her, stopping short when she pulled back, holding a WristCune.
"Ech." She scolded him. "Not an arse. Goin' for his WristCune."
Now that he stood closer, he could see the Gwyretti's hand positioned close to his shoulder. He mumbled his apologies. Godsdammit, this stimulant had just about outlived its usefulness.
She closed her fingers over the personal comms device, her eyes staring vacantly ahead.
"Shit!" She pierced him with an angry glare as she rattled off the current standard date. "I've been missin' for months, Rastur."
A chill moved through him. "Over a year for me."
She stared at him, unmoving for several seconds, making him want to shift on his feet. "When we find these fucks, you get first go at 'em."
That... well, he had not expected her to say that. At all. Then again, if she'd smothered him with sympathy, he'd be highly suspicious and a little bit queasy. She'd proved herself too sard to coddle him.
He swallowed, clearing his throat. "Much obliged."
She stood and moved to the next body, giving him a hearty knock on the shoulder as she passed him.
Ah, now she coddled him.
"This one's darted, too." She inspected the second WristCune. "They haven't had AthNet access in over a week. Think we're outside the Tendex?"
He hadn't even considered the specifics of their location. He'd ruled out the Teras Dominion planets or sectors because they would have been easily found. He just assumed the kidnappers held them in the same degenerate sectors he lurked in as an Unsworn, skirting House Jahat territory and hovering close to Radost or Giger Station. However, their inability to access the AthNet placed them in an area of space that even marauders didn't travel—the Uncharted Void.
With grim determination, Dyr dove into the pile of stripped components. If those fucks had dismantled navigation—
He shook his head furiously, derailing that thought. He turned his back on the pile. Those items would keep. He needed to clear the rest of the ship. He needed to get eyes on those half dozen WristCunes attached to the network. Their signals were all clustered together. Finding them became his top priority.
He side-eyed Vedma as she continued to skim the Gwyrettis' WristCunes.
He should be doing that, pulling data that could actually be useful to them, instead of persisting with false pretenses. After all, he now wagered Vedma manipulating him for his technopathic abilities against the odds of them surviving this ordeal by utilizing her technopathy alone. When presented in those stark terms, his reticence to disclose his technopathy painted him as a spoiled, self-serving arse of a Teras. He asked too much of her.
Besides, she alleviated one of his concerns, had she not? She had made it clear to him that she didn't want his oath. Had never even asked for his house. Direis keep him, but back there in the ore hold, he had been about to swear himself to her.
I am Teras. I am...
He stalled, not quite sure how he planned to bind his oath since he couldn't stake the honor of his house. But in that moment, she had looked so stricken and vulnerable, he couldn't stop the oath from surging up inside of him.
Thank fuck she knocked some sense into him. Struck him down like a tree in a storm. To be sworn to the Athela Anathema would have been disastrous. Gods, how his father would have crowed.
The ship-wide comms crackled. "...there was this perfect Athela..."
He couldn't help it. His eyes snapped to her, and she caught him looking. With a grump, she just rolled her eyes and turned away from him.
"...and an Unsworn technopath."
Godsdammit.
She pivoted back around slowly and pinned him with a glare.
Dyr snapped to attention as he chose both his words and tone carefully. "I'm sure they're talking about somebody else. That's not us, Vedma. Not me."
Her eyes narrowed to slits, flashing like dry lightning—silent, without a crack of thunder, the vanguard of the coming storm. "By Unholde, I do know you."
"Impossible. We've never met—"
"You're a technopath," she said venomously, and then with even more derision, "and you're Borac's heir."
Dyr's chest ached. "My brother's the heir. Has been for thirty some years. I'm just one of a multitude of spares."
Just a breeder.
He braced himself for her inevitable change. The sard ass Vedma of his acquaintance would now morph into a grasping, simpering Athela, intent on growing her clutch of suitors and begetting a technopathic babe. Attempt to snag him up in her whirlwind of chaos.
Only, she scoffed at him with another of her guttural 'echs' that conveyed so damn much. Like pity coated in impatience.
She crossed her arms. "Ain't how it works and you know it. You got technopathy—you got the house seat."
Ah, but he capitalized on not only tradition but a technicality. "Not if you're Unsworn. Then you haven't got anything."
Vedma glared at him and growled.
Dyrastur fucking Borac. Arsehole technopath from a godsdamn Great House. The best thing she could say about him was that he didn't disappoint her. She had guessed that he had ties to a Great House, and Unholde himself was probably cackling at how Fate handled her suspicions.
He only vaguely resembled the images that she'd seen of him from House Borac's clutch negotiation proposal. Of course, those images showed an earnest young Fleet cadet wearing a crisp uniform without a drop of clade ink on his skin. The man before her had bulked up, filling his tall frame. His long hair defied the Fleet regulation shorn length,
and the clade tattoos, the ones exposed on his thick neck and corded hands, gave him a menacing appearance. She looked at Dyrastur and saw an Unsworn, not the technopathic heir of a Teras Great House.
But he was undoubtedly here, and she was certainly fucked.
Since the laws meant that House Borac now sheltered her, she doubted that Dyrastur's father, Thane Borac, would let her go without some hellish terms renegotiated a dozen times over. The thane strategized like a fanged viper, a limbless lizard that somehow managed to have his hands in all the pots. Never had one of her plans blasted her in such a shitload of blowback. Her hard-won, mostly clutchless status lay atop a butcher's block.
Dyrastur snagged the Gwyretti's WristCune from her hands. He inhaled, his chest expanded with air.
"Here," he said, handing the device back to her.
The display showed the layout of the barge. A cluster of locator dots flashed in the berthing corridor, indicating additional WristCunes connected to the local AthNet. She gaped at the screen, a rush of humiliation coursing through her. He had effortlessly used his technopathy to connect the Gwyretti device to the few functioning systems of the barge. Her own technopathy hadn't picked up the WristCunes on the Gwyretti, not until she made physical contact with the devices, let alone the six additional devices Dyrastur so easily identified.
"We need to check out berthing." He held his breath again. There, his deep inhale, that was his technopathic tell, and she hadn't even noticed it until now. "Surveillance feeds exclude that area, but the WristCunes pinging the barge aren't in motion, so..."
She grimaced and glanced toward the Gwyretti on the floor. "Think we'll find more dead salvagers?"
He gave her an assessing look but didn't couch his reply. "Possibly."
"...perfect Athela and an Unsworn technopath..."
She snarled and jutted her chin upward, toward the ship-wide comms. "What about that? Have you located that recordin' yet?"
He frowned, his expression turning inward. "No. I haven't identified which system is playing that recording."
Trepidation spiked through her. "Or who operated the ore extractor?"
His jaw clenched, rippling the ink on his neck. "Not all the surveillance feeds are working."