The alarm ceased, and the AI made a brief announcement. The shuttle dropped down into the track with a hydraulic hiss and began the slide into the launch chute. Inch by slow inch, Asier disappeared from view. Lyra stood at the hatch, watching him until he was gone, replaced by the solid black darkness of the launch chute.
The AI growled at her some more. A red light appeared on the flight panel. Swallowing the scream that threatened to boil out of her throat, she fumbled in the pitch black to the front of the shuttle and belted herself into the pilot’s seat.
Light appeared first as a faint line along the bottom of the bow window. The glow grew until it filled the cabin with the cold gray light of a distant, nameless dwarf star.
As the rear of the shuttle reached the terminal of the chute, the thrusters came on, and Lyra was pinned against her seat. The shuttle shot out into the cold, empty expanse of space, and all sound fell away except for the sobbing sounds of her own breath, the horrible racing of her own heartbeat. There was nothing but cold light, long shadows, and the void.
Asier’s ship hovered darkly behind her. She felt his gaze like a weight on her body.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, wiping at the senseless hot tears that blinded her. When she could see again, she wiped her hands on Asier’s shirt, still damp with her sweat. Leaning over the control panel, she set the controls for a jump that would take her to the nearest Ellis gate.
Even through her grief, she felt a brief flash of awe over the capabilities of Scaeven tech. The fact that even a short-range shuttle had the capability to project a temporary superluminal bridge was astounding.
But very quickly the awe was consumed by sorrow. Lyra lay her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. The AI growled some sort of confirmation for the jump, and a second later, Lyra felt a disorienting shift that told her she’d passed through the bridge.
When she opened her eyes, the dark void of the Ellis gate was in front of her. She let out a heavy breath, and joined the line of ships waiting to jump.
Chapter Fifteen
Pavo-Indus Supercluster, NGC 7014
Manftigh Station
IG Standard Calendar 236.44.29
When Lyra reached Manftigh Station, she half feared Asier would be there waiting for her. But he wasn’t. She felt as much disappointment as she did relief, but let herself pretend to feel only the latter.
She moored Asier’s ship in a private berth. Payment for docking was extracted upon departure, so she didn’t have to worry about covering the docking fee.
It was idiotic, but she kept the shuttle’s RSP core. She knotted it into the hem of Asier’s t-shirt.
Extremely conscious of her odd dress, her bare legs, and bare feet, Lyra walked down to the commercial docks and found a Ravanoth tungsten hauler bound for human territory.
Captain Torsung was an elder Ravanoth female, her rosy pink skin freckled with red age-spots. Like most of the Ravanoth, she wore a scarf draped over her hairless head and wrapped loosely over her shoulders. The scarf—and her flight suit—would be woven with thermal fibers that kept the cold-blooded Ravanoth comfortable in the cooler temperatures that most other creatures preferred.
The captain’s round, black eyes regarded Lyra with the analytical detachment that seemed intrinsic to their species.
Seven faded blue tattoo lines ran from the captain’s lower lip, over her chin, and down her throat, where they disappeared beneath her clothing. They marked her as an adherent of a common Ravanoth religion—Paltunkth.
More of a spiritual ideology than a form of worship, Paltunkth required adherents to provide aide to any who asked of it, if it was within their power to do so. As a result, it was about as rude as possible to directly ask a Paltunkth for literally anything, since they categorically would not refuse you.
Instead, the polite method was to muse, aloud, that a particular object or occurrence might be optimal, leaving it up to the listener to decide whether or not they cared to assist.
Lyra couldn’t afford good manners. She’d found one Paltunkth among the crew, and asked for passage aboardship. It hadn’t been within the crew member’s ability to provide, so instead, he’d delivered her to the captain.
“I have an empty berth you may use,” Captain Torsung said, the trader’s Creole softened by the burr of her Ravanoth accent.
Lyra followed the captain into the ship’s loading bay, ducking workers and machinery. The heat and humidity of the ship was oppressive to Lyra’s human sensibilities, but she’d expected it.
“Could I borrow a comm?” Lyra asked as they moved through the ship’s passages. “I need to contact my sister and my employer.”
“It will be done,” the captain told her.
They climbed two levels in the ship. Captain Torsung stopped at a supply station, and handed her a blank comm.
“Keep it,” she said, meeting Lyra’s request with more than the tenets of Paltunkth strictly required. She also gave Lyra two lightweight workers’ jumpsuits without a word.
“The gifts of your goodness return infinitely,” Lyra said, thanking the captain with the Paltunkth blessing, in roughly accented Ravanoth.
Captain Torsung gave her a faint smile—which, from a Ravanoth was as emotionally expressive as a hug—and continued to lead Lyra through the ship’s passageways. They stopped at a narrow hatch.
“This berth is yours. A guest would be likely to remain on this level of the ship,” the captain said, using Paltunkth obliqueness to make a statement Lyra interpreted as a command.
“It will be done,” Lyra answered in the Paltunkth manner.
“The commissary is midship, on this level. The comm will give you access to the nutrition synths for the duration of your journey.”
Lyra thanked the captain again, and entered the berth she’d been given. There was a narrow bed and a private lav, and that was it. It was more than she could have hoped for. She locked the hatch and stepped into the lav. She desperately needed a shower. She was still streaked with crusted sweat from her journey through the ventilation system on Asier’s ship.
She peeled his shirt off and undid the little knot she’d tied into the hem. The RSP core fell into her hand. She set it on the bed next to the comm.
The lav was equipped with a Ravanoth sand shower. It didn’t leave human skin feeling as clean as a water or air shower, but it was better than nothing. After she’d sanded the grime from her skin, she dusted the powdery remnants away and pulled on one of the jumpsuits.
She slid the RSP core into the chest pocket of her suit, and then grabbed the comm and sat on the bed. Within minutes, the heat of the ship had her sweating again. She wasn’t likely to feel clean until she boarded a human vessel.
She called Sofie first—leaving a message when her sister didn’t answer. Disappointed, she contacted the university to find out what had been made of the ship’s hijacking.
The director of interplanetary research was stunned to see her. All the abducted women had been listed as presumed dead. The director promised to take care of alerting the authorities of Lyra’s continuing existence.
Lyra filled him in on the events following the hijacking—glossing over her involvement with Asier with a simple, “They’re not all bad. One of their own saved me.”
Shortly after hanging up with the director, a call came in with an URGENT tag.
Sofie.
Lyra tapped the screen, opening the call. Sofie’s wide-eyed, tear-stricken face filled the comm screen.
Other people often remarked on the familial resemblance between the two of them—though Sofie had gotten her biological mother’s coppery auburn hair instead of the white-blonde Lyra had inherited from their father, and instead of the ice-blue of Lyra’s eyes, Sofie looked out at the world from dark gray irises.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Lyra said, smiling.
“Lyra!” Sofie’s cry was warped by the tinny speakers. Tears streaked down her face. “I can’t believe it! I was in class when you called! Whe
n I saw your name on my missed calls—” Her sister broke down into wordless sobs.
Lyra’s eyes filled with tears. “Aw, Sofie, don’t cry. I’m alright. It’s all alright.”
“Where are you?” Sofie sobbed. “I want you home. Right now!”
Sofie was fiercely intelligent and mature beyond her years, but just now she sounded like the little girl Sofie had first met eight years ago. Lyra’s heart cracked more than it already had, and she found herself crying nearly as hard as her sister. She hadn’t wept in years. But since meeting and leaving Asier, she’d turned into a leaky faucet.
Too many different pains tore at her heart, squeezed her throat. She missed Asier as much as she was angry with him. She missed her sister as much as either of those. And yet, somehow, part of her wanted to hitch a ride back to Manftigh Station and find her way to Asier’s home planet.
“I’m on a merchant vessel, headed for Ravanoth. From there, I’ll get a ride to the Kuiper belt. The university has a research post where I can wait for a return vessel.”
“How long?” Sofie warbled, staring frantically back at Lyra.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. It depends on the Kuiper station’s shuttle schedule.”
Sofie dropped her face into her hands. “I thought you were gone,” she wailed. “I thought you were…” she descended into another round of wracking sobs.
“It’s okay, honey. I’m alive. I’m on my way home.” Lyra wiped at her slowing tears.
“What happened, Lyra? The university wouldn’t tell me anything. But I found out the hull was breached by unknown tech—”
Of course she did. Sofie’s sly, tenacious cleverness had plagued Lyra as much as it’d filled her with pride.
“—and everyone aboard was killed by the vacuum. But only the male crew members were found aboard.”
Lyra’s heart fell. “The men all died?” She asked hoarsely.
Sofie’s face fell again. “You didn’t know? Lyra, I’m sorry. I thought… I don’t know. I’m not thinking.”
Lyra took a steadying breath. “Don’t beat yourself up, Sof.” She glanced around the small cabin she’d been assigned. The captain had been generous and kind, but there was no doubt she was being monitored. “I can’t talk about it here. I’ll fill you when I get home, okay?”
Sofie nodded.
“Tell me about your classes,” Lyra said, forcing calm into her voice and her face.
Sofie smiled at the abrupt change in topic, but went along with it.
Hours later, long after she’d finally ended her call with Sofie—ordering the girl to go to sleep—Lyra lay in her berth, curled in on herself. What had been a dull ache, low in her abdomen, had turned to sharp, splintering cramps. She’d been living off of nutrigel aboard Asier’s ship for too long. An hour ago, she’d had the first meal in days that required chewing. And apparently her stomach wasn’t happy with it.
Levering herself from the bed, she made her way to the lav. Ravanoth toilets were a bit of a balancing act, since they perched on theirs like birds. Lyra braced herself on the bulkhead as she crouched over the toilet, beads of sweat breaking out over her body.
She shuddered as a particularly powerful cramp twisted up her guts. Inside herself, she felt something shift. It was not a natural movement. The cramps ratcheted up until she was whimpering in pain.
But instead of the intestinal trauma she was expecting, a streak of vivid red blood dripped from her body. Lyra stared in confusion. It couldn’t be menstrual blood, or menstrual cramps. She hadn’t menstruated since she’d been seventeen years old, when she’d had the birth control implant installed.
As if in rebuttal to that logic, something small and metallic slipped from inside of her, clattering against the steel walls of the toilet. Instantly, the cramping ceased. Overcoming instinctive revulsion, Lyra reached into the basin of the toilet and picked the small device from the shallow pool of blood. She cleaned herself and then went to the bath, cleaning viscous blood from the device. She held it under a light, examining it closely.
It was her birth control implant. Her body had ejected it.
It prevents the biological mechanisms of a human conception. It can’t interfere with Scaeven seed.
Lyra’s hand flew to her stomach. Cold fear washed over her.
It alters your body in ways that make you compatible for Scaeven conception.
It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be pregnant.
Chapter Sixteen
Virgo System, Andromeda Galaxy
Copernicus Station
IG Standard Calendar 236.45.17
It took eighteen Earth Standard days of interstellar travel, two ships, and three gate jumps to make it back to Copernicus Station—where Sofie’s university was located, and where Lyra lived when she wasn’t aboardship. In that time, Lyra’s body resumed normal function. But, she noticed warily, her appetite had nearly doubled.
When she set down on the docks at Copernicus, she was met by the university’s director of intergalactic research, and several armed sentinels. Sofie was nowhere to be seen.
“Welcome home, Captain Hallas.” The director held out his hand to shake. Lyra returned the gesture, forcing herself to stop scanning the docks for Sofie’s face and make eye-contact with the director.
“Where’s my sister?” She asked.
“Sofie Hallas is safe at your residence. You can join her there after you’ve been debriefed.”
Lyra fought down the urge to tell the director where he could shove his debriefing. Instead, she nodded stiffly and allowed the sentinels to escorted her to an unmarked auto. They brought her to the university, debarking at the medical sciences building. Inside, they brought Lyra to the Chief Resident, who conducted her medical exam.
After a standard physical examination, the Dr. Khoury handed her a biometric scanning probe. Lyra slid it beneath her tongue, closing her mouth tight. It took the machine only a few seconds to read her. It chirped at the completion of its scan and the doctor glanced up at her.
“Did you know you were pregnant?”
Lyra sighed shakily. “I suspected.”
“Looks like you’re about eight weeks along.”
Lyra frowned. That wasn’t possible. She hadn’t had a lover in… well, a very long time. Asier was the only male she’d been with in years.
The doctor gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry about the father. The university can contact his family, if you would like.”
It took her a second to understand what the doctor was suggesting. And then it hit her—eight weeks ago she would’ve been aboardship. By the doctor’s estimate, the only possible father could’ve been another crew member. And all the male crew members were dead.
Given the fact that Lyra didn’t have an implant anymore, the doctor would’ve assumed that the pregnancy had been intentional, and the relationship therefore a serious one.
“I’ll handle it,” Lyra said quietly. It was for the absolute best that the university believed her child to be from a normal, human union. If they knew the truth…Lyra shoved the thought from her mind.
“Your vitals are indicating stress,” the doctor murmured. “Are you alright?”
“Of course not,” Lyra said. “What kind of lunatic wouldn’t be stressed right now?”
Dr. Khoury conceded with an apologetic smile and turned his attention back to the scan.
She she was cleared of any foreign pathogens, and declared in good health. The doctor led her to a shower facility and gave her clean, university branded scrubs to change into.
Her personal items were stowed in a sealed waterproof bag. She didn’t have much, just the ill-fitting Ravanoth flight suit, her ejected birth control implant, and the IPS core she’d kept from Asier’s shuttle. It’d been foolish to keep it. She didn’t know enough about Scaeven tech to be certain he couldn’t somehow still access it and find her.
But, maybe a small part her wanted to be found. In any case, it was the only memento she had of him. She took it f
rom the bag and slipped it into the pocket of her scrubs.
When she emerged, clean and dressed, the two sentinels were waiting to lead her to a quiet conference room just down the hall from the medical offices.
She spent hours answering questions. Two different, high-ranking, sentinels, the director, several other researchers, and the university provost pelted her with questions, examining every detail of her experience.
She left Asier and her relationship with him completely out of the story, referring to him simply as “the Scaeven male who facilitated my return.” Even that clinical description had her throat tightening with emotion.
“You said the Scaeven pronounced the planet name as Kiri?” One of the researchers asked. “What language is that derived from? His own?”
“The spiders—did they exhibit indications of sentience?”
“Did you notice any seismic activity in conjunction with the climactic extremes?”
“We’d like to take samples from beneath your fingernails so that we may assess any material we recover. Will you sign here to acknowledge that this is within the confines of your original employment contract?”
“Can you elaborate on the medical fluid the alien male used to treat the injury from the predatory worm? What color was it? Did it have an odor? How viscous?”
“If I gave you pen and paper, would you be able to recreate any of the Scaeven glyphs?”
And on and on and on—questions about Scaeven transport technology, about the toxin in their bodily fluids, about the colors of the forest on Kiri, about Lyra’s health since the first Scaeven encounter.
Hours later, she found herself dully reciting the same thing to every question. “I really don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Alright,” one of the sentinels—a young, tough-looking woman with dark, assessing eyes—cut the others off. “That’s enough for today. I’m sure Captain Hallas would like to get some rest.”
The researchers looked mutinous, but the provost nodded. “Of course. The sentinels will escort you to your home. ”
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