Shades of Allegiance

by Sandy Williams

  “Ash,” Rykus snapped. “Patriarch, do you have a rope?”

  Bian looked unhappy, but he nodded and reached inside the transport. “May God grant you safety and good fortune.”

  “Thank you.” Rykus took the rope, then looked at Ash. She gave him a smile and a nod, neither of which he returned, then they trudged toward the Old Seawall. The waters lapped against its base, receding but still too deep and dangerous to swim through. They veered to the right where a huge pipeline traveled from the seawall to the largest break yard. Smaller ones connected the other yards as well, all of them gathering the waste oils from the decommissioned ships to deliver them to a purification and disposal factory.

  They headed that direction. The pipeline was wide enough to jog side by side. Ash kept pace with Rip, who still had that grim look on his face.

  “You want to say something,” she said.

  “Let’s focus on helping people.”

  She sighed. “Okay. Fine. I’ll back off the old man.”

  “No you won’t. You never backed off me.”

  “That’s because you’re—”

  He shot her a look that made her snap her mouth shut. She tried to suppress her smile.

  His expression softened, and he shook his head.

  “I love you,” he said. “Let’s save some lives.”

  A thunderous groan tore through the air. Ash gritted her teeth, ignored the vibrations of the beam she clung to, and waited while a worker swung back and forth, back and forth, gradually stretching the swing of the pendulum.

  This was taking too long. It had been over thirty minutes, and she and Rykus had only saved seven workers. Three more, including the man now swinging, remained. It was a slow process getting them across the huge gap between her and the ship’s mid-deck. Rykus had climbed farther up the metal beam, almost to the top where it hit the ship’s upper deck, to tie off the rope. He stayed up there, making sure it pendulumed to the workers while she waited farther down and helped pull them onto the beam.

  She tightened her grip on one of the rungs that wasn’t rusted out, then she stretched her left hand toward the man. He reached too. Their fingers brushed.

  He swung away.

  Damn.

  The wind picked up again, and the break yard wailed like a Maginian banshee, metal and wood and plastics shifting and cracking. A section of scaffolding to her right broke and dropped. It slammed against another beam, then cartwheeled into the ocean.

  It was way past time to abort this scheme and get out of there.

  She craned her neck to look up at her fail-safe. “Rhys!”

  “I know,” he yelled back. “Get this one and go.”

  “I’m not—”

  The man swung back. She stretched, grabbed hold of his wrist this time, and yanked.

  His shoulder hit hers, flinging her backward, and the half-rusted rung she’d been standing on gave way. She managed to maintain her grip on a solid rung, but she dropped hard enough that something in her shoulder popped.

  She flailed, found another foothold, then blinked stinging tears from her eyes.

  Far below, a small group of dregs yelled out a hurrah.

  That was the eighth hurrah they’d shouted, one for each worker she’d pulled onto the beam. They should be off the beach, far away from the break yard and the carcass of that ship, which looked like it might face-plant to its side any moment. But no. They stood down there watching and cheering and fisting their chests like she was winning a round of cell ball.

  Probably looked easy from down there.

  “Go,” she snapped at the worker. He nodded and began the treacherous climb down. She waited until he was clear, drew in a breath, then slammed her dislocated shoulder into the beam.

  Sharp, searing pain lightninged down her arm. Air whooshed from her lungs. When she finally wrestled her equilibrium back to steady, the next worker was swinging across the gap.

  One more left after this one.

  She wiped her hand across her face. It came away streaked with blood, and a second later, she registered the ache in her nose and cheek. Must have hit the beam when she fell.

  “Ash,” Rykus called. “Go. I’ve got these two.”

  She shot him a glare. What was he going to do? Climb down, pull the worker in, then climb back up to wait for the next?

  “We need to go.” She could probably grab this kid before Rykus reached her. That’s what he was. A skinny youth. Couldn’t have been older than twelve, maybe thirteen, and he was scared. He clung to the rope with his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Keep swinging,” she ordered. “You’re almost to me.”

  The only clue he gave that indicated he heard her was the increased length of the pendulum. He was using his weight, minuscule as it was, to gain momentum.

  “Okay. You’re close. Reach out.”

  The kid didn’t respond.

  She waited for him to swing back.

  “Reach. Out.”

  He might have shaken his head no. She couldn’t be sure with the way the rope spun him.

  The wind tore past, raising chill bumps on her exposed arms. Her fingers were cold, almost numb. They didn’t have time for this.

  “Kid, one more swing. Grab my hand or you’re dead!” She yelled the last words as he pendulumed away.

  Before he made it back, the beam beneath her shifted hard.

  Her chin hit the vibrating metal, snapping her teeth together. She thought this was it, that they were falling, that this scheme was a damn mistake she couldn’t undo.

  The vibration faded. The kid swung toward her.

  “Grab my fucking hand!”

  He reached out, eyes still shut. Ash stretched…

  And caught him.

  He didn’t release the rope. The momentum of the swing nearly pulled Ash off the beam. She clung to it, clung to the kid, her shoulder throbbing and the beam’s metal ridge digging into her body.

  She drew a deep breath, braced for pain, then yanked as hard as she could.

  The kid yelled. He flailed.

  She muscled him onto the beam, shoved his face against it until he stopped struggling.

  “Climb down,” she ordered. Then she looked up at her fail-safe. “Rhys! Get down here. Now!”

  “One more.” The wind tore his words away. Tore her curses away too, and the beam shifted again.

  The kid hadn’t moved. She put a hand on his shoulder and shoved.

  “Go. Go!” she yelled.

  He snapped out of his paralysis. Began to scramble down.

  She gripped a rung. Looked up again. Rykus was still there, still babysitting the rope, coaxing it back and forth, back and forth, trying to get it to the last worker.

  Somewhere in the break yard, something popped. The sound fissured the air like a physical thing, and more noise followed. More pops. More metal-bending creaks. It felt like the whole atmosphere shimmied. Then it moved.

  No. The ship moved. It tilted farther over, debris pouring off its exposed decks like rotting logs over a waterfall. The last worker slipped over the edge too, just another object in the wreckage of detached consoles, machinery, and broken bulkheads that spilled into the waters below.

  Numbness spread through Ash. The platform was too far down. They couldn’t outrun the tilting ship. She watched it crash over, the seconds stretching and stretching.

  And stretching.

  She blinked. It shouldn’t have been possible. The laws of physics and gravity shouldn’t have allowed it to happen, but in one of those little moments of chance that couldn’t be planned or explained, the ship halted its fall. Something—the mud or muck of the ocean floor, the piling up of debris, or the fucking claws of an invisible monster—prevented it from smashing into the water.

  “Go!” Rykus yelled. “Go!”

  His words were a whip that cracked her into motion. She pressed her boots against the beam, straddling the rungs, then she descended fast, gripping and releasing rungs in a barely controlled slide.


  She hit the platform hard, rolled out of the way just in time for Rykus to do the same. The workers who’d been watching them had grown a brain cell or three and fled across the shallow waters covering the beach. The kid was running after them. They’d make it to the seawall in time.

  She and Rykus might not.

  “Come on!” Rykus roared, yanking her to her feet. He said something else, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar behind her. She didn’t have to look to know the ship had lost its fight with gravity. They were in a race against a debris-filled tsunami.

  She pushed her body as fast as it would go, ignoring her accumulated bruises and injuries, ignoring the burn in her lungs, the fatigue of her muscles, to sprint across the sludge-draped beach.

  The cacophony behind her rattled her brain. She felt the chaos in the sand beneath her boots. This would be close. Too fucking close.

  Rykus edged ahead and veered right, toward a flatbed vehicle that had been slammed up against the seawall. She followed, refusing to give in to her body’s demand to quit, refusing to fall farther behind.

  Her fail-safe leaped onto the crunched hood of the vehicle, then to the top of the cab, then he flew through the air, using the power in his legs to surge up toward the top of the seawall.

  Ash jumped to the flatbed’s hood when Rip’s fingers reached the edge. She hit the roof when he pulled himself up. She was one step away from making that same leap when the vehicle shifted under her feet—the ocean winning the race. It was just enough movement to throw off her jump, to take some of the oomph out of it. Some of the height.

  She tried to make it, reaching, stretching, willing some miracle to close the distance between her fingers and the top of the seawall.

  She slammed into it instead, started to slide down.

  Then she slid up.

  A dozen hands dragged her across the ground. Adrenaline and an instinct to fight when outnumbered and on the ground kicked in. She kicked and shoved her way free, only belatedly realizing she was safe when the dregs backed off, giving her a wide circle of space.

  Rykus broke through that circle, dropping to the ground beside her. He helped her sit up, then pressed his palm against her cheek. His thumb slid across her skin, gentle, over a swelling injury. A bruised face was the least of her problems though. Her side was oozing again, the shoulder she’d dislocated throbbed mercilessly, and there wasn’t one square centimeter of her body that didn’t hurt.

  “I’m okay.” She pushed away his hand.

  He started to say something, but Mel stepped into the circle. “You are the gods-damned luckiest dreg. I don’t know how you’re not dead.”

  “It’s skill, not luck.” Ash tried to funnel bravado into her voice. She was pretty sure she failed.

  “Anything broken?” Rykus asked. His hands had found their way back to her body, running over her shoulders, down her arms.

  “Bumps and bruises, Rhys,” she emphasized his name. “I’m fine.”

  “Ash—”

  Her head only spun a little when she rose to her feet without help from her fail-safe.

  “We owe you,” someone said. She focused on a dreg, one of the workers from the middeck, who’d eased forward from the crowd. “What do you need?”

  Mel made an exasperated sound.

  “She needs space. Get out of here.” Mel’s gaze burned over the circle of workers. Most of them got the message, backing up, walking away. The few who lingered didn’t do so long. Toman, Mel’s dreg-on-a-leash, moved toward them. They fled.

  “Always endearing yourself to the masses,” Ash said.

  “Fear’s still the universal language round here.” Mel crossed her arms and studied Ash through narrowed eyes. Ash waited for an insult, some jab intended to ding her pride, but the woman let the silence stretch until the hair on the back of Ash’s neck prickled. Mel didn’t do quiet. She didn’t do stationary or patient either. And why the hell was she still there?

  Ash kept Toman in view, and a zing of energy shot through her body, readying her to fight.

  Mel’s arms dropped to her sides. Ash almost drew her Covar, but the woman shrugged and said, “If you can walk, let’s go. Scius’s dregs are crawling around this place, and Chace wants you back at the House.”

  Ash scanned their surroundings again. Most of the workers had moved on, but some lingered a short distance away. Some watched. Some might have been waiting for a signal from Mel or a ping from their comm-cuffs. Mel had connections to Scius. She might have already contacted the boss.

  Mel’s smirk returned. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Of course I don’t—”

  Rykus’s hand landed on her shoulder. “We’d appreciate a ride.”

  Ash knocked his hand away. “No.”

  His expression firmed in that familiar way, the one that said he was in charge and the rest of the KU needed to fall in line. It felt like he’d attached a thousand strings to her body. One little tug, and she’d be his puppet.

  17

  Seeker’s God. The loyalty training.

  Ash’s jaw set. Her breaths became strained.

  Rykus reached for her elbow, frustration ripping through him. He hadn’t given any kind of order—he’d just looked at her—but Ash had locked up like a ship bombarded with too many viruses. She was in a battle for control of her free will, and the only thing he could do was stand there and wait for her to fight through it.

  Mel stepped into view, tilted her head. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” he grated out. Then, more gently, “You’re fine, Ash. You’re good.”

  He saw the moment she regained control. Her shoulders straightened and her gaze hardened. When the muscles in her arm loosened, then went taut again, he almost released her, but she stepped into him, hard and quick and seething.

  “We’re not going back to the House,” she hissed.

  He shifted his weight forward to prevent her from pushing him back.

  “Give us a minute,” he said to Mel. He didn’t take his eyes off Ash. She looked at him with so much animosity, so much viciousness. She needed to calm down, needed to find her equilibrium and think things through.

  He gripped both of Ash’s arms so she wouldn’t attempt to take his head off, then he looked directly at Mel.

  “Go ahead,” he said, keeping his gaze and voice steady. “We’ll follow you.”

  Mel snorted. “You’ll follow me to the grave if you don’t—”

  “Go,” he growled.

  An expression very similar to Ash’s flashed across Mel’s face, and a warning cut down his spine. Toman, Mel’s strongman, stepped into his peripheral vision. Mel didn’t give him an order though. She replaced her anger with a bored look and shrugged.

  “Sure,” she said. “I wasn’t exaggerating ’bout Scius though. Might want to keep your heads down.”

  She turned inland and strode away from the seawall. Toman didn’t budge from his spot. Neither did Ash. She was still raging, barely controlled fury radiating from her skin. It almost rivaled the frustration coiling in his gut.

  “You need to take the damn booster,” he said.

  “Is that a command?” Her voice should have chilled the air. It should have created a wider circle of safety between them and Toman and the few workers limping along the seawall.

  “It’s fucking logic, Ash. You’re hypersensitive, and I’m tired of working with a frayed tether.” He gave her a little shove, just enough of a push to put a couple of centimeters of distance between them. “I need you focused. I need your mind clear and your thoughts quick so you can see what’s going on here.”

  Her eyes burned. “You want control.”

  He stared. His brain struggled to make sense of the accusation.

  “What?” The word was barely a whisper.

  “It’s who you are. People follow your orders, or they get the fuck out of your way.”

  It was like she’d taken her knife out of its sheath and slid it between his ribs.

 
; “I’ve all but twisted gravity trying not to control you,” he said, voice rising. “If I was in control, you wouldn’t have set foot on this planet. We’d be in a capsule halfway across the universe, as far away as possible from Neilan Tahn and this damn crusade you’re on!”

  Ash’s gaze darted toward Toman. The man stood there with no expression on his face, but damn it. Rykus was losing control now, not over Ash but over himself. Raising his voice. Letting her tangle his judgment.

  He shook his head, then strode away because what else could he do? Nothing right now. He was too frustrated. She was too vulnerable.

  He passed Toman, who kept his eyes locked on Ash. There was something menacing in his gaze, something off, and Rykus slowed, almost stopped, but then Ash was beside him. Toman muttered something unintelligible and followed Mel.

  Rykus drew in a breath and kept walking. Neither he nor Ash spoke as they left the seawall and the mangled break yard behind. They quietly became part of the crowd. The majority were onlookers now. They outnumbered the battered workers and already exhausted rescuers.

  He glanced toward the sludge-smeared sky. Somewhere beyond the atmosphere, the capsule approached. It was probably easing into far orbit. The vessels inside it would be queuing for departure, though why anyone would want to come to this godforsaken planet, he didn’t know. Glory was a tomb, a purgatory, a world designed to crush spirits.

  And it was the planet where Ash had earned her not-dead-yet attitude.

  It was almost unbelievable she’d survived.

  “Toman,” Ash said quietly, breaking their stalemate. “The burned dreg. He’s an anomaly.”

  He studied her a moment, the way the smog-filtered light managed to cast a glow across her face, the way her strength radiated past the bruises and smears of dirt on her skin, and the way she walked with confidence despite everything Glory and the KU threw her way.

  He wanted to pull her close. He wanted to push her against a wall beneath a shower and wash away all her grief and sorrow. He wanted to protect her from the emotional enemies living in her head and the physical ones who wanted to erase her from the universe. He wanted her.