Moon Struck

by Heather Guerre

  Asier regarded him darkly. “I’ll create a distraction.”

  Hadiza paced around the circumference of the central chamber in Lyra and Asier’s warren-like home. Shortly after Asier had left to give testimony at Errol’s tribunal, a team of Scaevens had arrived with a Ravanoth medical scanner. They’d recorded Hadiza’s biometrics, said nothing, and departed.

  Hours had passed since then, and they’d gotten no news. Comms were forbidden in the justiciar chambers, and so they would know nothing until the tribunal was over and Asier was back in his shuttle—with or without Errol.

  Lyra sat curled up on one of the seats, frowning in concentration while she read a Ravanoth manual on the Scaeven language. Sofie sat on another seat, playing with Orion. The Scaeven infant made big gummy bites at Sofie’s fingers, but she drew back too quickly for him, and landed a boop on his little gray nose each time. Orion’s big, blue vulpine eyes squinted shut and he giggled merrily—a hoarse, rasping sound, deeper than human baby laughs. Lyra looked up after every giggle, her frown melting away to an adoring smile.

  Hadiza continued to pace.

  “You’re going to wear a track in the floor,” Sofie said. Her tone was light, but nervous tension radiated off of her, same as Hadiza. While she was looking away, Orion managed to clamp down on Sofie’s fingers, and she yelped in surprise. Lyra and Hadiza burst into laughter. It was too sharp, and went on too long, edged with hysteria, but it was a release of sorts.

  Swiping tears from her eyes, Hadiza flopped onto the seat next to Sofie. She held out her hands, and Sofie passed Orion to her. She settled the infant on her lap and quietly observed him while turbulent thoughts danced hectically in the background of her mind. She trailed a fingertip over his plump cheek, grinning when he turned and tried to bite her. She whisked her finger away just in time, and tapped him on the nose as Sofie had done. He let out a gruff little chortle that was somehow both menacing and adorable at the same time.

  Hadiza tried to imagine Errol’s son in her lap. Did Scaeven babies take anything from their mother? Did Orion’s ice-white hair come from his platinum blonde mother? Did his stubborn little chin come from the Hallas side? Or were those merely coincidences?

  Would Hadiza’s own son have anything of her? Perhaps a slight curl to his hair? Skin just a shade warmer than the usual Scaeven monochrome?

  A soft ping sounded through the room. The domestic AI—which Asier had since programmed to speak in the Creole—announced, “An unmarked vessel has entered Mor-Talis territory.”

  Lyra looked up from her reading, her frown deepening. “Hail the pilot,” she told the AI.

  The AI pinged its acknowledgement. After several beats of silence, its smooth, Ravanoth-accented voice filled the room again. “The vessel has blocked contact.”

  Lyra’s gaze lifted to the glass dome overhead, peering through the forest towering around it. The sky was barely visible through the frothy canopy, but the shadowed glide of a small cruiser was unmistakable.

  Lyra got smoothly to her feet. The worried confusion had disappeared from her face, replaced by an affectless mask of decisive calm. In that moment, she was every inch the former Black Astro—one of the ADF’s elite combat pilots. “Standby for defense protocol,” Lyra commanded the AI.

  The AI pinged confirmation and fell silent.

  Hadiza felt a slight tremor ripple through the ground. The shuttle had landed.

  Lyra moved the wall and opened a perfectly disguised recessed panel. She pulled out an electron gun and checked the charge. “Sofie, take Orion to the safe room. Lock yourselves in.”

  Hadiza handed the infant over to his aunt, and he and Sofie disappeared wordlessly down one of the tunnels.

  “What if it’s Errol?” Hadiza asked.

  “It might be.” Lyra guided Hadiza to the mouth of a tunnel, where they’d be able to see any approachers, while remaining nearly invisible to outside eyes. “But—”

  A sudden sound like an electric zap cut her off. Lyra hissed and dropped the electron gun, her hand clenching convulsively.

  “What happened?” Hadiza demanded, seizing Lyra’s wrist.

  “An EM pulse,” Lyra gasped. Her hand trembled in Hadiza’s grip. Black scorch marks streaked her blistered, red palm. “Takes out electric weapons. No ordinary civilian has tech like this.”

  Ping. “An external AI has been detected. Electron locks have been disabled. Security has been—” the AI cut into Scaeven for several long growling words, then back to the Creole “—breached. Security—security—security has been—has—security has been breach—breach—breach—” The sound of every single physical door bolt releasing at once cracked through the entire home like gunfire. “Defense protocol—” the AI cut to Scaeven again, then broke into a single repeating syllable “Rarararararararara—” before cutting into abrupt and total silence.

  Lyra and Hadiza turned to look at each other. Lyra’s calm military bearing failed, and her wide, frightened eyes shot to the tunnel where her sister had disappeared with her son.

  “Go!” Hadiza shoved her towards her family.

  “Lyra grabbed Hadiza’s arm with her good hand and dragged her along a labyrinthine tunnel system that descended down, deep into the earth, far beneath the living quarters. It led to a small, reinforced chamber with old fashioned deadbolts that could only be undone by brute force. Above them, heavy bootsteps pounded over the floors.

  “Sofie,” Lyra pounded frantically on the sealed titanium door. “It’s us, let us in!”

  The locks clicked, and the door swung open as the sound of heavy, booted steps echoed down the tunnel towards them. Hadiza and Lyra stumbled into the chamber and Sofie swiftly shut and sealed the door behind them. Orion had picked up on the fear in the room, and began crying in loud, rasping howls.

  “Shhh, my fussy little badger,” Lyra soothed, taking him into her arms and holding him close. “It’s alright, love, shhh…”

  Lyra’s gentle murmurings were lost behind the sound of Hadiza’s pulse pounding in her ears. This had to be about Errol. What had happened at the tribunal? Why had Asier’s home been attacked? Was Asier in trouble, too? Or had Hadiza’s connection to Errol brought danger down on Lyra’s family?

  “Can they get through the door with electron guns?” Hadiza asked.

  “They won’t have any functional electron weapons,” Lyra answered, never looking away from her son. “That EM pulse would’ve taken theirs out, too.”

  Vicious pounding sounded on the titanium security door. “We have a plasma torch!” a deep, growling voice announced in the Creole. “Open the door now, and we will not use it.”

  “Get fucked!” Lyra shouted back.

  “We are only here for Errol Sin-Haros’s human. Surrender the female, and nobody else will be harmed.”

  All eyes turned on Hadiza.

  “Get fucked,” Lyra called again. But Hadiza had seen it—that brief flicker as Lyra glanced down at her son. The change in her eyes from cold fury to dignified resolve. She was doing what she thought was right, even if it risked her family.

  “I’m opening the door,” Hadiza said.

  “What?” Sofie squawked, reaching for Hadiza as she passed. “No! Lyra, tell her—” She caught sight of Lyra’s somber expression and let her hand fall away. “Lyra?”

  Lyra ignored her sister, kept her solemn gaze fixed on Hadiza. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes I do.” Hadiza reached for the first bolt.

  Outside the door came the high-pitched whine of a plasma torch warming up.

  “What if you’re pregnant?” Sofie demanded.

  Hadiza’s hand froze on the latch. “I don’t think I am. They tested me, and Errol’s still gone. The tribunal would be over by now.” She glanced back at Lyra. “Wouldn’t it?”

  Lyra shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Hadiza looked at the infant clutched tightly in Lyra’s arms. His terrified yowls filled the chamber, echoing off the hard, empty walls. She turned back
to the door. “I’m opening the locks!” she called out.

  The whine of the plasma torch died away.

  There were six massive bolts to flip and slide, four running in opposing horizontal directions, two running vertically. When the last one was freed, the door was ripped open, revealing four towering, brute-faced Scaevens dressed in plain black flight suits and ship boots. Four pairs of yellow eyes assessed the women. One of the Scaevens carried a thin, long-barreled weapon that Hadiza had never seen before, but which was still unmistakably meant to cause harm. The sight and circumstances were so reminiscent of when she’d been captured by the traffickers that Hadiza instinctively fell back a step, an involuntary scream strangling in her constricted throat.

  One of them stepped to the fore, his massive shoulders filling the width of the door. He nodded to Lyra. “You and your son will not be harmed.” He turned his attention to Hadiza and Sofie. “Which of you—” he gestured between them “—belongs to Sin-Haros?”

  “We’re sentient creatures,” Sofie snapped. “We don’t belong to anyone.”

  The leader glanced back at the others, snarling briefly in Scaeven—which Hadiza quickly guessed to mean “take them both.” Big bodies surged into the room, two of them pinning Lyra against the back wall, while iron-strong hands closed on Sofie and Hadiza and hauled them into the tunnel.

  Back in the chamber, Lyra’s furious cries blended chaotically with Orion’s terrified howls and the scuffling sound of a fight. Hadiza and Sofie were frogmarched back through the tunnels, up to the ground level, and out of the home.

  Dried leaves and needles crunched beneath Hadiza’s bare feet. In her peripheral vision, she saw Sophie kicking and thrashing in her captor’s hold. Hadiza knew she ought to do the same, just on pure principle, but she couldn’t find the strength to bother. She’d been through this before. She’d lost count of how many times the Scaeven traffickers had overpowered her and her fellow captives. And no matter how much she’d fought, it had always ended the same way.

  A cloaked ship sat waiting for them. The exterior was entirely invisible to the eye, but the ground was disturbed where its feet sank into the soil, and the rear hatch was open, revealing a traction-coated ramp that led to a dark loading bay.

  Sofie noticed it at the same time Hadiza did. Her struggles intensified. She descended into her native English, biting out what could only be vicious profanity as she twisted and yanked against her captor’s grasp. Soil and leaves sprayed into the air as she kicked against the ground, sending pebbles and grit pinging off the invisible sides of the ship.

  Hadiza marched slowly, evenly, watching the loading bay draw nearer. Her captor held her wrists with one hand, and kept an electron gun pressed to the back of her head with the other. Why? She wondered. Did he think they didn’t realize what the EM pulse had done to electric weapons?

  With the awareness that the electron guns were a meaningless threat, her mind raced to come up with an escape plan—what hadn’t she tried yet? Surely there was something she could do that wouldn’t depend on physically competing with her captor.

  Sofie was beginning to tire. Her fight was fading, her outraged bellows breaking off into heaving breaths. Hadiza glanced over at her. Was there something the two of them together could do? Could they… link up somehow? As she considered and discarded useless tactic after useless tactic, Sofie suddenly sagged against her captor, letting out a wordless scream of frustrated rage. The Scaeven holding her visibly flinched against the sound, his face contorting in agony. Hadiza felt her own escort falter, a pained growl rumbling in his chest.

  Sofie’s scream trailed into heaving breaths, and the two Scaevens seemed to recover, letting out a string of growling exclamations.

  Realization dawned on Hadiza as she remembered the earplugs the traffickers had always worn. In French, she said, “Keep screaming! It hurts their—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, Sofie was screaming again. Hadiza joined in, letting out a throat-shredding, ear-piercing shriek that could have woken the dead. The Scaeven holding Sofie released her arms, clapping his hands over his ears.

  Sofie sprinted straight towards Hadiza, stooping low and tackling her out of the other Scaeven’s hold. The two of them rolled over the ground in a tangle of limbs. Hadiza leapt to her feet, seizing Sofie’s arm and pulling them both upright.

  “Run!” Hadiza panted.

  “Where?” Sofie asked.

  “I don’t know.” She hadn’t thought of anything beyond getting out of their captor’s hands.

  It turned out not to matter. They were overcome almost immediately. One big gray hand fisted in the back of Hadiza’s tunic, jerking her to an abrupt halt, while the other hand clapped over her mouth before she could even begin to scream. The same happened to Sofie.

  Now Hadiza fought. She knew it was useless, but her blood was up, and there was nothing left to do. She kicked and thrashed as she was dragged backwards up the invisible ship’s loading ramp. The two other intruders sprinted from Lyra and Asier’s home, leaping onto the shuttle. Lyra appeared long behind them, Orion still clutched in her arms, her face a mask of terrified fury.

  The last thing Hadiza saw as the loading bay door descended, was a single shuttle in the distant sky. She couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her mouth.

  He’d come for her. Just as he’d sworn he would. Just as he always did.

  Errol’s shuttle—piloted manually at speeds exceeding atmospheric velocity allowances—reached Mor-Talis territory just in time to see a cloaked shuttle closing its bay. Leaves and dirt fanned out beneath the structure as it began to lift off—Errol’s only visual guide to the other vessel’s location. Without time to think, he shoved the yoke down, arrowing straight into the trajectory of the cloaked ship’s liftoff.

  The collision slammed through his body.

  Errol blinked, and he was suddenly immobile, suspended upside down in his seat restraints. The ground stretched overhead. The nose of his shuttle was torn away completely, revealing a complicated comb of shattered fuel cells. Pain shot up and down his spine. He fisted both hands, flexed his feet. He had full feeling. Moving clumsily, he released his restraints and dropped to the ceiling of the hijacked Enforcement shuttle. He landed hard on his shoulder, but the pain was lost under urgent, choking fear. Hadiza.

  He struggled upright, and surged unsteadily down the shuttle’s main corridor. He released the side hatch, and when it didn’t slide open, he kicked it free with one vicious slam of his boot heel. When he dropped to the ground, he was greeted by the sound of an unsettled forest. The outraged cries of various forest creatures was underlaid by the low drone of a failing propulsion train. He followed the sound, sprinting around the backend of his shuttle to find the unmarked, undeclared vessel laying on its belly, wedged between the massive trunks of two hithik trees.

  The vessel’s cloaking system was malfunctioning, flickering in and out of visibility. In broken pulses, Errol could see that the thermal tiles on the topside of the cruiser had been sheared away entirely, revealing the skeleton frame of the hull. The rear loading door was crumpled inward, punched away from the airlock frame, leaving just enough of a gap for Errol to squeeze through.

  He had no weapons—his escape from Enforcement hadn’t allowed the luxury of arming himself, and the vehicle he’d hijacked was an unarmed courier shuttle. He ripped a sheared thermal tile from the edge of the shuttle before slipping inside.

  In the empty loading bay, he moved towards the nearest hatch and pulled it open. A heavy wall of Scaeven muscle fell on top of him, and he surged to meet his opponent—only to find that the other Scaeven wasn’t fighting back. The body slumped off of him, and fell to the deck with a heavy thud. Dead or alive, Errol didn’t care. He stepped over the body and moved into the corridor.

  He rounded the corner, taking a live guard by surprise. In no mood to capture, Errol’s fight response defaulted to kill. He caught the guard in a headlock and dragged the slivered edge of the thermal tile
across his throat. Hot red sprayed the opposing bulkhead. The guard dropped. Errol picked up his weapon, and found himself holding the long, narrow barrel of a plasma torch. A grim smile tugged at his lips. He moved on.

  The luxury cruiser was moderately sized, but constructed along the same layout as all the others of its ilk. Errol followed the corridors to the bridge. The doors were sealed, security grid locked.

  Errol hoisted the plasma torch. He touched the muzzle to the sealed door and released flow valve. He closed his eyes against the blinding light, and sliced through the Inconel-alloy door like swirling a finger through still water.

  When he had finished, the cut portion of the door fell inward. It landed on the deck with a thunderous slam, rattling the entire ship. Errol stepped through the hole, plasma torch in hand, prepared to kill as many of the Sahr’s guards as he had to. He’d stack the bodies in the cargo hold and send the ship hurtling express back to the Sahr with a message written in their blood.

  What he was not expecting to face, was the Sahr himself.

  The elder Scaeven stood between two guards. He was tall, but thin and wiry with age. His black hair, dull and ragged, had been braided into the elaborate, interwoven chains marking his lineage. His eyes were cloudy, the pupils dilated to slivers, but he gazed upon Errol with the ferocity of a much more dangerous creature.

  And for Errol, he was the most dangerous creature alive. Because, while one guard held a human woman he’d never seen before, the other guard held Hadiza. His hand was fisted in her dark hair, wrenching her head back. Both guards kept one hand clapped over the women’s mouths. The Sahr stood between them both, a bone blade held to the other woman’s throat, and an electron gun pressed to Hadiza’s temple. Her eyes met Errol’s, wide and frightened.

  “You know,” the Sahr said, his voice as thin and soft as smoke. “They are so very delicate, humans. I warned my grandson against mating one. ‘Get a Yiruban or a Bijari mate,” I told him. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your lifespan fretting over a human’s fragility,’ I warned him. And I was right. The pretty little creature he got at auction has disappeared, and he has gone half-mad trying to recover her.”