Eclipsed (Heartstone Book 3)

by Frances Pauli

  “Wait.”

  “Captain—”

  “Unless you want Jarn involved too.”

  He waited. They’d specified that in their deal, hadn’t they? No Jarn. If the captain respected that now, maybe it meant he still honored their deal. Dielel watched the ships too, tried to imagine what they were looking at, how the captain would know what Jarn was up to all the way over there.

  “Okay. Inside.”

  Whatever he’d been watching released his attention, and the bulky man swiveled so fast Dielel jumped backwards. The captain didn’t comment, ducked through their door and into the hab before Dielel could recover his composure. By the time he carried the food inside their quarters, the captain had made himself comfortable on the only chair in the room. That left them sitting on the cot, where Jadyek already waited. Dielel placed the food containers on the floor and joined his heartmate.

  Jadyek tossed him a worried look. Justified. Nothing about this pirate planet boded well for them.

  “I need to know where your lot is from.” The captain drilled straight to his point.

  “We’ve told you already. We are Shrouded,” his heartmate tried.

  “Yes, yes.” The big man waved a hand at Jadyek and focused on him again. “But where before that?”

  “What do you mean? Our people have lived on Shroud for generations.”

  “But where did they come from originally? How did you get to Shroud?”

  “We are the descendants of seven refugees. Seven bloodlines that proliferated despite the elements. Seven strong…” He realized he’d been reciting from his textbooks. The captain squinted across at him with absolutely no understanding, no real interest either.

  “You don’t know where they came from, do you?” the brute said.

  “They found sanctuary and safety beneath the Shroud,” Jadyek offered.

  “Sanctuary.” The captain chewed on the word a moment. “Where did they come from, these seven purple bastards?”

  Jadyek’s jaw dropped open. Dielel placed a soft hand on his thigh and tried to ignore the blasphemy. The forefathers came in second only to the Shrouded Heart on a short list of sacred topics. He gave Jadyek’s leg a pat to reassure them both and then inhaled slowly before answering the pirate.

  “The origin of our forefathers has been lost to time, I’m afraid.”

  “No one kept any records?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t seem odd to you?”

  “No.” He stiffened. They might have abandoned Shroud, broken the laws and fled the planet, but they were still Shrouded, which to his mind put them on a level this man could not fathom. “One doesn’t question the forefathers, Captain.”

  “Interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “Just is. Just makes me wonder, maybe, if there ain’t no records on purpose.”

  “You’re saying the planet of our origin was kept secret intentionally?” Jadyek asked.

  “All I’m saying is it’s interesting.”

  “Well thank you for your interest,” Dielel said. “But the answer to your question is, we don’t know.”

  “Yup.” The captain stood and scratched the seat of his pants. He gazed around the habitat, took his time cataloging the space as if there were anything in there to note. “Interesting. Well, I’ll see what I can do then.”

  “About our deal?” It felt like he was pushing, like he’d taken a step too far, but the captain didn’t falter. Only nodded his hairy head and moved for the exit. Thank the Shroud.

  “Yup.”

  Dielel waited until the door shut behind him. He waited until they were alone again, until the pirate had left them with a final, muttered, interesting. Then he picked up the top ration container and passed it to Jadyek with a smile. It wouldn’t help to discuss it. They had no more choices left. They needed to eat, to keep their strength up, and their eyes open.

  “Why would he ask about that?” Jadyek asked the only logical question.

  Unfortunately, he had only one answer today, the same answer he’d given the captain.

  “I don’t know.”

  He retrieved and pried open his own ration box, eyed the food inside, and tried to imagine what the captain was up to. Or better yet, why seven men had fled to Shroud or what they might have been fleeing. He smiled, and ate, and chanted over and over in his thoughts. I have no idea.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She fell asleep eventually. Before fatigue took her, Corah tried to contact Niels without alerting the guards. Three times she tried, and all she managed to do was whisper into the static and pray someone would be able to un-garble it on the other end. Niels wasn’t answering. He might already be orchestrating a rescue operation, or he might have decided to cut all ties to her, to pull back and go deeper until his “perfect time to strike.”

  Alternately, the signal might not have gotten through at all.

  She had to bet they were on their own, but that meant she could operate autonomously now. She had no weapon, though, and would have to improvise. And she’d fallen asleep with her thoughts scrambling over plans to find Mofitan, or possibly assassinate Gervis first. Did the supply asshole have weapons on his shelves? What would she have to go through to get her hands on one? Where had they taken Mofitan?

  All of which were moot questions until she could escape her current environment. The creaking of her walls, which happened every time a guard leaned against her shed, perforated any ideas she nursed about sneaking past them. Shadows paced in front of her door when she fell asleep, and when she woke again, the walls sang to her that the bastards were still there.

  What if they killed him?

  Not the first thought she’d have chosen upon waking, but there it was. Gervis wanted the information in the man’s head. He’d admitted as much to her when he ordered her to fetch it for him. He wanted to know what Kovath’s child was up to in Wraith. He needed to know and that should mean he couldn’t afford to kill Mofitan.

  Unless the man struggled too much, unless he gave them no choice.

  The tightening of her chest gave her away. She’d done her best to snuff out all attachments to people over the years. Each friend or loved one only offered the enemy a chance to strike, a vulnerability to expose. Somehow, here in Spectre, Mofitan had growled his way nearer to her walled-up feelings than anyone had in her entire adult life. Corah wanted him to live.

  And if Gervis knew that, he might kill the man just to spite her.

  She scrubbed at her eyes, cleared the sleep away, and opened the bag she’d slept curled around. Device still in side pocket. Guards still leaning against wall. But the morning held an eerie quiet. Something in the air said this was not the time for risks. Corah stuffed the communicator to the bottom of the bag and then zipped the top closed. She dressed fast and still hadn’t finished buttoning her shirt when the door opened.

  “Early to bed and early to rise, my dear.” Gervis Dern strode into her shack as if it were his private quarters back in Spectre. “Are you in such a hurry to break our new friend’s defenses?”

  “I think I can get him to tell me what you want.” Corah breathed from her diaphragm and tried to judge his mood. He sounded chipper, but there was a hidden edge that usually meant Gervis was in a foul temper. “I hadn’t asked him about Wraith at all, yet. You specified information about his personal motives.”

  “Which you were completely inept at discovering.”

  “He’s less guarded about this Dolfan. I can pick up surface emotions there already.” Her best bet would be to tell the truth, as much of it as she could share safely, just in case he had more psychics lurking outside. “If we start there I suspect we’ll have what you want quickly enough.”

  “Except for the small matter of his escaping.”

  “I still should be able to… What?”

  “He’s missing currently. I thought perhaps you could enlighten me as to where he’s gone.”

  There it was—the threat, the hint of his true,
murderous mood. Mofitan had escaped them? He’d gotten free. Corah’s heart leapt for half a second.

  “I find it odd that he didn’t make his way here, to be honest,” Gervis echoed her own thoughts.

  He’d escaped, and he’d run for it. Of course he had. The man owed her no loyalty. He probably wouldn’t suspect that she’d need rescuing as well. She’d been on the wrong side the whole time, after all. Corah swallowed and found a voice that only partly sounded like her own.

  “Why would he come here?”

  “Why? I have no idea, darling. Why would he come here? Very good question.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Gervis.” She tried indignation, brushed off his insinuations with a toss of her hair. No time to wrap it up before he stumbled in, and now, she wished she had the tightness of the bun to keep her thoughts straight. “He can’t have gotten far. What are your men doing to recapture him?”

  “My men?” Gervis moved fast when he wanted to, silently too. One moment he was inside her doorway and the next he stood beside her, his slimy breath tickling across the thin material covering her shoulder. “My men will follow my exact orders, as usual, my dear. And what will you do? Follow orders or disobey me again?”

  “I never…”

  His hands found her throat, like lightning, like a street kid diving for a dropped coin. He wrapped his fingers around her neck, not quite squeezing, and Corah found two laser eyes focused on her. Face to face, Gervis’s rage spilled over into her mind whether she wanted his thoughts or not. His skinny body had more strength than most people ever guessed just looking at him.

  Corah knew better. She knew enough to tremble when his fingers tightened. She knew he wanted her dead, and also, something swimming in the tide of his anger, something he didn’t want her to know. It darted away like a fish, but Corah chased it. She did her best to ignore the demon tightening his grip on her larynx, the way the world darkened at the edges. She needed to know what he knew, to catch his secret and examine it.

  He threw another one to the surface, blocked the deeper thought with a more urgent one. Trap. He’d come here specifically to torment her, to make her squirm and if possible scream. Scream, Corah. Look at what I could do to you if I chose. A series of scenes paraded through their grappling minds. Tortures, pains, invasions. Gervis threw them at her faster than she could bat them away. The true treasure, the secret he diverted her from slipped away in the fresher revelation. He’d use her to trap Mofitan, to lure the man out of hiding long enough to recapture him.

  Corah clamped her mouth shut too late. She had been screaming. The room still echoed with her terror. Gervis had won this round in more than one way. He’d kept something vital from her, something she knew she’d never coax to the surface again, and he’d distracted her enough for her animal instincts to take over. She’d screamed and now, if Mofitan was anywhere he could hear her, she’d have betrayed him by luring him into Gervis’s clutches.

  How she knew he’d come, she couldn’t say. Why she believed it, made no sense at all. He’d left without her, hadn’t he? Escaped. But somehow, Corah knew he hadn’t gone far. He hadn’t run for safety because that was not in his nature.

  Gervis relaxed his grip on her and she gulped a painful breath, gasped like the fish she’d imagined, and tried to get control back. He knew he’d won. His low chuckle shivered her spine, raised low bumps on her flesh, and caused her to twist in his grip despite the fact that she knew he’d never let her go. Never.

  “Hold still, darling,” he purred. “Any minute now.”

  He didn’t expect violence from her, however. When she stamped her boot onto the top of his, Gervis howled and released her. She had no weapon, but Corah wanted him dead more than she wanted to live. She swung her fist into the side of his head and watched him stumble away. A weapon. The room had to hold something she could use to end him.

  She kicked him with her other foot, missed his knee and the opportunity to floor him. He staggered toward the door and howled for whomever he’d left outside. They’d have a rifle, no doubt. Corah leapt for Gervis, landed on his back, and wrapped her arms around him so that they both fell.

  They’d be less likely to shoot her if she’d entangled herself with the boss. He twisted in her grip, the floor slammed them together, and Corah rolled, tried to drag Gervis on top of her, to make a shield of the man.

  The door opened, but she only saw it as a blur, a lighter smear of gray at the edge of her vision. They’d tear her off him next, any second now. She lunged with her head, butted against something hard and bit down on whatever part of him she could reach.

  “Get her off!” Gervis screeched in her ear.

  Miraculously, however, no one shot her. Perhaps, they had orders not to. Did Gervis want her alive as well? She bit down again, pushed her luck a little further and earned another howl of pain from the bastard she chewed on. They definitely should have shot her by now. In fact, someone should have killed her moments ago.

  Corah tightened her grip on Gervis’s bony frame and listened to the sounds of scuffle around them. Around them? She looked up in time to see legs shuffling past her face. Scuffling meant a fight, meant someone else in the room on her side. She didn’t have time to register a hope as to who it would be. Gervis twisted, growled, and lunged, smacking his head against hers. The room spun and darkened. Corah snapped her teeth and found nothing at all between them.

  Like a viper, the man wriggled from her grip. Like the bastard he was, he landed a kick to the side of her head on the way out. The world blinked, out and back in. When light returned it had gone much quieter. The shouting all seemed farther away, and the steady thumping both more distant and much, much louder somehow.

  “Explosions.” The voice sounded familiar, but her swimming head couldn’t pin it down. “More explosions.”

  Strong arms wound around her shoulders and legs. With a rush of vertigo, Corah lifted into the air, fought her stomach, and slammed her eyes shut on the world. “Niels?”

  “Who?” The growl identified him.

  “Mofitan.” Corah opened her eyes and caught the frown furrowing into his brow. “It’s you.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “No.” She blinked and tried to sort out her head. “I thought you’d gone. Gervis said…Gervis!”

  He set her on her feet, but kept an arm at her back. She needed that. The empty shack still swirled when she tried to look around. No one remained with them inside, and from the sound of it, outside had gone mad.

  “Where is Gervis?”

  “Ran when the explosions started. I saw him clock you.”

  “He’s getting away.” She did her best to run for the door and ended up collapsed, facing the opening on her knees, worthless. His death had been in her hands, and she’d let him slip through them. She hadn’t finished him and now… “What explosions?”

  “The whole mine is under attack.”

  “Niels.”

  “Him again, huh.” Mofitan bent over her, scooped her up with his chest rumbling. “I don’t like him already.”

  “I have to catch Gervis.”

  “Outside? It’s chaos out there. Dern’s running fast. Not sure we can catch him.”

  “Please.” She couldn’t bring herself to wiggle free, suspected she’d end up on the floor again if she did try. “I have to kill him.”

  “Hmm.” He rumbled again, but at least he moved for the door. “I’m not usually much for chitchat, but I think you and I have a lot to discuss.”

  “After I kill Gervis Dern.”

  “Works for me.”

  He had her through the door in three steps. Outside, the air had gone to dust and smoke. Huge eddies swirled in all directions and through that haze, shadows darted everywhere. Where is he? Corah blinked and felt the grit already piling against her cheeks and lashes. Where would Gervis go if the world were on fire?

  “The landing pads.” He’d run away as fast as he could. “He’ll head for his transport.”<
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  Mofitan didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to stop her either. He tightened his grip on her, pulling her against his chest and out of the full force of smoke and spinning grime. Then he leapt into the fray and ran as if he could see through the stuff, as if he’d run blind every day of his life. They dodged panicking miners, laser fire, and once, Corah was almost certain, a black-clad rebel that could only belong to one of Niels’s teams.

  She should have hollered at that one, perhaps. She should have looked for her allies instead of chasing her vendetta. But Niels might try to stop me. He might not want me to kill Gervis today. Corah tucked her shoulder against Mofitan’s chest and peeked at the shadows, tried to identify the huge black shapes enough to label them pipes, buildings, or spaceships.

  “There.” Mofitan directed her into the shadow of a massive pipe. They hunkered there while the air cleared enough that she could see again. Her head no longer swam either, and as if he sensed it, Mofitan set her on her own feet and looked straight at her. No judgment. No ulterior motive there. He just steadied her with a hand on her shoulder and stared down at her. “The ships are just out there. What do you need from me?”

  “Stop him, if you can. Hold him here.”

  “You mean to kill him?”

  “Yes.” She meant to. She needed to. “I should have already.”

  “Then keep up.” His stern expression cracked. A sideways smile broke his tight lips and flashed impossibly white teeth considering all the filth in Banshee at the moment. He winked once and then lumbered off into the haze.

  Corah ran after him, kept herself on his heels so that she couldn’t possibly lose sight of him, confuse him with anyone else in the fray. The explosions sounded farther away now, and they happened with less frequency. The fight had either moved back into the pits or the bombs had been set to blow in a chain heading in the opposite direction. They still heard guns firing, but the poor visibility had stilled even that to an occasional burst.

  Perhaps everyone had figured out they could be firing on friends as easily as enemies in this shit. Perhaps they were just all too busy running for their lives or their various escapes. Either way, Mofitan led her out onto the landing pads and no one gunned them down. They tore across the paving toward the sound of engines howling, but even as they ran, Corah could see hulking vehicles lifting into the air.