Chapter 14
ONCE OUTSIDE THE SHIP, Morgan walked along the Wayfarer’s hull. Where his mind insisted was down, Auord spun, a jewel on velvet black. Glints marked other ships in orbit or on approach. The distant Port Authority station was blindingly white, rings caught by the rising sun.
Their lights were off. As instructed—with a reassuring lack of questions—Captain Erin brought her ship within the large shadow of the Worraud. The distance between the two continued to close, albeit very slowly. Alarms would be sounding throughout the Scat ship and in the shuttle limpeted to her far side.
Morgan kept the bone between him and the Scat, taking a step at a time until he reached the spot he’d determined beforehand. He was, at this point, supposed to activate the display in his helmet to verify his position.
Where was the fun in that?
The Human bent his knees, hit the mag release, and launched himself—gently—into space. It wasn’t as though he could miss the Worraud. The pirate filled his sky. The trick was to arrive with as little momentum as possible. He had what the Wayfarer provided already. With any luck, he’d added just enough to reach the other ship before it moved. A possibility reduced by the docking shuttle, but as soon as it was secure, the pirate could—likely would—take evasive action.
Especially with Terk on the coms to keep up the panic.
Unable to feel his passage, the bone blocking the forward view, Morgan counted his breaths. Ten. Fifteen. Nothing but hull in view now.
Nineteen and the bone shifted in his hands. The Assemblers were active, reacting to the nearness of their target. He could see the outermost ring of the escape hatch beyond the bone and braced himself.
Contact.
The hatch autos would respond to the touch of life. First to unlock—the bone vibrated, then pulled him forward.
Morgan found himself inside a Scat air lock.
The hatch closed itself, air immediately blasting through the floor grid. The Assemblers abandoned the bone for the grid, cilia holding tight. He stepped around them as he removed his helmet, clipping it to his belt as he headed for the inner door. It couldn’t open till the pressures matched. He pulled a stunner and braced himself.
There.
The second the door unlatched, hands scampered past Morgan to squeeze through the opening, climbing over one another in their haste. By the time he stepped over the sill, the corridor beyond was empty.
Should have used glue.
He shrugged, dismissing the escaped Assemblers, and headed left at a jog. Terk hadn’t been able to produce a scan of the Worraud, but Morgan knew his way. He’d made a point, last year, of studying Scat ship design; every edge helped when dealing with beings liable to switch from ally to predator without notice.
The chaos of the alarm and shuttle bought him moments, if that, before someone on the bridge noticed an unanticipated Human on sensors. The Worraud had a single cargo hold, one deck below this. The stasis box, and Rael, had to be there.
So would the shuttle, but the proximity of the Wayfarer should keep its doors locked tight till the all-clear.
A lift could be recalled from the bridge, so Morgan entered the first ladderway he came across. Ignoring the steps, he gripped the null-grav railing with a gloved hand and slid down.
Short of the next deck, he swung around, catching a rung with both boots. The alarm had stopped, and his lips thinned. They knew they had an intruder.
The hunt was on.
Gloves off, force blade loose in its sheath, Morgan eased to the floor. About to exit, he froze, the taste of change filling his inner sense. Hardly surprising, given he was sneaking around a Scat ship—
—but he hadn’t tasted such a warning since—
Didn’t matter. There was no time to figure it out and no guarantees he could.
He pushed the door open with his shoulder, hard, and jumped into the corridor beyond.
To find himself face-to-face with a stranger.
Interlude
HIS FACE MUST BE A STRANGER’S. It was impossible we’d meet again, here, like this.
Neither of us moved, even to breathe, and all at once my resistance crumbled and I believed. Jason Morgan was here. He’d appeared time and time again at the end of hope and beyond expectation, so how could I be surprised now?
But this wasn’t the Morgan I remembered. This version was thin, worn from inside. His dear face was marred with lines carved by grief, and I felt my heart give a single, heavy lurch of despair. I understood. Accepting, I took a slow breath.
I wouldn’t do this a second time. Couldn’t. Not to him. I opened my mouth, not to reveal myself, but to hide.
And that’s when Jason Morgan seized me by the throat and brought up his knife.
Chapter 15
MORGAN RAISED THE KNIFE. “You were in stasis,” he heard himself say. Protesting—as if it was Rael’s fault she stood there with his hand tight around her throat, watching him with eyes alive and aware.
Her mouth moved. Trying to answer; fighting for breath. Cursing his own weakness, he eased his grip. “Sira sent me,” she gasped.
Morgan released her, his resolve crumbled. He put away his knife. “Why?”
“To find the Clan.” Hand trembling, Rael reached up to touch the bruise blooming around her white neck, but all she said was, “The shuttle.”
He gave a curt nod. “This way.”
It wasn’t far, but they couldn’t go as fast as he’d have liked. Rael kept herself on her feet with a hand on the wall. Seeing that, Morgan moved to put his arm around her waist. She flinched aside, eyes wide.
“Rael, let me help you,” he urged gently, despite a deep, growing anger. She’d been badly treated, that was plain. They should head back to the Wayfarer, get help. “I can give you a locate—”
“No! No. I can’t ’port.” She pulled aside the blanket serving as clothing to show him the ugly wound on her hip. “There’s more, here.” A gesture to her front.
Staples held her together, the sort he’d use to attach a cover to a cargo crate. Around them, the skin was red and swollen. Every step must be agony.
He handed her the stunner. “Hold still,” he ordered, unable to keep fury from his voice. Coming to her other side, Morgan placed an arm behind her shoulders and bent to put the other behind her knees. “Tell me if I hurt you.” He rose, cradling her against the suit.
“It’s all right,” she said, whether to him or not he couldn’t tell, for the words were oddly breathless.
“Good.”
Careful not to jostle her, Morgan strode down the corridor to the next junction. There, he put his back to the wall and eased his head around for a look.
An Assembler hand scampered past.
He felt Rael start. “It’s okay, they came with me.”
“Really?” she murmured. “I thought it was one of mine.”
Something to sort later, the Human decided.
Granted they made it that far.
Interlude
I’D MADE IT THIS FAR, I told myself. As nightmares went, I couldn’t complain. In Morgan’s arms—though the spacesuit was every bit as unyielding and uncomfortable as I remembered—not dead, yet—though technically I was and Rael wasn’t, and the part where Morgan had been about to kill me—her—required explanation—but if I turned my head, so, and gave the tiniest sniff?
The scent of him filled me.
Plus, we were about to reach the shuttle, and the Clan I had to find. It didn’t take much to guess Morgan had come for them, or why. “Yihtor,” I whispered.
A nod. “He told me to find you. I thought to—doesn’t matter.”
To end Rael’s misery. My heart ached again, this time for my dear Human, faced with such terrible duty. We’d brought him nothing better. “Is he still alive?”
“Yes. Shh.”
I ti
ghtened my shields, but Morgan didn’t offer mindspeech. He was moving again, slipping around the corner as though I weighed nothing. I readied the stunner, glad of a weapon.
Only to find I didn’t need it.
Morgan set me on my feet in the open door to the cargo hold, holding out his hand for the stunner, then used the weapon to gesture sharply to the shuttle’s air lock. “Go.”
I edged my way along the wall, it being the route free of corpses.
Three had been Scats, their bodies lying where they’d crumpled, snouts aimed at the floor. A different body was nearby, this one crisped and still smoking above the waist. I covered my mouth and nose, aghast to see Morgan squat beside it to check pockets. But he’d known battlefields, my Human, and what was this, if not another?
A fifth dead, facedown in front of the air lock. Luck beads were braided into her lanky brown hair, and she wore spacer coveralls with Auord’s Port Authority logo on the shoulders. The pilot. I stopped because I could go no further, staring down.
Morgan reached by me to key the inner air lock, then helped me step over the body and move through into the shuttle. After that, he became a blur, sealing doors, taking the pilot’s seat, hands flying over the controls. “Do you know how to strap in?” he checked, over a shoulder.
Of course, I . . . it was Rael he doubted. “Yes,” I replied. Choosing the bench as the least painful option, I sank down on my good hip. I secured the straps as best I could without crossing any staples; now the action had paused, each seemed intent on reminding me I was vulnerable flesh.
“Final warning. Breaking dock,” Morgan announced, not to me, but to the coms. The air filled with outraged sibilants and hisses. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” my Human said next, cold and sure. “Port Authority’s on their way, and you’ve quite the mess in your cargo hold.” A pause, more hissing, then, “Us? Didn’t see a thing. Shuttle out.”
He slammed a fist to close the connection.
“What didn’t we see?” I asked quietly, unwilling to ask: Was it you? though I’d watched Morgan kill a Scat with his mind before. Not, surely, the shuttle pilot.
Having set our course, Morgan spun the chair around to regard me, his expression grim. “Two Clan—a female and a male—rode up on this shuttle with a stasis box. They’d reason to believe it contained Yihtor di Caraat’s mindless body. The Clansman’s dead, back there, courtesy of the Scats. The other?”
The Scats had killed two, but I felt no urge to correct his count. The names the Watchers howled, greeting the Stolen returned, had been of a Chosen pair. As for the Clanswoman? I’d seen no box, but I’d heard the Watchers’ protest. “She ’ported himself and the box safely away.” A ’port tearing another wound in the M’hir. This had to stop. “Where did she go?”
“Good question. Any idea what set them at each other?”
“The captain woke R—me from stasis against orders. He feared the Clan. I think he wanted me as a hostage. It wouldn’t have worked. My kind,” I grimaced, “don’t understand negotiation.” Or other species, but that was old news. “By the time the Clan arrived, I wasn’t where he’d left me.”
The corner of his lips quirked in that half smile I knew. “Bravely done.”
I gestured gratitude, stopped as something hurt. My breath caught.
Morgan’s expression changed, and he left his seat, coming to kneel beside me. To my chagrin, he undid the straps I’d managed to fasten. “Can you lie down?”
Rather than waste breath answering, I toppled sideways, feeling warm hands lift my legs onto the bench. “That’s better.” He lengthened the straps, placing one around my shoulders, the other at my thighs, then found something soft to put under my head. “Rest, Rael,” Morgan ordered. “There’s a medbay on the Wayfarer—the ship I hired. We’ll be there soon.”
Light as a feather, familiar as love itself, fingertips brushed my forehead, taking with them the worst of the pain. His gift, freely given.
It was all I could do not to weep.
Aside: The Goth
THE CASUAL VISITOR to the portcities of Iktia, the Goth homeworld, would encounter a typical theta-class humanoid species, with safe-for-most food choices and technology blandly similar to any Human inner system. The Goth were famed for a refined love of the ridiculous extending from abstract art to Goth politics, said to have the most entertaining parliamentary system in the Trade Pact. No one was sure if their sense of humor was a quirk of Goth biology, or a defensive response to the gloom of perpetual cloud cover over the planet’s fertile landmasses.
But what lived in those clouds had nothing to do with humor.
Clear of starship lanes, thousands of platforms floated out of sight, each containing a small number of residents. Monitors, they were called, living as far from the world below as possible. The surrounding press of cloud granted a mystique to the work that helped new arrivals cope with its wearing blend of dread and boredom.
That it discouraged premature departures without exhaustive interviews and psych evals was a bonus, the monitors’ task too important to diminish with failures. Those below could go about their business, secure in the knowledge that should any Hunters escape the Black, they’d feast on those above first and hopefully be satisfied.
Goth compassion being of a practical nature, most monitors were those about to die soon anyway.
It hadn’t always been this way. Once, all Goth had embraced the Black, drawing it close when ready for sleep, to dream in harmony; inviting it near those about to die, that they enter a realm of peace.
Then Hunters had come through, and Goth learned these bitter truths: that the Black wasn’t peaceful—
That it wasn’t theirs alone—
And in it, they were prey.
Goth fled, pulling themselves as free of the Black as their nature allowed, making themselves smaller there. Hiding, in sight.
Though all missed the dreams, and those who couldn’t bear their loss applied to be monitors, to expose themselves to the Black. To dream and die in the clouds. And yes, Hunters found them. And yes, Hunters took one here, and one there, but overall, the population below felt protected and safe.
Until the moment every monitor over the northern pole went silent.
Two reports were sent automatically: an alarm to those below, for what good it might do.
And one to the Consortium.
Chapter 16
“I TOLD YOU it was a terrible plan.” Terk paced as though the entire ship were too small to hold his frustration, stopping only to point a thick finger to where Morgan sat by the med cocoon. “But I was wrong. You came up with a worse one.”
“I couldn’t let her die.”
“That was the idea! What are you going to do now? Kill her after supper? Maybe after a good night’s sleep, because we all know it’s so much easier to murder a friend who’s looking you in the eyes.”
Morgan waved a listless hand. “Peace, will you? I was wrong. Rael and Yihtor are here for a reason—”
“And you know what that is because she told you, and you believe every word.” Terk threw up his hands. “Do you hear yourself? You were about to kill her. She’d say anything. I should do it,” flat and dark, taking a stride toward the cocoon.
He stopped in his tracks when Morgan rose to his feet, hands loose and at his sides. “Like that, is it?” the enforcer said in a different, too-quiet voice.
“Sira sent her.” There. He’d said it. “I know how it sounds—”
Terk hissed between his teeth. “I’ll tell you how it sounds. Like you’re not yourself. And if I’m to guess why? It’s the reason a surgeon cut into my head. The one that makes Finelle a good, safe partner because no telepath can touch the weirdness in a Lemmick’s head. You’ve been influenced, Morgan. She got to you.”
His shields had been proof against the most powerful of the Clan. Now Terk doubted? Morgan fought bac
k bitter laughter. The other was serious—deadly serious—and for Rael’s sake he couldn’t let this go. “Terk—”
The enforcer held up his hand. “You convinced me. Convinced the chief the presence of Clan in the Trade Pact endangers the rest of us. That they belong in some heaven of their own, and sending them back is the right thing for them as well. Has any of that changed?”
“No. Will you let me finish?”
Terk crossed his big arms.
“Finally.” Morgan sat back down, glancing at the readouts. The cocoon had enveloped Rael the moment he’d laid her on the diagnostic table. Modern equipment, the best a trader could afford. Erin planned a future on the Wayfarer.
He’d put that at risk, returning with—with whatever Rael was now. No help for it. “The deal between the Scats and Clan was falling apart before we showed up. I retrieved Rael—” because she’d stood there, covered in her own dried blood, and faced him with a courage he’d seen in only one other person. “—because she isn’t the enemy. We can’t trust Yihtor or anything he says. I can’t. I do trust Rael. Sira’s sister, Terk. My sister. A known ally. If I’m being influenced by anything, you great lummox, it’s common sense.”
“Huh.” The enforcer possessed a full vocabulary of monosyllables. That “huh” reserved the right to knock that sense into Morgan’s head.
He tried not to look relieved. “Agreed.”
With another “huh,” Terk grabbed a stool and sat, legs outstretched. He lifted a sandaled foot and wiggled his orange toes. “Gonna miss these,” he complained, the change of subject deliberate.
A peace offering, of sorts. Morgan smiled to himself. “You don’t have to change.”
“Nah, I do. Finelle’s a stickler for regs.” The foot dropped. “Besides, she’s bringing back my uniform. If I don’t put it on, you watch, she’ll stun me and do it.” With grudging admiration.
To Guard Against the Dark Page 18