Beyond the Next Star

by Melody Johnson

  “But you knew that.” A strange look came over Nikiok’s face. Torek couldn’t pick the meaning from it, but something about the set of her jaw soured his gut. “Did you know that she murdered Keil Kore’Weidnar too?”

  It took all of Torek’s life-long training and considerable iron will not to flinch. He hesitated, just a moment between opening his mouth and speaking, but she noticed.

  “She deceived you about being an animal companion. Is it so hard to think that she deceived you about Keil, as well?”

  Torek shook his head, his aim unwavering. “You knew Keil hadn’t committed suicide, and you didn’t launch an investigation?”

  There went her jaw again. “I did,” she said. “Immediately following his death. She was found guilty of his murder.”

  “And not pardoned?”

  “No.”

  Torek narrowed his gaze. “Why wasn’t I made aware of the investigation or that my animal companion was suspected of murder?”

  “You were on medical leave, Commander. You weren’t involved in any investigations. Besides, Shemara Kore’Onik reported that your health was greatly improved in Reshna’s company. I couldn’t interrupt your recovery until we knew for certain who was involved.”

  Torek shuffed. “If you were investigating Keil’s murder, someone should have told his wife.”

  Nikiok’s nostrils flared. When she spoke, her voice was deep and somber. “We can’t predict the power of grief.”

  Torek edged forward. “Where are the papers?”

  Nikiok blinked.

  “The signed writ of execution. Where is it?”

  She laughed. She actually laughed! “You sound like a first-kair cadet. My word is enough.”

  “It’s not, as any first kair would know. As Petreok knew, I’m assuming?” Torek lifted a brow. “Or did Delaney kill him too?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “With the RG-800 in your holster?”

  “With his.” She jerked her head to the side, indicating the blood outside an open cell door. Sure enough, an RG-800 lay amidst the spill.

  Torek shook his head slowly, finally recognizing the defensive certainty in Nikiok’s expression for what it was and why he hadn’t liked it.

  He’d never liked liars.

  “You tampered with our security feeds to cover your tracks, putting our guard at risk,” Torek ground out. “But tampering with our Zorelok sensors puts all of Onik at risk!”

  Nikiok shuffed. “You’re losing your head, Commander.”

  Torek jerked back. “What did you say?”

  “Are you willing to lose your guard, your position, and your forefather’s legacy, all for one animal companion?” She tutted. “Come to your senses, and sheath your weapon before I have you court-martialed and convicted of treason.”

  “Dorai Nikiok. In courtesy of your rank as Lore’Lorien, I’ll ask one more time before I shoot again. Step back. Now.”

  Delaney moaned.

  Torek broke his aim in an involuntary reaction to glance at her. His distraction was only a moment, but a moment was all Nikiok needed to slam Petreok’s limp hand against the console.

  The door slid shut.

  RAK! Torek pivoted to aim at the door.

  Nikiok dropped Petreok’s hand and leveled her RG-800 at Torek’s head. “You shoot that door, Commander, and I’ll shoot you.”

  Torek didn’t hesitate this time. He dove forward, hopefully out of Nikiok’s line of fire, and squeezed off three shots before she could vaporize his head.

  The door cracked on the first shot. The laser ricocheted in wild abandon, taking out a chunk of ceiling. The second shot split that crack into three, but the door still remained whole even as the laser recoiled, blasting a crater into the floor.

  The third shot struck home. The door shattered into three large slabs and a million shards. The mechanism that opened the release chamber ground to a halt, leaving Delaney safely huddled on the ground where she lay.

  Well, safe from the zorel, at least.

  But the third laser ricocheted off a holding cell. Its wall cracked, and the laser beam pinged into the viewing wall. That wall cracked, and the laser shot back, splitting the next cell and the next, zigzagging across all one hundred and fifty-seven containment cells before striking the last cell at the far end of the hall in an explosion of stone. But worse than the damage to the containment cells, a web of cracks and fractures weakened the viewing wall in the laser’s wake.

  Torek hit the ground and rolled, clenching his teeth against the pain suddenly searing his back. Nikiok must have pulled her trigger too.

  He re-aimed his RG-800 at her chest and fired.

  She lunged away from the console, protecting herself with Petreok’s body. His torso took the hit. The laser burned a hole through his uniform, ate his skin to ash, and his stomach belched his innards at her feet.

  “Torek?”

  He didn’t look this time, but his heart clenched along with his nerve. “Delaney. Stay down.”

  “What shhht—” Her arm slipped on a palmful of shards and blood.

  He tried to move in front of her, to shield her with his body, but his back was on fire.

  “I’m sorry, Commander. This wasn’t what I wanted, but I’d sacrifice anything for Onik.” Nikiok wiped her face with a shrug of her shoulder, but tears soaked into fur faster than the fabric of her uniform, staining her blond cheeks a dark brown. “Even you.”

  Dorai Nikiok aimed her RG-800 between Torek’s eyes and fired.

  Thirty

  Delaney opened her eyes to the most terrifying sight she’d ever seen. In her twenty-seven years, her eyes had seen quite a lot—more than the average person’s, she’d hazard to guess, considering the hovels she’d had the misfortune to live in, the abusive derelicts she’d had the misfortune to live with, and the aliens she’d had the misfortune to be abducted by—but nothing compared to the zorel. The creature had stopped circling. Its overcrowded, jutting bottom jaw and rows of giant, needle-thin, ten-foot-long teeth were inches from Delaney’s face on the opposite side of the floor-to-ceiling not-glass wall.

  Delaney groaned. She closed her eyes and turned away from the sight. When next she opened her eyes, she realized that she’d been wrong. That hadn’t been the most terrifying sight she’d ever seen.

  This was.

  Nikiok was using Petreok’s headless body as a shield. Torek aimed a cylindrical object, and the light beam that sparked from the device hit Petreok’s stomach and ate away his skin like acid. His organs spilled across the floor in a putrid splash.

  Delaney tried to sit up, but something embedded in her palm. She slipped on it, shredding her forearm as she collapsed onto her side. The agony encasing her ribs stole her breath and sight.

  When she opened her eyes again—who knew how much time she was losing between blinks—she realized that she’d been wrong yet again. Neither the zorel’s jaws with only an inch of glass between them nor Petreok’s evisceration were the most terrifying sights her eyes had ever seen.

  Watching Nikiok level that same cylindrical weapon at Torek’s forehead took the cake.

  Delaney’s heart stopped and then slammed against the fire of her broken ribs. Oh, Torek. Nikiok’s aim wasn’t an idle threat. Torek was already horribly injured. His back was a ruin of raw burns from his right shoulder to the bottom of his left hip. Bloody welts oozed from the blackened skin. He tried to move, and the wound separated, exposing torn, charred muscle.

  He staggered, gasping.

  Delaney’s gut curdled, watching him struggle. This was it—either Torek was family or he wasn’t. Either she could let go of the past to reach for the future or she couldn’t. She had something all her own now, more than just a name, but like names on Lorien, it had been both earned and given. Damn Kane, Nikiok, Reshna, and the tatters of her self-worth that had ever made her feel undeserving of it.

  She would keep it for herself.

  Delaney lunged in front of Torek. She snatched up a large
r chunk of broken glass amid the shards and lifted it before them like a shield in the same moment that Nikiok squeezed her trigger.

  A ray of light zapped from the weapon and hit the makeshift shield. The not-glass exploded in Delaney’s hands, slicing her palms to the bone. Nikiok dodged the laser as it ricocheted back at her. It bounced off a cell door, pinged the already cracked glass wall separating them from the zorel—why was that wall, of all walls, cracked?—and zigzagged down the entire hallway in a deadly game of Pong.

  A high whine split the air.

  On the other side of the cracked not-glass, a long, gray, knobby finger rose in front of the zorel’s needle-thin teeth. The pointed tip of its sharp claw wedged into the crossroad of all those spiderweb cracks.

  A spray of water spurted from the wall.

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

  Delaney was swept off her feet. A blistering-hot shoulder jammed into the agony of her ribs, strangling her scream. The room spun. At first, she thought the pain was playing havoc with her vision again, but no, Torek had about-faced. The prison cells rushed by in a blur as he ran.

  Her cheek bounced limply against his back. Maybe she had passed out again, if only for a moment. She struggled upright, but the pain was too much. She settled for just tipping her head up instead.

  God, why couldn’t she just stay passed out?

  That talon-tipped finger, backdropped by those ten-foot-long needle teeth, wiggled persistently, chipping away at the cracked glass. The spurt of water burst into a spraying shower.

  The prisoners had snapped out of their hopeless lethargy and were pounding on their cell doors, shouting. Nikiok chased Torek’s heels, several yards behind. The spiderweb cracks in the glass wall stretched outward, expanding in high creaks and whines. Three other places where the cracks converged suddenly sprouted leaks, and the shower flooded into a hemorrhage.

  Torek ran into the elevator, punched a code into its panel, and the doors began to close.

  The glass wall shattered.

  Water flooded through the room in a lethal rush. The prisoners’ screams soared to heights Delaney hadn’t imagined a voice could hit, then cut to silence.

  Nikiok wouldn’t make it, not without help and not before the elevator doors sealed. Not without killing them as well.

  Torek pressed a button on the elevator panel with one hand and reached between the closing doors with the other. “Jump!”

  Nikiok lunged forward. She stretched her lean body as long as she could, extending her right arm to Torek.

  Her right arm with no hand.

  She stared at that severed wrist, startled. It spattered blood in a wide arc across Torek’s uniform, missing his fingertips by inches.

  Torek snatched his arm back as the elevator doors closed, sealing them off from the rush of raging water and Nikiok’s wide, incredulous brown eyes.

  Delaney stared at those closed chrome doors, waiting. Any second now, the zorel would wedge its black claws between the seam and pry the doors open. The water would burst through, and the zorel’s many needle teeth would be waiting.

  Her stomach bottomed out.

  Delaney startled, nearly bucking off Torek’s shoulder before she could come to grips with the sensation. It was just the elevator. They were rising, not dying. Just the elevator.

  Torek collapsed. Delaney dropped with a pained grunt onto her side, half crushed beneath Torek’s chest and half trapped against the side of the elevator. His gasping breaths filled the silence. She’d be gasping too, as soon as she could inhale a full breath.

  Her heartbeat was deafening against her eardrums. Her limbs quivered in weak relief and lingering panic. Her head throbbed in time with her pulse, her ribs were a ring of fire around her chest, and her palms stung like they’d been dipped in lye. Or sliced to the bone by shattered glass.

  She basked in the pain. She was in the elevator with Torek, with air and both hands, and leaving the zorel far below the surface where it belonged. She was alive.

  And Torek, thank the God whom she’d thought had forsaken her long ago, was alive too.

  Light shot through the elevator window. They’d exited the prison and were catapulting into the sky. Instantly, the terrible wailing zorel siren assaulted her ears.

  Torek and his damn alarms.

  Delaney wedged herself a little higher, fighting her ribs and the slick puddle beneath her palms to get a better view of the courtyard: the snow-spouting fountain, the ice sculptures, the benches and running children. In seconds, Delaney and Torek were high overhead among the clouds, leaving the courtyard like a toy set far below.

  “Torek,” she croaked.

  He didn’t move. Her heart skipped and sank before her brain registered that he couldn’t hear her over the wail of the loudspeaker. She tapped his shoulder to get his attention, harder than probably necessary, because he startled up and whipped around, wincing from the movement.

  Recognition sharpened his gaze, and he grimaced.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize—” he began. She read his words from the movement of his lips. He strained to lift himself up, his arms trembling. “Are you—”

  Delaney caressed her palm along his jaw. She pressed her thumb across his mouth to hush his words and inadvertently smeared a line of blood across his lips.

  “I—I—” she stuttered. She would’ve struggled for those three words even in English, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember the words in Lori, if she’d ever known them to begin with. Not that he could hear her anyway. But it wasn’t for her life. He’d saved it. He’d saved them both. She had a lifetime to learn the words, which hardly seemed a challenge considering the hurdles she’d survived to find it.

  To find him.

  He turned his face into her palm, closed his eyes, and viurred. The vibration pierced her injured palm, bone-deep, and a matching, penetrating ache warmed her heart.

  Epilogue

  Ten months later.

  They were leaving Lorien. They were going home. They were returning to Earth.

  No matter how she phrased it, Delaney’s mind still couldn’t seem to come to grips with the reality of the situation enough to have a normal, calm conversation about it. What was “normal” anyway? As if being abducted by aliens was anyone’s definition of the word. What did Torek expect? Obviously not hysterical laughter, sarcastic zings, and abrupt topic changes. She knew she was acting strange and being difficult and whatever, but she couldn’t help it. They were leaving Lorien tomorrow on a five-year intergalactic journey to return to Earth.

  If she focused on the “they” portion of that sentence and ignored the “Earth,” she could almost say the words without having an inappropriate, emotional reaction. Almost.

  Delaney wriggled deeper into the furry comforter. She was going to miss this bed. Yes, they would have a bed during their journey, but it wouldn’t be this same bed with this comforter. They would have regular meals, but none of them would be at Grattao. She would have a room, but that room wouldn’t have a balcony that overlooked a snow-glittered courtyard. Torek would undoubtedly form a schedule, as was his habit, but it wouldn’t be the same schedule they had here on Lorien. No townsfolk to round on. No Graevlai to hike. No ice to slip on.

  She’d never even particularly liked their schedule, or having a schedule at all, for that matter, but now that everything was changing, again, sameness seemed safer than change, even if that sameness was a cage.

  She tried recounting the changes that couldn’t twist against her: no collar, no treats, no doctor’s appointments.

  Well—she sighed—no veterinarian appointments.

  At the release of that sigh, Torek rolled from his back to his side, gathered her in his furry arms and held her in a secure, warm embrace.

  “I think Keil would have liked his ice sculpture, with all his seventy-three animal companions surrounding him,” he murmured.

  Delaney discerned Torek’s forearm from the comforter and stroked her nails though his fur. “His wife lik
e it too, I think.”

  “If she could’ve seen it, yes. I think it’s exactly what she would’ve wanted.” Torek nuzzled the back of her neck.

  Delaney took comfort from the steady rhythm of Torek’s breathing, but her own still hitched. “They do not capture Petreok’s ears correctly in his sculpture.”

  “Petreok’s mother seemed content with it.” He shuffed. “As content as can be expected.”

  Delaney rolled and buried her face in Torek’s chest fur. “I see where he inherit his courage.”

  Torek nodded. His chin rubbed against the crown of Delaney’s head. “But I don’t think that thoughts of this morning’s memorials are what keep you up tonight.”

  Delaney just breathed. Torek’s fur tickled her nose. She moved her head, scratching that itch on his chest.

  “I’m sorry I failed to close all the investigations before tomorrow’s departure,” he murmured tightly.

  Delaney stiffened. She leaned back to meet Torek’s gaze. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll have Filuk continue investigating in my stead. The lor who attacked you in Graevlai will be brought to justice.”

  “And I tell you, many times, to drop that investigation.” She pinched a lock of his chest fur into a spike. “Pardon his crime like you did the lorok who try to poison me.”

  “I can’t.” He gathered her close and spoke against the top of her head. A few curls caught in his breath and fluttered across her cheek. “The lorok who attempted to poison you stepped forward. She admitted her guilt. She was repentant, and her testimony was key to corroborating Nikiok’s crimes against you.”

  “A proper autopsy was enough to reveal Keil’s death as murder,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, but not enough to determine who murdered him. And proving the circumstances of Nikiok’s own death wasn’t so straightforward: no body, no crime scene, no security cameras. Without that testimony and Brinon Kore’Onik reclassifying you, we didn’t have much beyond my word and your toxicology report to support our account of events.”

  She glanced up. “Yes, thank Lorien that Nikiok pump me full of poison.”