She staggered.
Dr. Idylle grabbed hold of her arm. “Jayleia?”
“It’s okay,” she rasped. The sense of loss struck open the memories of her first trip to Ioccal, when an entire ship full of her friends and crewmates had fallen ill and died.
The queen hummed. It registered as a caress of comfort.
Grappling for control, she gasped, “The UMOPG introduced humanoid illnesses into the Chekydran. It devastated them. They’re on the brink of extinction.”
“Of course,” Dr. Idylle said. “The hive model upon which the population appears to be based results in a nearly homozygous genetic profile of the species.”
“What?” Damen demanded over the com line.
“Millions of siblings,” Jay translated. “They are all one family with only the genetic variation to be had in the process of recombination. Their immune systems were so alike that what harmed one Chekydran harmed them all. We’ve seen this before in first-contact situations.”
“But they survived,” Pietre protested. “Didn’t survivors breed with other survivors?”
“If the Chekydran reproductive cycle follows other insectoid hive models, the queen and a single male who is her son are the sole breeding pair,” Dr. Idylle said.
Jayleia nodded. “That is the case. Under duress, a Chekydran queen can and will create more queens, but they are her daughters and the drones are her sons.”
“Inbreeding,” Raj finished.
“Outcrossing was their only hope,” Jay said.
“It also suits a sense of justice to use the species that precipitated their population crisis in the first place,” Dr. Idylle added.
“It is poetic, isn’t it,” Jay agreed. “I can’t know whether that played into the decision or if humanoids were simply the only available, remotely compatible, resource.”
“If humanoids transmitted disease to the Chekydran,” Raj essayed, “it suggests our species have enough genetics in common for the insectoid/humanoid outcross to work.”
“Do you know,” Dr. Idylle said, glancing around the nest plain, “I’ve seen larva and adults. Where are the pupae?”
An alarm wailed over the com.
The shrill of fighter engines drowned out the Kawl Fergus’s proximity siren.
The Chekydran-ki queen screamed.
Jayleia started, heart pounding in fright. She and Dr. Idylle stared at the huge creature. She’d risen to her full height, her head thrown back, her iridescent throat pouch shimmering.
“Incoming!” Damen shouted over the line.
“V’kyrri?” she hollered.
“Negative!”
Nursery attendants joined the keening shriek and swarmed as one, scurrying to the left.
Another sound reached Jayleia.
Weapons fire.
Horror knifed into her gut. She stepped toward the sound. What the Three Hells? More important, who and why?
Damen teleported in beside her and Jay started again. He gripped her arm tight enough to wring a cry of protest from her.
“Soldiers. Like Kebgra,” he gasped, his expression grim and pale, his eye blazing with rage. “Killing. Nests.”
She stared at him. Sensor readings? Or the Chekydran queen speaking directly into his head? What language did he hear when the matriarch bespoke him?
Then his words registered and a chill moved through her.
“Nests? Why?”
A swarm of nursery attendants, wailing a battle cry that made Jay’s blood run cold, harassed a group of soldiers. The biomechs had come close enough, firing at the ground as they strode across the plain, that she could count the flashes of their weapons. Twelve.
“Evacuate!” Damen shouted.
Jayleia held her breath as the nursery attendants reached the line of soldiers. The biomechs ignored the adult Chekydran flailing at them.
The attendants weren’t coordinating their assault, weren’t concentrating on taking the soldiers down one at a time. As a result, they had no appreciable impact.
The misshapen, grotesque soldiers could afford to ignore them in favor of slaying the young in their nest chambers. Why destroy the infants? They were the future.
Was that it?
For the first time, Jayleia noticed the scars lining the carapaces of the Chekydran-ki rushing past her to join the fray. She realized how few of the creatures there were to defend the nest plain.
This queen and her family were under siege.
Fury broke free deep within Jayleia’s psyche. She dropped her handheld. No one victimized the innocent. Not of any species. Not while a Swovjiti warrior lived to stop them.
The bastards were killing children.
She’d taste their blood for it.
Damen felt the change in Jayleia, smelled the chemical bite of rage overtaking her scent. He squeezed her arm. It brought her head around to look at him. A stranger stared out of her eyes.
“We don’t have weapons,” he cautioned.
“I’m the weapon.” She pulled out of his grasp. Without a word, she sprinted into danger.
“Jayleia!” Dr. Idylle cried.
Damen swore.
“Teleport back to the ship,” he commanded. “I’ll get her.”
Dr. Idylle gaped at him, then his features tightened with grim lines. He nodded.
Damen tore after her. So much for a coordinated plan.
He surveyed the nest plain. Two of the nursery attendants lay dead or dying. Their assaults on the bio-engineered soldiers had finally drawn fire.
Jayleia reached the retreating front line of defending Chekydran.
A cadre of Chekydran soldiers flew over Damen’s head to join the battle. Too few, too late.
Jayleia ran straight up the back of one of the nursery attendants, vaulted over the creature’s head, flipped in midair, and came down boot first in a soldier’s exposed face.
Pride nearly burst his chest. He couldn’t see it through the line of Chekydran, but he smelled the soldier’s acrid blood. He grinned as something primitive and bloodthirsty woke within him at the scent.
He crossed the Chekydran defensive line and saw no sign of Jayleia, though he sensed her nearby.
He scanned the advancing enemy. Nine soldiers remained. His fingers itched for a gun and a trigger to pull.
The soldiers were grotesque parodies of various humanoid forms, bio-organic armor covering every bulging, oversized body part. Only their faces remained clear, their milky white eyes fixed on their targets. Every single one of them strode the nest plain, destroying with mindless efficiency.
Damen darted, snarling, to the nearest dead body and grabbed a gun.
Two soldiers responded, raising weapons.
A tentacle whipped around his waist and flung him out of the line of fire. Pulse rifles whined. A Chekydran soldier screamed.
Damen cursed.
Jayleia answered.
Something impacted his chest. He glanced down as want rocketed through his body. A bloody hand shoved a second rifle against his ribs.
Jayleia.
Damen sniffed. Not her blood. Good. He gathered the former owner of the gun she’d given him would no longer need it. His grin widened. Too bad Jay had no idea what an aphrodisiac the hunt was to him. Once they’d killed the soldiers, maybe he could show her.
“Try to miss me,” she said before she sprinted away and used another Chekydran as a springboard to launch an attack. Her target dodged and trained its rifle on her. She tumbled, rolling to her feet and then springing head over heels away from the advancing line of soldiers.
Damen’s heart clenched hard. He lifted one rifle, knowing he’d fire too late to save her.
Flashes from the soldier’s weapon, the stench of wyrl-web burning. No cry of pain from his mate. Her acrobatics kept her ahead of the deadly spray of energy bolts.
He sighted and fired. The shot impacted the soldier’s head, but not the exposed flesh of the creature’s face. Damen drew a shallow breath, held it, acquired his target, an
d as the soldier turned to fire upon him, he squeezed the trigger.
The soldier’s face disappeared in a sickening burst of energy and flesh.
Eight soldiers.
Damen retreated to keep the line of Chekydran between him and the still-advancing biomechs. They’d slowed, he noted, and focused more firepower on the adult Chekydran.
But something vital had shifted among the Chekydran, too. The nurses and the soldiers concentrated their efforts, focusing on a single target at a time.
Jayleia’s doing?
Seven . . . no, six soldiers.
Fierce gratification welled up within Damen as Jayleia bounded out of nowhere to deliver a bone-crushing kick to a soldier’s jaw. The soldier’s head jerked with such violence that Damen suspected she’d snapped his neck. She’d chosen a target lagging behind the rest as if she’d trained for the hunt her entire life.
Still grinning, Damen picked off another target as Jayleia grabbed up the fallen soldier’s rifle and shot him point-blank in the face before she dropped the weapon and vanished.
Five soldiers.
Four. One went down screaming beneath the onslaught of enraged Chekydran.
Again, the tenor of the battle shifted. Damen couldn’t single out what alerted him. Scent change? Whatever it was, cold apprehension gripped his innards.
“Jayleia!” he roared.
“The queen!” she shrieked. “Shield the queen!”
The Chekydran picked up the cry as they tore another soldier to messy pieces before turning as one.
Three soldiers barreled through the defense line, guns poised, already aimed. Already firing at the queen.
Damen threw himself in front of the Chekydran-ki queen, spraying suppression fire at the oncoming soldiers.
Laser fire grazed his flank, ripping a bellow of pain and protest from him. Damen landed in a heap, hazing as fire ate at his side.
He saw Jayleia falter. Her lovely cream and chocolate complexion blanched. Then wrath seemed to explode within her. He swore she grew larger as she charged a soldier from behind. The creature spun at the last moment, firing.
She wasn’t there to hit. Jayleia had dropped to the ground, sliding in to sweep the soldier’s feet out from under her. The soldier went down hard, raising yellow orange filaments of wyrl-web into the air. Jayleia pounced, slamming the heel of her hand into the soldier’s face.
They were close enough that Damen heard the sickening crunch when bone broke beneath Jayleia’s rage-empowered onslaught.
A com badge beeped.
“Raj,” a voice rasped. “Medical emergency. My location. Pietre. Bring weapons.”
“No,” Damen croaked. “Pietre, stay with ship. Alert Queen’s Rhapsody.”
“Belay my order, Mr. Ivanovich,” Dr. Idylle said. “Major Sindrivik is right. Get that cruiser here.”
Dr. Idylle knelt beside Damen. He stared ashen and shaking, as Chekydran tentacles grappled one of the last two soldiers to the ground. The thing went down firing.
A guttural yelp from behind him froze Damen’s heart in his chest.
The Chekydran paused, and then caterwauled in one despairing voice.
The assassin had hit the queen.
Jayleia rose covered in blood. Damen heard her gasping, her breath coming in sobs.
Crying. Her sorrow clawed apart his ribcage, but she did not hesitate. Snarling, she stalked the last soldier, terrible, dark liquid dripping from the claws she’d made of her hands.
Damen could feel the gun still in his grip. Locking away hurt, shutting the door on the queen’s rasp rattling his brain, Damen sighted the remaining soldier and pulled the trigger.
The last soldier’s head exploded as Jayleia closed on him. Blood, brain matter, and bits of biomechanical yuck sprayed out all over her. She’d throw up later.
It was over. Not without cost. The queen was down, probably dying. Damen had been hit. Three Chekydran bodies littered the plain. She couldn’t count the number of smoking holes in the ground that had once contained infants.
Jay sprinted for Damen, then stumbled to a halt at the horror-stricken pallor of Dr. Idylle’s face as he gaped at her. The rush of adrenaline, which had fired her through the battle, flashed off as terror stabbed through her.
Her crewmates knew about her Temple training. Until today, none of them had ever seen her use it. Raj, believing he understood her capabilities, had tried to explain to Pietre and Dr. Idylle.
She’d hoped to never have to prove to them that the Temple had, in its own way, turned her into as efficient a killer as the biomech soldiers she’d destroyed.
Dr. Idylle’s fear cut, severing her from the people she’d believed understood her.
But how could they? They only knew a part of her—the part she’d allowed them to see. She’d never given them the chance to know and accept or reject all of her.
Until now.
It had never occurred to her how much someone else’s fear could hurt.
The Chekydran scuttled past her as a huge, glittering creature flew overhead, circled back, fragmenting the light into myriad rainbows full of colors Jayleia couldn’t identify. It landed beside the queen.
Its head swung toward Jay, drawing her gaze to his and she knew him. The beautiful, elegant creature with eyes black as bottomless pools was the queen’s consort.
“Jayleia,” Dr. Idylle gasped, struggling to his feet as Raj teleported in beside him.
“Twelve Gods!” Raj yelped when he spotted her.
“Are you hurt?” Dr. Idylle demanded.
Trembling with dread and reaction, she shook her head and dropped to her knees beside Damen.
Raj swore. The whites of his eyes showing as he tried to keep an eye on the Chekydran gathered around their queen. He rounded Damen and knelt beside her.
Jayleia scrubbed moisture out of her eyes with one filthy forearm. She tried not to notice that the man who’d claimed her as an adopted daughter an hour ago could no longer meet her eye. “Damen? Raj is here.”
“He’ll be okay. Burn damage,” Raj said. “Blunt-force trauma.”
Damen groaned.
Jayleia choked back a curse.
“Easy,” Raj said, ripping open his field kit. “We’ll get the pain under control and set you up for a few hours of regen.”
“Not for me,” Damen rasped, shaking his head. “Treat the queen.”
The color drained from his face. Pain response. Possibly shock. Damn it. Jayleia rose.
One of the Chekydran, a long sear mark marring her thorax, sidled close, her throat pouch quivering. As she edged past, Jay saw she carried something gelatinous in her tentacles. She began patting the reddish purple substance into Damen’s wound.
“Spawn of a . . .” Raj bit out.
“Stop it!” Dr. Idylle protested.
“Leave her!” Jayleia commanded. “She’s healing him!”
Her family stared at her as if they’d never seen her before in their lives.
Damen stirred, restless and sweating.
Rubbing her forehead as guilt shot through her, Jay turned away. She should have anticipated the assassination attempt. Regardless of why the soldiers attacked the Chekydran, once it had become clear they were attacking, she should have realized assassination made sense. If your mission is to destroy the young, destroying the source of those young would be even more effective.
Maybe she’d been a scientist too long. Her questions, her desire to analyze had slowed her. If she’d simply reacted, adhered to her training, Damen and the queen would never have been injured.
She shoved her way through the cluster of Chekydran blocking the felled queen from view.
They opened a path.
Jay glanced at Damen. He understood what she’d done, what she’d become in order to protect Chekydran—members of a race bent on destroying her own. If conspiring with them made her a traitor, what had she become by fighting to preserve them?
He clawed his way around to meet her gaze.
She saw approval, even pride, in his eye. It soothed the ache behind her breastbone.
Fortified, she turned and cried out in horror. One of the queen’s wings had been severed. Her throat pouch was ripped and charred. Yellow green fluid stained the ground beneath her prone body. The right side of her carapace had cracked. One eye dangled, the iridescent light dying.
But still she lived.
“My handheld,” Jayleia breathed, rushing to her side, cold tears sliding unbidden down her face. “Where is it? I need to understand Chekydran biology . . .”
The queen wheezed.
It registered in Jayleia’s head as amusement tinged by warmth, as if her desire to treat the queen, despite everything that had happened on the nest plain, had reached past the barriers of their separate species.
“I don’t know what I can do, Jay,” Raj said, his voice shaking, “but I’ll try.”
“Field stasis?” she breathed.
“I don’t even know that it would work,” Raj protested.
“Can we please try?”
She felt her cousin’s stare.
When he answered, the sharp edge of tension had left his voice. “I’ll get it set up.”
She wondered what had shown in her blood-and-gore-smeared face to make him sound like that.
“Major Sindrivik’s bleeding has stopped!” Dr. Idylle called, striding to join them. “We need more of that gel they used on him, assuming it’s designed for Chekydran physiology rather than humanoid.”
“Good. Jay,” Raj prodded. “Ask them.”
The queen convulsed.
Jay choked on futility. The creature was Chekydran. Even with the Sen Ekir, Dr. Idylle, Raj, and equipment in a language Jay could read, their medical gear was calibrated for humanoid biology. Everything she knew—everything she was—wouldn’t be enough to save the queen.
“Show me how to help you,” Jayleia said.
The creature grunted and, with a trembling foreleg, pressed something into Jay’s filthy hand.
She staggered. Images, memories not her own, lineage, and history whirled through her head, seeking to burrow into brain tissue already too crowded. She sucked in a ragged breath and the impression broke apart.
“Queen,” the Chekydran queen whistled.
Enemy Games Page 27