All the Stars Left Behind

by Ashley Graham

  Rika. Where was she? Leda tried one arm, then the other, and found they were freed. She pushed herself up, her muscles protesting and her back stinging. Then she remembered she was still nude, except for the gown covering her butt. She blinked a few times and the shadows in front of her eyes cleared away.

  Getting any sound out proved more difficult than trying to sit up. Leda’s throat felt tight and raw, and her cough sounded hoarse, sort of croaky. Her back didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, so she tried leaning up, covering her chest with one arm, to look around. She didn’t see Arne or Rika, or even Grams or Nils or Petrus.

  Behind her stood a woman in fitted black leather with a smug smile, flanked by two giant men covered in scars. They wore suits like the ones she and Roar had used the other day when they went out into space.

  “Hello, Leda.” The woman nodded to the man on her right and he stepped forward, handing Leda a fresh gown. “My name is Tuva. You must be rather groggy.”

  Leda nodded.

  “What a shame.” Tuva’s mouth drooped at the corners, a fake frown. “How about you put this on so we can talk?”

  Confused but grateful for something to cover herself with, Leda eased into a sitting position as she slid an arm through each hole in the gown. Her mind processed bits of information as they came in. She looked around. No one she knew was in the room, and her hands trembled from fear. Where was Grams and Uncle Arne? Where’d Rika go? No Nils, no Petrus. No Roar. And who was this woman and her creepy muscular friends?

  Before the gown closed at the back, Leda touched the base of her spine. A raised line ran up the length of her back, tender to the touch. No one was around to tell her if the surgery had been a success. She pressed hard against her spine, mentally prepared for the blinding pain and instant headache. None came.

  Leda let out a relieved breath. At least the thing was gone.

  Tuva moved to the side of the operating table. “Yes, they managed to remove the creature. Nasty things, those Woede trackers.”

  Woede tracker?

  “I suppose it was sneaked in during the operation you had on your spine when you were younger. Woede agents are everywhere, you know.”

  No, she didn’t know. Until Roar, Leda had never dreamed of thinking she might be anything but human, and the idea of intelligent, humanoid life existing in the universe hadn’t crossed her mind very often.

  She shivered knowing they had infiltrated her very body. Was that what had made it impossible for her to be intimate with Roar? What had turned them into, in Rika’s words, a booby trap that would destroy them from within?

  “Are you well enough to stand?”

  “I-I think so.” Leda’s throat ached from those few words.

  “Good. So, here’s the thing,” Tuva said as she helped Leda to her feet. “There’s a huge reward to whoever brings you in to the resistance, and I’d like very much to collect that prize.”

  Reward. Reward. Reward. The word was a hammer banging on a nail in her brain. Clouds of confusion blurred Leda’s mind for a second, then hot anger surged through her bones. She yanked her hand away from the woman. “Where’s the crew?”

  Tuva laughed, the sound icier than the table Leda woke up on. “Never mind about them. Just come with me and we can be on our way.”

  Prepared to tear the woman’s throat out with her bare hands if need be, Leda raised a hand, but her muscles were weak and cold, and her arm dropped limply at her side. Tuva’s slap landed on her cheek. Leda crumbled to the floor, still weak from surgery. Pain knifed through her back and all the air whooshed from her lungs.

  “That wasn’t a clever move, Leda.”

  Two sets of hands gripped her under the arms and hauled her to her feet. The floor spun beneath her, the lights too bright. Her stomach twisted. The guards held her upright, facing Tuva, whose mocking grin had flipped into a scowl, her expression carved from stone.

  “Are you going to behave now? Or must I do to you what I did to your crew?”

  Leda struggled against iron grips. “What did you do? If you hurt them—”

  Vicious laughter cut her off. “They’re alive, for now. However, that could change rather easily. You have a choice, Leda. Come willingly or I’ll destroy Equinox with her crew still inside and make you watch.”

  Any fight left inside her drained away at the threat. Leda hung her head, tears stinging her eyes, the hopelessness of the situation a heavy weight in her limbs. “Promise you won’t hurt them and I’ll go with you.”

  Tuva’s shiny black boots came into Leda’s vision. “Good girl. I give you my word.”

  Roar’s words to Gitte echoed inside her head: your word means about as much as a handful of vomit.

  The boots turned and the guards dragged Leda after them. Tuva traversed the halls as if she knew Equinox’s layout better than her own reflection. At a shuttle bay Leda hadn’t seen yet, the guards shoved Leda into a shuttle and Tuva took the helm. The next few minutes while Tuva and the guards performed the procedures to take them off Equinox were a hazy blur through tears Leda tried to hold back.

  As the shuttle flew out into the black, gaping maw of space, panic gripped Leda’s chest. She didn’t know if she’d ever see her friends and family again. The thought firmed her resolve. She might not see them, but she wasn’t about to let this Tuva woman get her reward. Leda had to find a way to Aurelis on her own.

  Roar woke with a jolt, his head thick and muscles protesting every movement, lying on his side in a steel square-shaped room he recognized as one of the cells in the brig. Every breath was a knife in his side. His body felt damp, and when he looked down, he saw puddles of blood crusting his clothes to the floor. That explained the pain. The glowing from the front of the cell told him whoever put him in here had activated the lockdown system, meaning he was stuck here.

  That woman. She’d gassed Equinox. Judging by the state he found himself in, he assumed she’d let her lackeys beat him as much as they liked. They must have been wearing RomTek suits when they beat him. Roar had never been in so much pain.

  He lowered his head carefully, content to lie still through the onslaught of agony cresting through his body. It’ll get better in a while. He hoped. Or he would die, then it would be over. Either way, the pain wouldn’t last forever.

  Roar shut his eyes and drifted between varying stages of consciousness and dreamless sleep. When he opened his eyes again, the glowing had vanished, replaced by the dull nighttime lights. On trembling arms, he pushed himself upright and winced as his ribs cracked. They were healing out of line. He’d have to break them again.

  He lifted one arm above his head and took a breath, then slammed his other fist into his ribs. A revolting snap and searing pain rippled through his torso. Roar lurched onto his stomach. Hot bile rushed up his throat and splashed the floor. But he wasn’t finished yet—he grabbed his side and jerked, snapping the bone back into place. Another bout of nausea, and he retched again. A deep black curtain fell over his eyes as he faded from consciousness.

  Sometime later, Roar woke. The smell was something terrible, forcing him from the unlocked cell. His boots slipped in the muck and he almost fell, but he lunged for the wall to support his weight. He moved slowly and with caution to the brig’s entrance and checked the hall outside, though he doubted the woman had remained on Equinox. She might have left some guards on board to protect her prize. If Equinox was the prize.

  Suddenly an iron fist choked the air from his lungs. The woman had mentioned Leda.

  What if the ship wasn’t the prize at all?

  What if it was Leda?

  Frantic adrenalin fueled him as he stumbled to sick bay, his pulse thumping a rapid tattoo in his ears the whole way there. He knew she’d be gone but it was still a shock to see the operating table empty and glittering piles of silver ash on the floor around it.

  They took Leda.

  He squeezed his hands into fists, momentarily forgetting his own agony. She was gone. Alone. He had to get her b
ack. But he couldn’t do it on his own. He had to find the rest of the crew. The logical place they’d be, since he’d woken up there, was the brig.

  He returned to the lower level of the ship, his body aching less with each passing moment. In the largest cell he found Frue Sørensen, unharmed but groggy, with Nils and Arne, both sporting black eyes and broken noses.

  The next cell over had Petrus, who was curled in a ball in the corner, clutching his head. Roar knew him well enough to leave Petrus alone when he was like this. No amount of pandering would help.

  The cell beside Petrus was empty. The next one had Oline, who was still out cold. As the slimmest of them all, whatever gas the woman had used must have affected Oline the most. Lying beside Oline, Rika swiped damp hair from her cheek, then tried to sit up.

  Roar felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned toward Arne. “They took Leda.”

  Arne closed his eyes, pain etching deep lines in his brow. “I know. Nils and I put up a fight, but those guards she brought with her were built like stone.” He shook his head.

  Roar knew all too well what those guards could do, except he’d gotten off lucky. They’d beaten him while he was unconscious. “Where’s Stein?”

  Rika stood on shaky legs. “He’s not with you?”

  Dread rolled heavy in Roar’s gut. No, it couldn’t be. He raced to check the remaining cells but found no sign of Stein. He searched his pockets, surprised to find his comm still mostly intact. He pulled up the tracking system and ran a ship-wide search for Stein. At the beep, he frowned. Stein wasn’t on board Equinox.

  Nils was the next to exit the large cell. “Did they take Stein, too?”

  “Looks like it. Unless he managed to get into a shuttle or a suit, and he’s somewhere outside of the ship. But even then, I should be able to pick something up. I can’t see anything.” Roar shoved the comm back in his pocket. For now, they had to figure out where the other Avenger Class ship had gotten to. The great thing about the strathdrives was the energy signatures they left in their wake. Wherever the other ship had gone, Roar would find them.

  What stung the most was the betrayal. As the Jäger, he and the crew on board Equinox should’ve been the only ones who knew about the weapon. Someone in the Elders must have talked. To what end he couldn’t guess, but money never hurt. It sickened him to think someone with the rank of Elder, someone respected and even revered, would sell out. There wasn’t another explanation he wanted to consider right now. And there wasn’t any place in the universe the traitors could hide from Roar once he sorted out this mess.

  Nils touched his nose and hissed. “What do we do now?”

  “We need to wake Oline and get her up to the bridge.” Roar looked at Arne. “Can you carry her there? I need to see to Petrus before we leave him here.”

  Arne frowned. “Is that wise? Leaving him down here?”

  “Honestly, it’s the best thing for him. The farther away we are, the less he’ll feel.”

  Arne seemed unsure but didn’t argue. “Nils, if you could help my mother to her cabin, I’d appreciate it.”

  Nils bobbed his head. “Sure. Want me to stay with her?”

  “Please.” To Roar, Arne said, “I think I might be able to help with Petrus, but not at this moment. Remind me later, ja?”

  Unsure what he meant but curious, Roar nodded, grabbed his comm, and set a note so he wouldn’t forget. He tucked his comm away again. “Here’s the plan so there’s no room for argument. We’re going to track the other ship and go after them. Any objections?”

  No one said a word.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Leda woke in a dark room with a sore head and the bitter feeling of having made a terrible decision. Memories of the previous day flashed in her mind like a blinking beacon, reminders of her stupidity. Reckless, her mom would have said. Thinking about her mom caused a lightning bolt of fury to strike in her brain.

  It took Leda a full five minutes to haul herself into a sitting position and look around. The room was a small rectangle with enough space for a single bed against the far wall. Across from the bed were a number of faint white glowing lines that crackled and danced, though they made no sound. The three walls and ceiling were all a cold, hard metal. It could have been steel. But Aurelis might not have the same metals as Earth.

  She looked down and saw she had on a bland gray shirt and jacket, and matching bottoms. On her feet were a pair of boots that reached above her ankles, with no laces. The getup had a distinctly military feel to it. Leda shuddered. Someone had removed her gown and dressed her, while she was asleep. They could have done anything to her, and she wouldn’t have been able to fight back.

  The thought made her angrier than the fact that she’d been abducted from Equinox the moment Rika completed her surgery and brought her back from the dead. At least Tuva had kept her word and left Equinox and her crew in one piece.

  Leda stood on overcooked spaghetti legs and walked a few steps, using the walls for support. She doubted Tuva and her guards thought to bring her crutches from Equinox, which meant less exercise than usual. The numbness in her lower legs was getting worse—soon she’d only be able to walk with her crutches, until she couldn’t walk at all. She closed her eyes and hoped the surgery hadn’t expedited her need for a wheelchair.

  It was your decision, you knew this might happen. It was, and she’d live with the consequences. But not from in here.

  Find a way out.

  That’s what she’d do in a game. She’d discover a flaw and escape the cell. Save the day.

  Better get started.

  She moved to the front of the cell. A sheer pane of light covered the entire opening. When she blew on it, the light fluctuated. Whoa. Some kind of electricity, or the Aurelite alternative. She wasn’t stupid enough to stick her hand in the light. For all she knew, she’d lose a hand or end up unconscious again—and neither of those sounded like a good idea.

  She peered through the lights and waited for the hall outside of her cell to come into focus. It was fuzzy at first, but she made out the shape of a man sitting on a chair, his body still except for his chest, rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. The rest of the hall was too dark to see anything else.

  She had to escape somehow, though. Disabling the lights was her main objective now, and she scoured her cell for answers. A panel, a wire, something. After a few minutes of hobbling back and forth along one wall, she took a break on the bed, needing to catch her breath and reserve her strength.

  She needed every ounce of it to escape Tuva’s ship and find her way to Aurelis.

  They came for her in the morning.

  A beeping sound chirped and the guard outside her cell stirred, then he jerked to his feet. Shuffling sounds reached Leda’s ears in the dark. A second later, the lights came on overhead. They were so bright that she had to blink as her eyes adjusted to the change.

  With the lights on, she saw a panel above the bed. A quick run of calculation in her head, and she determined she could just reach it if she stood on the bed and stretched her arms up. A task she didn’t think very wise so soon after surgery—even if she was a fast-healing Aurelite, instead of a plain old human.

  I’d give anything to be human and bored on a tiny Arctic island right now.

  A second guard entered the brig carrying a tray with a clear cover. He stood at the front of the cell and clicked a button on the device hooked to his belt. A section of the electric wall dropped away. Thin brows arched over his narrow black eyes, and his teeth made him look like a rat. He stepped inside. Leda stumbled back. He seemed smaller on the other side of the barrier.

  “Breakfast.” He held the tray out.

  So it was morning, according to these people. Difficult to tell day and night in the blackness of space. She accepted the tray and Rat Face exited the cell. When he stood on the other side, he clicked the button, and the barrier went back up. Rat Face gave her a slimy grin before he turned to the other
guard and relieved him.

  Her stomach rumbled, but nothing on the tray looked edible. An assortment of gray cubes that jiggled like gelatin and smelled less than appetizing.

  She poked a gray cube. “Is there meat?”

  Rat Face gave her a blank stare.

  “I don’t eat meat, or anything that came from an animal.”

  “We have no animals on board.”

  She sighed and hobbled back to the bed to sit. “Okay, maybe a better question is, what is this stuff?”

  “Nutrient-dense meal supplements,” he said, his voice as wooden as his posture.

  “And what’s it made of?”

  Rat Face shrugged and took the chair the previous guard had vacated. He crossed his thick arms and leaned back, watching her. “Eat, or don’t eat. Doesn’t bother me. Tuva won’t be very happy with you if you don’t, though.”

  She eyed the tray suspiciously, but in the end, hunger won out. And the fear of Tuva’s repercussions. She picked the sludge first. Nothing else on the tray looked as revolting, and common sense taught her the most disgusting-looking things often tasted the worst. On the tray was a set of plastic cutlery—a fork with rounded tips and a spoon, no knife—a napkin, and a small bottle of clear liquid she hoped contained water.

  She took a tentative scoop of the sludge. Half of the scoop slipped off the spoon and landed with a splat. Grease covered the spoon. Holding back a gag, Leda forced the rest of the spoonful into her mouth. At first taste, she spat the sludge out on the floor. It tasted like rotten pineapple and yogurt, mixed with dirt and hairs. Fuzzy and sour and curdled.

  She tossed the spoon onto the tray. “What the hell is that stuff?”

  Rat Face chuckled, his arms shaking on his chest. “I told her you wouldn’t like that stuff. It’s called níjiāng, and it’s her national dish.”

  “This is Aurelis’s national dish?”

  Rat Face snorted. He dropped his hands to his knees and leaned forward. “Not all of us believe the way the planet’s run is the right way. Before they called the entire planet Aurelis, it was just one country among many. Like your Earth.”