Nothing.
He peered around the boxes.
It was clear.
He headed for the corridor out of the cargo bay. “Shut the doors behind us,” he said to Saffron. The controls were on her side.
As they walked out of the cargo bay, she hit the panel and the cargo bay doors closed with a scraping, straining noise the way they always did.
Now, they were shut up inside the ship with a vidya. On the flip side, it was trapped in there with them.
“Down this corridor,” said Pippa from behind him, whispering.
He went first. It was a tight squeeze here, so they had to go single file. Saffron came behind him, since she was the next best shot on the crew, then Pippa, then Breccan, then Calix.
It was quiet. Gunner could hear their footfalls, and the sound seemed deafening. He walked with both hands on his gun, the barrel pointed outward, his finger tensed on the the trigger. The minute he saw that bastard freak, he was going to pour plasma into its skull.
On the sides of the wall, there were long gouges running up the hallway, as if something had been dragged down the wall.
A flash of red on the floor.
He glanced at it. Blood. There was a trail of blood down the corridor. Someone had been bleeding pretty badly. Eve?
Damn, he was going to lose all his passengers today, wasn’t he? Well, looking at the bright side, it would mean no trip to Hoder. Planet was a hole in the wall. Whole stinking place.
They came to the door to Calix’s medic bay. Gunner paused. He looked back at everyone to make sure they were ready.
They all had their pistols pointed at the door.
Gunner keyed in the open sequence and the door slid open sideways.
Inside, it was dark.
He stepped inside, still gripping his gun with one hand, feeling on the wall for the light. If he had to shoot with one hand, his aim wasn’t going to be as good, but he didn’t have a lot of choice. He found the light.
The room was bathed in brightness.
Two cots. A counter covered in tiny bottles and tubes of meds. A clear cabinet above, full of more medical supplies.
No vidya.
Gunner looked over his shoulder again. “Back out,” he instructed.
The others did.
Now, they were back in the corridor again. They continued forward until they came to the ladder to the upper level. There was more blood here, a pool of it at the bottom of the ladder. Gunner avoided it as he climbed. He could only use one hand. The other held his gun. It was a tricky balancing act.
It was too quiet up here.
If the vidya was here, killing Eve, why wasn’t she making any noise?
She must already be dead, he thought. But he couldn’t afford to care right now. He didn’t like the thought of the girl dead, he realized, but that wasn’t important. Only survival mattered.
Gunner emerged at the top of the ladder and climbed to his feet. He looked up and down the corridor. To the right, he could see the cockpit, a few of the screens and dials blinking at him. There were two other doors—the kitchen down to the left and beside it a bathroom. Both of those doors were closed.
It was easier to check the cockpit, and if a person had been running up here, she would have gone to the cockpit first—that was where the corridor dead-ended.
But why had the girl gone up here in the first place? Why hadn’t she run out of the ship with Pippa? Was she insane? Did she have a death wish?
Gunner backed into the wall across from the ladder. He held his gun with both hands against his shoulder, pointing it at the ceiling, and he waited as the others climbed up. His gaze jumped between a few spots. The cockpit. The ladder and whoever was climbing up. The closed door of the kitchen. Then he looked back again.
He didn’t like this. As they climbed up, they were exposed.
He wished he could see inside the cockpit. Maybe he should go ahead and go down there. He could go ahead, and then if it was clear, the others—
The door to the bathroom burst open. It was ripped off its sliders and shoved outward. The vidya stepped over it, stalking down the hallway.
Gunner leveled his pistol and squeezed off a few shots.
A beam of brightness hit the vidya in its chest, glancing off its armored skin. The other shots went wide.
Damn it. Gunner pulled the trigger again.
The vidya reached down the corridor. Its arms were long, and it had quite a reach.
Breccan had just come up the ladder. His back was to the vidya, and he was twisting to see it, bringing up his gun to aim.
The vidya’s spiky claw punched into Breccan’s chest.
Just as Gunner’s plasma beam hit the vidya’s arm.
The shot knocked the vidya off course, but it still tore into Breccan’s flesh.
Blood exploded onto the walls and ceiling, onto Breccan’s shirt and onto his face. He wavered on his feet and then crumpled, losing his balance. He let out a keening cry of pain.
Gunner shot again.
Saffron rushed forward, yelling Breccan’s name. She was shooting too.
But her shots were going every which way, not at the vidya. She was too upset to aim.
Gunner found himself flattening back against the wall to avoid friendly fire from Saffron.
Pippa was just now at the top of the ladder. Unarmed, she backed down the corridor toward the cockpit, eyes wide and frightened.
Saffron fell to the floor next to Breccan, pulling his body into her lap. “Breccan, Breccan, Breccan!”
Gunner turned on the vidya.
It swiped at him.
Gunner shot it again.
This time, he managed to hit its neck. It stumbled, swaying, an odd high-pitched noise echoing out of its mouth.
Calix was up the ladder too. He raised his pistol to shoot.
The vidya’s arm came around at the same moment. It collided with Calix’s arm, knocking his gun out of his hand. Its claws scratched along Calix’s chest and shoulder.
Calix grunted, staggering backwards. He fell back into the hole where the ladder came up, thudding against the floor below.
“Calix?” yelled Gunner.
“Motherfucker,” came Calix’s weak reply.
Good. Good, because if anything happened to Calix—
The vidya swung at Gunner.
Gunner ducked. He lost his balance and went down on his backside, but he still had his gun. He brought it up to shoot—
But before he could, he saw Eve rush out of the kitchen, a bag of salt over her head. A harsh sound came out of her peeled-back lips, and she dumped the bag of salt over the vidya’s head.
Gunner was too surprised to pull the trigger.
The vidya let out another inhuman noise, and then its features started to… melt. Everywhere the salt had touched it, it turned to something liquid and goopy, like dripping candle wax.
“What the…?” Gunner slowly pushed himself to his feet. He’d never seen anything like this before.
At once, the vidya erupted into a clear liquid. Inside were red and blue branches that looked like capillaries or blood vessels, but the whole thing was like a thick gooey gel. It moved together, like an amoeba or something.
“Shoot it!” screamed Eve.
Gunner looked at her, and then back at the thing on the ground. He shot it. He pumped beam after beam of plasma into it.
It sizzled and mewled and tried to shy away from the blasts.
But he didn’t let up.
And then it was still.
He kept pulling the trigger. More and more beams. Until his gas cartridge was used up and nothing happened when he pulled the trigger. Then he let the gun hang at his side and gaped at Eve.
“It’s the Xerkabah’s true form,” she said. “When you pour salt on them, they revert. Salt weakens them.”
Gunner hadn’t known that. He’d never seen… “Is it dead?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He stepped forward and
peered down at it. Well, one way or another, they had to get it off the ship.
* * *
Instead of trying to take what was left of the Xerkabah down the ladders to the cargo bay, there was a hatch on the upper level. Gunner and Eve took the thing there and tossed it. It didn’t move, and Gunner hoped it was dead, but he wasn’t taking any chances either. Everyone on Durga was dead, so it wasn’t as if they were hurting anyone by leaving it behind. Pippa and Saffron were helping Calix with Breccan, who was pretty bad off from his wounds, not that Gunner had really had a chance to find out the extent of all of it.
Speaking of wounds, there had been all that blood, the trail on the ship, and he’d been convinced Eve was a goner.
That was when he noticed her leg. Hell, she had been limping, but he’d been so distracted by everything else, he hadn’t noticed.
She peered out the hatch after the bundle of alien they’d just tossed.
“You need to get to the medic bay,” said Gunner. “What are you doing? Are you crazy running around with your leg like that?”
She looked down at her leg. “Oh. Right.”
Actually, Gunner knew the feeling. A person could get so pumped full of adrenaline that pain didn’t much register anymore.
“You might not notice now,” he said more gently. “But you’ll do damage if you don’t get off it. Let me help you down there.”
She gave him a quick flash of a smile. “Okay.”
He offered her his arm. “Come here.”
She hesitated, and then came closer.
Oh, sun and stars, what the hell? He’d offered to help with no intention of anything other than getting her patched up, but now there seemed to be an odd tension in the air that he didn’t quite understand. Like it was going to be a big deal for the two of them to touch or something.
He wanted to dispel it, so he decided to make small talk. “How’d you know that stuff, anyway? About the salt and the Xerkabah’s true form?”
She leaned on him.
He put his arm around her waist. She was tinier than she appeared in her shapeless black dress. Why he was noticing how small she was, he didn’t know.
She looked up at him from under her eyelashes, and her breath seemed to hitch.
“You all right?” Now his voice sounded lower, quieter. Damn it all to hell.
She licked her lips. “We know things in the Cloister. People see things. And we train. We want to protect our home. Thus far, we’ve never seen any visions of the aliens coming into the Cloister, but if they did come, we want to be ready. So, we have salt. We have weapons.”
He looked straight ahead. Of course, she was going to say that shit about visions again. He didn’t want to argue with her while she was hurt. “Let’s go,” he said, and started to move down the corridor. He went slowly, so that she could keep up.
And thoughts niggled at his brain.
So, if she didn’t have visions, how did she know about the vidya? And the salt? And the Xerkabah being that amorphous blob thing? It made sense, he supposed. If they could shapeshift, it made sense that their true form was a liquid that could conform to any shape. He supposed that someone should have thought of it before. But the fight against the Xerkabah had been all reactive. It had been humans just trying to hold their own. No one had the luxury of contemplating the enemy’s weaknesses. Everyone was too busy trying not to die.
Still. How did she know?
They had reached the ladder. It was going to be next to impossible for her to get down on her own. Climbing down a ladder with a ruined leg like that was tough. “Hold on,” he said, letting go of her. “I’ll go down and then I’ll help you down after me.”
She nodded once, letting him know this was acceptable.
He climbed down.
“You still don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “You don’t think the visions are real? Even after all this.”
He reached the bottom rung. He paused there, not looking up at her. “I don’t know what I believe. It doesn’t much matter, anyway. It isn’t important.” He raised his gaze. “I tell you what, though. If you get any more of these visions, you can let me know, all right?”
She smiled her small smile again. “All right.”
He held up his arms to her. “Let me help you down.”
She scooted forward, her legs dangling down in front of him. Then she pushed off, holding herself up with her arms, and slowly began to lower herself.
She’s strong, he thought, catching her hips. “Got you.”
“Sure?” Her voice was strained from the effort of holding herself up.
“Sure,” he said.
She let go.
And he was holding her.
Slowly, he lowered her to the ground—her body sliding against his.
Damn.
He hadn’t been this close to female flesh in…
But once her feet were on the floor, she pushed away from him and started hobbling down the hallway as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
* * *
“How’s Breccan?” Gunner asked as he helped Eve up onto the second cot in the medic bay.
Calix was bent over Breccan, applying synth skin to the wounds on his chest and stomach. Breccan was already stuck full of tubes. One in his mouth. Two in his arm. He wasn’t conscious.
“He’s working on him,” said Saffron, who stood to one side with Pippa. The two women were holding hands.
It was bad, then. Gunner sucked in a breath. Well, no time to tell Calix about Eve’s leg, then. Maybe Gunner could tend to the wound himself. He turned to Pippa. “Need you in the cockpit. Let’s get off this rock.”
Pippa turned to Saffron. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Saffron just nodded. She had a stoic expression on her face, but Gunner could tell she was worried.
Pippa let go of Saffron’s hand and left the medic bay.
Gunner turned to Eve. “Let’s see what we can do for that leg.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “I don’t need you to— You’re not a doctor.”
“I’ve done my share of bandaging, princess,” he said, nodding at her. “Lie back.”
Eve shot a glance at Calix. “I’ll wait until he can help me. You go do… whatever it is you do.”
Calix looked over his shoulder at Gunner. “What’s wrong with the girl?”
“You mind Breccan,” said Gunner. “Let me worry about the girl.”
“It’s just my leg,” said Eve. “I’m fine, really.”
“Lie back,” said Gunner. He put a hand on one of her shoulders and gave her a gentle shove.
She fell back on the cot, but she glared up at him. “I don’t want you to…”
“What?” said Gunner.
She looked away. “Nothing.”
Gunner didn’t know what to make of the girl. He turned his attention to her leg, shoving her skirt up to past her knee so he could look at the wound.
Violently, her hands went to hold down the skirt, and she sat up.
“Calm down,” said Gunner. “I’m not trying to…” And then he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
Eve’s face was red.
Gunner shifted on his feet. Hadn’t he just been thinking—? But then he saw her leg, and all of those kinds of thoughts fled from his mind. The wound was bad. Her leg had been shredded by that thing’s claws. She’d obviously bled a lot too. Her shoe was soaked in blood. Gunner worked to remove it and the sock she wore underneath.
The floor below them began to rumbled and vibrate.
Liftoff. They’d need to strap in. Gunner fumbled for the straps on the cot.
“Let me do that,” Eve snapped, taking them from him.
Gunner relinquished the straps and headed for the seating units against the wall as the ship lurched into the air.
Gunner stumbled. So did Saffron. Calix seized Breccan’s cot.
“Come on,” said Gunner to the two of them.
“In a minute,” said Calix, shooting
a look at Gunner.
Gunner noticed blood seeping through Calix’s shirt. “Hey,” he said. “That thing got you.” Now, Gunner remembered its claws swiping Calix, sending him plunging back down to the bottom level. “You all right?”
“Fine,” said Calix. “Breccan’s critical, okay? Don’t worry about me.”
“Calix, you can’t help anyone if—”
The ship was surging forward, gathering speed to take off. Gunner stumbled again. He managed to make his way across the room to the seats to strap in. Saffron was already there. All around them, they could hear the hum of the engines as they did their work to accelerate the ship.
“Calix, strap in,” said Gunner.
Calix didn’t listen.
The ship accelerated even more, and Gunner was barely strapped in.
Calix gripped the cot as the ship’s forward motion threatened to send him hurtling through the air.
“Calix!” Gunner shouted.
The ship was going very, very fast now. There was no way that Calix could get strapped in. He clung to the cot as the ship reached top speed, and his feet were ripped from the floor. He dangled there, holding on.
And then the ship burst out of the planet’s atmosphere and the ship’s manufactured gravity kicked in.
Gunner tore off his straps and got to his feet. “Damn it, Calix, you don’t do that.”
Calix wasn’t looking at him, instead going back to Breccan. “I didn’t have time to—”
“We can’t have you hurt,” said Gunner. “We need you, you got that?”
Calix glanced up at Gunner, a little abashed. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
Oh, hell. Breccan was really, really bad, wasn’t he? Gunner bit down on his bottom lip. He shot a look at Saffron, who still looked shell-shocked. Damn it all to hell. Gunner could not deal with this. Instead, he turned back to Eve strapped to the cot. “Calix, you got synth skin?”
“Top drawer,” said Calix.
“Thanks,” said Gunner. He went over to get the package of synth skin. He thought one package would be enough. He also picked up a sterilization wrap. He returned to Eve and applied the wrap to the wound. “This might sting,” he muttered, even though that was stating it mildly.
She cringed, gritting her teeth.
But when he removed the wrap, the wound was clean and disinfected. He opened the synth skin package and applied that to her wounds. The synthetic skin worked its way into her torn flesh, knitting everything back together. “You’ll be back to normal in a day or so,” he said to her as he bandaged everything up.
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