“Really?” Eve furrowed her brow. “So soon? What did you put on me?”
Gunner guessed they didn’t have synth skin in the Cloister. He opened his mouth to explain, but he was suddenly pitched sideways as the ship rocked violently. An accompanying crashing sound made his heart skip time.
“What was that?” said Eve.
“Someone’s shooting at the ship,” he said.
CHAPTER TEN
“Saffron,” said Gunner, rounding on her. “I know your head is not in this game right now, but—”
“It’s fine.” She was already heading out of the medic bay to the cockpit.
Gunner yanked his headset out of his pocket. It was just a small thing that sat in his ear and picked up his voice. He put it in place. “What’s going on up there, Pippa?”
“It’s a Fabis 4,” said Pippa in his ear.
The class of one-man fighter ship that the vidya favored. Sun and stars, what did it take to kill one of those things? He stalked down the corridor for the cannon pit. “Get us out of here as fast as you can.”
“To where? We didn’t set a course for the next stop,” said Pippa.
“Anywhere,” said Gunner.
“Well, give me something,” said Pippa. “I can’t make the jump without coordinates.”
Right, he knew that. Moving through space was a precise sort of thing, especially using the rescav thrusters to go faster than light. Pippa needed a destination. The obvious one was Hoder, but he didn’t need to go there anymore, so where should he tell her to go?
“Doesn’t matter,” broke in Saffron’s voice over his headset.
“Why not?” said Gunner.
“We’re being probed. Hacking into all our instruments, including any coordinates we’re inputing. Reading us like a book right now.”
Damn, damn, damn. Gunner turned into the cannon pit. The plasma cannon was on a swivel chair with a clear bubble of a window around it. He could shoot up, down, sideways, and upside down. He settled into the seat and seized the controls. “Where’s the ship?”
“Starboard,” said Pippa.
He swiveled. There it was. The Fabis 4 was a small, sleek little piece of metal. It looked like a metal bird that slid through the sky, which was maybe a bit ironic since Gunner’s own ship was actually named after a bird. But the Swallow was too big to evade a tiny ship like a Fabis. Still, the firepower should make up for that. Gunner sighted the craft and punched the trigger on the cannon.
Bright blue beams cut through space, heading straight for the enemy ship.
The plasma beam winged the ship, which darted out of the way quick—too quick, like a dancer.
Damn those little ships.
“Saffron, can you break the probe?” said Gunner.
“Trying my best to do that, captain,” said Saffron, her voice a little strained.
Sun and stars, the woman had enough to deal with right now with Breccan and—
The Swallow rocked again, hit by fire from the Fabis.
Gunner tried to return fire, but the blasted little fighter had moved so fast that he didn’t know where it was anymore. He swung the chair around, searching the sky. “Pippa, what do you know coordinates for off the top of your head?”
“Captain?” came her voice.
The ship was rocked again by more fire.
Where was the damned Fabis?
Oh, there it was. Gunner sighted it, squeezed off a few more bright beams of destruction. “Something you don’t need to look up. Someplace you can punch in right off the minute Saffron gets us free of that probe?”
“I, um, I guess…” She was thinking.
Gunner’s shot had hit the Fabis. There was a shower of sparks in the distance, but the ship was moving so fast that Gunner couldn’t assess the damage he’d done.
And the Swallow was hit again—hard.
“Can you try some evasive maneuvers?” Gunner said. “What the hell you doing up there, Pippa?”
“I’m trying to think,” said Pippa, whose voice had gotten high-pitched.
The Fabis zoomed overhead, filling the window in front of Gunner. It shot again, beam after beam hitting the hull of the Sparrow.
An alarm began to sound, a long, slow beeping noise.
“Pippa move the damned ship!” Gunner swung up to shoot the Fabis.
He hit it again. More sparks.
But it was going to take more than a few hits to disable that ship, and it was moving so fast that Gunner couldn’t keep up with it.
The Sparrow lurched upwards.
Gunner saw beams from the Fabis shoot by harmlessly. Pippa’s maneuvers had barely spared them.
“Nice one, Pippa,” he said. “Keep that up. Now, where can we go the minute we get free of the probe?”
“Ceymia 4?” she said. “It’s the only coordinates I know.”
“We’re not going back to Ceymia 4,” said Gunner. “That’s insanity.”
“Well, then I have to look it up, because I don’t know any—”
Another hit. This one was bad. The Swallow was hit with such force that the ship rolled over and several more alarms began to sound.
A robotic voice came on the PA system. “Rescav thruster failure. Repeat. Rescav thruster failure.”
Oh, no. That had not just happened. If the rescav thrusters were busted, they couldn’t go faster than light. That meant they’d have to go regular speed to whatever was in system. Might take them months to get anywhere, and they didn’t even have any damned ration bars.
Letting out a roar of frustration, Gunner swung around in his chair, looking for that little Fabis.
“Rescav thruster failure. Repeat. Rescav thruster failure.”
“Can you shut that off?” snapped Gunner. Where was the ship? It couldn’t have simply disappeared, could it?
Oh, sun and stars, if he couldn’t—
There.
It was turning around, coming in for another run, preparing to fly past and shoot them again.
“Pippa?” said Gunner.
“What?” She sounded panicked. “I’m sorry I don’t—”
“Reroute the power from the thrusters to the cannons.”
“But if we do that—”
“The thrusters are busted, right?”
“I guess they are.”
“So, do it.”
“Okay,” she said.
The Fabis was coming.
Gunner sighted it.
“Done, captain,” said Pippa.
Gunner opened fire, putting everything he had into shooting at the ship. He didn’t let up. Beam after beam after beam. He used all the power he could.
And every beam hit home.
The Fabis exploded into large chunks which went floating everywhere.
“Hard right, Pippa,” he yelled. “Avoid the debris.”
The ship banked right.
“You did it, captain,” said Saffron’s voice, stunned.
“Sounds like you didn’t believe in me, Saffron,” he said. “I’m hurt.” He grinned out at the debris of the craft. One less vidya to worry about. Nothing in that ship had survived.
* * *
Calix’s lips were white and bloodless. His eyes, on the other hand, were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He wouldn’t have left the medic bay if Gunner hadn’t forced him to. Now, Gunner sat his friend down at the table in the kitchen and set a drink in front of him.
“I have to get back to him,” said Calix, but he downed the glass of water.
“Let me see your chest,” said Gunner. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” said Calix. “Breccan is…” He shook his head.
Gunner took Calix’s empty glass and got up. He went back to the sink. “It’s bad. I know. Is he, um…” He bowed his head and then ran the water. The sound of the faucet was too loud for conversation. Gunner switched off the tap. “Will he make it?”
“Ask your Cloister girl.” Calix’s voice was bitter. “Does it look like I can see the future?”
> Gunner handed him the glass of water. “So, you don’t think he will.”
“Did I say that?” Calix flared his nostrils.
Gunner folded his arms over his chest. “I know you pretty well is all. When you start acting like this, it’s dire.” Damn. He was going to lose Breccan. Gunner turned away. He hadn’t lost a man since he took the Swallow to the air. He’d hoped that with the war over, his days of watching his shipmates die were over. But not bloody likely, and speaking of that girl…
What had Pippa said back on the planet? She’d run up to them and she’d said that the thing was after Eve.
Eve had known the thing was coming.
Hell, maybe she didn’t see the future at all. Maybe she just happened to know that she was being chased by the vidya. He set his jaw. That girl was trouble. He’d be happy to be rid of her. She’d paid for passage to Hoder, even though it hadn’t seemed as if she’d been real particular about her destination (another sign of being on the run, now that he thought about it). But once he got the thrusters up and running again, he’d take her to Hoder. He’d do what he bargained and then be on his way.
“Look, he might make it,” said Calix, who was on his feet. “But you have to let me get back to him.”
“Fine,” said Gunner. “Because I need him to fix the rescav thrusters.” He pointed at his friend. “But you bandage yourself up before you do anything else. Because if you faint, you’re worthless.”
Calix looked down at his blood-soaked shirt. He swallowed. “Yeah, okay,” he said in a low voice. “Fine.”
Gunner left the kitchen and went to the cockpit, where he found Pippa alone. She was scrolling through information about the Dern system, where they currently were.
“What are we close to?” said Gunner. “Anything?”
“No,” said Pippa.
“Nothing?”
“This is the only inhabited planet on the system.”
He swore under his breath. Then he massaged the bridge of his nose. Then he turned back, peering over her shoulder. “What about one of the uninhabited planets? We could touch down, do some repairs—”
“And not be able to breathe,” she said. “None of the other planets even have an atmosphere to speak of.”
He sighed. Then he nodded. “Okay, back to Durga, then.”
“Where we just came from?”
“The settlement there might have some parts we can use,” he said. “And it’s not like the folks there are going to be using them anymore.”
“Scavenging from the dead, huh, captain?”
He eyed her. “You do have a way of putting things, Pippa.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eve stared out at the outpost in the distance. Last night, the ship had set back down on Durga. This morning, everyone except the doctor and the wounded engineer had gone off together. They hadn’t told Eve why.
After some time passed, and having not been given any instructions, Eve decided to leave the ship and go for a walk. She needed to clear her head. She was feeling confused about a great number of things, and she thought some fresh air would help her think.
The landscape was mostly flat, but there were craggy rock formations on the horizon. Durga was fairly close to its sun, and its rotation only lasted about four hours each way, so it was already coming up on sunset as she walked. The setting sun turned the sky bright colors—purples and oranges and reds so bright they almost hurt her eyes.
It was beautiful.
But she wasn’t walking to bask in the prettiness. Instead, she needed to get things straight.
The vidya had come for her. It had confirmed it with its inhuman rasp. Killed them all to get to you. It had spoken her name. That could only mean one thing. By leaving the Cloister, she had become known to the Xerkabah. They were looking for her and they wanted to kill her. They must also know about her future son, and they wouldn’t want to allow their demise to happen.
If they killed Eve, then she could never become pregnant, and the humans’ champion would never be born.
This was not a scenario that they had prepared her for in the Cloister. Actually, they hadn’t really prepared her for much of anything. The discussion of the future was limited to what they could see, and since none of them were leaving the Cloister, they couldn’t see anything except when her life intersected with theirs again. They knew she was to come back with her young son in the future, to leave him in their care, but they didn’t know anything else, not even why she left her son there.
Possibly, she thought ruefully, it was because they were being chased by vidya all over the galaxy.
But she wasn’t even sure how this child of hers was going to be conceived, because she still didn’t feel whatever she thought a woman should feel for the father of her child when it came to the captain.
He’d been kinder to her lately, and she could see glimmers that maybe he was a better man than she had given him credit for thus far. But it wasn’t enough. She didn’t want to be intimate with him.
He’d touched her. His hands had been around her waist. He’d grabbed onto her waist and pulled her down the ladder, their bodies brushing against each other. And she still remembered when he moved her skirt to look at her wounded leg. (It was doing much better, incidentally, good enough that she could walk without discomfort.) The touching hadn’t bothered her. She’d even liked it—in a way.
But it wasn’t enough, and she didn’t know if anything would be.
She was worried that the fact that she’d been told that she was fated to be with this man had somehow made it impossible for her to want him.
She had to bring forth the champion.
But she couldn’t fathom the idea of forcing herself to be with a man she didn’t have feelings for.
“Hey,” said a voice, interrupting her thoughts.
She jumped, startled, and turned in the direction of the voice. When she turned, she realized that she’d somehow ended up twisting around to the back of the outpost. She’d been looking out at the scenery, not paying attention, and she’d walked in a circle.
The captain was standing outside the fence that surrounded the outpost. He wasn’t wearing a shirt again.
Her gaze flicked over his bare skin, annoyed. Why couldn’t that man stay clothed? It didn’t help that he’d obviously been doing something strenuous, and he was sweaty. His muscles and his scars gleamed in the fading light.
“You shouldn’t be out on that leg,” said the captain.
She lifted her chin, feeling defiant and annoyed. “It feels fine.”
The captain wiped at his sweaty brow with the back of his arm. “Suit yourself.”
She didn’t know what to do with herself now. Could she keep going? Did she need to tell him she was going to walk away?
“You have a minute?” said the captain. “You and I need to talk.”
“Talk? About what?”
He pointed out at the horizon and the expanse of land between them and it. “We can walk together if you’d like.”
“Okay.”
The captain took a step and then stopped. “It’s colder out here than I thought it was. Wait a second.” He left her there and darted back behind the fence. When he returned, he was buttoning a shirt over his chest. “Hot work moving bodies.”
She swallowed. “That’s what you’re doing?”
“Might be stealing from them,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we turn into beasts. We’re human, and we respect our dead. We’ve been burying them all.”
“That’s good,” she said, feeling another shift in her attitude toward him overtake her. He was a good man. Rough around the edges, but good inside. And he was attractive. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go to bed with him. Maybe it would even be nice. Maybe…
“I need to ask you a question,” he said. His voice was quiet, even, controlled.
“Yes?”
“Did you know the vidya was after you when you boarded my ship?”
“Of course not,” she said. �
��You saw me having the vision.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re not going to let up with that vision business, are you?”
She turned to him, aghast. “I thought you finally believed me!”
“Well, I thought it through some, and I think it makes a bit more sense that you simply knew a vidya was chasing you and you were running from it. You made up the vision.”
“I didn’t make up anything,” she said.
He looked her over, seeming to consider this. Then he turned toward the horizon.
“I don’t know how to convince you that I’m telling the truth,” she said, frustrated. “It seems to me that you’re determined to think the worst of me.”
“That ain’t it.” He glanced at her again. “Truth is, I feel a bit more charitable toward you than makes sense. That’s why I’m not going to give you some supplies and leave you on this planet.”
“What?” Her jaw dropped.
He stopped walking. He didn’t look at her, just at his foot, which he scuffed against the ground. “That would be the smart thing to do, I think. You’re being chased, and I know that if the Xerkabah have some reason to be chasing you, they don’t give up. Now, we may have killed that one vidya, but that doesn’t mean the chasing’s going to stop. Does it?”
She bit down on her bottom lip. “No, I don’t think it does.”
“More will be coming for you,” he said. “And regardless of your visions or what-have-you, I think you knew that you were bringing this danger down on me and mine when you boarded my ship.”
She twisted her hands together. “I… sort of. Maybe. I guess I didn’t really think it through. No one in the Cloister ever told me that something would be trying to kill me.”
He raised his gaze to her. “That’s why I should leave you. Because you’re endangering the people I care about—hell, you may have gotten Breccan killed—and I’d be a fool to let that continue.”
“I’m sorry about Breccan. I’m sorry about everything. I really didn’t know you’d be in danger. I should have, but I didn’t. I… you have no idea how hopelessly naive I was before all this.”
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