She couldn’t let that happen. If it went back in there, she’d have to fight it again. No, this had to end now.
She rushed out of the water, heading straight for the vidya. She tossed aside the broken crate. It landed on the sand. Then she grabbed the vidya by a foot and yanked.
The thing fell onto its back, howling. Its long arms came for her, raking its spiky claws into her arms.
She didn’t let go.
She backed up, dragging the monster with her, back into the water, back into the salt.
Its claws dug into her arms. Blood welled up. The pain made tears spring to her eyes.
Two more steps.
One more step.
The vidya’s legs hit the water, and the water submerged them. It cried out.
She kept going, pulling the thing into the water, grunting in exertion.
And then the change happened. It started in the vidya’s legs, but it traveled all the way up its body. The vidya went transparent, and then its features melted together, and soon it was nothing more that a clear blob on the sand, shot through with veins and capillaries.
Eve stood in the water, staring at it.
Oh, she had done it. She had done it.
She bent over and grasped her knees, struggling to catch her breath.
When she looked up, the Xerkabah was moving.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It was edging its way up the bank, away from the water. It was moving slowly, but it was alive.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Eve, splashing her way out of the surf after it. Her entire body wailed at her in pain as she did. Blood was seeping out of the wounds on her arms, her back, and her shoulder. Her shin was still hurt. She had never been so thirsty in her entire life, and if she didn’t find water soon—
It was shifting. It rose up off the sand and it twisted and came together, solidifying…
She let out a little cry.
It had turned into Gunner.
She stopped moving, putting up both of her hands as if to ward it off.
“Haven’t been able to shift out of the vidya form for decades,” said the Gunner-thing. It cocked its head to one side. “It’s freeing to be back to normal, I must say.”
But it wasn’t normal. It was Gunner.
It looked down at its fingers. It flexed them. “Such an odd form, the human body.”
She felt lightheaded again, but she fought it. She needed to focus.
“Anyway, thank you,” said the Gunner-thing. “I don’t think I understood before. I’d never been human…” It smiled. And then it lunged for her.
She lurched backward, but she wasn’t fast enough.
It tackled her and they went down on the sand. It clawed at her face with Gunner’s fingers.
She shut her eyes.
Its thumbs went to her eyeballs. They pushed.
She screeched, bringing up her knees. She drove one into the Gunner-thing’s crotch. She wasn’t even sure if they had human weaknesses in human form, but—
It let out a cry, loosening its grip on her.
She turned over on her stomach, using her arms to crawl away. There. On the sand. It was the broken piece of crate. If she could just get to it—
A sharp pain at the back of her skull. She was dazed.
It had hit her.
She turned around to look at it, and her vision was blurred. There were two of it.
It laughed. It wrapped its hands around her throat.
It hurt. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to struggle, tried to struggle, but she was so tired. Everything hurt, and she could feel a comforting blue blankness on the edge of her consciousness. It promised peace if she would simply let go. All she had to do was stop trying, and give in…
She shut her eyes.
And suddenly, the vision rose up in front of her. Her grown son, pointing out the windows at the fleet of Xerkabah ships.
Her eyes snapped open. She couldn’t die. It wasn’t just about her. It was about her son. And it wasn’t just about him. It was about the entire galaxy, all the humans who were imprisoned and waiting for a champion. She had to stay alive.
If she died, hope died.
She flung out her arm, reaching for the piece of broken crate.
Above her, the face of the Gunner-thing leered at her.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the crate piece, but she couldn’t grasp it.
The Gunner-thing’s hands tightened around her neck.
She summoned every shred of strength in her body, and she tried again. This time, the crate piece moved.
The Gunner-thing leaned closer. “I thought it was exhilarating to kill in vidya form, but you humans… There’s a viciousness here I never imagined.”
Yes! She had the crate. She snatched it up and slammed it into the Gunner-thing’s side.
It made a choking noise, letting go of her throat.
“I’ll show you vicious, asshole,” she said, pulling the jagged crate piece out and driving it back in.
It fell to one side, eyes bulging.
She scrambled up onto her knees. She tugged out the crate piece. She held it over her head with two hands and then she brought it down. She brought it down again and again, into the Gunner-thing’s stomach and chest and neck.
Until it wasn’t Gunner anymore, but had shifted back into its amorphous true form, only this time it wasn’t moving. There were big rips in its gelatinous body, and it was bleeding.
She kept stabbing.
She let out a guttural yell. Tears ran down her face. And she brought the jagged piece of crate down over and over and over.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
She ripped it into pieces. Four different pieces, which she threw into the water in separate spots, because she was afraid it was somehow going to form itself back together and come after her again.
Then she limped her way back into the ship.
She knew that the ship’s water was held in tanks in the belly of the ship, but first she had to stop in the kitchen for a container to put it in. To her great pleasure, she found that there were rows of water jugs on some shelves in the back of the kitchen, probably there in case of emergency malfunction of the ship’s water system. She was desperate for water, and so she guzzled some, and then she went back to find the bandages she’d dropped all over the corridor before.
At this point, she realized her idea of bringing all this to Gunner was stupid. She should bring Gunner here. In the end, that would be easier. They both should be closer to this wreckage. They would need the shelter and the supplies to survive.
She slapped some makeshift bandages on her worst wounds, but only to stanch the bleeding a bit. She was going to have to redo them since she was going to get them wet. When she waded back into the water, the salt water stung her everywhere that she had been hurt. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to swim all the way through that undertow again.
And then back with Gunner?
And that was when she noticed something.
She had left Gunner lying on the island over there, but Gunner wasn’t there anymore. In fact, the island itself was much, much smaller than it had been before.
The tide, she thought. The tide has come in and swept him out to sea.
She grabbed handfuls of her hair.
No.
This was not fair. She had fought and killed that vidya, and she had managed to stop the vision from happening, and she had saved Gunner.
She scanned the horizon. It was salt water, and he would float, even if he was drowned, she should see him somewhere. Where was he?
She knew that sometimes certain events in time couldn’t be averted. It was something they’d taught her in the Cloister. Certain moments were set, like the clock striking noon. Things about them could be shifted, the scenery could change, but they had to happen.
Maybe Gunner had to die.
Maybe there was nothing she could have done. Maybe it was meant to be, like everything else. Fate.
She saw
him, then.
He was floating face down in the water, not ten feet from her.
She kicked her feet and swam for him as hard as she could.
When she got him, she pulled his face out of the water.
His head flopped back. His lips were blue. He wasn’t breathing.
She clung to him. She stopped kicking and held onto him, and they floated.
No. This was Gunner. Her captain. Maybe she’d fought off a vidya without him, but she didn’t want to be without him completely. She didn’t want to be alone on this island. She didn’t want to have a baby on her own. Hell, she wasn’t even sure yet if she was pregnant. It was likely, she thought, but what if it hadn’t happened?
No, no, if it was fate for Gunner to die, then he must have already impregnated her, because fate couldn’t let it—
She gritted her teeth.
To hell with fate.
Suddenly, she started kicking her legs. She wrapped one arm under Gunner’s armpits and she hauled him after her through the water. She pulled him all the way back to the shore next to the wreck of the leon ship and spread him out on the sand there.
She was remembering a lesson that Calix had given her—the last thing that Calix had done before he died. He’d taught her how to make a person breathe again after they were gone. Maybe that was fate. Or maybe it was all just a series of coincidences and nothing meant anything. Maybe her visions let her see the future, but nothing was truly set.
She pressed her hands onto Gunner’s chest and she pushed down hard into the center. She made rapid compressions, just as Calix had taught her. Then she tilted back Gunner’s head, lifting his chin. She put her lips against Gunner’s, pinching his nose, and she breathed into his mouth.
She did it again.
Nothing from Gunner.
She squared her shoulders and repeated the process.
Then again.
She remembered that Calix had done this to Breccan back on the Swallow, and that nothing had happened. Breccan had never started to breathe again.
How long do I do this? she wondered as she started the process yet again. When do I give up?
Gunner coughed.
Stunned, she jumped.
He coughed and gurgled and water came out of his mouth.
“Gunner!” she said.
His eyes opened, bulging, and he sat up, coughing and sputtering.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
seven months later…
Gunner walked up the shore, carrying one of the species of fish that lived on the planet over his shoulders. It was a huge thing, and he had to balance it against his back, but he didn’t mind the heft of it, or the slimy feel of its skin against his neck and cheek.
Honestly, there was something very satisfying about being on the planet. It had been months now, and it hadn’t been easy at first. They’d been worried, because they weren’t sure if they only had the supplies on the crashed leon ship, which were not extensive. But a bit of exploring and they’d found a larger island not too far away. It had a tall mountain in the middle of it, and down the center of the mountain was a stream of fresh water.
Finding the water meant everything was going to be all right.
The planet itself was teeming with all kinds of animal and plant life, and there were various crashed ships all over the place. He was able to scavenge what he could to make weapons and tools. He speared fish and used a makeshift bow and arrows to shoots birds. They cooked their food over open fires on the beach and at night they slept in a shelter that he’d cobbled together from pieces of the wreckage and some of the tall, stringy trees on the big island.
They had all their needs taken care of and they were comfortable.
It was good. He liked it here. There was something about working with his hands that made him feel satisfied.
Eve helped too, of course, but he wouldn’t let her overexert herself. In the beginning, she’d been exhausted all the time anyway. At some point, she started to feel better, just around the time when her belly started to swell, and then she was running all over the island with him, helping to create the shelter. But as the months passed, she grew more and more heavily pregnant, and then she grew more tired easily.
Right then, he was sure she was napping in the shade of their front porch, which was composed of a handwoven thatch roof and pieces taken from the dead vidya’s Fabis 4.
Later, after he’d skinned this fish and cut it into filets and started to cook them up over the fire, they’d maybe get a transmission from the outside world.
It had taken some doing, but they’d managed to get enough pieces from the wrecked ships to cobble together a decent cator. They had made contact, and now they were working with the refugees on the Ceymia planets and with outposts all over to coordinate small expeditions to this planet. Obviously, they couldn’t all come at once, or it would tip off the Xerkabah, but this planet was the safest place for refugee humans. Its salty water provided a level of protection against the aliens, and they needed to take advantage of that.
If they were ever going to launch an assault against the Xerkabah and have a hope of winning, this was going to be the place it started.
For the first time in a long time, Gunner had hope.
He began to climb up over rocky outcroppings, away from the shore, to the place where their shelter was situated.
Eve wasn’t napping after all. She was sitting on a chair taken from the cockpit of one of the leon ships. When she saw him, she got up and waved.
He was stunned again by just how pregnant she was. It frightened him sometimes. It seemed insane. But if all went well, they’d have doctors here before she actually went into labor. And there was another part of him, a soft part, that loved her round belly and her bright eyes. He trudged up the rest of the way, a grin splitting his features.
She grinned back.
They were both tanned and strong, their hair bleached lighter from the sun and the salt.
“Big one today,” she said, gesturing to the fish.
“Yeah,” he said, setting it down next to her.
She rubbed her stomach. “Good, because we’re hungry.”
He laughed, stepping closer and wrapping his arms around her. “Always hungry.”
“Yes.” She kissed him lightly.
He deepened the kiss.
Her arms tightened around his body.
They held onto each other for a moment.
There was a beeping noise suddenly, from within the shelter.
Gunner pulled back. “What the hell’s that?”
Eve’s eyes widened. “That’s…” She turned and headed back for the shelter, going as fast as she could with her big belly, which mostly amounted to a waddle.
“That’s what?” He went after her.
“It’s the Swallow,” she said. “It’s the signal we sent out to the Swallow.”
Together, they rushed in to what was their living room. It was furnished with furniture from various wrecked ships. Gunner went over to the cator and grabbed the handheld speaker. “Go ahead,” he said.
A crackle of static. “Captain?” said a hopeful voice.
“Pippa, is that you?” said Gunner. He turned to Eve.
She grinned, settling down on a chair. “Hi, Pippa!”
“Oh, sun and stars, I finally found you,” said Pippa. “And you’re alive. I didn’t think you were. Saffron said there was no way, that you had to be dead, but I just knew—”
“Is Saffron there?” he said. “If she’s there, you put her on. I want to give her a piece of my mind.”
“No, actually, she’s not,” said Pippa. “We got in a big argument while I was recovering on Vishnu, and I wanted to look for you, and she said it was hopeless. Anyway, next thing I knew, she had taken some job on another ship smuggling guns. So, I was left with the Swallow, and I’ve just been staying put, putting out feelers for you.”
“The Swallow’s okay?” said Gunner. It was just a ship, but he realized in that moment
how much it meant to him.
“She’s swell, captain. I’m taking good care of her. You just tell me where you are, and I’ll turn her back over to you.”
Gunner grinned. “Well, hell, Pippa, we’re trying to get the word out to everyone about where to come. We’re on Salz.”
“That’s you?” said Pippa. “You’re the ones who found out the black hole planet is only a black hole to the aliens?”
“That’s us,” said Eve.
“Oh, Eve,” said Pippa. “I miss you so much. How are you?”
“I’m great,” said Eve. “I’m the size of a leon ship, and I’m tired all the time, but otherwise, just fine.”
“The size of a…” Pippa gasped. “So, it did happen, then? You and the captain? There’s going to be a baby?”
“You told her about us?” said Gunner, shaking his head at Eve.
She shrugged. “Sorry. At the time, it was only a vision.”
“Oh, sun and stars, captain,” said Pippa. “I just can’t believe—”
“Not a word,” said Gunner. But he was grinning. It didn’t matter now. Things had worked just fine between him and Eve in the end. Better than fine. They were going to take the future by the balls.
“I’m glad you’re both okay,” said Pippa.
“You just bring me my ship, understand?” said Gunner.
She laughed. “You got it, captain.”
* * *
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