He’d never seen ones like this before in person; hadn’t known the tech was fully completed, though there had been talks of weaponry such as this on the horizon.
Each mite was like a tiny droid soldier, whose mechanical “bite” reacted with the cerebral cortex of the imprisoned host body.
If a host revolted or acted out of turn, it sent a signal to the mites, which sent waves of pain throughout every host, firing against every nerve. He’d seen Cade signal those mites with a button on the wrist of his S2. But Karr knew it wasn’t that simple.
There had to be something in control of them all. A power source somewhere on the ship that was continually running. Perhaps it was the ship itself. Karr knew his way around tech, but nothing such as this—nothing that could run both the mites and the electromagnetic wall he’d trapped everyone in, used to keep prisoners inside, and to keep enemies out.
It was all sickening.
The crew: Jameson and Doerty, Rivers and Stacya and Balu. They were his family, the ones that had stuck around the longest. They’d shared laughter and drinks and meals during what seemed like endless interstellar travels. They’d explored new places together, sang stupid songs and gotten so drunk they couldn’t tell their right feet from their left.
But now they’d done what no human should ever do; what no human could ever come back from.
They’d stolen someone’s freedom.
“Karr, look at me.”
Karr flinched. He’d forgotten Cade was there.
Again, a wave of sickness washed over him. He swallowed the bile away, and said, “I thought I told you to go and stick your head further up Geisinger’s ass. It’s in there so deep, I’m surprised you can see the light of day.”
Cade’s outline was blurry in his peripherals as he joined his side. He was wearing his captain’s S2, the black set him apart from the crimson suits of the crew. He crossed his arms over the railing and stared out across the horizon.
Out.
Never down—at what he’d done.
“Why, Cade?” Karr asked. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times.” Cade’s voice was heavy. “The outcome is worth more than the risk. When the job is done, and it will be done...”
“What about them?” Karr cut him off.
“They’ll be freed. It will all have been for true gain, and not simply ours. They’re aiding the galaxy in something that will truly change things for the better. The eradication of the Reaper, Karr. Gone for good. Earth will be liveable again. A planet ten times this size.”
“And the ones that died in the attack?” Karr asked.
Cade faced him fully. His eyes were dark, the shadows beneath them even darker. “How many times must I remind you that you were among those dead? They struck first.”
“I’m not dead!” Karr screamed. His blood pulsed in his ears. His body shook with the need to do something, but what could he do? How could he do anything that would undo this? “So what if they struck? You defend your own, and then you get the hell away! You don’t turn it into this. You don’t start a…” His words trailed off as nausea tugged at his insides. “You don’t start a bloody war camp, Cade.”
He turned away and stared out at the Bloodhorns, trying to pick patterns out of the strange swirls of rock. But everything had blurred together.
It didn’t make any sense. Cade had always been good at his core, despite his unlawful activities… but everything he’d ever done was for their survival. For the good of their family. Hell, when they were younger, he was Karr’s hero.
Now he’d changed sides.
“You took a job for a man who doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” Karr said. “His own gain.”
“Geisinger is good.”
“Money doesn’t make a man good. Oftentimes it has the opposite effect.”
Cade threw his hands in the air. “Says the looter who’s spent his whole life wishing for a mountain full of riches!”
Karr’s hands curled into fists. “That’s not the same. We work for our money so we can survive.”
“And that’s exactly why I took this damned job!” Cade growled. “Because I promised you, just as I promised them.”
In his mind, Karr saw their parents’ death plaques, stuck in the wall alongside millions of others. I’ll take care of him, Cade had said, long ago, when they were mere boys visiting from their orphanage. Before Jeb had come to collect them. I promise, I’ll take care of Karr.
He always had.
But not like this.
“They would be ashamed of you,” Karr spat. He wanted Cade to feel his pain, to feel the truth of what he’d done. “They would be horrified to call you their son.”
Cade’s face changed at that statement.
“You didn’t know them,” Cade said through gritted teeth. “Not like I did. Don’t pretend as if you ever did.”
The space between them yawned wider. Karr knew if he kept going, he might not ever be able to reach Cade again.
“Look at yourself,” Karr said softly. “Look at what you’ve become.” His breathing grew heavy behind his visor. “Give me a reason to believe that you’re still you. Please. Tell me the truth. What does he have on you? What does he have on… on us? Because I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, Cade, and the only conclusion I can come to is that he’s threatened you, or…”
“You’re wrong,” Cade said. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’re acting like a child. You can’t go through life without taking a risk, Karr, without seizing an opportunity when it comes. You’d know this if you’d ever had to think for yourself, to make decisions, but I’ve protected you from that burden. I make the hard choices, I keep us alive, and you follow. That is our way.”
Karr felt like he’d been slapped across the face.
“How proud Jeb would be of you, Cade,” Karr said. “You’ve turned out just like him.”
“Just… listen,” Cade pleaded with him.
“How many died in the attack?” Karr asked. “I want you to say it.”
Acid filled his stomach as he waited for the answer. He took a deep breath.
The ground felt like it was too far from his feet, as if he were standing a hundred stories tall. For a moment, it was all he could do not to topple over. He closed his eyes, forced himself to take another breath.
“How many?” Karr asked again.
Cade shifted. “At least… two hundred.”
Karr nearly sank to his knees. Dohrsaran and human, for Karr couldn’t stop seeing the faces of their own crew that had fallen. Higgins, with his tall, broad frame and constant frown. Sampson, with his untamable mane of hair. Lex, who had a family back on her home planet. So many sisters it’s hard to count, she’d told Karr once.
Now there was no one to send money back home to those sisters.
Now there were three empty bunks and more holes in Karr’s heart that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to refill.
“Get away from me,” Karr said.
Not a shout but a whisper, full of pain.
“Get away from me, and don’t come back until you’re ready to call off this war and set them free.”
“I can’t,” Cade said. He closed his eyes, and behind his visor, Karr saw how shallow his cheeks had become. “I cannot, and will not fail, Karr. This is the only way.”
The door to the loading dock slid open with a hiss, and Rohtt marched onto the platform, heavy footfalls mixing in time with the workers’ hammers and drills down below.
“Geisinger on the line,” Rohtt said with a sneer, looking past Karr as if he were only a part of the horizon.
Cade sighed. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
“Geisinger doesn’t have a moment, Kingston.” Rohtt crossed his scarred arms. For the first time, Karr realized that Rohtt had probably been on the wrong side of the Great War. Crossman or not… it was like he had no soul. Karr wondered where those scars had come from, and what victims likely lay in shallow graves on
the other side of the story. “There will be time for your little family fits when the job is done.”
“Go,” Karr said. “Run to your new god and worship him.”
Cade glared at him. He turned and was almost to the Starfall doors when Karr spoke up.
“Is it worth it?” he asked.
“Is it worth what?”
“Your soul,” Karr said.
Cade didn’t answer.
He only swiped his palm on the scanner beside the door. It slid open, and he disappeared inside the enclosed halls of the Starfall, leaving Karr alone. The longer he stood here, the longer he allowed himself to stare out at this planet, the memory of that place returned clearer. The half-darkness, the half-light.
The place where he’d been asked to make a choice before he came back to life.
The whine of the drill started up again.
Loud and shrill, like a painful scream.
Disgust swelled in Karr’s chest. It squeezed at the place where his sword wound should have been. He placed a hand to his chest, falling to one knee.
What was there that Karr could do to turn things back around? Rise up against his brother and Rohtt and the crew? Steal a rifle, shoot the Crossman, and then what?
He’d get nowhere.
He’d never been a fighter.
And down below was an army and a monster king.
“Nothing,” Karr muttered beneath his breath. “You can do nothing.”
Because he was a coward. Because he always had been, when it came to truly living. He’d been beneath Jeb’s fist, and then beneath Cade’s, and when he’d tried to run and start a life for himself… well, that escape pod was never a true plan.
He’d come here and he’d died.
And he didn’t know how in the hell he’d come back to life.
His heartbeat pounded like a war drum, in time with the workers below as they dug into the mountainside. Each hit, his chest tightened, like he couldn’t breathe.
He bent over, leaning against the railing to try to calm himself.
You’re fine. Deep breaths, Karr. It’s all in your head.
But when he sucked in another breath… his lungs failed him. The oxygen readings on his S2 screen were in the green; he shouldn’t be struggling for air. Karr gasped, but again, it felt like nothing entered his lungs. He felt like he was drowning, pressed beneath the heavy weight of water.
“Cade.” He gasped his brother’s name into the com.
Only static answered.
“Cade.”
He barely got the word out as he stumbled towards the door, his vision filled with flecks of white. A few more paces, and he’d reach the door. Another thirty seconds, for the airlock to clear and open the door wide.
He wouldn’t make it inside.
Karr’s legs went out from under him just as he reached the door. He stretched, trying to reach the lock panel.
Breathe! his body commanded him. But he was suffocating, buried alive inside his helmet.
Some part of him still tried to hold on as his body reacted on instinct, reaching for the latches on the back of his helmet. He flipped the latches and yanked the helmet free, then took a gasping breath of Dohrsaran air.
He’d expected pain. He’d expected his lungs to fold inwards and revolt against the poisonous alien atmosphere, but at least he’d be able to take a single breath, get himself inside the airlock and pay the consequences in the med bay.
Instead…
Karr took another breath. It was dry air, the kind you’d expect from a land made of sand and no sea. But it was not painful.
If anything, it was fresh, a far cry from the air inside the helmet, and certainly the air inside the Starfall, which always held a hint of metal to its taste.
Karr turned and hauled himself to his feet as he stared out at the planet. He risked another breath. The wind sighed gently by, tickling his skin. He could feel his heart, a steady beat inside. It was almost calm. Almost, if it weren’t for the sound of the hammers and the drill below.
Beat, hammer, beat…
Beat.
Beat.
Karr looked skyward. For suddenly the sound was growing louder. And coming closer.
Beat.
…Beat.
…Beat.
He was certain, certain there was something above him. He heard it, felt it, his hair moving as if caught in a strong breeze. But there was nothing above him save for the sky, the rings of Dohrsar still glittering bright, the monumental red rock towers off to the right.
“You’re losing it,” he told himself, over the sound of the wingbeats. Perhaps the air was poisonous. Perhaps it had gotten to his brain.
Not a second later… Karr’s helmet fell from his hand and landed with a dull thump against the loading dock.
For out of the sky, a monster appeared.
It burst into existence, a wyvern as black as night. Its wingbeats carried it closer, dark scales and sinews undulating as it stroked its mighty wings once, twice, then tucked them close to its body and spiraled down towards the ship.
There were two riders atop its back, outlined in the last dregs of sunlight as the day shifted into cold, unfeeling night.
The first was a man wearing a hat, a leather duster coat rippling behind him as it caught the wind. The second was the very same blue-haired woman who’d driven a sword through his heart.
He stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet as he tried to get to the airlock. The wyvern landed before him. Its mighty claws screeched against the metal, black jaws oozing as if it couldn’t wait to swallow him whole.
“P-please,” Karr gasped, holding his hands before him as the young woman dismounted, swift as a river, and strode across the landing dock to stand above him. “Please.”
He wanted to scream, but his voice had been stripped from him in the face of fear.
“Oh, look at that,” the woman said, raising a blue brow as she frowned down at him. “The beast begs.”
Terror washed over Karr, freezing him to the spot as she took the very sword from his nightmares, spun it around…
And with a single hit across his skull, sent him spiraling into the dark.
The last thing he saw was his own blood, pooling across his vision as he fell.
Not crimson.
But dark as night. As if it were made of living shadows that danced away on a hot desert wind.
Chapter 22
Sonara
The Wanderer boy bled red like the rest of them.
Sonara had seen it with her own eyes, felt the warm wetness of it melt into the spaces between her fingers as it oozed down Lazaris.
Red—like the bird painted on the belly of his ship. A crimson that spoke of Soahm’s mystery.
He had bled red. Sonara was certain of it.
But when Lazaris’ pommel hit true on that landing dock, and the skin atop the Wanderer boy’s scalp split open…
Her curse went wild.
For it wasn’t crimson that seeped from his wounds, like the last time she’d drawn it from him. It was shadows. Shadows like her own, not pooling from beneath his skin, but soaring. Little ghosts formed out of the darkness, sprouting wings and taking flight.
And then she’d sensed it with her curse: that something, the strange zing that came from Shadowbloods alone. Along with something else. Something that had set Sonara’s knees to quaking, something that was…
“Impossible,” Azariah said now, the very same word Sonara and Markam uttered when they’d loaded the Wanderer’s unconscious form onto Razor’s back and soared away.
Azariah kept her distance from the Wanderer, her lips set in a frown as she stared down at him. “So he came back, then,” she said. “In… in the same way we did. But how?” Her pupilless eyes found Sonara and Markam, who understood that moment of coming back from death to a second life. “He’s not from here. He’s not Dohrsaran.” She frowned. “How is he breathing our air? He’s not wearing his helmet.”
Thali emerged
from the edge of the cave, her Canis mask stark against her dark robes. “Who are we to say that only natural-born Dohrsarans should receive the Great Mother’s gift? It is a miracle,” Thali said. She knelt and pressed her gauntleted hands to the cave floor as if she were touching a holy relic. “Something I have never come across, in all my readings or travels. A Wanderer, come to Dohrsar, and changed.” Her voice wavered with reverence. “The Great Mother’s hands are upon him now. He is forever bound to this place.”
“No,” Markam shook his head. “Tell your mother we don’t want him.”
“I will do no such thing,” Thali hissed. “To do so would be heresy.”
“But he’s a Wanderer. Whose people shot the hell out of ours.”
“And now he is a Child of Shadow, too.” Thali stepped closer. Her eyes glittered from deep within the sockets of her mask. “I wonder what magnificent gift swims within his blood, alongside his bones.”
Azariah approached the Wanderer slowly, eyes narrowing as if she were waiting for him to spring to life and strike like a snake. With a deep breath, she removed one filthy glove and touched the young man’s forehead. Her skin was no longer burned, though deep scars that looked like jagged lightning ran across her wrists, towards her elbows. “He is warm. Feverish.”
“Rags and cool water,” Thali said, then faded into the darkness at once.
“So he’s our pet now?” Markam asked. “We’re going to care for him, and feed him and—”
“He’s collateral.” Azariah looked up with narrowed eyes. “Language I would think you, of all people, would understand.”
Markam stiffened. “It was years ago, Azariah. How long will you make me pay?”
She lifted her chin. “As long as it takes.”
The two froze like that, glaring back and forth at each other; his hand on his dagger, her hand on the Wanderer’s forehead.
“Nevertheless,” Azariah said, backing down from the fight, “we have to keep him alive until we recover what is rightfully ours. Watch him. I’m going to help Thali gather supplies to care for him.”
She stood and glided past him, her shoulder grazing his.
Markam muttered something under his breath, then marched across the cave to his pack, cursing as he shoved his bedroll aside. “Who the hell went through my things?”
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 21