Chapter 14
14
Z ara’s heart drummed a rapid tattoo as she followed Traax through the dimly lit corridors of the lower levels of the station. As soon as they’d left the hangar bay, the doors had sealed behind them, and the automatic environmental systems had come online, which had meant they’d been able to remove their helmets and conserve the air in their suits.
She almost wished they hadn’t. The air was old and thick with an acrid stench that made her nose wrinkle in disgust.
“If that smell is the Krin, they smell like they died years ago,” she grumbled.
Traax gave a humorless snort. “I wish. They’d be easier to deal with then.”
“How do you usually deal with infestations?” she asked, hurrying to keep up while keeping an eye on the lurking shadows around them. She didn’t even know what the damn things looked like. For all she knew, they could be the size of hedgehogs. Which wasn’t so bad… then she remembered that piranhas were small but deadly in large groups.
“Normally we destroy any station they’re on,” he said with a shrug. He moved with a deadly, feline grace that was captivating, his muscular frame taut and alert. His amber eyes scanned the shadows intently, the muzzle of his blaster following every movement as if it were an extension of his body.
She couldn’t help but admire him, all power and precision. His broad shoulders filled out his combat suit in a way that caught her eye, as did the flex of his biceps under the leather as he gripped his weapon. Heat crept up her neck as her gaze lingered on the hard lines of his jaw and the sensual curve of his lips.
Shit. She was staring. Snatching her gaze away, she gave herself a mental ass-kicking. She needed to focus on the mission, on getting out of here alive. Then they could deal with what was between them.
Forcing her attention back to him, she studied his finger placement, the way he kept the muzzle of the alien blaster slightly lowered. It was easy to see he was trained for this, and well. She’d known he was a brilliant pilot from the moment she had seen him in the cockpit… before that even. No one attained a high rank like his without being really good at what they did, not even with the weird rank structure of the Latharian Empire. But, seeing him now, she realized he had been trained as more than a pilot. Much more.
“You’ve had a lot of ground combat training,” she remarked, keeping her voice low. It was more of a statement than a question.
He slid her a sideways glance, surprise flickering across his handsome face.
“Yes,” he replied after a pause. “We begin training young, under the masters-at-arms of our households.”
She tried to imagine a younger Traax being taught to fight by some older, grizzled Latharian warrior. It was a far cry from her own upbringing on a colony farm, learning to shoot tin cans off the back fence.
“Is that what happened with you?” she asked, curious. “You learned with a master-at-arms?”
Traax shrugged as they reached a row of elevators, but he turned toward the stairwell instead.
“The Krin like enclosed spaces,” he explained, his bootsteps echoing in the confined area as they started upward into shadow. The emergency lights flickered and hummed, casting a greenish glow over everything. She suppressed a shiver as a cold draft rose from the depths, carrying with it the faint, rotten stench of decay.
“And no… I was born in the palace, so my training was with Warmaster Kaarigan. I trained alongside my cousin, the emperor.”
She stumbled slightly on the stairs, the steps just that bit bigger than she was used to, catching herself on the railing. She stared at his back, processing this new information.
“I forget you’re an actual, real prince sometimes,” she muttered, shaking her head. “You’re not exactly what I’d expect from royalty.”
He paused on the landing, weapon trained on the shadows above them. His amber eyes seemed to glow in the emergency lighting as he shot her a quick, challenging glance before looking back upward.
“How so?” he asked with a bored tone as they began upward again. But she was onto him. She’d realized he used that tone to deflect, to hide his interest.
She was saved from having to answer as they emerged onto the next level. The corridor stretched out before them, lined on either side by towering monsters. Her breath caught, and she almost took a step backward. The Krin were here.
Traax shot her a glance. “It’s okay. They’re just drakeen.”
She took a deep breath, trying to hide the relief that rolled through her, and looked again.
There were eight of them, battle robots, each easily three times Zara’s height. They looked a little like huge spiders, their metal armor gleaming dully in the emergency lighting, and a patchwork of scars and abrasions marred their armored hides. Each had a cluster of black eyes in a wedge-shaped head and multiple jointed legs that extended from a thick central body. They looked like heavily armed mechanical nightmares.
Monsters in all but name.
Her hand tightened on her blaster. But the robots didn’t move, standing still as statues.
“They’re older models, which I would expect from a station of this age. Don’t worry. They’re dormant. Something serious must have happened for the assigned hunter not to activate even one.”
She eyed the robots warily as they passed between the hulking forms. Up close, she could see the intricate detailing on their armor as well as the nasty-looking blades and blasters built into their frames. If these were Latharian creations, she dreaded to think what the Krin were like.
“There’s a whole damn army here,” she breathed, a shiver running down her spine. “I’d run like hell if they all came at me at once.”
Traax reached out and grabbed what looked like a headband from a stand next to one of the robots. He held it out to Zara with a grin.
“A souvenir,” he said. “It’s a control band. And unless eight pilots are on board, you won’t see them all together.”
She took the band, turning it over in her hands. It was surprisingly light, the metal cool against her skin.
“It looks like a headband.”
On impulse, she slipped it on, placing it across her forehead. She waited a beat, half expecting some sort of neural connection to snap into place. But nothing happened. The robots remained still and lifeless.
He chuckled.
“It goes the other way.” His fingers brushed her temples as he reached out to adjust the band. “Around the back of your head, under your hair.”
A blush crept up her neck as his fingers lingered against her skin just a beat too long. “Oh. Okay.”
She held still as he put it into the right place and rearranged her hair over her shoulders. She held her breath, but still nothing happened. The Drakeen remained dormant, looming over her like slumbering giants.
“Not many people can pilot a Drakeen,” he said as he stepped back.
She swallowed, managing to tear her eyes away from his intense gaze. They continued down the corridor, trying to keep their footsteps silent. No sense in advertising their presence aboard if the Krin were as dangerous as he said.
“So it’s one robot, one pilot?” she asked.
“Normally, yes,” he replied. “Drakeen are difficult to pilot anyway, and the neural load is too great for most warriors to handle more than one at a time. Only one person I know can pilot more than one.”
She raised an eyebrow, sweeping her blaster’s sights over the corridor in front of them. It narrowed up ahead but then seemed to open out into some kind of junction. “Oh? Who’s that?”
“Daaynal. The emperor.”
She gave a low whistle as she swept the muzzle of her blaster across the shadows where the corridor opened out. The weapon’s enhanced targeting system scanned the darkness for any sign of movement.
For a second, she thought she saw something moving in the darkness, a flicker of movement at the edge of her vision. But when she focused on it, there was nothing there.
“So he’s not just a pretty face,” she said, more to distract herself than anything else. Unease prickled along her spine, a cold sensation like the brush of ghostly fingers. They weren’t alone. She could feel it in her bones.
Traax snarled, his amber eyes flashing with a possessive fire as he stepped in front of her.
“He’s not even a pretty face,” he growled, his deep voice dropping to a register that sent shivers through her core. “You will never think of the emperor, or any other male, ever again.”
She sighed as exasperation warred with the instinctive thrill his words sent through her, and she narrowed her eyes.
“Seriously? You want to do this right now?” she hissed, gesturing at the shadows around them. “When we’re on a station infested with scary aliens who want to eat us?”
He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed, his intense gaze flicking away from hers to concentrate on their surroundings instead. He opened his mouth to reply but seemed to think better of it. Instead, he settled for a curt nod, his jaw still clenched with tension.
Zara shook her head and opened her mouth to say something, to try and break the sudden tension between them. But before she could utter a word, a skittering sound, like the scratching of claws on metal, broke the silence. The sound came from directly above them.
Her head snapped up, and she whipped her blaster up to aim at the ceiling. Beside her, Traax dropped into a fighting stance, his own weapon at the ready.
For a moment she heard nothing but the rasp of their breathing and the thunder of her pulse in her ears. Then, with a scream of tortured metal, a ventilation grate ten feet ahead burst open.
A dark figure fell from the opening and landed on the floor in front of them with a heavy thud. It unrolled slowly, rising to its full height.
Her breath caught in her throat, and the blood in her veins turned to ice. Every survival instinct she had told her to run, to hide, to get something between her and the predator in front of her.
The creature towered over them, easily eight feet tall. Its body was a mass of rippling muscle under armored, mottled green skin. A trio of clawed, three-toed feet supported its bulk, digging into the metal floor. Eight tentacle-like arms sprouted from its torso, each ending in a viciously curved claw. Its head was a nightmare of teeth and mandibles, a pointy, beak-like mouth gaping wide as it let out a bone-chilling hiss.
Its eyes were black and lustrous, reflecting the dim light like polished onyx. Intelligence shone in the dark orbs as it tracked their movements.
Traax growled, deep and dangerous, but she knew what he was going to say before he hissed, “ Krin .”
Traax didn’t even think, moving in front of Zara to shield her from the Krin’s hungry gaze. His muscles tensed, ready to spring into action as the pungent stench of the creature filled his nostrils and made his stomach churn. The Krin liked to smear blood and bodily fluids from their food over themselves. Given that the only other beings aboard the station apart from the two of them were Krin, it meant this pod had started to give in to its cannibalistic urges.
“Run!” he shouted, his deep voice echoing in the confined space. “Get away!”
“Not a fucking chance!” she snapped back, standing her ground. The flash of her blaster lit up the darkness as she fired at the Krin, the shots sizzling through the air.
The creature jerked back as the shots hit, a high-pitched scream of pain coming from its beak-like mouth. Its mottled hide had scorch marks where the shots landed, and wisps of smoke curled from the oozing wounds. The stench of burning flesh filled the air, making them both gag as it slid back into the darkness.
Draanth . He should have known she wouldn’t leave him, not even to save herself. It was one of the things he admired about her—her fierce loyalty, her unwillingness to leave anyone behind. He’d seen it with her pilots and when she’d put her life on the line to save Kaaric. But now it would just get her killed.
The sibilant hisses in the shadows increased, an eerie chorus that sent shivers down his spine.
“More are on the way!” he shouted over the din of blaster fire as they forced the wounded Krin to stay in the shadows. Hopefully the new arrivals would sense its weakness and target it, which might give them chance to escape.
He looked up at the ceiling. Draanth . It was paneled. The Krin could be above them as well. “This one’s just a youngling. Which means there’s a whole pod on board.”
Her back was pressed against his, the warmth of her body seeping through his suit. They dropped into a defensive stance, each covering half their surroundings as the Krin circled them, its claws clicking against the metal floor and its black-on-black eyes studying them. Working them out. Figuring out how to attack and subdue them so it could feast.
“So... how many in a pod?” Zara asked, her voice tight. She wasn’t panicking or hysterical, though. That much he was really grateful for.
“Up to sixteen,” he replied, his voice grim. “Depends on the parents.”
“Shit. Are the parents here too?”
“We’d be dead already if they were.”
“Why isn’t it attacking?” she whispered, her blaster trained on the prowling creature as it crossed through her firing arc.
The Krin chittered and hissed, its tentacles twisting as it kept trying to surge out of the shadows. Each time it tried, she fired, driving it back into the darkness with a painful shriek.
“It’s young but not stupid,” he explained. “Its armor hasn’t fully hardened yet so the ganglion at the base of its neck is vulnerable. See how it uses a tentacle to cover that area?”
She made a noise. “I thought that was just a nightmare alien fashion choice. Like it really wanted a hat, you know?”
He snorted, unable to stop the grin spreading over his lips. What was it about her that she could make him laugh, even in such a dire situation?
“Not a fashion choice. It knows that between us we can hurt it, kill it. So it’s waiting for reinforcements.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Shit. So we’re screwed.”
He kept silent. She was right, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. Their only hope had been to get to the command section without the Krin realizing they were here and free his fighter. But now, surrounded by a pack of the bloodthirsty draanthic ? They didn’t stand a chance.
More and more Krin filled the shadows, black eyes glittering with malevolent hunger. His heart sank as he counted them. Six, eight, ten... they just kept coming. This must be the whole pod, which meant they’d already killed and eaten their parents. If they’d consumed the brain ganglions, they had all the knowledge of adult Krin, which made them twice as dangerous.
Which was why they hadn’t attacked yet. They knew they had to wear Zara and Traax down and then pick them off. It was only a matter of time before they surged forward and those vicious claws and snapping jaws tore through flesh and bone.
Their flesh and bone.
Bile rose in his gut. He could do nothing to stop them. But maybe, just maybe, he could give Zara a chance. Could give his mate… the female he loved, a chance to survive.
He blinked as the realization hit him like a broadside volley from a fighter.
He loved her. He loved Zara. This brave, stubborn, beautiful human female had claimed his heart. Completely and utterly. The thought of losing her, of a universe without her in it, was more terrifying to him than any Krin ever could be.
“Zara,” he murmured, his voice low and urgent. “When I say, you run. Get past the drakeen and run to the fighter as fast as you can. Okay?”
Silence loomed behind him.
“And you’ll be right behind me. Right?” Zara replied, her voice wavering slightly. “Right?”
He swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat. He wouldn’t be. He couldn’t be. Her only chance was for him to stay behind and hold off the Krin as long as he could. And hope that Zhain would come for her in time.
But if he told her that, she wouldn’t go. He knew that as sure as he knew space was black.
“I will.” The lie was bitter on his tongue. “I’ll cover our escape, make sure they don’t follow us.”
“Okay...” she said, but Traax could hear the doubt in her voice.
He took a deep breath before she could argue and steeled himself for what was to come. “Three... two... one... Now! Gogogogo!”
She bolted, her footsteps loud against the metal grating. Traax roared as he fired, the blaster shots cutting through the massed Krin and clearing a path for her.
Locking his emotions away, he banished the fear, the regret, his love for her… He couldn’t think about any of that now. All that mattered was keeping the Krin occupied and giving Zara as much time as he could.
Even if it cost him his life.
And he knew it would cost him his life.
They came at him as he expected, in a wave of teeth, claws, and armored skin. He kept firing even as they wrapped around him. The razor-sharp teeth on their tentacles sliced through his flesh, his blood warm as it ran down his skin. He ignored it, ignored the pain, and kept firing, kept fighting.
A roar of defiance exploded from his throat as he scored some wins. His blaster found weaknesses in their armor, sending them reeling back with screams of pain even as the blaster shots burned his own skin.
But there was no triumph in these small victories. He was only delaying the inevitable. These were young Krin, yes, but there were too many of them. He couldn’t hold out forever.
“I love you, kelarris ,” he murmured, even though she was long gone, even though she couldn’t hear him. She should be at the bottom of the stairs now and racing for the fighter.
The Krin swarmed around him, their weight crushing him. He slipped in his own blood on the floor and dropped to one knee. He closed his eyes as their tentacles wrapped around him.
This was it. This was how he died. The lord starfighter, dying on a station in the ass-end of beyond, killed by the Krin. Killed by youngling Krin. But if it meant Zara lived, if it meant she had a chance...
It was worth it.
“Get away from him, you assholes!”
Zara’s voice cut through the haze of pain, and his eyes snapped open.
The Krin surrounding him were ripped away, their screams of hunger and triumph turning into terror and pain. Shiny metal arms ripped into them, tearing flesh and shattering bone. His eyes widened as he staggered back. Three drakeen had powered up, the war machines moving with a grace and precision that was beautiful and terrifying. They waded into the Krin pod, blades and blasters turning the creatures into sprays of green blood and chunks of flesh as they tore tentacles off to get at the unprotected brain ganglions.
He blinked, looking past the carnage. Zara stood on the other side of the battle, the uplink band glowing under her hair as the light cast an ethereal glow over her beautiful face.
He dropped onto his ass like a puppet with its strings cut and just stared, awe and disbelief warring in his chest. Somehow, she was controlling all three drakeen . At the same time—something that should have been impossible for a human. But there she was, a goddess of war, turning the tide of battle with the power of her mind.
The drakeen finished the rest of the Krin off, their armored bodies soon the only things moving in the bloody corridor. Then they took up sentry positions, their metal feet clanking on the blood-soaked floor.
Slowly, painfully, he staggered to his feet to hobble over to her.
“You... how?” He gestured to the drakeen . “You shouldn’t be able to… Not three.”
She shrugged, a small, tired smile quirking the corners of her lips. “Have you ever seen the inside of a human fighter? This? This is small potatoes.”
She glanced over her shoulder down the corridor where the rest of the drakeen sat, still and silent. “There would have been more, but I think the others are damaged.”
He stared at her for a long moment and then threw back his head and laughed. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated joy, a sound he hadn’t heard himself make in many years.
Still smiling, he reached out and cupped her face in his hands, his touch gentle despite the blood and dirt.
“You, my beautiful warrior, are amazing,” he breathed, his eyes locked with hers.
Then, before he could think better of it, he leaned in and kissed her.