Chapter 14 Lia
LIA
Rakkh’s hand slides from my wrist to my lower back—firm and unmistakable. A silent promise that if this goes wrong, he’ll pull me away—or tear the ship apart trying.
“Do it,” he says quietly. “But… be careful.”
I nod and press my palm against the panel.
The response is immediate.
The hum deepens, resonating in my bones. The violet glow floods outward, racing along the walls, the floor, the ceiling—then collapses inward, focusing entirely where my hand meets the metal.
Heat blooms beneath my palm. It’s not burning or painful. It seems to recognize me.
My breath catches as something brushes the edge of my awareness—not a voice, not words, but impressions instead.
Starlight. Cold vacuum. A launch—violent, hurried, unfinished.
A woman’s presence—sharp, brilliant, furious with purpose. I don’t see a face, and it’s not a memory I can watch unfold—more like the echo of her intent.
Hold the line. Protect what comes next.
Tears sting my eyes before I realize I’m crying. Rakkh’s hand presses on the small of my back, and he moves closer.
“Lia.”
“I’m okay,” I whisper, though my voice trembles. “It’s not… taking anything. It’s giving.”
The panel retracts—not sliding, but unfolding.
The metal softens, drawing back into the wall like a living thing, yielding space. Behind it, the chamber deepens, revealing a narrow alcove lined with unfamiliar structures: smooth surfaces etched with faint symbols that pulse gently in time with the ship’s hum.
Travnyk exhales slowly. “It accepts her.”
Tomas lets out a shaky laugh that borders on hysteria. “Of course it does.”
Rakkh does not laugh. He studies the alcove, the glow, the way the ship seems to lean toward me. His jaw tightens, something dark flickering behind his eyes.
“This thing was waiting,” he says. “Not for us. For you.”
I pull my hand back and flex my fingers. The warmth lingers, fading slowly.
“I think,” I say carefully, “it was never meant to wake like this. It was supposed to stay dormant. Hidden. Protected.”
“Until you,” Travnyk says.
“Until someone like me,” I correct, softly.
Silence settles over the chamber—heavy, expectant.
Outside, far beyond the hull, something scrapes uselessly against the ship’s armored exterior.
Inside, the ship hums—steadier, calmer. And for the first time since we stepped into the violet dark, I realize something that makes my stomach drop.
The ship doesn’t just recognize me. It’s relieved to have found me.
The ship seems to settle around us like it’s a living thing, and the tension eases at last. It’s no longer tight, but deliberate.
The violet glow dims from a flare to a steady wash, soft enough that the edges of the alcove stop feeling like a trap and start feeling like… shelter. For the first time in what feels like hours, my lungs take a full breath without snagging on panic.
Outside, something scrapes again—slow, stubborn, hungry. The sound travels through the hull in muted vibrations, like claws on stone heard from underwater.
Tomas flinches at every sound. Travnyk doesn’t. He stands with his head angled slightly, listening with his whole body—calm in a way that borders on unsettling. His tusks catch the violet light when he turns, fixed and gleaming.
Rakkh is the opposite of calm. He is a wall of contained violence behind me, wings half-unfurled in the cramped space, like he’s ready to shield, strike, or tear the ship apart if it dares to breathe wrong.
And I… I’m the problem. The ship hums in time with my pulse, as if my body is the metronome it’s chosen. My palm tingles where I touched the panel. The warmth has seeped into my skin and refuses to leave, like I pressed my hand to memory instead of metal.
Hold the line. Protect what comes next.
The impression lingers behind my eyes. I swallow hard and force myself to look at what the alcove actually contains.
Not crates. No obvious weapons. Not even anything that screams “spaceship” in a way I’d recognize with my limited experience. No jagged consoles or blinking lights.
Everything is smooth. Grown, like Travnyk said.
A low shelf curves out of the wall at waist height. Shallow indentations mark it—places for hands, maybe, shaped for a body that isn’t mine. Above it, etched grooves form spirals and segmented lines that pulse faintly, as if the ship is breathing through them.
At the center is a narrow recess—an opening no wider than my forearm. Inside, something rests. No glow. No hum. Waiting. My stomach tightens.
“Don’t,” Rakkh says, the word roughened.
“I wasn’t—” I stop because I was.
The truth is I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. The desert was poison and dead plants and patterns I could follow. This is something else. This is history with teeth. I take one careful step closer anyway.
Rakkh moves with me, not beside me—around me. His body shifts to keep himself between me and any angle of the ship that could become a threat. Even in this tight space, he somehow manages it.
It shouldn’t be possible to feel protected and caged at the same time, and yet that’s exactly what I feel. My gaze drops to the recess. The violet light brightens a fraction, as if pleased I noticed it.
Tomas whispers hoarsely, “Lia… maybe don’t touch random alien holes in the wall?”
Travnyk makes a sound that might be amusement—low, brief, gone.
“It already chose her,” he says, speaking softly too.
That doesn’t help Tomas’s panic. It doesn’t help mine, either. I crouch and peer inside. Metal. Not like the panel. Not like the ship’s grown walls.
This is a different alloy—duller, matte, textured with microgrooves. Not decorative. Functional. Designed to lock into something. To carry something. Or to be carried.
It looks like a thin baton split down the center, with a seam that suggests it could unfold. A tool. A key. Or a weapon.
“Rakkh,” I whisper, unable to stop myself. “I think it’s… meant for me.”
His breathing changes—sharper, deeper. A warning sound rumbles in his throat, not quite a growl, not quite words.
“No,” he says again. “Nothing inside this thing is ‘meant’ for you.”
But even as he says it, the ship hums in agreement with my pulse, like it’s laughing at him. I lift my hand and hover my fingers just above the recess. Not touching. Not yet. The violet glow strengthens along the grooves around the opening—soft, coaxing.
Recognizing.
A weird, dizzy thought hits me so hard my eyes sting. What if this isn’t recognition of me at all? How could it be? This entire ship… it’s sized like… a human. The Zmaj and the Urr’ki—they’re bigger. What they craft is sized for their comfort. This is… my size, but it can’t be for me.
I’m the seventh… no, the eighth generation removed from those who left Earth. So many light-years away from Tajss that I can’t even begin to contemplate how far away that distant memory of a planet is. This couldn’t have been designed or waiting for me.
But it could be… someone like me. It must be recognizing bloodlines—genetics. Some kind of markers carried down through generations, like a hidden map. My throat tightens until swallowing hurts. I force myself to pull my hand away.
“I’m not doing it,” I murmur, mostly to prove I can.
Rakkh’s hand closes gently on my shoulder—heavy, grounding.
“Good,” Rakkh says quietly, but the relief in the word is unmistakable.
Outside, something scrapes again—closer this time, louder. The hull shivers with the impact. Dust sifts from the ceiling seam in a soft fall. Tomas makes a strangled, choking noise.
“Those things are still out there,” he says.
Travnyk steps toward the corridor opening—toward the hall we came through—his head lowered, listening. His hands rest near his curved blade, posture loose but ready.
“It tests the shell,” he murmurs. “It seeks a weakness.”
Rakkh’s claws flex. “It will not find one.”
The ship hums—deeper, almost like a response. Then the light changes. Not brighter—colder. The violet shifts toward something sharper, edged with blue-white. The grooves along the walls brighten in segmented patterns that look suddenly less like breathing and more like… circuitry.
Rakkh goes still, and I think I know him well enough to see it’s not that he’s afraid. It’s because his instincts are screaming. I feel it in my own skin, a pressure building behind my ribs.
The ship’s hum rises a notch—tightens—like a throat clearing, and then the sound comes. It’s not words, but a sequence of tones: three low pulses, one high, then a long, sustained note that vibrates my teeth. Tomas clamps both hands over his ears.
“What is that?” he screeches.
Travnyk’s eyes narrow. “A signal.”
Rakkh’s wings flare hard enough to brush the curved walls. “For what?”
The ship answers by doing something that makes my stomach drop out. The corridor behind us—our way out—seals shut. Not with the dramatics of a door slamming shut, but with the metal itself flowing across the opening like a muscle tightening—smoothing into an unbroken wall.
“No—no, no, no—” Tomas says, the words a choked sound that might be a sob.
Rakkh lunges toward the sealed passage, claws slashing at the surface. No sparks fly. The hull doesn’t dent. It absorbs his strike like it was made for it. It probably is.
“Open,” Rakkh snarls.
The ship hums once. Indifferent.
“Lia,” Tomas gasps, voice cracking. “Tell it to open!”