Chapter Five
Elara
The next morning, I sit up carefully. My wrists ache, but the bandages are clean. My ribs still feel like someone used me to test structural integrity. My throat burns less.
A tray waits on the low table: water, something that looks like bread if bread had lost hope, and a folded strip of dark fabric. Under the cup sits a small black slate.
Words appear across it in Standard when I pick it up.
Elara Quinn. You are not required to attend medical scanning before eating. Dr. Vahl recommends food first. She was unpleasantly firm about this.
This message was dictated by Nima. Dr. Vahl objects to the phrase unpleasantly firm.
I laugh at the slate. It hurts less than yesterday.
By the time Nima arrives, I have eaten the sad bread and dressed.
She steps in carrying a bundle of fabric.
“Good. You’re vertical.”
“What’s that?”
“An outfit for a deeper scan.”
She sets it on the table. “Seryn wants a better look at the resonance.”
“What kind of scan?”
“Not invasive.”
“Define invasive like someone who has had a human body before.”
“You stay clothed in an external diagnostic field. No needles or restraints.”
Nima unfolds loose pants and a long wrap layer. Dark blue-gray fabric catches the light like water.
“There’s something else,” Nima says. “Seryn thinks Rhazek should be nearby for part of it.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Outside the glass, the wreckage field is gone. Or we have left it. Space looks the same when it steals things from you.
“Why does he need to be there?”
“She wants to know whether your body reacts to proximity or whether yesterday was the chemicals.”
“He can stay outside,” Nima says. “She can run a different baseline without him.”
I run my thumb across the fresh bandage.
“Fine. He can be nearby. No touching, no hovering. No warlord breathing down my neck.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Nima leaves while I change. The fabric wraps around my body without fasteners, warming where my fingers touch it.
I pull the neckline above the bruises on my throat. The fabric adjusts.
When Nima returns, I point at it. “Why does everything here have opinions?”
“Because Dravari are terrible at expressing feelings, so they outsource them to objects.”
Two guards wait in the corridor. One’s tail goes rigid when I look at him.
Nima leans close. “That’s Varek. He is terrified of you.”
I snort. “He is seven feet tall.”
“Six-eight. Sensitive subject.”
“You can hear us,” I say.
He does not move. “Yes.”
I leave him staring at the wall and follow Nima to medical.
At the entrance to medical bay three, Seryn waits with her arms folded and her mouth set in its usual line of professional disappointment.
Seryn looks at my outfit, my balance, then my face.
“Nima staying?” Seryn asks.
“Nima remains.”
“Rhazek is outside the secondary chamber.”
Inside the chamber, dark glass panels curve around a platform with a chair in its center. Above it hangs a dim ring of gold light. I check the chair for restraints.
“No pressure fields?”
“Only if you faint.”
I step onto the platform.
The floor warms beneath my bare feet.
The diagnostic ring overhead wakes with a low chime. Gold light drifts down around me, not touching exactly. More like warm dust suspended in air.
My skin prickles.
I lock my knees.
Seryn lifts the scanner. “Surface readings first.”
The light moves over me. Slow. Careful. It pauses at my wrists, my throat, my upper arm where the needle almost went in. The air hums. Symbols ripple across the glass panels.
“Foreign compounds have decreased by forty-three percent,” Seryn says.
“Good?”
“Yes. Your liver is offended but functional.”
“My liver is used to colony alcohol. It can survive anything.”
The scan moves through blood pressure and adrenal response. Seryn explains the readings.
Then the gold light changes.
The warmth under my feet climbs up my legs.
I stiffen.
“What is it doing?”
“Reading resonance markers.”
“I thought you said surface biometrics first.”
“We have moved past surface biometrics.”
“Announce the moving.”
“You are correct. I apologize.”
The gold field deepens. My pulse beats in my wrists, my throat, the base of my stomach.
A second rhythm answers from somewhere beneath the floor.
I grip the arms of the chair behind me.
“I don’t like that.”
“We can stop,” Seryn says.
If something is happening in my body, I need to know before everyone else decides what to do about it.
“Keep going.” Nima moves to the edge of the platform beside me.
The second rhythm grows clearer. It vibrates in my bones, not my ears.
“What do you feel?” Seryn asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Describe it badly.”
“Like the floor has a heartbeat.”
The glass panels flash.
Seryn studies the panels. “The ship is routing Rhazek’s command biometrics into the room.”
My entire body goes tight. “Why?”
“I did not ask her to.”
“Stop it,” I tell the ship.
The gold light flickers.
For a second, the heartbeat rhythm fades.
Then it returns, closer.
Seryn’s fingers move quickly over the control panel. “I can cut the scan.”
“Is he here?”
“He is outside the outer chamber.”
“How close?”
“Fifteen paces.”
Smoke and dark spice reach me. “He’s outside and I can smell him?”
“Humans do not have that range,” Seryn says. “His second heart is matching the rhythm you described.”
“Tell him to move farther away.”
Seryn touches the wall panel. “Warlord, increase distance by twenty paces.”
He answers in Dravari. Low, rough, layered with that second vibration.
My body reacts as if he spoke against my skin.
The diagnostic ring flares bright.
My breath punches out.
Panic and warmth braid together until I cannot separate them. My pulse climbs too fast. The room edges blur.
I grip the chair hard enough that pain shoots through my injured wrists.
“Stop,” I say.
The light cuts instantly.
I try to step off the platform and nearly fold.
Nima catches my arm.
Seryn helps me into the diagnostic chair.
My lungs won’t fill right. Part of me is reaching for something I have not approved.
“Get him away from the door.”
Seryn’s face tightens. “He already moved.”
“Farther.”
She touches the panel. “Rhazek, leave the medical sector.”
His translated voice comes through the wall. “Is she harmed?”
“No,” I snap. “I’m annoyed.”
Silence.
“That is not new harm.”
An unwilling laugh escapes me. I can breathe again.
“I go.”
The second rhythm fades a few seconds later.
The room feels colder.
I rub my palms over the fabric at my thighs. “What happened?”
Seryn sits across from me. Nima stays at my side.
“Your pulse tried to synchronize with Rhazek’s second heart. Bonded Dravari pairs can do that. Humans cannot.”
“Because of what the enemy gave me?”
“The compounds may intensify it. But they are leaving your system while the resonance is strengthening.”
“What does resonance mean?”
“Biological recognition.”
“I met him yesterday while half-naked in a murder pod.”
“I know. Yet your blood triggered an old archive in The Black Star.”
“What archive?”
“One related to a mating bond. The Black Star bond. We believed it extinct.”
I stand. “I am not a soulmate science project. I am not some special human womb your ancient murder boat ordered off a secret menu.”
“The bond is not complete.”
“What does it do?”
“It can produce shared calming responses and protective instincts. If it progresses, mate attachment.”
“And pregnancy?”
“Not now. If the bond progresses and your biology keeps responding, pregnancy may become possible through intimate contact.”
I press a hand against my stomach. Still mine.
“They were going to use me for that.”
“They intended to test whether exposure to a sovereign Dravari bloodline could produce conception.”
I sit, elbows on my knees, and focus on the floor between my feet.
“When did Rhazek learn about this?”
“After your rescue, while you were resting.”
“What does he want?”
“To find your people, keep the council from learning about this, and send you somewhere safe.”
“And?”
“He wants to be the safe place. That worries me.”
“Because he could decide I belong to him.”
“He is trying to keep his instincts out of your treatment.”
I look toward the door. “Can I leave before it progresses?”
“We will look for a safe transfer. But some effects may persist at a distance, including distress during separation.”
“Find the transfer anyway.”
“That may be difficult.”
“If Sarkan Veyl funded the research and can identify you, a neutral station may not protect you. Your colony ship is destroyed, and we do not yet understand what is happening to your body.”
Destroyed. Even if they find more survivors, there is no ship to take us home. I press both feet into the floor, waiting for it to feel solid. The chamber door chimes.
All three of us look toward it.
Seryn touches the wall panel. “Yes?”
A guard’s voice answers in Dravari, then the translator smooths it into Standard.
“Commander Jorren requests entry. He has survivor identification.”
I get to my feet. Nima steadies me.
“Let him in,” I say.
Seryn nods and opens the door.
Commander Jorren steps inside.
He is tall, broad, horned, and armored in matte black, though less massive than Rhazek. His skin is dark gray, his white hair cropped short, his pale eyes suspicious by default. A yellowing bruise circles his throat.
I look at it.
“Training incident,” he says. Seryn looks deeply unimpressed.
Jorren keeps a careful distance from me and inclines his head. Not a bow exactly. Something formal.
He lifts a small slate.
“Six other survivors were recovered alive. Two remain unconscious. Four are awake or waking.”
He reads from the slate.
“Thomas Vale. Human male. Age fifty-nine.”
Tom. Hydroponics supervisor. Told terrible jokes. Could coax vegetables out of nutrient sludge and profanity.
“Rina Oshiro. Human female. Age thirty-two.”
Rina, who fixed comm relays and sang old Earth songs off-key.
“Pavel Menon. Human male. Age sixty-seven.”
Dr. Menon.
“Asha Bell. Human female. Age nine.”
Asha. Missing front tooth. Drew stars on every maintenance label she could reach. Asked me once whether real planets were lonely because they had so much sky.
My knees fold.
Nima and Seryn catch me.
Suddenly I am sitting on the floor. The warm black surface presses under my palms. My bandages blur.
Asha is alive.
I make a sound I would not recognize from someone else.
Nima kneels beside me. “Breathe.”
Jorren’s voice comes from above me, quieter now.
“Grace Halden. Human female. Age twenty-eight.”
“Grace? Her baby?”
Seryn crouches beside me. “Alive. Both are unstable but responding to treatment.”
I reach for Nima. She puts an arm around my shoulders.
“The sixth?”
“Captain Elise Naylor.”
The sob comes out as a laugh.
Captain Naylor once fixed a reactor alarm with chewing gum and intimidation. Death probably tried to file a claim and she argued jurisdiction.
I wipe my face. Six names can be miracle and massacre at the same time.
“I want to see them.”
“Asha and Thomas today, if your vitals stay stable for an hour,” Seryn says. “Grace is in a sterile field.”
“I’m a medic. I can help.”
“You can barely stand. Let us help you first.”
Jorren says, “Asha has asked for you twice.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“And no one told me?”
“You were asleep,” Seryn says. “Chemically exhausted. She had someone with her. You needed rest.”
“She’s nine.”
“And you need to reach her able to stay with her.”
Nima helps me to my feet.
“One hour,” I say. “No more bond scan today.”
“Agreed,” Seryn says.
Jorren lowers the slate. “The warlord sent a message.”
“What message?”
He looks as though he regrets being alive for this duty.
“The survivors are under his protection. Their names are being entered into the ship’s protected status with yours. No questioning until Seryn clears them.”
“He wanted you to know this does not bind you to The Black Star.”
Jorren adds, “He also said: Eat more.”
Nima laughs.
“Like a command?”
“Like a male attempting not to make it a command and suffering for it.”
“Tell him I ate his bread. It tasted emotionally supervised.”
“I will convey your message.”
“No, wait.”
“Tell him thank you. For the survivor names.”
Some of the judgment leaves his face. “I will.”
At the threshold, he looks back. “Elara Quinn.”
“What?”
“The warlord did not ask me to add this.”
“Many aboard this ship will treat you as an extension of the warlord’s authority. Some will resent it. Some will misunderstand it.”
“And you?”
“I do not understand it. But I know what cages are. You will not be placed in one by my hand.”
Then he leaves.
I sit in the diagnostic chair. “Start the hour.”
Seryn checks the scanner. “Already started.”
Nima settles beside the platform.
I lean back in the chair.