Chapter Seven
Elara
Asha falls asleep holding my sleeve.
I sit beside her recovery bed and do not move.
My back aches and my burned hand pulses under Seryn’s fresh sealant.
Asha’s lashes lie dark against cheeks too thin from ration years and terror. The medical field glows blue above her, adjusting to her breathing.
Nima sits cross-legged nearby with a slate on her knees. She keeps looking at me.
“You can say whatever you’re trying not to say,” I whisper.
“You need to rest.”
“Seryn gave you twenty-two minutes. You are at forty-six.”
Asha stirs.
“I told her I’d be here when she woke up,” I say.
Nima’s voice softens. “You can sleep in the chair.”
Two guards stand beyond the open door. The recovery deck has quieted.
Engineers replaced the warped latch. Tom Vale woke long enough to call his medical bed “fancier than a greenhouse cot and twice as judgmental.” Rina Oshiro cried when she saw me, then threatened to rewire any alien who tried to separate us again. Dr. Menon slept through it all.
Grace and Captain Naylor are still unconscious.
Mishmish, our tabby, turned up in a salvaged cargo crate and is now in quarantine. Asha wants to see her.
Seven humans accounted for. Eighty missing. Maybe someone else is out there in a pod or a broken ship.
I rub my thumb over Asha’s knuckles.
“She asked where her brother was.”
Nima says nothing.
Asha’s brother, Milo, was five. He kept beetle shells in an old nutrient tin and once shoved three ration crackers into an air vent because he thought the ship sounded hungry.
He is not on the survivor list.
Nima’s voice is quiet. “What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“That we don’t know yet.”
Then the ship screams.
Asha jerks awake.
The entire recovery room flashes red.
A sound like metal thunder rolls through the deck. The bed field flickers. Somewhere outside, Dravari voices snap into sharp motion.
“Elara?” Asha clutches my sleeve.
“I’m here.” I stand and brace a hand on the bed. “Nima?”
“Attack,” she says, already on her feet.
Another impact slams through The Black Star.
The floor tilts.
Asha cries out. I grab the side of her bed with one hand and her shoulder with the other, keeping her from rolling as the medical field sputters back to full strength.
Outside, one of the guards barks into his comm. The other steps into the doorway for the first time, weapon raised but angled away from us.
The ship’s voice comes from the walls.
“External breach attempt. Port recovery sector. Civilian deck sealing.”
The wall beside Asha’s bed goes from warm to hot.
Nima crosses to the emergency panel. Dravari warnings flash faster than she can clear them.
Asha starts breathing too quickly.
“No,” I say, instantly crouching beside her again. “Hey. Look at me.”
Her eyes are huge. “Are they coming back?”
“If anything comes through that door,” I tell her, “I will make it regret having bones.”
Her lower lip trembles. “What if it doesn’t have bones?”
“Then I’ll improvise.”
A wet laugh escapes her.
Behind me, the guard says something I do not understand. His translator clips on a second later.
“We must move protected civilians inward.”
I look at Nima. “Can Asha’s bed move?”
“It should,” she says, working at the controls.
The ship booms again.
This time the lights cut out completely.
Darkness drops so hard Asha screams.
I am moving before thought. I climb halfway onto the bed and pull her against me, wrapping my body around her small shaking one.
“I’m here. Breathe with me.”
The emergency lights return, dim and red.
The doorway guard lies half in the corridor, armor smoking.
A black spike protrudes from the wall beyond him, still vibrating from impact. Not shrapnel. A boarding spear. I have seen enough hull damage to know when something enters a ship on purpose.
The second guard drags him back by the shoulder and fires down the hall.
Nima swears.
Then the far wall of the recovery room splits.
A seam of white light cuts through the black living metal, followed by a sound so high my teeth ache. The wall bubbles inward around the breach point.
Asha buries her face in my shirt.
The medical bed field flares protectively, but I feel a small pressure drop.
“Seal interior vents!” I shout.
Nima slams the panel. “Trying!”
The bed chirps. Asha’s field tightens.
The guard fires again. His weapon answers with blue-white bursts. Shapes flicker in the corridor. Thin enemy forms, armored now. Not the same ones exactly, but close enough that my body remembers the pod.
The room tilts under another impact. Asha’s bed unlocks with a hiss and begins sliding toward the inner door, then jams sideways because a piece of broken ceiling track drops into its path.
I pry Asha’s fingers off my sleeve and press her hands to the blanket. “Stay low.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I’m not.”
I grab the fallen ceiling piece. Pain rips through my burned hand and bandaged wrists.
Nima grabs the other side. Together, we shove.
It barely moves.
The wall seam screams wider.
The guard in the doorway grunts and staggers back as a shot hits his shoulder.
I brace one foot against the bed frame, grit my teeth, and push like I am back on the Mercy Ark trying to force a warped hatch closed before the heat bled out of hydroponics.
The metal shifts.
“Again,” Nima gasps.
We shove.
The ceiling piece scrapes free.
The bed starts moving.
Asha clings to the blanket, eyes locked on me.
“Go with Nima,” I say.
Nima’s head jerks toward me. “Elara—”
“Take her!”
Asha screams my name as Nima gets behind the bed and pushes it toward the inner corridor.
The recovery room wall bursts inward.
The first attacker comes through the smoke.
Tall. Pale armor. Smooth mask. Needle rifle.
For one second my body wants to freeze. I force it to move.
I grab the nearest thing I can find: a medical tray loaded with Seryn’s neat little instruments.
I fling it at the attacker’s face.
The tray hits hard enough to make him stumble.
The attacker recovers and raises his rifle.
A black blade takes his arm off at the elbow.
The rifle clatters to the floor.
The attacker turns.
Rhazek Vonn steps through the shattered doorway behind him.
His horns cut through the smoke. Red light catches his silver-black skin and the blood across his armor.
Then he moves.
The attacker dies against the broken wall. Another tries to come through behind him. Rhazek catches the creature by the throat and drives it backward through the breach so hard the wall around them caves outward.
Rhazek turns back toward me. “Are you harmed?”
“Busy,” I snap.
He turns instead to the remaining guard. “Move the civilians.”
The guard nods and staggers after Nima and Asha.
Rhazek steps toward the breach.
The ship convulses.
A deeper impact hits beneath the recovery deck.
The deck pitches under me.
I lunge for the wall.
Miss.
The floor opens under my left foot, leaving sparking darkness and air being sucked hard through the gap.
Rhazek catches me.
His arm bands around my waist and yanks me against his body with enough force to knock breath from my lungs. His tail snaps around a ceiling support, anchoring us both as the floor tears wider beneath our feet.
Debris whips past us into the hole.
The pressure drop becomes a roar.
Rhazek’s body folds over mine.
His back takes the first spray of shrapnel.
His muscles jump against me, but his grip never crushes. His claws dig into the wall above my shoulder. His tail coils tighter around the support.
The ship’s voice booms around us.
“Pressure breach. Sealing.”
A dark membrane grows over the broken floor, living metal knitting across the gap in thick black strands. The suction weakens. The roar dies to a howl, then a moan, then silence.
His hand remains at my waist while I cling to a strap across his chest.
I shove at him.
He releases me instantly.
I stumble back onto the newly sealed floor. It holds. Barely. The black metal under my feet is warm and pulsing like fresh scar tissue.
“Where’s Asha?” I demand.
“Nima moved her inward.”
“I need to see.”
He steps aside.
My legs shake so badly I nearly trip over the uneven floor seam, but I make it into the inner corridor. It is packed with medics, guards, beds, equipment, frightened humans, and very controlled Dravari chaos.
Asha sits on her bed in Nima’s arms, crying but breathing. I reach her and take her face gently. “Look at me.”
She sobs. “You fell.”
“I’m rude that way.”
“You almost—”
“No.” I press my forehead to hers. “I didn’t. I’m here.”
Her hands fist in the front of my shirt.
I hold her until her sobs turn into hiccups.
Nima’s eyes are bright. “You okay?”
“No.”
Behind us, Rhazek emerges from the damaged room.
Black blood runs down the left side of his back where shrapnel punched through a gap in his armor. Another cut crosses his upper arm. A jagged shard is embedded near his shoulder blade.
Seryn appears at the far end of the corridor with a medical case in one hand and murder in her eyes.
“Rhazek.”
“Attack status,” Rhazek says to Jorren, who arrives at a run with three armed Dravari behind him.
Jorren’s eyes take in the blood and shrapnel. His mouth tightens, but he gives the report. “Boarding party contained. Three breach points. Two sealed. One active near port storage. Enemy signatures match Sarkan-linked mercenaries.”
Asha makes a scared sound as Rhazek turns toward the damaged room.
Rhazek looks at Seryn. “Can Asha be moved?”
“Yes,” Seryn says. “Inner recovery chamber. More secure.”
“Move all survivors there.”
Jorren signals the medics.
Rhazek turns toward the damaged room again.
Seryn catches sight of the shard in his back. “Treatment. Now.”
Then a guard drags one of the attackers into the corridor.
The attacker is not the same species as the laboratory creatures, but he wears their insignia branded into one side of his armor. Pale yellow eyes. Scaled gray skin. Mouth full of needle teeth. He spits black blood onto The Black Star’s floor.
Jorren grabs him by the back of the neck and forces him to his knees. “Found him near the recovery breach.”
Rhazek moves toward the prisoner.
The prisoner lifts his head.
The prisoner’s gaze slides from me to Asha, then back. He smiles.
“There,” he rasps through a translator disc cracked at his throat. “The human breeding stock.”
For a second, there is pod glass over my head again. My breath disappears.
Rhazek crosses the space and takes the prisoner by the throat.
The attacker’s feet leave the floor.
The prisoner chokes out a laugh. “Sarkan said she was worth the risk.”
Rhazek’s claws press into the prisoner’s throat.
Black blood beads around each point.
“She is not stock,” Rhazek says.
The prisoner’s smile widens despite the blood. “Not yet.”
Rhazek slams him into the wall.
The impact cracks something.
Asha screams.
I hand Asha to Nima and walk straight to Rhazek.
Rhazek does not look at me.
His claws sink deeper.
“Rhazek.” He does not answer.
I reach out.
My fingers close around Rhazek’s forearm.
Gold light snaps beneath my hand.
Through the touch I feel no thoughts or words, only his need to erase the threat—and fear for me and the crying child.
“Stop.”
His head turns slowly.
“Not here,” I say. “Not in front of Asha.”
The prisoner makes a wet, mocking sound.
Rhazek’s hand tightens again.
I step closer. “Do not let him make you into my next cage,” I whisper.
Rhazek lowers the prisoner, then throws him at Jorren’s feet.
Jorren catches him by the collar and pins him with one knee before the attacker can move.
My hand is still on Rhazek’s arm.
The gold light curls around my fingers. Every medic and guard in the corridor can see it.
I pull away.
Rhazek lets his arm fall to his side.
He looks past me at Asha.
The child peeks at him from Nima’s arms, still crying.
He kneels several paces from Asha.
“I frightened you.”
She nods.
His head lowers once. “I will not do it again in front of you.”
Asha sniffs. “Are you still going to kill him?”
Rhazek answers carefully. “Not here.”
As Rhazek rises, the shrapnel shifts in his back.
He turns to Jorren. “Question him. Do not kill him until he gives Sarkan’s location.”
The prisoner laughs weakly. “Sarkan will take her.”
I step between the prisoner and Rhazek, knees shaking.
“Tell Sarkan,” I say, “I’ve already had one group of idiots call me stock this week. It didn’t work out great for them.”
The prisoner smiles through blood. “You think the warlord saved you?”
The prisoner’s voice lowers. “He came because your body called to his. That is all. Flesh answers flesh. Blood answers blood. He will put prettier walls around you, human, but a breeding cage is still a cage.”
Behind me, Rhazek says, “She chooses her walls.”
The prisoner laughs again. “For now.”
Jorren hauls him away from Asha’s bed.
Then the adrenaline starts draining out of me, and the corridor sways.
Rhazek shifts toward me, but Seryn is already at my side.
She catches my elbow. “Sit before you make this theatrical.”
I let her guide me onto the edge of Asha’s bed.
Asha touches my sleeve again. “Did you stop him?”
“He stopped,” I say.
Jorren hands the prisoner off to two guards, then steps close to Rhazek. His voice is low, but I hear it anyway.
“Warlord,” Jorren says.
Rhazek does not look away from me. “Speak.”
“Your crew saw.”
“They saw you yield to her.” Jorren glances at the still-glowing mark on Rhazek’s arm.
Rhazek says one word in Dravari.
The translator does not catch it.
But every Dravari in the corridor lowers their head.
I look at Nima.
Her face has gone pale.
“What did he say?” I whisper.
Nima’s gaze flicks to Rhazek, then back to me.
“He said,” she whispers, “witnessed.”