Seven
WILLOW HAD REGRETS. Not choosing botany was climbing the list. Plants didn’t usually develop contact-vector bioweapons, hold tests that targeted civilians or force exhausted anthropologists to sprint through enemy stations while cradling unconscious migraine-eating space scarves.
“Left!” she shouted.
Renjik turned and slammed a Scozid guard into the corridor wall with his shoulder before firing into the next junction.
The team moved around them in a brutal dance of death.
Willow stayed in the center, one hand locked around Na’ashq’ii and the other gripping a small gun Renjik shoved into her hand.
The counter she’d employed in the chamber was an improvised and incomplete method cobbled together from Na’ashq’ii’s sounds and Willow’s increasingly fragmented understanding of how the weapon interpreted vibration. It worked in the support chamber, mostly.
Structure-wide was another matter. Remnants remained in places on the walls and floor. They reached the central communications room with less than ten minutes remaining before the ceremonial broadcast completed, but it was an irrelevant clock because the Scozid intended to blow the moon apart.
The comms chamber door was locked with a warning barrier. Willow recognized the text. She threw both arms out to the side to stop the team’s forward motion. “It’s a challenge gate.”
“Everything they build is a challenge.”
“Yes, but this one’s literal.” She moved closer, scanning the cadence pattern in the words. “If we force it, it’ll lock for good.”
The Azar asked, “Can you open it?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Would you prefer I lie?”
Renjik stepped up behind her, his heat at her back. “Do it.”
That shouldn’t have settled her, but it did. She let the world narrow to language and nuance. Cadence wasn’t meant to be written, but their language included visual timing markers to mimic spoken exchanges. The door didn’t want a password.
Willow smiled. “Arrogant little door.” She entered a response sequence. The door flashed red.
Renjik leaned over her shoulder. “Problem?”
“It wants submission language.”
“So give it that.”
“Absolutely not.” She laughed and rewrote the response in a neutral cadence no Scozid would use. A linguistic heresy.
The door hesitated. Then opened. One of the warriors muttered that he was impressed. Willow stepped through. “I’ve defeated a door with diplomacy. My career has peaked.”
The comms chamber exploded with motion.
Three Scozid techs attacked. The team handled two, but the third lunged for Willow.
Na’ashq’ii woke with a furious blue flare.
For a few seconds, it emitted the same series of clicks and whistles that neutralized the freha enhek.
Its plates lifted and smacked together, reinforcing the rhythm.
Then it launched itself at the Scozid’s face.
The Scozid’s scream cut short when it popped.
Willow stared at it. “Good scarf.” She scooped it up and returned it to her chest, then ran to the central console. She tried to wake it, but the screen erupted in static. “Damn it. It’s locked to Scozid biology.”
Renjik handed her a severed tentacle.
“I love how efficient you are.”
“Focus.”
She pressed the limb to the console and the system opened. She uploaded the warning. Rejected. She tried again. Rejected.
A Scozid ship fired on the moon. The entire comms chamber shook. Alarms blared. The sound of civilians screaming erupted over open channels.
“Fuck!”
Renjik’s hand closed over the back of her neck. Warm and steady, the metal thumb pressed gently against her pulse because he’d touched her without thinking. “Breathe.”
She took a deep breath. Na’ashq’ii pressed a limb to the console. The system accepted Na’ashq’ii as a valid input. “Oh, you beautiful thing.”
She fed the warning into the system for a third time. Accepted. The warning sounded throughout Kerrak. Every screen lit with the order to evacuate in Scozid civilian cadence. A simple message. Don’t touch exposed surfaces, evacuate at once.
Relief hit Willow so hard she nearly fainted.
A voice over the comms was calm while it said, “Alliance ships are jamming Scozid targeting, but it’s temporary. Evacuate now.”
The floor shook again. Renjik lifted Willow off her feet.
“I can run!”
“Not fast enough.”
By the time they reached the landing site, the fighter was damaged.
The pilots spun up the engines and one flickered to life.
She hoped one was enough. Renjik shoved Willow inside, then turned to help the last warrior board.
A blast sent her flying backward and everything beyond the ramp disappeared in a cloud of dust and debris.
Willow screamed. “Renjik!”
She scrambled to her feet and ran.
The ramp began to close.
She stumbled in the dust cloud and saw Renjik run past her. He threw the wounded warrior into the already retreating fighter. They watched someone inside catch him. Then the ramp closed and the fighter was gone.
“Well this seems familiar. Only this planet is rapidly dying.”
Renjik grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the front of the structure. Where several Scozid ships had landed.
“I feel like you have a very bad plan.”
“We have to get off this moon.” He pointed to the nearest Scozid ship. “That’s our only ride.”
“Yep. Bad plan.”
“Only plan.”
“Okay, fine.”
She followed him inside an enemy ship. As the hatch closed, Na’ashq’ii clicked sharply and pointed a tentacle toward the ship.
Toward the contamination spreading across the hull plating.
She tugged on Renjik’s hand and whispered furiously. “Na’ashq’ii just pointed out that the ship is contaminated.”
He didn’t stop.
“We have to warn them.”
He pulled her into a supply closet of some sort. “Will they listen?”
“Probably not, but we have to try.”
Na’ashq’ii crawled from her chest and settled against Renjik’s damaged synthetic wrist. Blue light pulsed once beneath its plates.
The pain in Renjik’s face eased a little.
He looked at it, then at Willow. “Your scarf is touching me.”
“It has excellent taste.”
A shipwide announcement vibrated through the wall and floor deck. This is your Vekh. All ships are to return to Sustroria. We believe an Alliance attack is imminent. Be prepared to defend.
Renjik shook his head. “Okay, how do we warn them?”
“We need to get to their communications command.”
The dead weight of his arm dragged at his shoulder. “Of course we do.”
RENJIK HAD MADE many bad plans in his life.
This one had impressive range.
It began with being stranded on a dying moon, continued with boarding a contaminated Scozid military vessel, and now apparently required him to sneak his rhun through enemy corridors while an alien creature pulsed blue against his useless cybernetic wrist.
The supply closet was narrow, dark, and smelled of scorched metal, chemical seals, and the slick organic rot that clung to all Scozid vessels.
Willow stood close enough that her shoulder brushed his ribs with every breath.
Her pulse was fast. Not panic. Not yet. But fear had sharpened her scent beneath the lingering heat of sweat and smoke.
Renjik wanted to put her behind him.
He also wanted to put her on the next functional ship and launch her directly into Alliance custody.
Neither option was available. He settled for listening.
Beyond the door, Scozid voices moved in clipped bursts. The translator implant caught pieces through the metal. Containment breach. Unauthorized boarding. Departure corridor compromised. Military cleansing order confirmed.
Willow went very still.
Renjik lowered his head until his mouth was near her ear. “What does that mean?”
Her voice was barely breath. “It means they know the freha enhek is on the hull.”
“And?”
“And they’re treating it like a discipline problem.”
Of course they were. A ship carrying death on its skin, and the Scozid were concerned with obedience.
Na’ashq’ii clicked once against his wrist.
Renjik looked down.
The creature’s plates had shifted again, overlapping in a pattern that looked too deliberate to be instinct. Blue light pulsed beneath the armor, slow and rhythmic. Not the chaotic flicker of pain. Not the violet warning from Kerrak. This was different.
Willow saw it too.
Her eyes narrowed.
“What is it doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
That was becoming his least favorite answer.
Na’ashq’ii stretched one tentacle across the ruined plating of his prosthetic and tapped twice. Then once. Then twice again.
Renjik’s arm didn’t repair itself. That would have been convenient, and the universe rarely offered convenience unless it intended to charge interest.
But the pain in the nerve ports eased a little. Enough.
The limb remained dead from elbow to fingers, useless weight strapped to his body by damage and bad luck. But the fire where machine met flesh dimmed to a manageable burn.
Willow stared at the creature. “It’s not just reacting.”
“No.”
“It’s responding to something.”
“Possibly.”
She shot him a look.
He deserved it. Possibly was cowardice shaped like strategy.
He felt the jump drive spool up through his feet. Gravity threw them against the back wall of the closet before abruptly releasing them.
A heavy thud sounded in the corridor outside.
Both of them froze.
A second thud followed. Then a wet scraping sound.
Renjik shifted Willow behind him with his good arm and raised his graj?. The closet door was thin enough to shoot through. Thin enough for something outside to shoot through as well.
The voices stopped. A Scozid screamed.
The sound cut off too quickly.
Willow’s hand closed around the back of his belt. “Renjik.”
“I hear it.”
“I wasn’t asking if you heard it.”
No. She was asking if they were about to die. The answer was still negotiable.
Something struck the corridor wall. Once. Twice. Then silence.
Na’ashq’ii went black.
Not dim. Black.
Every plate sealed tight against its body. Every tentacle tucked in. The blue glow vanished like a light extinguished beneath water.
Willow’s breath caught.
Renjik opened the closet door a finger’s width.