Chapter 9
Rook
It’s our day off and the whole compound smells like traq and rain.
Hallie sits across from me at the low table.
A mug of steaming traq with copious amounts of sweetener is at her elbow.
Her dark red hair is loose around her shoulders and she’s telling me about a move she could have made three games ago that would have ended me faster, and I am only half listening because I am too busy being happy.
“You’re not even listening.”
I blink. “I’m listening. You’d have taken my flank with the runner. I’d have seen it.”
“You would not have seen it.”
“Queen,” I say, just to watch her flush, “I always see it.”
She rolls her eyes, but the color comes up in her freckled cheeks anyway. Hallie reaches out and nudges one of my corner pieces a hand-width across the board, which is not a legal move and we both know it.
“There,” she says. “I win.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s strategy.”
“It’s cheating and you don’t need to cheat. What’s gotten into you this morning?”
The rain ticks against the windows and somewhere deeper in the compound I can hear Argylia shriek with laughter and one of my brothers rumble back at her.
“I talked to the women last night.”
“I heard. Roxy says you out-drank her.”
She snort-laughs. “I did not out-drink Roxy, nobody out-drinks Roxy…They told me things, Rook.” She gestures, a little helplessly between the two of us, at the board, at the air. “About how all of this works and it’s really on my mind this morning.”
I crook an eye ridge. “Is this good or bad?”
“I asked them to tell me.” She meets my eyes. “I wanted to know more about how a clasping specifically works between a human and a Xylan.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I manage.
“Because I didn’t want you to ever wonder whether I understood what you really meant when you said that you scented me and that you want to one day clasp my hand in a mating ceremony.
I mean, you have told me a lot, of course.
But it was good for me to heard it all from another group of women who are in the midst of it all right now. ”
“You can’t make any kind of decision on this yet because there are operatives out there who want you dead,” I say, because I have to, because I will not let her mistake a cage for a home. “That’s not the same as—”
“Rook, I’m trying to tell you that after I talked to them last night and thought it through a whole bunch, I can now see myself living here.”
“Hallie, you’ve only been here for a week. How can you know that already?”
She shrugs. “I was on Chronos for three years, but I never meant to stay there forever. It was a means to an end. It was a very high paying job and I meant to eventually return to New Earth and start my own business. That was always my dream. But I want you to know that I can see myself living on Timbur, with you. And I don’t say that lightly.
I truly understand that this means a lifelong decision, that you can never leave Timbur and that I would become pregnant right away.
And I say yes to all of that. In fact, that type of life sounds pretty wonderful to me and I believe I would be lucky to live out my days here, with you.
I wanted you to have heard me say that, when nothing was forcing my hand. ”
My two hearts are going so hard I’m sure she can hear them.
“Hallie.” Her name comes out rough. I reach across the board, slow, giving her every chance to pull back, and I cover her gloved hand with mine.
Cloth between us, always cloth, until she chooses otherwise and gods, she might choose otherwise.
“I have wanted to have this talk with you about specifics since the night you arrived, and I have been swallowing it every single day so I don’t frighten you.
So let me say one piece of it now, while nothing’s forcing my hand either.
” I meet her bright gaze. “There is no version of my life that’s better than the one with you in it. ”
She grins, turns her hand underneath mine, gloved palm to gloved palm, and holds on.
And then the front door bangs open hard enough to rattle the walls.
“Crew meeting!” Scar’s deep voice booms throughout the whole compound. “Front room. Now. Everyone.”
Hallie’s hand jerks in mine. We’re both already up.
It isn’t the command that does it, it’s the way he says it. Scar doesn’t shout. He’s the one who watches a room for an hour before he picks a chair. This must be serious, in fact, deadly news.
The rest of the family pours in from every direction, half-dressed for a day off work. Heavy has a cleaning rag still in his fist. Chief fills the far doorway, Cannibal and Claws crowd behind. Doors bang. Humans arrive. In moments we’re all here.
“What?” Heavy demands. “What’s happened?”
Scar stands in the middle of the room, his chest heaving.
“Three off-worlders came through the transport station six diurnals ago. I didn’t catch them then; that’s the part that’s bothered me this whole time.
They came in clean with credentials that scanned as Minecorp contractors, then they went dark and stayed dark.
No lodging on record, no movement on any cam, nothing.
They’ve been invisible, right under me.” His jaw flexes.
“I only have them now because they surfaced this morning to move. That’s the only reason I know they exist at all. ”
The room goes cold.
“And Scar doesn’t miss things,” Ines comments.
“This time I missed them because they were trained well enough to be missed,” Scar growls.
“Oh hells,” Heavy snarls.
“Where are they now?” Chief questions.
“Routing toward us through the dead zones. Avoiding every cam I’ve got, in a pattern.” Scar looks at Hallie. “They were never sightseeing. They’ve been sitting on us for six days deciding how to do this. And this morning they decided.”
“You’re sure they’re coming here.”
“That’s not a patrol route, Chief. That’s an approach.”
“How do you know they’re not just contractors who got lost…” Heavy starts.
“Because of how they move.” Scar’s voice is flat.
“The way they cover each other. The gear, once I finally got eyes on it. These aren’t local muscle, these aren’t hired thugs from the processing station who don’t know which end of a blaster to hold.
They’re professionals. And they came from Chronos. ”
I feel Hallie go still beside me.
“These aren’t Grytel’s people,” I say, because someone should say it out loud. “Grytel’s an ally now. This is the House, reaching in directly.”
“Yes.” Scar looks at me. “This is the House.” He turns to the whole room and says the thing none of us wanted said in front of her.
“Understand what she is to them. She’s the Keeper of Records.
Hallie Longwell walked off Chronos carrying hard evidence that ties what they’re doing here to what they did to our parents.
She’s the only being alive who connects the two.
Without her, our mother and father stay a cargo accident and the House stays a ghost. And without her, no one knows how they are trying to eliminate Margol Xylan from the future of Illibrium mining.
” He looks at Hallie, and there’s something almost like an apology in it, but not quite, because there’s no time.
“They didn’t send probably their best three Chronos operatives across the Four Sectors to frighten her off a cold case.
They came to erase her. They cannot let her testimony survive. ”
Hallie remains steady. “How long do we have?” she questions.
“Minutes,” Scar says. “Maybe less.”
“Offspring and the pregnant go to employee housing,” Chief barks, and it isn’t a discussion. “Stay with Leah and Hook. Now.”
Lila scoops up Argylia mid-protest. Naomi waddles to the front door.
Jana’s already got Rux on her hip and her chin set.
Ines moves with one hand on the curve of her belly and her journalist’s eyes taking everything in even now, even running.
No long goodbyes. Quick kisses. A door, a transport, gone.
The most precious things in our world, out of the line, and the compound feels suddenly hollow and cold without the noise of them.
And then there’s Roxy, standing in the middle of the front room with her arms crossed, not going anywhere.
“Roxy.” Cannibal’s voice drops into the register that usually ends arguments. “Housing. With the others.”
“No.”
“Roxy.”
“I’m not leaving her alone.” She tips her head at Hallie. “I’m staying.”
Cannibal stares down at his mate. “You did this exact same thing when they came for Ines,” he admits.
“And I was right that time too.”
He sighs. “I can’t keep you out of anything.” It comes out almost fond, even now, even with his claws already half-extended. “Not the mine, not a fight, not—”
“You knew what I was like when you scented me.” She pats his enormous chest. “Go guard a door.”
He goes and guards a door.
“That leaves six crew and two females,” Chief remarks.
“Hallie goes in the center,” Heavy says, jerking his chin at my female. “Walls on every side. We stack around her.”
And it’s the obvious thing, it’s what any of them would do, and that’s exactly why it’s wrong. “No,” I say.
My brothers all turn to look at me.
I don’t fight like Hook. I don’t track like Scar.
I’ve spent my whole life being the youngest brother they love and don’t quite see, the one with the trophies they think are useless.
But I’ve spent ten thousand hours looking at a board and asking one question—where will my opponent move, and how do I already get there—and I know, the way I know my own name, what I’m looking at.
“If they’ve watched us at all, they know we’d wall her in the center.
The center is the obvious square. They won’t come at the center.
They’ll feint somewhere thin to pull us off her, and they’ll come at her from the side we’re sure is covered. ”
Heavy’s mouth opens. “Noted, Rook,” he says, not unkindly, already turning back to Chief. And in moments they are passing out weapons, discussing strategy amongst each other, just expecting me to take their orders.
I let it go. I’m used to letting it go.
But I ignore their plans and put myself beside Hallie.
And then I put the both of us by the northeast joint of the compound, where the old construction meets the new, the thin place, the square nobody’s watching.
Because I’d rather be wrong and standing in the right spot than right and standing in the wrong one.
For a moment nothing happens at all.
Hallie stands close at my shoulder, her breath quick and shallow, and I can hear the others down the corridor moving into their positions.
Trunk’s low voice, the clink of weapons being passed hand to hand, Chief setting them where the threat should come from.
The center, the strongest wall. Everywhere but here.
Both of us have blasters in our hands, fully charged.
Roxy appears in the mouth of the hallway with a small blaster in her own hand and frowns at the two of us tucked into the dark northeast joint like we’ve lost our minds.
“What are you doing all the way over here?” she hisses.
“Rook thinks they’ll come through the seam,” Hallie says. “And I agree.”
“The seam? What does that even mean? Heavy and Scar have got the whole crew stacked at the south…they’re annoyed that the two of you have disappeared.
” She stops, looks at me, looks at the thin place where the old stone meets the new, and I watch her do the math the rest of them wouldn’t.
She’s a scientist; therefore she follows our logic maybe easier than most. “Huh.”
“Roxy.” Cannibal’s voice, sharp, carries from somewhere I can’t see. “Where did you go? Get back here.”
She hesitates. Looks at Hallie like she doesn’t want to leave her.
“Go,” Hallie tells her. “I’ve got Rook. Go where it’s covered.”
Roxy swears under her breath and goes, jogging back down the corridor toward the others, toward the south, toward the wall everyone’s so sure of.
And then it’s just the two of us in the quiet wrong corner, and I count my own heartbeats, two at a time, and I wait for the board to prove me right.
I hate that I want to be right.
It comes the way I said it would.
The first hit lands at the south wall. The charge is loud, a breach that punches a hole and fills the corridor with smoke, and it pulls exactly the way it’s meant to.
I hear Claws and Heavy surge toward it. Chief shouts.
All the Fever Brothers, including Roxy, race towards the explosion.
I stay behind with Hallie, doing my best to protect my female in the time it will take for my brothers to realize they are fighting against nothing, circle around and come back.
The northeast seam remains quiet and in fact starts to vibrate.
“Here,” I shout, pulling Hallie back with me. “They’re going to come in this way.”
My brothers can’t hear me.
The joint blows inward.
Three Royal Pigment warriors with House insignias come barreling through the smoke.
They are nothing like the masked thugs who hit us before.
They move like one thing with six legs. Matte gear, no faces, weapons up and sweeping, and they don’t hesitate, don’t posture, they flow into the room looking for one target only.
Both of us fire out blasters and soon realize they’re worthless against the high-tech armor.
Dammit.
I get my body in front of Hallie. “Down,” I tell her, “stay low, get behind the table base,” She’s already moving, already dropping, dragging the data slate off the side table and shoving it into her shirt against her stomach, protecting the proof with her body.
That’s my Queen.
Just for an instant, I can visualize the width of one square. Hallie alone against the wall with her arms full of the only thing that can hang the House, and the third operative coming through the smoke with his weapon already up and already leveling at her chest.
I see the whole board.
I see it the way I see everything, all at once, every line of attack, and there’s no move here, there’s no clever move, there’s no flank or feint or trade. There’s just the one piece nobody guards, the one square that matters.
The Rook goes in the corner so the most important piece doesn’t fall.
I don’t decide to move. I’m already moving. I get between her and harm and make myself the wall.
The blast takes me in the chest.
It doesn’t hurt. That’s the strange thing. The ceiling tips. I’m on the floor and I didn’t feel myself land. The smoke is very far away now. Everything is far away and getting farther, sinking, like the compound is a cage and somebody cut the power. I’m dropping down the dark shaft.
Is she safe.
That’s the only thing in me. Not the cold spreading under my ribs, or the wrong light at the edges.
Hands are on me. Five crowded fingers, pressing down hard on my chest where the warmth is leaving. Her face swims down through the smoke into mine and she’s saying my name, over and over.