Chapter 25
Thatcher
Letting Ysa go was possibly the hardest thing I’d ever done.
I was so used to always being her shadow, her guard, that using her as bait was like asking me to pull my own heart out of my chest. It felt raw, wrong, terrifying.
Ysa was so brave, though, and sleek in the black Varakartoom armor—even if it looked weird with her long braid awkwardly stuffed into the limited space the helmet offered.
Not long ago, Mitnick had confirmed he’d sealed the ship’s airlocks, including the hangar bays.
Nothing was going to get in or out. The only place left unlocked was the little maintenance hatch the Shadow Unit soldier Eric had used to get aboard.
Ysa had opened up the bulkheads to reach it, and not long ago, she’d vanished into the narrow hole beneath the panels in the floor.
As the air had become breathable again, the entity had given up on its attack, and we’d said our goodbyes with our helmets off.
I still ached recalling the moment. The hardest thing I’d ever done: letting her go.
I’d begged her not to do it, and I wasn’t proud of that.
“Ysa, don’t…” My voice had been so hoarse it felt like gravel in my throat.
“We’ll find another way. There has to be another way.
” She’d shaken her head, her blue eyes shiny, like she was ready to cry, and that only made this harder.
The brutal, angry side of me was more than willing to take advantage of that hint of weakness—capitalize on her own fear and doubts, and put a stop to the danger she was about to put herself in.
I had even opened my mouth to do exactly that, and then I’d shut it again.
Ysathea loved this ship, and it would kill her—kill all of us, perhaps—if we didn’t find a way to stop the entity.
As much as I hated this plan, it was also the only plan we had.
My little engineer was a genius, and if there was anyone who could pull this off, it was her.
So I dragged her close, and, breathing raggedly, I pressed my forehead to hers.
“I love you, Ysathea. You are my heart, my soul. You cannot die. Understood?” I didn’t say it, but I knew she heard what was in my heart.
The rawness that would explode into death if I were to lose her.
Even the pain in her eyes I’d seen would not change that.
There was no promise she could make me swear that would stop me from becoming exactly like Eric had been.
If she died now, there would be nothing but death and destruction until someone managed to take me out.
It wasn’t fair to Ysa, but she truly was my soul, and without her, there would be only death.
Her voice had been bright, bold, far more confident than her eyes told me she was.
“I’ll come back to you, Thatcher. You are not him; you’re mine.
” And that’s how she’d slipped down into the ship, deep into darkness.
It wasn’t true, but it felt like she’d vanished into thin air.
This was farewell, the last I’d ever see of her.
To rescue the ship, I was forced to sacrifice the one person in the quadrant who anchored me to something good.
Something potentially kind. To rescue the Varakartoom, I had to let Ysa go.
The ship’s engines shut off unexpectedly.
We were suddenly dead in the water, our speed cut in half, the ship decelerating and causing me to stumble forward and nearly slam into the nearest wall.
That hadn’t been part of Ysa’s distractions, but it made sense.
Just cutting the engines might not be enough to stop us from reaching the waterworld the entity wanted to return to.
It was the next solar system over; we might already have reached it.
To tempt the entity to follow Ysa onto the stolen shuttle…
the ship had to be a useless, immovable hunk of metal.
Perhaps my little engineer had managed to give her engineers more instructions.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if it had worked.
My only option was to fulfill the task Ysa had assigned to me.
I righted myself and focused on doing just that, boots thudding against the metal floor as I bolted back to the turret Ysa had carefully worked to isolate from the rest of the ship and place under my control.
I burst into the narrow chamber, then threw myself into the seat.
Targeting systems came online; my hands tightened around the manual controls.
I swung the turret in the right direction, squinted with bated breath, and waited for Ysa’s signal.
I’d shoot that bastard, kill it once and for all.
It was my task to disable the shuttle’s engines in a much more permanent fashion than those of the Varakartoom currently were, while Ysa would send that ship on a path headed straight for the nearest sun.
With no engines, all the entity could do was go along for the ride.
There. Moments later, I saw it float into view.
A clunky, boxy shuttle that shouldn’t have managed to get so close to the Varakrtoom without anyone noticing, but had anyway.
I knew all the tricks on how to do that, drift with the engines off, move so slowly it appeared to be space debris to the ship’s sensors.
The Shadow Unit soldier—he’d been a very skilled opponent indeed—but now something good was going to be done with his ship.
“I see it,” I breathed over my comm to Ysa.
“Did you manage to set the heading? Or do I need to nudge it?” It would be a bit trickier, but I could do it.
Use the turret to adjust the course of the shuttle even further and send it into one of the three pale, thin-looking suns that dominated the waterworld’s solar system.
“Heading set, no nudge needed. Get ready to fire.” She hesitated before she said the words that destroyed my world.
“I didn’t make it off the shuttle, Thatcher.
I’m sorry. But you’ve got to fire anyway.
” Denial rattled through my body, claws raking my flesh like fire.
A growl drowned out every noise, even the soft hum of the turret I controlled.
I controlled nothing. I had let Ysa go, and now she was doomed.
***
Ysathea
My ears burned with sharp pain as Thatcher’s roar came through the comm.
My eardrums popped and bled, damaging some of my hearing, but not all.
Not nearly enough of it. That sound was the embodiment of the pain I felt inside me.
Not because I was scared of dying, weirdly enough, but because I was so damn worried about Thatcher.
My human mate. I knew he was going to lose it without me, and it was a thought I couldn’t bear.
He’d do terrible things until someone killed him, I’d seen that in his eyes when we’d parted ways only a few minutes ago.
Thatcher’s feelings, they were so obvious to me now.
He wore his heart on his sleeve, at least when it came to me.
And now this stupid plan of mine… it was going to fall apart.
I wanted to save him, as well as everyone on the Varakartoom.
Now there was only one choice: doom everyone but perhaps keep Thatcher for a little longer, or save the ship and forfeit my life—and thus his. Impossible.
My eyes stung with tears, but fury that echoed that pained scream rode me hard.
“I hate you,” I snarled at the entity clinging black and menacing to a good deal of the shuttle’s interior.
It had rushed me as I’d raced to pre-program the shuttle’s course and then lock out the systems, throwing itself into the shuttle behind me and blocking my exit.
It was so fast, it had to have been waiting nearby, listening in on what Thatcher and I said, hiding behind a nearby wall panel.
If I didn’t finish locking it out, this plan wouldn’t work at all. So I’d stayed.
The entity had already begun rapidly trying to take control of the shuttle, so I’d had no choice but to launch it.
Get it away from the Varakartoom and hope all of it had boarded.
“You’re not going to get away with anything,” I said.
My hands found the right set of cables beneath the piloting console and yanked. “Now you’re trapped.”
Blood trickled from my ear into my hair, but I ignored the pain and the sticky sensation to focus on Thatcher.
I’d managed to mute his scream of pain after that first burst caught me by surprise.
Now I discovered there was only rapid, frantic breathing on the other side—rough, pain-filled, and panicked.
“I’m not giving up, Thatcher,” I whispered to him.
“I love you, and I’m not giving up. I’m coming back.
” I barely believed that myself, but I clung to the faintest glimmer of hope anyway.
Save the ship, save Thatcher, save myself.
The entity spread across the wall, appearing to ignore me as I spun to keep it in view.
It was spreading, but it was not giving up its control of the hatch, like it knew keeping me trapped was its best way to survive.
It hooked itself into the console, and I watched as it began taking control.
Too bad it couldn’t control what was broken, and I’d made damn sure I’d ripped out everything it would need to alter the course.
No engine control, no thrusters, it could do nothing.
“Ysa, turn that ship around, right now.” Thatcher’s voice was so broken in my ear that I trembled.
I was like Grunn now, with half my hearing gone, but that was still enough to hear his pain.
I shook my head and bit down hard on my lower lip to hold back a sob.
I refused to let him hear how scared I was, and how much I feared losing him.
“You’re going to fire, Thatcher. You have to fire.
” I said it as much for myself as for him, but I didn’t think he’d do it.
“I can slip out…” My back hit the shuttle’s wall, and my stomach swooped with fear when the entity swept a tendril of black through the air that nearly struck the faceplate of my closed helmet.
My hands scrambled and found the ace up my sleeve I’d decided to take with me at the last moment.
I’d have to use it, and using one was far different from repairing one.
Thatcher roared another denial, but this one was not nearly so loud as the first. Perhaps simply because my hearing had already been damaged; nothing Dravion couldn’t fix, I hoped.
It was not Thatcher who responded, but the entity.
I’d been wrong to think there was nothing it wanted to control left functioning on the shuttle.
It had tapped into the communication system somehow, and in a synthesized voice said, “Your mate will not fire. His programming leaves him unable to harm you. Repair the flight controls. I will let you live if you land this vessel on Home.”
My skin crawled listening to the emotionless, synthetic tones the entity had created to speak to me.
Let me live? I knew that for the lie it was.
Perhaps it would let my body survive, but the moment I’d done what it wanted, it was going to try to control me the same as it had the Shadow Unit soldier.
Unless I got off the shuttle, I was doomed, but I wasn’t going to doom the Varakartoom with me.
“Thatcher, now,” I breathed. “You don’t need to blow it up, just take out the engines.
Trust me. I love you. I believe in you.” I did not ask him to promise the impossible, that he’d go on without me if I didn’t make it, or that he’d stop himself from spiraling into self-destruction.
What I did ask of him was already impossible enough.
“I love you, Ysa,” he responded after a pause that tingled with expectation, like the entity was waiting with bated breath to see what he’d do, just like I was.
Not that it needed air, but the air was definitely heavy with expectation.
Thatcher’s voice was a husky, raw whisper that barely penetrated my bloody ears, but I heard it anyway.
Heard it, felt it sink deep into my bones.
The blast rocked the little shuttle, threw me off my feet, and nearly straight into the black embrace of the entity.
My heart thundered, my head spun, but adrenaline surged.
He’d done it. “Blasting my way out, I’m coming,” I said.
Rolling, I brought up the heavy laser cannon that had weighed me down.
It was too big for me to carry any other way than strapped to my back.
Firing was impossible while I held it, but sprawled across the shuttle’s floor, that did not hold me back.
There was a screech and then an explosion of light. My hearing went completely numb, the cannon blasting a hole in the side of the shuttle, cutting through blast-resistant metal like it was butter.