Chapter 41
- Nora -
The membrane closes behind us, and for the first time in what feels like years, there's nothing left to do.
No audience to survive. No station to tear apart.
No message to record with shaking hands before I lose my nerve.
Just the quiet, living hum of the Beast around us, and Krix'vorr's chamber, and my own hand, which I keep turning over to look at.
The mark sits dark and precise against my skin, cool to the touch even now, hours later.
I trace the shape of it with one finger.
"Does it hurt?" Krix'vorr asks, watching me.
"It just feels strange. Like it's mine and not mine at the same time." I look up at him. "I'm a Junior Harrower. I keep waiting for that to feel less insane."
"Give it time," he says. "I've been a Chief Harrower for longcycles and some mornings it still surprises me."
I laugh, and it comes out looser than I expect. Some final knot in my chest has finally let go. "I have to see Lucius."
He's in the small alcove off the command chamber where the crew set him after we boarded.
Resting, if that's the right word for a drone, atop a cushion of something soft the Beast apparently grew for him without being asked.
The two of them have been on very friendly terms since he gently examined her memories with a great deal of respect and awe.
His casing is scorched along one whole side, and when his single working light flickers up to acknowledge us, it's dimmer than I remember it being even a few days ago.
"Captain. Chief Harrower." His voice is thin, strained at the edges, but unmistakably still his own. "I understand congratulations are in order. Twice, in fact. The marriage, and the rank. I don't know which to address first."
"The marriage." I kneel down beside him, careful, the way you'd approach something fragile even when it insists it isn't. "The other thing is more for their own convenience. How are you? Really?"
"Damaged," he says, and there's none of his usual dry deflection in it this time, which worries me more than the word itself. "Several systems are not functioning as they should. I calculate perhaps sixty percent of my original capability remains reliable. The rest is intermittent."
"Can it be fixed?"
"Possibly. I don't know if the Brood can repair Space Force engineering, and I don't know if Space Force will ever see me again to try." He spins his rotors, and they make a squeaky noise. "It's a strange thing, being this uncertain about my own continuation. I find I don't entirely care for it."
I put my marked hand flat against his casing, gently, the way you'd rest a hand on someone's shoulder.
"You got the cell door open," I tell him, echoing the thing I said to him in the dark of that cage, because it still feels like the truest thing I know about him.
"You got us out. You saved Sophia. Well, all of us.
Don't feel like a lesser drone because parts of you are held together with hope right now. "
"That is a very generous assessment of my current wiring, Captain."
"I mean it. And we will see if we can get you fixed. The Brood can't, I'm sure. But you can probably tell us what to do, if we find the tools. Sophia is good at tech."
He's quiet for a moment, his light flickering once, low.
"Thank you," he says finally, and it comes out more sincere than anything I've heard from him before.
"I will attempt to be repaired. In the meantime, I intend to keep translating, keep calculating, and keep being generally insufferable, at whatever percentage I currently manage. Drones aren't known to retire."
"Good," I say, and mean it. "Don't you dare go quiet on me."
"I wouldn't dream of it, Captain. Even here, I hear rumors. It seems you also have a calf. A living spaceship, fit for a Space Force officer. I suppose I don't have to tell you that the sheer existence of those creatures is the greatest mystery in the galaxy right now?"
“They're weird,” I agree. “Suspiciously useful, in a way.”
“Precisely. Captain, I must remind you that this is exactly the outcome we wanted. You're free and you have a spaceship. Following our plan, you would now go to Earth and report.”
“Actually,” I ponder, “I think representing Earth right here among the locusts is a much better outcome than we ever considered.”
“I couldn't agree more.” Lucius's light goes out.
Krix'vorr's hand finds my shoulder, and after a moment, we leave Lucius to rest, and make our way toward the stall where the calf waits.
I feel it before I see it, that same restless, trembling eagerness radiating through the Beast's flank as we approach, and when we round the last curve of the corridor, the calf is already straining against its tether, every one of its senses fixed on the sound of my footsteps.
"He's yours," Krix'vorr says softly, beside me. "Truly yours, now. To use and fly in. Just yours, and whatever the two of you decide to make of that."
I step closer and place my hand on the side of him.The calf presses himself gently against my hand, the same nuzzling gesture he gave the Beast the night I stole him away into the dark.
"Hey," I whisper to it, stupidly, my eyes stinging. "I'm sorry I never got to properly thank you before. You helped save my life. And Sophia's. I don't even have a name for you yet."
The calf trembles happily under my palm, radiating that same pure, uncomplicated joy he had the very first night I met him.
Beside me, Krix'vorr laughs. "Take your time."
“Hmm,” I ponder. “He travels in space, and he's clearly powerful. I think we'll call him Apollo.”
“An alien name is appropriate,” Krix'vorr agrees. “Aplo it is.” His lips won't quite cooperate.
“Apollo,” I repeat. “A-poll-lo.”
“A-plopo. A-po-pol. Hmm. Perhaps one day I will be able to pronounce it properly.”
I go up on tiptoes and kiss him on the mouth. “Don't you dare. I want you to say it just like that. Always.”
We end up in the training chamber almost without deciding to, the way old habits pull you back to familiar places when there's nothing left that needs doing.
It's exactly as it was: the living tissue walls, the rack of unfamiliar alien weapons, the high ceiling that swallows sound the way it did the very first time I stood in here and told him to try to grab me. It feels smaller now, somehow. Or maybe I just feel less like I need it to be a battlefield.
"Take up the ready stance," Krix'vorr says, and there's a warmth in his voice that wasn't there the first time, though the words are almost the same.
I put my hands on my hips. "You're joking. It's my wedding day!"
"I never joke about combat readiness." He tilts his head, and I catch the same amused glint from that very first night. "Wedding days are an obvious time to attack. Also, I want to see if you've gotten better."
"Hey, I was captured a few days ago. I was in a cell! Look how weak I am." I lift one arm, then let it flop weakly to my side, pretending I'm too weak to keep it there.
Krix'vorr chuckles. "You also destroyed a slave-trading operation and married a Chief Harrower at the same time. I think you can afford to lose one sparring match to me without it troubling your record."
I laugh, and take up the stance anyway, mostly because some part of me does want to know. I want to test, one more time, whether the ground beneath us has really changed as much as it feels like it has.
"There's something I should have told you a long time ago.
" He catches my wrist mid-feint, but gently, holding rather than deflecting.
"The lightning. The Inquisitor told me what it means, although I already suspected.
There's a word for it: Marankz. It's ancient.
It means we were... chosen. Matched. Before either of us knew it. "
I study his face. He's bordering on sheepish, and it's entirely charming. "You mean… fated mates? How long have you known?"
"Since before the Nest. Since Brax'tok told me on the Beast's hull, in vacuum, where nobody else could hear. Though I suspected it earlier."
I free my wrist. "And you didn't tell me?"
He looks away. "I didn't know what it would cost you to hear it. Or what it would cost me to say it."
I consider being miffed about that. Then I consider how many things I kept from him for exactly the same reason. Earth's location, Sophia's mission, my own escape attempts. "I think we're both bad at sharing important information."
“Let's get better at it.” He lunges, slower than he used to, more deliberate, and I sidestep out of habit and catch his wrist the way I did that very first night, pivoting to pull him off balance.
He lets me.
I feel it the instant it happens. The deliberate giving of his weight, the same trick he pulled on me back when we were only pretending not to be falling for each other.
and instead of sending him crashing to the floor, I find myself pulled forward into his chest instead, his arms already closing around me before I can protest that it isn't a fair move.
"That's not a combat technique," I tell him, muffled against him.
"Oh?" he says. "Perhaps I am inventing a new one."
I push gently away from him and deliberately roll my eyes. “Perhaps you’re trying to turn this into something else.”
“That eye thing is genuinely infuriating,” he growls. “Do it again.”
I roll them again. “Why should I?”
“That’s it.” He tips my chin up, and kisses me, slow and unhurried in a way we've never quite had the luxury of being before — no Queen waiting, no Inquisitor circling, no ticking clock counting down toward an auction or a war.
Just the quiet hum of the Beast around us, and his hands finding the ties of my wrap with far more patience than the last time we stood in this room together.
"If this is your combat style, I have to say I like it." I murmur against his mouth.
"It has its attractive points," he agrees, and picks me up entirely off my feet, and carries me toward the resting platform at the edge of the chamber without breaking the kiss even once.
“But now I can never let you fight anyone else,” I tell him. “I can't have your enemies fall in love with you.”
The lights of the training chamber dim of their own accord, the Beast's version of discretion.
“Oh, I will only ever use this style when I'm fighting you.”
“Do you think we'll do a lot of fighting?”
“The thing is, we don't have to be actually fighting. This technique is only suited for practice.”
"Then we'd better practice a lot," I murmur as the wrap slides off my shoulders and his mouth finds the curve of my neck. "I hear it takes a lifetime to master a new technique."
"At least," he agrees, lowering me onto the platform with a gentleness that still, after everything, surprises me. "Perhaps longer. I'm told humans are slow learners."
"And I'm telling you right now, locusts are stubborn teachers."
"Then we're perfectly matched." His weight settles over me, warm and vast and utterly safe, and the Beast dims her lights the rest of the way, leaving nothing but starlight, and the slow pulse of a living spaceship who is, at least for once, content to share him.