Hybrid: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 4)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “What are we going to do when the Nelka get here? Just jet off to save Hawk and leave him here wailing?” Danny asked, sitting next to his brother.

  “I’m not crying!” Tray pouted.

  “You never are,” Danny said, putting an arm around his brother and kissing the top of his head. “I love you, Tray. I’m so sorry.”

  Shaking, Tray swayed side to side, then dove his face into Danny’s shoulder. It was strangely intimate, and almost childlike—the way Tray nestled near him when he was a little kid and having nightmares. “I know you just needed the money.”

  “That’s not why I keep you here,” Danny chuckled, nuzzling against his brother. “But I confess I’m terrified one day you’re going to sell this ship and send me packing.”

  Tray stayed silent, his eyes drifting open and closed. Saskia took his hand, gently moving it under the scanner, and carefully knitting the gash.

  “I can’t sell this ship,” Tray said softly, his voice hoarse. “No one would buy it. When I leave, I’ll give it to you.”

  “Thanks. When you leave?” Danny asked. Tray didn’t answer; he just kept his eyes on his knees. “After this adventure, I can’t blame you.”

  “That’s it?” Tray asked, looking offended. “Just ‘can’t blame you’?”

  “What do you want me to say, Tray? Just a minute ago, you were shouting ‘you can’t keep me here.’” Danny got choked up just repeating those accusatory words. “It’s not the first time you’ve said it.”

  “I suppose you have only yourself to blame, kidnapping me all those years ago,” Tray mumbled.

  “Kidnapping you?” Danny exclaimed, sliding off the bed. “You came to Terrana five years ago looking for me!”

  Tray swayed and nearly toppled. “The ransom. When I came to find you in Kemah. When I was fourteen.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Danny cried, sinking onto the second bed, his mind spinning, his stomach turning. “Tray, I would never do anything like that to you. I would never hurt you, and I for damn sure would never do anything that got me on Steven’s bad side. The man hated me enough for existing.”

  “He said you took me. It had to be you,” Tray said, his eyes glazed. “He said you tried to take me before, when Mom died. Didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes. I wanted to take you, but I didn’t do what you’re saying,” Danny insisted. “Tray, leaving you behind was one the hardest things I’ve ever hard to do, and I only did it because I thought you would be safer with Steven than with me. I’m sorry, I was wrong, and I regret it, but I never kidnapped you. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Tray huffed, and laid back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Fists clenched, Danny punched the wall and stalked out, but Saskia grabbed his collar and spun him back toward his brother. She sealed the infirmary door and gave Danny a firm look, demanding they finish the conversation.

  “What happened, Tray? What do you remember?” Saskia asked, taking Tray’s hand again to finish knitting.

  “And not what you’ve been told, what you actually remember,” Danny fumed, pacing in circles. “Tray, this is unbelievable. Tell me what happened to you!”

  “I ran away from home, but they were there in Kemah,” Tray said, his voice hitching. His body was still, his good hand clenching the front of his shirt. “Tied me up like an animal. Hung me on a meat hook in a freezer. They cut me and kicked me and told me I would never be rescued because Dad wasn’t going to pay.”

  Danny swallowed hard. “How long before Steven paid the ransom?”

  “He never did,” Tray said, wiping his cheek against his shoulder. “One day, they came in—there were three of them. They sliced into my hand and said they may as well slice off the fingers and fry them up. Feed me into the meat grinder one limb at a time and send Dad a protein block.” Tray’s injured hand twitched and Danny’s heart broke for him. “Dad kicked down the door, shot two of them. The third one disarmed him, but he strangled the guy with his bare hands. He looked at the corpses and said: ‘I don’t pay for what’s mine.’ Then he untied me and carried me home.”

  “No wonder he’s your hero,” Danny said, swallowing hard to keep from throwing up. He sat on the second bed, then laid down, sick and dizzy. He never should have left Tray behind.

  “Hero,” Tray repeated, getting choked up again. Then he snapped out of it and looked at the red mark on his hand. “Is my hand fixed?”

  “Another minute,” Saskia said, her eyes glued to the work.

  “I was having such a good morning before this,” Tray said, talking to her as if Danny weren’t there. “I figured out which of the signals was coming from Quin. We need to get home.”

  “We need to get Hawk,” Danny said, burying his head in his hands.

  Tray wiped away his tears and slid off the bed. “Sky!” he said, tapping his Feather and climbing up the stairs. “Sky, it’s been long enough. Are you coming back or not?”

  Danny looked at Saskia, who seemed just as shocked as he was.

  “Why would he lie?” Saskia asked, twiddling the knitter between her fingers, staring at the scan of the wound.

  “What do you mean?” Danny asked.

  “Someone cut off his fingers,” she explained, holding out her own hand, running the knitter over the top knuckles. “God, I’ve run so many scans on his hand, I thought I was seeing things.”

  “They’re not bionic,” Danny said, scrutinizing the scan. “Those are his real fingers.”

  “They were severed and reattached,” Saskia said, pointing to the second knuckle of his index and middle fingers. “Expertly reattached. Two for sure. If his flashbacks have been as vivid as mine, then he remembers that pain. Why would he lie?”

  Danny bristled at the scenario that came to him naturally. Steven had orchestrated the kidnapping to scare Tray away from the outside world and keep him from making friends. The kidnappers weren’t meant to cut off Tray’s fingers, but they did. Maybe that was why Steven killed them. Or maybe it was in Steven’s plan all along, to solidify the trauma. Either way, Steven somehow convinced Tray that the mutilation had never happened.

  “He remembers it how Steven told him to. The hero struts in just in the nick of time,” Danny said angrily. “That’s how he remembers everything.”

  31

  Liza saw a way out, but Kerris and Hawk wouldn’t listen. It was a good solution. No one died, and it gave her time that she so desperately needed to understand her new abilities. The conjuring, the teleporting, the ability to dissolve and move as a ghost—none of that came from her. It came from the memories, and Boone was full of them. Full of genetically engineered hybrids like her, who lay in wait in the other realm, trapped by one misstep she made when she was five years old. But Liza didn’t want to bring them back to this cruel, human world. She wanted to be with them in the Spirit Realm. She wanted to stop being a human-spirit hybrid, and just be spirit.

  “Oh!” Liza cried, feeling something cold and metal against her palm. “Another flask. Kerf, Hawk. How many of these do you need? What kind of word is ‘kerf?’ What does it even mean?”

  She tossed the flask aside and rolled out of her bed. She didn’t remember going to bed, but she was glad for a soft landing. Her trips to the Spirit Realm came with many physical bruises. Her window was dark, a barrier put over it to keep the cool air in the house. She’d grown accustomed to the warmth, and with only one thin blanket, she reached out with her mind to find some elsewhere. “How are you doing, Tray?”

  A blast of heat, tears, and blood came from him, and Liza saw Tray’s severed fingers on the ground. “Oh, gross! Are those real fingers? Oh!”

  She turned again. The fingers faded, but a meat hook appeared, bringing forth the pain and horror of the memory it fell from.

  Kerris! she cried. Kerris, I need help!

  Hawk nearly kicked over the air cooler when he heard Liza scream. Kerris seemed to fly through the hall, shouldering into Liza’s bedroom. Of all the skills Hawk had practiced, blocking out
screams was next on his list, and even after Kerris’ shield went up around Liza, Hawk found himself panting for breath. Yanking on his shirt and shoes, he rushed to Liza’s room. She lay in her bed, limp as a wilted flower, a string of trinkets around her. Hawk picked up a flask, then touched his breast pocket, feeling the other one she’d conjured for him. Taking the first flask out, he put both on the bed. He saw a few strange devices. One looked like a kitchen gadget, another some kind of sports racket. The pistol frightened him.

  “What is this?” he asked, picking it up. His spirit eyes showed him the mechanical working of the revolving chamber. The weapon was loaded.

  “From Saskia’s memory. An assassination. She was shot in the hip,” Liza said, wincing as though she felt the pain of the injury. When she moved, she knocked another small device that looked similar to a Virp. Her wince turned to a smile. “Kerris look.”

  “A comm,” Kerris said, flabbergasted. He slid the device onto his wrist, looking close to tears.

  “It’s the one Mom gave me,” Liza said. “It has all the games, but only the ones I played actually work.”

  “Liza, you need to stop conjuring things. It’s draining you. You’re exhausted,” Kerris said gently, taking the other trinkets off the bed and shoving them into a corner.

  “It’s worse than that. I can’t control it,” Liza whimpered. “A memory floats past, and something falls out. It’s all here. The memories are trapped here. Kerris, I have to get out of Boone.”

  “We’re working on that,” Kerris soothed, stroking her hair.

  “My crew will help us,” Hawk added. “We don’t have to fight them, we just have to let them in and ask for help.”

  “The droids are blocking the door,” Liza said flatly. He saw a strange twitter in her spirit form again, as though a part of her were delighted by her physical sadness. Perhaps hybrid forms were more split than he’d thought.

  “We can use the liquid fuel in the refinery to create an explosion,” Hawk explained. He’d spent his life preventing fuel from exploding, and he knew several easy ways to cause a disaster. “We can decimate the droids.”

  “No, you can’t destroy this place!” Liza cried.

  “Liza, Boone is long dead,” Kerris said gently.

  “Some of it, yes,” she said. Her palm turned, and a gold-leaf locket appeared. “But look at all that’s still here! I can save it. I can pull it back.”

  “Liza, I can’t teleport back to Rocan and I don’t think you can take me either,” Hawk said. “But if you and I can’t get back there to help heal my people, then returning to Oriana is my best hope. I have children in Rocan that I need to save.”

  “Are they like you?” Liza asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hawk answered, a new fear taking hold. It was difficult to live with two sets of eyes, and his daughters would be especially vulnerable to asylum. “But that bed you saw—Geneculture—that’s in their future if I don’t find the medicine I’m looking for.”

  “Fine. Go back to your stupid slave masters. I’ll just disappear and let you two find your own way out,” she groused, fading into her blue, spirit form.

  “Liza,” Kerris cried, throwing his body on top of hers, but landing on her empty mattress. “Liza, come back! Don’t leave me!”

  “Don’t leave you. Don’t leave you,” she mocked, appearing beside him, her skin glowing and rejuvenated. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “I don’t want to be a spirit, Liza,” Kerris stammered. “That’s not what we are!”

  “And I don’t want to be human,” she replied. “If you saw what I saw in that realm, you wouldn’t hesitate.”

  “I’m blind in that realm. I always have been,” Kerris said.

  Liza gave Hawk a look. “You have eyes. Can I see how they work?”

  “What do you mean?” Hawk asked, sidling toward the bed, hand reaching for the pistol.

  “I told you; I’m a healer,” she said, taking the pistol from him. “I see how the body is supposed to work, and I invite it to happen. I’ll see how your eyes work and invite it to happen in my brother. He won’t be blind anymore.”

  “Liza, that’s a bad idea,” Kerris begged. “You can’t even read a memory without stirring up one worse.”

  “Maybe I could do something good. He’s hated these eyes since he learned that he had them,” Liza replied. Her hands turned into blue talons and they scratched at Hawk’s face. “I could blind them.”

  “Liza, you’re hurting me,” Hawk whimpered, seeing red.

  “Just another few seconds, and this will all be over,” she muttered, her fingers piercing deeper.

  “Liza!” Kerris protested.

  Hawk felt intense pain, but a moment later, he was alone in the house. His vision went red with blood, but he ran into the street. The droids still guarded the front gate.

  “Tray. Oriana. Somebody!” he cried, activating his Virp. “Tray, they’re hurting me.”

  “Hawk!” Sky responded.

  Hawk fell to his knees, tipping forward, so the blood would drain away from his eyes and mouth. “Bébé?”

  “I’ll find a way in. I’m coming for you,” Sky said.

  “Is it really you?” he whispered, rolling onto his side. “Stay away. She’ll take your magic. She’ll tear you apart. Stay away!”

  32

  Danny sat on the ledge of the middeck hatch, his feet dangling over a twenty-foot drop. The air was muggy and the sun beat down on his skin. The ‘sled wafted into view, drifting side to side like a feather on the breeze. After so many years thinking the vessel he’d designed would never fly, the sight of it in the air astounded him, but after hearing Tray’s story, it couldn’t lift his spirits.

  The landing kicked up a cloud of leaves, and Danny’s eyes welled with tears of anticipation. The Bobsled’s cover slid back, revealing Sky. Her skin was smooth and clean of the Nelka paint, her blond curls perfectly formed. She looked peaceful, like an angel, glowing despite the overcast weather blocking the rising sun. Danny watched her emerge gracefully from the ‘sled.

  “It’s about time!” Tray snapped, stalking down the open ramp to the cargo bay. “We almost took off without you.”

  “I brought food,” Sky said, giving him a wave and a charming smile. “Mostly berries. For Amanda. And I brought her an Occ. A Nelka version. Where is she?”

  “Locked in a padded room,” Tray said importantly.

  “I hate prisoners,” Sky recited.

  “How do you feel about unprovoked attacks?” Tray retorted. “I didn’t shoot her and break her arm.”

  Danny’s heart twisted with guilt. He kicked at the air, not wanting to go down and join the conversation, but at the same time knowing he had to if he ever wanted to leave. Swinging sideways, he searched the grips that would allow him to climb from the hatch down to the wing, but some of them had been smoothed over with avalan.

  “Are the Nelka not coming?” Saskia asked, coming down the bay ramp, stunner at her side.

  “They wanted me to return first,” Sky said, noticing Danny sliding toward the wing, and giving him a wink. She put a hand on Danny’s legs to steady him as he lowered himself to the ground. For a moment, she looked at him penitently, silently asking permission to come home. Not caring for words, Danny embraced her. He felt her breath quicken as she hugged him back, and waves of relief washed through him.

  “Hey,” she whispered, touching the bruise on his face. “Did Amanda give you that?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Honor has some medicine that might help her in the short term,” Sky said. “It would get her out of that room.”

  “We have to get her to Quin,” Danny choked.

  “Then let’s get Hawk and get out of here,” Sky said. “The Nelka can have their wagons here in minutes. I just have to signal them that you’re on board.”

  “They’re bringing wagons?” Tray balked.

  “Only the flying ones,” Sky assured, running her hands soothingly over Danny’s arms.
“They’re small, but well-traveled. When they take over Boone, they’re going to want to open trade with Quin.”

  “Avalan quarries all in these hills, large oil reserve,” Tray listed excitedly.

  “The city isn’t ours to give,” Danny said, taking a step back. It seemed like an awful large venture to tack onto a rescue. “I talked to Kerris. He’s a sweet boy. Lonely. Scared. I don’t care that he was bred in a petri dish; he’s not a weapon. He doesn’t deserve to die so the nomads can take a few droids.”

  “He and his sister are responsible for the death of every person in that city!” Sky argued. “82,000 people.”

  “They were babies. You have no proof that they’re involved,” Danny said, raking her touch off his arms. “And the Nelka have only hearsay. Stories that have turned into accusations. Are we going to kill them without at least confronting them with the truth?”

  “82,000 people!” Sky repeated.

  “I want to talk to Kerris before we allow these people to destroy his home. His history,” Danny said. “He warned the Nelka about her. That makes him an ally.”

  “For goodness sake, Danny. They knocked our ship off a cliff!” Tray interrupted. “I think we’re past talking.”

  “I intercepted a message from Hawk,” Sky said. “He was calling for you, Tray.”

  “Why would the message go to you?” Danny countered.

  “I’d guess because my Virp can still function through the Bobsled,” Sky said. “He said they’re hurting him.”

  Danny swore.

  “I don’t care what you and the Nelka decide to do to the city,” Sky said. “I have to find a way in. I have to get him out. They’re hurting him.”

  Whispering a prayer, Danny sat in the dirt and buried his face in his hands. “What did the Nelka have in mind?”

  Kerris’ face burned, as if the skin had been peeled off, leaving him exposed. He could feel his sister’s cool breath against his cheek. The fire faded and he opened his eyes. There was color everywhere, thick like smoke. He felt a breeze and enough of the color cleared for him to see the ethereal plane. It felt like he was looking through different colors of glass marbles all stacked together.