by E L Strife
“You didn’t want to punch him?” She asked, dropping three steps at a time.
“Oh, I absolutely did. I just didn’t expect it to happen like that.”
Security teams surged out into the hallways.
Atana’s fists curled as she and Bennett dropped down to Level Six. “I can’t believe they were in Command.” She huffed. “Then again, I haven’t trusted them as a collective since Agutra first arrived two weeks ago.”
Bennett lifted his wristband. “Tanner, how many do we have logged on duty and in the quarters in the bombed levels?”
Over the speaker, they heard keys click with speed. “Three hundred fifty-two, sir.”
Bennett stopped. “Maybe you should go check on Azure’s team. This is different to them like Agutra was to most of us.”
Atana slid to a stop, thinking about it. “You go, I go, co-shepherd. They’re safe for now.”
He gave her a delayed nod.
She took a deep breath and looked at the floor. “Tanner, we have any other crews searching for the bombers?”
“Yes, ma’am. There’s a crew closing in on each one.”
“Good. We’re heading to the closest dunk tank on Level Seven,” she said.
“No, you’re not.” Hyras came over their bands, pushing Tanner’s avatar to the side of the screen and shrinking it.
Atana glanced at Bennett. We’re going. Now. Run.
They exited the stairwell, and, rounding it, headed deep into the guts of the station built into the island rock.
“Get your asses back here for evacuation!” Hyras barked.
“The shepherds down there are running out of air and time. There aren’t a lot of us who can help them,” Atana snapped as they sprinted through the halls. She swallowed the ache in her throat as she and Bennett thundered into the airlock. The door shut with agonizing slowness behind her. Come on.
Shepherds were dying every second they wasted. Ripping her jacket off, Atana threw it aside. She was tired of waiting. The pressure increased, pushing on her eardrums. She added her corset and boots to the pile, as Bennett watched.
“Right now?” he stammered.
She glared at him, wishing he would do the same. Tearing her mocha camisole over her head, she straightened her bra. “The five minutes you waste in there will be a number of lives we have no hope to save. Besides, we’ve already seen each other naked.”
“Good point.” Bennett promptly joined her in shedding his clothes. “You’re always putting others first.”
The doors to the dunk tank unsealed as she kicked off her pants. “Because I know what they’re feeling right now: fear, pain, the notion they will die alone in the dark, and no one will care or notice.”
He paused beside her as they waited for the entrance to open wide enough for them to slip through. The concern in his eyes wasn’t just for the shepherds drowning below.
“Once is all it takes to change you,” she muttered, squeezing past him and into the room.
Chapter 25
THE BUNK RUMBLED beneath Azure, sending a hot prickle through his brain. It’s a purge! Get up!
No purges on Home Station, he reminded himself. They don’t have sectors that open to their liquid void.
Exhausted, Azure shifted in the comfort of the unusually soft, cotton sheets. When his energy crashed, his body cooled, and he couldn’t be more grateful for such warmth.
“Sahara, what was that?” He hummed, reaching for her. His hands found only fabric. Azure’s eyes popped open. Sahara?
Scrambling out of bed, he flipped the lights on and checked the room. Kios was still asleep on his cot. Azure cracked the door and checked the hall, the intersection, the lunchroom beyond. He could smell her in the area. And Bennett.
Azure huffed. Oh, how he wanted to put his hands around Bennett’s neck and squeeze.
A sharp angle of light from their bedroom burst into the hall, exposing Kios rubbing his eyes. “Where’s miima?”
Picking the boy up, Azure did his best to soften his deep voice. “I’m sorry, I woke you. I’m going to go find her, okay?”
Kios rested his sleepy head on Azure’s shoulder. “I get to sleep with Ramura again?”
Feeling scattered, Azure thanked the stars for the boy’s suggestion. “That’s a good idea.”
Azure hated turning away from her scent trail, but he had to keep Kios safe. In the last breath of it, her scent had taken on an exceptionally spicy note which conveyed fear. It was so strong he could taste it on his tongue.
A few doors down, he pushed inside the group room. Ramura?
Imara sat up on her bunk in the background, brushing hair from her face. She was still in her BDUs.
“You just finished a maintenance shift,” Ramura said, edging toward the door. “Why are you back? What is wrong?”
“Sahara is missing.”
“Tsu; tsu. Ruaha shirrahs, Kios.” Ramura waved the boy to reach for her. Kios eagerly traded Azure’s side for hers and buried his face in her long hair. “Where’s Bennett? Maybe they are working?”
Azure grunted. “I hope they are. I do not want to have to kill him.”
Imara glowered at him as she approached. “This is their home, Azure. I have never known you to be this—tannasaht toward innocents. ”
He hissed at her through his teeth. “She is my mate. Not his.” He looked at Kios’ frightened face and instantly regretted his outburst.
“Is miima okay?” the boy asked, picking at his bottom lip.
Azure’s nostrils flared. “I will make sure of it.”
“Is this a purge?” Teek asked. He clutched his tail close, eyes wide and pinked with fear. “Are we going to die?”
Azure didn’t know what to say. Were they? He looked at the water beyond the auditorium windows, dark and life-sucking like the void of space. Growing uneasy about the safety of his kiatna in Home Station, he peered over Teek’s shoulder to the only other person he knew might keep them safe.
Lavrion sidled up next to Ramura, a rifle strapped to his back. “If anything happens, I will find them a safe place on Earth. I know of many.”
“Thank you.” Azure didn’t understand the reason for Teek’s disgusted look. “Unless you want to.”
“No, I have to fix fusion transformer for Atana,” Teek blurted.
Azure kissed Kios on the side of his head.
“Sim verons ahna, miipa,” Kios called after him as Ramura shut the door.
Sim verons ahna. Azure hustled out into the hall, following Atana’s spicy-sweet scent. The more he took in, the hotter his insides burned. He sniffed at the junction to their bunk hall. Up the stairs.
Saema Chamarel always told him not to blame others for what they did not understand. Bennett didn’t understand mating because, to these shepherds, it was forbidden.
Azure snorted haughtily. Probably doesn’t even know how it works.
The guilt of dumping Kios off in Ramura’s arms again formed a lump in his throat. I am his father now. I cannot keep doing this. But to Xahu’ré, the mate, on instinct, was priority. They could make more if the first children died. Except Sahara can’t. And Kios is special.
Entering Level Two, Azure scoured the screens around the auditorium and the staging area, lit up with flashing schematics.
“Azure!” Sergeant Tiisan, a concealed Xahu’ré of comparable size, jogged up to him. Shepherds poured out from the halls and stairwells, communicating on their wristbands and drawing weapons. With as often as Azure needed to check out tools, he and Tiisan had become good friends.
“What’s going on?” Azure asked, spinning out of the way as a security team charged by with shotguns in their hands.
The man took him firmly by the shoulders, blue eyes sharp and bright with concern. “Listen carefully. There are Linétens on base. You need to protect your team. Tell your doku what I’m telling you. The safest place right now is in their group rooms. Get everyone in there and spin the wheel on the wall to make it watertight.”
&n
bsp; “Wheel on the wall, yeah.” Azure nodded but felt like a fumbling mess.
“If water comes in, there are small breathing units in the panel beside the door. It’s only twenty minutes of air, but once the room fills with water, you can open the door and try to swim out.”
“In that?” Azure asked, disconnectedly glancing at the murky ocean beyond the windows. “None of my crews know how.”
Tiisan’s tone hardened. “If it happens, you will try.”
Azure didn’t know what else to do but nod.
“Someone will come for you.” Tiisan’s eyes darted aside. “If that someone has a tail instead of legs, it’s okay. She’s safe.”
“A tail?” Azure sputtered.
“Go to your people. I must hunt with the crews.” Tiisan pulled a shotgun off of his back and headed down the stairs.
Blinking in shock and confusion, Azure took one last glance at Command’s bloodied office and followed Tiisan’s descent. Pulling up his wristband, he selected all doku codes and sent out a mass message as directed. Approaching the group room, he slowed. Placing his hand on the door, he cracked it open. “It’s just me.”
“Come,” Lavrion’s voice shouted.
Pushing inside, Azure saw Lavrion lower his SI, and the blue-green igniter darken. Amianna sat with Ramura and Kios on her bunk, her flumes curled around them in a hug made of pink light. At the table in the back, Teek had a small, cylindrical transformer pulled apart. Lavrion stood alone by the door, Imara in the middle of the room with throwing knives in hand.
With everyone accounted for, Azure spun the wheel on the door. Steel groaned and clunked into place. A soft white light popped on above. He checked the box and found eight small breathers. He closed his eyes and calmed his heart the best he could.
“Azure?” A gentle hand slid around his arm. “Where is Sahara?”
He looked to find Imara’s worried eyes peering up at him. Drawing her close, he braced her head to his chest. “There are Linétens here. Tiisan and the others are searching for them. It looks like two levels of the station have been purged. Eight and Nine.”
Amianna gasped. “Four doku from Cutashk’s sector were staying down there!”
“I know.” Azure silently prayed they’d worked late. But he knew better than to assume the best.
“Sahara, what about her?” Imara asked again.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I came back to protect the rest of my family.”
“Why do you not help them?” Kios asked.
The boy’s question seared his heart. Azure tapped the screen above the wheel. It blinked on to a cross-section of Home Station, two levels in solid red. “Because I don’t know how to swim, and those doors are sealed. They are already with the starfish, Kios.”
Chapter 26
CRAMMING THEIR FEET into the fins, Bennett and Atana stood at the mouth of the dunk tank.
“There are a few shepherds sealed in their rooms still reporting heart rates. Linking map,” Tanner said through the ear-buds in their suits. “Skitter’s rescue team is already in the drink from tank Seven A.”
The schematic of beacons opened up on Bennett’s wristband. Scattered blue dots pulsed out like radar. He zipped up his front and clipped five extra packs of portable breathing canisters to his belt.
Atana stood beside him, black drysuit hugging her curves, tanks and weapons clinging to her body like silver leeches. She’d been swaying between her fins while they waited for the hatch to open. He couldn’t tell if she was warming up or nervous.
Bennett laid a gloved hand on her shoulder. “You good?”
She turned to look at him as the light ring around the opening to the sea switched to green. Blue light glazed her face inside her helmet. “I never liked the chute. Feels too much like a cage you can’t breathe in.” She glanced at her wristband. “Ready Tanner?”
“A-firm A and B,” Tanner replied. His face blinked in the corner of the search screens tracking each active wristband below them.
Bennett jumped first. Rings of LED lights in the chute pierced the inky depths. Bubbles poured out over his head from his released breaths. The soft rush of water above made him look. Atana followed his path with speed.
The empty pocket they’d entered under Home Station was unusually large. Only the ducts and pipes which had once fed Level Eight still snaked their way through the water.
“There’s nothing here,” Bennett called up to her.
Clicking on their flashlights, they searched further out into the sea. Conjuring their shields, Atana and Bennett lit up the destruction around them. Beside her steady blue beacon, his light fluctuated like a flare.
Still can’t quite control the energy yet, he admitted.
“Better than what we’ve got,” one of the other sergeants said over com, as their beams of light swept through the mangled trusses and crushed rooms. “Not sure how they managed it, but the two levels sheared off from the top structure and slid down the mountain about another fifty meters.”
“That damned Linéten metal,” Atana muttered, flurrying out ahead of Bennett and diving down the slope of the island.
Bennett tracked behind her, pushing aside debris. Twisted steel, viscera, and broken wristbands floated by, mixed with lunch trays, toothbrushes, and socks. He breathed a gasp that rushed around inside his mask. A pair of eyes blinked up at him from below. “Found one!”
“I think I did too,” Atana responded.
Bennett looked to see her swim into a misshapen room, its door hanging by a hinge. “Be careful, please,” he called after her.
Shimmying through the openings in the metal, Bennett climbed down into the ruins with the shepherd. In his golden light, he could see the man’s ankle pinned between the bedframe and the wall, his room crushed to half the size it should’ve been. The red LED status bar blinked on its last unit. The man was almost out of air.
Taking a canister from his belt, Bennett freed the old one from the man’s mouth and pressed the new one in, clicking the button on the side. A green LED bloomed in the darkness. The man nodded dramatically.
Bennett moved the bed aside. The shepherd groaned, releasing a host of bubbles from his breather and reached out to brace the break. Bennett hooked an arm around the man’s chest, and swam for the portal. Frayed wire and contorted metal clawed at their bodies. Bennett pushed on.
A long, dusky creature darted across their path.
“Atana, did you see that?” Bennett asked.
“No, what is it?” She pulled a shepherd out of their room thirty meters away, the body completely flaccid but bursts of bubbles released from their breather.
The movement ripped by Bennett’s location again. Tracking its trajectory, he cried out, “Atana, it’s coming for you!”
She looked in time to lean the two of them out of its path. “What is that?”
“I don’t know, but we don’t have time for this.” Bennett tugged his shepherd out of Home Station’s skeleton and, holding him close, swam hard for the dunk tank visible overhead.
The creature swam by them again and again as they ascended. Then it circled and stopped before them.
Light from the portal above silhouetted a woman’s torso, adorning her black hair in a white halo. Humanoid arms reached out.
Feeling the man’s lungs pick up their pace, Bennett drew the shepherd away from her. His shield expanded on instinct, surrounding the man.
Citrine circles reflected in feminine eyes. Touching the bubble, the woman jerked back, shaking her head.
Bennett couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. She was a creature from fairytales.
The woman gestured both hands to the two of them, then to her sternum and up to the light above. As the creature repeated the motions, Bennett let go of his constructs, reminding himself he and most of Earth were creatures from bedtime stories told to children. “I think she wants to help.”
“She?” one of the shepherds from Skitter’s team asked over the coms.
“I’m not hallucinating.” Leading with confidence even when he lacked it had always been important for mission success. It was trained into every Team Leader. After a calming breath, his shield dropped.
The woman swam closer, gently taking the shepherd into her arms. The man shivered. Bennett watched her swim them up to the portal and disappear in its light, her forked tail the last thing he saw. She returned empty-handed, her smile genuine and exposing multiple rows of spiny teeth.
Bennett directed her to Atana’s position. She bowed and jetted off.
“Breathers to all the ones you can find first. Then pull them out and wave her down!” Bennett called out to the crews. “She’s much faster than we are.”
Skitter’s team acknowledged.
With Tanner’s help, Bennett and Atana logged twenty-two survivors buried on the east side.
Most shepherds had become one with the sea. Bennett didn’t stop long enough to look at the dismembered parts he dodged and guided out of his way. He now understood why Atana distanced herself. Seeing the mass murder of brothers and sisters made it hard to focus on his task—the clash of anger and despair yanking his heart too many directions. Part of him wanted to cut down every Linéten by hand. The other wanted to drown with the shepherds he hadn’t saved in time so that he could beg forgiveness in the afterlife.
The water darkened around him, a cloud his light couldn’t penetrate. Carefully swimming through it, Bennett discovered a body in a fold of metal, it’s lower half missing, sheared off at an angle. Bennett reared back in fright. Her face was frozen in terrified agony: mouth open, eyes squeezed shut, arms braced before her.
Instinct demanded he back away, but he drifted there, unable to move. She wore an R3 patch; the woman was a Team Leader like him. He shuddered and felt despair creep its aching fingers into his muscles, his face, his eyes.
Arms collected him, carrying him out of the cloud. Atana’s eyes fell on his with sympathy when she braced his face mask with a hand.
He struggled for breath. This is my fault.
No. It is the Linétens’. She let go to point at the time on her wristband then swam off. “Follow me.”
