by Carysa Locke
Muttering to himself, Gideon did as Casimir directed. The holoview disappeared and an astrogation chart took its place.
“These are the routes we can take,” Gideon said. Five different jumps points were highlighted in different colors.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cas said, waving a hand. “Pick one. We’ll keep trying until we find the next place where the jewel’s light shines brighter.”
All of the highlights disappeared but one.
“Course set,” Gideon said.
“Drop the shield. Jump as soon as the drive crystal allows.” Hopefully that would only take minutes, and with the stealth flaps in place no one was likely to notice them.
“What do you mean there’s another ship?” Cannon asked. “Where?”
Treon waved a hand vaguely toward the destroyer. “Off their starboard side. It’s smaller than the destroyer, but still larger enough to be a threat. A cutter or a corvette.”
Declan swore. “If we couldn’t stand against that destroyer, we definitely can’t handle two ships.” He looked at Treon. “Can you keep them from noticing us?”
“I—” Treon frowned.
“What is it?” Mercy asked.
His brow furrowed in concentration. “I—cannot. There’s something…odd.”
“About the ship?” Mercy’s heartbeat kicked hard. “Could they be Talented? Is it the same crew who took Sebastian? Can you feel him?”
But his next words plummeted her into disappointment. “No. They aren’t Talented. But something…” His expression turned to one of strain. “There is someone very odd on that ship. I can’t touch his mind. I can barely get any kind of read on him at all.”
A second later Treon staggered. Reaper caught his arm, steadying him. Treon waved him off.
“Thank you, I’m fine. They’ve jumped out. They’re gone.” He cleared his throat. “The destroyer is still unaware of our presence.” He frowned again. “And they never noticed the other ship. They had stealth flaps deployed, and some kind of shield. I picked up a couple of things from the other crew members. They’re on some kind of mission. Something about a jewel?” He shook his head.
Mercy stared at the holoscreen. “Did that strike anyone else as odd?”
“Very,” Cannon said. “Then again, a lot of what we’ve encountered has been out of the ordinary, including them.” He waved a hand toward the destroyer. “It seems to be the order of the day.”
“I suppose.”
“Looks like something is happening over there,” Titus called over his shoulder. “Their drive is spooling up.”
“Yes,” Treon confirmed. “They are getting ready to jump.”
A moment later, the massive ship disappeared, and everyone drew a breath in relief. Treon gave them a wan smile.
“I think I’ll retire to my quarters. If another destroyer pops in before we can jump way from this lovely vacation spot, well, I’ll probably feel the number of minds before you can call me.” He flicked his fingers in a mocking salute and left.
Either their beacon worked, or their luck held. No other ships jumped in, and their drive finally spooled up.
Thank the Mother. Everyone relaxed a bit once they’d left the system behind, and their next jump proved uneventful.
Reaper tugged on Mercy’s arm. I think we have time, and you haven’t trained yet today.
She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less. “Do I have to?”
Every jump gets us closer to our goal. Do you want to be prepared?
She rolled her eyes. Of course.
It was a rhetorical question.
Chapter Eight
For the most part, Sebastian's kidnappers left him alone. His cell was a tiny crew compartment, with the door locked from the outside so he couldn't leave.
It would be child's play to get out, of course, if he could access his Talent. But he remained unable to do so, the lack a yawning emptiness inside of him that seemed to get larger with every passing hour.
To distract himself, he cataloged everything in the room. It took depressingly little time. A bunk, a sonic shower, a disposal unit for waste, a sink, and a closet so small it might fit one full change of clothes. It was empty.
There was no kitchen unit, but he had the sink for water and a ready supply of nutritional bars, every spacer's least favorite sustenance.
Lucky him. Well, he wouldn't starve, but now he had a good idea of why Octavia was so thin. You could live off the stuff, but it hardly qualified as food.
The room lacked any handy maintenance panels he could squeeze through to reach the bowels of the ship. There was not even a locking mechanism on this side of the door. It had clearly been altered to serve as a holding cell on a permanent basis, which begged the question: just how often did this group take people against their will?
I wonder how they found us? It was the persistent thought that wouldn't leave him alone.
Only a handful of people knew their plans and goal. Most of them were on the mission. Sometimes the galaxy seemed a small place, but with thousands of star systems and populated worlds, it was anything but. Space was vast. The chances of the Alpha queen's forces accidentally stumbling across them were next to impossible. Yet somehow, they'd tracked Heresy and knew Mercy was on it.
A disquieting thought occurred to him. Could the Alpha queen feel Mercy? Could queens feel one another? He'd have to ask her or Lilith the next time he spoke to them. If he got to speak to them again.
No. No, that was not a path of thinking he wanted to go down. He would see Mercy again. There were things he still wanted to say to her.
The best thing he could think of about his situation was also the worst: his captors wanted him alive. It meant he would survive, for now. It also meant they had some use for him, and there was nothing good he could think of coming from that. At best, they saw a use for his Talent. At worst, they meant to use him against Mercy, possibly as bait to capture her. Her loyalty to others was a fierce thing. It was one of the traits he loved best about her.
But it could also be a weakness, one he did not relish seeing used against her.
Reaper would never stand by and allow her to be taken. That was his one solace. If it meant protecting Mercy, Nikolos would abandon Sebastian to his fate in a heartbeat. And Sebastian would be glad of it.
With nothing else to do, he forced down a nutritional bar, drank some water, and slept. His best chance to escape was to be prepared, and that meant staying as physically capable as possible.
He fell asleep more easily than he might have imagined, slipping from wakefulness to dreams between one instant and the next.
It surprised him to dream of Lilith. A familiar breeze lifted his hair from his face, bringing with it the scent of summer and the wildflowers that grew in the hills beyond Lilith's house. He knew their scent from his first days with the pirates, when Lilith had taken him with her to Ardon and given him something he'd never had before: a home.
He'd visited it in the years since her death, seeing it in dreams, and in the mental landscape created by whatever piece of Lilith remained in Mercy’s bracelet. Her own proverbial bottle, with her cast as the genie.
“You always were too romantic for your own good."
He swung around, startled. "Lilith. Is that—is that really you?"
"And who else would I be?" she asked with a scowl.
"No. I just mean…is this a dream, or am I really talking to you?"
Her eyes narrowed, and she peered at him closely. "What have they done to you to addle that mind of yours so thoroughly?"
For some reason, shame filled him. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, like a boy caught doing something wrong. "My Talent is blocked," he muttered. "I shouldn't be able to see you." He cast a look around the room, taking in the white furniture, the open windows overlooking the tree-filled hills outside, and the framed holopics on the walls. "I shouldn't be here."
Lilith crossed to him. She reached a hand up to his forehead and brushed his h
air back, a look on her face he hadn't seen since he was a boy.
"And why shouldn't you? You are my son, Bastian, as much as any child I bore from my body. This will always be your home."
He closed his eyes, unprepared for the sudden sting of emotion. This was the Lilith he'd known first. The one who had pulled him out of hell and into her arms, and given him freedom and a place to call home. The woman he loved as fiercely as if she really was his mother. Over the years, she'd changed. Hardened. The softness in her touch, in her eyes when she looked at him, had turned cold. Always fierce and strong, she’d become cruel. She turned into a stranger in the years prior to her death, but some part of him had clung the memory of how she used to be and had never given up on her.
He took a deep breath and allowed himself this moment, just for a few seconds enjoying the touch of her hand to his face. Then he pulled away. They didn't have time to indulge in the past. He didn't know how long he had.
"I need you to get a message to Mercy," he said. "Or better yet, bring her here so I can talk to her."
A flash of something moved over Lilith’s face, an emotion he couldn't quite interpret. "I can't," she said.
"Why? Wait, is this just a dream, after all?" Bitter disappointment filled him at the thought. He started to turn, to look for flaws in his vision, to find the nooks and crannies that would rip it all apart like a piece of synth-cloth hit with plasma.
“No.” Lilith looked troubled. “I’m not sure how you're here, but you are. This is real.”
He wanted to believe her. “Hmm. Maybe my connection to you. You were my queen. Some part of you still is. I'll always be connected to you on some level, even if Mercy has claimed me as hers now.”
"Perhaps.” Lilith didn’t look convinced, but said no more.
“You're more deeply connected to Mercy than you are to me,” he said. “Why can't you bring her here?”
Lilith turned, pacing away from him.
“Lilith?”
Her head angled slightly towards him, but she remained facing away, her back to him.
"What's wrong?" A sudden certainty filled him as her shoulders tensed. Lilith didn't admit wrongdoing, and she rarely felt guilt. But that’s what he was seeing in her posture now. "What did you do?"
She waved a hand. "It was nothing. A little disagreement, that's all."
He crossed to her, forcing her to either turn away, or look at him. “Disagreement?” he asked.
Lilith was many things, but she was no coward. She looked up, her green eyes snapping with temper. Ah, of course. That was her default when backed into a corner.
"It was Cannon's fault. He tried to manipulate us! To keep us from going after and rescuing you. How dare he! You are my son and Mercy's consort. If we want to rescue you, we will, and there is nothing that so-called King can do about it."
Oh no. Sebastian covered his face with a hand. “I’m not Mercy’s consort. I’m her friend. What did you do?”
“Just because she hasn’t chosen you yet—”
“Lilith.”
She looked everywhere but at him.
"Tell me. I don't know how much time we have."
She crossed her arms over her chest, striking an angry, defiant pose. "I may have taken control of Mercy. Only for a moment, and only to keep that insufferable empath from unduly influencing her."
He could just imagine Mercy's response to that. "And?" he prompted.
"And…she kicked me out. I don't even know if she realizes what she's done, but she has me blocked." Lilith threw her hands into the air. "I've tried to reach her half a dozen times, but I can't. She's not listening to me."
Any trust between them was gone, destroyed in one moment of Lilith’s famous temper. Fuck. He took a deep breath in through his nose, and let it out slowly, counting to twenty so he wouldn’t say something they would both regret.
"She's stubborn. I'm sure she'll get over it, eventually."
Sebastian just gave Lilith a look. "Oh, really? Like you would?"
"That's different."
"How?"
“I’m me, and she’s—”
“Your granddaughter. Where exactly do you think she gets that stubborn streak from?”
Lilith huffed. “Just give her time. She's having a snit, but she'll get over it and realize how much she needs me, now more than ever.”
“You better hope she does," Sebastian said. "For my sake.”
“She will.”
“Listen, assuming you talk to her again, tell her I'm on a ship, an Ivaldi Dragonfly corvette. There's a unit of the Alpha Queen's people on board. Two killers, a ghost walker, an unknown, and a...well I don't know what she is, but she was able to block my Talent. It's Thirteen, the same Thirteen who was on Nemesis, the woman Treon's been looking for.” He described each of them in as much detail as he could. “And Octavia's here, too. That's how they took me. I don't know where we're headed, but I think they're planning on using me as bait to lure in Mercy. Tell her not to do it. Under no circumstances is she to come for me.”
Lilith stared at him like he was crazy. “Of course she's going to come for you! On that point we were united. We are not leaving you, Bastian.”
“Tell her.”
“I will not.”
Sometimes, no matter how much he loved Lilith, he just wanted to shake some reason into her. He closed his eyes and asked for patience. She was still looking at him defiantly when he opened them again. “Please, mother. Do this for me.” He said the words softly.
Lilith stared at him for a long moment, her green eyes burning with anger. He'd lost her. That was it, he'd tried his best, but sometimes Lilith just couldn't be reasoned with. Defeated, he turned away.
“Fine.”
He swung back, but she was looking away from him, her head lifted in an arrogant tilt, her eyes on one of the holopics on her walls. It was one of the two of them together, Lilith in her pirate regalia, Sebastian a boy standing beside her, too thin with hollow cheeks and big, dark eyes, his hair a ragged mess pulled back from his face. Her hand was on his shoulder.
“I’ll tell her, but she won't listen. She loves you, you stupid boy. We don't abandon those we love.”
He could have said many things in that moment. Reminded her of the many times she had chosen her own whims over her family, or contradicted her assertion of what Mercy would do. But it was best, easiest, to say what was in his heart.
“Thank you, mother.”
She finally looked at him, her eyes still too bright, her posture stiff and untouchable. “You're welcome. Now go, before your captors realize that your sleep is not a natural one. And come back. Visit me again, my foolish son.”
I will," he promised.
Lilith waved a hand, and the room faded away. He woke to the click of the lock on his door. It slid open.
He sat up, waiting.
Koal walked in. He hooked his thumbs on his belt, eyeing Sebastian with an unreadable expression. He was young, but that meant nothing. Sebastian had seen children as young as eight or nine kill before. Koal was nearly an adult, and he served the most dangerous person in the galaxy.
"Get up. She wants to see you."
Sebastian found it interesting that out of everyone on the ship, they'd sent him. While being a ghost walker was a useful and powerful Talent, it wasn't in the same realm as the two Killers. If they'd viewed him as particularly dangerous, he was sure one of them would be escorting him.
Then again, he wasn't much of a threat, hobbled as he was.
He stood up, and Koal turned and walked out of the room. He didn't seem particularly worried about whether or not Sebastian intended to follow, nor did he seem worried that he would try to escape.
With good reason. There was no point right now. Not while they were traveling in space. An escape pod wouldn't get him very far. His only chance would be planetfall or docked at some station where he could disappear into a population. Preferably with his Talent intact and Octavia by his side. With those two things,
he was confident he could escape even a highly trained team. Without them, his chances plummeted quickly.
He followed Koal down the corridor. He wasn't restrained in any way, his hands free and not even a restrictive grip on his arm. In fact, Koal seemed to ignore his very existence.
Knowing the layout of the ship, Sebastian figured out where they were going very quickly. So he wasn't surprised when Koal turned toward the galley and stopped outside the hatch that led into it. He gestured for Sebastian to go in, so he did.
Thirteen was seated at the table, cutting an apple into slices with a knife. She indicated the seat across from her with a flick of her blade, and Sebastian sat. She continued carving up the apple, dividing it into quarters, removing the core, and dividing the pieces again. She placed half of them on a small plate and slid it across to him. She picked up a piece from the other half and took a bite, chewing in silence for a few moments.
He waited for her to tell him why he was here. While he did, he picked up a slice of apple and ate it, the fruit tart and crisp. There were cups hooked to the wall beside the table. He grabbed one and gestured to the water spout next to them, a question in the look he gave her. Thirteen nodded, so he filled himself a glass, and one for her as well, setting it in front of her. He took another slice of apple and chewed it slowly, savoring the fruit one bite at a time.
He took the time to study her. He’d seen her twice before. Once, just recently here on this ship, and once months ago on Nemesis, when she’d first been brought aboard. Then, she’d been a ragged creature, thin and malnourished, dirty, with lank hair and an unhealthy pallor to her skin. Now, her pale complexion glowed with health. Her dark hair, braided and pinned up, shone lustrous and nearly black beneath the ship’s lights. Her features were still angular, her frame too thin. She hadn’t gained back a healthy weight yet. Her bone structure was fine, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her lips were full, and her eyes were an unusual blue-violet color.
