Honor Bound

by Rachel Caine

  “No stars that could function as, I don’t know, waypoints to someplace safer?” Beatriz asked. “If they could have a chance to fuel and heal a little to make the next leg of the journey . . .”

  “It’s a long way between stars out here,” Marko said somberly. “They won’t make it.”

  That was worrying. Nadim and Typhon were born sailors of the stars; Leviathan navigated space the way whales swam the oceans on Earth, though they were vastly larger creatures. They ate starlight and bathed in it to accelerate healing. Though we were currently orbiting a small star, Nadim’s energy levels were dangerously depleted. He was keeping me at a distance while he conserved his strength, but I still sensed his pain and his struggle to stay awake.

  “They can’t heal and travel at the same time,” I said. “I don’t know about Typhon, but Nadim doesn’t have too many reserves left.” C-X and Marko wore identical expressions that told me Typhon had even less.

  “Anything else we can shut down?” I asked. Bea shook her head, ponytail swinging. “Shit. What about playing something for him?”

  The Leviathan were singers. They sang to each other across the lonely, dark distances among the stars; they appreciated music of all kinds, and in some strange way it helped them build their strength. Maybe because it reminded them they weren’t alone. Same reason they liked having crews on board, life-forms they could sense and sometimes touch in deeper ways, as Nadim and Bea and I had done.

  “Sing?” Starcurrent perked up, tentacles undulating in what I assumed was excitement. “I sing!”

  “Me too,” Bea said, glancing past me. “Yusuf, what do you think?”

  Sure enough, Yusuf was in the doorway. Propped up, looking ill and miserable and still radiating that terrible loss.

  “No,” he said. “Music helps, but the Leviathan can’t recover on that alone.”

  “Should we make for the Sliver, then?” Marko asked.

  That earned a shrug from Yusuf. “It’s hard for me to care. For me, the worst has already come to pass.”

  Chao-Xing took exception to his attitude. “You still have your life. That’s more than a lot of Honors can say right now.”

  I saw a brief burst of anger in his dulled eyes. “I expect you’d tell me I’m lucky. Don’t. Not while your Typhon is still alive and drinking starlight.”

  Never thought I’d be the one to play peacemaker, but I wasn’t about to let Chao-Xing step on Yusuf. I had his back, even if he felt completely alone in the universe.

  Bea spoke before I could. “This isn’t helping. Since Typhon and Nadim need aid desperately, shouldn’t we ask what they want to do?”

  Nadim answered at once. “The Sliver is our only hope,” he said. “Though it is the most dangerous for all of you.”

  Chao-Xing’s eyes went black, and Typhon spoke through her. “We must go to the Sliver. It is a matter of survival.”

  Once her expression cleared, I could tell she wasn’t 100 percent on board with this plan, but since her Leviathan still had gaping holes bleeding starlight from the last fight, she probably got that it was a shit idea to contend with him. Not that Typhon usually allowed any arguments.

  Beatriz went over to Marko, frowning over his bad leg. They bickered a little, but eventually he agreed to go back to the medbay. Funny, I’d never noticed Bea’s tendency to mother people before, but come to think of it, she always took great care of me. You’d think I might have some of those feelings, since I was the one who’d dragged him off Typhon’s smoking deck and saved his ass, but nope; my job was done. I had too much other shit to worry about.

  “I guess we’re doing this,” I said to Nadim, but there was gentleness in my voice, and a question, and I mentally opened the doors wide to let him know he could get closer if he needed it. He responded carefully, holding back that constant grate of pain and giving me warmth and the sweetness of trust. We couldn’t go deep, not here and now, but surface contact was good enough to make me feel weak with relief. To any outside observer, I was still Zara Cole: hard-ass, but inside? Inside I let myself be something kinder with him.

  “Setting course, moderate speed,” Nadim said from the speakers. I have to slow down for Typhon, he added silently. That allowance for the Elder’s wounds was necessary. If we tried for too much boost right now, he’d bleed out trying to keep up. Chao-Xing was already edgy about not being with him, but Typhon was adamant that he couldn’t offer safe conditions to his human crew just yet. That was more consideration than I would’ve expected out of him.

  All Leviathan were massive, but Typhon was frightening. He was an armored war machine, scarred and cold from the moment I’d met him. Violence was his default. He kept his crew at a chilly distance and controlled them like puppets when needed; there was no partnership with him, not for humans. I’d gotten close once, slipped inside his defenses, and glimpsed the weary soldier on the battlements. That was Typhon. He’d left behind consideration, kindness, and love. For him, it was all about survival.

  Hey, I understood that.

  Now that we’d come to consensus, I retreated to my room. Nadim needed more from me than I felt comfortable providing in public. A deeper bond could assuage some of his pain, but I wanted a door between me and relative strangers before I let my guard down like that. I set my door to NO VISITORS and then sat down, flattening bare hands and feet against Nadim. His sweet green warmth flooded me, laced with red-and-orange pain.

  The colors of discomfort glowed in my head, and I could feel his various injuries; I hummed—however badly—to help make them less. Nadim gentled like a sigh, settling into the speed that would carry us to the Sliver. Eventually. I sank into Nadim, and he sank into me, and we slowly became something new. Zadim, we privately called ourselves. We dwelled together in that quiet place, drifting together. Waves of peace and happiness, bright and nourishing as sunlight.

  “Has Typhon told you any more about the Phage?” I asked Nadim later. I did it out loud, so he could choose to edit his response if needed.

  No matter how close we’d become, we still required personal space. It was more than just being polite. There would be things he needed to keep to himself, and stuff I needed privacy for too. This intimacy was frightening in its intensity, dangerous too. Tricky, when it came down to sharing minds and emotions. I might screw it up, but I’d do my best to keep it to small mistakes. This meant too much to me.

  I belonged here, with Nadim. And with Beatriz.

  I got chills realizing that I could have lived my life on Earth only half-aware of who I was supposed to be. Before, I would have said I wasn’t Honors material, but now I understood that if the Leviathan needed you, then you fit. Period. There was no “Honors type.” Maybe there never had been.

  Of course, we were well beyond the formal boundaries of the Honors program, where I wasn’t supposed to know about the Phage, and humanity wasn’t permitted to interact with other intelligent life beyond the Leviathan; we’d veered from the path plotted for us on the baby steps of the Tour. We’d started out playing explorer, and now . . . now we were at war.

  “Typhon has promised to transfer full information once we’re out of danger,” Nadim said.

  “Why not now?”

  “The pain doesn’t let him focus.”

  “Okay, but we need some intel before we reach the Sliver, then. What do you know about the place?”

  A series of images cascaded through my mind, too fast for me to process. When they receded, I retained a glimmer of what he’d shown me. I had the impression of grungy, pitted metal and garish lights, as if someone had transplanted a run-down Las Vegas to deep space and flooded the place with crims from the Zone.

  “You’re even more excited now,” Nadim said, and his tone clearly conveyed a sigh. “That was meant as a warning.”

  “Yeah, not sorry. But I do understand the dangers.”

  Danger is where I live. That sounded badass in my head, but it wasn’t just a slogan. I’d survived lots of difficult years in the Zone.


  “Good.”

  “How long until we get there?” I asked.

  “Three days at our current speed.”

  Even if the Sliver had never seen a human, they’d probably let us do business; Earth natives seemed to be the only ones who had an adjustment period for adapting. The ones I’d met so far found humans as dull as dirt.

  Haggling was an art where I came from, and I had been surviving around fringe types in the Zone forever. People like Conde, the fence I worked with so often—that thought broke abruptly, leaving me with a smoking hole of a memory. Shit. Things were messed up out here, but there was nothing good waiting for me back on Earth either. Conde was dead. I’d left Derry McKinnon—a drug-addicted boyfriend who’d sold me out—and gotten on the wrong side of a major drug kingpin, Torian Deluca. I had to make this situation work for me, because running home wasn’t an option.

  Not to mention that leaving Nadim would probably feel worse than dying.

  “Zara?”

  Nadim couldn’t read my thoughts, but he sensed my shifting mood. “Just thinking about some long odds. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I do worry about you,” Nadim said. I knew he did. That spread through me like a ghost of an embrace. “You’re very tired, you know.”

  “Thanks, I’m aware.” With a weary groan, I took out the silk scarf that protected my curls—I was getting real fond of my grow-out—and wrapped my head. Then I flopped backward and hauled the blanket down from the bunk and spread it over me. The grav felt like it was twice as heavy as it ought to be. “Don’t wake me unless things go sideways.”

  “I won’t.” His voice dropped to a whisper through the speakers. “Sweet dreams, Zara.”

  I brushed my fingers across the soft skin of the wall, and felt colors trailing after. Nadim’s answering touch. It soothed something in me, something wild, and then I was gone.

  I must have been dead tired because I was out for eighteen hours. At least that was what Nadim told me when I roused at last. Time for a shower. Since we had two whole days before our arrival at the Sliver, I did it up right, finger combing my hair after I wet it. Out in the Zone, I kept my hair short, almost skull cut, because I couldn’t care for it in those rough conditions. Now, I had co-wash and luxe conditioners in stock from Earth, and it was nice to feel the springy weight of clean hair. I felt flash, and most of all, I felt free.

  Suddenly, I had an unsettling realization that my Earth products wouldn’t last. I’d stocked enough for the year of the Tour, but what about when that was gone? It wasn’t likely we’d be swinging by home for a quick shopping trip. I didn’t even know if other races out here had hair, much less product.

  Guessed I’d be shopping for more than just weapons at the Sliver.

  I was thinking about shopping because it was better than worrying about war, but we needed to gear up for that too: Weapons. Armor. Shields. We had to acquire all of that for Nadim, and fast. Hard not to be mad at the Elder Leviathan, who had tapped us for their war games without explaining the stakes. I mean, you wouldn’t sit down at a poker game without knowing the buy-in.

  I was sure that if I checked the old first-contact records, they’d show the Leviathan had never lied to us; that wasn’t their style. No, they’d just told us half-truths, and dazzled us with vaccines to cure our rampaging diseases and biotech to stabilize our wildly imbalanced climate. They’d saved billions of human lives over the last hundred years, and maybe more importantly, they’d given humanity something it had lost in those desperate years . . .

  Hope.

  But it was all built on a cracked foundation.

  Nadim probably felt my surge of bitterness because a surge of warmth trickled in, the equivalent of him asking if I was okay.

  “I’m up,” I said.

  Not quite the answer he wanted. A deeper touch, and he knew why I was pissed. “I’m sorry. The Elders didn’t tell us, either.”

  Younger Leviathan weren’t informed about the Phage, or the dangers. It was the reason for the Tour, for the safe routes they were kept to during their training. Like us, they were learning.

  Graduating from Tour to Journey meant putting on armor and taking up the battle. Unfair? Sure. The transition must have been tough for most of the young, innocent Leviathan who saw the universe as their playground . . . and found it was a jungle, and they were the prey.

  That was the difference between me and Nadim. I’d always known there were monsters.

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better, but thanks for trying,” I told him, and patted the skin of the wall. No starbursts of color this time.

  After dressing quickly, I headed out to see how everyone else was coping. I found Marko playing cards with Beatriz and Yusuf at the kitchen table. I poured whatever was in the pot—luckily, it turned out to be coffee—and took a seat.

  “What’s the game?” I asked.

  “Pai gow poker,” Marko said. “Chao-Xing taught me. Deal you in?”

  I knew pai gow from the Zone. Normally, they played it with Mahjong tiles, or dominos, but gamblers were flexible; they could play with pebbles if necessary. I wasn’t surprised to learn there was a card version. “Hell no,” I said. “I know a wolf when I see one.”

  Marko raised his brows without cracking a smile; he looked drawn and tired, just . . . not himself. We probably all seemed off our game. Even me.

  “Speaking of Chao-Xing, where is she?”

  “Combat sim,” Yusuf said. He looked even worse than before, if that was possible; there was an unhealthy shine to his skin, and I doubted he could hold anything heavier than his cards. But he was here, being social, and that was better than grieving alone.

  “Starcurrent?” I asked.

  “No idea.” Marko shrugged and played a card.

  I’d find out from Nadim in a minute. But first . . . “Any Phage sightings?”

  Bea nodded, looking grim. “There’s something you need to see.” She put her cards down and stood, and I followed her through to the control center, where she brought up a holo screen with images queued for playback. Yusuf and Marko, I noticed, had trailed along, though Yusuf quickly took a seat. Bea spun the playback and showed me what she was worried about.

  I didn’t see it at first. Looked like another Leviathan, very long range. I punched in on it with magnification, and that was when I started seeing the damage.

  The rot.

  This Leviathan was still clumsily swimming through space, but its solar sails were folded, and the sleek, silvery body had blackened sores on the skin that pulsed and heaved. It made me break into a cold sweat to look at it: a living dead thing, colonized by a deadly parasite that was piloting it in search of more prey.

  If it was still alive, it was dying in agony.

  If it was dead, the Phage knew how to puppeteer the corpse.

  Both possibilities were chilling.

  “Did it see us?” I asked.

  “Can’t tell,” Bea said. “But it couldn’t possibly catch us even if it did. We’re doing better time.”

  For now, I thought. “Can the Phage talk to each other across distances? Coordinate attacks?” I asked, and there was silence. I turned and looked at Marko and Yusuf. “Anybody?”

  Yusuf finally said, “I don’t know. Individually they don’t seem very intelligent. But as a swarm . . .”

  “Great. Just great.” I raised my head. “Nadim, please tell Typhon that sooner would be better on that intel he’s hoarding, okay?”

  “Okay, Zara,” he said. “But I don’t think he will respond just now. He’s sleeping.”

  That quickened my heartbeat. “What do you mean, sleeping?” Because my only experience with Leviathan sleep was the dark sleep that Nadim had entered—a coma state, where he’d drifted, powered down and helpless. It was a kind of chrysalis, and he’d come out of it stronger, but the idea of Typhon powering down just when we needed to be on our guard—

  “Not dark sleep,” Nadim immediately qualified. “He is . . . dozing, I suppos
e you would call it. It is helpful for his healing. In a few hours, he will wake, and I can ask him for the information.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t just ask. Tell him we need it.”

  He didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue, either. I re-ran the playback and watched it again. My guts churned, and I regretted the coffee I’d downed, but I made myself view it again. Then again. I swore. “This is nuts. Do the Phage eat Leviathan? Do they prey on other kinds of ships too?”

  Though I wasn’t expecting much info at this stage, Yusuf said, “I’ve heard they can overtake a mechanical starship, but they don’t feed on it. They crack it open and feed on the crew.”

  “So the Leviathan are shelter, transport, and a food source to them all at the same time.” A cold shudder worked through me. “Preferred targets.”

  “They will hunt my kin to extinction,” Nadim said softly.

  If they hadn’t already.

  “Nadim, is there any immediate danger you can sense from this . . . thing?”

  “No,” he said softly. And then, a moment later, even more quietly, “I don’t know who it is. There is no song inside anymore. Just . . . noise.”

  The noise of insects, burrowing, breeding, eating. I shuddered again. Maybe—hopefully—that Leviathan was dead.

  We can’t let it happen here. Not to Nadim. Not even to Typhon.

  FROM THE SUNG HISTORY OF THE ABYIN DOMMAS

  Comes now the day of pain and silence

  Lost we have the greatest number of Dark Travelers

  And their bound pilots and starsingers

  Loss comes not from sickness

  Or the dry burst of a dying star

  But from a thing between the light

  A thing of no reason

  Only cruel hunger.

  Beware now the shine of armor

  The hiss of unmaking

  The cut of edges

  And ravaging mouths.

  Many bodies, many teeth

  One purpose

  Eat, and eat again