Separated Starlight (NightPiercer Book 2)
Page 33
“Rainer.” She hadn’t heard her husband’s name mentioned once by the wolves who had come and gone. There had been reports from Tsu, Juan, and a dozen other section and deck officers.
If Rainer was her mate, she’d know if he was dead, right? So was he not dead? Something refused to believe he was dead. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t.
Bennett ran his hand over his face again. He slumped in the big chair, all arrogance and cockiness drained from him. “You’ve heard everyone who’s come in here the past eight hours.”
“And no one has mentioned his name. Someone has to know where he is.”
Bennett took pity on her. “There are three possibilities. He’s dead, he’s alive and in a crawlspace somewhere, or he’s in surgery.”
She glared at him. “Find. Out.”
“You know comms are limited right now, and Forrest is probably up to his elbows in intestines.”
“He’s the Lead Engineer. You probably should find out how dead Rainer is or isn’t. As much as I know you wish he was dead.”
“I don’t want Rainer dead,” Bennett said. “He’s too useful to be dead. I just want him to know how to wag his tail like a good dog.”
“You—” she started to snarl.
Graves interjected over the two of them. “We should probably know who’s in control down in Engineering.”
Bennett scowled, she barred her teeth, but when a messenger wolf trotted in twenty minutes later, Bennett said, “Where did you come from?”
“Telemetry, sir,” the wolf answered, looking a bit absurd totally naked on the bridge.
“Do you know where Commander Rainer is?” Bennett asked.
“No, sir.”
“Find out and report back.”
Lachesis swung back and forth in her chair. Her eyes were grainy and sandy globes crammed into sockets stuffed into her face. “Graves, have you spotted Ark?”
“We don’t even know where we are,” Bennett started to growl until Harkins gestured for him to shut up.
“You know I can’t see a damn thing,” Graves told her, not unkindly.
“I know. Just…hoped…maybe we’d headed in the same direction.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes against the unbearable, crushing grief. Her family, her friends, hell, the other thirty-two percent of civilization… they couldn’t be all that was left.
“Try not to think about it, Navigator.” Bennett’s tone was rough with his own emotion.
“I’m trying,” she croaked, not hating him quite so much in that moment.
Thirty minutes later, Bennett’s tablet flickered. “Amazing. Comms. Sort of. Rainer is alive, but he’s been injured and is in Medical. No details beyond he survived surgery and is in an iso-pod.”
Survived surgery? “What? What happened to him? Was he crawling around in the Core again?”
“Did you not hear me just say no details?”
“That’s my husband, you asshole.”
Bennett’s expression shifted to sharp menace. “You two are very attached to each other, aren’t you?”
Harkins said, intolerantly, “Are you saying they think they’re mates?”
“Maybe I am.”
Lachesis’ heart rate tripled, making her world dissolve a bit around the edges. “You want to have this fight now?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation at all,” Bennett said tersely.
“I guess because it didn’t end the way you wanted it to,” she retorted.
“Both of you knock it off,” Graves barked.
Harkins told Bennett, “You’ve been on duty too long.”
Bennett ran his hand over his face. “Forrest will ping you when Rainer’s ready to leave. Fourteen hours, give or take. He can’t be that badly injured.”
“They’re keeping him an iso-pod for fourteen hours and you don’t think he’s injured?” her voice cracked.
Bennett dropped his hand, weary expression sharpening once more. “I think he’s alive, and you need to fly the ship so he stays that way.”
A bedraggled Keenan marched onto the bridge. Her uniform, unlike theirs, looked fresh, even if she looked like she’d been wrung out. “I’m taking over, Commander.”
Bennett barely moved. “You look like shit.”
“Then let’s not discuss what you look like. Or smell like. Get out of that chair.” The Crèche Commander shoved Bennett hard enough the First Officer staggered out of the big chair and fell onto the floor.
“Any word from Tsu?” Bennett asked as he picked himself up.
Keenan sat down and crossed one leg over the other. “Passed out asleep in some corner of Engineering, last I heard. Rainer lost an eyeball or such, and no, Lake, you are not allowed into Medical until Forrest summons you.”
“Casualties?” Bennett asked. “I’m suspicious we haven’t gotten any tallies.”
“Haven’t gotten any either, which I, as Crèche Commander, am taking as a very bad sign.”
Every inch of Lachesis’ skin prickled with icy cold. “How much genetic material was lost?”
Keenan puffed her cheeks. “Ask me later, I’m tired, and lost genetic material is the least of our problems without warm bodies to incubate and provide for it. Both of you get lost. Unless the ship can’t fly itself for a few hours.”
Lachesis shook her head, then regretted it as a wave of exhausted dizziness staggered her.
“The lift to the officer deck works. Mostly,” Keenan added. “And the deck has power and life support. I checked on the families, they’re fine, just a few bumps and bruises. Will probably look like Security tossed your rooms, so look out for sharp debris. Everyone get out of here and find a replacement. This is why we make sure there’s redundancy and contingencies. Let’s use them.”
“Well,” Lachesis said, staring down at Rainer, who now sported a patch over his left eye. “You are a sight.”
He sighed.
She sighed too.
“So,” Rainer started to move, “I suppose this means they’re—”
She pushed him back down onto his bed. He still had needles in his arm. “Are you dumb?”
“No, I’m fine.”
This was not fine. The details on how he’d gotten himself chewed up were a bit vague. Something about fire and shrapnel from a panel blowing out or such, and he’d taken himself to Medical after Juan had pointed out he only had one eye and that’s why his depth perception had gone to shit. She hadn’t had enough brain power left to pay attention beyond he’s very much alive and we’re done doctoring him, please come get him out of our iso-pod before he chews his way free.
Shrapnel had sliced his left eye into useless goo not worth repairing, he’d needed some stitches and nerve and skin grafts to his upper arm (again), had a ton of debris fished out of his flesh, and he’d bled a lot. He was also bruised and a bit lumpy in places. Medical didn’t have him in anything except a thin strip of cloth to preserve modesty Rainer didn’t care much about, and certainly Medical had seen every single part of Rainer there was to see.
“This is nothing compared to the first time I was in here,” Rainer said.
“Are you talking about when they replaced half your body, or when you punched your way into my pod?”
“Yes.”
The globe was a perfect clone, but the sophisticated optic nerve connections would have to regrow, and it’d take his brain time to learn the quirks of the new wiring, then coordinate it all with the other eye. It was easier for the brain to learn to use two new globes, but a double globe replacement when one globe was fully functional was a waste. Rainer’s body would heal within a week or two, but his vision would be abnormal for months.
Rainer wouldn’t suffer AGRS like she had—he’d been carefully tended to. Artificial gravity restraints, proper hydration, physical therapy while he’d been conked out.
But that was in the past, and she was grateful that they were taking good care of him. “They’ll be along. They’re sort of done with you.”
; “How are you?” he asked, his fingers reaching for her hand. His voice was hoarse from being intubated.
“Still here.” There was nothing else to say beyond that. How could she be? How should she be? How could any of them be?
Would they even be here in another hour, day, week, month?
His one remaining eye clouded, and his scent turned to something she didn’t care to name. “You look and smell like you’ve walked through hell.”
“I think we all have.” He should have seen her before she’d had a shower and slept a few hours. Water supplies were rationed even in the officer quarters, and lukewarm for reasons she didn’t want to contemplate, but she still could shower. The end of civilization lowered expectations.
“Tell me about the ship while we wait. I know Simone and Jess made it out alive. Tell me about the ship.”
She picked a strip of adhesive clinging to the skin by his right eye. She flicked it away, and caressed his skin softly, before she found a simple answer she could bear to choke out. “Flying.”
“Don’t bullshit me. I know it’s bad.”
She shook her head. “There’s no formal report yet.”
“Are we still under Condition Black?”
She nodded, throat too dry and thick to name the evil. She’d been naming evils and delivering bad news for hours.
Rainer looked at the ceiling, flexing his fingers into fists, releasing, flexing. “We can’t fall into the denial trap Ersu fell into. We’ve got to see this for what it is.”
“You can’t see much of anything right now,” she said, trying to joke around the sick feeling in her gut. The ship was badly damaged, and not everyone was accounted for. They were still finding people trapped in bunks, quarters, closets, collapsed decks, rooms. Some people had radiation sickness, but the exterior and interior sensors were so mangled nobody knew exactly how much radiation they were getting. There were countless injuries. She couldn’t be sure exactly where they were going, how fast they were getting there, if they’d hit anything along the way. Nobody knew how much damage the Biomes had taken, or if the long term food storage had been flooded or irradiated or incinerated.
But she didn’t tell him any of that, because Rainer would start ripping needles out of his arm and someone could probably sanitize and reuse those. Instead, she stroked his forearm with her fingertips.
He asked, “Ark?”
A wave of anguish from the dark place in the corner of her soul. “We don’t know. I can’t talk about it. I can’t… if this is all that’s left.”
Rainer twisted his wrist so his fingers grazed hers.
A few teardrops fell on his wrist. She managed to get out, “It might be awhile before they actually remember to come unharness you. Can I wait with you?”
“You know you may.”
“Asshole.”
“I’m sure that’s been prodded a few times since all this has begun, yes.”
“You probably liked it.” Teasing him made all of this sort of bearable and even more painful at the same time.
“I might have. Jealous?”
She couldn’t shift, so she hopped up onto the sliver of bed, and squirmed next to him, tucking her ass and spine along his side. Tears dripped out of her eyes. She did not sob.
He said, softly, “We’re going to survive, my love. I swear it to you. I will set paws on a planet yet, and I will set you into its sky.”
Book 3: Between Dark Places
Only monsters survive the abyss.
Lachesis has no time for the guilt and doubt that plague her nightmares. Her ship is shattered, her crew is broken, and Rainer is increasingly unstable… and he’s pulling her into madness with him.
If Rainer has to rebuild NightPiercer from bones and skin, he’ll skin the crew, starting with Bennett. LightBearer’s destruction unlocked horrifying nightmares that consume his mind, and a deep, primal drive he can’t control.
If civilization is to survive, Lachesis will have to face her deepest fears, Rainer’s nightmares, and the horrific reality that she and Rainer may be civilization’s last hope for survival… or the instruments of its final destruction.
Gaia’s most brutal game has begun.
Available October 2020
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About the Author
Merry is an independent author living in the Napa Valley of California with her husband and two cats. She enjoys coffee, combat sports, casual games, and low budget disaster flicks.
www.merryravenell.com
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