She dug her fingers into the armrests. She could tell by his expression he’d made up his mind. Without access to her own memory, she had no grounds for argument. Or maybe her memories would only confirm his explanation.
“I am not a spy,” she snapped, eyes burning with tears of frustration. “I don’t care why you were at the reservoir. I don’t care what happens to you or your ship, or what you believe about me. All I want is to go back home.”
In the space of a heartbeat he’d plucked her from the pilot’s chair and dumped her onto the console.
“Banshee!” she cried, wriggling away.
But he leaned in, caging her between his arms, his body, and the windshield. The end of his nose was no more than an inch from hers.
“Banshee and I understand each other better now,” he warned. “Don’t expect her to help you.”
Asha pressed her lips together, her heart racing.
The captain raised an eyebrow. “You need to care what I believe. In fact right now I’d say that’s your biggest concern.”
An angry sob burst from her throat. “You think so? How about the fact I might be going crazy? That every passing moment takes me farther away from my family than I’ve ever been? That I’m a passenger on a ship that’s more than half alive, and its captain keeps attacking me?”
The angry hue drained from Paxton’s face. He eased back from the console.
* * *
She righted herself, and he watched her struggle to rein in her emotions—to hold on to her dignity. He knew beyond a doubt she was afraid of him, but she refused to let it master her. The respect he felt for her ticked dangerously upward.
“It was never my desire to attack you,” he said. “I’m ashamed of it.”
Asha met his gaze, unblinking.
“That doesn’t surprise you?”
“Not what you’ve said. Only that you said it.”
Clever girl.
“Why can’t you control it?” she asked.
Pax stepped back and crossed his arms, studying her. She perched like a butterfly on the edge of the console—light and fragile, trembling softly. Light, yes. Fragile, no. He had a stinging ache in his side to remind him of that.
“One difference between humans and animals,” he said, “is humans have the desire and the ability to control their impulses. I’m part human, part animal. I have the desire but not always the ability.”
“But you’re … okay now.”
He nodded. “It’s triggered by a female’s reproductive cycle.” This was an oversimplification, but he wasn’t about to discuss the tuning with her. He didn’t have a handle on that yet himself. “Unfortunately receptivity is not a factor.”
“You mean it doesn’t matter if I don’t want to.”
“Not to my subconscious impulses.” She swallowed audibly, and shifted on her perch.
He added, “It does matter to me.”
Her shoulders dropped a fraction with the release of tension. “This is a result of your insect DNA?”
“Not directly. I think it’s specific to transgenic organisms.” More oversimplification. Most members of the youngest Manti generation were transgenic, chimeric, and hybrid. “Transgenic” was the commonly accepted shorthand.
“Even in the insect world there are courtships,” he continued. “My lack of control … I think it’s the result of human impulses and instincts being out of balance with the increased aggression and enhanced hormone receptivity introduced by mantis DNA.”
Her brow furrowed. “You sound like my father. He’s an archivist too, and a scholar. Did you go to school?”
“Of course.”
She flushed, and for reasons he could not have explained, it fired a tiny arrow into him.
“We have a school in Sanctuary,” she said. “But I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the ones you have.”
“I haven’t noticed any obvious deficiencies,” he said softly. “You understand me well enough.”
Her fear of him didn’t prevent her targeting him with a look of vexation. “I’m not saying I’m stupid.”
“No.” He fought the grin pulling at his lips. “Neither am I. I’ve studied beyond my formal education. Possibly in areas that would not have been … useful to you.”
Biology, physiology, psychology. Philosophy, sociology, political science. Hardly practical subjects for a species just trying to survive.
He watched her, curious whether she’d take offense. If he was honest, he was curious about everything she did, down to the way she kept crossing and uncrossing her ankles. The way she rubbed her lips together while she was thinking.
“Did you have something removed?” she asked suddenly, eyes grazing his midsection.
His amusement withered. His lower rib cage tingled, just as it always did when he tried to flex the appendages that had been surgically removed every year between birth and age seventeen, when finally they stopped growing back.
“Why?” she continued, taking his silence as confirmation.
“Asha,” he said, ignoring her question, “when we leave here, I’m taking you home with us, to Granada. For the time being, I have no choice but to consider you a potential threat to myself, my family, and our interests. You’ll be closely watched, and I’ll continue asking questions until we have answers.”
He watched the color drain from her face. Watched the questions flashing in her eyes. Waited to see which of them she’d ask.
“Who are you?”
She’d chosen the question that was easiest to answer. But doing so would ensure she’d never go home.
That was a foregone conclusion now, though. She’d interacted with his ship. Both he and Iris had let details slip that Asha’s confused brain might examine more closely once she was away from them—once her memory returned. She was an archivist, after all, who had specialized in his culture.
This decision has consequences. Iris had been right to say so. And his city was no place for someone like Asha.
* * *
“Who do you think I am?”
Asha had thought she knew who he was. The menace in the sky over Sanctuary. The ship that watched the borders, ensuring containment of the human survivors. She’d been warned since she was a child that the border was guarded, and anyone caught beyond it was taken back to Granada. The Manti capital was an ancient symbol of ruling conquerors near Spain’s southern coast. Warm, humid climate. Appropriately exotic setting. She could easily picture Iris standing before the oblong reflection pool of the Alhambra, framed by the arched portico.
As she studied the Manti captain, a name bubbled up from her internal database.
“One of your generals had the name Paxton—Emile Paxton, I think. Are you related to him?”
Paxton gave a slow nod. “I’m his son. He’s the amir now. Our highest ranking military and civil official.”
She stared at him, astonished. So that made him what? A prince?
“Why does an amir need to send his son to watch over the defenseless remains of his conquered enemies?”
Paxton hesitated, studying her. But then his focus shifted to the windshield behind her. He stood blinking at the landscape outside the ship. She slipped off the console and turned, following his gaze.
He touched the windshield, and an image of the countryside appeared on the console below, overlaid with a grid. He tapped a square labeled “C25.”
The grid was replaced with an enlarged section from the original image.
At first she saw a low rock ledge in a sea of scrubby grass, but on closer inspection the rock took the form of a camouflaged ship, identical to Banshee. It tipped at an odd angle—part of it seemed to have sunk into the ground.
“Bring Iris to the bridge, Banshee,” murmured Paxton.
“Friends of yours?” asked Asha.
Paxton frowned at the image, drumming his index finger on the console.
The cockpit entry panel slid open, and Iris joined them. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, Iris. SC-011, Nefertiti.”
The brother and sister shared a look of surprise.
“Can you get any readings? Is anyone on board?”
“I’m sorry, Captain. Nefertiti is unresponsive, and I can’t take an accurate life-form reading from this distance.”
“I don’t like this,” said Iris. “Let’s get out of here. We can report it when we get back.”
“What if the crew’s still on board?”
“It’s been weeks. If they’re still on board they’re dead.”
Paxton continued to study the enlarged image, and somehow Asha knew what he would say.
“Regardless, we need to recover that ship if we can. Engines online, Banshee.”
* * *
“What’s the ground like around that ship?” asked Iris as Banshee moved into position. “It looks soggy.”
“Yes, Iris. The raised area is solid, but the area around it is blanket bog.”
Pax knew by the stiffness in Iris’s tone she was not pleased about his decision. But he also knew she wouldn’t defy him.
“It looks like we might be able to squeeze in beside her. Can you confirm, Banshee?”
“There is room for both ships, Iris.”
“Okay. I’m only going to be in the way on this one. Take the landing, Banshee, slowly. And let us see the ground.”
The static image on the ship’s console switched to video of the landing target.
“No room for error,” murmured Pax. “Banshee, notify us if anything starts moving inside that ship.”
“Yes, Captain.”
He wondered about the fate of the missing crew. Had they managed to cross the bog? Were they awaiting rescue on some nearby patch of solid ground? Hard to imagine this forbidding landscape had aided their survival. There was a tumbledown cottage maybe a hundred meters away, and a crescent of dense, shrubby woods beyond that. They’d check both places once they’d secured the other ship.
Banshee set down gently next to the listing Nefertiti.
“Stay with Banshee,” Pax said to Iris, rising.
“No chance,” replied Iris, spinning around in the pilot’s chair. “No one’s going to sneak up on us here. The only potential for danger is inside that ship. I’m going with you.”
She was right, and he didn’t argue. “I suspect it’s empty, but we’ll see.”
He turned to Asha. She watched them closely, quiet and guarded. He could almost hear her thoughts—she was trying to decide whether this diversion presented any opportunity for her to escape.
“Banshee, keep Asha on the bridge. No interaction while we’re gone.”
“What if something is waiting for you in there?” Asha asked.
He frowned. “Then I suspect you’ll be pleased. Be careful what you wish for, Asha. If Banshee returns to Granada without us, you’ll have a lot to explain, and no one to protect you.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” was the terse reply.
He had underestimated her. Again.
“Let’s finish this, Pax,” said Iris.
* * *
Asha’s first thought—this is my chance—was immediately followed by a second: There’s no way in hell. She understood enough about bogs to know that even if she managed to get off the ship, she’d be going nowhere in a hurry. And what if she did escape the Manti? She was a very long way from home.
She watched from the cockpit window as her captors moved, slow and watchful, toward the other ship. Both carried firearms—small handguns with long, narrow barrels. She knew nothing about recent Manti technology—she’d learned more from observing and interacting with Banshee than she had in all her years at the Archive. Almost all the information she worked with was historical—data collected before the Bio Holocaust. She was left with plenty of time to expand her knowledge in other areas, and to help with her father’s research on geopolitics, a concept she didn’t pretend to fully grasp.
Nefertiti’s ramp was down, and the brother and sister ascended and disappeared. Asha couldn’t help being curious about what they’d find. It didn’t look like the ship had crash-landed, so presumably the crew was alive. Iris had said the ship disappeared weeks ago—unlikely the crew would have remained so long in such a barren spot.
“Banshee.” Asha jumped as Paxton’s voice sounded over the com. “Nefertiti is offline. Must have been a power surge. Release your umbilical and we’ll see if you can wake her.”
“What about the crew?” asked Asha.
“No sign of them.”
Paxton returned to Banshee, ducking under the nose to retrieve the released cable.
Something moved in Asha’s peripheral field, and she glanced up. At first her eyes could make no sense of what she was seeing. A section of bog beside Nefertiti was rising.
Earthquake crossed her mind, but she quickly dismissed the idea. Nothing had moved but that perfect rectangle of turf. When it had risen about a meter, it shifted to one side.
She gave a cry of surprise as a dozen men came pouring out of a hole that had been concealed underneath.
THE HONEYTRAP
Six grubby men launched at Paxton just as he spun around. They wrestled him to the ground, wrenching his gun away from him, and a blast fired over the bog.
Asha gasped, heart racing. Humans?
“Iris!” Paxton shouted. One of the men bashed the hilt of a knife against his head, and they shoved his face into the mud.
Asha jumped from her seat and sprinted for the corridor. The panel over the cockpit exit swiveled down, and she dove and wriggled under.
“Asha, please return to the bridge,” said the ship.
“Sorry, Banshee,” she muttered as she pounded down the boarding ramp, which was already closing. She scrambled over the edge and hit the ground hard, cradling her injured wrist against her chest.
“Freeze, love!” one of the newcomers yelled, raising a knife in the air at her.
She raised her hands. “Wait! I’m a prisoner on this ship!”
The threat in the man’s eyes yielded to interest. “Human?”
“Yes.”
He motioned her closer.
Her right knee protested as she got up and strode toward the speaker. Paxton’s eyes rolled to follow her.
Before she’d closed the distance between them, a pulse of energy struck the ground in front of her, creating a hollow-sounding impact and a sizable crater. She froze as soil rained down over her.
“Release my crew or I’ll be forced to fire on you,” Banshee threatened.
“Stand down, you beast,” the man shouted in contempt, “and we’ll consider not killing your crew!”
A shrill cry knifed through the air, and Iris burst out of Nefertiti, propelled along by four more of the newcomers.
“Watch those stabbers, lads!” cried one of them. “She’s got a wicked bite, too.” An oval of red beads marked the forearm of the woman who’d spoken.
“Hold your weapons on her!” shouted the man who’d spoken to Asha, as they struggled to control their livid captive. “Their ship is making threats.”
“What’s going on?” demanded Asha. “Who are you?”
The man winked at her. His blond hair was closely cropped. He had a trace of a beard and eyes that laughed.
“Humanity’s last stand, love. Out checking our honeytrap for flies.”
* * *
Pax’s cheek ground into the dirt as he wrenched his chin so he could see the rectangle of false ground that had sheltered his enemy. A frame made of wood and some kind of mesh, with blocks of turf fixed to it. The turf on the frame was dryer and lighter in color than the turf on the surrounding ground—it was subtle, but something he should have noticed.
How had the patrols missed these people? The Scarab detail was responsible for containing the known human survivors. Sanctuary was the largest group, and the only one that still possessed anything close to a pre
-holocaust level of technology. The rest of them were mudgrubbers like these. The British Isles had succumbed to the microbial onslaught faster than other regions due in part to the densely populated urban centers, but there were isolated rural areas in Wales and Scotland—and here in Ireland.
The Scarabs had documented—or in the early days, destroyed—all known pockets of survivors. This one had obviously escaped notice.
“How many of you are there?” Asha asked their leader—a broad-chested man with a deep voice and penetrating gaze.
“Questions all around, I’ll wager,” he replied, glancing at the low clouds. “Morning’s gone chill. Our base is not far from here. We can talk there.”
The man held out his hand to Asha. “Welcome to Connemara, love. I’m Beck.”
Her small hand disappeared in his. “Asha.”
“Yank, by the sound of it.” He shook his head grimly. “Long way from home.”
Beck approached Pax, and one of the men pinning him down jerked his head back by the hair. The leader stooped to look into his face.
“That female important to you?”
Pax’s jaw fell open—not the question he’d been expecting. “Listen, there’s still time for you to stay alive. Let us go now, and—”
“Don’t waste my time, bugman. Answer the fucking question.”
Pax grunted with pain as his hair was yanked again. “I don’t know her. We picked her up yesterday.”
Beck snorted. “Not that female. I mean the one that came out of somebody’s bloody nightmare.”
Pax pressed his lips together and glared.
“I take that as a yes. Here’s the situation. I’m going to slice her open right in front of you if you don’t order that beast to camouflage itself like the other one, and power all the way down. Full stop, all systems. Understand?”
Nothing in Beck’s demeanor suggested he was bluffing. In fact, every bit of information Pax’s senses had gathered about the man confirmed he had it in him to do it.
“It won’t help you,” replied Pax. “Banshee’s already sent out a distress call.”
“Bring her,” Beck shouted over his shoulder. “Captain, we don’t know each other at all, and I can excuse you once for assuming I’m an idiot. There’s no satellite reception here. That thing could send out a hundred distress calls and it will make no difference if there’s no one in range to receive it.”
The Ophelia Prophecy Page 4
