Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3

by Amy J. Murphy

  He grunted with surprise. She coiled down against him, like a metal blood-tick latching onto a host. Her gloves scrambled over the surface of his helm and cowl, vying for purchase. The helm release was buried at the base, where the neck met the harness.

  Grith guessed her play, threw his head back, pinching her fingers between the articulated folds. Metal squealed. The bones of her fingers snapped like dry twigs inside her glove. Her world went red with pain. She shoved in a blind, twisting motion with her free hand. Something popped. Astonished, she watched the clearplas of his visor drift into view. Blood poured from a gash along his forehead and cheek.

  He gave another bellow of rage. Anything that represented the Grith that had befriended her in the Shallows was well gone under whatever Poisoncry had done to him. His next shove was enough to knock the air out of her wounded lungs. The room flashed by in a smear. Her left side struck the wall. Something deep and wet in her ribs made a sharp click. The same spot blossomed with pain. She drew in an agonized breath and tasted blood.

  The HUD flashed through a whole new series of warnings, each worse than the next. Her breath rang against her ears in the helm. She rolled along the wall to face his approach. Something clanked against her leg. Sela looked down and saw Grith’s bandoleer of hull poppers.

  Of course, he was crazy enough to bring ship-killing ordnance onto a ship.

  The sound that came from her throat was a raw bark of triumph. Moves made awkward by her broken fingers, she slipped one of the cylinders from the strap. The cap flipped away, and the flat wide disc of the primer was a giant friendly button, designed for use with gloved hands.

  “Run. Don’t want to do this, Tyron. Got no choice.” Grith strode forward in murderous purposeful lunges. Metal tapping against metal. Hydraulic fluid drifted behind him in a small trail of milky white droplets, mixing with his blood.

  There’d only be one chance.

  Ten strides away. Now six.

  “Hey, Grith. Hold this for me.” She tossed the grenade in his direction. Unencumbered by gravity, it sailed straight for his face. His hands went up reflexively, grabbed it. He opened his fist, looked.

  Sela caught one quick glimpse of his expression before the world became an angry, violent roar. Priceless.

  Twenty-Seven

  “Alert. Decompression. Alert”

  The androgynous voice floated above a sense of wrongness that dug into places Sela could not even identify. Pain blossomed red, then white, behind her eyelids. She instinctively began to grit her teeth but found her jaw was already clenched like a fist. Something sharp and unforgiving ground in her ribs with each inhalation. She forced her breathing into shallow gasps.

  Still, the voice droned on, calm in the face of calamity. A three-phase chime joined the voice as if the contents of the message itself were not enough to make her take notice. As if the brain that ran the suit doubted her commitment to survival.

  She opened her eyes. The HUD fluttered like a blurry moth in her vision. As her focus sharpened, she made out the decompression reading. Primitive panic spiked in her but subsided.

  The decompression warning was not for the suit, but for the ship. The frigate complained to her about its mortal wound and flipped an image up from her helm’s side cam into her HUD. A jagged hole had appeared in the hull where Grith had last been before the world had snapped out from under her. Drifting puffs of frozen water vapor traipsed past the ragged shape as the last of the atmo hemorrhaged out of the space.

  The hull popper had lived up to its reputation. Grith hadn’t been lying about that.

  The amber-bannered displays for the suit were not inspiring. The frigate showed multiple breaches: command, cargo, mid-ship. The places that had been glowing dots of the ship personnel were grayed out. Never a good sign. It took a few tries, but she eventually killed the flood of messages from the ship.

  Her lip throbbed. She prodded the swollen tissue with her tongue and tasted copper. The helm seemed the wrong shape as if it were dented. She reached for the side of her helm and found her arms locked in position at her sides. She wriggled her fingers against the insides of the glove. Did the same with her toes.

  She was trapped inside a frozen battle suit.

  The sub-s band. Warn Jon and Corsair. She chinned at the connection. A jabbing roar of static filled the suit, drowning out the flat metal echo of her own breathing. She opened the ship’s vox system that was slaved to her suit. The channels cycled through waves of static.

  No connection. It prodded her for a command to continue. She dismissed it.

  Ignoring a perfect red bubble of blood that drifted into her view inside the visor, she focused on opening the suit diagnostic. The interface flashed open for one jarring second. Then shut. Too fast. She was trying to make it do too much too quickly. Especially since it had just been hit with the concussive wave of an explosion. Something hot and sharp twisted inside her, against her ribs. It enlivened a dazed, directionless anger at the pain.

  The medical assess flashed open, telling her about three broken ribs and a likely concussion.

  Sela forced another stilling breath and focused on the suit diagnostic program. It solidified onto the HUD after what felt like an eon of heartbeats. Blearily she realized there was a countdown on the corner of the screen. Relief flooded over her. The suit was dead weight because the power pack to the main exoskeleton was rebooting. The numbers ran down in an agonizing slowness. Another seven minutes. Until then she was trapped like a giant insect in a discarded husk.

  The only systems were emergency vox and helmet cams. The sub-s band refused to sync up to the suit.

  She dared not use the emergency channel. The system was likely a closed one, meant to summon help from what the suit considered a home base. In this case, she didn’t know where it would go. A distress call meant taking a chance on who or what would answer.

  Maxim had needed help to manufacture this grisly end to his sister. The complexity of this plan was not something she would attribute to the brutish, self-important clod. The insidious, calculated nature of it smacked of Poisoncry, acting on his behalf. After all, he was their creature.

  Splitdawn’s laws were clear: he’d need irrefutable proof of Tove’s death to secure his position as sole Imperator. No doubt there were agents en route to the ship now if they weren’t already onboard. That was an encounter she’d prefer to avoid in her current state, as much as she ached to retaliate.

  Best chance was to record a trans; have it ready to go the moment there was a signal lock. Using the efficient shorthand of Regimental standard, she formulated a warning for Jon. There was a temptation to give her compromised status, but it wouldn’t do to pull Jon off target. She activated the vox recorder, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “Jon, if you’re getting this, I’ve failed. Tove is dead. Maxim is working with Poisoncry. Avoid Splitdawn territories at all costs.”

  She hesitated, imagining she could hear the patient hiss of the vox system, waiting for her to complete the message. The words hovered at the base of her tongue. I’m sorry I broke my promise. To say that meant defeat. It meant she actually believed it.

  “Stay safe.”

  She ended the message, selected the highest encryptions for the sub-s band. Set the file to send when it had another chance to connect with an outgoing transponder. If that ever happened.

  Now was nothing to do but wait for the system to power back up.

  Frustration crowding her thoughts, she assessed her position. The boots had gone into an emergency lockdown when the decompression happened, and she’d been unconscious. She was affixed to the wall of the bay at an odd angle. The cameras showed her a view where the floor met deck, the hole in the bulkhead. The other view was a grainy image of the hatchway to the middeck. The angle was kinked, adding credence to her theory that the helmet was dented on that side.

  For now, there was only the agonizingly slow reboot counter and the view of the stars.

  A green-bannered message flas
hed across the HUD.

  ////\\Proximity Alert////\\

  From her view through the gash in the heavy rigger’s hull, she saw the ship approach. A quick glimpse of the sleek outline was enough to tell her that it was nothing like the Wedge. This one was far larger; sleek, with rounded sides. A familiar sigil glowed on its hull: a hand wrapped in vines. Poisoncry. Her suspicions had been correct.

  “I’m getting really tired of being right.”

  Part Six

  Twenty-Eight

  Erelah woke to harsh light, turning the inside of her eyelids blood red. The surface beneath her was scratchy fabric, a cushion with little give. A steady buzz filled her ears. Her mouth held a metallic taste that threatened to make her gag. On impulse, she thrashed to her side as her stomach churned and her lungs lurched with a violent spasm of coughing.

  A primitive fragment of memory told her she had more freedom of movement than she should. This attached itself to more memories: her eyes growing heavy with the pharms as she looked up through the small window of the cryo box into Kelta’s tearful smile, the last fluttering onslaught of claustrophobic response to the small space.

  She opened her eyes.

  Rachel Northway slept in a chair a few feet away, a jacket draped across her upper torso. The woman’s dark skin was given a grayish cast by the stern lights that cast unflattering shadows over her normally elegant features. A sudden flood of relief warred with confusion.

  Erelah swallowed against a throat of dry bark and tried to speak. The sound that came out was a rasping croak. She tried again. “Rachel?”

  The woman shot up in the chair as if caught in some guilty act. Her voice rang with false cheer. “Hey, kiddo! Good. You’re awake.”

  Neck sore, Erelah followed her with her eyes, afraid to move her head. Everything felt sore, stiff. Small white circles attached to wires clung to the skin of her torso. The wires became a bundle that disappeared under the thin sheet. She got the sense that the wires were collecting data.

  Experimentally, she lifted her left arm and felt a burrowing pinch at her elbow. A thin tube peeked out from under a bandage there and climbed to a bag of clear fluid suspended from a pole nearby. Erelah frowned. She’d never seen this equipment before.

  This was not Picus’s lab. How?

  Rachel stooped over her, directing a flashlight into her gaze. Erelah squinted, flinching back into the bedding. “What is this place? Did Asher find you too?”

  But the doctor produced a device Erelah recognized from their previous encounters: a stethoscope, she’d called it. She pressed its round piece of metal to Erelah’s chest. Erelah gasped at the frigidness of it. “Stop.”

  Rachel pulled away, satisfied, and flexed a more genuine smile at her. “It’s good to see you, kid…considering the circumstances.”

  “Circumstances?” Erelah pushed up onto one elbow. The room swam around her and resettled. The walls were smooth white. The one opposite was a bank of frosted glass panels, lit from the other side. Everything seemed antiseptic in its uniformity—vastly different from Picus’s warren of rooms. A bank of what looked like ancient consoles filled the corner, patterns fluttered across their screens with characters in an alien hand.

  Hushed voices erupted in the room beyond the frosted panels. Erelah got the distinct sense that her waking had stirred excitement, sent other unseen people into action.

  Definitely like nothing in Picus’s keep, or anywhere on Narasmina, for that matter.

  She focused on Rachel. Her thoughts collided, rearranged into a better order. “The baby. Is the baby alright?”

  Rachel’s brows pinched together. Erelah sensed the woman push a warring flood of emotions down, like forcing clothes into an already overstuffed bag. It was something that seemed like a ritual for the doctor. She drew in a deep breath and seemed to churn through her thoughts.

  “Erelah.” She kept her voice low, eyes darting to the frosted glass wall and shifting shadows beyond. “You took a big risk getting pregnant…a couple of big risks, actually. But yes, the baby’s okay. From what I can tell.”

  Erelah released a breath she did not realize she’d been holding.

  “Asher’s?” Rachel quirked up an eyebrow as her mouth formed a disapproving bow.

  Erelah nodded, feeling her face grow hot under Rachel’s stare.

  “This isn’t the place to talk about it. Remind me to yell at you later,” she hummed.

  The relief Erelah felt was temporary and quickly flattened. Sticky, sinewy fear pushed at her, but it came from outside. It belonged to Rachel, to other people beyond this space.

  Rachel held a cup out to at Erelah. “Try to drink some water. Then I’ll get that IV out of you.”

  She sniffed cautiously at the clear liquid in the container and took an experimental sip. Flat, metallic. Enough to make her gag some more. She shook her head, pushing the cup away. “Where’s Asher?”

  “Not here.” Rachel once more glanced at the door. Her voice was hushed, hurried when she turned back. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, kiddo.”

  Erelah’s heart thudded faster. A high-pitched beep came from one of the machines, seemingly in response. Annoyed, Rachel slapped at the device. It went silent.

  “I got sick. Something that Tristic did to me to make me…how I am.” Erelah pushed the words out through a throat that seemed too small. “There was a splicer that could fix me, named Picus. But he needed my brother. He could use Jon’s genetics as a template to reprogram the nanotech Tristic used to alter my body to serve as her vessel. Asher journeyed to Hadelia to find Jon and bring him back.”

  “Shit,” Rachel said, shutting her eyes briefly. She was angry, but Erelah sensed it was turned inward, some failing accounted to herself. “That’s why you were in stasis. I told them we should have waited for the full analysis before we got you out.”

  “Them?” Erelah asked, looking again at the alien room. “What is this? What’s happened?”

  “Look. You’re on a station called Roughbook. It belongs to the Humans that hit Tintown.”

  Erelah clutched the blanket more tightly against her. Bright, acid panic slid into her blood. Her instinct was to lurch out of bed. She was half-up, struggling on weak limbs to slide away. She pulled the wires free. The needle and tubing ripped from her arm. She did not feel the pain of it. Her bare feet hit the floor. The cold of it seemed to sap her strength. Her knees buckled.

  “Hey! Hang on!” Rachel caught her beneath her arms and trapped her against the bed. “Where’re you going?”

  “They placed a bounty on me, Rachel! Sent hunters after me. And Asher.” She wanted to claw her way out of this strange white room. “I almost died.”

  “It wasn’t me. You have to believe me, kid.” Rachel looked at her levelly. “I would never do that.”

  Erelah sagged against the bed, heart pounding, the long muscles in her arms and legs threatening to cramp. Rachel stepped back.

  The commotion from the area outside the room gathered more organization: footfalls, voices coalesced in an alien tongue. Rachel’s face pinched with irritation as she called to someone Erelah could not see in her Human language. The words were nonsense, but her tone was clearly annoyed.

  “Here.” Rachel held out her arm and rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. “Do your…thing…if you don’t believe me.”

  Erelah regarded the woman. The tears that threatened finally came, blurring the room, the hateful white walls and strange equipment. She drew the blanket closer. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Plus…it makes things worse, every time I try to sightjack someone.”

  “They were under orders from someone that was under the influence of…something,” Rachel said. “I think you can help. In fact, I think it’s connected to you.”

  Something.

  With the Sight, Erelah pushed out, as gently as she dared, at the place beyond the frosted glass wall.

  A presence lurked out there just beyond the steady current of anxious emotion emanating from the Humans. It
s pull was subtle this far away, but poisonous to anyone caught in its ecliptic. A necrotic collapsed star. It had a deep, sapping cold to it even though it seemed to be in a half-dazed slumber.

  No. That wasn’t correct.

  Her heart stuttered. Impossible.

  Tristic.

  And it knew she was there.

  Twenty-Nine

  Asher slipped into the tunnel from the Wedge, a KT7 Piercer nestled into the crook of his arm. He nearly tripped. The gravity had a strangeness to it here, seeming to pass in waves. Heavy. Now light. Heavy. Light. It was the effect of the asteroid’s spin. He could access Erelah’s memories that explained it in terms of mathematical equations: an elegant string of numbers and symbols that would illustrate a perfect spiral. A force of nature broken down into simple terms. But this knowledge did not help his sense of balance.

  “Looks clear.”

  “I said so already,” Maeve said, exasperated.

  She was well ahead of them. Her armor moved with a quiet efficiency. He’d never seen her out of the suit. He suspected she was one of those addicted to the armor. It happened sometimes. The battle drugs regulated everything: pain, fear, euphoria. He could not blame her. And if he’d had a fraction of the childhood she’d suffered, Asher would have likely sought the same way of sheltering from the harsh old world.

  But he knew better than to feel sorry for Maeve. She was a dangerous animal masquerading as Tove’s house pet. Only someone as desperate for allies as Tove was would have suffered her company. The strange wild woman held a fierce loyalty to the Imperator that was nearly obsessive. He made a mental note not to ask her about it, ever.

  Following up the rear was the true pain in his ass, Veradin. The man had insisted on a secondary check of the area. They’d selected an entrance on the dark side of the asteroid. Several access tunnels had been created here by the original builders, the Sceeloid. There was evidence that the Humans knew about the tunnels—an errant beacon light here and there—but nothing to suggest that they considered them a security matter or spent much time there. It had been a simple matter of taking out the sensors at the entrance. So far, nothing had happened: no alarms, no guards moving in on their position. This hadn’t come as a relief. Asher felt his anxiety ratchet up another notch.