Calix’s eyes widened. “Sun and stars,” he murmured. “You don’t mean…?”
She spread her hands helplessly. “The captain is the father of the champion.”
Calix took a step back. He turned in the direction of the captain’s room and then turned back to her. “Oh, man. Really? Gunner?”
She nodded.
“So, you told him that?”
“I sort of, maybe, tried to… I went to his room and I kind of…” No, there was no way she could explain this. She didn’t have words. “Anyway, he wasn’t interested.”
Calix looked confused for a minute, and then seemed to understand. He winced. “Oh.”
They were quiet.
“It’s not as if I’m… offended or something.” She sucked in a steadying breath. “I mean, it’s just that he’s denying destiny, and this is the fate of the galaxy we’re talking about and now I don’t know what’s going to happen, especially because he’s just going to leave me here without, you know, uh, completing his role in all of this and…” She twisted her hands together.
Calix nodded slowly at what she was saying, knitting his brows together. He stroked his chin. “Yeah, well, um, that’s a lot for a man to take in, you know.” He cleared his throat. “These visions of yours, they’re a definite thing? Like you’re sure that Gunner is supposed to…” He suddenly blushed.
She blushed too. “Yes.”
“Huh,” said Calix.
Another long silence between them.
“I botched everything,” muttered Eve.
“No,” said Calix. “It’s fine. Look, I can talk to him.” He considered. “Admittedly, it’s all taken on an awkward wrinkle at this point, and I’m not really sure how to bring it up, but…” He shrugged. “He’ll come around. You’re a very attractive, nubile…” He blushed again. “He’ll, uh, I’m sure he’ll fulfill his destiny if you give him some time to…” He let out a nervous laugh.
“Maybe we should drop the subject,” said Eve.
“Oh, no, you’re upset,” he said. “And I’m trying to be comforting, but it’s a little, uh, weird, I guess.”
“It’s fine.” She smiled at him. “You’ve been very reassuring.”
He laughed.
“No, really,” she said. “You have. You’re good at that. At saying the right things.”
“I’m sure I did not say the right thing here.”
“Well, you’re good at a lot of things, anyway,” she said. “I mean, you’re a doctor. You save people’s lives.”
His face fell. “Not always.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean to bring up… Obviously, you did whatever you could for Breccan. I mean, you tried to breathe for him and everything.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t work.”
“Well, I wish I could do something like that,” she said. “I’m just utterly worthless.”
“You’re not worthless. The aliens wouldn’t be trying to kill you if you were worthless.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Well, I can teach you how to do the resuscitation if you want. It’s actually a pretty simple process. I mean, if that would make you feel better.”
She gave him a small smile. “Actually, you know, I think it would.”
He grinned. “All right.” He unslung his bag from his shoulder. “So, this is a person’s chest.” He put the bag on the ground and knelt down next to it. “What you want to do is alternate breaths with compressions.” He beckoned. “You, get down here. You’re going to do this, not me.”
* * *
“You picked that up pretty well,” said Calix as they made their way down the hallway to the door to the outside. “You may have a future in medicine.”
“Me?” said Eve. “Don’t you have to go to school for ages for that?”
“Well, technically,” said Calix. “Truth is, in my case, war broke out in the middle of my schooling, and I learned most of what I know on the field. I kept up for a while, doing correspondence when I wasn’t patching up soldiers, but that was madness, and I couldn’t keep up with both. After the war, there were no more schools. As far as doctors go, I’m as good as anything, I suppose.”
Eve shook her head. She had never really known the galaxy as it had been, humans having such power and reach. But she knew that she wanted that back. The Xerkabah were cruel and brutal. They needed to be stopped.
Calix stopped at the door and keyed in a quick sequence on the panel beside it.
The door slid open sideways, but slowly, groaning as it did, as if it was too old and heavy to move quickly.
Calix banged on the wall by the door.
The door gurgled and then opened abruptly.
“Piece of junk,” Calix muttered.
With the door open, a rush of hot, humid air from outside rushed inside, enveloping Eve sweetly. It was hot, but it wasn’t unpleasant, not in the darkness. She smiled as she stepped out the door after Calix.
Ahead of them was the ship, and the ramp was indeed down, indicating someone had gone inside.
“I bet Pippa’s out there,” said Calix. He turned to close the door. And then he paused. “Wait a second.”
Eve turned. “What?”
Calix pointed. “That door down there.” He was pointing at another door on the base, maybe twenty feet down. “That look open to you?”
“Maybe Pippa came out that door?” said Eve.
Calix squinted. “We need to go check that out. I think that door may have been ripped open, like by a…” He swallowed. “Eve, get back inside.”
She felt dread settle over her. If something had ripped open that door, it could mean that—
The vidya came from the side. It bowled into Calix, knocking him to the ground.
Calix fell to the ground, fumbling at his side for his plaspistol.
Eve screamed. It found me. It found us.
“Run!” yelled Calix, tugging at the pistol.
The vidya slashed its claws over Calix’s arm.
Calix cried out, dropping his gun.
It slashed Calix’s throat.
His cry died out in a burbling sound as blood welled up. He was still.
No. Eve shook her head. No, no, no. Why does everyone keep dying?
The vidya ticked its head to one side, sizing her up.
She turned and ran.
Belatedly, she realized that she should have run for the base. Especially with the thin air out here. She was gasping for oxygen more quickly than she normally would have. And even with that door down there torn open, she would have found better places to hide inside. Better protection. Other people who could help her.
But she wasn’t thinking clearly, not with a fucking monster on her heels, so she ran for the ship.
She hurried up the ramp and emerged into the cargo bay. She tried to close the ramp, but the vidya was right behind her, and she didn’t have time.
Instead, she just ran. She sprinted across the cargo bay and into the corridor.
The vidya reached out with its long, long arms and slashed at her.
She felt it nip at her arms as she pumped them to get away. It hurt, but it wasn’t a serious wound. She kept going. She hurried down the narrow corridor, past the medic bay, past the ladder to the captain’s quarters, and then—
Lying in the middle of the floor, bags of salt around her, open and spilled, was Pippa.
She wasn’t moving.
There was a lot of blood.
“No!” Eve sobbed and shrieked and moaned. She turned to face the approaching vidya. “No, why? You could have left her alone.”
The vidya stretched out its claws, reaching for her.
Eve, tears pouring down her face, had to step over Pippa and keep running.
She got to the ladder and tugged herself up.
The vidya grabbed her legs.
Pain. Claws in her thigh. She kicked.
The vidya’s grip loosened.
She wriggled up further.
It still had her.
She kicked again.
A slash of sharp pain on her hip, blood pouring out of the wound.
She roared and kicked with all her strength. She was free. She pulled herself up the ladder to the top floor.
The vidya was coming up the ladder behind her.
But now she was trapped. She’d come up here, but she had nowhere to go. And Pippa had taken all the salt, so she couldn’t use that weapon again. What was she going to do?
Then she remembered how they’d dumped the last vidya body through a hatch up here on this level.
The vidya’s head and shoulders were through the ladder. Its long arms reached down the corridor after her.
She sped down the corridor as fast as she could. Now, here was the hatch. Her fingers shook as she tried to open it.
The vidya had cleared the ladder. It was coming for her, walking at a steady pace down the corridor.
She got the hatch open. And she pushed herself through it.
Airborne for moments.
Then she fell on the ground and rolled, pain radiating through her bones, but she couldn’t let that stop her. She scrambled to her feet, and she ran as fast as she could.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After that crazy business with Eve, Gunner had not felt as though he could sleep. He had a crazy energy he needed to work off, and so he’d gone for a walk through the station. He tried not to think when he walked, because he didn’t want to think. He had too much swirling around in him—Silvi, Eve, the ship, Breccan—and he didn’t know how to process any of it. He wanted to walk to get away from it. If he walked far enough and long enough, he’d leave it all behind. That was what he hoped.
But it didn’t seem to be working that way.
He felt hopelessly sad over Breccan, not only because it was the loss of a good friend, but because it brought it all back. The war, so many dead, the screams and the blood and the agony. Because Breccan hadn’t died some normal, civilian way. He’d been killed by a vidya. It was too much like the war for comfort.
Still, he’d rather think about Breccan than think about that madness that Eve had spewed at him. The future? Destiny? He was supposed to—
No.
It was easier when he could dismiss all that nonsense as a fairy tale. And he didn’t want any of that kind of responsibility. He didn’t want to be anyone’s father. Hadn’t he vowed to himself that he’d never get entangled like that ever again? It wasn’t worth the risk of loss. He couldn’t handle feeling something like that again. It would break him.
The walk wasn’t working.
He couldn’t get away from his thoughts. They were chasing him, and this was no escape.
He turned around and headed back for the more populated areas of the ship, thinking that maybe he could find Atticus, tell him the whole ridiculous story, have a drink or two, and maybe talk himself out of even believing it. If he talked to Atticus long enough, surely—between the two of them—they could come up with something to explain away all of Eve’s visions and all the times she’d been right thus far. Coincidence, that was all.
He went by Atticus’s room, but he wasn’t there.
Figuring he must still be in the den, the room where they’d talked earlier, the room with the liquor, Gunner headed there.
But when he got there, the door was wide open, and hot, muggy air was pouring out into the hallway, warring with the coolant system.
Gunner didn’t like that. He tugged out his plaspistol for the second time that night. This time he checked the cartridge.
Hell. Empty.
He kept the gun out. Maybe, with luck, he could threaten whatever was in there with it and they’d believe him.
He hoped nothing was in there. He hoped Atticus had opened a window or something, and that was where the hot air was coming from.
Slowly, he stepped inside.
The first thing he saw was the liquor bottle, knocked over on the floor, liquid spilling out all over the floor.
From there, he followed the puddle of liquid to a hand splayed out on the floor. He could see the hint of a tattoo on the forearm. It was Atticus’s hand.
But he couldn’t see Atticus’s body, because he was lying behind one of the couches.
Tightening his grip on his useless pistol, Gunner walked around the couch.
Damn.
Atticus was dead. His throat had been ripped out. His stomach slashed too, as if the first wound hadn’t been enough.
Gunner looked past the body to see that a door to the outside had been ripped open, the metal bowed and bent and destroyed.
Only one thing with the strength to do that. A vidya. The Xerkabah had found them.
Damn, did it have to do with the communications panel? Saffron had said that she’d scanned and seen nothing, but the ship could have already been on the ground at that point, and then Saffron wouldn’t have been able to find it with her scanners.
He knelt down over Atticus’s body and shut the man’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
All Atticus had wanted was to be left alone out here. He hadn’t asked for this. Gunner had rained down destruction on his friend. His throat constricted.
A noise.
Behind him.
Gunner stood up, leveling his pistol in the direction of the noise.
“Captain.” It was Saffron in the doorway.
He lowered the weapon. “Sun and stars, Saffron.”
“We need to go now,” said Saffron. “It’s bad, captain. You found Atticus?”
Gunner nodded once.
“Pippa told me she was going out to the ship to look for her screen,” said Saffron. “She isn’t in her room, so I figure she made it to the ship, saw the vidya and is holing up there. We need to get there too, and take off.”
Gunner started toward her. “Where’s Calix?”
Saffron sucked in a sharp breath and looked away.
“No,” said Gunner.
“I’m sorry, captain, but he didn’t make it,” she said. “Now, we need to go, or we’re all going to die.”
“Eve,” he said. “What about Eve?”
“What about her?” said Saffron. “Leave her here to die and this all ends.”
Gunner ran a hand through his hair.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“No,” said Gunner.
“You’re going after that girl, aren’t you?” Saffron’s face twisted. “She’s the reason Calix is dead. I know how close you and he were, captain. Let’s leave her. Let’s just go.”
“I can’t leave an innocent girl to die,” said Gunner. “That’s not who I am.”
“How many of our lives are worth hers?” said Saffron. “Have you thought about that?”
Gunner pushed past her, out of the door into the hallway, and he took off running.
“Where are you going?” Saffron called after him. “Ship’s this way.”
“I’m going for weapons,” he threw over his shoulder. “Come with me.”
But Saffron only shook her head.
He turned back to see where he was going, and then careened around a corner to the weapons stash he knew that Atticus kept. Before he did, he shot one last glance back at Saffron.
Except Saffron wasn’t there anymore.
Oh, hell, he hoped she was okay. Woman wasn’t thinking clearly. Grief had turned her mind. He understood, but there was no way he could live with himself leaving Eve behind here. He wasn’t exactly a good man, even though Eve had said he was, but he had his lines in the sand that he wouldn’t cross. This was one of them.
He skidded to a stop in front of the door to the weapons stash and opened the panel. He pressed the open button.
Enter code.
Damn it all to hell, there was a code?
He looked to his left and to his right. The damned vidya could be anywhere.
Okay, back when this was a military base, there was a universal code to open any door with a regular security clearance. He punched it in to the panel.
Access
denied.
“Fuck,” he roared at it.
Oh, actually, wait. That wasn’t the universal access code. That was the last six digits of his identification number, what he used to punch in to get rations and fresh uniforms and all that.
He tried again.
The door slid open.
It was a small room, but it was jam-packed with weapons. They hung in racks on the wall, and he ran his fingers over them with a slight smile. “Hi there,” he whispered. His fingers settled on an Orse Thunder-7. “Oh, come to Daddy.” He took the thing off the rack and tried it out for a second. It was a hefty thing, but it packed a punch. Instead of a small, concentrated plasma beam (like a pistol or blast rifle), it shot balls of plasma, and it had a core propulsion system that hurled them at a velocity high enough to punch through most anything. Going up against a vidya, it was the only thing a man could want.
He swept up a few cartridges of gas, although the Thun-7 generally didn’t go too hard on the fuel. Thing ate charge like nobody’s business, though. Hell, he hoped this one had battery.
He switched it on.
It powered up in his hands, and he could almost feel its power itching to be released.
Okay, looked good.
Was there an extra battery in here, though?
He scanned the shelves. There were the batteries. He went over and looked through them, resting the Thun-7 on the floor. It was a heavy bastard.
“You kidding me?” he muttered. No extra batteries that would fit?
This reminded him of a particular rant he had about weapons and how the companies refused to make parts interchangeable, which was hell for a person trying to win a stupid war. Of course, there were no companies now, unless you counted the ones that manufactured weapons for the Xerkabah.
“Fuck,” he muttered again.
He grabbed a few cartridges for his plaspistol and shoved that in his belt.
Then, hoisting the Thun-7 up over his shoulder, he headed down the hallway, back the way he’d come.
The hallways were quiet and still, but there was a creeping warmth coming in from the open door in Atticus’s den, and he could hear the coolant system straining.
He turned a corner, half-expecting the vidya to be there, waiting for him, jaws open into a dark, gaping mouth, beady eyes dancing.
Pursuit Page 17
