CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Eve was standing over him, hands on her hips. Her nostrils flared.
He rubbed his eyes.
“Where the hell are we?” she said, her voice breaking.
He sat up. Oh, fuck. He’d really done that last night, hadn’t he? In the middle of the night, it had seemed like a brave gesture, almost poetic. He wasn’t taking it back now or anything, but he had meant it when he said he had no desire to die. He wondered how much time he had left. They should have arrived in orbit around Salz while they slept. Did they have days? Hours?
“There’s a planet out there.” She pointed behind her.
“You don’t recognize it from your vision?” he said.
“Fuck you, Gunner Jisse,” she said, and she started to cry.
“Don’t do that,” he said, throwing aside the covers. He was still wearing his pants after his excursion to the cockpit last night, but where the hell was his shirt? “You saw the vision for a reason. This is fate, just like everything else.”
“I saw the vision to avoid this,” she said. “To save you. I need you. What am I supposed to do without you?”
There. A shirt. He didn’t think it was the one he’d been wearing last night. He was thinking now that he might have left that one in the kitchen, but it didn’t matter. He picked up the shirt and shrugged into it. “You’re supposed to live,” he said. He took her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead. “Have the baby, stay safe. This is the place for that.”
She shoved him. Hard. Both hands on his chest. “I hate you.”
He hadn’t been expecting it and he stumbled. “Hey,” he said, righting himself. “I’m doing this for you. For the fucking galaxy.”
“I don’t care about the galaxy.” Her nostrils flared.
The ship rocked.
It wasn’t a hard rock, because it was a leon, and it took a hit pretty easily, but someone was firing on the ship.
“Damn it,” said Gunner, and he took off running for the cannon pit.
Eve was right behind him. “Where are you going? What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going to go take care of that stupid ship that’s firing on us,” said Gunner. “It’s the vidya, right? A leon can blow a tiny Fabis to bits.”
“Don’t engage,” she said.
“Are you kidding? This can be over in seconds.”
“But the vision,” she said. “In the vision, you were in the cannon pit. Don’t go in there. We can still stop this from happening.”
He stopped. Turned to look at her. “If we don’t fight back against the ship—”
“Can a little ship like that really damage us that badly?”
“Well, uh…” He thought about it. There were a few points of weakness on a leon ship, but no one could ever fly fast enough to actually get close without getting blown up. Of course, if he wasn’t manning the cannons, then there would be nothing to stop—
There was a loud bang and a shower of sparks from overhead. The ship started to shake.
“Damn it!” Gunner roared, shifting direction and heading for the cockpit.
“What?” said Eve, running after him. “What happened?”
“We’re going down,” he said, careening around the corners of the ship, going as fast as he can. “I’ve got to get in there, see if I can stop us from crashing and blowing up.”
“Blowing up?” said Eve. “That’s likely?”
He rounded another corner, coming straight to the cockpit. He flung himself inside and began flipping switches, turning everything over to manual operations. He was going to have to steer this thing in for a landing.
“Gunner?” said Eve.
“Strap in,” he told her.
She sat down next to him, strapping herself into the co-pilot seat.
The ship was going down nose first, and it was entering the planet’s atmosphere. Everything was heating up and and speeding up. The planet’s gravity had a hold on them now, and they were accelerating.
He needed to get the nose up, and he was putting as much pressure on the stick as he could, trying to right the thing, but he was fighting a force much stronger than him. His muscles strained. He clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw started to ache.
All around them, the ship was beeping and screaming and various alarms were going off.
He wasn’t going to make it. He could feel it. There was no way he’d get the nose of this ship up in time.
They were going down too fast.
Outside the forward window, it was all streaking by so fast—clouds, sky. And below them, water, vast and barely interrupted by tiny islands. Well, if they were going down in the water, maybe they wouldn’t explode.
That was a good thing, wasn’t—
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kerxe watched as the leon ship zoomed through the air. It was crashing, and he was pleased with himself. He hadn’t thought it would be so easy to take down, but it had been. Now, he followed in its wake, his ship intact and in control.
The leon crashed into the water, and white foam exploded, spraying everywhere. The water was choppy as the ship began to sink.
Kerxe maneuvered his ship around the wreckage and the churning water to find an island to land on. The island wasn’t large, but there was another wreck of a leon ship there. This one had been cracked nearly in half when it fell. Bad luck to crash on land when the water was everywhere.
Kerxe got out of his ship.
Coughed. Screamed. Spray from the ocean hit his face. It was excruciating.
He scrambled back into his ship.
He shut himself inside and felt panic go through him. Oh, so it was salt water. He hadn’t thought… Well, maybe that was why the wrecked ship next to him had tried to land here instead of being submerged. Salt weakened the Xerkabah. Under certain circumstances, it could even be deadly.
On their planet, Ceymia 4, there was no salt water. It was an anomaly of some other planets, though, and they were always careful to steer clear of it. Now, he’d gone and landed himself on a planet of salt water.
He should leave. He was safe inside his ship, but if he went back out and got more of that spray on him, it would make him weaker and weaker. There was no point in being here. He needed to get clear. Maybe, now, knowing where the girl was, he could get word to the leaders, and they could find some way to get to her.
But then he saw the female surface in the water, next to the wreckage. She gasped, throwing her head back, whipping her wet hair out of her face.
Oh, this was his prey, and she was so close. He wasn’t going anywhere.
* * *
Eve gasped several lungfuls of air. She just needed to breathe for a minute.
She dove back under the water and dove down. She swam through the door of the leon ship, which was filling up with water. It was rushing in, filling the corridors, but the entire place wasn’t full yet. She got past the rush of water and ran back around the corridor to where she’d left Gunner.
She’d dragged him out of the cockpit. He was unconscious, and his face was messed up. She thought he might have a broken nose. There was blood.
She knelt down and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Gunner?”
He didn’t respond.
“Okay,” she said, “Come on, I got the door open, we can get out now.” She’d left him behind because she couldn’t hold onto him and open the door to the ship. Then she’d been barraged by a faceful of water. It had been instinct to swim to the surface. She had him now, though. They were going to be fine.
She dragged him along with her until they got to the part of the ship that was filled with water. Then she sucked in as much air as she could and pulled him along with her. By the visions, she hoped he didn’t try to breathe under the water. If he was unconscious, would he instinctively know not to do that?
She needed to get to the surface as quickly as she could.
She swam out of the door and kicked her feet, pulling his lifeless body along. In the
salt water, he weighed next to nothing, and she was buoyant too. The water wanted to float them up, and it didn’t take much of her helping before they both cleared the surface of the water.
She held him up.
His head rolled back on his shoulders.
Was he breathing?
She put a finger under his nose. Yes, she felt it. It was faint, but it was there. He was alive. She kissed his cheek. “We did it,” she whispered to him. “We averted the vision.”
She treaded water, looking around.
There were small islands all over the place, but most were far away. She’d head for that tiny one, the one that was closest. There was nothing on that island. It looked to be maybe ten feet in diameter, just a sandy little bit of land poking up.
As she got closer, the water grew shallower.
She didn’t have to swim, but she stayed low in the water anyway so that she didn’t have to hold up Gunner’s full weight.
When they were close enough, she dragged him up onto the shore of the island.
Then she sat there, panting, watching the leon ship sink into the water. It was slowly disappearing.
There had been supplies on that ship, things they could have used. She wondered if she should swim back out and try to salvage what she could.
Of course, there was that other island over there, nearby, and it had a wrecked leon on it too. She supposed that was why this place had gotten a reputation as a black hole planet. Because Xerkabah crashed out here and were obliterated by the salt. Anyway, maybe that ship had supplies.
She peered down at Gunner. The water had washed away the blood on his wounded face, but it was gushing up again. He was really bleeding. He could use a bandage, even some synth skin. And they both could use water—fresh water, drinkable water. She was incredibly thirsty after swimming all the way over here.
The other island didn’t look too far away, and if she was smart, she could figure out some sort of floatable raft to bring everything back on. The bandages wouldn’t even get wet.
She kissed Gunner again, this time on the forehead. “Stay put,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
And then she waded back out into the water, this time in the direction of the other island.
The water was shallow for a while, but then there was a sudden drop-off and she had to swim. It was easy to stay afloat, but there was a strong undertow trying to pull her away from her destination, and she really had to fight that to stay moving in the correct direction.
Eventually, she arrived at the island, exhausted and even thirstier than before. She really hoped there was water on that ship. For that matter, she hoped there was fresh water somewhere on the planet. They were stuck here now, after all. She didn’t want to die here.
She staggered toward the ship, her entire body aching.
* * *
Kerxe watched the female as she dragged the man onto the island, and then he watched her swimming toward the island where he was. It was only luck that he’d managed to set down his ship in a spot where it was in the shadow of the leon wreckage. She hadn’t noticed he was there.
He had a suit in his ship, something suitable for a short space walk if necessary. He could wear that to make it through the salty spray of the water.
The female was climbing into the wrecked ship. Once Kerxe was in there with her, he could shed the suit and track her. He’d kill her in the ship, and his mission would be complete.
Sure, he wouldn’t get the male, because there was no way to the other island, but that would have to do. He had wanted the male also. Two quarries were better than one. But he knew the leaders wouldn’t think it mattered. With the female dead, that would be sufficient. He’d have to be satisfied with it as well.
He smiled to himself. He could almost taste her fear and agony as he ripped her limbs from her body, dug his claws into her heart.
He started to put on his suit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Eve made her way through the darkened corridors of the wrecked leon ship. It had been abandoned for a long time, and it smelled strange and fishy inside, as if the ocean had come to live in there in the interim.
It was nearly impossible to see. She didn’t have anything to make light with, and all the internal lights were gone, so she had to make her way through by feel.
Luckily, she knew the basic layout of a leon from having spent the last two weeks on one. So, once inside, it took her a bit to get her bearings, but then she knew to follow the corridors up the ramps to get to the medic bay.
Once in there, she began pawing through the cabinets, looking for synth skin and bandages. She couldn’t see anything, so she had to touch the supplies to see if they were what she was looking for. She gathered up what she could.
A noise.
She froze, arms full of bandages in sterile packets. What had that noise been? It hadn’t sounded like the noises of the planet—the roar of the water or the distant calls of the strange winged creatures that flew in the distance. It had sounded like… footsteps.
She moved, just a little bit, shifting on her feet.
The packages in her arms crinkled, and it was deafening.
She suddenly realized that she didn’t know what had happened to the Fabis 4. In her vision, they’d destroyed it, but she’d told Gunner not to engage. Oh, hell, she’d saved Gunner’s life, but at what cost?
She ran out of the medic bay and into the corridor. She was going to go back out of the wreckage, back to Gunner.
But it was in the hallway, coming for her. It reached out its long, spindly arms tipped with sharp, spiky claws.
She screamed, dropping all the packages of bandages, and ran the other direction.
The vidya came after her.
She moved as quickly as she could, but she couldn’t see where she was going, and she was running blind. She grabbed the walls to direct her, and as she ran, she thought that she needed to get to the kitchen.
Salt, I need salt.
She knew where that was. It was down this way, then she needed to make a left, and then another left, and then—
Something in the darkness caught her foot and she went sprawling. There was a sharp pain in her shin from whatever she’d tripped over, and pain on her arms where she’d caught herself in the fall.
She tried to get up, but she was tangled up in whatever she’d tripped over.
The vidya was on top of her.
What was this thing she’d tripped on?
The vidya raised its claw over its head to bring the claw down, to sink it into her flesh.
It was a crate, a broken crate. It had a jagged edge, which had cut her shin. She brought up the jagged edge into the vidya’s face.
It squealed.
She scrambled backwards, getting up and hobbling away. She clutched the broken crate with one hand. She touched the wall with her other hand.
By the visions, she was thirsty. As she righted herself, she felt lightheaded, as if she was going to lose her balance. But she pushed forward through it. She couldn’t let herself be caught by the vidya.
She half-ran, half-hobbled.
The vidya scraped at her heels.
She cried out.
She turned left, and then took the next immediate left.
The kitchen!
She hurled herself inside. Now, where would the salt—?
No, I’m an idiot. This is a Xerkabah ship. They won’t have salt. She’d tunneled herself deeper into this wreckage for nothing and—
The vidya’s claws buried themselves in her back.
She shrieked.
It pulled her back against its body, and she could hear its satisfied sighs.
She struggled, lashing out with the crate.
It connected with the vidya, and the creature let go of her for a moment.
She turned, trying to wriggle past it. She needed to get to the ocean. The salt water was what would defeat this thing. She didn’t even understand how it was that it was alive on this planet an
yway.
But the vidya snatched her by the waist and threw her down on the floor.
It hovered over her, claws dancing over her skin. “Mine,” it whispered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Eve gasped. She tried to scoot herself backwards, away from the beast over her body.
It drove one claw into her shoulder, pinning her in place.
She screamed.
“Yes,” hissed the vidya. “That’s more like it.”
She brought up the crate, slashed at its face.
It hissed again, removing its claw from her shoulder.
She tried to get up.
It shoved her back down. It put its face next to hers, and she could barely see its wide-set eyes in the darkness. “Sweet, frightened prey,” it murmured, ticking its head to one side.
She brought up the crate and drove it into one of those eyeballs. She heard an awful squishing noise, and then there was liquid on her hand, and the vidya was making a keening noise and flailing out with its claws.
She scrambled past it, ducking its limbs, back into the hallway.
She ran, forcing weight onto her wounded shin. Her shoulder pulsed agony at her as she ran. She panted, her breath so loud that it seemed to echo off the walls. She ran and she ran.
And then there was light. The outside. The ocean. Safety. If she could get it into the water…
She emerged, and she kept running, right down to the surf. She was waist deep in the water before she turned around.
The vidya was staggering out of the ship. One of its eyes was ruined, black goo streaming down over its features. It thundered over the sand for her, screaming as droplets of water made contact with its skin. “You are mine!” it roared. “I will have you.”
Eve stayed in the water. She still had the crate, and she held it up, brandishing it.
But the vidya was starting to retreat. Each droplet of salty water that hit it was hurting it, and it wanted to go back into the safety of the leon wreckage.
Pursuit Page 26
