Sarda Read online

  He hopped on one foot, yanking on the suit. His eyes ran over her golden skin. Toned legs, pops of muscle firming her arms and shoulders, and the slight swell to her belly all assaulted him. His hand-eye coordination suffered catastrophic failure as he toppled into a cryo-bin.

  "Fucking Unholde." He righted himself. "Praal? What about your praal?"

  She narrowed her eyes and flashed an incisor at him. "I'm just a late budder."

  Ah. Now he understood her. With her whisper-thin praal lines running all over her skin, she looked young. Paired with black hair so sleek that it flashed like strikes of lightning when it caught the light, she looked too young to be standing around in her delicates with an Unsworn bastard like him. Of course, once she pointed this out, his eyes snapped to her breasts—honed on them like a weapon's lock, until she grumped and crossed her arms over her chest.

  "Late budder is all," she mumbled, looking away from him. "So was my gamma. Skips a generation."

  Gods, this lady. What the hell was he going to do with this lady?

  With one final heave-ho tug, the skinsuit snapped off his body, out of his hands, and smacked her in the face.

  "What the hell?" She stumbled backward, into the closed hatch of the maintenance bay.

  "Shit! Gods, sorry Vedma!"

  He lurched for her as she snatched the skinsuit off her face and backed away from him. "How'd you know my name? I know you, don't I?"

  He froze, hands held out before him, and shrugged his shoulders at the forgone conclusion.

  "We've not met, but I know who you are. You're Lady Vedma. An Athela." He and every other desperate Teras man tracked Athelas the way planetary satellites tracked hurricanes. Helpful to know when to shelter in place. But not everyone felt the way he did, some being crazed storm chasers, so he added, "Hell, it's probably why you were taken."

  "You a technopath, too?"

  He shook his head, not trusting his voice to sell the lie.

  Her eyes flashed, distrustful. "Well, who the hell are you?"

  Who the hell was he, indeed. "I'm no one."

  She snarled. "Your name. What's your damn name?"

  "Rastur," Dyr said without breaking eye contact.

  He'd been going by that name for years. Rastur, unlike Dyr, wasn't a technopathic heir living on the fringe of the Tendex Worlds. Rastur was just a houseless bastard who threw down with his clade. An undesirable. Not another acquisition for an Athela's clutch—the flock of prominent men, all jockeying for her attention that she clustered about herself for social and political gains. Occasionally, some of those men became lovers and even fewer became fathers to a potential technopathic child. Storm chasers, all of them cracked in the head. He'd never be one of them.

  "Rastur?" He heard it in her tone, her skepticism. "What kinda name is Rastur?"

  He cleared his throat. "It's my clade handle."

  Her shoulders drooped, her tension easing. "You want me callin' you by your scrum code?"

  He shrugged his shoulders, a bit abashed to find himself scratching at the clade markings on his neck. "It'll do."

  He shouldn't infuse such a small request with deeper meaning. Clades organized their alliances using scrum codes. Vedma calling him by his handle didn't signify an alliance. Just prudent cooperation, considering their predicament.

  As she looked at him, her green-gold eyes swirling with far more discernment than he'd initially thought possible, he could feel the ship shimmying and trembling. Other than the steady thrum of the engines powering the ship, he didn't think the thrusters fired, yet the ship pitched as if caught in docking clamps that refused to disengage. Whatever she thought of his name, or whatever assurances she sought in his gaze, their untenable circumstances needed to be rectified, posthaste.

  "Lady Ved—"

  "Ech. Just Vedma'll do."

  Fine, he could pander a bit for expediency's sake. "Vedma, we need to get to the bridge."

  "Aye," she grumbled, "I know that."

  But she didn't like it, and he didn't blame her. As an Athela, if she already used her technopathy to connect with the pipe's systems, she knew that the alarm she deactivated detected a hull breach. The corridors between compartments lacked air, and the bridge lay one level above them.

  With the situation so grim, it did them no good for him to coddle her.

  "And anyone in the bridge knows we're coming." He gave her a pointed stare.

  Her spine snapped straight, and she spread her arms wide, rearing up. "What the hell is that look for?"

  "You silenced the alarm technopathically." Never mind that he had wanted to do the same, but he'd conditioned himself to suppress his technopathy, to keep it a secret. With Vedma, he saw no reason to stop his ruse.

  "So?" she snapped.

  He sighed as he realized that she certainly wasn't the brightest star in the cluster. "Now anyone on board knows we're awake. And we can't assume that he," he directed her gaze to the dead Gwyretti on the deck with his back tore open, "was the only crew. A pipe crews four to six, easily."

  Her mouth had been hinged open, ready to fire her next volley, but she snapped it shut as a blue blush rushed her cheeks.

  He gave her a brisk nod. Good. She understood her mistake.

  She returned it with a wry wince. "Well, that's some shit for you."

  Dyr gaped at her. She'd contritely offered him shit as an apology.

  A shit gift.

  What the hell was he supposed to do with gifted shit?

  He ran his eyes over her. Well, he knew the first thing to do: get her covered.

  "Put on the skinsuit," he said to her, softening his tone.

  No sense in riling her before they had to storm the bridge in their foolhardy attempt to—

  The skinsuit slapped him in the face. She'd flung it at him.

  "You wear the damn skinsuit."

  "Gods, Vedma." He had heard this about her. How her unwavering pride in her own humble origins had become a mantle of obstinacy. "I'm not going to fight with you about this. I'm not offering out of pity or self-righteous—"

  "Ech!" She silenced him with that phlegm-infused utterance of rebuke. "It won't fit."

  What the hell was she going on about?

  "It's a skinsuit." He shook the damn thing in his fist. "Intellifibers. One size fits all." Even her hard ass. "If you think it's cold in here—"

  She flapped her hand at him. "Already told you. Been colder."

  He growled and powered through, determined that his words connect with her. "There's no atmo outside this bay. That means no temperature other than sub-zero. You'll never make it up the deck ladder, let alone all the way to the bridge."

  "That," she said, jamming her finger toward the far bulkhead, "won't fit you."

  Blustering, he followed her finger point like a tyke following a parade. On the far bulkhead, a spacewalk suit and helmet had been tossed into an overfilled cubby. Huh. He'd missed that in his earlier surveillance of the small bay.

  And she was correct. This was a Gwyretti ship. So the spacewalk suit would fit a being who stood a head or two shorter than someone his size. He had his father to thank for that. Being too big for his britches was something he experienced literally, not figuratively.

  "Quite right," he said as he went to the too high bin and put his excessive height to use by extracting the suit. He held it out to her. "I'm glad you saw this."

  "Right," she huffed at him as she snagged the suit.

  "No, truly."

  She shrugged, not even looking at him as she started to sort the suit out. Based on his visual perusal, it would fit her. The tail would flop around as extraneous fabric, but it'd protect her from the void. Also, he now wouldn't have to make a mad dash in nothing but his shorts. The skinsuit, an excellent insulator within cryo-bins, would serve as a passable barrier between him and the vacuum of space. Now he just needed air.

  As he rolled the skinsuit back up his thighs, he caught sight of Vedma staring at the cryo-bins, her expression unreadable.


  He softened his tone. "I think we were—"

  "Ech, I figured it out." She shuffled over to him and knocked him in the chest with a mask. "Here. It's a huff-haler."

  Actually, it was a welding mask, and he didn't like to dwell on the fact that as he had taken a visual inventory of the maintenance bay, he saw a disturbing mix of medical and machine shop equipment stored in the space, making it feel like a nefarious laboratory.

  The welding mask was a reciprocal respirator model. The mask's internal mouthpiece immediately scrubbed the air he exhaled, readying it for him to inhale back through his nose. Great for welders and miners who wanted to avoid inhaling ore particles. As for spacewalks, like his skinsuit, the mask was better than nothing at all. It would provide him with a good dozen breaths, hopefully enough to reach the bridge and force the hatch.

  Gods, he hoped the hatches wouldn't be an issue. They truly had no choice. The Gwyretti, in stripping Vedma to her underthings, already proved to be their enemies. Even with the ship reporting a hull breach, they just couldn't stay there in the maintenance bay indefinitely. They needed to get control of the ship, which meant securing the bridge and dealing with any crew they might find.

  Still feeling drained from stasis, he walked over to inspect the hatch. The dead Gwyretti had crumbled just a step beyond the threshold, and with morbid relief, Dyr noted that man had expired before engaging any locks. He could simply lift the release lever, and the hatch would swing open.

  "Here," she said from behind him. "I found some stims. They're expired, but..."

  "No, good. That's good." He took the thumb-sized hypo-syringe from her and injected the stimulant into his neck. "We're both too groggy from the stasis drugs."

  Chagrined, he realized that she had done well in anticipating this need.

  "Not my first vacuum hop." She pressed the hypo-syringe to her neck, wincing when the device hissed and injected her.

  "Not your first self-injection, either."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  Damn. That was a rather callous thing to say. Here he thought his delivery would have been lighthearted. A lighthearted ribbing about casual drug injections... By Unholde, he was an ass.

  He mumbled a weak apology, then ducked down to haul the body away from the hatch. The wound on the Gwyretti's back still seeped blood. He'd never taken a forensics course at Fleet Academe, so he could only guess. Perhaps a few hours had passed? If his assumption proved correct—that hours had passed and no one addressed the hull breach—that would mean no one helmed the bridge. Well, no one in any condition to put up much resistance.

  With the body moved, he grasped the release lever and looked over his shoulder at Vedma. She had the spacewalk helmet with a protruding clear faceplate to accommodate a Gwyretti's snout on and sealed. He had prepared himself to find fear in her eyes and planned to say something bolstering like, 'Don't worry, we'll make it.' Instead, he watched as her eyes, alight with a concerning glint, flicked over him. Then she shook it off. All the better. There was nothing to be done about his lack of gear or the limited time it gave him to secure the bridge. Also, he wasn't going to send her up there on her own.

  One more matter lingered, though. She still didn't know he was a technopath, and he wanted to keep it that way, which meant any tech work fell to her.

  "If the pipe's systems sealed the bridge hatch," he said, "will you be able to open it?"

  She shifted on her feet. "I think so."

  "Think so?"

  Blue tinted her cheeks as she dropped her eyes. "Ships're thanes' business."

  So he'd been told as well, but nevertheless. "You overrode the alarm."

  "I muted the audio," she said, countering him. "Alarm's still runnin'."

  "Well, that was a creative solution."

  She huffed.

  "Perhaps you could try something like that if need be."

  "Need be," she said mockingly, then shook her head at him. "Open the damn hatch."

  She had a point. They had makeshift gear and stimulants powering their bodies. No more reasons to delay. So he cranked the lever, breaking the seal with a low hiss. The second he cracked the hatch open, the air in the maintenance bay rushed past him, sucked out into the corridor. As the air battered against him, he suspected that the hull breach must be significant. The last bit of atmo wheezed out of the bay, leaving them in silence. Expelling his first puff of limited air, he yanked the hatch open fully and propelled himself through.

  Partial gravity greeted him, cushioning his collision with the corridor's paneling. He pivoted to orient himself. His eyes skimmed over a huge rupture that had torn clear through the cargo hold at the end of the pipe. He passed his gaze over Vedma as she followed him out, and finally he spotted the shaft and ladder that would take them up a level.

  He grasped the handrail, readying to slingshot himself down the narrow corridor to the shaft, when the entire ship tumbled. Turning end over end, he bashed into the paneling—watched as the grated deck became the ceiling above him. A hard grunt on impact with the ceiling conduits expelled more of his precious air. The stimulant pounded through him, though, spurring him to clamor up to his hands and knees and search for Vedma.

  Relief flooded him as he saw her upright, grasping the corridor handrail should the ship tumble again.

  A flash of movement beyond her, further down the corridor, caught his attention and his chest clenched.

  He couldn't hear the screech of metal rending, but he could damn well see it. Watched as a coiled, metal-plated tentacle sank its hooks into the shredded flaps of the breach and stretched the opening wider and wider, crumpling the hull like paper.

  A Gwyretti pipe was a frigate class ship. It had nothing like the metal apparatus—a manipulative extension—that now attacked the hull, forcing itself inside.

  He roared Vedma's name. Lost all his air as the vacuum in the corridor sucked his voice away. Rocking back against the paneling, he sprung for her, arms stretched out, fingers spread.

  The tentacle lunged for her as well, had coiled like a spring, then struck.

  Dyr crashed into her and pulled her close. Did his best to encase her small body.

  "Rastur!" Her voice came muffled through her faceplate.

  He had no air left, leaving him voiceless. He could only tuck her tighter as the tentacle's tip spread open—like the diamond-head mouth of a tapeworm splitting wide—and became a gaping metal maw.

  It sank down over them, snatching them up, and swallowed them both whole.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Even in the dark, and just by feel alone, Vedma knew where she was—she'd know these cone-studded grinders digging into her side anywhere. They were stuck inside the ore extractor arm of a materials barge.

  Maybe it was a bad patch of luck they'd been swallowed up like a hunk of sard, or maybe not, but she knew an exit when she saw one. Why waste time prying the ore extractor open? That would just spit them back out into the airless corridor of the pipe, and that huff-haler wouldn't last Rastur forever. Besides, she'd crawled inside ore extractors before, greasing the grinders and whatnot. This arm led somewhere—probably to a materials barge that hopefully had air. So, a second ship had lingered nearby. Made sense since the Gwyretti wouldn't have stopped if there'd been nothing to salvage.

  She locked her hand around Rastur's thick wrist and pulled him forward. He only resisted a second, then urged her onward with gentle nudges. Aye, she knew what she was about. She weaved and ducked through the cogs and gears as if threading an endless chain of needle eyes.

  When they reached the end of the payload cavity, she praised Direis that the maintenance hatch opened easily. She scurried out onto a pile of rocks, yet somehow still felt like the extractor plopped them out like two twisted up turds. If the extractor's grinders had been turning—

  Her da always told her to mind the business end of an ore extractor, lest she find herself shat before Unholde's Gate, just a steaming pile of torn up Teras.


  She shuddered. What an abysmal way to travel.

  Rastur must have a cracked casing about his brain, because back on the Gwyretti pipe, he had actually run toward her, eager to be gobbled up too. She had caught a glimpse of his wide eyes and bared teeth before he damn near smothered her. Well, not truly smothered her, because she wore a self-contained breathing apparatus, but still. She wasn't a hugger. Never had been. Not even when faced with a surefire calamity.

  So for good measure, she scooted away from him, rocks digging into her ass as she retreated. Tried to ignore how adrift she felt without clinging to him like a barnacle.

  But the damn idiot scrambled over the orange rocks, plowing straight for her, looking concerned of all things.

  "Vedma! Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

  He only paused to rip the huff-haler off, giving her no choice but to throw her hands up and fend him off. "Ech! Leave off, already. I'm fine."

  But he pressed forward until her palms flattened against his heaving chest, the now filthy skinsuit a scant barrier between their actual skin. He reached out with his clade-inked hands, releasing the seal on her helmet and lifting it over her head. Stale but breathable air infiltrated her nose, carrying the odors of rock dust and mold. The scents of her childhood.

  He tossed the helmet aside and grasped her by the shoulders.

  "You're unharmed?" he asked between deep draws of air.

  She batted him. Damn nuisance. "Back off. Nothin's broke."

  He settled back on his haunches, shifting and scattering rocks as his bulk sank into the pile. His hair reigned unruly all over his head, and orange dirt smudged his face.

  He blew out a breath. "Gods, Vedma."

  "What?" She eyed him warily.

  His gaze roved over her as his chest heaved.

  Then his concern flushed away, replaced with a far more acceptable look of irritation. "Nothing. Not a damn thing."

  He twisted away from her, shaking his head and muttering curses. As he gathered himself, the familiar sounds of a retracting extractor chute drew her gaze upward. She watched as the ass-end of the extractor sank back into the mining hub. Other than the pile of orange rocks that cushioned their landing, the cavernous hold echoed with tumbling rock slides. Considering the size of the space, the rock heap they sat upon looked no larger than a cairn. Nowhere near full to capacity of the hold.