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  She knew her tone carried her challenge and accusation, but if the ship-wide comms hadn't outed him as a technopath, they'd just be a couple of blind arses bumbling in the dark. Her handle on her technopathy gave them few advantages.

  She scoffed. "So we know shit all."

  He regarded her a moment, nailing her with a reproving stare. "Think some key intel revealed itself."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "Means I'll be doing all the heavy lifting." He turned on his heel and left.

  Snarling, she slunk after him, and damn him, she felt like so much baggage. She asked all those revealing questions because she couldn't determine the answers herself. While she fumbled to connect to the ship's systems, Dyrastur fucking Borac had casually accessed the ship's feeds and located additional WristCunes. She had to sift through the systems like untangling convoluted balls of yarn. That, right there, neatly summed up her Athela Academe education. Knitting. Not systems infiltration or modification, but knotting together bits of her technopathy to make a pretty frippery, like a damn pair of mittens.

  Lost in her musing, she squawked when Dyrastur—Dyr—suddenly backtracked.

  "But a moment," he muttered as he brushed past her and ducked into an open hatch.

  "But a moment," she snapped back at him.

  And another thing, since he'd been outed by the arse sucking ship-wide comms, he'd ratcheted up his Teras Ero accent, driving nails into her ears every damn time he spoke.

  "Right, then," he said as he stepped back through the hatch, sword in hand.

  A sword. In his hand.

  Vedma scowled at him. "Really?"

  His grip tightened around the sheathed blade, practically cradling it to his chest. "It's the first weapon I've found that's serviceable. Besides, it's a good Teras blade."

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're like a tyke in a toy shop."

  He sighed, turned his back to her, and continued down the corridor. "You mean like a tyke in a weapons cache."

  "That was your childhood?" Hell, sounded like a damn carnival to her.

  His reply came dry and flat. "Being a thane's son wasn't all merriment and amusements."

  "See, right there." She poked him between the shoulder blades. It pissed her off that she had to hustle to catch up to him and then stretch up onto her toes, but she got him. A good poke, right on his vertebrae. "I smell the stench on you."

  He rounded on her. "Stench? Stench of what?"

  "Privilege."

  He stiffened, his brow sinking low.

  "Dyr." Vedma shooed at his sulking with a flip of her hand. "My da let me name the vermin that infested our unit. A whole nest of nudibranches that I'd feed scraps from the trash heaps, believin' they actually came to me when I called 'em by name."

  Dyr shifted on his feet as he regarded her. "I don't know what to say to that, Vedma."

  "Nothin' to say, thane's son." She shrugged, not quite sure why she shared that particular memory. It used to be one of her better ones. The way he regarded her, with a cross between discomfort and pity, ruined it for her now, so she mumbled, "I was happy enough."

  With another weary sigh, he slid the sword's sheath strap over his shoulder, and with both hands open, he took a determined step toward her.

  "Ech!" She recoiled a step. "Stop right there!"

  He froze, his brow sinking again. "What?"

  "I'm not a hugger."

  His brow sank lower. "You hugged insects."

  "'Cause they was fuzzy."

  "Slugs with antennae."

  "And they had gumption." She jammed a finger at him. "But not you."

  He seemed to reconsider and lowered his hands. "My apologies. Don't know what came over me."

  "You got delusions."

  "Yet a keen inkling of your retaliatory response." He took a step back.

  She eyed him, not quite convinced he'd given up his crusade to comfort her. "Damn straight. I'd kick your ass, thane's son."

  He replied with a chin dip, then continued toward the berthing corridor, leaving her riled and ornery and itching for a fight.

  She hated that he acquiesced, but it just underscored what an utter imbecile she'd become. She truly had no business haranguing him. Her da would say to hand him your pickax but never your helmet. She could partner up with Dyr without losing her head, without any oath swearing or mutual regard mucking up their interactions. They just had to stick together until they got off this damn barge.

  She swallowed back the lump in her throat.

  She guessed she could be... nice to him... and have it mean nothing at all. Just more pretty words, easy to wipe away.

  "By Unholde," Dyr growled.

  A chill seized Vedma's spine, jangling her nerves and icing her belly. It pushed her headache and nausea, and even that underlying tingling of her genital cilia, into the background. She'd yet to hear Dyr sound so enraged.

  He charged down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of crumpled bodies in the corridor that led to berthing.

  Vedma approached at a more cautious pace, taking in the scene before her.

  Six men, in full Teras Tactical assault armor, lay dead on the deck. They'd all fallen on their bellies with holes blown through their armor. The best damn armor in the Tendex had been torn into like tissue.

  "Dyr?" She drew his name out, not sure what she expected him to say or do.

  With a fierce frown on his face, she watched him assess the carnage. He knelt by the bodies, changed his vantage point by canting his head, then even lowered himself to the deck. Snarling, he pushed up, tucked his feet beneath him, and got back on his feet.

  "Here?" He shook his head and curled his lip, exposing his teeth. "Why here?"

  She had no idea what he rambled on about. "Dyr?"

  "This corridor is a damn kill box." He jammed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the hatch behind him. "Berthing should be right through there. It's defensible."

  As if to prove his own assessment, he strode to the hatch, which was already open, and proceeded on through. Vedma hurried after him, gasping when she saw dozens of the stacked bunks were missing. Cryo-bins had been slotted in their place. Two slots sat empty.

  Dyr, standing before the empty slots, turned to look at her.

  She stayed him with her hand. "I know. I know. We were in those slots."

  "So it would appear."

  "The others?" She gestured to the other bins.

  "All empty."

  Relief should have flooded her, but alarm gripped her instead. The kidnappers had planned on additional prisoners.

  Dyr clenched and unclenched his fists as his chest heaved. Vedma gandered a guess as to his thoughts. He'd spent a year tucked into that slot, and based on the dead bodies they just encountered, he might never know why.

  Abruptly he pivoted and marched back to the corridor, and Vedma trailed along in his wake.

  He hunched down next to one of the bodies again. Then he shifted position, miming that he held an imaginary bullpulse rifle and took aim down the corridor.

  His assumed stance had her casting her gaze about the deck and asking, "Where're their weapons?"

  "Probably the first thing the Gwyretti carted off to their pipe. Guaranteed payload. Better than the ship's components."

  He continued to stare down the sight of his imaginary rifle.

  "Dyr? What's bangin' 'round inside your noggin?"

  "Don't like it when things aren't what they appear to be. If I'm bracing for a forward assault—"

  She cut him off. "They weren't bracin'. They were runnin'."

  He flinched and shot her an outraged glare. "But the attack would've come from down the corridor."

  "They're all shot in the back, Dyr," she said, not unkindly.

  He flicked his gaze back to the armored bodies, his expression one of befuddlement.

  She sighed. "You're lookin' at this like a thane. Like a man who ordered his men to hold the corridor. So they'd be facin' the enemy and holdin' the f
ort and dyin' in flames of glory, but the truth is, they was runnin'."

  He frowned and shook his head. "No, they—"

  "They're all shot in the back and fell on their bellies." She flipped her hand, the motion purely rote, her go-to deflection because the implications shook her just as badly as Dyr. TerTac grunts, especially armored ones, didn't run. "But don't mind me, you just keep on seein' the world through your shaded lenses. I'll wait for you to join me in the real world."

  "Vedma." He sounded lost like he didn't want to believe her.

  "Armor don't make the man, Dyr. If these grunts were so honorable, where's their house crest?"

  He reached for the closest body, running his hands over the smooth shoulder bracer, the prime location where houses branded their crest into armor.

  Settling back on his heels, he swallowed thickly. "How old are you?"

  Based on what she had read about him, she was just a few years older, but damn him and his patronizing tone. "Fine. Dismiss me."

  "No. You're correct, Vedma." He pushed to his feet. "I just don't like that you see the world with such cynicism. You're very sard."

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "Is that an insult? You're sayin' it like an insult."

  His lips curled, but she'd never call it a smile. His expression held no joy. "You're practical beyond your years. It's the highest form of compliment I know."

  Unable to read him, she scoffed. "More pretty words, then."

  Surely, he shit talked her.

  "No, Vedma," he said quietly. "The honest truth."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dyr had no more reasons to snipe at her. What he first perceived as her unadorned faults paled when compared with their dark reality. He thought he had a handle on their situation. If the Gwyretti were not the culprits, then certainly they pitted against a ragtag clade of haggard Teras Unsworns. He'd charge forth, thrash their asses, and save the godsdamn day. He never expected to encounter a fully-kitted Teras Tactical assault team. An assault team that had been mowed down like blades of grass.

  Even more unsettling, he had to stop thinking of those fallen grunts as Fleet. They weren't fleetmen. No way TerTac would kidnap an Athela and stash her in stasis. His deserting ass, sure. But not her.

  Admitting those dead men weren't Fleet didn't change much at all. He still had no fucking idea what was going on. None. With the stimulant still coursing through his system, discombobulating him with awareness and rousing his cock and anthers, his first reaction erupted as panicked vigilance. He snatched Vedma's wrist and proceeded to drag her all over the damn barge, searching each compartment, cubby, and cupboard, looking for ghosts.

  He couldn't accept that they were alone, for now, stranded on a near-derelict ship, with no comms, no transport, and no damn answers.

  "...there was this perfect Athela and an Unsworn technopath..."

  Except for that. At least they had that. A cryptic recording that played over and over, spurring him to gnash his teeth and clench his fists.

  Whereas the stimulant and his own temper propelled him onward, he could see Vedma fading. Her speech wasn't punctuated with her insufferable 'eching' and the boots of the Gwyretti spacewalk suit clopped along the deck. Torn between protecting her bodily versus hunting down hostiles, he took her to berthing.

  Selecting a cabin that he'd already cleared, he tore through the supplies stored there. Based on the items he uncrated—rations, spare clothes, medicine—this particular cabin had probably been the field camp of the slaughtered kidnappers.

  Finding no additional weapons, he pressed the sword into her hands. "You've handled one before?"

  She shook her head, then said, "Poke 'em with the pointy end, aye?"

  It worried him that she said nothing further. No quip. No barb. She slouched like gloomy rain without the gusting wind.

  Needing to do more, he returned to the corridor and the kidnappers' bodies. He removed two WristCunes. Based on his quick vetting of all six devices, none of the kidnappers were technopathic. Their user tracks had all been consistent with manual user interfacing. He didn't know how he felt about that; he and Vedma, both technopaths, had been held by non-technopaths.

  He handed her the WristCune. Hovered until she rolled her eyes and strapped it onto her wrist. An improvement in her mood, but she still unsettled him. So much so that when he left her, he paced the corridor, debating his course of action.

  But he had to do this. He needed to be certain that no one else remained aboard. So he jogged away, intent on sweeping clear a vessel the size of a damn urban square. The materials barge's size matched Prykimis, the spirenought he served on while he had been clade to House Jahat.

  In the corridor outside the control room, he saw a mounted nameplate, stylized in Ancient Athelasan, identifying the ship as Kigen. Well, at least one ghost now had a name, although the name meant nothing to him. Without access to the greater AthNet, he couldn't search for the barge, either. The ship-wide comms ghost still bantered with him. Had him sprinting to each comms station, only to find the terminals were either offline or broken. The recording continued to play throughout the ship. A dry, joyless chuckle followed by the same damn words.

  "...perfect Athela and an Unsworn technopath..."

  Finally succumbing to fatigue, he dragged himself back to Vedma, rallying his energy reserves as he stepped through the hatch. No need for her to see him burned out of fuel.

  She'd changed out of the Gwyretti spacewalk suit and now wore what appeared to be a fleet standard-issue jumper with no insignia. Her hands poked out of the overly long sleeves, like a ratka pup peeking out of its burrow. The shitkicker boots on her feet looked ridiculous with the pant cuffs of the jumper pooling around the ankle fastenings. She'd braided her hair. The shiny plait trailed along her spine as she dipped her head and tucked into a ration packet.

  She sat on a cot and flicked her eyes up to him as she slurped a starchy smelling mash into her mouth.

  "Good news." She mumbled around her food. "We ain't gonna starve."

  He sank down on an adjacent cot. "What did you find?"

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. He pushed down on the snide huff that now constricted his chest. She'd spent years at the foremost institute in the Teras Dominion, yet had the social graces of a foraging swine. When Dyr forswore his house and slunk amongst other Unsworns, he had to consciously omit social graces to avoid being called out constantly. Whereas he dropped manners, adapted for self-preservation, Vedma refused to acquire them—had even been known to flaunt her uncouthness.

  Did he admire her blatant disregard of social graces—that her change in station hadn't changed her as well? Or did he resent that his fall from grace forced him to transform into someone else entirely?

  "Ration bars," she said, pulling him back into the moment. "Canteen porridge. Don't feel like you gotta contain your excitement, thane's son. This here's good eats."

  Ah. She didn't pull him back but shoved him head first into their shitty circumstances.

  He leaned over to rifle through the food crate and released his pent-up huff. "Better than eating bugs."

  The resulting silence had him wincing. Even worse, he'd ducked his head, meaning she didn't see his flash of regret. Perhaps he could play it off as some light ribbing.

  "Now that's just mean," she said softly. "They were my pets, you arse."

  She was right. That comment made him an unmitigated arse. He had no defense and no energy to utter a half-assed apology.

  He cleared his throat. "How are you feeling?"

  "I'm starvin' and nauseous." She shrugged. "I feel like shit."

  He nodded his head since he felt the same. Well, the same plus a constant awareness of his damn cock. "It's just the stimulants running their course. Probably some post-cryo symptoms as well."

  "Do those symptoms make things taste delicious? 'Cause this shit tastes delicious." She slurped up another mouthful of mash and winked at him.

  He laughed. Just a little sno
rt that sounded like a cough. She apparently didn't harbor any grudges.

  "Possibly," he said, tucking into his own packet of mash.

  "You find anythin'?"

  "Searching the ship? Other than its name, no."

  She straightened her spine and tilted her head back, shaking mash from the packet into her gaping mouth. "What's its name?"

  "Kigen." Gods, he just couldn't look away from her, could he? He canted his head as she began to roll the packet, squeezing the last morsels out.

  "Never heard of it." She sucked on the foil.

  Not to be caught staring, he turned his attention to his own packet. "Neither have I."

  "Ship's old."

  "Aye."

  "Could be Athelasan."

  "Aye."

  She nodded along. "So you're thinkin' we're alone?"

  "Aye." He felt like the busted recording. "But there's no telling when more salvagers or kidnappers could arrive."

  "You think more are comin'?" As soon as she spoke, she grumped. "Course more are comin'. No sense settin' us adrift with all them supplies. All them empty cryo-bins."

  He sighed. "Aye."

  They ate in silence.

  She slipped her feet out of her boots and resituated herself on the cot, crossing her legs and tucking in her toes. "Do you know how we got abducted?"

  He took his time chewing and swallowing his mash, not wanting to rush headlong into this conversation. Mostly because he had no answers. The food went down his gullet like hardening clay.

  "No. Last I remember is shuttling off my ship with some crewmates." Didn't want to add that they had been heading for Radost, a pleasure planet. Doubted that she'd believe he'd been wrangled to pilot and guard the transport. No shore leave amusements for him. "What about you? You kept saying something about a test?"

  She scoffed, gracing him with her disdain filled 'ech' again. "Don't know why I said that. I'm done, well, was done, with all them tests. Unholde himself can't force me to take another one. So I don't really know what I was babblin' about when I woke up." She gave him a wily look. "You were askin' for five more minutes."

  That surprised him. "I was?"

  Her lips tugged up slightly at the corners. "That and somethin' about battle stations."