“Yeah,” Fehn said. “I think we’d be stupid not to.”
Jace rapped his talon over his satchel. Tayel gave him a reassuring smile, the most honest one she could muster, and started forward. They all jogged through the far right door, sirens chasing them through paths carving ever deeper into the Rokkir mothership.
Chapter 28
The blaring alarm snapped Ruxbane out of his paperwork trance. He’d never heard the ship’s siren before, but the orange swath of flashing lights and the sudden fear in his requisition officer’s widening eyes told him all he needed to know: he and his people were in danger.
He thrust the list of lab equipment requests back into the officer’s hands and ran. Out the door, to the left. The command center would be at the end of the hall, and with any luck it would have answers. There were no windows this deep into the ship, no possible way to tell if the trouble came from outside. There was no sign of trouble from the inside either. Only the sirens and the lights casting his shadow as he sprinted down the corridor.
His mind raced with possibilities: a severe blizzard storm, a malfunctioned engine, another Varg attack. No, it couldn’t be the Varg. When they’d charged the city from Kalanie Outpost, Ruxbane had ordered a full assault; a technologically deficient war pack couldn’t possibly breach a Rokkir carrier. But if they did — it was impossible, but if they did — then every Rokkir onboard was waiting for slaughter. That whisper of doubt pushed him faster.
He slowed enough at the door to let it slide automatically open. The command deck beyond bustled with activity, twenty of the brightest operations managers the Rokkir had were running from station to station, shouting commands. Ruxbane ran past them all, ignoring the weight of turning faces as he took the single staircase at the back of the room. The archway at the top let through to the command deck’s second tier. He froze, following the eyes of slack-jawed helmsmen watching the bridge’s main screen.
A camera feed from the first quadrant of the main labs recorded in real time. Dozens of Varg tore through desks, stations, equipment, and people, their rampage a silent, horrifying display even without the audio accompanying it. Ruxbane supported himself against the archway. Those beasts had actually made it on.
Onscreen, a Rokkir scientist fell in the stampede, and a Varg moved quick to finish her off. Her body lurched as his sword sunk deep. She was still for one heartbeat before dissolving around the blade, evaporating upward into the dark matter cloud that was every Rokkir’s truest form. This is when any enemy would walk away. The Rokkir’s physiology would be an enigma to this destitute dog and that scientist would survive.
Instead, the Varg sneered, and plunged his sword into the center of the mass. Ruxbane stiffened. He glared at the understanding on the creature’s face, the way it shuddered when the Rokkir went out like city lights, every strand of neurons that made it life going dark. The matter dissipated, dead, the only way a Rokkir could be.
Ruxbane shivered.
“Sir!” One of the helmsmen caught sight of him. “Sir, we’ve been boarded.”
“I can see that.” Ruxbane snapped the tablet out of the man’s hand.
“That’s a path tracer program for the two groups we’re tracking. One’s the core group of Varg — the ones you’re seeing on the main screen — and the others are—”
A dull ring filled Ruxbane’s head as he flipped to a feed of the second group. His cure, his test subject, and that damned raider princess. His pulse pounded against his ears. This was the last time she would get in his way.
“Sir?”
“Where are our raiders?” Ruxbane asked.
“Sir, you asked for every last troop onboard to be sent into battle against the approaching rovers.”
“Then call them back!”
“We — we’ve been trying, but our communications are blocked. We think the Varg brought a signal jammer onboard, but—”
Another ring sounded in Ruxbane’s skull like a deep pulse. His breaths sounded short against his throbbing eardrums — wheezy, raspy; his hands had clenched into fists. His people were dying. Their work was under siege. He’d failed them. He never should have started this mess. Heat surfaced at the front of his head and combed away the excess thoughts. It was a relief, and it started to spread.
“Get me Adonna,” he demanded.
“At once, sir.”
The helmsman ran off, and Ruxbane dropped the tablet face up on an empty station. He watched back and forth between the princess’ party and the Varg. This ship was a carrier first, and its fighters were all gone. It was a research vessel second, and that meant no defensive suite, no armed security team, and no battle-tested checkpoints to hide behind. The people onboard weren’t aetherions, weren’t soldiers — just scientists and admins. Ruxbane had only one option.
The helmsman returned with Adonna. “Sir!”
“What do we do, Ruxbane?” Adonna snapped.
“We evacuate.”
Her feathers puffed, and her eye ridges narrowed dangerously, but her silence only showed she also understood it was the only option. She nodded once.
“Go to the labs; give our people an escape route,” Ruxbane said. “I’ll provide escape for everyone here.”
“And after everyone is safe?”
Ruxbane turned to the helmsman. “Tell people they have sixty seconds to be up here and ready to leave.”
“But sir,” the man squeaked, “It will take thirty minutes at least to purge the data, and our backup drive hasn’t finished—”
“I will ensure our ship’s information won’t be compromised,” Ruxbane said.
The man paled but sprinted to a station, relaying Ruxbane’s command through the deck’s intercom.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Adonna said.
“Once you’ve finished saving our science teams, return to the isle and request extraction for our forces here,” Ruxbane ordered. “We have what we came for.”
She squawked. “But we could bring back more Rokkir to stop this!”
“It’s not worth the risk.”
“This ship — this pinnacle of our people’s invention isn’t worth the—”
“This ship’s purpose is complete, pinnacle of invention or otherwise.”
“So you’d waste this resource?”
“People are resources, Adonna, and you would waste them fighting an enemy already beat,” Ruxbane snapped. “This is not where we spill blood. This is not the end of what we’ve come to do.”
Adonna closed her beak over a half-uttered word and averted her eyes. “Understood.” She opened a portal, and Ruxbane watched its other half appear onscreen in the labs. “I assume you won’t leave behind what we did come for.”
“The Varg? I’ll take care of it.”
Adonna lingered for a breath longer before disappearing, and Ruxbane opened a portal of his own. Not to the doomed ship’s labs, but to the floating isle, where his people would be safe. The assembling command deck crew looked to him.
“Everyone through,” he yelled.
One by one his people disappeared through the wavering black until all of them had gone. Ruxbane closed the path with a flick of his wrist as he walked to the main station on the bridge. He brought up the security terminal and with override access granted to him by his position, ended the whir of sirens and swirling orange lights. Finally, it was silent.
Ruxbane picked up the tablet he’d dropped earlier and watched his cure’s path through the ship.
Chapter 29
The sirens had stopped minutes ago, leaving only the sound of their footfalls to echo dully off the gray walls. No maps were etched into the corridors like in Castle Aishan, and with every aimless step, they ran deeper into the mothership. The architecture had become less angular. The ceiling stretched higher, and the hallways widened. The lights had dimmed to a grayish hue akin to an early Elshan morning. It all made Tayel’s skin crawl.