She cleared her throat. “What do you want with me?”
“What does it matter?” Shy asked. “You’re not going with him.”
“Maybe this would be a better conversation away from the princess of the raiders who invaded your homeworld,” Ruxbane said.
Tayel glared. “Invaded only because you made them.”
“With that sick mind control xite we saw in Castle Aishan,” Shy spat. “And you’re doing it to hopeless refugees, too.”
Ruxbane’s eyebrows shot up in surprise he quickly stifled. “I don’t intend to do that to you. I won’t harm you.”
Tayel stood taller. “It’s hard to believe that, considering all the harm you’ve caused in the last few weeks.”
“You Rokkir have abducted hundreds of thousands of my people,” Balcruf barked.
“And killed hundreds of thousands more,” Tayel added.
Ruxbane winced. “Deaths are an unfortunate necessity.”
“A necessity for what? What are you trying to do that’s so important you’ve basically destroyed an entire system?”
“Please, Tayel. I need you. You could save lives. More will die if you don’t come and you could help us — you could help me. I’m dying.”
Shy snorted. “Good.”
“I could be free of this” -Ruxbane gripped his head, teeth bared — “You have a gene — in your DNA — that I need. It will cure an ailment of my people and it will save billions in the years to come.”
Tayel crossed her arms, not in defiance, but to stifle the growing discomfort in her chest, or maybe in her conscience. Billions of people. Billions of which people? Of Rokkir? She’d save them so they could continue to raid the Igador System, maybe more? Balcruf eyed her sternly, like he was searching her for something.
“I can’t,” she stammered.
“Please,” Ruxbane begged. “After all this, I—please.”
Her guilt boiled over into anger. “I said I’m not going!” she snapped.
Ruxbane squeezed his head until she was sure he was going to crack his own skull. He swung his arm down and turned on his heel, shoulders stiff as he marched to the dashboard at the back of the room. The blank screen above him flickered to life.
It showed a view of a stark white room filled with endless columns and rows of glass tubes. Unconscious Varg floated inside them, and outside, the Varg who had gone in search of their stolen kin tried to rip the glass open.
Balcruf howled. He fired a pointless bolt at the shield. He leapt at it next, swiping at the purple ripples with his bladed crossbow even as every blow slid off.
He snapped his head toward Tayel. “Do something.”
She froze. He wanted her to offer herself up. It was the only thing she could do, but she couldn’t — wouldn’t. It was unthinkable.
At the base of the containment tubes onscreen, previously white nodes turned a purple-black hue like the dark aether itself. The captured Varg slipped downward, falling into portals which formed inside the glass. They all vanished. All of them. In an instant.
Balcruf’s howl faded into a whine. He backed away from the barrier. The crossbow clattered to the floor, and then he to his knees.
Shy gasped. “Oh, xite.”
“What did you do, Ruxbane?” Tayel asked.
Most of the Varg outside the tubes in the video gave up as Balcruf had, but one pounded a now empty tube with silent, frantic desperation — even faster, more flurried than before.
Ruxbane cut the feed. “I’ve transported them.”
“Where?” she demanded.
He didn’t answer. The dashboard beeped and whined as he input commands she couldn’t see. He pressed one final button before turning, and the ground shuddered. Distant sirens echoed up the stairs behind her. The floor rattled again, and she widened her stance for balance. Ruxbane opened a dark portal beside him.
“Whatever you’re doing here on Modnik — to all of Igador — it’s wrong!” Tayel yelled. “You only care about your own life, and you’ve just ruined so many more.”
He glared at her.
The ground tremored again — harder this time — and Tayel caught herself against Shy. Sirens rose all around her, grating against her eardrums. Her stomach did a flip like she was falling.
“I do hope enough of you survives this crash to scrape into a test tube,” Ruxbane snapped, and he stepped through the portal. It closed instantly behind him.
Tayel grit her teeth, her retort stuck in her throat. No point yelling insults meant for the Rokkir now.
Shy grabbed her wrist. “We need to go!”
“I — I know. What about Balcruf?”
“If he wants to die crying, let him.”
Shy pushed her forward. Tayel stumbled into a run without sparing the control room another glance, but even so, the image of a world’s worth of Varg vanishing through the bottom of glass tubes refused to leave her head.
Chapter 30
Tayel stumbled as another distant explosion rocked the ground. She caught herself against the wall and kept moving, wincing at the sharp pain throbbing up her shins. Sirens blared through the ship, and their accompanying alarm lights cast every slightly tilted corridor in orange. An inferno eliminated one of the paths ahead. Shattered window glass littered the hallway where the flames had burst free. Tayel gave the destruction a wide berth, running left.
At this rate, they would never escape. It was a wonder the mothership still flew at all. Any moment it could succumb to gravity’s deadly pull, and she’d be pinned to the ceiling as it fell.
She stopped at the next turn in the hallway. The others had taken much worse beatings in the fight than her. They were slower, less alert. Jace edged around the fire Tayel had passed, lifting his head for the half second it must have took to know he was still headed the right way. Shy skirted past the flames next, one arm under Fehn’s as she led him forward. Even with Shy’s thick coat tied snugly to his wound, spots of blood started to seep through. He limped forward at roughly the pace of Jace’s jog, but his face had lost more color.
“Hurry up!” Fear strained Tayel’s throat, making her voice crack.
She ran ahead, in the direction she continued to desperately hope was the hangar bay. Too many destroyed hallways and rooms had prevented tracing their original steps. There weren’t any schematics on the walls, but the corridors had narrowed and the ceiling had sloped to match the tightening angle of the mothership’s rim — good signs. Not as good as the open bay and its rows of ships, but good enough to hope. Good enough to keep going.
“Hey!” Shy cried.
Tayel tore her baton free of its mag strap and spun around.
Balcruf staggered past Shy and Fehn, then Jace, his shoulders drooping as his enormous bare paws plodded him forward. Relief and guilt hit Tayel in equal measures. She didn’t — couldn’t — help him when Ruxbane stole away his people, but at least he wasn’t letting sorrow kill him. She didn’t think she could have lived with that.
“Balcruf,” she yelled over the sirens.
He didn’t stop. Just kept running, his tail dragging across the floor. Tayel met Shy’s eyes for a beat and re-sheathed her baton, chasing after him. He didn’t flinch when she reached his side. Didn’t even look at her. Given the circumstances, she didn’t blame him, but the silence felt like more than the result of a desperate flee. It built up thick around him.