Spyware? She lied to me? I look up at her, the indignation building in my chest—and when I see the expression of exhaustion and determination on her face, I realize I should be grateful. She saved my life. “Thank you.”
We’ve entered what looks like a metal shop. Shears, rollers, punchers, and drills are clamped to the walls, and two uniformed soldiers wield a plasma cutter to slice a sheet of steel. The air smells of ozone. “They’re making repairs to the ship,” says Sirna. “Let’s stay out of their way.”
I peel off the constricting gloves, wincing.
“Rho, your hands,” says Hysan, gingerly holding my wrists so he can survey the damage without inflicting more, then examining the rest of me. “Your neck, too.”
“Frostbite,” I say. “Ophiuchus. He injured me with Psynergy.”
“How is that possible?” asks Sirna.
Hysan wraps me in his arms again. “I’m so relieved you’re okay,” he says, his voice husky. “We should get you into a life-support pod and heal your hands.”
We weave along a narrow passage cluttered with crates of food, water, and gear lashed to the walls. The Xitium’s a large ship, but its neutron drive and weapons take up most of its volume, and the spaces left over for humans are dim and cramped.
On the bridge, I greet the Ariean Captain Marq, a dark, leathery man built like a boulder. At the start of this mission, Marq seemed enthusiastic, but now when I thank him for rescuing me, he examines me with bloodshot eyes.
“Guardian,” he snarls, making my title sound like an insult. “The shields your colleague provided were worthless. Our ships are rupturing from the inside out. Reactor meltdowns, fires in munitions bays, unexplained hull breaches. We’re in full retreat.”
“The shields were obviously sabotaged,” says Hysan, iciness in his tone. He glares at the captain. “Rho had nothing to do with that.”
Marq’s maroon cheeks flush a deeper shade. “Go with your ambassador, Guardian. We have enough to do.”
Sirna hurries me out of Captain Marq’s sight. “The Arieans have lost many comrades,” she whispers.
“They don’t want me on board, do they?”
Sirna sighs. “Marq gave me a stateroom. You can stay with me.” We skulk away from the bridge, and when soldiers meet us in the passageway, they glare.
“Where’s Rubi?”
Sirna’s face falls. “We lost contact.”
“Rho, I’m going to check with Neith, and then I’ll come find you,” says Hysan. He kisses my cheek before hurrying down the corridor.
Sirna’s stateroom is narrow and barren. She offers me a squeeze-tube of salmon roe. “Protein,” she says. “Eat as much as you can. You’ll need strength.”
She activates her Wave and calls up a scanner view of the fleet, then enhances the image with false color to make the ships easier to identify. Over half our vessels have been destroyed. Sirna magnifies the view of a wrecked pleasure yacht, and I bite my lip until I taste metal. “Those drifting particles, are they . . . bodies?”
Sirna nods and closes her eyes. “The Capricorns were assisting a disabled freighter when their steering went out. Head-on collision.”
She tells me our ships have scattered all over the sky, and every vessel still under power is limping back to its home world. Only two of the five Ariean destroyers survived. When Sirna shows me the latest casualty figures, the air in my lungs turns to sand.
I choke out a cough, shut my eyes tight, and see Mathias standing before me, ramrod straight in his dark blue uniform, strong and serene, only twenty-two years old.
How is it possible I’m still alive? It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
“Rho.” Sirna takes my wounded hands in her own. Her expression’s sober, weary. “There’s something else you need to know. The Marad has come out of hiding. While we’ve been away, they joined the conflict on the Sagittarian moon. They’re arming the rebels, threatening to invade the planet below. We think they have hadron bombs. It seems what the army was waiting on . . . was for us to go.”
“You mean—this was a distraction?” I blurt. “Ochus used a feint?”
Sirna sighs. “We’re all in the dark here, Rho. But right now, we’re going back to Phaetonis. You’ve been summoned.”
? ? ?
Right now is a relative term in space travel. Lightspeed and relativity, time warps, wormholes. Ochus’s game is far more complex than I thought. He didn’t just manipulate Psynergy—he manipulated us.
He turned our own tactic against us.
Caasy’s warning echoes through my mind. He was right: I was deceived. Maybe I still am.
Time is my enemy now. We’ll need four galactic days to reach Phaetonis, and waiting is torture. I’ve been forced to spend the first eighteen hours cooped up in a life-support pod getting my hands repaired. Apparently, Psy wounds take longer to heal than normal injuries.