Hotbloods 6: Allies

I frowned, confused. “Do you think we picked her up on the Junkyard?”


Stone laughed. “No chance, Ri. I’d have sniffed ‘er out at some occasion, if she’d been ‘ere that long. Has to have been more recent than that.”

I remembered the mysterious clang just outside Vysanthe that had hit the rear of the ship without leaving a dent. Rexombra were notorious for their ninja-like ways and stealthy behavior. I guessed she’d used those skills to find us near Vysanthe, picking us out as a prime target. The bump might not have been particularly discreet, but it had been enough to put us off the scent—we’d gone running, expecting to find something at the root of the noise. Undoubtedly, our distraction had been the exact thing this Rexombra had needed to get inside. Hell, she’d probably slipped into the engine room behind us, knowing it was a spot none of us went to very often. Now, I realized she was the one responsible for all the strange happenings recently. Perhaps she’d wanted to hijack the navigation system to try to figure out where we were headed. Why she’d cut the wires, however, I didn’t know. Had she wanted to delay us for some reason?

“Tell me, spy, what do you know about us? What have you heard?” I asked, my stomach sinking. “Tell me everything you know, or I will personally see to it that you get put into an airlock without a suit and are fired into space.”

I didn’t really mean it, but I needed her to think I meant business. Before, I’d been afraid of her knowing what Stone was in case she knew how to evade him, but now I realized the true extent of what she must have overheard. If she’d been on this ship since we’d picked up the transmissions outside Vysanthe, then she’d had the opportunity to listen in on everything we’d said about the queens, the rebels, the elixir, the notebook, and Earth. By now, she’d know just as much as we did… and that meant the people she worked for did, too.

She glared at me in silence, her mouth frozen.

“Stone, unfreeze her mouth.”

“As you like, Ri,” he said, releasing the Rexombra’s mouth from the grip of his third eye.

I lifted my gun to her, not taking any chances. Her golden eyes glowered in my direction as she bared her teeth with a flash of sharp fangs.

“I will not breathe a word. For my queen!” she roared. Before Stone or I could do anything to stop her, she chomped her jaws together, biting down on something hidden within her mouth. Purple froth spilled out of her mouth a split second later, dripping to the floor, where it sizzled. Stone unfroze her, and she collapsed, her eyes glazing over as her body slumped forward. He caught her before she could hit the deck, gently lowering her to the ground.

“For her queen?” I gasped, horrified by what I’d just witnessed.

Stone nodded, peering at the dead Rexombra. “Likely the boss she was working for.”

“Gianne must have done this,” I whispered, almost hyperventilating at the sight of the female’s contorted face. Her eyes were turning a sickening shade of milky white. “The queen must have had her spies lying in wait, with orders to get aboard any vessel that came too close.”

My stomach churned. The Rexombra’s state was only worsening as the moments passed. Her sleek, beautiful black fur was withering to a curled gray, as though someone had ignited a lighter too close to her body. The liquid in whatever pill she’d taken was clearly potent, eating up her body from the inside out so there would be no scrap of evidence left.

“You oughta scarper pretty sharpish,” Stone warned. “I’ve seen these pills work afore, and they ain’t nice. I’ll deal with ‘er, if you wanna go tell the others what’s gone on.”

I nodded gratefully, skirting past the dead body and clambering up the steps and out of the hatch, eager to be as far from the engine room as possible. Holding on to the contents of my stomach, I hurried along the corridor to the cockpit, where the others were waiting, apparently oblivious to anything that had happened. I supposed they’d had no way of knowing, since the stun pellets were silent, but still… it seemed impossible that somebody had just died, and they had no idea.

“Riley, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” Lauren said. She rushed over to where I stood leaning against the entrance of the cockpit, using the doorframe to hold myself up. It was the only thing stopping me from fainting.

I shook my head, feeling woozy. “We found someone… They snuck on board. They were spying on us. They took a pill, and… they’re dead.”

“What do you mean?” Angie asked, joining Lauren as they helped me over to one of the chairs.

Everyone clustered around, their expressions worried. Navan was nowhere to be seen, though. The poor guy had probably gone off to take a nap in our room; I’d have to catch him up later. I took a deep breath and told the others everything that had happened, from the first sighting after the severed cable, to the last sight I’d seen when I’d hurried from the engine room.

“So, I think she was working for Queen Gianne as a spy outside Vysanthe, employed to listen in on anyone who came too close—anyone who seemed to be acting suspiciously, in the vicinity of the planet,” I concluded miserably. “She must have heard everything we said. At the very least, she’ll know about the notebook and the rebel base on Earth.”

“You realize what this means, don’t you?” Bashrik said somberly.

“Queen Gianne will be headed for Earth as soon as she figures out where it is,” Xiphio answered for him.

“It won’t take her long. She must have the information from the Asterope hidden away somewhere. Plus, her spy will have had access to our navigation system. Even a vague idea of where Earth is will make finding it easy,” Bashrik said.

Ronad sighed deeply. “She has the secret to deep-space tech now, right? Once she has those coordinates, there’ll be nothing standing in her way.”

“Plus, I know the cruiser is faster than a lot of ships, but we are still weeks away from Earth,” Lauren murmured. “Even factoring in the time it’ll take for Gianne to build new deep-space ships, she’ll get there before we do at this rate.”

At that moment, Stone strode into the cockpit, clapping his hands together as if brushing off the last of whatever he’d done to the Rexombran spy.

“Is it done?” I asked anxiously.

He nodded. “Jettisoned ‘er into space. Job’s a good’un. Just… don’t watch out the windshield fer a bit. It’ll not be pretty.”

As if to prove his point, there was a quiet thump as something collided with the windshield. Unable to stop myself, I turned in time to see the Rexombra’s body shatter on impact, scattering in every direction. I snapped my head in the opposite direction, but I’d already seen too much. All of us had, by the looks on everyone’s faces.

“Couldn’t you have put her in a pod or something?” I asked, repulsed.

“Why waste a good pod? Death’s death; she ain’t gonna care if she got a pod or not, but we might care if we need to escape or somethin’.”

“I suppose…”

He wandered over to a chair and sat down, putting his feet on the dashboard. “I’m guessin’ Ri here has caught ye all up on what happened? Sneaky critters, them Rexombra. Better to be the pal of one, instead o’ the victim, right, Ren?”

Lauren smiled at him. “That’s very true. If we’d had Alfa, we might’ve spotted the spy sooner.”

“We were just discussing logistics,” I interjected. “Lauren’s right. Even with the building time it’ll take to get a new fleet in the air, Gianne will get to Earth before us. If we keep going toward Glossa, that is. It’s still three days away, but if we turn around now and head for Earth right away, and really punch the engines, we might be able to give ourselves a head start. It might buy us that day or two that we need to beat Gianne to it.”

Stone sat up straight, turning toward me. “Nah, not gonna happen, pal.”

“Let me finish, Stone,” I fired back.

“We don’t go to Earth ‘til I’ve got me crew back. That’s final.”