The man only had time to let out a satisfying squeal and a dribble of blood from his mouth before the blade flashed and Nev laid them both flat like everyone else. He grinned at me over his shoulder and beckoned with his sword. Far more surprising than his inappropriate attitude to the whole situation was that I found myself grinning back at him.
I stumbled away from the wall as he lifted the microchipped key to the starfighter off the pilot, along with yet another ID card. He was building quite the collection. “Probably the only reason I’m doing this instead of just leaving him to get sucked into space”—Nev grabbed one of the disgusting man’s legs and dragged him toward the airlock doors—“is so he can live with the shame of all this.”
He did the same with the pilot, depositing them safely on the other side of the doorway. I was ashamed myself that I was too weak to help him, but I couldn’t even attempt to offer. Nev didn’t seem bothered.
Once he’d sealed the airlock again, he dusted off his hands. “Ready?”
“Ready,” I said, unable to keep from grinning again, even as tired as I was. Or maybe because I was so tired. “Let’s get back to the Kaitan and get the blasted hell out of here.”
How I would explain his presence to the crew posed a greater challenge than starting up the starfighter, blowing straight through the bay doors with a pair of plasma torpedoes, and jetting for the stars through the ragged hole. Any fighters that could have followed us came tumbling out behind us, unmanned, into the vacuum of space.
“You,” Eton growled while stabbing a finger at me, “ought to be dead.”
He sounded disappointed, rather than amazed that I wasn’t. We were seated in the messroom, where the crew could eat their meals or spend some quality time stewing in awkwardness, as we currently were.
Eton had been blessedly absent before now, holed up in the turret, chipping away at the destroyer with the mass driver. Not that it had been all that necessary since, mysteriously, it hadn’t even attempted to return fire or lock onto us again with its tractor beam. Maybe that was because Captain Uvgamut had so neatly and astonishingly disabled it from the inside out. Arjan had been piloting the Kaitan away from the foundering destroyer, but he’d since put the ship on autopilot. And now that everyone had finished their various duties, we’d gathered here for what was shaping up to be a rousing good time.
I glanced at Qole. She looked to be at death’s door—her eyes were deeply hollowed and her entire face remained shockingly pale for someone with a complexion that dark. My only consolation was that some color had finally returned to her lips.
It hurt to look at her, both in sympathy for the obvious abuse she had sustained, and because what in the systems had transpired in that destroyer? Shadow affinity was one thing, but what I had seen and experienced was entirely fantastical—more magic than science.
What had been perhaps even more amazing was that, in the middle of a complete rage, in the grip of some unspeakable power, she hadn’t lost control. In my admittedly limited experience of Shadow in anyone other than Qole, black eyes seemed to indicate madness—obvious, nonsensical, reckless insanity. Instead, Qole had shown a restraint and quality of behavior that I knew I wouldn’t have had. And she had obviously paid the price.
Here I sat, having deceived her practically since I’d met her, using tricks instead of the truth to try to achieve my goals, and I had only a few bruises to show for it.
I didn’t want to think about why else it might hurt to look at her. She was sitting across the table from me, keeping her distance. I had the strong urge to close that distance, but I couldn’t. She wouldn’t want me to. For a moment there on the destroyer, it had been just the two of us, a polarized pair united by a common goal. But now we were back to being worlds apart. It almost made me miss the destroyer.
I wanted to share the same goal again—and preferably without the looming threat of death. I wanted to tell her the truth. All of it.
Despite looking at the end of her charge, Qole somehow managed to sit up straight when she spoke. Her voice was steady, but she wasn’t meeting my eyes. “Eton, he just saved my life.”
“So what? Qole, you were in danger because of him in the first place.”
I swallowed. There was little denying he was right.
“Eton’s right,” Arjan helpfully confirmed. “One minute, our lives are fine, and the next you’re almost dead and the Kaitan is shot up, thanks to him.” He stood with his arms crossed, and his fury was more contained but no less potent than Eton’s. “I’m glad he wasn’t a total scumbag, I guess, but he’s still a piece of scat.”
“And did you see what he did to Eton?” Telu demanded. “He beat the snot out of him. Not what I’d say was nice-guy behavior.”
“Hey.” Eton scowled, an expression somehow made all the more frightening with half of his face swollen and bruised. “There’s no need.”
Telu shrugged. “Sorry. But I say we strip his stuff as payment, maybe rough him up so he gives us some sweet credentials to a princely bank account, hey?” Her face started to redden. She practically spat out her next words. “Then we can leave him in some scum hole and tell everyone he’s there. And we can say, ‘Oh hey, we were super nice, we thought he’d be okay there, we didn’t intend to get him killed or anything.’?”
“Attractive as the thought may be, you’d only be causing us a great deal more trouble,” Basra said. “And he didn’t call the destroyer on us—he tried to warn us about using the comms; we didn’t listen.”
Arjan stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t be serious, Bas.” He sounded almost hurt. There was tension between them disproportionate to Basra’s logical comment, and I filed it away for later investigation.
“It’s not that complicated,” Qole said. She still wouldn’t look at me. “He lied to us, and everyone got in trouble. He also saved my life, probably all our lives, when he didn’t have to. We drop him off where he can get transport, he promises to never contact us again, and we’re done.”
I’d assumed her initial judgment would sting, but such an impersonal dismissal from her life hurt a lot more than that. I wasn’t sure what I had expected from her…a little more credit, after what we’d been through? Acknowledgment? Acknowledgment of what? I had no idea.
Silence settled around the table as everyone considered this somewhat acceptable course of action. Acceptable, that is, to everyone but me, for whom it was profoundly wrong on multiple levels. I took a deep breath. The last twenty-four hours might have been hell, but this was going to be the hardest part.
I let out the breath. “I’m afraid you can’t really do that.”
“Why the hell not?” Qole asked. She only gave me a glance at that, then focused determinedly on the wall somewhere to my right.
I rubbed my jaw. The pain suppressors were making it a very disengaged servant, and I needed it in top form right now.
Basra stole my thunder. “That destroyer won’t be the last one, will it?”