“It’s hellish hot in ‘ere, right?” he mused. “Me forehead’s sweating bullets!”
Holding my breath, I watched as he removed his bandana, revealing his third eye. Sticking close to his side so I wouldn’t get caught in its gaze, I waited as he moved his line of sight across every inch of the room, starting from one side and moving all the way over to the other. There were plenty of places to hide in the engine room, but Stone was already one step ahead.
“Where’s a wrench when you need one?” he asked, weaving through the built-up machinery, casting his glance in every direction. All I could do was follow him as he hurried along, his expression thoughtful, as though he knew precisely what he was doing. “Why don’t you shoot in all them corners, see if we can catch any of the buggers!”
I did as he instructed, firing rounds off into the darkened corners of the engine room as we pushed through from the back of the space, heading for the hatch again. If our stowaway was down here, they would have no choice but to run or reveal themselves. As it happened, they seemed to agree with the idea of running.
“There!” Stone yelled, turning his gaze toward the stepladder.
A slight gap had appeared between the hatch and the engine room ceiling, letting us know that someone was trying to escape. Now that Stone knew they were there, he had them caught in his freezing vision. The gap in the hatch stayed the same, even though I couldn’t see the person holding it up. Evidently, they’d made a break for it, hoping they could get out into the ship, where they could lose themselves in another hiding spot, using the vessel’s vast size to their advantage.
What they hadn’t counted on was me having an ambaka as my secret weapon. With the ambaka species well-documented as being extinct, I doubted our stowaway would even have known what Stone was, especially as he kept his third eye under wraps. Even in discussions about what we were going to do on Earth, we’d kept Stone’s skillset vague, speaking only about his “powers,” so it was likely that the hidden lingerer had no clue what trouble they’d stepped into. If they had guessed, they would still have only had two options: run or attack. The fact that they hadn’t attacked made me even more curious.
I fired a pulse of blue light at the stepladder, the stun setting sending electrical charges out of the barrel toward its victim. At first, I missed, which forced me to fire out another few rounds. The last of them hit its mark. The invisibility suit flickered, as it had done above my head earlier, and a clear shape faded in and out of sight.
With Stone holding the stowaway in place, we approached. He leaned forward and grasped at the flickering suit, finding the switch that rendered it useless. The invisibility shield crackled for the last time as it fazed back into sight. The silver, rubbery material covered the whole body, with a ski mask-like hood concealing the face. I reached for the hood.
Chapter Thirty
As the hood came away, I gasped. A female Rexombra stood before me, the silky black of her fur spiking up in two mohawks that rose from the base of her neck, up to the peak at either side of her forehead. She had the face of a panther, her feline eyes piercing into mine. Hooked inside one of her cat-like ears, a scarlet feather dangled from a silver hoop. I’d seen a similar piercing in the ear of Alfa, Stone’s friend and crewmate, who was of the same species as this female, though I didn’t know what the feather was supposed to represent. Both of her muscular arms were frozen in the air, lifting the hatch up, her body stiff. Even so, judging by the pure fury burning in her eyes, I could tell she was fierce.
“What’s a Rexombra doing on board our ship?” I asked, thinking out loud.
Stone offered a shrug. “’Tis not unusual for folks of all kinds to hire Rexombra as spies or assassins—any job they don’t wanna do themselves, usually. They’re trained killers, no two ways about it. A useful skillset to a lot of folks, given they’re stealthy and never get themselves caught.”
“You think the rebels would send an assassin?”
“Dunno, could be. Bit pricey for ‘em, I would’ve thought.”
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… i
t 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.”
“You aren’t in charge of this ship, Stone,” Angie said coldly.
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but ye need me more than I need you.”
Lauren looked to him with sad eyes. “What are you saying, Stone?”
“I’m sayin’ I won’t help a one of ye until I get me crew back. You gotta understand, Ren—what yer askin’ me to do is the same as me askin’ you to leave yer pals behind. I can’t do it.”
I wanted to tell him that he’d already asked her to do that when he kidnapped her, but I held my tongue. Getting into a different argument with Stone wouldn’t do us any favors right now, not when he was already being stubborn.
“And we won’t change your mind?” Ronad asked.
“’Fraid not.”
“Stone, will you just listen to me for a second! I wasn’t finished talking,” I snapped, losing my patience. As much as I hated wasting time, I knew we had to reunite Stone with his crew. If we wanted an advantage over the rebels, we would need his powers. More than that, if we wanted to claw back a head start over Gianne, we were going to need whatever goods he had available from his years of scavenging and trading.
He held up his hands. “My bad, Ri. Tempers are flarin’, and I got all carried up in the flow. What more did ye have to say about it?”
“You and your crew have got something we need. So, as much as I hate to say it, we have to go to Glossa, regardless of the time it’ll take us to get there.”
Bashrik frowned. “What?”
“We’re going to have to give some time in order to buy ourselves more of it,” I explained.
Stone nodded in appreciation. “I remember now. Ye need to give this cruiser some juice, right?”
“Precisely.”
“An’ I’ve got the goods to make the juice?”
“I’m really hoping so.”
Lauren’s eyes brightened. “Are you talking about all that stuff in the cargo bay?”
“Bingo,” I replied. “Although, I’m not sure what he’s got, exactly. He just keeps saying he’s got ‘stuff.’ You’ve spent time on that ship—don’t suppose you can shed a little light on it?”
Lauren turned to me, looking hopeful. “Stone has been collecting all these different engine parts over the years. He steals them from people who don’t pay up. There’ll definitely be something in there that the guys can use to patch together a deep-space engine. He’s got power cells and mechanisms from species all across the universe.”
Ronad and Bashrik exchanged a look. “You might be a stubborn ass, but at least you’ve got the goods to back it up,” Ronad said, smiling.
“Ye’ve always gotta have the goods, pal. Always.”
Over the course of the next three days, Stone kept to himself, while the rest of us drifted aimlessly through the ship, spending our days together in the cockpit before retreating to bed each night. Everyone felt more hopeful, thanks to the news that Stone likely had what we needed to upgrade the engines. I was trying to feel more positive, too, but I worried that by the time we picked up his crew, souped up the engines, and returned to Earth, there was every chance we might still be too late. I’d caught Navan up with everything that had happened with the Rexombra, and the story seemed to warm him a little toward Stone, in addition to the news about the scavenger’s supplies.
On that first night, after the stressful events of the spy in our midst, I attempted to stay awake to figure out what Navan was doing, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light. Even with the stresses of Gianne playing on my mind, I couldn’t fight sleep, to the point where I began to wonder if someone had slipped something into my evening herbal tea.
On the second night, things had started off in the same manner. As soon as my head had hit the pillow, I’d drifted off into a fitful slumber, only to be awoken an hour later by a terrifying nightmare. In the fever of my dream, I’d seen the flickering Rexombra dangling from a cable above me. Her disintegrating body bristled with electrical currents as her rotting hand reached for my throat
, her golden gaze turning milky white. My eyes blinked open with a start, and a cold sweat trickled down my forehead.
Staring at the wall opposite, my mind racing a million miles a minute, I couldn’t help wondering if there might be another spy hiding somewhere. I was pretty sure there wasn’t, but my brain was working overtime, conjuring up worst-case scenarios left, right, and center.
Wanting some comfort, I wriggled backward in bed, snuggling up to the familiar shape of Navan’s body. He slipped his arm around my waist, scooping me closer, making me feel safe. To be honest, I was surprised he was still alert enough to hold me, but I was glad he was. After what I’d been through that day, I needed to cuddle, even if we were both only half conscious.
Twenty minutes later, I was still wide awake with Navan’s arm wrapped around me, his grip getting looser by the moment. I’d stayed motionless in his embrace, not wanting to disturb him in case he’d fallen asleep. His breath was ticklish against the back of my neck, but I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not. Ordinarily, he’d mumble something or plant a gentle kiss on my shoulder, to let me know he was falling asleep, but there’d been none of that—he’d been too tired to even say a sweet goodnight.
Suddenly, he stirred, moving his arm away from me with such deliberate care that I knew he was trying to sneak off without me realizing. I stayed still, determined to trick him into believing I was asleep. This was the moment I was finally going to get to the bottom of what had been going on with him, and I wouldn’t rest until I’d figured it out.
I listened as he rolled out of bed and tiptoed across the room. He paused for a moment beside the bed; I could hear him standing there and felt his gaze drift across me. It was a peculiar sensation, with one half of my conscience urging me to open my eyes and ask him what was going on, while the other half insisted I keep them closed so I could catch him in the act of whatever he was up to. It was a bit deceitful to lie there silently, but after all his sneaking around, I doubted he’d have been honest with me anyway.