Page 82 of Fighting Gravity
Rhone spoke in his native tongue, a crease forming between his brows at whatever was being said back to him. Then suddenly he was heading toward the entrance to the observatory.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“A human vessel is approaching quickly,” he said, his dislike for my kind evident in his tone.
“Wait… ahumanvessel? Here?” I asked, following him briskly. Humans meant maybe I could go home. Maybe he’d let me leave. Let the humans take me back to the Nexus. “What… what are you going to do?”
He didn’t answer. A human ship was my best chance at getting off the Shadowbreaker. My best chance at leaving the bizarre hell I’d gotten tied up in. The possibility, no matter how small, snapped me back to reality where Icouldn’tfall for a damn alien. For Rhone.
But I couldn’t forget that Rhone was gek and gek destroyed the freighter. Gek were out to kill valerians. And humans, now that it was clear we were allied with them, were just as much a target.
I needed to get my head on straight, remember that I was human and that I needed to get home and forget Rhone entirely.
Seemed simple.
Except it wasn’t…
34: Rhone
Quinn followed close behind me as I made my way to the bridge. A human ship was inbound and it was too suspicious to dismiss. They shouldn’t have been out so far and after what I learned about humans and valerians and their dealings with each other, every bit of odd behavior needed to be met with suspicion.
I entered the bridge to find Crex at the helm and Veron at a tracking panel watching the ship’s every move.
“It’s a recon vessel,” Veron said.
“Go after it,” I ordered. “Intercept them.”
Quinn was anxious. I could tell by her stance and the way her eyes darted from one place to another like she was trying to figure out what was going on. I spoke in my own language to my crew and she couldn’t understand a word, which was likely driving her mad. I knew she wanted to get off my ship and the mere mention of a human vessel in the vicinity had gotten her excited. But she had to be nervous, too, because I had no plans of negotiating.
Murdering her kind right in front of her wasn’t something I would have had a problem with before, but now…
The ship hummed as the engines prepared to veer off course and once we were setting out to find the human ship, I looked over Quinn’s head at Utrek standing by the entrance to the bridge.
“Take Quinn to a room,” I said to him.
Quinn whipped her head toward me when she heard her name.
Utrek liked Quinn, I could tell. He hesitated for half a breath and then nodded, walking up behind her and grasping her arm. She yanked herself from his grip and I watched the confusion turn to anger on her face. Her eyes went dark and her jaw pulsed with tension.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded.
I stared at her but said nothing. She tried to walk toward me and Utrek put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She slipped away from him again and ground her teeth, stomping up to me. Her hands came up and slammed into my chest, a gesture that would have made a lesser being stumble backward.
“What are you going to do?”
I glanced at Utrek and he gave a reluctant nod. Whether he liked Quinn or not, I was urok and Quinn needed to be off the bridge. He stepped up behind her, grabbed both her arms, and pinned them behind her. When Quinn realized she couldn’t pull free that time, she began to struggle and shout and kick, but she was still human and any one of my crew could overpower her with such ease.
“You can’t!” she shouted. “You fucking bastard! If they’re here, something is wrong! You can’t just blow them out of space.” Utrek got her to the door, despite her efforts to stay put. When she realized she was making no progress in getting free, her enraged tone turned pleading. “Please. Rhone don’t do it. Please! They didn’t do anything to you! Humans don’t even know anything about what the valerians are doing! Rhone!”
A strange ache settled in my chest when her voice broke and I heard the pain and fear laced through her pitch. I gritted my teeth and turned away from her, blinding myself to the hateful, terrified look on her face. Utrek got her into the hall and the door slid closed, dividing us and muffling her voice. I took a deep breath, finding my center.
I wasn’t used to searching for my center, but Quinn had knocked me so far off balance.
When I refocused, I glanced up at Veron near the tracking panel. Her gaze was on me instead of the display with that same, judgmental, questioning look in her eyes. Only I thought dismissing Quinn to go after a human ship would have overjoyed her.
“What?” I hissed.
“I thought you might have developed a soft spot for the human,” she said. “After you claimed her as yours. Does her protesting do nothing to you?”
