Page 42 of Alliance
“You should go,” he told the commander.
Lokurian pressed his hand against his mangled jaw with a snarl, the red glow of his stare narrowing to slits. “I can’t face her.”
“You are her para. You must.”
Lokurian growled viciously. “Do not tell me how to be a father!”
Jharim shrugged. “Then act like one, Commander Lokurian.”
“The bog’s right,” Vindilus said. “Chop, chop, Roka. What’s your choice? Cower or dad up?”
The ex-commander hissed but stood up straight for the first time in days. He grimaced as his plates grated together from where they’d grown out of shape. He brushed the front of his coveralls with shaking talons. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Tell Aelia that I’ll… I’ll be up in a moment. I’m not a coward.”
Vindilus’s head disappeared above, shouting across the tarmac. Roav squinted at Lokurian with confusion.
“Not a coward?” Roav asked. “You nearly condemned an entire species to subjugation because you’re afraid to lose yourvira.”
Lokurian winced. “You don’t understand. Any venandi would do the same.”
“But that can’t—”
“It’s true,” Jharim said, crossing his arms. His look was distant again, looking through Lokurian rather than at him. “Loyalty is a venandi’s greatest strength, and most tragic flaw.Vicious as they are, strike the right blow, and they’ll fall like feathers.”
The assessment shivered through Roav’s mind, as dangerous as a prediction.
“Let’s go, big boy,” Vindilus said, descending the steps as he opened the cuffs with his biometrics. Lokurian turned, presenting his wrists at the small of his back. Roav and Jharim watched the two venandi until they were gone, the heavy hatch falling closed again with a thunderous boom.
13
“Seeding complete, Cap’. Stormfront forming eighteen klicks out from drop point at seventy-four degrees,” one of theMummer’screwmembers called out.
“Good, good,” Traveler mumbled, rummaging through a tall column of compartments set into the wall.
His crew was small, serious, and didn’t bat an eye at us or the eccentricities of their captain. But I wasn’t really paying attention to them either. A week after leaving Huajile, Fásach, Safia, Misila, and I stood together, staring out at Yaspur’s lavender and tangerine horizon.
Rosy had no memories of approaching the moon, at least none that I had inherited, and I felt a pang of sorrow for her. It wasbeautiful.All those rosy pinks and orange sorbet hues. A leafy sea of dark pink and maroon covered nearly the entire moon, laced with veins of bright turquoise water.
All except for the tidally locked cap, eternally cast in the shadow of its toxic water planet, Big Blue. An eerie teal darkness veiled the tundra and its ring of mountains and black forests, all drawn by the immense gravity of the moon’s parent planet. It was so different from the warm orange light that bathed the jungles and glistened on larger bodies of water.
Misila held onto Fásach’s leg with worry as theMummerapproached the freezing maw of doom that would turn us all into [reference] popsicles…
Popsicles?
I bit my lip, amused and trying not to giggle. My originator must have hated the cold. I wondered if I would too.
“What’s funny?” Misi asked, glancing up at me from around her father’s leg.
“Just thinking about popsicles,” I said with a smile.
Fásach scritched her little spires with his claws. “Why don’t you two go watch closer up? I’m sure the pilot won’t mind.”
“Thanks, Para,” Safia said, taking Misi’s hand. They bounded down from the observation deck and smashed their faces against the panoramic view of the moon with gasps of excitement.
“Aha!” Traveler slid a cartridge out of the wall marked with even rows of little buttons. He walked his fingers across their surfaces until he found the one he wanted and pulled it out of its slot. “Roz, you sweet little bit, come here.”
I joined him, and he dropped the tiny thing into my hand with a cocksure smirk. It was a red copper pill with tarnished splotches that looked like smears of iridescent oil. I turned it over in my hand, feeling the draw of a magnet inside its shell but unable to discern its function.
“What is it?”
