Page 21 of Taken to Kor
“We’re not close enough.”
“Rhork?” Deena whimpers.
“I’m here. Are you clear of the thing?”
“I rounded a corner, so I can’t see him anymore. But…but…what was in the syringe?”
I cringe, hating to answer and fighting to find honor. I do, but I have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for it. “Adrenaline mixed with a potent healing agent. It’s for use in extreme emergencies. I’ve only used it twice — once, when my ship crashed and I had to drag myself eight solars through the Egamion desert and then again in battle against a Lemoran fleet. It’s extremely potent. The user will look dead for as long as it takes for the healing agent to kick in, then comes the adrenaline and those things are proportioned to Niahhorru sizes. If you’ve given it to a creature any smaller than a Niahhorru, it will make him crazed when he wakes.” Lethal. “You need to get away from him. Brave the others, but get away from this one.”
Her breathing picks up. She’s panting now. I can hear her fiddling with something while I bounce on the balls of my feet, watching the satellite come closer. So close. And then it touches down. Gerannu is first to stroke the yeeyar walls of the ship. With our shared command, the exterior of our ship peels back to reveal a portal covered in a sickly green crust. I reach for the substance first, batting Gerannu’s hands out of the way, but I can’t find the token reader.
“Get the shrov out of my way, Rhorkanterannu.” Gerannu pushes me off, reaches into a small depression in the hard, static material and pulls a hand-lever. I frown. “I told you. Everything here is manual.”
Shrov.
“Everyone got their oxygen?” He shouts over his shoulder. Without waiting for an answer, he starts to pull on the grit-encrusted handle while the yeeyar forms a protective barrier around the full length of the ramp, thus shielding the rest of the ship from the satellite’s atmosphere.
Frost blows out of the satellite like breath over a candle. Grumbled assent and a few curses chase me into the darkness. I’m running before I even land.
“Rhorkanterannu! Your pirates aren’t even all on board yet!” Herannathon shouts. Even though there’s a disparaging note in his tone, he keeps pace with me.
“I’m not stopping.” I switch communication to Deena, who I can hear thumping around through the token. She has not turned off communication on her side. She doesn’t know how. “Deena, what are you doing?”
“I’m…getting…this…pole…uughh!” A banging sound is followed by a pained curse.
“Deena!”
“It’s attached to another grate that leads down…down another tunnel. I think this might be how this one got in. Ahh — there! Ugh. Ugh.”
“What the shrov are you doing? Are you out of the tunnel?”
“Centare, I’m trying but…there isn’t an exit. I haven’t…found…it’s just darkness.” Her voice tilts up at the end, entering that trembling, too-high-to-be-human treble. It’s a tone she never used before, not even when she was with Mathilda.
I understand something quite important.Thisis Deena’s fear. And even though I thought I had, I’ve never heard her afraid before.
And then she sniffles and sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m going to have to fight.”
“Deena…” But I never get a chance to finish that thought as something falls onto my head.
“Rhorkanterannu!” A voice behind me shouts, but Herannathon has already killed it by the time I dislodge it from my tines and shoulders and place it under the ray of my cannon.
“Seven shrovs.” Herannathon moves forward and kicks the thing. As it flops lamely over the floor, I understand why Deena called it a carpet creature. “Is it a warat?” He says, referring to the creatures of the sand plains of Norath, a beautiful place populated by some of the Quadrants’ most hideous beings.
“Warats have eight limbs — these only have four — and warats have exoskeletons. I don’t think so.”
“We should take stock. Wait for Quintenanrret to tell us what it is before we continue. They may have defenses we can’t see.”
I nod, but without feeling, because my own urge to stop and inspect the creature is tempered by the sound of Deena shuffling on the other end of the token. She’s breathing harder than she was before and my heart is beating harder as if there’s a direct link between her panic and my pulse.Such a bridge shouldn’t exist, but it does.
“We can’t. She…” I cough, clear my throat. “I can’t spare the time. We’ll have to proceed blind.” As she did. My fearsome Deena with silk ropes for hair and the crystalline waters of a beach she has never been to glistening in her eyes.
Herannathon looks up at me, his silver eyes luminous beneath the glow of his lunar shield. He meets my gaze, stunned at first, maybe confused. Then the protective skein covering his eyes lifts and he reallylooksat me. I don’t know what he sees, but it’s enough.
“Let’s go,” he agrees.
He darts off before I do and I quickly fall in line at his left wing while more of my pirates V out behind us. And as we charge down the halls, more and more of the flimsy, wriggling creatures start to appear.
They lunge at first, charging Herannathon in the lead. He picks them off with his short-range blaster while I clean up any that he might have missed with my cannon set to its weakest frequency. They are easy to kill, but I know what Deena meant because for every one I kill, ten more crop up like weeds.
