Page 19 of Caldar
This thing was a coffin.
And once that particularly unsavory thought crossed her mind, she felt trapped. Buried alive. She was back to being woken in the middle of the night and hiding in her closet during a raid, waiting helplessly. The air grew warm and thin. Her chest felt tight, like she didn’t have enough room to breathe.
A hand stroked her back.
“Your heart rate is elevated. Breathe with me,” Caldar said. “In. Out.”
His chest rose and fell with a smooth rhythm.
She mimicked him, breathing in, and releasing slowly. Once the tension eased in her chest, she relaxed against him. The rise and fall of his chest had a steady, calming effect. He wasn’t cuddly. His body was too solid for that, but it was nice.
“You keep saving me,” she mumbled. The stubborn part of her resented that she needed to be saved, but the practical part of her was glad for it.
“You have a distressing habit of finding trouble,” he said.
“Hey, trouble finds me.”
He continued to rub her back. The touch felt comforting but removed, even a bit clinical, like he sat through a training video about how to calm down people mid-freakout.
“Agree to disagree,” he said.
“What’s going to happen?”
He didn’t answer straight away, which made her suspect he was trying to find the nicest way to lie about their imminent doom.
“If we’re going to die, just say it. Don’t sugarcoat the truth,” she said.
“There are several options. The pod will seek the nearest habitable planet, where we will wait for rescue. Or the beacon will be intercepted by a passing vessel. That could be another cruise ship or a cargo vessel.”
“Or the Suhlik?”
“They do have a warship in the immediate area. I imagine that it deters traffic.”
The sass from him right now. She sort of liked it.
“The pod is also floating in a debris field. We may go unnoticed by the Suhlik,” he added.
“The ship is definitely gone?” Another hesitation. “Just tell me,” she said.
“The ship has been destroyed. It had minimal shielding. The Suhlik attack in a standard pattern with little variation. They teleport aboard, take captives, leave, and destroy the vessel. Every time.” He spoke with such certainty that Sonia believed every horrible word.
“All those people.” She should have tried to save them or done… something. Her mind drew a blank.
“Most of the people in the ballroom had time to flee,” he said.
That helped, but Sonia still had the gnawing sense of guilt that she should have done more— done anything other than cower under a table.
His hand stilled. His fingers seemed to dig in. “You are upset because you are a compassionate person. This is a good thing, but you must acknowledge that there was little to be done. The engines took a direct hit. That is the only reason for the ship to fail.”
“But—”
“Can you stop a missile? Restore shields? Rewind time and alert the ship’s captain to the danger?”
“Stop being reasonable,” she grumbled. She knew that when the masks dropped in an airplane, you put your mask on first before helping others. She knew that, but the guilt remained. “I wish I had time to grab the first aid kit.”
There. That was something she could have done if she had been thinking clearly. Instead, she grabbed her bag of art supplies. Brushes were expensive. In the heat of the moment, that was what she took. What that said about her as a person, she didn’t want to contemplate.
Materialistic, nasty, and greedy.
