The Choosing (The Pruxnae Book 1) (7 page)

Ryn pressed his
back against the door to the bridge. His heart pounded in his chest and the
memories of that long ago time crowded into his mind. The swiftness of his
parents’ deaths, the terror of being captured by merciless aliens, the slash of
metal tentacles whipping down across his back, and, Tyornin help him, the
ever-present stench.

Sweepers. They’d
jumped into a kraden nest of Sweepers.

How that had
happened was beyond him. Jump points were supposed to be clean. They were
supposed to be checked on a routine basis by the inhabitants of nearby systems
and guarded against the very situation he and Ziri had jumped into.

The
Yarinska
jolted as another ship attempted to lock onto her airlock. Likely, the first
jolt had been a near miss. Sweepers weren’t known for their ability to maneuver
their junkers in close quarters. If he was lucky, they’d take at least two more
tries before they aligned the two ships correctly.

If he was really
lucky, the jolting was caused by two ships jockeying for position. It meant
more Sweepers, but it also meant each ship’s crew would be more preoccupied
fighting the other for salvage rights and less concerned with him picking them
off one at a time.

Ryn leapt into a
run, racing down the main corridor to his bedroom and the armor he’d stored
there. He didn’t have time to put it all on, but the helmet would come in
handy. It would filter out the stench of the creatures trying to board the
Yarinska
and the infrared sensors embedded within it gave him a slight tactical
advantage. If worse came to worse, he could lash himself against one wall of
the cargo bay and blow the airlock. With the helmet on, he could breathe
through the resulting pressure loss, not for long, but for long enough. They
might lose a lot of supplies, but at least they’d be rid of the Sweepers so he
could maneuver the
Yarinska
to another jump point.

By the swift
calculations he’d done before he’d left the bridge, the jump engines had just
enough juice left in them for a short leap into a nearby system. They could
find a safe hiding place and power almost completely down, waiting out the
Sweepers’ inevitable pursuit and eventual disinterest. It would be uncomfortable,
especially for Ziri, but it could be done.

He retrieved his
helmet and slipped it on, stuffed extra battery packs into wherever he could
fit them, and strapped a half-ceg long knife to his thigh. That might come in
handy, depending on how many Sweepers there were, though he wouldn’t be able to
use it for long.

As ready as he’d
ever be, he veered off toward the cargo bay, shutting everything out of his
mind as he went, the fear stabbing at him, Ziri’s wide eyes and the sweet taste
of her mouth, the knowledge of what would happen to her if the Sweepers found her.
He closed everything off and slipped into the cargo bay, determination steeling
his courage.

Two Sweepers
huddled on the far side of the largely empty space next to the airlock, their
misshapen forms clearly visible against the flat gray of the
Yarinska
’s
exterior wall. Bile shot up Ryn’s throat, searing the back of his mouth. He
swallowed it down and crept into the bay, his boots nearly silent on the hard
floor. A third Sweeper shambled out of the open airlock, its hulking form
swaying on thick, humanoid legs, its tentacles swirling around its back in
languid sweeps. This one had two eyes, large ovoid discs as big as Ryn’s hand
set into a pointed skull above a gaping maw filled with row upon row of tiny,
pointed teeth.

Those eyes fixed
on him. A nasal roar escaped the Sweeper’s mouth as its back arched in a
primitive display of domination. Tentacles writhed and twitched, their ends
searching for the threat the Sweeper had sensed. Its roar echoed around the
cargo bay, and the other Sweepers scuttled across the floor, well out of its
reach. The Sweeper’s head lowered and its bulbous feet swept from side to side.

Ryn aimed his
gun and braced himself. The Sweeper bunched itself into a tight ball, then
launched itself upward, arcing through the air toward Ryn. He followed its path
through the cargo bay, waiting, waiting. The Sweeper hit the highest point of
its jump and began a controlled descent, its tentacles splayed out around it,
flattened against the air rushing past them.

Twenty ceg,
fifteen.

When it was ten
ceg away, Ryn fired,
bim, bim, bim
. Three short pulses flashed out of
the gun’s barrel, each one hitting the Sweeper in its armored chest, rippling red
bursts of energy over the unwieldy alien. Its tentacles went limp and it
bobbled, teetering onto its side in mid-air. Ryn scrambled out of the way,
barely avoiding it as it crash landed into the space he’d occupied mere ticks
before. He tossed a quick glance over his shoulder. The kraden thing was down,
unmoving. Satisfaction rolled through him. One down, probably umlek more to go.

He aimed at the
other Sweepers shuffling their feet from side to side at the far end of the
cargo bay. If he could get to the airlock, he could manually disengage the
other ship’s hold on the
Yarinska
, not an easy task with the kraden
things shuffling through the opening. Even as the thought flitted through his
mind, two more Sweepers passed through the airlock, and two more after that. He
shifted his aim to the overhead lights and mentally cursed the necessity of shooting
them out. Sweepers couldn’t see as well in the dark as he could through his
helmet’s various filters, and with the kraden filth pouring into his ship, he
needed every advantage he could get.

Bim. Bim. Bim.
Bim
.

The cargo bay
went dark in a spray of sparks and falling plasteen. The Sweepers’ roars filled
the air, rebounding against the metal walls into a shrieking cacophony. Ryn
hunkered down next to the door leading into the ship proper, infrared on,
weapon tuned to full power, and bided his time. Sooner or later, they’d figure
out where he was, and when they did, he’d be ready for them.

* * *

The silence in
the control room was absolute. Ziri held her hand over her mouth, muffling the
sobs startled out of her every time Ryn’s ship jolted under whatever was
happening around them. Her horrified gaze was caught by the real-time images on
the viewscreen. Long ropes shot out of the other ship, bounced off of Ryn’s,
and were retracted, then shot out again. They made no sound, not like the
wrenching metal-on-metal grind ripping through Ryn’s ship every time something
jolted it.

A second ship
rotated and fired blue-tinged bursts of light at the first ship. The long ropes
retracted and stayed put as the first ship shot bright orange balls of fire at
the second ship. Back and forth they went, firing on one another without
seeming to do enough damage for either to blow up or turn tail and run. A third
ship entered the fray, only a portion of its hull visible on the viewscreen,
and then a fourth, each one as uniquely built as the last. Not one of the other
ships looked like it would make it halfway across a star system, let alone from
one to the next.

Ziri’s hold
relaxed on the blaster as she inhaled a shuddering breath. Ryn was somewhere on
the ship in who knew what kind of trouble, and she was here, hiding like a
child.

What could she
do, though? She didn’t even know what they were up against and had no idea how
to help him. Her eyes fell on the control panel. She might not know how to
help, but she
did
know how to gain information.

She peeped
around the edge of the console. The door was firmly shut. The red light on the
panel beside it held steady. She gripped the blaster in one hand and pushed
herself upright, balancing on shaky legs with one side pressed against the
secondary console.

The fourth ship
peeled away, replaced almost immediately by a flattened sphere streaked brown. Rust,
maybe? She shook her head, staggered toward the main control panel, and flopped
into the chair on the left. A quick peek at the viewscreen and her heart
nosedived into her gut. The first ship had managed to clear a space around
itself. Those long ropes were shooting toward Ryn’s ship again. Grappling
hooks, she’d bet, and that wasn’t such a great thing for her and Ryn.

“Onu’s breath,”
she muttered. “Why didn’t he teach me the rest of the systems?”

A flat,
masculine voice said, “Hrenig nyin.”

Ziri yelped and
whirled around, searching for the intruder, and the blaster slid out of her lap
and clanged onto the floor.

The room was
empty around her.

She sank into
the chair and pressed a trembling hand over her pounding heart. “Get a grip,
Ziri, and stop imagining things.”

“Hrenig nyin.”

Her heart leapt
into her throat. She twisted around, scrutinizing the tiniest shadow in the
control room, and said, “Who’s there?”

“
Yarinska
Intelligista Artifig Docen.”

Yarinska
. Where had she
heard that word before? From Ryn, maybe? And where was the voice coming from?
She peered under the console, searched the ceiling, and saw nothing out of the
ordinary. “What’s
yarinska
?”

“Hrenig nyin.”

She huffed out a
breath and slumped into the chair. The viewscreen showed yet another ship
challenging the first ship’s dominance, but at least the grappling hooks were
nowhere in sight. “What does
hrenig nyin
mean?”

“Request
denied,” the voice said promptly.

Ziri sat
straight up. “You can understand me.”

“Hu.”

Yes
, she
translated. Ryn said it infrequently, but it was one word of his language she
knew. “Can you speak Tersii Basic?”

“Ny.”

She scowled at
the console. Now,
that
word Ryn had no trouble telling her. “Wait, you
can understand what I’m saying but you can’t speak to me?”

“Hrenig nyin.”

“Why do you keep
saying that?”

Silence pressed
in around her.

She toggled the
viewscreen. Gradually, it zoomed out, encompassing an ever wider view. One
spaceship, four, seven. Her fingers slid off the toggle and thudded into her
lap. How many spaceships were they up against? She tried sorting them out,
picking distinct features out on each one, and eventually gave up. Too many.

“Belnyin luf,”
the disembodied voice said.

“Oh, so you’re
speaking to me again?” Ziri shot an exasperated glare at the ceiling. “It’s not
like Ryn didn’t already tell me about Belnyin.” Whatever that was.

“Ryn abid Alna.”

The viewscreen
shimmered. The outside view faded and was replaced by a head shot of Ryn
glaring sternly down at her. Line after line of text appeared to the image’s
right. She squinted at it, trying to decipher it. “You could at least show me
this in Tersii Basic.”

“Hrenig nyin,”
the voice said.

In spite of the
voice’s standard
request denied
, the words next to Ryn’s image blurred,
then reappeared in Tersii. Ziri read them eagerly, her peril forgotten. “Ryn
abid Alna. Birthplace: Unknown. Birthdate: Unknown. Current residence: Abyw,
Fluma System, Twelfth Quadrant. Where’s the Fluma System?”

A map of the
galaxy popped up, zooming in on a bluish planet with thick white clouds
scattered in streaks through its atmosphere. The planet shrank and shifted to
the left. Rows of text appeared on the right of the viewscreen, listing the
date the planet was discovered, its non-humanoid inhabitants, the date it was
settled, the primary languages and cultures. Ziri scanned through the text,
memorizing as much of it as she could. That was probably where he was taking
her, and if so, she needed to know everything about it. Maybe a piece of that
information would help her escape.

Light pings echoed
through the control room and Ryn’s ship jerked forward. The momentum pushed
Ziri back into the chair, hard. Her head bounced off the seat, painfully
wrenching her neck.

“Kraden Belnyin,”
she murmured, and slapped a hand over her nape, rubbing the crick out. She’d
forgotten all about the mess she and Ryn were in.

“Belnyin luf,”
her unseen companion said.

Ziri shrieked at
him. “Could you tell me something useful for once?”

“Oh, you’re just
like him,” the voice said in a petulant huff. “Demand, demand, demand. See if I
help you out again.”

The viewscreen
went blank. Ziri gaped at it, her mind scrambling through the bizarre
conversation she’d just had. Had she been talking to the ship this whole time?
She glanced around. “Hello?”

A scratching
sound filled the room, coming from somewhere overhead.

Great. That was
probably something trying to get in.

Ziri tapped the
viewscreen’s control. Nothing happened. She tapped again and again, exactly the
way Ryn had shown her. The viewscreen remained stubbornly dark. “Come on, you
lanoo. I need to know what’s happening.”

A loud bang came
from behind her. She spun around in the chair. The crick in her neck twinged
and she hissed in a breath. Kraden lurching and jolting and banging. What could
possibly go wrong next?