Authors: Marcella Burnard
Enemy Games (41 page)
Jayleia clamored to her feet.
Grumbling, the drone beside her surged to his feet.
She spun on him. “I’m done being used. By anyone. My parents. My friends. And by you! You most of all!”
He rumbled a hint of placating hum.
She waved it off. “Yes. Yes. Everyone has an excuse for taking without asking, for giving orders and then looking hurt when I balk, yet they’re all the while twisting the ‘but you love me’ knife in my back. No. More.”
He chuffed, hooked his foreclaws under her arms, spread his wings, and lifted off the cliff, leaving her stomach behind.
She yelped in surprise. A tendril of icy fear slid through her belly. Did the Chekydran register humanoid anger? Did they deal with it by dropping the irate person from altitude?
In a musical whir of wings, the queen’s consort flew her over the surface of his world.
Pride not her own welled up within her. Joy, too, at the complex, subtle fragrances—she wondered at that translation. Should it be chemicals—pheromones?—brushing through his antenna on the wind?
Jayleia relaxed.
He darted into the gorge. Lush forests of bulbous trees, fragrant with exotic spice, spread beneath them. The drone chortled.
She frowned at the impression that unfolded within her. The spice trees were poison to her kind.
Interesting.
“What kind?” she asked. “Contact? Does it have to be ingested?”
Confusion answered her. He either didn’t understand her question or didn’t know the answer.
The drone hovered as a swarm of tiny, fluttery creatures rose in a cloud from the surface of a yellow stream. He showed her the waterfall tumbling from the black rock partway up the cliff face.
He climbed and flew her over the nest plain.
She saw the mound where the queen lay cocooned. A pang of regret hit Jayleia as she craned her neck to keep the still, web-enshrouded queen in sight.
Was she alive?
Something stirred inside Jay’s mind. A faint trill rippled through her skull and she smiled.
Rest
, she thought at the trill, not knowing whether it would have any effect at all.
Heal
.
, she thought at the trill, not knowing whether it would have any effect at all.
Heal
.
The impression of someone, or something, sharing her brain space diminished. Data and experience suggested the Chekydran were a telepathic race, though data also indicated that insectoid thought patterns couldn’t mesh with humanoid thought patterns any more than humanoids could produce Chekydran vocalizations. How had the queen heard her?
The drone carried her over the place where the biomechanical soldiers had landed in a dozen single occupant ships. Chekydran workers were dismantling the little fighters and carting pieces away for use elsewhere, though she couldn’t say how she knew that with such surety. What had happened to the bodies?
She shuddered, not certain she wanted to know.
They paused, hovering above a nest chamber, humming encouragement in unison with the nursery attendants as another infant hatched and perched at the edge of her nest, waiting for blood flow to straighten her wings.
And Jayleia remembered Dr. Idylle’s question.
Where were the pupae? Every single Chekydran she’d seen outside of a cocoon had been an adult. A Ki. The larvae were called Eyn.
The queen’s consort whistled. It resolved to a familiar refrain. “Save us.”
She realized he’d taken her on a tour of what the Chekydran were asking her to save.
Jayleia sighed. “Why should we trust you?”
The buzz in her head swelled.
“No,” she countered. “Not me. I mean all of the humanoids out there on the front lines fighting and dying. The Chekydran out there are going to such great lengths to destroy us. You’ve altered me. And Damen. Without our permission. How do we trust you?”
Sorrow and regret overflowed the buzz in her brain. Her throat closed in sympathetic response. Disagreement. Violence. Desperation. He stamped the image of the massive, tentacled, aggressive Chekydran she was familiar with into her mind.
They lived in isolation on this planet.
She shuddered.
The flood of emotions and images dried up. “You’re at war with them, too.”
Another tidal surge of sorrow.
He was asking her to choose. Two life-forms so alien to one another they couldn’t even say each other’s names and he understood that by offering her a choice, he’d tipped the scales in his favor.
“Show them to me?” she asked.
Refusal.
“No more using me,” she said. “Full disclosure or no more help. I can’t choose with incomplete data.”
Her head felt too full and she could no longer see. She cried out. Her eyesight returned and the throb in her skull subsided to vague discomfort.
Gently, the drone shifted the information in her brain, moving a bit there, shifting a piece from this place to that. He drew forth a shard of memory that didn’t belong to her and opened it.
She experienced and absorbed the memory as if it had been her own, but she knew full well she’d never walked on six legs or flown with crystalline wings.
The Chekydran pupae were called Hiin. And over a century ago, under the pressure of looming extinction, a clutch of Hiin had found a way to suppress metamorphosis. They’d broken away, warring with the Ki, until the queen and her consort had banished them from the planet.
They still had Hiin. Every larva, save the one destined to become the next queen who underwent her Hiin period inside the nest being fed by her attendants, emerged from the egg as a Hiin.
The drone expressed reluctance when she asked him to fly her over the feeding grounds where the Hiin spent months eating, quarreling, and finally, succumbing either to the chemical pressures of metamorphosis or refusing to do so.
Jayleia blinked. The queen and her consort no longer banished renegades. Sadness stabbed pain through her chest.
If they could not force their children to accept the change to adulthood, they destroyed them rather than allowing them to shore up the Chekydran-hiin war machine.
The drone took her to the mountains. Black, jagged rocks pierced the belly of the clouds. Stinging rain fell against the upper slopes in sulfurous-smelling sheets. At the foot of the mountains, thick, dense mats of purple growth hosted groups of Chekydran in a size and body form she recognized.
Her heart rate skyrocketed.
The drone hummed reassurance.
The adolescents couldn’t fly and he would not land.
The wind of their passage had made Jayleia’s eyes water, but it had also proven therapeutic.
She listened to the Chekydran-hiin humming as they swept their tentacles over the violet foliage below, obviously foraging.
Calm settled over her.
Some things were worth dying to preserve.
Family. Knowledge. Discovery. Peace, even when the price was gut-wrenchingly high.
She’d thought she wanted her life aboard the
Sen Ekir
back, so she could return to making a difference in the lives and health of people of Tagreth Federated.
Sen Ekir
back, so she could return to making a difference in the lives and health of people of Tagreth Federated.
Damen had shattered her myopic loyalty. She did love him. A feeling of power and of possibility swelled within her. How had he known?
No matter. She could no longer think in terms of protecting just her people. Didn’t her work in science better all humanoids? Could she let go of her prejudices and consider working for all life-forms? Chekydran included?
As the drone turned to leave the mountains behind, she laughed. She’d accused Ari of prejudice. Looked like that blade cut both ways. Fine. The Temple had taught her that a deficiency known was a deficiency defeated.
She’d overcome terror and prejudice to defend the Chekydran. All of them. She could do it again.
Confidence flooded her. She was a Swovjiti warrior. It didn’t matter what accusations were leveled at her. It didn’t matter that the Temple had been disbanded. The law of the Temple said that so long as one Swovjiti lived, so too, did the Temple.
The thunder of a ship entering atmosphere startled them both, and they slide sideways in the sky until the drone recovered.
Her companion hissed.
Jayleia followed the bright arc of the vessel through atmosphere. It looked like a Chekydran cruiser. She frowned. Two of their cruisers had rescued Damen and her from the UMOPG. Why shouldn’t one land?
The drone’s agitation resolved into something grim and resolute inside her head.
Of course. This wasn’t one of the Ki’s two cruisers. This was a Chekydran-hiin vessel. The biomech assassins had been the advance guard. They’d injured the queen. The Hiin were landing and massing to finish the job.
Rage pressed against the confines of her body. She’d made her choice.
“If you give me the weapon to fight the Hiin, I can help you protect your mate!” she shouted at the drone. “Take me back to the
Sen Ekir
!”
Sen Ekir
!”
CHAPTER 38
H
E spun and flew. The ground was a blur. Atmospheric resistance and speed pushed her legs back, up under the drone’s body to the point that she felt like she was the one flying.
E spun and flew. The ground was a blur. Atmospheric resistance and speed pushed her legs back, up under the drone’s body to the point that she felt like she was the one flying.
The ships zipped past beneath them. The dark maw of the gorge yawned.
They circled, slowing.
Jay’s feet touched down.
The drone let go and lit behind her.
She sprinted for the
Sen Ekir
.
Sen Ekir
.
Pietre gaped from the ramp. “What is that?”
“The queen’s consort,” she replied.
She yanked her handheld from her belt, activated it, pulled the data the buzz in her head told her was there, and thrust it at a confused Pietre.
“The Chekydran-hiin—they’re the bad ones—have landed for an assault. This is a chemical weapon that may help us stop them. Make as much as you can. We’ll be dosing Chekydran-hiin,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Their metamorphosis key,” she said.
He stared. “You’re going to use the
Sen Ekir
to bomb the Chekydran into hibernation? That guy gave you this?”
Sen Ekir
to bomb the Chekydran into hibernation? That guy gave you this?”
“They are very knowledgeable about their own biological processes,” she said. “They’ve broken down every aspect of themselves, looking for possible points of modification. Because the adults can’t manufacture this chemical once they’ve been through their change, it hadn’t occurred to them to attempt to use it as a weapon.”
He stared at her, excitement lighting in his brown eyes. “Wait. So, okay, this helps win battles, but what happens when they emerge? Aren’t murderous, violent Chekydran that go into a cocoon going to come back still murderous and violent?”
“Sometimes,” Jayleia allowed, “but it’s rare. The Chekydran-ki actually control when and how the cocoons break open. The queen exudes a pheromone . . .”
“Of course!” Pietre exclaimed. “When food resources were scarce she had to stagger emergence. I’ll recall the team and get to work.”
She gripped his arm. “Thanks. Where’s Damen?”
“In surgery.”
“What?”
Pietre waved off her panic. “Repair work. Raj had the downtime. He’ll be done by the time the
Dagger
lands.”
Dagger
lands.”
Meaning she’d have to do without his tactical ability. She’d have to do without attempting to patch up the damage she’d done to his faith in her.
Jayleia’s breath hissed between her clenched teeth. She needed him. And she couldn’t have him. What she felt for him would have to be enough. Her faltering courage steadied and her heart rate normalized.
Dr. Idylle was right.
Love
was
enough.
was
enough.
She grabbed her pack and sprinted into the ship, gathering laser triggers and spare power cartridges from the weapons locker. She even found two ancient plasma grenades Ari had tucked into the locker prior to the ship’s original Ioccal mission.
She donned the face mask and gloves that completed her uniform.
Dressed in black, she’d be nearly invisible against the midnight-hued drone. And when it came to close quarters fighting, the Skeppanda silk would confer protection her lab clothes couldn’t. She shoved her equipment and tools into the bag, sealed in, hefted it over her head and one shoulder, then returned to the drone.
Pietre boggled when she headed down the ramp. “Jay. Where are you going? Aren’t you going to help?”
“I’m going to buy us time.”
“You?” He shook his head. “You’re too valuable to risk! We need you.”
A sore place in Jayleia’s heart unraveled. Pietre thought they needed her? Maybe she’d had a solid family template, just like Damen had in his family of sex slaves, all along.
“I’ll be back,” she promised before turning to the drone.
“Ready,” she said. “Let’s go protect your queens.”
He picked her up. They raced to the nest plain.
“I need some of the toxin from the spice trees,” she told him when they touched down. “We’ll make our anti-personnel traps multipurpose.”
He hummed confusion.
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