Heaven's Queen (27 page)

A spike of pain exploded in my left arm, and I looked down to see a dart the size of my pinky sticking out of my bicep just before my vision started going fuzzy. “What?” I slurred, forcing my now heavy head up to glare at the commander. “Right to the stick? Not even going to try the carrot?”

“You were the one who forced me to get personally involved, Miss Morris,” Commander Martin said, his voice far away. “Now you will learn that when I get involved, we do things one way: mine. And my way does not involve taking chances.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting my body slump, but it was all for show. My anger was flaring nice and sharp now, scraping the drug haze away. It was the impotent anger of a trapped animal, but after getting cornered, learning I was going to die for certain, and losing Rupert, I was feeling the need to act out.

“If that was your intent, then you haven’t done your research,” I slurred, pulling myself straight again in slow, exaggerated motions. “Otherwise you’d know shooting me only makes me mad.”

A flicker of confusion ghosted over Martin’s face at my words. I answered with a crocodile smile before pushing back with all my strength to slam my bound fists into my guard’s crotch.

I never could have caught someone like Rupert or Caldswell with a move like that, but this idiot must have been another back-line symbiont, because he doubled over with a yelp, letting me go. His pained cry was music to my ears. Not so armored there, asshole. I was about to rush Martin when I felt three more pricks hit my back.

This time, the dizziness hit me like a tidal wave. I was on the ground in seconds, knocked forward by my own fumbled charge. I was staring down at the stars through the clear floor, trying to decide whether it was worth the effort to raise my finger for a final rude gesture before I passed out when I heard a gruff voice I’d never expected to hear again.

“Never did know when to quit, did you?”

My breath caught, and I looked up, letting shock do what strength couldn’t as I raised my head to see Brian Caldswell staring down at me with Commander Martin’s tranq gun in his hands. He’d traded out his spacer captain’s flight vest and collared shirt for Terran military surplus fatigues, but otherwise, the captain looked exactly as he had the day he’d hired me. This time, though, his glare was far more personal.

“Sorry about this, Morris,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “But it’s time to stop being stubborn and go to sleep.”

I wanted to tell him I hadn’t even gotten to stubborn yet, but my mouth didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t even feel the pain from the darts now, or Caldswell’s hands when he slid them under my shoulders to hoist me up. As he carried me unceremoniously toward the emergency exit, the last thing I saw through my darkening vision were the phantoms. There were a dozen of them now, floating along behind me like little glowing ducklings chasing their mother. My mind was drifting so badly that I actually took a breath to apologize to them since I was probably being dragged off to a lab to become the instrument of their extinction. Before I could form the words, though, I fell into unconsciousness, slumping over Caldswell’s shoulder as he hauled me onto the waiting shuttle.

I woke up strapped down to a medical bed with a woman cutting off my clothes.

She squeaked when I jerked, jumping back like she thought I was going to bite something off. Which, to be fair, I would have if I could. “Where am I?” I demanded, wincing when the words came out a slurred mess. My body felt like wet sand and my head was killing me. I lay back with a string of garbled curses. The next time I saw Caldswell, he was a dead man.

The woman, a timid-looking lady of indeterminate middle age, looked at something behind me like she was appealing for help, and then I heard a clicking sound, like a little dog running over a polished floor before a handset appeared above my head.

Don’t worry
, it read.
A decade of drug abuse has rendered Morris incapable of responding normally to sedatives, hence the restraints.

I pushed against the straps, rolling over just enough to see the xith’cal standing at my bedside. Considering Caldswell had been the one to put me down, waking up to Hyrek didn’t even surprise me, though I couldn’t say I was happy about it. “Hey,” I said, turning back to the nurse. “There’s a crazy lizard in here. Cut me loose and I’ll take him out before he can eat you.”

Hilarious as ever, I see
, Hyrek wrote on his screen. He flashed me a wall of sharp teeth before turning his handset back to the woman.
Please continue.

The woman looked more frightened of me than of the xith’cal, but she obeyed, reaching out to lift my shirt from my body to resume her cutting. Tied up, I couldn’t do a thing to stop her, so I turned back to Hyrek, keeping my words steady in the hopes he wouldn’t realize how groggy I still was. “What’s going on? Where’s Caldswell?”

You are being prepped for surgery, and the captain is with Charkov
, Hyrek typed before putting down his handset to shine a light into my eyes.

The word “surgery” went through me like an icy splash, but it was hearing that Rupert was with Caldswell that really worried me. That was not going to be a happy reunion. “What kind of surgery?” I asked, working hard to keep the whimper out of my voice.

We haven’t decided yet
, Hyrek typed once he was done shining his light into every part of my face.
But Commander Martin ordered you be ready for anything the moment we left hyperspace, and I wanted to get that out of the way while you were still being a good patient, meaning asleep. Alas, it seems even four darts’ worth of military-grade tranquilizers can’t take down the raging Deviana Morris for more than two hours, so here we are.

I frowned, struggling to take all that in. The room we were in was a tiny closet with barely enough room for Hyrek and the nurse around my bed. Sleek medical equipment covered every inch of the walls except for the door, arranged with the sort of precise economy of space you’d expect from a Terran battleship. There was no window, so I couldn’t see if we were in hyperspace, but I had no reason to think Hyrek was lying. If I’d been in Martin’s position, I would have gotten me into hyperspace as quickly as possible, too.

I sighed, sinking into my restraints as the nurse finished cutting off my shirt and started working on my bra. I would have felt more self-conscious about being naked in front of strangers, but Hyrek was an asexual alien and the nurse was a nurse. Mostly I felt exposed and vulnerable. I don’t do being tied down in front of people who are trying to help me, but being tied down and naked in front of my enemies, even familiar ones like Hyrek, was putting me on edge something fierce. I tried to remind myself that I’d chosen this, chosen to surrender because it was my last chance at making sure my death meant something, but that knowledge didn’t stop the trapped animal anger from sending my whole body rigid, especially when Hyrek started prepping my arm to draw blood.

“So,” I said, trying to distract myself from the needle Hyrek was shoving into me. “I guess since you’re here, you know everything now?”

Hyrek filled three vials before he removed the needle and typed out an answer.
I’ve known everything since before you were born
, his handset read.
I’ve worked with Brian Caldswell for over thirty years. If I was still ignorant of the captain’s true nature after so long, I would have had to be either dangerously in denial or dangerously stupid.

He stopped to label the vials and ready an IV before picking up his handset again.
I am also the Eyes’ leading expert on symbionts. I accompany the captain to Dark Star station every year to assist in the implantation process.

The moment he said it, it made perfect sense. Who could have a better understanding of a xith’cal modification in a human body than a xith’cal doctor who specialized in humans? I also wasn’t surprised to hear that Hyrek had been in Caldswell’s pocket way before I started poking my nose in. He and Basil had always been the most loyal of the captain’s crew.

“What about the rest of the
Fool
?” I asked. “Where’s Nova and Basil?” I would have thought for sure the captain would have brought Nova to help with her father. That fact that he hadn’t struck me as ominous, a feeling that was only confirmed when Hyrek took his time answering.

We exited hyperspace at Dark Star station seven hours ago
, his handset read when he turned it to me at last.
The others are still there. Considering the circumstances, the captain thought it would be safer if they remained under supervision.

“Under supervision,” I said, glaring. “You mean in prison, right?”

Hyrek shrugged, and I lay back with a sigh. Poor Nova. Still, compared to how the Eyes usually dealt with people who’d seen things they shouldn’t, prison wasn’t half bad. “Are they okay?”

The crew of the Glorious Fool is quite adroit at bearing up under difficulties
, Hyrek replied, which actually made me feel better. Prison wasn’t the same as safe by any stretch, but I was very happy to hear they were alive. At the moment, I was ready to welcome any good news at all.

“Hyrek,” I said quietly as he slid the IV into my hand. The nurse had me down to my underwear at this point, leaving me shivering under the restraints. “Am I going to get a chance to talk to Caldswell before they do … whatever it is they’re going to do?”

Hyrek blew out a breath as he taped the tube to my skin.
I don’t know
, he typed at last.
If you’re wondering about the deal you made with the captain, I don’t know anything. Things have changed a great deal while we were in hyperspace. But I will let him know you want to speak with him.

“Thanks,” I said. Now that the IV was in my hand, I could feel the pressure of the high-grade drugs on my mind. Since I hadn’t even fully shaken off the last round, these grabbed me quick. I lay still as the room began to spin, wondering if I’d ever be clearheaded again. Considering my future, some would consider that a blessing, but I’d always been the sort who preferred to see death coming, and I fought the drugs as long as I could, staring up at the phantoms hanging below the tiny room’s ceiling.

There were a lot, I realized dimly. Thanks to the blindly bright medical lamp, I hadn’t noticed before, but now I saw there were dozens of phantoms floating above my bed, watching me with that eerie stillness, their little tendrils waving. I stared a moment longer and then closed my eyes against them, turning my head away as the drugs snuffed out the last of my consciousness.

Coming back the second time was a lot harder.

I opened my eyes with a heavy gasp, my lungs thumping and shuddering like an old engine as my head reeled from the sudden, stabbing pain at the back of my skull. Sadly, this was actually the highlight. The rest of me was even worse.
Everything
hurt. I felt like I’d just fought a ranked gladiator match without my armor. My skin was tender as a bruise, my tongue swollen, my joints stiff. I couldn’t move my legs or my arms, couldn’t even shift my weight to take the pressure off my throbbing back. All I could do was lie there and try to breathe through the pain, staring up at the beautiful lights moving across the ceiling.

There were so many, it took me about thirty seconds to realize they were phantoms. I dimly remembered seeing them on the ceiling before I’d gone under, but this was another level. The room was packed to bursting with the little glowing bugs. They were crawling across the ceiling, up the walls, and bobbing in and out of the light fixtures. Still more were hovering in the air all around me, twitching their little tentacles like they were waving hello across the empty space that always separated me from them. I had the distinct feeling that should creep me out, but I was in too much pain to care. And anyway, they were beautiful, their blue-white glow shining down on me like summer moonlight.

Well, I thought, staring up at the beautiful moving lights, at least I wasn’t naked anymore. They must have redressed me while I was out, because I was now wearing a loose set of beige medical scrubs with what felt like a whole lot of tape underneath. Probably sensors, or another IV. There were a ton of tubes running out of me, so I had no idea. For all I knew, I didn’t even have blood anymore.

Given my general hatred for all things medical, I probably should have cared more about this, but I kept getting distracted by the hair that kept falling into my face. Even in my pain-induced haze, that stuck me as wrong. Rupert had braided my hair so carefully; nothing should be drifting—

Clarity came back in a rush, and I jerked on the table, shoving painfully against my restraints. I tried to lift just my head next, but it was caught by wires. Someone had glued a whole network of neural leads to my skull, and they’d
unbraided my hair
to do it.

Rage hit me like a spark to dry tinder. I’d never felt anything like it before, but the idea that some random Terran had handled me while I was asleep and vulnerable to take away the last thing I had of Rupert mashed every button I had all at the same time. I was so furious I didn’t even care that this would flare the virus. They wanted it? They could
have
it. I would kill every last person on this goddamned boat. And when the lelgis came, I’d kill them, too. I’d—

A wave of pain sent me back to the bed like a punch, knocking my plans for vengeance right out of me. It was like someone had thrown a switch and given me twenty-four hours of the universe’s worst migraine all at once. There was no breathing through this pain. I couldn’t even think beyond it. All I could do was wait and hope that it would fade and something would be left when it did.

And then, while the shock was still working its way through my system, the pain left as suddenly as it had come. I collapsed back onto the mattress, sputtering and confused. A quick check confirmed all the pains I’d woken up with were still there, though they felt like nothing after what I’d just been through, but the headache from hell was completely gone. I looked up at the swarming phantoms, my mind spinning over in hopeless confusion. What had just happened?