The Druid Gene (17 page)

His head dipped slightly. “I will do as you wish, my queen.”

There wasn’t time to exchange any more information. The tentacled creature continued to flail wildly behind them. A circle had cleared in its vicinity. Any minute now someone was going to put an end to the commotion it had created.

“Fall into a heap and pretend to be shocked!” she said to Selpis and Raub. “Tesserae71, stand over us like you just shocked us!”

“I do not lie down and pretend anything,” Raub ground out.

“They’ll pass by us if they think we’re already down. We have nothing that will work against their weapons,” she pleaded.

He frowned and studied her for a moment until someone crashed into him. He growled and shoved them away.

She shot him a look that told him he better not suggest she use her power against them. He knew how it had ripped her up before. Fighting was one thing. People could be patched up, could recover from bruises and broken bones. But she didn’t want any part of killing anyone. He knew that.

Selpis nodded. “It should work.”

“If they see his broken leg, it won’t,” Raub said angrily.

“I shall keep my body turned away,” Tesserae71 clacked.

Darcy motioned to Tesserae71. “We’ll go down one at a time. Try to make it look realistic.”

“I’ll go first,” Selpis volunteered, and slumped to the floor, arranging her body artfully so that Nembrotha was protected.

Darcy rushed at Tesserae71 and just before she reached him, she flung herself back and slid down the wall. Through her lashes she could see his mandibles working, and she swore it was almost like applause for her performance. He turned to Raub, tilted his head, and extended the device to within inches of Raub’s shoulder. Raub blinked as if to say, “Really?” then crumpled to the floor, his arm flung over his face to hide his expression.

D
arcy worried
that the hymenoptera would notice her as they passed by and would freak out, possibly even poking her to make sure she was unconscious. They all seemed to know who she was, and there was a current of fear and dislike that ran through her every interaction with them. Her hair had conveniently fallen over her face as she fell, and now she peeped through the curls, careful to keep her face slack and her body immobile.

Her back felt jagged and raw. It throbbed in sync with her pounding heart. The ship rocked with the impact of another blast. She slid bonelessly across the floor and watched Tesserae71 skitter around a few steps, tapping a few more individuals with his shock stick while carefully keeping his injured leg out of sight of the other hymenoptera. It worked. The others moved past them without a second glance and then he backed carefully down the hall in the opposite direction, over the fallen stunned bodies littering the floor.

Raub stood as soon as they’d gone by, gesturing impatiently at Darcy. Why did he want her with him when he could have gotten away ten times over on his own already? She was slowing him down.

She rose stiffly. That few seconds of rest had allowed the pain to register more fully. As she came upright, she swayed and her vision narrowed. There was a rushing sound in her ears. She felt someone lean into her, wrapping arms around her to steady her with cool, smooth, pebbled skin. She opened her eyes to see Selpis looking down on her, her large green eyes wide with alarm and Nembrotha’s sensory stalks peering over one of Selpis’s shoulders. Selpis opened her mouth as though to speak.

Darcy shook her head and brought a finger to her lips. Even though the corridor resounded with screams and warlike cries, she didn’t think they should risk making another sound. She lowered her hand and nodded. Selpis loosened her hold on Darcy gradually and then released her when she realized Darcy was steady. Side by side, they headed toward Raub, who stood glowering at them twenty feet down the corridor. As soon as they were in proximity he turned and silently loped ahead, catching up with Tesserae71 and then passing him.

Darcy glanced over her shoulder. The hymenoptera had silenced the many-armed creature and were making significant inroads into quelling the unruly crowd. The number of prisoners fighting was decreasing rapidly.

Raub had reached a point where the corridor changed direction, angling around an obtuse corner. He stopped short and stood there, his hands clenched into fists.

Selpis held back a few paces and flattened herself against the wall. Tesserae71 looked from Darcy to Raub and back again, his mandibles working.

“What is it?” Darcy hissed as quietly as she could.

“A boarding party,” Raub growled. “Between us and our berth.”

Raub glanced down the corridor. Darcy followed his gaze. The fighting was all but over and the hymenoptera were beginning to drag the fallen prisoners back into holding cells. It was only a matter of time before their group was noticed.

“Is there any other way around?” Darcy asked.

“Only going back the way we came.” Raub gestured behind her, and then his gaze fell on Tesserae71. He pushed away from the wall and approached the hymenoptera. Tesserae71 backed up slightly. Raub swiped the shock stick from the hymenoptera’s grasp. “Give me that.”

Raub’s nostrils flared. He breathed deeply, forcing air in and out quickly until he was chuffing like a locomotive. Darcy straightened. Even in the dim light she could see his blue pallor dissipating as a purple flush swept over his exposed skin, turning it a deeper shade. His expression had gone from menacing to murderous.

His lip curled as he refocused on Darcy. “I expect you to step up now. Our survival depends on it,” he said—with no regard for the loudness of his voice.

“I…okay.”

He grunted and suddenly broke into a sprint around the corner. Darcy glanced at her three companions. They looked as nonplussed as she felt. Did he expect her to follow him? To fight alongside him? To have his back? She swallowed hard and stepped around the corner. What if Raub was wrong? What if these people were there to liberate them? What if they could help her find Adam or get her home?

The boarding party had left three individuals to guard the passageway that led into the bay where they’d apparently docked or landed. They were wearing grey armor with helmets—she couldn’t see faces behind the smoky screens.

Raub barreled down the corridor so fast they were caught off guard. By the time the first one raised a weapon—a gun of some kind—Raub had reached him and used the length of the shock stick to knock the gun out of his hand. He grabbed that guy under his armpits and swiveled, blocking a blast from a second man. He then ran at that man with the first guy still held in his arms, smashing the first one into the second with a deafening crash.

He looked up then and roared, “Leebska!” Fighting hand to hand against the third man, he moved fluidly, anticipating his opponent’s moves with grace.

No one was asking questions. No one was trying to discern whether Raub was a member of the crew or a prisoner. Did the boarding party know what this ship was? She could fight them—she had the skills now to do serious damage—but what if they were there to free them from Hain and the Lovek?

“Wait!” she yelled. She jogged toward him. “They might be able to help us! My enemy’s enemy is my ally!”

She looked down to step over the crumpled men at her feet and suddenly realized that Raub hadn’t just knocked them out—he’d crushed them. There were dark liquids pooling on the decking beneath the armored bodies. The earthy, metallic scent of blood and death reached her nose. He had killed them. She recoiled, backing into Selpis and Tesserae71.

Nembrotha’s sensory stalks twisted in the air on either side of Selpis’s head. Selpis looked solemn as she leaned forward over the bodies, her eyes darting from the dead men to Raub. He’d just finished off another one of armored men.

Nembrotha lisped, “They won’t be allies now. Not when they see this. We’re with that lunatic now, whether we like it or not.”

Raub swooped, picking up a discarded weapon in each hand, and turned to face them. Purple veins stood out on his neck and cheeks, parting the velvety fuzz. His eyes were dark with anger. He looked like a predator. “Come now, Leebska, or die here.” He raised one of the weapons and pointed it at them.

Her heart pounded in her throat. She felt cold and sick. He was a killer.

But she was too, wasn’t she? Were they the same?

Boots thundered down the passageway leading to wherever the second ship was docked. And behind her, she heard the clattering steps of approaching hymenoptera.

Selpis’s cool fingers wrapped around her arm and pulled her forward over the corpses. Darcy followed, stumbling and slipping in before she got her footing and built some forward momentum.

Raub sidestepped and appeared to be taking aim behind her. A series of brief white flashes reflected off the grimy walls of the corridor but the gun didn’t make a sound. She didn’t have time to think about why that might be. She heard the crashing sound of chitinous bodies hitting the decking. More death.

Her vision blurred around the edges. She must have lost a lot of blood. She was beginning to feel weak.

Raub gestured impatiently down the hall toward the next door and began to walk backward, training his gun down the corridor. That must lead to the berth he’d spoken of, where the tern he was planning to steal was parked. Selpis pulled her past Raub toward that door with Tesserae71 scuttling right behind them.

She heard shouting coming from the direction of the second ship just as they reached the door. It was locked.

S
elpis turned dilated
eyes on her. “There must be a code.”

If Raub didn’t have this code they were going to be in real trouble. Darcy turned to call down the corridor to him, but her voice came out weaker than she intended and she wasn’t sure he heard her. He was focused on the figures in grey armor pouring out of the corridor from the other shuttle bay. They were waving around guns, but no one was shooting yet.

Then she noticed that one of those men had a small red dot on his chest—which suddenly burst into flames. There’d been no sound of a weapon firing. What? Had Raub done that?

Tesserae71 pushed her down and reached up for the keypad. She stared at him dully and realized there was a red dot on the back of his head. She lurched for him without thought, pulling him down. As she tumbled backward, a scorched and smoking spot appeared on the wall just below the keypad where Tesserae71’s head had been.

Selpis went down with them, hard, into a tangle. Darcy thought she felt something tearing in her back and gritted her teeth as her vision swam in and out of focus. The overwhelming scent of burning plastic filled her nose and lungs, making it hard to breathe.

They floundered for a moment, limbs flailing, as each of them tried to regain their feet. Tesserae71 got his legs under himself first and reached up to the keypad again, tapping on the symbols there. She heard a strange crackling sound and smelled a sickly sweet odor like spoiled meat cooking. The door swooshed open and Tesserae71 collapsed back on top of her.

He was unmoving, dead weight. She shoved at him fruitlessly. He was lighter than he looked, but she didn’t have any energy left.

Selpis crawled out from under them through the open doorway and got upright, reaching for Darcy. But before Darcy could grab her outstretched hand, Raub barreled through, pushing Selpis out of the way. He leaned out, aiming his weapon again, then hauled Darcy through by the arm as though she weighed nothing.

Her vision closed in, pain screaming through her back. When she was able to refocus, Raub was stooping and throwing her over his shoulder. She yelped in pain, but he ignored her.

She lifted her head, her vision swimming, trying to stay alert. She gasped when she saw Tesserae71 sprawled prone on the decking just outside the door with a steaming hole in his thorax. “No!” She wriggled and fought Raub’s grip. “He might still be alive! We have to give him a chance.”

Raub grunted and swatted her rump. “Stay still, Leebska. The bug served its purpose. It’s dead.” He leaned forward and pressed a symbol to close the door.

She pushed on him and thrashed until he let her down. She mashed on the symbols, trying to trigger the door to reopen, energy surging back into her limbs with her desperation.

“Enough. We’re running out of time. Keep this up and I’ll leave you behind.” Raub was already striding toward a sleek black vehicle, identical to the one that had been used to abduct her. For all she knew it was the same vehicle. It was the size of a city bus.

“You don’t know he’s dead!” she yelled at Raub’s back.

“Your attachment to stray pets will be your death. It has a broken leg and a ruptured thorax. Its entrails were likely cooked by the laser weapons of the incursion team. When its cadre finds it, they will kill it because it’s useless.”

“But you don’t know—” Darcy spat.

Selpis was at her side. She gently pushed Darcy’s hands out of the way and pressed a symbol combination. “I was watching,” she murmured.

The door slid open. On the other side, one of the grey-suited individuals knelt over Tesserae71. The figure lifted its head.

Darcy lunged forward without thought and channeled everything she had into a powerful scissor kick, sending the figure flying back to crash into the opposite wall. She swept Tesserae71 up into her arms, ignoring the pain searing her back, and spun around, his light, chitinous legs dragging limply behind.

“I’ve got the door,” Selpis said, at her side.

Raub had opened the craft. A ramp was lowering. The second the ramp touched the decking, Raub bounded up it. She was suddenly terrified he’d leave them behind. She was equally afraid of being cooped up with him in such a small vehicle, but what choice was left to her now?

She took off at a run. Selpis kept up with Nembrotha still slung around her neck. They galloped up the ramp as it lifted, scooping them, stumbling, into the vehicle.

Darcy looked around wildly. Raub grunted as he thrust himself into a bucket seat at one end of the craft. The seat had been facing them, but as soon as he was in position it rotated so that his back was to them and he was facing a windshield, surrounded by a console with multiple screens that wrapped around his body one hundred and eighty degrees or more. He began tapping and flicking buttons and switches as though he were an old pro at piloting this vehicle.

There was another, similar, seat next to his, but no others. She and Selpis were standing in the middle of an empty cargo area. “There are only two seats,” Darcy murmured, and started to move toward the second bucket seat to secure the hymenoptera.

Selpis moved to the back of the craft, where there were panels on each side draped with cargo netting. She pulled the mesh from the wall. “Put him in here,” she said.

“But…” Darcy’s instinct was to put him in the safest spot, but Selpis was giving her a quelling look, her large, expressive eyes darting from Raub to Darcy and back again. She was probably right. Raub wouldn’t let her put the hymenoptera in the copilot seat if he’d just left him for dead.

“Shouldn’t we do something for him?” Darcy lamented, peering at Tesserae71 as she slipped him into the netting and taking in his injuries. He wasn’t bleeding. The wound must have been cauterized by the heat of the laser or…maybe he didn’t have blood? She felt like she should be administering first aid, but she had no idea what was needed. His anatomy was so different.

Tesserae71’s mandibles were slowly opening and closing but he was silent. He raised a foreleg feebly and let it drop.

Raub growled an unintelligible warning.

Selpis was already climbing into the netting on the opposite wall. She pulled Nembrotha off her shoulders and tucked them in beside her.

“Survival first,” Nembrotha spluttered, their sensory stalks poking out of the mesh and twirling in the air.

Darcy turned, stumbling as the ship lurched. Her stomach flip-flopped. Through the windshield she could see a large door to the outside of the ship opening, revealing a sea of stars. Her jaw dropped. There were so many, so close together that the sky wasn’t black—it glowed a dark silvery grey.

She paused in stunned astonishment for only a moment before dashing for the open seat, grabbing the armrest, and flinging herself down. She grimaced as her back made contact with the seat. The chair pivoted to face front and then lifted up several inches, which was good because otherwise she wouldn’t have been able see over the console surrounding her.

Raub side-eyed her then snarled, “You’re bleeding on my ship.”

She wasn’t about to apologize for something that was beyond her control. She huffed as she worked out how to buckle the harness while keeping her hands well away from any button, screen, or switch. There was no way to know what any of them did and she wasn’t eager to increase the level of confusion.

“Do not get any blood on the console.”

“I wasn’t planning on touching it,” she snapped. She got the harness together and not a moment too soon. She was crushed back into her seat as the ship leapt into space.