The Druid Gene (18 page)

D
arcy caught
a glimpse of large dark objects against the field of stars and flinched as orange explosions lit them up briefly, illuminating details in small sections. All doubt that she’d actually been on a spaceship this whole time vanished in that instant.

Just as she thought she was getting her bearings, the view outside the ship flipped upside down. Her body jerked against the harness, then was pressed into the seat, then the straps were biting into her shoulders.

Each movement pulled painfully at the wound on her back. She locked her jaw to block the whimpers that her throat wanted to make. Up became down, forward became backward, until she was thoroughly disoriented as they spiraled and twisted in seemingly random patterns.

She considered protesting, then wondered if they’d been hit and were out of control, before it dawned on her that he was flying erratically to evade weapons fire and capture.

Beside her, Raub grunted and his hands moved fluidly over the controls. He was intensely focused. But this wasn’t just about fleeing in the chaos of the
Vermachten
being captured and boarded. They weren’t running away. No distance grew between them and the other ships. If anything, they were getting closer.

He was clearly strategizing, seeking weakness. She could see it in his gaze. It was the same kind of predatory look he gave her sometimes. In fact, his skin was still cast in that strange purple flush. That thought crystalized. She hadn’t misinterpreted that expression.

The sweat on her body went cold.

She caught her first glimpse of the
Vermachten
in the flash of light from an explosion. It was a rounded hexagonal disk and massive. Unlike the other ships, it was black as night. Not a single external light or a lit window to betray its presence.

A huge triangular ship suddenly loomed in front of them, filling the windshield. There was a silent explosion just off-center of the nose of that ship, and then they dived away beneath it. Raub had done that, she was sure. There hadn’t been any kind of visible laser line or even a discharging sound of any kind, but she was certain he’d fired on them. The tern must contain a bigger version of those silent weapons she’d seen him discharge in the corridor outside the berth.

“What are you doing?” she cried. “Those ships are huge in comparison to this one! Why are you fighting them?”

“It was clear they’d detected us immediately. The
Vermachten
is caught in a border-patrol net and is disabled. It’s not going anywhere. They’ll naturally assume that the commanding officer is aboard this ship, attempting to escape, and therefore they’ll follow us—that would put us on the defensive. They know the
Vermachten
will still be here when they get back. I will not be quarried like prey. We get away cleanly or die here and now.”

Darcy swallowed hard. It was even more dire than she’d thought. “But how can you possibly hope to best them?”

“I will best them because they’ll underestimate a ship of this size, assuming it’s not adequately armed or piloted by an experienced pilot. Besides, the
Vermachten
has already weakened their defenses. Now quiet your mouth unless you can handle the weapons system.”

She blinked. Their very survival was at stake and she had no idea how she could contribute. She looked helplessly at the controls. They meant nothing to her. All she could do was hang on and watch while her life and the lives of her companions hung in the balance, hinging on this insane alien’s sense of self-preservation and skill.

Her heart hammered in her throat. She looked over her shoulder to check on Selpis, Nembrotha, and Tesserae71. Selpis was curled in the fetal position around Nembrotha, and Tesserae71 looked unconscious or possibly dead, with his legs poking through the cargo mesh at odd angles.

A loud beeping sounded. Raub’s attention refocused and the ship lurched again. When he turned the tern to face the
Vermachten
’s captors, Darcy saw something streaking across the screen, originating from the
Vermachten
. It exploded upon impact against one of the opposition’s ships. At least the
Vermachten
didn’t seem to be firing on the tern.

Pieces broke off. Fireballs rolled away from it to extinguish in the vacuum. A chain reaction seemed to have started, and the other two ships in the formation were moving away—though, due to their size, they were moving at a lumbering pace. The tern seemed to be a nimble little craft by comparison.

The tern shuddered and an ear-piercing siren sounded. Raub let out a curse, mashing on the console until the siren went silent.

A small screen popped up in front of him. He tapped at symbols until images of one of the two remaining ships appeared. He scrolled through them, then enlarged one image and scribed a line in green over it with his fingertip.

The ship tumbled again. Raub leaned over and slapped at her console, causing a similar screen to emerge from it. He pointed at it with an open hand.

“Familiarize yourself with this,” he snarled. Then the ship spun wildly and she was slung to one side of her harness. The torn muscles in her back shrieked and her vision dimmed for a moment.

“I—”

“A child could do it. We are going to enfilade one ship along that line. I have my hands full here. We were just hit and our maneuverability is compromised by thirty-seven percent. The autotargeting system will do most of it. You’ll trigger that system on my mark.”

He seemed certain she would do it. This situation was so out of control. She hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that she’d accidentally killed three people—now she was supposed to fire on an entire ship? It was one thing when he did it, but would she? She gulped and looked around wildly.

“Place your hands on the console,” he barked.

“We don’t know—these could be the good guys! Why are we shooting at them? We should be talking to them—they might give us sanctuary if they know we are escaping prisoners!”

“I’ve told you it’s too late for that. As far as they’re concerned we’re guilty. They don’t care about our circumstances.” He spared her an angry look.

She wished she knew if that were true. She wished there were someone else to consult. Was he just a paranoid, delusional psychopath or did he know what he was talking about? Did she have any choice but to trust him? He was a member of this galactic society and she was an outsider.

She grimaced and made her decision. She didn’t really have a choice. She wanted to survive. She laid her hands on the console. A bunch of symbols appeared on the screen.

She was starting to decipher them when Raub said, “I’m authorizing your biometric signature now.” The symbols disappeared before she could make any sense of them.

“Now what?” Darcy glanced at Raub. The fine fuzz covering his face and beefy arms had darkened in patches and flattened to his skin, sweat beading on it in places. It made him look more human, though still feral.

“When I say, ‘Mark,’ you tap this red square and it will start the sequence.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She was almost getting used to the spinning and plunging. They skirted the wreckage of the ruined ship and came up underneath one of the others. On her screen, the targeting system recognized it as the same ship Raub had marked for his strafing pass. The image wavered then was replaced with a refreshed image in real time from their angle of approach, with the green line still superimposed over the image.

“Get ready…” Raub growled. She glanced at him. He seemed to be fighting the controls.

Darcy braced her hand against the side of the screen so she wouldn’t accidentally press the red square too soon, but kept her thumb in range. She felt nauseated. Everything about this was so wrong.

They got impossibly close. Darcy found herself shrinking back into the seat, fearing that impact was inevitable.

“Mark!” Raub yelled.

She tapped her thumb on the screen and the red button disappeared. Time slowed. Or maybe that was the tern.

The viewpoint on the screen changed again to a close view from the underside of the tern. The green line gradually disappeared, to be replaced by a glowing red line scored by the targeting system as they passed by. Fiery orange clouds plumed out of the line from time to time but quickly disappeared.

The fissure they’d created widened, and pieces began to break away in chunks as secondary explosions erupted from the line. When they were almost to the end of their run she started to notice that lights all over the ship were winking out.

She looked up at the windshield in time to see a second missile leave the
Vermachten
and impact the third and final ship. It began to splinter apart in seconds. She panted. Her fingers tingled. She’d never seen so much impersonal death and destruction in her life. How many innocent people had she just killed? She tried not to think about it.

But they’d survived. They’d escaped.

The tern rotated at a more sedate speed and leveled out. The battle was behind them and there was nothing but stars visible through the windshield.

Her brow furrowed. “You aren’t going to attack the
Vermachten
?” she asked.

“They’re disabled and stuck in a border net. The local authorities will be hunting them if they manage to get away. They won’t have time or inclination to follow us.”

Could he be right? Would Hain cut her losses and just let them get away? Somehow she doubted it. She remembered the gleam of avarice in Hain’s eye when she told Darcy how valuable she was. She wondered if Raub knew that little detail. He’d been present, seen all the stuff about the druids, and knew she was rare. Maybe he didn’t think any of that mattered.

“But I would think you’d want to get revenge on Hain and the Lovek for taking you captive,” she replied and then clamped her mouth shut. That was a slippery slope. The circumstances she was under were altering her sense of morality. Did she want to fire on the
Vermachten
with all those innocent prisoners inside just to make Hain and the Lovek pay for what they’d done to her? Was she that ruthless? Was she that afraid? What the hell was happening to her?

He was silent for a moment. “Revenge is a petty concept,” he said, so low she had to strain to hear him. He eased back in his seat and focused on the controls, ignoring her.

She stared at him. For the first time since she’d met Raub she was sure about something about him. His statement rang false. It was bullshit. He was playing a role, pretending all the zen crap he’d been teaching her was his true philosophy. There were a lot of things she didn’t understand about the universe, but one thing she did know for certain was that Raub did not think revenge was beneath him. She knew that like she knew she needed to breathe oxygen.

What else was he lying about?

Who or what had she just allied herself with?

The small screen on her side of the console displayed a view of the ships they’d left behind them. She watched as they became amorphous shapes against a sea of stars, dotted with orange flashes, growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

Her sense of disquiet grew.

R
aub was engrossed
in something on his side of the console, flicking and scrolling and tapping on it. Darcy’d been watching him and wondering what she should do.

Triage. That’s what she should be doing.

She reached for the latch on her harness. “Is it safe for me to go check on the others now?”

He grunted. She would take that as a yes.

She unbuckled herself, and her body lifted away from the seat. Panicking, she clutched at the armrests as the chair automatically swiveled to face the back of the ship and then cautiously pushed herself down until the decking was under her feet. It felt strange. She realized her feet were not going to stick when she let go of the armrests and had no idea how to maneuver her body to get where she wanted to go. She felt buoyant, kind of like she was immersed in water, but not quite.

Selpis and Nembrotha were slowly extricating themselves from the cargo netting, which was floating freely from the wall. They seemed a little more competent in this environment than she was. Of course, Selpis had the advantage of a prehensile tail to use in addition to her limbs.

Darcy took a tentative step and drifted away from the floor, arms and legs flailing, until she bumped into the ceiling of the craft. She splayed her hands out to slow herself down and let her elbows bend until she came to rest with head and upper back against the ceiling.

A loud, sloppy sucking sound emanated from below her, followed by a harsh whisper from Selpis: “Quiet!”

Great.
The slug was laughing at her.

She’d never given gravity much thought while on the
Vermachten
, but now, in its absence, she realized it was something she’d taken for granted. The slightest push against any surface would send her sailing across the cargo area. She had to concentrate on every movement to maintain a semblance of control and find creative ways to anchor herself. She’d manage. She always did.

She gently pushed on the ceiling and did her best to gracefully float down toward Tesserae71. Selpis was already clinging to the mesh surrounding him and reached out an arm to steady her and pull her in close.

“First time in null g?” Nembrotha slurped, the staccato wet chuckle echoing in their throat as they spoke. Their body was wrapped loosely around Selpis’s thin neck like a slimy scarf, their orange-fringed sensory stalks extended and waving in her direction.

Darcy frowned. “Obviously.” She grabbed the netting and pulled herself hand over hand closer to Tesserae71. He was very still. Not even a twitch. His shell was dull compared to how it normally looked.

“Not dead yet,” Nembrotha said juicily, but with authority.

Darcy darted a look at them. They seemed to have an acute sense of chemical detection. Since she had no idea how to check for signs of life from Tesserae71, she was obliged to believe Nembrotha knew what they were talking about. “Yet? Is there anything we can do for him?”

Nembrotha gurgled in a way that Darcy interpreted as an exasperated sigh. “Of course there is. The wound is clean. We should pack it with regen gel and seal it to prevent sepsis.”

Darcy glanced at Selpis, who blinked back at her blankly. “Nembrotha was a chemist before they were taken. They would know better than I.”

Darcy didn’t know how a chemist would know about medical care for a hymenoptera, but nevertheless she looked around. There were compartments in the bulkheads lining both sides of the tern. Maybe some of them contained emergency medical supplies. She looked briefly at Raub, who was still intent on looking at screens on the console. She wasn’t going to ask his permission because he wouldn’t give it. She’d just do what she had to do and deal with the consequences.

She reached for the nearest compartment, feeling all around the door for a trigger mechanism since there wasn’t a handle. When she pressed the lower-left corner it sprang open. Behind the door was a mesh barrier. She stared through the mesh, trying to decipher the symbols on the boxes and canisters. The translations came, but not as quickly as reading English would have.

Selpis moved closer. “This is food,” she said impatiently. “Let’s try another.”

They opened every compartment quietly, instinctively knowing that they shouldn’t do anything to attract Raub’s attention. The compartments mostly contained food, water, and some equipment Darcy didn’t recognize, but finally they did find some rudimentary medical supplies.

Under Nembrotha’s direction they opened a package of bright-blue gel and squeezed it into the hole in Tesserae71’s thorax. The insect didn’t move at all. Darcy kept her hand over the wound to keep the gel from floating back out while Selpis fashioned a patch to place over it.

As she worked on Tesserae71, she glanced down for the first time since she’d broken out of her cell to look at the index finger she’d used to break the lock. It was angry red and throbbing. There was black stuff flaking off where her nail had been. It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought, actually. The nail would grow back.

Darcy wished she could do more for Tesserae71. He was probably in shock and would have benefited from IV fluids—if she’d had them or known how to administer them—but she didn’t. He’d either survive or he wouldn’t. Without Nembrotha’s help, he probably wouldn’t have had a chance.

“Should we try to drip some water in his mouth or something? He might need fluid,” Darcy asked quietly.

“No,” Nembrotha said firmly. “That would be dangerous. He’ll absorb some fluid from the gel. He doesn’t require much.” The slug seemed to be enjoying playing the expert. She just hoped they were right.

“We should do something for his leg as well,” Darcy said. She wasn’t sure how this regeneration gel worked, but it said plainly on the wrapper that it worked on all species for a variety of purposes. She squeezed the remainder of the gel pack onto a piece of gauze and wrapped it around the hymenoptera’s injured midleg, then took a self-sticking bandage from Selpis and wound it around to hold the cloth in place.

She cast around. “We need something to splint his leg.”

“Splint?” Selpis asked.

“To keep it straight and immobile—”

“Nonsense,” Nembrotha slurped. “The bandaging material is very strong. Just wrap some more on the leg. If it is possible to heal this injury, that will be sufficient.”

Darcy didn’t see any other alternative so she did as prescribed and carefully wrapped the leg with more of the bandaging material. When she was done, she had to concede that the limb was being held firmly, and he wouldn’t be putting any weight on it in the absence of gravity anyway. She’d just have to hope that it would work. With five other legs to depend on, he probably wouldn’t be significantly handicapped if he survived the burn.

She sighed. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, exhaustion was setting in.

Selpis gently grabbed her upper arm. “We should tend to your injuries as well, Darcy.”

“The anthropoid is healing already,” Nembrotha sputtered. “We’ve no need to waste supplies on her. Some food, one lengthy rest cycle, or some meditation and she’ll be hearty as Hirank.”

Selpis didn’t have eyebrows, but the horny ridges above her eye sockets were mobile and expressive—now they drew together in consternation. “That’s not possible.”

Darcy allowed Selpis to turn her. She clicked the button on her sleeve to loosen the jumpsuit and let it slide over her shoulder so Selpis could reach the injury. Even as she did, she realized that her back wasn’t feeling as raw and painful as it had just a short time before. She held her breath and braced herself against the bulkhead to endure the pain of cleaning the raw wound. She was sure that the creature’s claw had not only broken the skin, but torn muscle as well.

Selpis wiped gently with a sponge from the medical kit, murmuring aloud as she did so. “There’s a lot of blood…”

Darcy wasn’t surprised. The wound was bad. She was sure she’d lost a great deal. She needed stitches—maybe even surgery. Without proper medical care she could be disfigured for life. But there was none of that for her out here. She’d have to hope she could survive without it.

Selpis clucked and began to wipe a little harder.

Darcy flinched at the pressure on her tender skin but knew that Selpis hadn’t touched the worst parts yet.

Selpis’s voice sounded incredulous. “I wouldn’t believe this if I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes. I saw this injury just after it was created. It was a deep, jagged gash. But now…the skin is unbroken. It simply looks red and irritated. There may be a permanent scar, but the wound has closed. I’ve never anything heal so fast.”

“What?” Darcy asked, reaching up to feel for herself. The muscles in her shoulder and back protested. She was experiencing a lot of pain, but it was nothing at all like the pain she’d felt just an hour before. Her skin was raised, warm and tender to the touch, but it was smooth and unbroken.

“Just as I said it would be,” Nembrotha gurgled haughtily.

“The Cunabula gave your species many gifts,” Selpis breathed as she continued to wipe the blood from Darcy’s back.

“This is why they treated her so differently on the ship. These are unusual traits. She would be valuable on the black market,” Nembrotha said.

Darcy turned her head to look at them. Selpis held her at arm’s length and something in her expression changed.

“But I—I’ve never healed like this before,” Darcy protested. She thought back to touching the stones. They’d supercharged her body. Then she remembered the video Hain had showed her. It had said she would experience accelerated healing. But at this level?

It was a disturbing reminder that she was not fully human.

She breathed slowly and tried not to let the burst of panic she was feeling show on her face. She glanced back down at her finger. Maybe it had been worse…

“Did Hain experiment on you?” Selpis whispered. “She did perform surgery, you said. Perhaps she did more than implant a chip to allow you to speak Mensententia.”

Darcy shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

In response, Nembrotha’s sensory stalks stretched even closer to her and waved around. “You are an unusual specimen for an anthropoid,” they said. “But then, so is that one.” Nembrotha’s head craned back around, and their sensory stalks indicated Raub.

Darcy suddenly felt bone-tired. She didn’t like being called a specimen, and she was tempted to snap at Nembrotha, but when it came down to it she was simply too exhausted.

She reached up to try to close the gap on the back of the garment, so no one could see the healing wound anymore. But she couldn’t let go of the mesh or she’d drift away, and one-handed she couldn’t properly reach.

“Allow me,” Selpis said, and gently resealed the clothing.

“Thank you,” Darcy mumbled. She clicked the button to save the setting on the jumpsuit.

“We should eat,” Nembrotha declared.

Selpis rummaged in the compartments again and doled out a few food cubes and small pouches of water. She handed two sets to Darcy. “Would you?” She indicated Raub at the front of the ship.

Darcy took the food and water, cradling it against her body with one hand, and pushed off for the cockpit. She gave herself a large margin for error and bumped into the wall next to the empty seat. She turned awkwardly, hearing Nembrotha’s damp squeaks and chortles over her shoulder.

She managed to maneuver into the seat and hold on while it swiveled to face forward. Raub didn’t acknowledge that she’d returned.

She extended the food and water toward him with one hand, drifting out of the seat a little. “Raub?”

He didn’t move or speak, just continued to pore over information on his screen.

She spoke louder. “Raub, do you want something to eat or drink?”

He inhaled sharply and turned those cold cobalt eyes on her. The whites of his eyes seemed greenish, as did his skin. She looked at the display for a source of yellow light, but it was mostly white. “Leave it. I’ve more pressing things to be concerned with.” He gestured with an open hand to a storage compartment on the dashboard near the top of his console.

She slipped the food and water into it. “What is it?”

“This craft has a limited range. I must find a planet within reach where we can either refuel or find passage to a larger hub. This sector is not well documented. It is not an easy task.”

“Oh.” Darcy shrank down into her seat a little. She knew this news should concern her, but she’d just had enough. He seemed to know what he was doing. He could handle it. Her back ached something fierce and her body felt drained. She couldn’t process anything else right now.

He turned away. “You should sleep while your body regenerates. It is foolish to remain awake. You’re practically catatonic.” And with that he was refocused on the screen again.

She slipped her own cubes and pouch into a compartment and snapped the harness into place. She didn’t even try to keep her eyes open.