Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

ALINA

H er right cheek was cold, but the left was burning. After those first sensations came the empty black box of her mind. Alina reached for the familiar presence of emotes and comms all around. The line between her Neurosync and everyone else in range was always buzzing, even when everyone was silent. Except now that line did not exist.

Muffled voices grew sharper as Alina racked her brain to figure out where she was and why there was no one there.

When she remembered the nightmare, she nearly laughed at the sick story her brain had come up with now. Good thing Alina was due for her next session with Dr. Pertin later that day.

The voice was Orion Halen's, and Kaia's by turn, and someone else's. Behind her, all Alina could make out were abstract mutters.

She was in the command center, prone on the ground.

Had she passed out? It had happened once before when she was a kid, but fainting wasn't a normal occurrence for her. Alina grasped for when memories ended and the nightmare began. She'd seen blood in the hall. Was that real? She'd heard Colossal announce a new commander… that had to be the dream, and that was before the blood.

When had she finished her shift?

"Hey. Glowstick."

Alina managed a grin through the pain in the side of her face that was pressed against the cold floor. Kaia's snark had this way of being both badass and somehow funny as long as it wasn't directed at you. Alina instinctively tried to reach out to her charge with the NS, but it was no use—the words for a subvoc wouldn't even form in her mind, much less transmit. Had she fallen and damaged something? She'd never heard of an NS being broken before.

"Why the hell are you here? What do you want with us?" Kaia's voice again. Alina squinted toward the command platform.

"Nothing," a deep, barely discernible gargle responded.

Alina tried to push herself up, but buckled as pain shot through her elbow. It must've been a bad fall.

"Nothing?" Kaia again. "You came here and killed dozens of people for nothing?"

Killed people?

Alina willed her eyes to focus, and this time they obeyed a little. She clamped her teeth on her lip to stifle another scream when the uhyre's shadowy outline came into sharp relief.

Please tell me this is still a nightmare.

"I need you not," the uhyre rumbled in broken Universal. He swiveled to face the thermaview and paused for several seconds. "Ship, how long will it require to vent the population deck?"

" What? " Alina, Kaia, and Orion blurted out at the same time. A sharp kick to her ribs made her clamp her mouth shut and curl in on herself, tucking her knees against her chin.

They're behind me, Alina realized.

She fought the violent urge to scramble away in panic. How many of them were there? Alina blinked back a vision of a monster army looming back there. She made herself as small and as quiet as she could on the floor.

Don't draw attention. That, she now remembered in a rush of recognition, was what had gotten her in a bruised heap on the ground in the first place. And it was a bruised heap—she felt it now as sensation came back to her limbs and her mind recalibrated itself to this new reality.

Indistinguishable murmurs and a sob rose from the other side of the command deck as Colossal complied with the information request and said it would take four minutes and thirty-two seconds to vent the CRD.

"Hey now, wait a minute." Orion again, dropping into the empty copilot's seat. Kaia was behind him a second later, gripping at the carbon fiber back of it. "You can't do that."

"You were commander, no?" the uhyre questioned. "Are you confused how this works?"

"You can't just kill seven thousand fucking people," Orion snarled. "You can't have come here just to murder a bunch of humans, can you? What do you really want? What's the endgame here?"

The alien seemed to consider whether to answer. That or look for words. But finally he found them. "I was born for this, human. I will claim my birthright and find a planet for what remains of my people."

"A New Earth," Alina whispered under her breath and winced reflexively, expecting another kick in the back.

She flinched as a shadow passed over her. A monster stepped over her curled form. She glimpsed his back now, red spikes running in a single row down his scalp, disappearing into the neckline of his bulky exosuit.

The cyan one, the one in the commander's seat, turned to him. "With a suitable planet, we will need not Haevn, brother."

It took Alina a few seconds to denote that he was saying Heaven through a thick accent .

"But our father—" the red alien began, taking obvious effort to contort his words into Universal.

" Your father. Not mine."

The red one recoiled. "And me, then? Are we not brothers?"

The cyan uhyre lowered his chin, chest rising with a sigh as he replied in rapid-fire Uhyreish before switching back to accented Universal. "Koruth wanted Haevn and control, brother. He killed my parents for the power of their blood once we learned their stories were true. But this is my ship and my cohort now. And I want to live."

"What kind of planet are you looking for?" Orion Halen cut in.

"Orion…" Kaia's voice held a warning, but her husband didn't look at her.

"No need," the blue one said. "I will use your people's records after your disposal. Our ideal habitation environment is as your Earth was."

Kaia's knuckles blanched with how hard she must have been squeezing the back of Orion's seat.

"You won't find what you're looking for in our records. You won't find what I know." Orion slung his ankle over his knee, elbow propped on the arm and his temple on his fist. He looked so confident… so certain.

The uhyre cocked his head. "What you know?"

"I know where your planet is. And I'll take you there, but only if you let the humans on Colossal live."