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As if on cue, Silarra’s head popped into the rig room, making the humans gasp and flinch in unison.
“You have five minutes to handle your emotional issues,” she snapped. “Get on it.”
Threxin cringed slightly as his Alina shifted beside him. The scowl on her pretty face when he glanced down at her was not unexpected.
“Threxin, that’s completely inappropriate,” she huffed.
Threxin sighed. His female was sensitive—she was human, after all. He reached up to smooth her hair in a soothing motion he had recently learned she enjoyed. Although judging by the tension leeching from her mind, it was not working quite as intended yet.
“There are more than one thousand humans to get through in one ship week before we jump,” Threxin explained patiently. “And more register each day. The nature of time does not permit us to accommodate stalling.”
Threxin may not have a limiter anymore, but tempered by his link with his female it seemed his mind was still more rational than that of a human.
“Then can you at least tell her not to be such an assholeabout it?” his Alina ground out through gritted teeth, jerking her head from his petting.
Threxin issued a short hiss through his fangs and yanked her back toward him by her waist. Ticks later, the flash of possessive frustration was tempered by a soft pang of trepidation on her end.
“Yes, my female,” Threxin took a deep inhale, leaning into her fragile presence.
He lifted his wrist to his mouth. Alina had said he could now initiate transmission to his cohort’s comms devices through his Neurosync, but it felt viscerally wrong to establish such a link with anyone but Alina.
“Silarra,” he barked into his comms patch. “I told you to be more delicate with your reprimands yesterday. If I must tell you again, I will rip your other fang out.”
He spoke in Universal for the benefit of his female finding some comfort in the words. Indeed, while his Alina was generally not one for violence, a warm flush radiated through their link as she leaned into his side.
“Thanks. Now stroke my hair again,” she grumbled under her breath.
Threxin smirked and resumed his petting.
CHAPTER 56
ALINA
Five days before the jump, the air was heavy with both anticipation and a kind of haze. The whole ship was in limbo, not least because of the palpable shift in Threxin’s approach to the human occupants.
On the one hand, Threxin tightened security. He wanted to minimize the risk that someone would enact a rebellion so close to the jump. Alina had deduced that she was the only person told of the specific timing of the upcoming jump. She’d gathered that Orion Halen had been warned in rough terms, since he’d have to be the one to provide the target coordinates. Of course, that would mean Kaia had the same information. But the rest of the population were only told thatColossalwas headed to a potential New Earth that they’d be forced to cohabit with the uhyre. That was, after all, the crux of their choice: that, or Heaven.
The upcoming jump was not announced to people, but Threxin fully believed that Orion and Kaia had every reason to blab about what rough information they had and try to stir up trouble. Their begrudging collaboration had been very much forced, and though Alina was hoping they’d grow to see that things didn’t have to be all that bad, she didn’t blame Threxin for taking extra precautions.
On the other hand, the uhyre adopted a visibly softer approach to their handling of what they had considered to be human “pests.” More food rations were doled out, the CRD medbays had been restocked, and the rig remained open to all who wanted to try their lot in Heaven. Perhaps that in part accounted for the slowing trickle of Uploads in the medbay.
Alina had long since given up her triage runs for Kaia. The former commander’s wife made clear she wanted nothing to do with her, now more than ever. But she did make a habit of spending time in the observer pit in the command center daily, listening, picking up what she could.
Alina wasn’t sure if Threxin didn’t realize just how much Apthian she’d managed to pick up or if he just didn’t care, but he seemed very open with his discussions with Renza, talking everything from timelines to population numbers.
Five hundred people had died since the uhyre’s arrival. Just over two thousand more chose to Upload, with the trickle of new volunteers slowing as the days wore on. That left about five thousand people on the ship—still more than Threxin’s mandated limit.
Alina would have to ask him about that, and soon. She gnawed her lip, staring absently at the line connecting Threxin to the ship as blood trickled down the tube. Who would’ve thought the lifeblood of one of the last great ships to leave Old Earth would be that of the very creatures they were running from?
“You weren’t entirely wrong.”
“Hmm?” A familiar voice startled Alina out of her ruminations. She tensed when she noticed Kaia in the seat beside her, slumped with one foot propped on the carbon cushion. Was she about to get another verbal lashing about how much of a traitorous disappointment she was? She was already getting dirty looks left and right from the crew—maybe she could slip away and avoid yet more public humiliation.
“I said you weren’t wrong,” she said, keeping her volumelow as she glanced over at Threxin and Renza deep in conversation fifty feet away. “I thought about it… And Orion talked some sense into me. After the invasion, this was the best outcome many of them could have hoped for: alive and with an option to Upload or find their New Earth. Uhyre aside, I bet some of them would rather be in Heaven than on New Earth anyway.”
“I get where you were coming from. The limiters make them… logical,” Alina said, unable to thwart the familiar compulsion to make concessions. “And logically it makes perfect sense for him to kill us all as soon as he has the coordinates to his planet.”
“I have seen him here, with you. He’d gladly kill everyone else, I’d bet,” Kaia scoffed. “But he won’t, because he knows it’d destroy you. He doesn’t give a shit about any of these people, but he looks at you the way Orion looks at me.”
