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And yet the calm voice overhead was insisting, repeatedly, that there was one.
Something had gone horribly wrong.
Alina picked up her pace, pushing her protesting legs well beyond their limits.
Kaia? Are you all right? I’m on my way.
No reply came, but whatever tragedy had befallen Orion would be taking Kaia’s full attention. Besides, ignoring Alina’s comms wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence for Kaia at the best of times. But as Kaia’s official assistant, Alina had access to her location, pulling it up in her NS: the command center.
When she finally climbed the stairs up to the Common Residence Deck, Alina tried the elevators again, and thankfully this one worked. She rubbed down her burning thighs and gulped a few steadying breaths as it took her up to the command deck.
When she got there, the deck was eerily quiet. Silent alarms flashed overhead, flooding the hall with intermittent flares of red and yellow. Every little hair on Alina’s body stood on end as she walked, her skin buzzing with pins and needles.
She saw blood in a passage crossing the main hall. A big smear of it that blended with the red light of an overhead alarm. Orion’s blood? Alina spurred her feet from a brisk walk to a run. All she could do was focus on her charge. Damn it, if Alina would have justinsistedharder for Kaia to let her do her job, she’d be there right now instead of clambering through half the ship to get to her. What if, for once, Kaia needed her? What if she was too late?
The door to the command center was already open, and Alina took a sharp running turn inside.
“Mrs. Halena?” she called, expecting the need to shout over a mass of commotion.
The first thing she spotted was Kaia, standing beside the commander’s chair where Orion sat, very alive. “Are you all?—”
A massive black arm slammed into her chest, stopping her dead in her tracks and knocking the air from her lungs.
Everything was a blur as Alina was tossed back against a wall, and it took her a few seconds too long to get her bearings and process what her eyes were seeing.
A giant stood before Orion in an exosuit, long legs raising him to the commander’s platform. He wore a black helmet, which was cocked to the side as he stared down at Orion Halen in the seat.
The wall behind her shifted, and Alina finally recognized that it wasn’t a wall. Someone huge was forcing her against their body, an arm clamped tight around her waist. Alina tensed, but didn’t fight as she tried to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do to help Kaia up there.
The suited one standing before Orion spoke. The voicewas deep—male—and too quiet for her to make out the words. Kaia’s fists were bunched, her eyes flashing. Orion looked calmer, which was… confusing.
At least he was alive. The notification had been a mistake. Maybe something came loose when the ship was jostled earlier.
Only a moment later, Orion rose from the commander’s seat and stood aside. To Alina’s utter confusion, the giant took his place, which was just ridiculous, not least because he looked way too big for that thing. More than that,Colossalran on Orion Halen’s blood alone. If this was a coup, whoever staged it was an idiot. For a moment Alina thought she may be dreaming, because this was exactly the kind of thing that made no sense. She wriggled against the solid expanse into which she was pressed in a sort of check of solidity, and the expanse grunted in response.
If it was a dream, it was not letting her go. Alina could only watch as the giant settled in the seat meant for the commander of the colony shipColossal. Then huge black-gloved hands came up to unclasp the helmet and lift it over his head.
She squinted into the blue backlight emanating from the chin being revealed.
Shamefully, it took a few more seconds after the helmet was fully removed for Alina to register what she was seeing, and that it wasn’t a backlight at all. That was when she finally screamed.
The uhyre turned his monstrous blue-gashed face toward her, making her shrink back into whoever was trapping her. And whoever it was, it dawned now, felt way too big to be… human. She twisted her head back with the hard pit of realization seeding in her stomach, but she couldn’t see past her captor’s suit and helmet. All she could see was that the person… thecreature… must’ve been over eight feet tall.
Alina slapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her cry, hoping the uhyre in the commander’s chair would maybe just forget she ever drew his attention. But instead of turning away, the alien gurgled something low and grating in her direction. The thing behind her gurgled back.
CHAPTER 2
THREXIN
The reclamation of the ship did not take long. Once they destroyed the enemy’s combat fighters with their own planetary missiles and satellite nukes, it was only a matter of maneuvering around the ship’s mounted projectiles, latching to the hull, and searing a speedy but careful opening in its surface to accommodate a pressurized passage tube.
It took much longer to do so with this ship than it had withElssian, Threxin acknowledged with some pride. In fact,Clossalas a whole looked much more impressive. It was a massive and practical black beast, with zero effort spent on appearances and all of it on defenses, however useless against his efforts.
Just at that time, hisClossalobjected to being underestimated by landing a hit on their transport vessel.
“Shoq,” his brother swore next to him, adjusting to keep the transport steady as the mechanic in the back did his work.
Threxin made for the tail of the craft just in time to watch his men push the seared hull inward. They looked back at him through the transparent sealed tube they had created between the transport vessel and the colony ship.
