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Focus.
She threw on leggings and a singlet, donning her favorite worn-out old jacket over the top. It had been her mom’s, and Alina thought she could still smell the musky rose of her perfume lingering on the collar. She pulled a pair of knee-high work boots from under the bed and cinched them tight around her calves, taking comfort in the constricting pressure.
Steeling herself, Alina tried to focus on work. Herrealwork: Kaia Halena. Her alien debacle was finally over—as over as it could be for anyone on a ship infested with them, that is—and she had real duties to worry about.
CHAPTER 18
THREXIN
He’d woken up in his own bed with a bad mood and an aching breastbone. His head still throbbed, as if the limiter were issuing phantom signals to his brain from the night before. Threxin wanted nothing more than to stay there and sleep off the pounding in his head. But with three ship days until the jump to the edge of human space, there was work to do. He’d wasted time. Renza assured him everything was on track, but there were final arrangements to be made… and a port to install.
The pain in his chest and skull intensified with each step toward the command center, and it took all of Threxin’s efforts to mask his discomfort. Renza lifted his chin when Threxin entered, spikes twitching with displeasure. The humans at their control panels exchanged furtive glances.
Pteron, the guard Threxin had assigned to Orion Halen and his female, approached. “Where have you been?”
Threxin’s apertures tightened. “Where I was needed, Pteron.”
“It has been many ticks,” Pteron pressed.
He was too forward. He took after his parents in that, who had been rebel leaders in the last Apth uprising. Failed rebel leaders, dispatched quickly by Threxin’sreplacement sire. Threxin had been only a child then and barely remembered a thing, but he remembered being told his parents were dead. He remembered himself and Pteron being taken up from the planet’s surface to theElysian, ushered into the ship’s medical wing in a line with the other offspring, Renza—a stranger back then—among them.
“Your human-kin has been looking for you,” Pteron grunted, as if Threxin hadn’t already known. As if Orion and his red bitch weren’t loitering right behind him. Threxin’s spikes itched. He found, somewhat unnerved, that feeling the limiter kick in only induced another flare of protest which was as well suppressed.
Threxin shouldered past Pteron and stepped to the platform on which his seat was bare and waiting.
Threxin winced as the sampler buried itself inside his wrist. Everythinghurton this shoqing ship, and Pteron was still hovering, waiting for an explanation he was not owed.
“Go to Lesthin in the medical bay. Tell him I will come to install my port tomorrow,” Threxin told him. He could already tell he’d be in no shape to go through a procedure today as he’d hoped.
“Is his communications band broken?” Pteron’s brow drew back. He was referring to the devices Threxin had issued to his cohort, somewhat more primitive than the sleeker adhesive strip on his own inner wrist, but they got the job done.
“You will tell him yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because I command it.” Threxin leaned back, splaying his feet wide on the floor. He eyed Pteran, waiting for another challenge. Renza cocked his head from the copilot’s seat. The guard adjusted his weapon on his back and went to do as he was told without further protest.
“How far from jump location?” Threxin asked no one inparticular. Either the ship or one of the crew would answer, and he cared not which it was.
“Sixty-seven hours, sir,” said a human voice from the panel.
“Renza,” Threxin turned to his brother. “Gather seven of my cohort. Have them shadow the humans on shift.”
The humans tensed in unison. Threxin had two jumps to get to the destination Orion Halen had in mind. The destinationElysian’strained uhyre technicians were working to decode—something he would need to check on later. There were traitors on board, made clear by his attempted assassination, and Threxin would not rely on the humans to get them the whole way to his new planet. He needed to train his people to replace them, and fast.
The first three hours in the command center were spent reviewing navigation and trajectory data he’d missed, then approving tweaks of the engine and jump drive systems that only his blood could authorize. Alina Argoud had slinked in at some point. She carried a steaming box ofsomethingthat she foisted onto Kaia Halena, who sat in the command center’s observation pit.
“I did not expect to see you today, brother,” Renza muttered under his breath in Apthian, eyes tracking Alina casually.
“I was well enough to work.”
In truth, Threxin had been feeling worse by the minute since the moment he got out of bed that morning. Now each strand of fabric chafed against his wound.
“Has the female’s care been sufficient?” Renza asked instead of calling him out on the lie.
“If you’re asking if I need her any longer, the answer is no.”
“I will dispose of her tonight then.”
