“Where are we going?” I ask Volga as we float in the center of an intersection. I feel as though someone is watching us. The bodies of murdered Yellow civilians float far behind us. She squints at the air, incredibly calm.
“Can you see blood?” she whispers. “I lost Fig’s trail. My eyes are not good in low light. Sorry.”
Have we been following her trail the whole time? I thought we were just going at random. Volga might look stupid, but she’s done this before. Well, maybe not fight monsters from space, but the other stuff. Seeing how comfortable she looks with the rifle in her hands, I remember what she did to Kavax. How many people has she killed?
“Why are we following Fig?” I ask.
“She knows her way better. She’ll be going for a ship too.”
“Not to kill her…”
She looks over at my pistol. “Do you want to kill her?”
“Yeah,” I say, surprised at how natural it feels. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”
Volga glances at me before going back to her search, her face unreadable.
I squint and search lower than Volga. Sure enough, I find blood droplets floating just over the floor, seeming to head off to the right. We set off in pursuit.
The ship grows eerily quiet except for the blaring alarms. It worries me how silent our movement is without gravity. Anything could be waiting for us around any corner.
A mechanical roar greets us at the next intersection. We scramble to reverse as a big Gold in gravBoots and a nightgown tears down the hall toward us with a bloody razor.
He locks eyes with Volga as he passes.
His voice trails down the hall. “Run…”
We look at what lies in his wake. The hallway stretches like a pulsing red throat, bending a hundred meters down. Shadows move.
“Oh shit…” I mutter, and push off the wall after the Gold faster than Volga. I’m numb. Vision constricted. Don’t even know if I should follow. But Volga is right behind me. And that gives me some comfort. Still, we’re not going fast enough, but we can’t look back without throwing our forward motion off. Volga shouts for me to grab her. My instinct is to trust her. I snag her leg and she fires behind us with the pulseRifle. We accelerate with its recoil just as the hall stutters black again. A mournful horn echoes down the hall like a whale song.
“Catch ’em!” someone shouts.
Two armored men in gravBoots zip forward to collect us. They bring us to a cluster of heavily armored Sol Guards led by two Golds. They form a defensive circle around the hall where it meets a gravLift station fed by multiple levels.
Blue light from the lift illuminates the soldiers. There’re more than thirty, not all armored, about a dozen sailors amongst them. Some look like they’ve just woken up. Though they know who we are, they make no effort to take our weapons.
Not reassuring.
The leader, a huge Gold man, hangs upside down looking at a Gray’s datapad. “Thermal is bunk. Go motion.” A heartbeat comes from the device as white waves ripple over the image in a circle. He moves a wand about. “They’ve stopped.”
“What’s—” I begin.
“Silence,” the Gold snaps. Aside from his nightgown, he wears only gravBoots. His eyes flick to Volga. “Might need your help, Obsidian. I hear you know how to use that.” He looks at her rifle. She nods and he motions everyone to be quiet. “I hear them down the hall. Lucia…secure our flank in case they come from the vents. If they reach the central gravLift, they can spread through the ship. We hold them here.” Lucia watches him evenly, speaking in a private, silent language I don’t understand. “Backup is imminent.” Lucia nods and departs.
I try to get the Gold’s attention again. “Sir—”
“Shut up, girl,” he snaps. “Germanicus, I need you to take the hostages to Madam Julii in the—”
“Listen to me!” I shout. The Gold wheels, dark with anger. “They’re already in the rest of the bloodydamn ship,” I say.
His eyelids flutter. He knows what I mean.
“How do you know this?” he whispers.
“I saw them from outside. There were hundreds all over the ship.”
“It is true,” Volga says. “She was far enough out.”