Grimspace (Sirantha Jax 1)

“We’ve done everything we can here,” March says finally. “All aboard, we’ve got to make tracks.”

“We’ll never stay ahead of them,” Keri answers in a monotone. “There isn’t a land vehicle fast enough, and they can pry off armored plating—”

I realize it’s not resolve buoying her up. She’s numb with despair, and I know this is my fault even if I don’t understand what’s happening entirely. But the others are too accustomed to listening to March to heed the girl’s objections. One by one, they climb inside, and the Gunnar takes his place at the wheel. It’s close, not meant to carry this many, and so I wind up on someone’s lap. Not surprisingly, March holds Keri, carefully although not possessively. I’m figuring out she’s like a little sister to him. Maybe if I had a brother, he’d treat me like that, too.

I glance down at Dina, who rolls her eyes. “You’re so not my type,” she tells me, although she does wind her arms about my waist, probably to keep me from hitting my head. “Scrawny little bitch.”

“Dahlgren compound is closest,” the Gunnar murmurs, presumably laying in the course as his fingers fly across the consoles. “We’ll make for it and pray.”

Loras pauses in his low chanting. “Already on it.”

“Would someone please tell me what’s coming?”

“You called them,” Keri tells me, pale green eyes eerie in the half-light. “With the blood. They live in the caves and only come above to feed, they’ll descend in hordes…”

Before I can erupt and start pulling her hair out in sheer frustration, Saul elaborates. “They’re a native Lachion life-form, one of the few things that seems to have thrived here—” He gestures, and glancing between the miniscule gap in the plated panels at the barren plain, I can see why survival might be difficult. “Largely because the creatures eat anything that moves…”

“Or doesn’t move,” Mair adds, cheerful as a death’s-head.

Saul continues as if he hasn’t been interrupted, as if he’s giving a lecture, and we ought to have holo-recorders fixed on him, lest we forget something important later. “In some regards they are akin to Nyctosaurus gracilis, from the Upper Cretaceous of western Kansas. That was part of Old Terra,” he adds, seeming to notice that some of his audience look blank.

“There used to be great herds on Lachion,” the old woman tells me. “Bison. We cloned and raised ’em here. We didn’t know about the Teras then. Didn’t know why nobody had developed this world. It seemed like hard work but doable.”

“But you can’t see them coming,” Keri says in a reed-thin voice. I see March rubbing her back, his expression as soft as I’ve seen it. “Just hear their wings.”

Now I’ve got this image of these flying things, mouths full of jagged teeth to rend, talons to pry the metal off the Landcruiser, and leathery wings that carry them faster than anything can move on the ground. Plus, you can’t see them coming. And this is better than my cell, better than Psych Officer Newel? Maybe. Despite myself I shudder, but Dina doesn’t stroke my back comfortingly.

Instead she says, “And you called them down on us, dumb-ass.”

“Er, yes.” The doc looks discomfited. “The Teras are natural hunters, and they’ve evolved a very complex camouflage mechanism that approximates invisibility. True invisibility is impossible, naturally, but—”

“Quiet.” March holds up a hand, and everyone in the vehicle stops breathing. Or damn near. Over the rumble of the Landcruiser, I’m pretty sure I can make out the faint sound of wings. To make that kind of noise, there must be—“Hundreds,” he says, after a moment. “And closing fast. Will this heap go any faster?”

The Gunnar shakes his head. “Got her wide-open right now. I’ve got their heat signatures on-screen, and I figure our paths are going to intersect a good ten minutes before we reach the compound.”

“They’ll be on us in less than four minutes,” Loras informs us. Nobody asks him how he knows that or how he was able to sense the Teras stirring in the first place. I’m sick of asking questions everyone else already knows the answers to.

“Powering up the shock fields.” March flips a few switches, and I can hear a new hum in addition to the engines and the ominous rush of wings growing ever closer. Through the seams between panels I can see that the light is going, and I wish that didn’t fill me with such inexorable dread.

“That’ll deter them a little while.” The Gunnar’s knuckles gleam white where he’s gripping the steering console a little too tightly.

His brothers are starting to come around, some of them. The one Mair whacked in the jimmy asks, “What the hell are we doing with Dahlgrens, bro?” Then pauses, registering the sound: “Mother Mary of Anabolic Grace, we got Teras incoming?” He levels angry blue eyes on me. “You’re a hex, lady, dark luck, powerful bad juju, ken?”

“Only to people who try to kidnap me,” I tell him sweetly, and March snorts, so I feel obliged to add, “Or rescue me…” And then Dina makes a pfft sound. “Or who travel with me…” My gaze sweeps around the darkened interior, trying to find an ally, but nobody will hold my eyes more than two seconds, it seems. “Fine, frag you all, I’m dark juju, bad luck, and you’re all doomed.”

“I don’t think you’re bad luck,” Saul says, touching my shoulder lightly. “I think you’re the best hope we’ve had since the Corp bought out and shut down Clericon Stellar twenty turns ago.”

Before I can ask what the hell he means, something thumps hard against the roof, slinging the Landcruiser sideways. I almost hear something, just above the range of human hearing, but Loras flinches, trembling visibly, and I can see a thin trickle of blood seeping from his nostrils. Something…sonic about these Teras, and poor Loras with his hypersenses, their screams hurt him? Well frag me, that’s…really…not good.

The shock fields hiss as bodies hit them, and I smell the obscene odor of frying meat. But each time the power surges, the engines splutter, and the Gunnar finally says, “Turn ’em off, March. We’re going to stall out. There’s just too many of them, and they’re overloading the systems.”

Mair says softly, in praise, “You bought us some time.”

“It’ll be enough.” Keri lifts her head from his shoulder long enough to deliver this vote of confidence. “March never lets us down.”

There’s always the first time, I think sourly, and am rewarded with a glare.

“Hard part’s going to be getting from the Landcruiser into the compound,” the Gunnar says, fighting with the steering column now. I can tell that only his raw physical strength is keeping the ’cruiser from being towed off course. But he’s tiring; I can tell that, too. “Unless you’ve remodeled according to my recommendations since the last time I was there.”

Mair’s expression seems to indicate she didn’t want to take advice from a Gunnar, a fact that we’re all going to regret before much longer. But I’m distracted by the way Loras covers his ears, shaking uncontrollably. Once I’d have thought he was weak, terrified, maybe having a seizure, but now I know it’s agony, pure and simple. He isn’t human. I’m suddenly positive of it. He’s more than a savant, and people are treating him like he’s furniture, subhuman, not worthy of their regard. Even the doc, who by certain sworn oaths, should give a shit, doesn’t seem to.

Kneeing Dina in the chest, I crawl over the seat, pushing my way back between Gunnar brothers until I reach Loras. He regards me, eyes wide and blank, tuned to the frequency that seems to be liquefying his brain. It’s not just their screams of pain; he can hear everything, their calls to one another, their rage. Hunger. What it must be like, experiencing that, I cannot begin to imagine, but it makes him like me, alien in his way.

And for that I want to help him.

CHAPTER 10

“What can I do?”

Loras doesn’t seem to see me, let alone hear the question, so I take his hand in mine, and it’s cold, frighteningly so. If someone doesn’t do something, he’s going to die. Too many fragging people have bought it because of me. I’ll be damned if it’s going to happen again.

Think, Jax.

For a minute, nothing comes, then—okay, maybe it’s a stupid idea, but it’s the only one I’ve got. If one sound is killing him, maybe another pitch can cancel it out; I just have to find the right one. Watching his face, I start singing, running the scale in “ahs,” and everyone else turns to look at me as if I’m insane. Maybe I am.

But when I hit an F toward the lower end of my range, Loras responds. His fingers wrap around mine, and he nods. He still can’t speak, no more than he could articulate his distress when the Teras came, but that’s helping, so I sing it louder. Though I have decent pitch, I’m not trained, so my lungs are starting to burn from holding the note.

March raises a brow at me. “What the frag are you doing?”

I don’t pause to answer, but Dina figures it out. “Saving a life, you brainless hump.” With that, she adds her voice to mine, finding the note after a few false starts.

And then one by one, the rest of the vehicle joins in. The Gunnars are all tone-deaf and just succeed in making racket, but Mair and Keri hit the right one on the first try. March is the last, and I think it’s more aggravation that it was my idea than lack of desire to help Loras. I honestly think they just didn’t notice. I don’t know why that should be, why they pay so little attention to him, but I’m going to find out.

“Lights of the compound ahead,” the Gunnar says. “We can’t stay in the vehicle; they’ll pull it apart. Do you at least have shock fields installed?’

“The entire perimeter can be electrified, plus all building exteriors,” Mair answers. “We have that capability remotely, and the fields extend twenty meters.”

“So you can turn it on after we make it inside the fences?”

The old woman nods.

“Well, it’d be better if you had an outbuilding big enough to drive the Landcruiser inside, like I advised you, so we wouldn’t need to run…but that’ll do.”

“We were getting around to it,” Mair says tightly.

“That wouldn’t help with so many of them on us.” March sounds grim. “They’d just hold on, then we’d have them chewing us up inside when we tried to disembark.”

“Once we’re safely parked, we could fire up the shock fields on the Landcruiser without worrying about stalling,” the Gunnar points out, and I’m surprised to see March concede with a nod.

“If they damage the ’cruiser, with too many panels gone, the fields won’t work. Necessary connections ripped out.” And the Gunnar nods at March’s words.

Holding the note almost distracts me from what’s going on outside the vehicle. I can feel it rocking, and the metal plates scream as the Teras pry at them. I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared in my life, and I’m starting to feel faint from the tiny, rare gulps of air I’m permitting myself to keep Loras among the living. Keri hasn’t faltered; neither has Dina, and I spare a smile for both of them.