“Do you have the herbs?” I gasped, feeling his body press against me. I was moments away from being with him, but that didn’t mean we had to be reckless.
He nodded, a slightly embarrassed look twinkling in his slate eyes. “I didn’t want to be presumptuous, but I didn’t want us to get caught without them, either,” he whispered, pulling his discarded pants back toward him and rummaging in the pockets. He brought out two of the Vysanthean herbs, passing one to me.
I swallowed it, then pulled Navan close, desperate to feel his bare skin against mine again. It had been way too long since we’d done this, and I didn’t want to wait a moment longer. I wanted to forget the ordinary world. I wanted to feel the ecstasy that flooded my veins whenever I was entangled with him. I wanted to envelop him, until there was no telling where one of us began and the other ended.
After all, we had two hours to kill, and I was determined to make the most of them.
By the time we heard Bashrik’s voice echoing across the loudspeakers, telling us that we were approaching the Fed outpost, we had collapsed in one another’s arms, my head on his chest, his arm around my waist, our bodies drenched in sweat, a happy smile on each of our faces.
We dressed quickly and hurried back up to the cockpit, where we waited for the Fed outpost to appear. I was excited at the prospect of meeting more of these universal guardians, especially since I didn’t know what sort of species was in charge.
“Where have you been?” Angie asked suspiciously, raising an eyebrow.
Lauren flashed me a wink. “They went to the engine room to look over some of the mechanisms, right?”
I blushed. “Something like that. Anyway, where’s the outpost? Is it on a planet?” I asked, looking ahead. I didn’t know if it would be a structure like the one we’d just visited, to drop off the coldbloods, or on an actual planet, like the Fed who resided on Earth.
Navan tilted his head. “It’s a large structure built on the surface of a moon, though no other species live there. This outpost caters to a series of four nearby planets—the moon is equidistant from each.”
“Cool.” I whistled. “Are they lycans?”
Navan shook his head. “No, I think this outpost is manned by a large number of fae.”
“Fairies?!” Angie yelped excitedly, prompting a laugh from Bashrik.
“No, not fairies—fae. They’re a very diligent, honorable species with powerful telekinetic abilities,” he elaborated.
Angie grinned. “But are they teeny-tiny, with wings and a fondness for children’s teeth?”
Bashrik frowned at her, bemused. “A fondness for teeth? What kind of sick fairies do you have on Earth?”
“The tooth fairy! She creeps into your house at night, takes your lost teeth, and gives you a quarter in return,” Angie replied defiantly, but Bashrik was having none of it.
“That’s disgusting, not to mention downright disturbing!” he cried.
“I take it there’s no tooth fairy for your Vysanthean fangs?” Lauren teased, laughing at the pair of them.
Bashrik shook his head vigorously. “There certainly is not! We do not let creepy weirdos just waltz into our homes and steal our things!”
“No, because you are the creepy weirdos,” Angie retorted playfully. Bashrik flashed her a sour look, opening his mouth to say something else, but Navan interrupted him before he could utter a word.
“I hate to break this up, but we’re approaching,” Navan said.
“If the fae agree to help us, do you think they might help us persuade the Titans, too?” I asked, moving beside Navan, my eyes watching the small, silvery moon as it appeared ahead.
Navan pulled a face. “I still don’t like the idea of getting the Titans involved,” he said firmly. We’d already discussed them during our journey from Zai, while playing our games of hangman and I Spy, but Navan hadn’t seemed entirely sold on the idea. It didn’t look like anything had changed in that short time. He’d seemed slightly more interested when I’d told him about Cambien’s promise to be an ally—or to send an ally, as the case appeared to be—but even then it had been like squeezing blood from a stone. The others had been more excited by the news, but I had a feeling Navan just didn’t like anything that involved Cambien. Either that, or he didn’t like the proviso that came with Cambien’s help—we do all the grunt work, and he takes the credit of providing the final blow. I guessed he couldn’t trust what he didn’t know, and none of us knew what this final blow entailed.
Bashrik nodded. “As I said before, the Titans are fearsome warriors, but they’re a troubling group. They’d be as likely to kill us as help us.”
“Yes, but if we got the fae to aid in our mission, they might be able to provide some backup with the Titans,” I insisted.
Angie made a sound of agreement. “You said these fae have powerful telekinetic abilities, right? So they could get into the minds of the Titans and make them join us!” she said, making some somewhat worrying hand gestures.
“He said they were telekinetic, not telepathic,” Lauren corrected. “Although, they might share some similar ground?”
Bashrik shrugged. “I’ve never spent enough time with one to know.”
“Or, maybe you did, and they made you forget all about it!” Angie replied, waggling her hands in a spooky manner.
“Look, I’m just not keen on the idea of the Titans joining us,” Navan interjected bitterly. “They’re nothing but trouble. They’re only marginally better than coldbloods, if we’re looking at morality. If we have any other option, I say we avoid them, but we can talk about it after we’ve dealt with the Fed.”
The moon was getting closer. A large number of tiny satellites flowed around the sphere, following no particular orbit. I wondered if they were like the satellites at home, intended to receive and transmit information. If they were responsible for four planets, they needed a way of communicating quickly across a large space.
It was only as we drew nearer to the surface that I realized they weren’t satellites at all. They were bodies—hundreds of bodies, drifting aimlessly. And they were harrowingly small.
“They’re children,” I gasped, tears pricking my eyes.
Navan shook his head slowly. “Not children. Fae.”
We stared in disbelief at the wreckage of the outpost building, which had been more or less destroyed. Pieces of debris were floating around, bumping into the corpses. There were no spacesuits, no breathing apparatuses, no signs that anyone had escaped. They were all just floating there, their sanctuary blown to bits.
I realized, with sickening certainty, that everyone at the Fed outpost was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I stared out at the chaos, stunned. The chunks of metal and stone looked oddly familiar. With a sickening sense of understanding, I realized this was the same kind of debris we’d run into on our way to Zai. The fragments had evidently floated out from the source of the destruction, the aftermath reaching far into the universe. I imagined an explosion would give off a powerful first push.
“They’re all dead,” Angie whispered.
Her words made my mind drift back to the distress call that had come through our speakers before we’d even reached Zai. That child’s voice pleading for our help. This must have been where they were transmitting from, desperate for someone to rescue them from their ruined outpost.
“Who would do something like this?” Lauren added solemnly.
“Many species have a vendetta against the Fed, though most are smart enough not to strike against them,” Navan murmured. “I have theories, but I don’t know for sure who would’ve singled out this outpost.”
Tears pricked my eyes as a body floated past us, having broken free of the grisly congregation in the moon’s orbit. The body hit the windshield of the Vanquish with a sickening thud, before ricocheting off. I caught glimpses of the face as the body spiraled but wished I hadn’t. A crystalline network of ice had trailed across a face so swollen and distorted that it was
impossible to tell what they’d once looked like.
“Do you think there are any survivors?” I asked, thinking again of the voice that had called to us from across space. There was no way of knowing how long the attacked fae had been out here, like this. We’d received the distress call a week ago, and she could’ve been trying to find aid long before we’d picked up her transmission.
Sorrow bristled through me as I realized we’d probably waited too long. If we’d forced Pandora to launch a rescue mission, refusing to take no for an answer, we might have had a window of opportunity to save any survivors. A week, eking out an existence on a destroyed outpost, with limited—if not zero—life support resources seemed like an impossibility. If I hadn’t already seen the puffed-up face of a dead fae, I might have hoped their bodies worked differently and could hold out in the harsh conditions of open space, but now that possibility was gone.
“If they managed to stay inside the outpost during the explosion, finding some sort of shelter from the blast, then maybe they weren’t expelled into space,” Bashrik reasoned, though he looked just as doubtful as I felt.
“The voice we heard—that distress call that came through… I think it came from here,” I said. “If that girl is still down there, then we need to find her.”
Lauren nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing. The debris is too similar to be a coincidence.”
“We let her down once, but if she’s still alive, we can’t let her down again,” Angie added quietly, her eyes fixed on the devastation in front of us.
“Even if there aren’t any survivors, we need to find out what caused this. If a report needs to be made to the Fed, then we should gather as much intel as possible,” Navan interjected. “The only problem is, we can’t get closer to the outpost without risking the debris or bodies hitting the ship.”
Bashrik grimaced. “The debris could damage the ship’s hull if we get hit, and we might damage the bodies if they hit us hard enough. I think they deserve better than that.”
“I agree,” I said, and the others nodded their assent. I really didn’t want to see these poor souls put through any further indignities.
“Can’t we use the force guns to gently push them aside?” Angie asked.
Lauren shook her head. “No, if we use the force guns, even the slightest push would mean expelling everything away from the orbit of the moon. Bodies and debris would end up flying everywhere.”
“What about suits?” I pressed, trying to wrack my brain. I couldn’t remember seeing any on the Vanquish, but I figured the coldbloods would know what kind of inventory these warships tended to have. After all, if these ships were built for battle, they’d undoubtedly get damaged somewhere along the line, and that would mean mechanics taking a spacewalk to fix whatever had been broken.
“There are spacesuits in the engine room,” Bashrik said, a note of hope in his voice. “No idea what shape they’re in, or how long it’s been since they were used, but they might be our only shot.”
It was all the persuasion I needed. “Let’s take the suits then!”
I hurried from the room, with the others right behind me. Upon reaching the engine room, however, my optimism sank like a stone in deep water. In a locker to the side of the noisy engine room, we found four suits, though two looked as though they’d seen better days. One had a great big tear in the fabric and a crack in the helmet, while the other one looked like it had been burned to a crisp.
“Looks like only two of us are going out there,” Navan muttered, taking out the viable suits. He was about to hand one to Bashrik, but I stepped in defiantly.
“Someone with the right skills needs to stay in the cockpit to drive this thing if something happens out there,” I said. “That falls on either you or Bashrik.”
Bashrik lifted his hands in surrender. “I’ll happily give up my spot. I’ve taken a few spacewalks before, and they’re really not that fun.”
I turned to Lauren and Angie. “Do either of you mind if I go?”
They shook their heads vigorously. “Just take care of yourself out there,” Lauren warned.
“Yeah, please come back safe,” Angie agreed, offering none of her usual humor.
“I will,” I replied, turning back to Navan. “Looks like it’s you and me, then.”
He smiled begrudgingly. “It’s always you and me,” he murmured. “I just wish you weren’t so stubborn.” I rose up on my tiptoes and kissed him on the lips, taking the spacesuit out of his hands.
“You wouldn’t have me any other way,” I teased.
He laughed. “You’ve got me there.”
With his arm around me, we made our way out of the engine room, heading back up to the main space of the ship. The suit was a hefty piece of equipment, getting heavier with each minute I carried it. I knew it wouldn’t feel like that out in the weightless vacuum of space, but I was already working up a sweat.
“Need a hand?” Navan asked, carrying his with ease.
I shook my head, smiling wryly. “Queen of Stubborn, remember?”
In the main chamber, we came to a halt. With the help of the others, Navan and I clambered into the suits, making sure every buckle was fastened, every zipper done up, every clamp snapped into place. There were retractable folds at the elbows, knees, and waist, to fit the suit to the size of the wearer, so at least I wasn’t drowning in it. Even so, I was getting more anxious by the second. After all, there was no way of testing our suits before we stepped out of the safety of the ship. We were taking a leap into the unknown, without having any clue how protected our bodies were. The last thing I wanted to do was end up bloated and frozen, drifting forever through space.
Once the suits were fastened up, Navan explained the life support and movement systems. There was a panel on my forearm, embedded into the material, with an orange light flashing to show the steady flow of my oxygen levels, and a red beep to show the beat of my heart.
“If either of those lights turns blue, then you’re in the danger zone, and we turn back immediately,” he explained, his voice tight with worry. He went on to explain how the two triggers attached to my hips controlled the air jets that would move me wherever I wanted to go—the right trigger made me move to the right, the left made me move to the left, and both together made me move forward.
“I think I’ve got that,” I said with forced brightness.
“If anything feels wrong, you can talk to me through the headset,” Navan promised, his voice rasping through the speakers in my helmet. “I’ll be there the whole way. You ready?”
I nodded. “Let’s go, before I lose my nerve.” He flashed me an anxious look, but I stopped him before he could tell me not to come along. “I’m fine. Let’s just get this show on the road,” I insisted, dragging my heavy body toward the airlock.
Bashrik opened the door to the airlock, and the other two helped us inside. Once we were safely in the middle chamber, they darted back out into the hallway. The hatch of the interior door slid back down with a satisfying clunk. Once it was secure, Bashrik signaled to us through the small window, giving us a nervous thumbs-up.
Navan typed the code to unlock the exterior door, waiting for the control panel to turn green, to show that the chamber’s pressure had been altered to match the outside atmosphere. As soon as it flickered green, he pushed down the lever beside the exterior hatch, and the door slid open. The icy cold of the outside crept into the chamber—I could feel it even through the thick insulation of the spacesuit. My oxygen levels seemed to be holding, the small monitor on my arm beeping at a steady pace.
Navan grasped my gloved hand in his as he helped me through the airlock door. I stepped into space for the first time. It was weird, the floor falling away below me, and yet I didn’t plummet into the black oblivion underneath. I floated there, drifting along. It almost didn’t seem real—it was too bizarre to be reality.
Removing my hand from Navan’s, I pressed down on the two triggers, propelling myself forward, toward the thron
g of bodies and debris. I gulped, dreading the moment we got too near, when I’d have to see a corpse up close. But we owed it to the fae to find any survivors among them.
“I’ll go down to scout the outpost, if you want to check the bodies?” Navan said grimly. “See if you can find any identification cards, that sort of thing.”
I lifted my hand in an awkward thumbs-up. “Will do.” I supposed he thought I’d be safer out here, instead of getting too close to the origin of the blast site. After all, there was no telling what might still be inside the outpost, lurking in wait.
He drifted off toward the surface of the moon, winding in and out of the floating masses with ease. I watched him until he disappeared, his jets propelling him toward the outpost itself. I wondered what the other three would be thinking of us splitting up, but since there was no way they could communicate with us, I knew they’d be waiting anxiously in the cockpit, observing us from a distance.
“Navan is going to explore the outpost. I’m going to check the bodies for ID,” I explained, pressing down on the comms button. They’d be able to hear me, even though they couldn’t respond.
Taking a deep breath, I moved through the sea of bodies, tentatively reaching for the buttoned jacket pockets of the deceased fae. I tried as hard as I could not to look at their distended faces, or feel the awful hardness of their frozen bodies, but it was impossible to ignore as I took their ID cards and stowed them away in my suit. At each body I came to, I said a few words, though I had no idea what religion these people followed or how they might’ve wished to be honored. Even so, it didn’t feel right to leave them without at least saying something to commemorate the lives they had lived and mourn the way they’d been cut short.