As Kira ended the recording, she allowed herself one breath of grief, one hiccupping gulp of air that formed a fist of pain in her chest before she let it out, all of it.
Calm was good. Calm was necessary. She needed calm.
She had Morven forward the message to the Seventh Fleet, and then she shut down the console and went to the sink. A splash of cold water on her face, and she stood blinking, letting the droplets roll down her cheeks. Then she removed her rumpled jumpsuit, willed the Soft Blade to dim its lights, and got under the frayed blanket on the bed.
It required a serious effort of will not to pull up her overlays and check on what was happening throughout the system. If she did, Kira knew she would never sleep.
So she remained in the dark and worked to keep her breathing slow and her muscles soft while she imagined sinking through the mattress and into the deck.…
She did all those things, and yet sleep continued to elude her. Words and thoughts could not erase the nearness of danger, and because of it, her body refused to accept the lie of safety—would not relax, would not allow her mind to do anything but keep watch against the fanged creatures that instinct insisted must be lurking in the surrounding shadows.
In a few hours she might be dead. They all might. Finito. Kaput. Done and done. No respawning. No do-overs. Dead.
Kira’s heart began to jackhammer as a slug of adrenaline hit, more potent than any rotgut. She gasped and bolted upright, clutching at her chest. A deep, wounded groan escaped her, and she hunched over, struggling to breathe.
Around her, dark whispering sounded as thousands of needle-sharp spines sprouted from the walls of the cabin.
She didn’t care. None of it mattered, only the ice water pooling in her gut and the pain stabbing at her heart.
Dead. Kira wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not for a long, long, long time. Preferably never. But there was no escaping it. No escaping what tomorrow would bring.…
“Gaaah!”
She was afraid, more afraid than she’d ever been. And what made it worse was knowing that there was nothing that could fix the situation. Everyone in the Wallfish was strapped to an express rocket heading straight toward their doom, and there was no getting off early unless they wanted to grab a blaster and put it against their temples, pull the trigger, and ride the short trip to oblivion.
Had Gregorovich’s dark dreams infected her mind? Kira didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered—not really—except the terrifying pit yawning before her.
Unable to hold still any longer, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. If only Gregorovich were there to message with. He would understand.
She shivered and sent a thought to the Soft Blade that activated the light-producing nodules along the corners of the room. A dim green glow brightened the bristling space.
Kira gulped for air, struggling to get enough. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about. Don’t … She let her gaze roam across the room in an attempt to distract herself.
The scratch on the surface of the desk caught her eye, the scratch she’d put there when she’d first tried to force the Soft Blade off her body. That had been, what, her second day on the Wallfish? Her third?
It didn’t matter.
Cold pinpricks of sweat sprang up on her face. She hugged herself, feeling chilled in a way no external warmth could correct.
She didn’t want to be alone, not then. She needed to see another person, to hear their voice, to be comforted by the nearness of their presence and to know that she wasn’t the only speck of consciousness facing the void. It wasn’t a matter of logic or philosophy—Kira knew they were doing the right thing by helping the Knot of Minds—but rather animal instinct. Logic only took you so far. Sometimes the cure to the dark was to find another flame burning bright.
Still feeling as if her heart were about to hammer its way out of her chest, she sprang to her feet, went to the storage locker, and removed her jumpsuit. Her hands shook as she dressed herself.
There. Good enough.
Down, she told the Soft Blade. The protrusions throughout the room quivered and subsided several centimeters but no more than that.
She didn’t care. The spines retracted around her as she made her way to the door, and that was all she required.
Kira strode down the hallway with purpose-born steps. Now that she was moving, she didn’t want to linger, certainly didn’t want to stop. With each step, she felt as if she were teetering along the edge of a precipice.
She climbed one level up the central shaft to C-deck. The dimly lit corridor there was so quiet, Kira was afraid to make any noise. It felt as if she were the only person aboard, and all around her was the immensity of space, pressing in against a lone spark.
A sense of relief as she arrived at the door to Falconi’s cabin.
The relief was short-lived. A spike of panic erased it as she heard a clank farther down the corridor. She jumped and spun to see Nielsen opening a cabin door.
But not to her own cabin: Vishal’s.
The other woman had wet hair, as if she’d just washed, and she was carrying a tray with foil-wrapped snacks and a pair of mugs and a pot of tea. She stopped as she caught sight of Kira—stopped and stared.
In the first officer’s eyes, Kira glimpsed a hint of something she recognized. A similar need perhaps. A similar fear. And sympathy too.
Before Kira could decide how to react, Nielsen gave a brief nod and disappeared into the cabin. Even through the cutting edge of her panic, Kira felt a sense of amusement. Vishal and Nielsen. Well, well. When she thought about it, she supposed it wasn’t entirely surprising.
She hesitated a moment and then lifted her hand and knocked on Falconi’s door with three quick raps. Hopefully he wasn’t sleeping.
“It’s open.”
The sound of his voice did nothing to slow her pulse. She spun the locking wheel and pushed back the door.
Yellow light spilled into the corridor. Inside, Falconi sat in the cabin’s single chair, his feet (still in their boots) propped up on the desk, ankles crossed. He’d removed his vest, and his sleeves were rolled up, exposing the scars on his forearms. His gaze shifted from his overlays to her face. “You couldn’t sleep either, huh?”
Kira shook her head. “Mind if I…?”
“Be my guest,” he said, dropping his feet and scooting back in the chair.
She entered and closed the door behind herself. Falconi raised an eyebrow but didn’t object. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Let me guess: worried about tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
He nodded, understanding.
“I just … I…” She grimaced and shook her head.
“How about a drink?” Falconi reached for the locker over his desk. “I’ve got a bottle of Venusian scotch somewhere around here. Won it in a poker game a few years ago. Just give me a—”
Kira took two steps forward, put her hands on either side of his face, and kissed him on the mouth. Hard.
Falconi stiffened, but he didn’t pull away.
Up close he smelled good: warm and musky. Wide lips. Hard cheeks. He tasted sharp, and his perma-stubble was an unfamiliar prickle.
Kira broke the kiss to look at him. Her heart was pounding faster than ever, and her whole body felt alternatively hot and cold. Falconi wasn’t Alan, wasn’t anything like him, but he would do. For this one moment in time, he would do.
She fought and failed to keep from trembling.