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  She stepped closer. He touched her face.

  Her world collapsed beneath her. Incomprehensible thought patterns assailed her. Physical sensation vanished as if cut off. Perception of up, down, depth, breadth, and width twisted around her.

  She gasped.

  And fell out of confusion into terror and soul-killing pain.

  She recognized the source.

  “Damen!”

  An image played through his mind, resounding through the drone’s brain and into hers.

  The Queen’s Rhapsody had been destroyed.

  It arced into a death dive over a seared, rocky world. Pursued by UMOPG scouts.

  Rage and panic slashed her gut.

  V’kyrri. It had to be V’kyrri in telepathic connection with Damen, even as Damen lay on Raj’s surgical table.

  She was seeing what V’kyrri saw. On his way to death.

  Please, Twelve Gods, she shrilled mentally, fighting for breath that didn’t rasp in her burning throat. Not V’kyrri. Not easygoing, good-natured V’kyrri.

  A blinding flash. Searing pain.

  She screamed.

  Horror ripped her out of the strange, relayed contact. Dumped her into her sorrow-wracked body, huddled and sobbing on the ground between the drone’s front legs. Tears wet her face.

  She knew what she’d seen.

  The engine core had detonated.

  They’d lost the Queen’s Rhapsody. And everyone on board.

  Helpless rage rocked her, followed swiftly by terror. If V’kyrri died while in contact with Damen . . .

  “Damen!” she shrilled, anguish ripping her heart.

  The queen’s consort stirred, but didn’t rise.

  “Is Damen alive?” she pleaded. “Did he . . .”

  The drone lowered one feathery antenna. It trembled.

  Jayleia choked on a sob, fear squeezing her heart. She pushed herself to sitting, resting her back against the drone’s carapace. Fingers shaking, she shed her glove and touched the antenna.

  The drone swept his senses across the world as if they were still flying. There. Her mate was alive, but not conscious. Like the queen.

  Jayleia dropped her hand to the soil and let the tears run down her face.

  V’kyrri must have broken contact at the last second, right before . . . she caught in a shallow breath and screwed her eyes shut. He hadn’t taken Damen with him into death, but that didn’t mean V’k hadn’t done irreparable harm on his way out of Damen’s mind.

  How easy V’kyrri had made it to forget that telepathy had a dark and deadly aspect. Ari’s telepathic attack on the TFC admiral who’d given her to the Chekydran had left the man a permanent resident of the Armada psychiatric ward.

  Jayleia shuddered and closed her eyes.

  “You can’t be gone,” she murmured aloud. “V’kyrri wouldn’t want that. Damen, I need you. I know you think I lied to you. It’s fair. I suspect you only seduced me because I was your assignment. I don’t care.”

  She paused, sniffed, and scrubbed her face dry with her sleeve before leaning back again. “It doesn’t make any sense. Knowing you want to hurt me for not telling you everything, and knowing you only care about your mission, how is it that I fell in love with you, anyway? It’s not rational.

  “I’m not rational.

  “You promised to teach me.”

  Color. She heard it. Cascading, swirling, humming.

  She joined in. The sound soothed her aching heart. Adrift in the play of color and hum, Jay lost track of time. At some point, another, deeper voice augmented the sound.

  Damen.

  Her eyes blinked open. No. Not Damen. She and the drone were alone, disabled on the edge of the nest plain.

  But she’d heard Damen’s voice, felt his presence so clearly. She frowned. She wasn’t telepathic, not by a long shot. But the Chekydran were. Were they acting as a connecter, putting her in contact with her mate?

  Her mate. Heart expanding, she smiled, closed her eyes, and leaned back against the drone.

  She dropped into the play of color and hum.

  And collided with him instantly, the gold and green glow of his mind recognizable in the sea of alien colors and minds.

  Jayleia ignored her trembling heart. She swallowed against the lump in her throat at the desolate tone of Damen’s wan hum.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked in a mental whisper.

  His hum and the sense of his presence winked out.

  She’d surprised him.

  It took only a few seconds for him to return.

  “Jayleia.” He sounded ragged. “Where are you?”

  “On the nest plain,” she said. Grief pierced her, her own and Damen’s. “V’kyrri . . .”

  “He was my friend,” Damen murmured. “Before I knew how to have or be a friend, he was mine.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again.

  “I dreamed,” he said, his voice relaxed, wistful as if he hadn’t quite returned to full consciousness. “Dreamed you said you love me.”

  Shock rippled through her. How had he heard that? She’d spoken that aloud in the middle of nowhere, before the Chekydran hum had brought them together in a way she couldn’t comprehend.

  “It wasn’t a dream. Do you want me to say it again?”

  “Yes.”

  “I fell in love with you,” she said, her mental voice breaking. “Some things are worth dying for. You’re one.”

  A locked-up, frightened place inside Jayleia’s heart tore free. She gasped at the initial twist of pain, but then light and heat suffused her. A sense of liberation welled within her.

  Via the drone at her back, she flashed Damen a snapshot of the Chekydran-hiin landing and of the traps she’d laid.

  His pride, approval, love, all underpinned by the sorrow of lost friends, encompassed her.

  “I love you,” he said. “I prefer you not die for me. Live, instead.”

  “That complicates things.”

  “It usually does.”

  CHAPTER 39

  JAYLEIA opened her eyes and sat up.

  “Jay?” Ari’s voice on the com badge channel. “We’ve received data from the Chekydran cruisers you didn’t want us to fire on.”

  “Yes?”

  “They tweaked our sensors,” her friend said. “I’ve got new targets entering system. Cloaked, but carrying a distinctive energy signature.”

  “UMOPG military.”

  “That’s my guess,” Ari said. “They’re decloaking! Scan! I want to know what those Carozziel slime-bats ate for breakfast!”

  “The lead ship’s singed, Captain,” a young man’s voice called. “Residual energy readings match the Queen’s Rhapsody’s main guns.”

  “They’re making a run for the planet!” Ari yelled. “Damn it, where’d they get that speed? Weapons! Get me a shot at them!”

  “Working, Captain!”

  Behind Jayleia, the drone coughed out a curse.

  A ship, then another and another, entered atmosphere, angling for the queen.

  “Stand down, Dagger. I’ve got them.” Jay watched the craft slant across the horizon and smiled in spite and satisfaction. UMOPG. The scavengers come to pick the carcass clean. Save this one wasn’t dead. Not by a long shot. And regardless of Temple teaching that vengeance killed more warriors than it avenged, she intended to exact terrible retribution for V’kyrri’s death.

  The drone’s hum strengthened. He rose, hooked his forelimbs under her arms, and lifted off.

  The UMOPG scouts had set down in a tight triangle formation within sight of the queen’s cocoon. A group of ten people clustered in the defensible center of the triangle.

  Jayleia frowned. So many factions seemed to want the queen dead. The Chekydran-hiin she understood. What did the UMOPG get out of genocide? She studied the group, not buying for an instant that they were the sole attack force. She surveyed the plain.

  Half the Chekydran-ki soldiers stood guard over the two queens. The other half were invisible. />
  The drone chortled approval of their preparations.

  A humanoid shout sounded. Laser fire sizzled past. They’d flushed a cluster of soldiers between forty and fifty meters south of the queen’s mound. The men and women sprayed weapons fire into the air.

  The drone dodged, sliding one way, changing altitude, canting his body first one way, then another.

  He made it look so effortless, Jayleia couldn’t help but laugh. She pulled her knees up, creating a surface for her pack. It took effort and concentration to unseal it without the full use of her arms. If the drone intended to continue flying her around, they’d have to develop a harness system of some kind.

  As the queen’s consort circled the squad, Jay managed to extract a handful of poppers. They were little more than toys, noisemakers with a time-delay fuse, useful for flushing specimens toward a trap in the field.

  She activated five fuses and dropped the tiny toys behind the entrenched group of miners wasting their power cartridges on a creature who owned this world’s skies.

  Pressure built in her head.

  Jay showed him what she’d done.

  The first popper string fired. Blam. Blamblamblam. Screams sounded from below.

  The drone peeled east, away from the troop, as the next four strings blew.

  Figures scrambled out onto the nest plain, and sprinted for their ships, dodging nests as they went.

  The drone zipped sideways to watch.

  Something flashed.

  An innocuous-sounding pop reached Jayleia’s ear over the music of the drone’s wings and she realized what had happened.

  The lead runner had passed within six meters of one of her modified traps.

  He threw himself to one side, trying to avoid the detonation, too late. His comrades, fleeing on his heels, plowed into him from behind.

  What looked like a fine spray of dark powder exploded into the air before settling to the ground. Wind currents carried it in whorls and eddies, something Jayleia hadn’t calculated for.

  The lead runner had suffered concussion injury and sprawled, dazed, in the webbing. His squad members shouted, then finally picked him up and ran.

  Straight through the cloud of spice tree toxin.

  Nothing happened.

  Jayleia cursed. Now or never. Once the squad reached the ships, her chance to pick off the soldiers diminished.

  “Drop me on them,” she said.

  Refusal. The drone clicked. It resolved as a request for patience. He dropped a meter and slid sideways, keeping the limping squad in view.

  They dropped their stunned friend.

  At first, she thought he’d recovered and demanded to be put on his feet. The screaming started.

  One by one, the squad of eight fell into the webbing, thrashing, rolling, and shrieking in agony.

  Blanching, Jayleia gathered the toxin had taken effect. But what effect?

  The drone slipped upwind of the downed miners and hovered closer.

  Huge, angry, red blisters covered the soldiers’ faces. Where the toxin had touched clothing and armor, it had burned through and attacked the exposed skin beneath.

  An attractively scented, powerful acid? Jayleia blanched. What the Three Hells did those spice trees eat?

  When the first blisters began bursting and the soldiers’ screams dwindled to wet, gargling noises, nausea surged within her.

  Her companion spun and flew her directly into the wind. It cleared the dizziness and settled her.

  This was war. She hadn’t started it, but by all Twelve Gods, she’d end it.

  They circled the queen’s mound.

  The guard trumpeted a challenge.

  “There!” Jayleia shouted as movement on the plain caught her eye.

  The Chekydran-hiin.

  Wave after wave.

  Her resolve faltered.

  Where was the Sen Ekir?

  The drone flushed another squad of twelve UMOPG soldiers advancing on the young queen’s nest. They’d eluded Jay’s traps and the margin for error was dwindling.

  She drew her knees up again, rummaged in her nearly empty pack, and pulled out five more poppers.

  Pressure built in her head.

  She showed him her intent. Exultation flushed her. Hers? Or his? Did it matter?

  He agreed.

  Two Chekydran-ki soldiers sprang from false nest chambers as the first wave of miners crept over them. The Ki grabbed two miners apiece, one in each tentacle and began using them as clubs on their companions.

  Jay activated the popper fuses all at once.

  The drone darted straight at the second wave of UMOPG soldiers, standing in mute horror as the Chekydran decimated their companions.

  Jay dropped the toys at their feet.

  Staring at the mess that remained of their fellows, faced with an enormous, oncoming Chekydran, the squad panicked and fled when the poppers fired in unison. They scattered.

  Jayleia picked the two who’d fled together.

  The drone swooped in and dropped her on their heads.

  Almost.

  Warned by the sound of his wings and by the increase in air pressure, the two men flung themselves to the ground.

  She landed a scant half a meter ahead of them and tumbled to one side to evade potential gunfire.

  They did shoot, just not at her.

  It gave her plenty of time to bound in, disable one man with a lethal blow to the head, flip over his body, and land on the second trooper’s gun hand.

  He bellowed, and yanked backward to his knees, leaving his weapon and his trigger finger beneath her boot. Gnashing his teeth, he swung at her.

  An alarm shrilled inside her head, nearly blinding her. She dropped.

  The deafening, crystalline noise of wings, the beat of wind against her back, and the dull sound of an overripe stripe fruit impacting a solid object rolled over her. She rose on one elbow and peeked at the man whose weapon she’d taken.

  He still knelt in the webbing, but his head and the upper quarter of his torso were missing. The corpse wavered and fell, spraying her with blood.

  Jayleia managed to get her knees under her before she threw up. She was eternally grateful she’d opted not to wear her mask.

  The queen’s consort lit beside her.

  More screams reached her ears and she assumed the Chekydran-ki soldiers were mopping up the stragglers.

  After a few moments of gasping and wiping the sweat from her forehead, she climbed to her feet, fished a hydration packet from her equipment belt, rinsed out her mouth, then forced herself to drink what remained of the doctored water.

  It helped.

  “More attackers?” she asked, tottering to the drone.

  He hummed.

  She nodded. “Take me to the queens then. They won’t give up. And we still have the Chekydran-hiin to fend off.”

  His antenna drooped.

  She nodded. They were both tired.

  “The enemy doesn’t care,” she said.

  He whistled agreement, hooked her under the arms, and took off.

  They didn’t have far to fly.

  She spotted the group of ten leaving the cover of their ships as the drone circled the queen’s mound.

  He lit atop the web sheltering his mate and set Jayleia on her feet.

  She shed her pack. Empty though it was, it had thrown her off in the last fight. She couldn’t afford the distraction. Had the drone not intervened, the last miner might have landed his blow.

  The standing guard trilled in greeting and in exultation.

  Two more UMOPG squads had been cut down. One Chekydran-ki soldier had given her life protecting her queens.

  The loss cut, but without the preparations Jay and the Ki had made, far more of the fighters would have perished.

  “Jayleia Durante!”

  She started. After a day spent learning to hear and understand the people she’d pledged to protect, a humanoid voice sounded odd to her. Still. A part of her insisted that she should reco
gnize the voice.

  “This is Guild Mistress Kannoi! We know you’re colluding with the Chekydran,” the woman called.

  The guild mistress? What would drag her so far away from Silver City? Unless Jayleia’s quarantine flag had turned the political tide on station against the woman.

  “Surrender to custody and you will not be harmed!”

  Jayleia blinked. Surrender? Not be harmed? She grinned and turned her back.

  “IntCom and a ship full of Ykktyryk mercenaries have your ships, your companions, and your mate,” the woman yelled.

  Shock jolted the smile from Jayleia’s face. Fear ate at her.

  “Damen,” she breathed, stripping a glove from her hand and reaching for the drone.

  Refusal.

  She gaped in disbelief.

  He called out an order.

  A soldier lifted off and raced away to assess the situation, skimming low to the ground to avoid being seen by Kannoi’s party.

  Jayleia nodded in understanding. Talking to her drained the queen’s consort. It made sense to conserve resources, regardless of how little she liked it.

  Too bad she couldn’t recruit the Chekydran-hiin to fight the United Mining and Ore Processing Guild Army.

  “Surrender! Or I tell those bloodthirsty reptiles to start shooting!” the guild mistress bellowed.

  “You want me dead!” Jayleia countered. “Why pretend?”

  “On the contrary, my dear!” Kannoi returned. “I am being offered an exorbitant amount of credit to deliver you to IntCom alive. Maybe not whole. But alive.”

  “Baxt’k,” Jayleia muttered.

  The Chekydran-ki soldiers bugled in concert.

  Jayleia’s heart rate climbed and she stared at the drone. Anguish rang the blood from her head. Her knees gave way.

  It was true.

  Mercenaries had the Sen Ekir and the Kawl Fergus.

  She had a choice. One she’d never wanted. She could protect the Chekydran-ki or she could save her friends.

  Ironic.

  She choked on a broken laugh as moisture burned her eyes. How often she’d railed about not being offered options. She’d counted choice a luxury, one the people she’d loved most had dangled just out of her reach.

  The Chekydran-ki soldier circled high above the mound, the song of her flight a gorgeous soundtrack to the siege shattering Jayleia’s heart.