Local Star, Aimee Ogden [ebook reader that looks like a book txt] 📗

each other, sprawled flat-out on the deck. Then Casne lunged forward to tackle them both with arms spread wide.

Her skin still burned where it touched Triz, and when it burned, it drove waves of breathless smoky laughter out of her, all the grief she had shoved down and put aside converted to impossible, ever-expanding joy. They were all laughing, less giddy than hysterical, and when the laughter guttered and ran dry, they only clung to each other. As if making up for lost time, and Triz had lost so much time already. As if letting go would make the image unravel like a ‘port drama gone off the rails.

When Triz had the breath to ask the impossible question, she did. “How did you survive?”

“I’m modded, Triz. And I was lucky to have my Fleet boots on in my cell. They magnetize when they detect depressurization. Never out of uniform, right?” Casne’s half-smile faded. The press of fingers and lips had erased some of the rime from her face, but hazy nebulae still mottled her forehead. She rubbed her forearms with her hands and looked at Kalo, who shrugged and avoided Triz’s eyes. “I know you don’t like the idea, but combat adaptations save lives.”

“I’m coded for conditional production of cold resistance proteins too,” Kalo said, to the deck. “And infected with hypoxia-activated Aerobacter. Only reason I’m still flying.”

Triz rubbed her wet eyes. “I’m not—I’m glad you’re alive, Cas!” She could barely believe it, but she was glad. “I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. That once you crossed the line between human and Ceebee, you’d just keep crossing lines.” Casne and Kalo flicked a gaze at one another. “But I guess it’s not really that simple.”

“That’s a good way to start thinking about it,” said Casne, at the same time Kalo said, “Well, seeing as I haven’t tried terraforming an alien intelligence out of existence to build myself a castle, yeah.”

They all three laughed.

Before the lift doors exploded.

Chapter Ten

Triz’s ears rang. She lifted her hands from her head. No sign of Casne and Kalo beside her. No! She’d just gotten Casne back; she couldn’t lose her again. She struggled to her knees, then her feet, and looked around.

She could still hear human voices under the shrill of the ringing, but they seemed so terribly far away. Muffled by the yellow-gray smoke drifting through the works, maybe.

Smoke? In the wrenchworks?

Triz spun. The smoke billowed out from the blistered lift doors. And amid the conflagration, four figures traded blows.

Casne. Kalo. Lanniq. Rocan.

Casne fought with Lanniq for control of a lancet gun. Kalo forced Rocan’s tunnelgun, buried where his wrist and hand should be in his flesh, down just in time for a blast to slice through the nearest Skimmer. The fighter canted sideways, misbalanced by the weight of the slice of missing fuselage that crashed to the floor in the opposite direction. When the fighter struck the deck, it rattled Triz’s teeth, but she barely heard the sound. She was focused on the two people in front of her, the two pieces of her heart battling for their lives. Even to her untrained eye, both Casne and Kalo moved slower than Lanniq and Rocan, muted by exhaustion and injury.

Lanniq swept Casne’s feet out from under her and the lancet gun went skittering across the floor.

Kalo dove for it, and the tunnelgun cut a long narrow swath through the floor between him and the weapon. This one bled darkness—space and dark matter—before the unstable tunnel faltered and closed off, leaving only a ragged, smoking canyon in the deck.

That could easily have been a hull breach if Rocan’s aim had been a little higher. The others might survive a breach if they were lucky. Triz wouldn’t.

Triz grabbed for the sealant canister she’d dropped before. She caught it by the hose and dragged it along behind her. If Rocan breached the hull again—if he aimed faster or better this time—

Rocan spun to meet Triz. He didn’t raise the tunnelgun embedded in his wrist toward her. Maybe it needed to recharge? He came toward her, snarling. Rage glinted in his eyes—the silvered marble of his right implant, and the dull gray of the left, which must have been damaged in the melee. Triz stumbled back, but he was on her, and his elbow met her sternum with startling precision. She doubled over in silent paroxysms. Rocan seized her hair and slammed her face into his knee. Stars exploded red and gold behind her eyes, and she swung the sealant blindly as she fell. It connected with something, not Rocan, and spun out of Triz’s hand. Rocan’s knee hit Triz’s chin this time and split her lip.

The lancet gun cried out a warning.

Something heavy struck Triz hard. She fell with it. Her head rebounded off the deck; her mouth opened around a yelp, but she had no air in her lungs to give it voice. Blood dribbled down the back of her throat. She scrabbled to get the weight off of her chest, her legs, but it was so heavy she was so afraid of what she’d see when the daze of stars lifted. This was it, then. That’s what she got for trying to claw her way out of the gutter.

“Triz!” The pressure lifted off Triz slowly, then all at once, and Kalo’s hands were on her. “Shitting, shitting stars.” He ripped open her jacket, ran fingers over her chest and belly and down her legs. “Are you hit? I shouldn’t have taken the shot. It was too close.”

The deck shuddered beneath them. Kalo dropped Triz and looked around wildly. “He was just here!” he said, and whirled around as Triz’s freshly fixed Scooper rose into the air of the bay and then lurched forward off its blocks.

“Rocan!” Kalo cried, and ran across the wrenchworks.

Triz turned back to the lifeless body beside her. She stared stupidly at Lanniq, whose lifeless eyes were fixed on a point somewhere above. Human eyes, not