Empress of a Thousand Skies(19)

He looked up at the thought of heaven—a force of habit he didn’t think he’d ever shake. Instead of the divine, all he saw was a vent working overtime. He willed himself to forget the noise, but in that muted space his thoughts became crowded. The image of the old Nau Fruman came to mind. It wasn’t so much the blood that bothered him. Aly could handle that. No, it had been the little red handprints on the Nauie’s wrinkled shirt, and that long, black braid placed across his chest.

The lightmount on the wall switched from red to green, and the inner door of the chamber finally creaked open. He pushed the helmet off and threw up in a trash can. Relief was short-lived. He gulped at a breath of recycled air, his stomach clenched a second time, and he purged himself again. He looked up, suddenly self-conscious that the daisies would zoom in and catch him puking his guts out—way worse than getting caught with his pants down, which had happened plenty of times. But then he remembered they’d stopped broadcasting.

“Vin,” Aly said into his cube. He caught the pitch of his own voice, rusty, like it needed oiling. “Get out here. Suit up. Over.”

Pavel rolled toward him. A panel opened at the top of his domed figure, and dozens of magnetized pieces emerged. Stacking and clicking into place, the droid extended to his full height, just short of Aly’s waist. Aly nodded at him distractedly. He’d programmed the droid to detect subtle motions—greetings like nods and waves, disappointment like a head shake or crossed arms. Pavel blinked his blue eyelights in response.

“Did you get my hail?” Aly asked.

“I went into sleep mode during the upgrade.” His eyelights went red. “I did not see any incoming messages.”

“VINCENT!” Aly said again, touching the spot just below his ear. Silence. He wondered if Vin still felt weird about how they’d left it earlier. “Where is he?”

“Heat signature reads his bedroom,” said Pavel. “Pulse is low, delta waves have slowed.”

“Are you telling me he’s asleep?” So much for mourning.

“He’s likely in NREM, stage three of the sleep cycle. Humans often—”

“Hold that thought, P,” Aly interrupted. “Vin, WAKE. UP.” He yelled a string of what he thought were particularly colorful insults into his cube, and threw in some Wraetan ones for good measure. He could say whatever he wanted with the daisies off, but his whole rant was met with more silence.

Aly found his rhythm despite the bulk of his suit. Pavel enabled his density mode and rolled closely behind him. Slipping and sliding, Aly finally reached Vincent’s threshold and burst through his door. His cramped room was a disaster zone. Vin was still in bed.

He kicked his way through the piles of clothes. “Get up, taejis face.” Aly hopped over a gadget he didn’t recognize—one of Vin’s new projects, probably. “I found an escape pod from the royal ship.”

“Alyosha—” Pavel started.

“Look, I’m sorry for being kind of pissed earlier, but we gotta go. Rise and shine, you lazy son of a choirtoi.” Vin had made Aly teach him a bunch of Wraetan curse words, and that one was his favorite. He flung the sheet off him, but Vincent wasn’t there. All he found was a pillow and some balled-up clothes. What the hell was going on?

“Pavel,” he called back to the droid. “You said you read a heat source?”

From under his base, Pavel switched out the wide treadmill wheel to two large all-terrain ones, then climbed the stacks of clothes to stand in the center of the tiny room. His dome rotated in a circle as he scanned. Then he extended an arm and picked up a gray cylinder—the gadget Aly had stepped over to get to the bed.

“It’s some kind of external heat device,” the droid said.

The pressure felt like too much, like everything was bearing down on him. He didn’t know what to do. He looked around the room—really looked—for the first time. Vin had always been messy, but this was different. All of his drawers had been pulled out and emptied on the floor. Tiny machine parts were scattered everywhere. Everything that had been up on his bulletin board was torn down. Someone had searched Vincent’s room, it seemed. But who? And what had happened to Vincent?

Aly felt cold. Vin had disappeared just after Aly had found the royal escape pod and sent out a hail across an open cube channel. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Who else is on board?” he asked Pavel.

Pavel looked distressed—for a droid, at least. “I detect no additional heat signatures.” So Vincent had left—or had been taken.

Aly felt a quake starting inside his chest. With a sweep of his arm, he sent everything on the desk flying. A familiar hammer landed on the floor. It was his. Vin was always stealing his tools. He could never keep track of his own. They’d gotten into a fistfight over it once. He suddenly regretted how stupid he’d been; he should’ve just given it to him.

“Cube transmissions are scrambled,” Pavel said flatly. “Something is wrong.”

“No taejis something is wrong.”

But at that moment he saw a shadow eclipse the doorway: a humanoid droid—tall and shiny, made of a high-grade alloy. Military-grade alloy. It was the NX series, but from a model that hadn’t yet been released. Aly didn’t know why or how it had boarded the Revolutionary, but it stood at least eight feet tall and had to duck through the doorway.