Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(100)

Something happened to the other ship. It seemed to rock in space, side to side, as if it was being hit, only there was nothing I could see near it. Then I saw that it was . . . pulsing. Swelling. And then the other Leviathan’s skin peeled away, spinning off in strips. Blood geysered from severed arteries into a floating cloud of silver around it.

It swelled again. Pulsed.

Exploded.

And out of the corpse came a black rush of . . . things.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


Breaking Bad


“BEA! DROP ALL power to nonessential systems. Drop everything! Get our shield back up.” I was already running for the nearest hatch.

Nobody had to tell me that this dark swarm was why Typhon had internal defenses, all the traps and gases and sectioned-off corridors. They were like onyx needles, visible only from the hissing violence of the binary stars as the light shimmered on sharp edges. These were some nasty weird-ass space pirates, and I wasn’t letting them commandeer either of these ships.

This idea has to work, it has to.

If it didn’t, I had nothing else.

Leaving my body at the hatch, ready to fight in case we were boarded, I leapt for Nadim with no hesitation. He was scared and in pain, and when we locked in, it nearly overwhelmed us. We fumbled for a second until the Zara part remembered. The dark cloud was nearly to Typhon; we would save him, we could save him.

Typhon, grapple! We sang it, as both an order and a plea. The irony might amuse in better times, since we’d fought so hard to get free of his hook before. We had no choice but to ally with him. We still didn’t trust him, but that didn’t mean we’d leave him to . . . this.

A rumble of disapproval mingled with reluctant admiration. Typhon thought we meant to stand and die with him. Then the Elder latched on, not just the tow line from before, but a full docking tube that connected us hatch to hatch. Symbolic acceptance, we are one, we share the same fate. A significant commitment, but events were not going to unfold as he expected. We hoped.

As the swarm neared Typhon, we lunged, and our shield came up with exquisite timing. We could not go weapons hot. We would be the weapon. Our shield let us slam into Typhon’s side without taking additional damage, and he was so much bigger that the impact did little more than bruise. But the crawling things caught between the two ships?

They died. Crushed.

We swung in reverse and slammed into his other side, smashing more, but others survived, swarming up, up. And our horror grew as we watched them stab, chew with diamond-sharp mouths, trying to penetrate Typhon’s armored skin.

This is how they take us.

Our energy shield bewildered them, so they crawled along the docking tube with awful dexterity. Hard to say how many; we could not count them. Soon, they would breach Typhon’s hull. Already, his thrashing had slowed, movements sluggish, and the blood trail sang of dying stars, of so many who had gone before. Of those lost in the Gathering.

Time to fight.

We—I—dropped back into my skin, and I took a quick inventory. No intruders—Nadim was still clean. “Status, Bea?”

“Some damage, shields holding for now,” she came back.

“Okay, I need you to keep them up and start towing Typhon away if you can. I don’t know if we have the strength for it.”

“I will find it,” Nadim said as if it was as simple as deciding to do it.

“Excellent. I’ll be back soon.” Without waiting for possible objections, I cracked open the hatch. “Two seconds, bring the shields down, then back up.”

“But—” Nadim sounded shocked. “You will be outside their protection!”

“That’s the idea,” I said. Before he could talk me out of it, I dodged out as the shield sizzled away. It was rock steady when it came up again. The shields wouldn’t let anything in now. Not even me.

I checked my skinsuit as I ran down the boarding tube, weapons at the ready. A black-edged thing dropped down on me, too fast for me to get a good look, and I shot it in the face, right in a rotating ring of fast-moving teeth. I didn’t use a stunner, either. Its head evaporated, leaving an arachnid body that ran five steps at me before falling down. A deep shudder rolled over me so hard, I almost threw up.

And the smell—

Indescribable.

It was worse inside Typhon. There were multiple breach points, and though I’d only bonded with him once, his revulsion and agony nearly swept me at the knees. I stumbled, catching myself on the wall. Huge mistake, because it clarified the contact even more. Quickly I yanked my hand away, wondering how the hell Marko and Chao-Xing were even functioning.

He’s protecting them, I realized.

His coldness and cruelty keeping them separate from him had a point after all; it might save their lives during an attack like this.

I tried my comm and hoped the ones inside Typhon were still working. “Marko! Chao-Xing! Where are you?”

Marko’s voice came back in a rush. “Midships, near the central hub!” That was a long way. I broke into a run. The corridor ahead of me curved, and there were signs of fighting—cuts and dark splashes on the walls, two black-shelled bodies lying on top of each other at the next bend. I leapt over them and hoped that they weren’t just pretending, that they wouldn’t reach up and grab me, horror-movie style. They didn’t. I landed and kept running.

I found Marko pinned down and half-mad with Typhon’s pain, shooting wildly; the hall between us was filled with black-armored intruders. This corridor had been fitted out with some control boxes, and I quickly took shelter behind one. Multiple electrical conduits were fried, so the lights kept flickering. We wouldn’t have oxygen much longer if this kept up. It wouldn’t all escape at once, of course, but—I cut that thought short. One problem at a time.