Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(52)

“Breathe,” I told her quietly. She sent me a quicksilver smile and nodded. There were tears in her eyes, but they never fell. She blinked them away.

We sat silently in the lounge with the entire wall turned window, the entire ceiling transparent, as much a part of the stars as we could be while still having chairs and oxygen.

It was mesmerizing. Not just the spectacle of passing worlds, but the school of Leviathan who traveled with us. In view, we had at least twenty, both young ones like Nadim and Elders who resembled Typhon, the silvery shimmer of them picking up and shedding color like the scales of fish as they swam the emptiness.

We glided past Saturn. It was the farthest we’d been before, and we kept going. Light was fainter here, and the Leviathan were fading except in shimmers; I might have imagined it, but it seemed they were growing darker to match the weak ambient light from our sun. Stars burned hard, but they were far away, and as we passed the outer limits of our system—our home—I could only make out the other Leviathan when they blocked other lights.

At this diaspora, I thought of all the live ships that wouldn’t return to the Sol system, or if they did, it wouldn’t be during my lifetime. The Journey meant being willing to follow your Leviathan into the unknown, away from your home forever. Talk about a tough call. Nadim didn’t speak, but I felt this was something special, this moment of parting . . . and then, a sound hummed through the floor. A low, throbbing rhythmic pulse that I felt in my chest, like boosted bass at a party.

“What was that?” Bea asked. Still not quite past her nerves, I could hear that.

“It’s a song,” Nadim said. “I suppose you’d call it a good-bye. Those going out on their Journey sing it to us.”

I didn’t have any idea how sound could travel through space—that was supposed to be impossible, wasn’t it? But maybe it wasn’t sound, it was resonance. Resonance the Leviathan were attuned to hear, and we couldn’t under normal circumstances. It vibrated through Nadim’s body.

The pulse amplified and I gripped the arms of my chair tighter. I shut my eyes, and I felt what Nadim did: proud, defiant, sad, relieved. Such a profound and complicated mixture of emotions.

Through my connection with Nadim, I also felt Typhon, at a far remove, like calling into a canyon. Not his emotions, but a kind of empty pressure, like the frozen bubble of a massive explosion. Terrifying and dark. No singing from him. No sound at all.

Then he was gone. Marko and Chao-Xing with him.

Nadim dimmed the transparency of the windows and ceiling gradually, rather than cutting us off at once—that was an adjustment I appreciated. It made it less traumatic for me, and especially Bea. We still sat for a moment, just breathing, and then she reached over and grabbed my hand.

“So,” she said. “We’re doing this.”

“Damn right. Nadim, what’s our first Tour stop?”

“We are on course for a planet that we refer to as Firstworld.”

“Firstworld. You mean, where you’re from?” Beatriz asked him.

“We are from a galaxy so far from here that it would takes years in human time to reach it,” Nadim said. “This is the first world where Leviathan gathered and made contact. Once, long ago, there was a civilization.”

Beatriz raised a brow. “You mean . . . there are people?”

“No. The indigenous race is gone. But it is a beautiful place. One day another intelligent species will rise, but it’s fallow now. We visit often, to observe the changes and record them.”

“Why?” I asked.

“When sentient life evolves, we must withdraw, continue observation from a distance, and strike that planet from the Tour. It would be wrong to offer aid before they reach a certain technological level.”

“Is it dangerous?” That was Bea, of course. I’d never have thought to even ask. Everything was dangerous; that was my default position.

“There are some lower predatory life-forms,” Nadim said. “But they avoid the ruins, which is where you will take readings and gather samples. It should be quite safe.”

“Hey,” I said, as if it was a logical segue. “So, do you have weapons for us?”

“There is a weapons locker. I will open it for you. You should take sidearms down with you. But please, damage nothing. Take nothing but the designated samples. This is a revered site for us.”

“Sacred.” Beatriz nodded. “We understand. We won’t disturb anything.”

I could hear Derry’s response to that, whispering in my ear. Yeah, right. If I see gold, I’m lifting it. Screw sacred. I’d have agreed with him, before. I’d thought freedom meant breaking the rules, stomping on other people’s ideas of what shouldn’t be done. Hearing Beatriz say sacred made me think maybe freedom didn’t mean wrecking shit. It meant not doing it too. After all, no cops out here. No rules. Just respect.

“How long until we get there?” I asked.

I could’ve checked our course on the console, but it was easier to ask. I liked hanging out in the hub, where most of the human-friendly tech was installed. The equipment and screens, the chairs, all of it reminded me of what humans had imagined a ship’s bridge would look like in old science fiction vids.

“Not long,” he said. “Now that I can move at real speed.” Meaning, of course, that flying around Earth’s solar system had been like being trapped in a tiny room. I could feel the energy coursing through him now.