Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(92)

“Yes,” I admitted.

No Honor ever came back from the Journey.

And maybe, just maybe, we’d figured out why.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Breaking Ties


“TYPHON IS ARMORED up like a tank and carries six rail guns. I don’t think he went through all that bioengineering for fun. You might carry one gun for fun—well, I would—but six?”

I could see the whirl and crash of thoughts behind Bea’s eyes. “Maybe that’s why their Honors choices have changed. More military officers have been chosen. Maybe they’re trying to learn how to fight better,” she said.

That hit me hard, for some reason. Typhon had once been a gentle soul, like Nadim. He’d been twisted by what he went through. Maybe violence didn’t come naturally to the Leviathan. It wouldn’t, to a species that hadn’t evolved in the competitive hothouse that humans had.

“If they don’t use their weapons on other Leviathan, then they have to be squaring off against an alien species,” I said.

“There are few we’ve encountered who could hurt us,” Nadim replied. “Most species who develop that level of technology in conjunction with sufficient aggression have used it to destroy themselves. As humans were bent on doing, before.”

“So you don’t even have a guess?”

“My records are incomplete.”

I hated that the Leviathan suckered humans into some private struggle, but the idea that they dragged their younger kin into it without warning—that was another level of disgust.

“Nadim needs to be armed,” Bea said then.

“I’m not allowed to have them yet.”

She was implacable. “So what? Were there instructions on how to attach that weapon you were making, Zara?”

Nadim answered, reluctantly, “I was able to take some of the data from Typhon. Including the plans for how to install the weapons. And my . . . alarm. But perhaps we should wait.”

I wasn’t having that. “If there are enemies out there who want to kill your people, you need the ability to fight them. No arguments, Nadim. Whatever you’ve got in storage, we are going to install. Now.”

Bea said, “I’ll take inventory and see if there’s anything we can scrap to build something we can use for defense. Or offense. Nadim, I’d be grateful if you’d line up any details on the weaponry that the Elders use.”

“I don’t have much,” he said. “But I will.”

“I’ll be on the supply deck,” Bea said.

No point in wasting time. I got to work too. There were complicated instructions for attaching the weapon to Nadim’s exterior; he’d have to reroute some nerve endings to control and power the device, but we needed to position it and clamp it down first. Nadim would then graft skin around it, integrating fully with his body.

The self-powered cart glided effortlessly ahead of me into the airlock, and I stood beside it in my skinsuit while the atmosphere cycled out. When the outer door opened, it did so without a sound, and suddenly I was . . . there. Drifting in the stars, just like Nadim.

It took all my concentration to pull myself away from the dizzy expanse and focus. The mass of the weapon made it dangerous once I had it out in space, but Nadim altered his speed and trajectory to help me maneuver it within a fraction of a centimeter to its assigned spot, which meant all I had to do was activate the biotech seal between his skin and the base of the weapon. I’d have to wait a bit for the connection to take, so I allowed myself to really look around.

This was my first spacewalk. The enormity of it, and the lonely smallness of my body, took my breath away. We were in a bright, busy part of the Milky Way galaxy, thick with stars, and it was hard to imagine that Nadim’s home was so vast, so cold, so beautiful. So many stars. I could feel the life of them all around me—and even though I wasn’t currently deep bonded with Nadim, I could hear them. Not clearly. Not the way he did. But when I closed my eyes, I could still make out the positions of the burning points of light, the ancient swirl of slow movements. Dark occlusions of planets.

My awe was interrupted when I felt a bright, hard stab of pain. Not mine. Nadim’s. “It’s all right,” his voice said in my suit comm. “That was the nerve connection being made. There is some discomfort as the grafting begins. The technology is not completely compatible, but it will work.”

“Okay,” I said. The red wash of feeling ebbed. Now it just felt like a bad bruise. “So, do you want to test it while I’m out here? In case you need me to, ah, adjust something?”

Nadim fired the cannon at a nearby asteroid. I don’t know if he meant to use that much power—from the shock that flashed through me, it seemed like he hadn’t—but it damn sure worked. Energy blew out of the open end of it in a thick plasmatic stream, bright as the stars, so bright that even though the skinsuit darkened the goggles to save my vision, I couldn’t blink away the afterimage. No sound, of course, except my surprised yelp and fast breathing. The energy cut out in another second, and Nadim said, “That . . . feels . . .” He didn’t finish. I could sense what he did, and I didn’t know what words to put to it, either. There was a wave of almost visceral thrill, and then horror at having this kind of power. Then his exhaustion swept over me; this had drained him somewhat.