dreaming instead of diligently searching the dark corners of the hangar. Though the hangar bay was cavernous, the search took less than an hour.
He shared his appreciation for the pilots’ cooperation as he finished the search. Though he didn’t turn around, he heard Iana yell after him.
“Don’t forget, you owe me.”
The search of the weapons bays, while equally uneventful, did not go nearly as smoothly. Scyant was openly hostile at all turns, cutting him to ribbons with her dagger-like stares and equally sharp retorts to his accusations. Yen had expected little else after she suffered such painful rejections while sharing his bed, but it made his work difficult and uncomfortable. As quickly as possible, Yen finished his mandatory inspection and left, finding solace in the bridge of the
On the bridge, the two crewmembers looked to Yen with inquisitive looks, but kept their questions to themselves. Taking the Captain’s chair behind Vangore and Tylgar, he reveled in the quiet and lost himself in the deep darkness of space as it was projected on the front screen. Soon, he would have to start the second part of his plan, sending suspicion spiraling even further away from him, but for the time, he stared at the screen. They moved at half the speed of light, having slowed to provide ample time for the searches. Though Yen knew that the Fleet moved at exceptional speeds, the distant stars remained far beyond their reach. Yen had found the tranquility within the stars long ago, as a fighter pilot. Soundless in the void of space, with the horizon of stars indefinitely beyond your reach, a pilot can lose himself, finding an inner peace as his vessel drifted between the stars. With the war so far away from their current position in known space, Yen let his eyes slip out of focus, as he stared into the distant nothing. Though time passed as he sunk lower into the Captain’s chair, time froze within his mind. He thought of a place and time light years away, when he had met a brash young Wyndgaart pilot, one who saved his life. His heart still raced at the thought of Keryn and he found himself, not for the first time, wondering what happened to her. She left before the invasion of Earth, before the Terrans unleashed their frozen hell upon Alliance space. He didn’t know if she still survived, but his heart ached at the thought of her lying dead or dying, buried in the darkness and the snow. Reality crept back into Yen’s thoughts. If he hoped to find Keryn, the Alliance would need to win the war. That could only be done if a culprit was accused in the death of Merric.
As his eyes slowly slid back to the present, Yen opened his hand and a blue filament coalesced in his palm. Someone needed to be blamed, Yen knew, even if they weren’t truly guilty. The psychic serpent in his hand responded to his thoughts, coiling around his fingers and darting in mock strikes into the open air near his arm. Yes, Yen had a plan and he knew it would ruin someone’s life, but it was inevitable if he ever hoped to find Keryn again.
“Keryn,” Yen whispered into the bridge.
The serpent leapt from his hand, elongating as it stretched beyond his reach. The blue psychic snake bared its fangs and sunk their power into the base of Vangore’s spine. The Wyndgaart Communications Officer jerked as the serpent’s head disappeared under the skin and reached into his subconscious mind. Vangore flinched as his mind became alight with psychic fire and whispered suggestions. Words flittered through his subconscious mind, filling it with thoughts not his own.
Vangore convulsed quietly while the mental dams in his mind broke free, flooding his synapses with an overload of information. Images fluttered through his mind, like triggered memories rising to the surface after being long forgotten. Only Yen knew that the memories running through his mind were not his own. The power coursed through Yen, pulsing down the length of the filament that ran between the two.
Stealing a glance at Tylgar sitting in the navigator’s chair, Yen debated sending a second filament in his direction. Instead, he showed impressive restraint by reeling in another blue filament that began to coalesce in response to his pondering. While Yen feared Tylgar turning around and seeing what he was doing, he was more concerned with the perception of the entire bridge being involved in a conspiracy against Merric. People were quick to accept a single man plotting bodily harm against another. But when it reached a point of multiple people working in an intricate, interwoven conspiracy, skeptics quickly arose in the ranks. One person is a fluke. Multiple people lends itself to a leadership failure and blatant mutiny against the established command. No, he wouldn’t do this to Tylgar unless the Lithid turned around.
As Yen’s thoughts wandered between Tylgar and Vangore, the Wyndgaart stopped his subtle convulsions. With its work done, the serpent slipped free from Vangore’s mind, coiling once again around Yen’s wrist. It flicked its tongue once toward the Communications Officer before turning and plunging into Yen’s open palm, disappearing from view with a final toss of its transparent blue tail.
In front of the Captain’s chair, Vangore began typing furiously on his overhead display, alternating between inputting and erasing new data. Sinking into the Captain’s chair once more, Yen let his eyes lose their focus once more as he stared out beyond the stars.
CHAPTER 17:
Keryn stumbled through the snow, the freezing wind tearing through her wet pants, biting into her skin. The numbing cold had spread from her feet and legs into her fingers and hands. She staggered forward, her hands tucked under her arms as a minimal protection from the stinging wind and her filth-caked hair blowing in chunks of frozen strands. When she had last made the three-mile walk from the
Without the sun as a guide and with all her jungle landmarks now decaying, the world seemed entirely foreign. The cold still clouded her mind and allowed doubt to creep into her thoughts. For all she knew, she had been wandering in circles for the past half hour and would, quite soon, come across her own beaten path through the snow. Still, she trudged on, knowing that movement was all that kept her from collapsing into the snowdrifts, never to rise again.
She staggered for another ten minutes, certain that she was completely lost in the woods. The walk to Miller’s Glen over two weeks ago had been quick, taking less time to transverse the entire distance than what she’d been walking since her escape, yet she still had seen no sign of the stream in which they had washed a few weeks earlier. She was panicked and disoriented, turning back and forth, her only guide being the straight trail behind her as she broke through the deep snow. Shivering now both from the cold and her own fear, Keryn drove forward hoping and praying to Gods she didn’t believe in that she would find something familiar soon before the threatening cold overtook her.
Her foot catching on a buried root of a recently deceased jungle tree, Keryn stumbled and dropped to a knee. Tears streamed down her face, cutting clean tracks down her dirty face. Her energy was quickly leaving her; she feared now that she didn’t even have the strength to get back to her feet.
“What do you care?” she moaned through her chocking tears.
“Just go away,” Keryn replied with little conviction. “Just leave me alone.”
Keryn pushed herself up, using a nearby tree for support. Her knees cried in angry defiance as she tried to straighten her legs again. The cold had settled deeply into her bones during her brief reprieve from walking and now each step sent explosions of pain through her legs. Still, the Voice cried in her head, driving her forward even as her own thoughts sunk into the dark recesses of her mind. The memory of her shared kiss with Adam rose to the forefront of her mind and, with the Voice taking control of her movements, she lost herself in the memory. She
