Fewer than half of the women were asleep, but most of them were hanging out in the bunks they’d been assigned to. The ones who’d been talking quietly clammed up when Sierra walked in and she tried not to take it personally, reminding herself just how bad of a situation each of them had been in. She’d shut up around strangers too.
Quinn, the ringleader, was sitting on the floor beside one bunk, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Come to check out the merchandise?” she asked, the edge in her voice undercut by the yawn that escaped as she was talking.
“You’re not merchandise,” Sierra reminded her. “We’re headed back to Earth where you’ll be safe.”
The sound of disdain Quinn let out wasn’t quite a laugh or a snort, but it let Sierra know exactly how much the young woman believed her. She wanted to get defensive, wanted to ask Quinn why no one believed that three human women who all spoke English and claimed to be from Earth would be lying about rescuing them. But she was almost afraid to hear just how bad the things that had happened to the women were.
“There’s rations in the kitchen for anyone who’s hungry,” Sierra said after a moment. “And plenty of water. It’s easy to get dehydrated on board, so I hope you’re all drinking enough.”
“We’re not children.”
“Clearly.”
Two women, one Asian with short brown hair and the other with light brown skin and tangled brown hair, walked up from the back of the hall, talking to each other in serious hushed tones. One of the other survivors cleared her throat and the Asian woman looked up and placed her hand on her companion’s arm. They both quieted and watched her, full of distrust. Davy and Monica, Sierra was pretty sure were the names of these two, but she wasn’t positive. She smiled and nodded, but Monica glared and Davy turned away without a word.
Clearly the campaign to win the hearts and minds of the survivors was going well.
Another woman, short with unevenly cut, chin length blonde hair came up from the same direction as Monica and Davy, but she didn’t look at either of the women or at Sierra when she climbed into one of the bottom bunks and pulled a blanket up over herself. What were the girls doing back there? The bathroom they had access to was in the other direction, so was the kitchen. There was nothing behind them but the cargo hold and the engine room.
Sierra looked down at Quinn, but Quinn had burrowed into her covers and seemed to have fallen asleep, or she’d closed her eyes to more easily ignore Sierra. Whatever. Sierra stepped past the young woman and tried to keep her expression neutral as she walked further into the depths of the ship. She didn’t want to accuse the women of hatching some scheme to take over the ship or something like that. But Quinn, as the representative of the survivors, had made their distrust perfectly clear. Twelve determined women could do a lot of damage if they put their minds to it.
But the tension that had gathered between Sierra’s shoulders released when she got to the engine room door and saw that it was locked and it didn’t look like it had been tampered with. She didn’t try to go in. Mindy and Jo might kill her if she touched the innards of their precious ship.
Sierra went a little deeper, back towards the cargo hold, where she found a pile of protein bar wrappers. Had they snuck back there to eat? Maybe they had issues about eating in front of the crew, or maybe they didn’t trust that Sierra wouldn’t take the food back if they did something she didn’t like. If they needed this little rebellion, she’d let them have it. She bent down to scoop up the wrappers, but thought better of it at the last moment. She didn’t need to announce that she’d found their little safe corner. Instead, she left the litter there and headed back out.
None of the women said anything to her as she walked through their territory once more, and the short blonde whose name she couldn’t remember was still curled up in her bunk, now quietly whimpering, possibly in the throes of a nightmare. Sierra’s heart broke and she wanted to help, but there was nothing she could do for them right now except keep them fed and get them home safely. She just hoped that it would be enough.
***
Panic was a new and unwelcome emotion that flashed through him for a second before Raze got it under control. He hadn’t realized that it would take effort to put on the mask of the old Raze, and he knew that he didn’t school his expression before Toran caught a flash of emotion. But he had endured and survived much more harrowing situations than this one, and today would be no different.
“I didn’t realize that you wanted me confined to the room for the night,” he said instead of directly answering Toran’s question. His soul yelled at him to declare his claim to one and all, to make them know that Sierra was his, but until he had the situation under control, his mind knew that it was safer for the both of them to remain quiet. For now.
“This isn’t our ship,” Toran hissed, voice barely audible above the sound of the air circulators. “Why would you think you can go wandering around like you own it? You aren’t acting like yourself.”
He was in dangerous territory. One word to their superiors once they were back home and Raze’s life would be forfeit. And if he was too out of character before then, Toran might just finish the job.
Before Raze could formulate a response, the door behind them slid open and Sierra came through. Their eyes connected and the spark of their bond flared to life deep within him. He caught himself just in time to keep from smiling, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from trailing her as she passed them with a polite nod and continued on to the cockpit. He might have been the one to live without emotions for the last three years, but it seemed that Sierra had a better handle on the concept of discretion.
What exactly did she and her team do? They’d never quite gotten around to talking about that.
“Are you fixating?” Toran asked, the words freezing the air around them with their frigidity.
“No.” It was a nasty habit that a few of the soulless fell into, obsessing about a single person or place to the point of destruction. The concern had occurred to him when he first met Sierra, but now he knew that it had nothing to do with harm; he’d never hurt her and would do anything to make sure no one else did either.
“Are you sure?” It was obvious Toran didn’t believe him. Raze hadn’t realized just how difficult conversation had become; now interpreting emotions felt like a superpower, something only a select few—of whom he was one—could do.
“Yes.” The soulless didn’t bother with long explanations to yes or no questions. And, lucky for him, the habit was so ingrained that he had no trouble keeping it up in this conversation.
Toran leaned back and crossed his arms, not bothering to keep the naked look of worry off his face. Why would he? Raze shouldn’t have been able to know what it meant. “I thought Kayde was going to be my problem on this mission,” his leader admitted.
Raze didn’t respond, though his new emotions had him biting back a question there. The soulless didn’t have curiosity.
Either Toran sensed that Raze wanted to know, or he just wanted to talk. “He’s been on edge for months, and there’s a flag in his file. Seems he’s been collecting rocks from every planet he’s sent to.”
How that was a cause for worry, Raze didn’t know, but he still said nothing.
Toran continued. “You gave spot on answers during my evaluation. He’s ready to shoot anything that moves. He doesn’t have the faintest echo of empathy left, but he was an utter bastard before, so I don’t know if that’s anything new. I fully expected to need to turn him over for review the moment we got back, but he’s executed this mission perfectly. You, though…” Toran shook his head.
When he didn’t say anything else, Raze couldn’t hold himself back. “What about me?”
“That!” Toran pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about. You’ve deviated from parameters. You’ve asked questions you’ve never asked before. Your eyes—” he cut himself off before completing the accusation, but Raze knew exactly what he planned to say. His eyes had glowed red, something the soulless lost the capability of. “Do you have any reason that I shouldn’t recommend your actions for review when we get home?”
It could be months before they made it back. For security reasons, they hadn’t mentioned the coordinates of their home base, and finding a ride would take a good deal of time. And with everything Toran was saying, he didn’t think going home would be an option for much longer. Not that he’d ever planned to leave Sierra once they were mated, but he’d wanted the option to take her with him.
Toran looked desperate, like he’d been holding onto a single thread of hope that Raze wasn’t too far gone to save. They’d been friends once, many years ago, even though Toran had been an asshole and Raze too nice to tell him to get lost. And in the memory of that friendship, Raze put his faith in hope, for him and for their people.
“Do you remember what you told me about the human denyai?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that I met mine?” It was supposed to be a joyous confession, but Raze had to keep everything out of his voice. The second he slipped, Toran would do something that couldn’t be undone.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “Whatever it is, you’re confusing it with fixation.” He didn’t glance at the cockpit, but they both knew exactly which of the humans that Raze was talking about.
“I can feel, Toran. My soul isn’t dead anymore. And it’s all because of her.” What if some of those cases of fixation had been the discovery of the bond too late? What if past soldiers had been put down, rather than freed through mating? He hoped he was wrong, but feared the likelihood.
“You—”
The ship jolted around them and Toran fell forward, straight into Raze, who reached out to brace his teammate from crashing to the ground. They glanced at each other and moved towards the cockpit without needing to say anything. The door was still open and they could hear the humans talking.
“What the fuck was that?” Mindy, the navigator, demanded.
The pilot, Jo, sounded equally confused. “We just fell out of FTL, one of the engines went down.”
“Went down?” That was Sierra. “You did maintenance before we left, how is that possible?”
“Who went in my engine room?” Mindy asked, her chair squeaking under her. “Log shows one entrance two hours ago.”
“I checked it a few minutes ago, the door was locked,” said Sierra.
Jo hissed and he could hear her scramble. She cursed. “The auto lock was set on a twelve hour delay. I forgot to switch it over. That door was unlocked until an hour ago.”
There was more jostling and a moment later a blur of colorful hair ran past them, presumably headed for the engine room. Sierra came out a moment later and spotted them. She took a step towards Raze before she realized that Toran was still there and paused. She took a deep breath and gave them a bright, utterly false smile. “Hello, gentlemen. Please take your seats. We just have a momentary issue, everything will be fine in just a minute.”
From where they were standing, it was obvious that they’d heard everything said in the cockpit, but neither he nor Toran contradicted her. This was the humans’ ship, the humans could fix it.