“I recommend you keep your chest covered on board. My associates are more likely to take it as an invitation to dine than as a mating overture.”

Shit.

“You mean they aren’t more—” I break off before I can piss Velith off by calling his race Sliders again. Trouble is, I can’t recall the respectful term. Theirs is an obscure world, seldom studied in our exoanthropology courses, not that I ever took such a thing.

“No,” he says dryly, as if I’m an idiot for envisioning a crew comprised of Sliders. “But you will see for yourself, soon enough.”

As if on cue, the doors flip up with a soft hiss of decompression. Slim and sleek, shining with ultrachrome, the ship appears to be a Silverfish, good for them, bad for me, as it’s the fastest transplanetary vessel available today. Once I climb aboard I’ll be delivered to Corp headquarters in Ankaraj in less than two hours.

Velith curls his hand around my unshackled wrist, and I’m surprised to find that his palm feels leathery but not unpleasant. The chitin of his face gives me the crawlies since I can’t stand insects with a hard carapace, the way they crunch when you step on them…Oh Mary. A shudder runs through me.

He glances back, seeming to misinterpret my reaction. “You have nothing to fear from me, Sirantha. You have comported yourself as a model captive, and I will deliver you to your destination unharmed.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” I answer truthfully, as we board via three small steps that flip down from the low-slung craft.

“That is…most unusual.”

I think I’ve managed to surprise him. Looking like that, no doubt he’s used to people pissing themselves once he sheds his human skin. I wonder if he can smell the acrid tang of terror, whether our emotions manifest to him in the olfactory spectrum. If so, it probably tells him something about his prisoner’s intended course of action, and I would do well to remember that. A jump in my adrenaline levels might communicate itself to him in some fashion, warning him I’m about to try something.

Sighing, because I truly needed something else to worry about, I take stock of my surroundings. The interior of a Silverfish is cramped, not intended for extended use. I count ten seats and five of them are filled.

“Mother Mary,” I breathe. “Your crew is made up of—” Velith claps a claw across my mouth as a growl goes up from the fanged collective. It occurs to me that they would find the term derogatory.

Glad he didn’t let me say it.

“Yes. As you noted earlier, I am the charming one. So I suggest we get under way before you precipitate a problem.”

One of them squeezes my arm as I walk by; it’s not a warning or a cruelty so much as…well, testing my flesh for texture, I suppose. To them, I must look like dinner on the heel. No wonder Velith told me to keep myself covered, although breasts wouldn’t be as tasty as they look, all glands and fat.

Velith hisses and chitters, gesturing with both claws and mandible. What I take to be an argument ensues; maybe his crew wants to eat my extremities before delivering me? If I arrive alive but truncated, that would still fulfill the terms of their contract. Finally, one of the Morgut straightens its lower limbs and skitters upright. I find the movement both horrifying and hypnotic. This is a creature, who by all evolutionary standards, should not exist, and it’s heading for the cockpit.

How the hell am I going to get out of this?

“Just a misunderstanding,” Velith assures me, as he sinks into a seat with the mantis motion that seems comforting compared to the appalling otherness I discern among the Morgut. That’s human slang: We named them so for their insatiable appetite…more gut than anything else. They are the stuff of terror vids and bedtime stories told each other by children in hushed, gleeful whispers.

He pats the space next to him, surreal but cordial. “Make yourself comfortable, Sirantha. This will all be over shortly.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

CHAPTER 48

I manage to sit beside Velith quietly for all of ten minutes.

The inside of the vessel carries a strange sweet-and-sour tang. I’m not sure if it’s an odor given off by the Morgut or a food source concealed somewhere. It’s all I can do to keep from staring over my shoulder at them, but I don’t want to show interest, either.

As a species, they’re intelligent but savage, seldom seen on human worlds, primarily because they view us as a delicacy. Gehenna is the most liberal of ports, but after constant incident reports, they became the last non-Conglomerate world to restrict Morgut travel. Here on New Terra, they used to require a permit and a trainer sworn to control them and assume liability for their damages. That sums Farwan Corporation up right there. They don’t care about loss of life, just property damage.

“How come they don’t eat you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He doesn’t need to turn his head to glance at me. The disconcerting placement of his eyes permits him to study me at his leisure. I’m almost accustomed to the insectile quality of his mannerisms, but I can’t figure out how he manages to speak universal. Maybe he has a vocalizer implanted; that would seem to make sense.

“The Morgut’ll eat anything. How can you work with them safely?”

His mandible twitches. “My body chemistry renders me poisonous to them.”

“Oh. That’s convenient. I guess they make incredible enforcers. Strike terror into the hearts of hardened criminals.”

“Yes.” He inclines his head. “Though it is occasionally difficult to persuade them that our bounties would not be better served with a sweet glaze and mixed fruit.”

I grin a bit. “Was that a joke?”

“Perhaps.”

“I have to know, were you the ones who chased us into grimspace?”

“Your pilot is good,” Velith says. “The ghosts were clever and made tracking you exceedingly difficult.”

“I don’t suppose—”

“No. Go to sleep, Sirantha.”

“I should have known you weren’t Doc,” I mutter. “He never calls me Sirantha. And he doesn’t need me to hold his hand during a landing, and he doesn’t suffer from motion sickness.”

“I did not interpret him well? I adjudged him a scholarly individual, a beta male, who would behave with some timidity in certain situations.” He reacts like a vid-actor being advised his performance was over the top.

“You did all right faking the science stuff, although it helps that none of us have a clue what he’s talking about half the time, but for personality, no. Not even close.” I sigh, tallying up all the inconsistencies. “Where is he, by the way?”

I don’t want to believe he’s dead. Nutty as it might sound, I sort of like this Slider. I don’t doubt he’d kill if it were necessary, but I’m beginning to get a sense of his intellect. He prefers to think his way around problems.

Velith lifts one jointed shoulder in a fair approximation of a shrug. “I left him in a storage locker. I would surmise he has gotten out by now in some fashion.”

No wonder he pushed to get us off Gehenna as soon as possible. Some of the tension eases out of my shoulders, but then I realize I have something else to worry about. “That stuff you said about the lesions…did you make that up?”

He hesitates. “I…examined all the data and Dr. Solaith’s notes, but I am not a scientist, and I needed you to jump to New Terra. The Morgut could not pass on Gehenna for obvious reasons, and I feared I would require their assistance to subdue you.”

“Why in the hell would you think that?” I put my hand to my head, meaning to mess with my hair as I tend to do when I’m nervous, but I find nothing but rough skin. Fragging bastard, no wonder he said it didn’t matter if I shaved my head, and now I’m bald for nothing.

“You are a cunning and dangerous woman, Sirantha, wanted on every Conglomerate world for mass murder and wanton acts of terrorism.”

Shit. From his point of view, he’s the good guy, and it’s astonishing he has been this polite to me. How ironic; it speaks well of him. I wish I had 245 with me; she could probably figure something out. But she’s in the bag I dropped outside the san-shower.

Has March found it yet? Do they know I’m missing?

Desperation laces my voice. I’ve got less than an hour to think my way out of this. “Did it ever occur to you to that the Corp is guilty of disseminating false information? I’m the only survivor from the Sargasso but I didn’t do that. The landing authority used override codes on our vessel and supplied incorrect coordinates, the wrong trajectory. They fragging engineered that crash.”

“Every convict claims he is innocent.”

I nod. Every scum-sucking lowlife he’s captured has probably begged and pleaded, professing his innocence. I’m just one more in a long line; tough shit for me that in my case it’s actually true. For the first time in my life, I can’t see a way out.

He’ll deliver me to the Corp, where they’ll turn me over to Unit Psych Newel, who will work on me until I’m broken, until I confess to anything they want: Matins IV and DuPont Station, who knows what else. After all this, forget Whitefish, they’re going to execute me. And the Corp comes off squeaky clean.

I can’t fucking stand it. And then I realize there’s another way. It goes against all my instincts, but my back’s to the wall, and I will not let them win. There’s one last act of defiance I can offer.

“At the hostel, would you have killed me if I screamed?” My voice sounds hoarse, urgent, and he turns his head then.

His mandibles flex as if he finds the question impolite. “Yes. Then your associates would have rushed to your aid too late; mine would have descended on the place like locusts. A messy situation, best avoided.”

Then I accomplished what I intended, saved Dina and March. Huh, so this is what altruism feels like. It chafes a bit. But I can’t let myself think about March, or I won’t have the strength to continue. I force the words out before I think better of them.

“Please…if you’d have done it then, do me this kindness. Do it now. Feed me to the Morgut afterward, I don’t care. Just don’t turn me over to the Corp alive.”

Velith clicks his claws together, a sound I interpret as exasperation. “I am not a murderer, Sirantha. I kill when I am presented with no viable alternative.”

Wouldn’t you know it? A bounty hunter with a conscience. That’s it then. I’m out of ideas. Then my eyes light on the bracelet he slapped on my wrist. When we get off the ship, I can try to run, hope to reach two hundred meters out before I’m caught. Don’t know whether I’m fast enough to manage it. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to do that to myself on purpose.

But if I run, I might incite their predatory instincts. The Morgut might eviscerate me. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s preferable to returning to a cell, going back to Psych Officer Newel. There comes a time when speculation ceases to matter and all planning comes down to instinct. Thinking has never been my strong suit anyhow. I just need to—