Page 29 of Monsters After Dark

The rush of that decision carried me most of the way through planning how we’d make it work. Krell swore he could bring the hyperdrive to me, much safer than me bringing the Stardancer closer and risking more damage. It still sounded insane for him to jump the distance between us and join me, but I had to trust him when he said he could do it.

Trust him. That was the problem. He was a sworn enemy of my family and I’d be all alone with him in the Stardancer. While the thought of spending a week alone with him sent a tingle through me, my rational brain balked. If Krell decided to throw me out of the airlock, into vacuum I’d go. I’d put up a fight, sure, but I doubted I’d even slow him down.

He has to trust me too,I told myself. If I don’t open the airlock for him, he’ll die out there and I can grab the hyperdrive off his corpse.

The thought made me shudder, a visceral horror shaking me from my toes to the top of my head. Dying out there in the icy embrace of space was a nightmare. Krell would hang there, waiting for his suit’s airscrubbers to run down, the air in his helmet thickening…

Serves him right. I heard my dad as though he was in the copilot’s seat, his voice rough and ragged from one too many close calls with vacuum. Carl Dorran held his grudges as dear as his children and wouldn’t miss a chance to do his enemies harm. That alien motherfucker doesn’t deserve your air supply, Isadora. And you don’t have the spare capacity to waste.

“Shut up, Dad,” I said under my breath. “This isn’t your decision.”

An imagined dry chuckle was all the answer I got, but it was enough. The feud between our families had lasted three generations—I’d grown up with it and so had Krell. Like it or not, neither of us would make our decision alone. We all carried a part of our family with us.

* * *

The transferitself was difficult for both of us. I had to hold the Stardancer in position above the Third Sunrise without getting hit by any debris large enough to do more damage, and I had the easy job. Fingers dancing across the controls, I gave the Stardancer little nudges, holding her steady relative to the broken hull of the battleship. The explosion in the torpedo magazine had stripped away the plating, leaving only a skeletal framework of jagged metal struts. Somehow, Krell had wedged his ship on the inside of that twisted mess. It must have seemed like a great choice, safe from the flying shrapnel that had crippled both of our vessels. Unfortunately, if I tried to fly the Stardancer in there, I’d be more likely to impale her on the exposed struts than dock with the Third Sunrise.

A tiny dot grew from Third Sunrise, pushed by small sprays of gas. Krell, ascending to meet me with the grace of a pouncing cat. Behind him, starlight gleamed off the mirror-bright surface of the hyperdrive he towed.

One stray piece of space junk and he’d end up smeared across the Elder battlefield.

“You’d better not have fucked this up,” I said, though he couldn’t hear me. “If I’m going to all this effort and your hyperdrive goes flying into the dark, I’m screwed.”

The alien came closer, closer, and I tried not to stare at the screen tracking him. My job was keeping the ship steady and undamaged, giving Krell a stationary target to aim for. Attention darting from screen to screen, I shifted the bare minimum needed to dodge anything large enough to do more than scuff the paintwork. That took enough of my concentration that Krell almost reached me before I spotted what was wrong. He wasn’t wearing a space suit.

A fine tracery of ice lined his blue skin, and his jaws were wide as though to snap shut on his prey. The thought of being that prey made me shiver with a weird mix of anticipation and fear. That he was still alive added awe to the mix. A human trying that? Dead in thirty seconds. Somehow Krell was still going, conscious enough to use a handheld thruster to steer and accelerate toward the Stardancer.

Normally—if you’d call any jump from ship to ship normal—I’d have maneuvered more freely, knowing that even if he missed, I could come around for another pass to pick him up. Not this time. Without a suit, even Krell wouldn’t live long enough to match vectors with, and in this chaotic mess I wouldn’t trust my sensors to keep track of him. We had one shot at this, no more. Better to risk another impact from a piece of flying junk than to risk Krell missing because I dodged too far out of the way.

So I gritted my teeth, focused on my work, and accepted the smaller hits while I dodged the big ones. It sounded like a rainstorm hitting the hull and I had an uncomfortable image of the paint stripping away, then the hull, and finally me. I did my best to put that out of my mind, focusing on tracking objects large enough to wreck the ship and keep out of their way as much as possible.

A loud clang filled the ship, and my blood froze. Had I missed something?

No. A glance at the monitors showed me it was Krell hitting the hull. Heart in my throat, I watched as he bounced off. Grabbed desperately for the ship.

Caught hold.

And pulled himself into the waiting airlock, towing the cylindrical hyperdrive inside after him and shutting the outer hatch. As soon as he was inside, I opened the throttle, pushing the Stardancer into the safest course out of this nightmarish vortex of death. I didn’t need to worry about my passenger—as soon as the sensors reported a lifesign in the airlock, automatic systems kicked in and flooding it with air. I glanced at the airlock camera, just in time to see Krell slumping to the deck. Apparently that jump had taken its toll after all, though his vital signs were stable. My enemy, my family’s sworn foe, was now just one door away, and once he’d recovered, he’d open it and step through.

Why did that send warm tingles radiating through my body? It wasn’t anger that filled me, it wasn’t fear that made my limbs weak. No, it was anticipation that made my heart flutter. I was too busy piloting to think about the reasons for those feelings, and I embraced that excuse with a passion. Swooping past the engine parts I’d claimed earlier, I engaged the tractor beam and took it in tow as we passed. That would have to be enough to pay for repairs—no way I was stopping for anything more.

The Stardancer was nearly out of the debris field when the airlock sensors registered movement. Krell, pulling himself to his feet. After his ridiculous jump, I’d expected him to need hours of rest at the very least, but the Hormza warrior was even hardier than I’d thought.

Swallowing, I glanced at the airlock controls. One touch would turn that green light red and lock Krell in the airlock. Another would open the outer door an inch, venting the air into space and killing him. At which point I’d take the hyperdrive from his corpse, just like dad would have wanted.

“No.” I said it firmly, ignoring my father’s imagined disappointment. “I won’t murder someone just because of his family, Dad. Besides, I went to the trouble of putting another t-shirt on, and I won’t waste that effort by murdering the only person who’ll see me.”

I just hoped that Krell made the same choice. He had to, because if he didn’t, I’d die.

This is insane. Who the hell lets a battle-hardened alien warrior board their ship willingly? I watched the airlock cycle. If I wanted to keep Krell outside, this was my last chance. Once the inner door opened, he’d have me cornered and helpless.

A chime announced the opening of the airlock, and the last chance to keep him out had slipped through my fingers. Dad had insisted I take a stunstick in case of trouble, but I had no illusions about my skill with it. If it came to a fight, I’d already lost.

“Better get this over with,” I told myself, checking the radar again. Nothing near our course, not anymore. The autopilot would keep me safe just fine, leaving me free to greet my ‘guest.’ After a moment’s thought, I left the stunstick holstered by the pilot’s seat. Carrying it was more likely to antagonize Krell than deter him.

The airlock opened onto the crew deck, the largest room on the Stardancer aside from the hold. Space enough for six to eat together, a chipped and worn table for them to eat at. In better times, my family sat around it, laughing or bickering, but no longer. In the months since I’d last shared this space with anyone, I’d gotten used to having it to myself. The idea of sharing it with a stranger made me skittish.

Especially this alien, who awoke so many conflicting feelings in my heart. I looked up at him, framed in the airlock doorway, and my jaw dropped as I got my first good look at him. At his scarred face, one good eye raking the room, looking for threats. His broad shoulders, the muscular torso that made my heart race, abs I could have stared at for hours. And he’d not made even a token effort to hide them. He wore nothing above the waist, and why not? Anyone with a body that gorgeous should show it off if he wanted to.

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