Page 24 of Shattered Silence

Or maybe she was just really, really unlucky.

Lucky to survive.

Lucky to be found.

But unlucky to be captured.

Layla was quickly losing hope that this mysterious Enki, who might have been just a figment of her delirious imagination, would come for her.

Even if he did, what were the chances he would turn out to be a demon, a creature strong enough to infiltrate this floating fortress and break her out?

Slimmer than getting hit by a micrometeorite storm, probably.

Slimmer than her emergency transmission getting picked up by a lone alien ship.

And slimmer than being captured and tortured and studied, all because her body apparently held the key to the survival of the Kordolian race.

Endure a little longer.

Oh, she would endure for now, but if she ever reached the point where there was no hope left, Layla would do her best to make sure she gave this pompous metal-faced asshole a taste of his own cruelty before she went down.

Because after what she’d gone through on Earth, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

Never again.

Chapter Eight

“Well, well. Will you look at that? Now there’s a familiar sight.” Lodan grinned savagely as the Ristval V appeared on the holo. “It’s just like the good old Imperial times, except now we have official permission to kick Daegan’s ass. He’s such a shitbag.”

They were close enough now for the Virdan X’s powerful sensors to see through her cloaking and perform a thorough analysis. The 3D image that appeared before them was incredibly detailed, allowing Enki to see everything, right down to the damage. One of the thrusters was on half-power, and parts of the hull had been crudely patched.

“Looks like she’s limping,” Nythian murmured, raising his silvery eyebrows. “So Silence really did some damage last time, eh? Can’t fix a battle cruiser without a Fleet Station… or a crew of stubborn human mechs. Just ask Kalan.” He laughed. “Hard to believe they’ve just been lurking around in the Ninth right under our noses all this time. You’d think they would have made some noise by now. Daegan will shit asteroids if he finds out we were able to trace them through the Alerak brother’s House comm. Sometimes I truly think the nonexistent Goddess is just fucking with us for her own amusement.”

This is not because of some deity, shadowkin. This is curlae. The strands of the Universe. Everything is connected.

This time, Enki didn’t fight. Instead, he pushed the Tharian’s meaningless chatter to the back of his mind as he watched the black ship. As it slowly rotated on the holo, he recalled the moment when the Ristval V had appeared in Earth’s orbit and threatened the planet with total annihilation.

Because General Tarak al Akkadian had stolen their Fleet Station, and they were enraged.

A complicated game of threats and subterfuge had followed, and somehow they’d managed to lure the battle cruiser away from Earth. Engaging in a vicious firefight, Silence had forced the Ristval V down the throat of an uncharted wormhole, and the massive battle cruiser had disappeared.

Blinked right out of existence.

And now they’d just found her.

Limping.

“The boss is going to be happy. Too bad Silence is deployed to Bartharra right now.” Lodan stared hungrily at the holo-image. “It’s the only ship that can match the Rist for pure firepower.” He turned back to the controls and closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. A gentle shudder coursed through the ship and Enki felt its speed drop away until it came to a complete stop.

Now they were just hanging.

Waiting.

“This is as far as we go,” Lodan said. “Any closer and we risk getting picked up by their surveillance, even though we’re cloaked. We’re just too close now. You’re going to have to use a Stealthstalker to get inside.”

Enki grunted in agreement as summoned his exo-armor, visualizing the familiar forms in his mind. The black nanites emerged from his bloodstream, flowing over his lower arms and hands. A million tiny pinpricks of pain lanced through his skin as the microscopic machines coalesced to form a light but impossibly strong barrier, a sleek black outer shell that allowed him complete freedom of movement.

It was a monstrous feat of bio-engineering, turning him into something not quite Kordolian; something other.

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