Page 29 of Shattered Silence

Why are you waiting, warrior? The passenger chose that very moment to speak, and Enki swore it did that on purpose to annoy him. Sometimes, he suspected the thing derived amusement from irritating him. Those impossible blades of yours can cut through anything. Why don’t you just force your way inside?

Enki sighed heavily, tempted to silence the Tharian with brute mental force. But for once he relented, because it had been the Tharian who gave him the idea of interrogating Relahek, and that is what had led them to this point.

I can’t forcefully breach the airlock, he replied, channeling his thoughts into a kind of mindspeech—a trick he’d learned from Silent One. Any change in pressure would immediately be detected.

Time is scarce. Humans are fragile creatures, are they not? I hope you—

Be quiet now. Distract me later, if you must. I do not want to listen to things I already know.

Wonder of all wonders, the Tharian obeyed. For some reason, it seemed to want Enki to rescue the human.

He sighed through his exo-helm, releasing a small puff of air into the cold vacuum of space. The Stalker had an oxygen port that could connect to his armor if needed, but Enki had decided not to breathe for the time being. Like the other First Division warriors, he could survive for a certain amount of time in space without oxygen.

He pressed his palm against the cold metal of the ship’s hull. Enki was seething with the need to get inside and get moving, because time was slipping away from him, but he had to get this right, had to sneak inside with as little disturbance as possible, otherwise he would blow everything.

So he hung there for some time, waiting, waiting, waiting…

Until a faint tremor rippled through his fingertips. There it is. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the body of the ship started to unravel, revealing a gaping black hole.

The airlock had opened.

A small black cruiser flew out of the airlock, probably heading for the nearest trading station or neutral planet. Whatever. Enki ignored it, focusing on his task—to get inside without being detected.

He slapped the Stealthstalker’s anchor to the hull and hauled himself up toward the edge of the opening, digging his claws into the Callidum hull. The absence of gravity made it an easy thing to do, and in the space of several heartbeats, Enki was able to pull himself over the lip of the opening, just as the Qualum fibers began to draw closed.

Somewhere in the distance, Nythian was on standby, ready to infiltrate the Ristval V if Enki had to break his cover and send out a distress call, requesting backup.

But that would not be necessary.

You make it look so easy.

I thought you agreed to be quiet.

Merely a compliment, soldier. Relax.

Silence.

As the outer doors wove shut, gravity kicked in, and Enki landed silently on his feet, grateful for the sensation of a solid floor beneath him.

He was almost in.

The only thing standing in his way now were the massive internal doors, which provided the second layer that was necessary to every functional airlock in the Universe.

They were sealed shut.

Enki could wait for another craft to come through, but only Kaiin knew how long that would take. He couldn’t afford to waste too much time here, not when his human charge was suffering at the hands of the medics.

Enki had no idea who was in charge of the medical unit on Ristval V now. After a brief stint on the Fleet Station, that pompous ass Mirkel had gone back to his regular post under Daegan’s command, but there was a rumor he’d been killed by Xalikian.

The thought of a highborn prick like Mirkel laying his hands on Layla triggered a special kind of insanity in Enki. The strength of his emotions surprised him. For someone who didn’t feel much of anything at all, this was… unexpected.

But there was no time to dwell on such useless feelings, because Enki had to get inside without being detected.

Most doors in the old Imperial military fleet would open for Enki. As a First Division warrior, almost all Qualum was coded to recognize his bio-sig, but airlock doors were different. Ordinary mortals didn’t enter warships through airlocks; they were for spacecraft only.

A faint pop in Enki’s ears told him the pressure had equalized. If he breached the inner doors now, there would be no detectable pressure leak.

He ran across the wide space to the center of the Qualum seal and drew his longknife, gently teasing the blade into the thick meshwork of fibers. Quickly but meticulously, he cut through the thick Callidum-impregnated material, fashioning a distinctly person-sized hole. In the massive airlock doors, it was little more than a pinprick.

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