Page 41 of Shattered Silence

She didn’t complain when he made her walk behind him as if she were just a weak, inferior human, even though she was anything but.

They strode out of the medical bay, and Enki led her down the long dark corridor, walking briskly. He adopted the demeanor of an Imperial captain, trying to look as haughty as possible. He made his footsteps noisy on purpose, a surprisingly difficult feat for someone who was used to walking without a sound.

So far, so good.

In this massive battle-cruiser, it wasn’t unusual for the corridors to be empty. Even Silence had its quiet times, when personnel were on their dedicated rest periods, or all maintenance and training tasks had been completed.

But the fact that nobody had come to check on Mirkel and his guard-squadron made Enki a little uneasy. Surely the sylth’s surveillance sensors would have picked up some sort of disturbance; he’d been expecting to kill many more of Daegan’s soldiers before reaching the docking bay.

Maybe he was just being his usual paranoid self, but this silence could almost be considered suspicious.

Never mind; they had to keep moving, and if a problem came up, Enki would simply deal with it.

Just keep moving. It was all they could do now. As long as the fucking Tharian didn’t interfere again, Enki was supremely confident in his ability to fight off Daegan’s men and keep Layla safe.

In the old Empire, the highborn Kordolians that made up Daegan’s ranks were almost always assigned the soft missions; the cruisy postings in the inner sectors, the secure assignments on planets that were already colonized. Those missions kept their stats up and their egos stoked, and Daegan’s soldiers were always happy to leave the real grunt work to General Akkadian and the warriors under his command. They hadn’t fought the dirty battles in the outer sectors, hadn’t faced opponents where the slightest lapse in concentration would mean certain death.

Being First Division, Enki and his brothers were given the dirty work; the worst of the worst.

And Enki knew every single dirty trick in the book.

Back there in Mirkel’s chambers, he’d taken out that squadron in the blink of an eye. They hadn’t even sensed him until it was too late.

That’s why he wasn’t being overly cautious. Instead, he walked as quickly as possible, trying to make up for lost time, trying to take advantage of their clear path… until he realized that Layla was starting to fall further and further behind.

“What’s wrong?” he said softly, keeping an ear out for enemies.

“It’s dark,” she whispered, and Enki cursed softly as he realized he’d forgotten that human dark-vision was extremely poor.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Enki was mildly irritated—more at himself than at Layla.

“I thought I could follow the sound of your footsteps, but you’re doing that thing again.”

“Thing?”

“That thing. You move like a fucking ghost.”

“Sorry.” Never before had Enki felt compelled to apologize for his hard-won skills, but now he did. “I don’t carry a light-source.”

“Figures.”

This was a stupid problem. How could such a simple difference between species—the ability to see in the dark—become such a pain-in-the-ass? At least on Silence, there were enough monitor and indicator lights dotted along the corridors to allow humans to get by, but from what Lodan had told him, the Ristval V hadn’t received nearly the same amount of modification as Silence.

The General was constantly upgrading, refitting, enhancing. He was rather obsessive about it.

Enki contemplated carrying Layla in his arms and making a run for it, but that probably wasn’t a good idea, because he had to go in front. If they suddenly encountered an enemy, the time it took to put her down and behind him could mean the difference between life and death for her.

All it took was a single plasma blast.

Humans were too fragile.

I could…

What do you want? He roared at the Tharian in his mind, allowing his fury to spill over. Because of you, I almost…

I could give you light.

You just don’t know when to stop, do you?

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