Gillian lifts her head to look at me. Water tracks down her cheeks.
“I am so, so sorry, Dalox. I didn’t realize.”
“We are Sarkarnii. We survive,” I say, but I can’t inject any passion into the statement. “And it turned out Dante’s ship was carrying sarkarnlings in stasis, so we have a new generation to look forward to. And of course there is you and the other females.”
Gillian continues to study my face, but her eyes are guarded again.
“But otherwise, you survive,” she says, her voice hoarse.
“I am Dalox, admiral of the fleet and member of the High Bask. I do not ever give up.”
GILLIAN
Being brought face to face with the sadness of the Sarkarnii was not what I was expecting to find in this abandoned space ship.
They lost so much. My heart was already aching with my own loss, but to see what they endured, laid out for me like some terrible tableaux, I think it broke me.
And yet Dalox says they survive.
I know about surviving. I cannot even believe it was possible after what happened.
And as for the silence…I know it only too well. It is as if someone has scooped out my heart and laid it to one side, never to beat again.
I am not alone. Not anymore.
“The mapping system will not be here,” Dalox says. “We need to find the bridge.”
I don’t protest as we walk away from the scene of death. I have seen enough now to last me forever.
The passage we follow gets progressively brighter, until all the lights are on.
“It would appear this ship still has power,” Dalox says as he inspects the walls. “Which means there must still be star fuel for the engines.”
He presses his hand against a black square like the one in the flyer, and a hole opens in the wall, revealing a ladder.
“I hate to point this out, but I don’t think you’ll fit.” I stare into the hole.
“These ships were not made for Sarkarnii,” Dalox says.
“They weren’t?”
“No, we took this fleet from another species,” he says, as if this is the most natural thing in the universe. “They owed us.”
“I think they were smaller than you.”
“They were not.” Dalox flashes me a fang. “They had less tail.”
He turns to stare at the dinosaur-like appendage, and after some time, it swirls away into nothing.
“We had better move. I doubt I can hold my shift for long,” he rasps.
“You can’t stop your tail?”
“I cannot stop my tail,” he growls. “The thing has a life of its own and I am not involved.”
I raise my eyebrows as Dalox squeezes himself into the hole and begins his descent.
I get on the first rung of the ladder and follow him. The light is dim in the tube, with only a prickle of pinpricks to allow me the ability to see the rungs as I go down. Occasionally my foot slips, but I catch myself because, although I know Dalox will break my fall, given he takes up all of the room below me, I don’t really want to land on his head.
