Page 13 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

All our fragile, stubborn, patched-together life turned into inventory in the mouths of off-world aliens who apparently want to control all of us. I don’t know the word Zzlo, but pirate slavers need no translation. Those live in the old crash stories, the kind people tell when they want fear to have a face.

“How do they know of the source?” Syin asks, stepping closer to the table.

“They do not know,” Rhazek says. “They suspect.”

“Then why come?” Adran asks.

“Because suspicion is cheap. Proof is valuable,” Rhazek says, looking at him.

Everyone is silent. I hate how much sense that makes. Rosalind’s fingers rest beside the copper sphere, not touching it.

“What did Arcan send you to do?” she asks.

“Warn you.”

“That isn’t enough.”

“No.” Rhazek’s eye shifts to me for half a breath, then away. “Find whether the signal that answered from Tajss was real. If real, stop confirmation from leaving the planet.”

The room goes colder than stone.

Sera whispers, “The signal from below.”

Rhazek looks at her. “Yes.”

Kavor’s voice is quiet and deadly. “It was not a call.”

“No,” Rhazek says. “It was an answer.”

My skin prickles.

I think of the ship screaming. The basin breaking. The zemlja rising like the planet itself had been yanked by a chain through its belly.

“That wreck,” I say. “It called the zemlja.”

Rhazek looks at me. The whole chamber does too. I’d enjoy the attention more if it didn’t feel like being placed on a cutting board.

“It used the same rhythm as the system under the City,” I say. “Once. Pause. Again. The ship clicked it before it exploded.”

Rhazek’s face changes, not much, but enough I know I’m onto something.

“You heard it before the ship broke?”

“We all did.”

“No.” His voice sharpens. “You named it before the others moved.”

“I’ve had practice not dying recently,” I say, bristling at his questioning.

“That is not what I asked.”

“You didn’t ask anything.”

“Kessa,” Rosalind says.

One word. Both warning and invitation. I try to hold her gaze, but I don’t have the steel to meet it for long. She’s too calm and she has an air of eternal patience about her that is impossible to feel like you can possibly outlast.

I exhale through my nose.