“Supervisor, you weren’t on this ship when we just popped out four months ahead of schedule. You didn’t feel that building terror, let alone see the expressions as my people waited until the astrogation officer verified our position.” Abibi had never looked as grim as she did when she said, “If we hadn’t been in Capella system? If we’d been somewhere out in the black? These decks would have run red with blood. Freelander would have seemed a cakewalk compared to the carnage on Turalon.”

“We do what we have to, Margo.” Kalico told her.

Abibi was giving her a sober appraisal. “You’re not the same woman I watched step on that long-ago shuttle to head dirtside before we spaced home.”

Kalico gave the woman a dry smile. “No. I’m not. Donovan has made me into something different.”

“Well, God help you, Kalico, because I’m bringing you a shipload of trouble.”

Chapter 11

  11  

Kylee Simonov stood in the back of the room, out of the way, and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. A single lantern hung from a hook in the ceiling; its flame wavered as it cast light over the white-plastered room. Tip lay supine atop the heavy wooden table in the center. His eyes kept flickering and darting, his dirt-smudged face working in pain. Sweat—despite the cool night—popped from Tip’s sun-bronzed skin, and he kept gasping, panting for breath. Then he’d swallow hard.

The thought that Tip was dying opened the floodgates. The room faded, replaced by a vision of Mundo, of Capella’s hot light burning down on the dark soil. Of Talina crouched over Rocket’s bloody body. Of the pain, the impossibility, of the hole that tore a gaping hollow in Kyle’s gut.

Everyone I love dies.

In that instant, she was back, crawling into Rocket’s grave, wrapping herself around his body. Letting herself fall ever deeper inside. Remembering how she’d melded herself with Rocket, become quetzal somewhere deep in her mind, to the point that nothing human had remained. Not even when she was standing in the forest, watching Flash and Leaper kill Rebecca and Shantaya.

“I brought you back,” Rocket told her.

And now Kylee was losing Tip. Grief sucked toilet water. Quetzals were so lucky they didn’t feel it. Or hadn’t. Rocket did. Flute now did. Maybe sharing human-tainted TriNA wasn’t such a good thing for quetzals.

At the table, Madison Briggs bent over her son, scissors cutting away the last of Tip’s trousers, leaving him naked below the waist. As the cloth fell away, the extent of the injury could be seen. Madison sucked a hard breath, body tensing.