Aberrant

Chapter 7

A click, then a run of light taps sounded overhead.

Jinx stopped, bracing a hand against a bulkhead of the Xykeree ship, her heart pounding. Beyond her scanner's light, darkness hung heavy with moisture and the smell of rot. The ship's drone—electricity or alien communications—pulsed, rising and falling with the activity she heard.

The knowledge she was not alone was like spiders on her skin.

She'd had an escort of no fewer than three Xykeree since she'd left Olsen and Rolli at the airlock. Right now, close to the main hold and the barge's starboard shuttle bay, she had more. Her scanner showed her dozens of life signs. Scuttling sounded everywhere—overhead and down side corridors. The aliens were staying back, remaining wraiths in the periphery of her vision, but priming weaponry whined in the darkness.

Her presence was barely being tolerated.

A glint of red.

Her heart rate rocketed. Centimetres from her nose, a nearly invisible beam turned moisture in the air brilliant. Laser bloom. The atmosphere in the ship was damp enough to reflect the thin stream of light.

It was a guide beam. Non-lethal.

But it meant a weapon was trained on her.

She backed up a few steps. On the edge of her scanner's light, the andropod sidled down from the darkness, reinforcing the targeting beam's warning.

She was being herded. Had been since she'd started her inspection. Eight goddamn minutes and counting.

Unable to focus enough to bring up a mental picture of the barge, she accessed the schematics on her com and plotted a different route to the main hold. Through nerve-racking trial and error, she'd discovered certain parts of the ship were off limits: a number of auxiliary storage spaces, the medical facilities, and now the corridor outside the starboard shuttle bay. She'd had to skip dozens of checks. Her med bay assessment had been a skim of the inventory list—a stream of alien glyphs.

But she no longer cared what the aliens were hiding.

She continued toward the hold, repressed panic and the barge's stench threatening to close her throat. No air, like in her nightmares. Her head throbbed with the effort to suppress her recall. Whispers rose—unintelligible, agitated. Bloody images flickered. Sensations from her dreams—desperation, pain—turned her pulse ragged.

A chill touched her nape, a phantom breath at odds with the humidity.

She swung about.

Nothing. Nothing but black air and damp, alien res-plex.

But she could have sworn something had been right behind her.

She was a hair's breadth from losing it.

Pressing a hand against her heart, she checked her scanner and gave herself a reality check. The ambient temperature was still reading twenty-eight degrees Celsius. The malfunctioning ES was probably causing odd airflows. The closest life form was six metres away. In fact, most of her creepy company was...

Her pulse jumped back up a gear. Many of the life forms around her were heading away from her location. Rapidly.

She looked up; listened to the clatter of racing feet. Dozens of exskels retreating higher into the ship.

Her own need to leave escalated. Her priority scans were complete; the vessel posed no immediate environmental threat to the port. She'd have headed directly for the exit, except she wasn't sure how the Xykeree would react to her ditching the inspection. Numerous targeting lasers had been aimed at her over the last few minutes. She'd got the impression it wouldn't take much for one or more of the crew to slip their hive's leash. She was human—past prey and an old enemy.