Kalan glared at Temera. “Don’t speak to her.”

The spy gave him an unamused look. “I was just saying hello to the girl.”

Fresia looked deeply uncomfortable at the minor battle of wills going on between Kalan and the Ikaren spy.

“Don’t,” Kalan repeated. “I won’t let you use her.”

The woman managed to look offended and shook her shackled hands at him. “I wouldn’t do that. How could I like this?”

“Your Zeren counterpart did. Call me cynical, but I don’t have much reason to think you’ll behave with better manners.”

“Wait. How did Colle use her?”

“Is that what he calls himself?” Kalan asked.

“It’s one name he uses,” said the woman. “I’m sure he has others. So, how did he use that poor girl?”

Kalan grunted, ignored the question, and didn’t release his grip on the woman’s arm. Instead, he picked up the pace, all but dragging her along. Kalan was pleased to see that Fresia hung back, out of easy reach for either a grab or a blow. They walked onto the bridge and Kalan considered where he could put her that would make her the least amount of trouble. He finally settled on one of the retractable seats along the opposite bulkhead from where he told Fresia to sit. He hit a button on the side of the chair and harness attachments protruded from the seat. He fastened the harness around the woman. She gave him an arch look.

“Why captain, do you make a habit of feeling up all your prisoners? We could have had a lot more fun if I’d known.”

“I’d sooner bed an Ikaren golden viper,” said Kalan with no emotion. “It’d be safer.”

Temera looked a little shocked at the statement. He didn’t know why. She’d made no secret of her intentions to kill him. He walked over to where Fresia was seated and showed her how to strap herself into the harness. He’d made her go through the procedure three times. Once with his help and twice on her own. She had a knack for remembering those kinds of things if she got a chance to practice them a couple of times. It was worth the extra minute or two to ensure she wouldn’t need help the next time she needed the harness. He looked over at Em.

“How long until we hit atmosphere, Em?”

“Approximately three minutes, sir.”

Kalan sat down in the captain’s chair, brought up his projected display, and toggled the comms to a ship-wide announcement. “Attention. We will be entering atmosphere in approximately two minutes. If you haven’t already, secure yourselves.”

With that chore out of the way, he secured his own harness. Kalan tried to relax as the seconds ticked down. There was no upside to going into the experience tense. The problem was that Em, in what he’d probably meant as a helpful gesture, had put the planet up on the main viewer. That meant that Kalan could see the massive storms raging across the planet. Storms that his ship would have to fly through and survive. He pushed away the fear and decided to trust in Em’s judgment. If he couldn’t navigate the weather, the robot would have told him so.

Em piped up, “Atmosphere in three, two, one.”

Entry into any atmosphere was always a little jarring. The transition from pure vacuum to an environment with air, air currents, and ever-increasing gravity would buffet any ship. Those effects typically evened out once you descended far enough. Instead, the ship began to shake and lurch violently as they passed from the upper atmosphere down into the lower atmosphere where the intense storms were happening. Kalan had a decent understanding of the kinds of forces the robot was navigating but had rarely experienced the almost tidal power of the wind shear that nearly sent the ship into an uncontrolled spin and made Fresia scream. As they dropped lower, the wind became an almost secondary concern to the lightning that looked less like bolts and more like curtains of electrical fury. Despite his best efforts, Kalan felt himself gripping the arms of his captain’s chair so hard that his hands hurt.

He looked over at Temera. The spy’s eyes were closed, and her lips were moving in what he imagined were silent prayers. He considered offering his own prayers, but it seemed hypocritical to him to only pray when he needed a favor. Instead, he gritted his teeth and focused on the screen. As if to punish Kalan’s lack of piety, Em’s luck ran out. The ship rang like a gong. The ship lurched so hard that Kalan was certain he’d injured his back, and everything went dark. He slowly realized that the ship’s computer system and electronics were offline. We’re in freefall, an oddly calm part of him thought. The idea of the ground rushing up to meet them at terminal velocity made his blood run cold. Then, he realized it was far worse than that. They’d been traveling at speeds well beyond terminal velocity.

“I’ve killed them,” he whispered.

Fresia started screaming in unrelenting terror. As much as he hated the sound of it, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her to stop. He met Temera’s eyes. He was astonished to realize that she wasn’t panicking. If anything, she looked resigned. She gave him a wry smile like she’d always known it was going to play out this way. Kalan wracked his mind for something, anything, he might do to avert this disaster. That action simply didn’t exist. Out in space, the situation would be dangerous but manageable. The ship would grow steadily colder and the air would get stale. Still, they’d have time to work on repairs. The EVA suits would extend that time by providing oxygen and temperature control. With the planet yanking the ship downward, there just wasn’t any time. He couldn’t investigate or issue orders. Without the inertial dampening the ship normally provided, Kalan’s vision started graying out as the g-forces drove blood away from his brain. Then, as abruptly as they had gone out, the ship’s systems came back online.

Kalan felt himself being whipped back and forth as Em fought to bring the ship back under control. He managed to look up at the viewport and immediately wished he hadn’t. The ground was still rushing toward the ship at a speed that made Kalan feel more than a little nauseated. He looked away and saw Fresia. She was still screaming, tears running down her face, her hands wrapped around the harness straps like a pair of tiny vices. Kalan clenched his jaw so hard that it ached. He found himself offering that prayer he’d rejected earlier.

“Spare her. She’s just a child. Take me instead. Just spare her. Please.”

Kalan couldn’t have named the deity he prayed to or even been sure if he’d had a specific one in mind. It was simpler than that. It was just a naked plea to the powers that be, if they existed at all, to grant the girl mercy. At a certain point, Kalan realized that the ship had stabilized. He looked back at the screen and saw that Em was navigating them over the surface of the planet, rather than at a hideous right angle to the planet’s surface. Although, even that was a limited comfort. The magnetic reversal and subsequent ecological fallout had left the planet’s surface all but bare of anything like recognizable life. There was still soil in some places, but much of the surface was bare rock, the wind and rain having carried the rest away. He wished that there was some court that could bring the Zeren Authority to account for this travesty, but he knew that no one would ever pay for turning a previously habitable world into a lifeless husk. In a century or three, maybe someone would be able to start over on the planet.

Kalan surveyed the bridge. Fresia was sobbing with a hand over her eyes. It might have been a product of residual fear or overwhelming relief that they hadn’t all just been murdered by gravity. Temera looked relieved until she saw him looking at her. That relief transformed into the glare he’d come to expect from her.

“I should kill you for dragging me along on this suicide mission,” she said to him.

He rolled his eyes at her. “Stop complaining. We’re still here, aren’t we?”

“I hate you,” she muttered and turned her face away.

While the ride still wasn’t precisely smooth, Em managed to keep it from becoming another experience in the limits of terror. Kalan leaned his head back and did his level best not to distract the robot. After another ten minutes of flight, the robot slipped the ship through a low mountain pass and over a valley that had weathered the relentless storms a little better. The valley was sheltered on all sides by the small mountains, which meant that some of the soil was still intact, although all the plant life was still gone. Kalan spotted something through the rain that looked manmade in the center of the valley. In another life, it had probably been a landing pad of some kind. Em brought the ship to a hovering stop over the pad, lowered the landing gear, and managed to settle the ship onto the ground with an only mildly jarring thump. While he knew that they’d have to make a second trip up through those storms to get off the planet, relief still washed over him at the idea that they were no longer at risk of falling out of the sky. He let himself bask in the relief for five seconds before undoing his harness and standing up.

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“Well done, Em.”

The robot looked over his shoulder at Kalan. “Thank you, sir.”

Kalan went over to Fresia and crouched down by her. She stared through him with bloodshot eyes. He put his hand on her arm and spoke quietly.

“I want you to stay here with Em and run diagnostics on the systems. Help Petronan if he needs an extra pair of hands.”

Fresia nodded without any comprehension seeping into her expression. “Help. Okay.”

He patted her arm before turning his attention to Temera. He walked over to where she was seated and started disconnecting her harness straps. He felt the change in the air around her as she prepared to do something. If he didn’t believe he was going to need her in the almost immediate future, he’d have been tempted to just medicate her into a coma and call it a day.

“Do you really want witnesses this time?” He asked her without even looking up.

She let out an exasperated breath. “You guessed.”

He finished with the straps and stepped back. “I knew. Now, get up. I’ve got a treat for you. We’re going for a walk.”

“Where?” She demanded.

Kalan pointed to the screen. The rain was coming down so heavily that it looked more like a wall of water than actual rainfall. Temera’s eyes went a little wide.

“You can’t be serious.”

Kalan ignored her and looked over to Em. “Get Petronan on the comms.”

A few seconds later Petronan’s voice came over the system. “Petronan here.”

“Any damage we need to worry about?” Kalan asked.

“It looks like the computer systems are all back online, sir, but I’d bet some hard currency we burned out some relays. Readings from the engine all look okay. There’s probably some hull damage, but I won’t know how bad it is until I get outside and take a look. Either way, you should assume that the ship will be sluggish the next time we take her up.”

“Understood. Do what you can. I need to take our visitors on a little field trip. If we’re lucky, it won’t take too long.”

“Aye, sir.”

Em spoke up. “Sir, if the facility is underground, odds are good we won’t be able to maintain a comm link.”

“I know. There’s no avoiding it. I’ll just need to be extra vigilant,” said Kalan while he stared at Temera.

“Ha, ha,” she muttered before giving the viewscreen an uncertain look.

“Let’s go,” he said with a firm gesture to the hatch.

As she walked past him, he took a grip around her arm and led her off the bridge. Kalan made a conscious effort to shorten his stride. Temera was a fairly tall woman, but he still had a good five or six inches on her. For her part, she waited until they were out of earshot of the bridge before she started in on him.

“You don’t need to lead me around this way. I’m not a child.”

“I’m not leading you. If it isn’t abundantly clear by now, I don’t trust you,” said Kalan.

“What if I,” she began.

“No.”

“But,” she continued.

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish.”

“I don’t need to let you finish. Here, I’ll finish for you. You’re going to offer to give me some solemn oath that you’ll behave. Or you’re going to try to bribe me. Or you’ll try to seduce me,” he said, stopping and turning to look at her. “You’re a spy, so your word means nothing. You can’t bribe me because you don’t have anything I want. You can’t seduce me because I don’t want you. Beyond all of that, you’d try to slit my throat at the first opportunity. Did I miss anything?”

“No,” she admitted.

“There we are.”

“They breed them cold on Nirren, don’t they?”

Kalan shrugged. “Maybe they do.”

“I get that you won’t take my word for anything. I even get that maybe you aren’t open to being bribed. Still, I’m not really that repulsive, am I?” she asked, gesturing to her face.

“Only on the inside.”

An expression of genuine hurt lanced across Temera’s face and then transformed into raw hatred. “You don’t know what the hells you’re talking about! You don’t know me!”

“You have no honor!” Kalan roared. “You have no code. You followed me all the way to Cobalt 7. You didn’t do it out of duty, which I could respect. You didn’t do it out of loyalty to your Queen, which I could understand. You did it for petty revenge because I beat you. Even after I let you go. Even after I let you live, over and over again. All you can see is your anger. That is what makes you ugly.”

“You don’t know me,” she whispered.

“Do you know what the worst part is? You could be beautiful. You could be transcendent. Not this,” said Kalan, touching Temera’s face. “You could be beautiful where it matters. I see it in you. The will is there. Except, you won’t ever be that. You’ll never let yourself be that. You’ll never be more than this. It might have been kinder to kill you back on Hasen 5.”

“I hate you,” said Temera.

“I know.

“If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.”

Kalan shook his head. “Temera, do you really think you’d still be breathing if I planned to kill you?”

Kalan didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to continue walking and came up short. Estra and Tessan were standing in the corridor, staring at Kalan and Temera with stunned expressions. Temera saw them and spun away. Kalan released his grip and pretended he didn’t see Temera trying to put her game face back on. Estra looked like she was about to say something, so Kalan jumped in first.

“Good. I was just coming to find you two. Tessan, come with us.”

“We’ll both go,” said Estra.

“No. Tessan will come. You’ll stay. Call it an insurance policy.”

“Kalan,” Estra said, a world of objections fused into that single word.

“I’m not debating this. He holds up his part and there won’t be a problem.”

“It’s fine,” said Tessan. “I can do what needs to be done.”

Estra fought back what looked like a lot of angry words before she said, “Be careful.”

“I will,” said Tessan.

While Tessan reached over and squeezed his wife’s hand, Kalan glanced over at Temera. She’d composed herself and wore a neutral expression. He almost took hold of her arm again and then let his hand fall back to his side. He was growing weary of the constant push and pull with the woman. He spoke to her under his breath.

“Behave for the next hour or two, and there may well be something in it for your Queen.”

She gave him a sharp look and considered for a moment before she said, “Very well.”

“Let’s go, Tessan.”

Kalan started walking again and Temera kept pace with him. Kalan heard Tessan fall in behind them. There was complete silence among the three for about a minute before Temera spoke under her breath to him.

“We don’t all get the luxury of ideals, Kalan Rinn.”

Kalan didn’t answer her immediately. He’d thought long about the idea that ideals were a luxury afforded only to the lucky few. He’d thought even longer on why that was the case. He kept his words as quiet as hers when he did finally speak.

“Maybe they wouldn’t be a luxury if fewer people treated them with such contempt.”

Temera was quiet for a long moment before she responded. “Maybe so.”

Kalan opened a hatch and gestured for the other two to enter. He followed them into the cabin where five environmental suits hung in individual cubicles. Tessan got the point immediately and went over to one of the cubicles. Kalan started toward one when Temera spoke.

“Oh captain, my captain.”

She held up her shackled wrists and gave them a little shake. Kalan went over and pressed his thumb against a small reader on the shackles. They unlatched, and he took them off her wrists.

“Don’t make me regret this,” he said. “I’d like to be wrong about you.”

He walked over to a cubicle without waiting for her to say anything. Kalan took off his captain’s coat and hung it in the cubicle. As much as he had loathed the thing, he’d spent so much time in the coat recently that it felt wrong without that weight hanging on his shoulders. He took off the weapons belt and hung that in the cubicle before donning his environmental suit. He locked the helmet in place and a HUD lit up on the inside of the helmet, feeding him information on his suit’s integrity, current oxygen levels, and the environmental conditions inside the ship. Everything came up green and the suit had a full five hours of oxygen, with a thirty-minute backup reserve. He went over to Tessan, checked all the seals, and established a wireless connection with the suit. Everything came up as operating correctly. He went to do the same for Temera and found her only half into the suit.

Kalan flipped up the visor on his hood. “Haven’t you ever done this before?”

She shot him an annoyed expression. “No. They don’t send me places where you need this kind of equipment. That’s what marines are for.”

Kalan lowered his voice. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I thought I could figure it out.”

“Trust me, this isn’t a learn-by-doing moment,” said Kalan as he removed his gloves.

He reached out and took Temera’s hand, which she jerked away immediately.

“What in the hells are you doing?” She demanded.

“Do you want me to help, or do you want that guy over there that you’ve known for five seconds to do it?”

“Oh,” she said and held out her hand.

Kalan took it and turned it so that she looked like she was trying to shake hands. He reach over and picked up one of the suit gloves. He slid it over her hand slowly so she could seat her fingers into the glove. He pressed the glove into the joint and gave it a small twist to lock it into place. Then he wrapped the self-sealing strap around the joint.

“It’s a double-seal system,” he explained. “Less chance for failure. Try moving your hand.”

She did and gave the glove an unhappy look. “Not great for dexterity.”

“Outstanding for not losing all your oxygen to a breach,” he replied. “You do the other one.”

She put the second glove on, grumbling about how clumsy they made her hands. Kalan double-checked the seals and then helped her put the helmet on. He made another wireless connection to her suit and checked the readings. Everything looked good. He walked back over to the cubicle where his coat and weapons belt hung. He grabbed the weapons belt and fixed it around his suit. The suit’s gloves would make him clumsier with the weapons, but he’d rather have the option. He turned around to see both Temera and Tessan eyeing the belt with frowns. He opened a comm channel to the other suits.

“Follow me. We’ll go out the cargo bay.”