Phillip and the two pirates met just outside Engineering.

At point-blank range.

All three hesitated, equally surprised by the encounter, but Phillip recovered first. He fired twice in rapid succession, striking each man before either could bring his rifle to bear. Their suits began sealing around the wounds as they slid down opposite walls, but Phillip was already past them and running toward the bridge.

He reached the command level just as Varna’s mass driver fired.

By the time Phillip forced his way through the damaged entrance, Thomas was standing at the weapons station. The lieutenant’s hand came down on the launch control, and Artemis rocked as another antimatter missile left its bay. Varna sat slumped against the command console, blood spreading across his uniform.

“Is he dead?” Phillip asked. Thomas glanced toward the body.

For a moment, he seemed to see more than Varna. He saw the bridge crew lying where they had been murdered, the people aboard Nirenda Station, and however many others had died because Varna had regarded them as pieces in a plan.

Thomas raised the mass driver and fired twice more into the pirate captain.

“Yes,” he said.

Phillip nodded and placed a hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.

The shock wave from Fortuna’s destruction reached them moments later.

This time, Artemis was far closer to the detonation, and the damage already spread through the ship left her vulnerable. Power surges raced across the bridge. Panels erupted in showers of sparks, displays collapsed into static, and the deck twisted beneath them as the gravity systems flickered in and out.

Thomas caught himself against the weapons console.

Phillip held on until the worst of the motion passed. “You have to bring the engines under control.”

“It’s already done,” Thomas said, breathing hard. “The overload is bleeding through the damaged reactor section. Someone opened part of the radiation-venting system.”

Phillip looked at him. “Kales.”

“I don’t know how, but the engines can’t build enough power to implode. Not while the vent remains open. I will start settling it down, though.”

Phillip turned toward the bridge entrance. “Then I have to stop G’Dahn.”

Thomas looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“Long story.” Phillip started for the ladder. “I’ll tell you once I know what it is.”

He left the bridge and ran toward Medical. Several minutes later, Phillip entered the bay and found it empty. Kales was not here.

Neither was the stasis capsule.

The tarp lay crumpled on the deck where Phillip had left it. Beyond it, deep scrapes marked the plating, running from the rear of the medical bay toward the corridor. Whatever powered the capsule had either failed or been disabled. Someone had dragged it away.

Phillip raised his pistol and followed the marks. The trail continued along the passage before turning sharply through an intersection. At the far end, Phillip saw the rear of the capsule disappearing into an airlock.

He ran.

When he reached the corner, G’Dahn stood beside the open chamber, entering commands into the outer-door controls. The capsule had been forced against the airlock threshold, positioned to slide directly into space once the door opened.

Phillip leveled the pistol. “Did it open that easily when they were trying to get me out?”

G’Dahn stopped.

His head rotated slowly until his black eyes settled on Phillip. Then the Serpis rose to his full height and turned away from the controls.

“It should not have been opened by them.” The words came in a series of hisses and clicks.

Phillip looked at the translator pin attached to G’Dahn’s uniform. Its indicator was dark. The casing had been cracked by a needle or impact sometime during the fighting.

Broken.

Phillip understood him anyway. “I never needed that thing to talk to you, did I?”

G’Dahn hissed and leaned forward. Phillip steadied the pistol.

“That wasn’t a very nice answer.”

“You should not have been awakened,” G’Dahn said. “You should no longer exist.”

“Why?” Phillip’s voice rose. “Tell me why.”

G’Dahn moved before Phillip finished.

One limb snapped outward and struck the pistol from his hand. The weapon spun across the deck as the Serpis lunged.

Phillip retreated, narrowly avoiding the first attempt to wrap him in G’Dahn’s arms. He knocked one reaching limb aside and slipped beneath another, refusing to set his feet long enough for the alien to gain a firm hold.

The Serpis was a nightmare at close range. Every passing strike carried enough force to break bone, and the limbs came from angles no human opponent could reproduce. Yet Phillip felt no fear. He felt almost nothing beyond the immediate problem of surviving the next movement.

G’Dahn relied upon his strength and flexibility as he had against the pirates. The Serpis flowed through each attack, gathering momentum as his limbs curled and uncoiled.

Phillip began to see the limitation inside the advantage.

G’Dahn could change shape, but not direction. Not instantly. Every sweeping attack committed his mass along a path, and the larger the motion, the more difficult it became to reverse.

Phillip did the opposite.

He stopped when G’Dahn expected him to continue. He reversed direction in straight, sudden bursts. He stepped inside the alien’s reach, struck once, and withdrew before the Serpis could fold around him. He ducked beneath one limb, drove an elbow into the joint of another, and used the bulkhead to redirect himself before G’Dahn could adjust.

For several seconds, the Serpis recoiled. Surprise gave way to anger. G’Dahn adapted.

The flowing attempts to seize Phillip became broad, crushing strikes intended to destroy whatever they touched. One limb smashed into the wall hard enough to deform the plating. Another tore a conduit from its mounting when Phillip slipped beneath it.

Phillip ran along the bulkhead, kicked away, and landed beyond the next blow.

Then a tendril struck his side.

Pain exploded through his ribs. Phillip spun across the corridor, barely keeping his feet. He lashed out with a desperate kick toward G’Dahn’s head.

The Serpis adjusted. One hand caught Phillip’s ankle.

Phillip grabbed a support rail and tried to pull himself free.

G’Dahn’s grip did not move.

The Serpis lifted him from the deck and held him upside down.

“You are a credit to your crafter,” G’Dahn hissed. “But they made you too well. I will chastise them for their work when I return.”

He slammed Phillip into the wall. Then into another. Then onto the deck.

Phillip felt ribs crack beneath the impacts. Sound became distant. The corridor tilted and blurred around him as G’Dahn struck him again, each blow carrying less pain only because the last had already overwhelmed his ability to process it.

Finally, the beating stopped.

G’Dahn stood over him.

Phillip opened his eyes only slightly and looked up at the Serpis.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

The words came through a bloody cough.

G’Dahn’s expression tightened into something Phillip recognized as a frown. The Serpis seized him by the head and lifted him again.

Phillip’s hand dragged across the deck.

His fingers touched the grip of the pistol. He closed his hand around it, brought the weapon up, and fired.

The first round missed G’Dahn and ricocheted down the corridor.

The Serpis barely reacted.

Phillip fired again.

The bullet struck the airlock controls behind G’Dahn.

Sparks burst from the panel.

The inner door began to cycle closed.

G’Dahn released Phillip.

For the first time, panic seemed to cross the alien’s face.

The Serpis threw himself into the narrowing airlock and struck the interior controls with one broad hand. The inner door continued closing behind him as he pulled his body into the stasis capsule and secured himself inside.

Phillip hit the deck and struggled for breath.

Through the narrowing opening, G’Dahn looked down.

A small circular device rested on the floor of the capsule beside him.

The initiation unit from the anti-ship missile.

Recognition spread across the Serpis’s face.

Phillip reached into his pocket and withdrew the thin remote control he had taken from G’Dahn.

He pressed the first button.

A red indicator illuminated.

The damaged airlock completed its sequence.

The outer door opened, and the capsule slid into space with G’Dahn sealed inside.

“Call me a Pa’Doh, will you?”

Phillip pressed the second button.

The explosive charge detonated outside the ship.

White light flooded the airlock and poured through the corridor, as absolute as the illumination that had shone down upon Phillip when he first awakened aboard Artemis.

Then everything went dark.

Next Chapter: XXI