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“Well?” he prompted.

“My
ship depressurised,” she finally blurted. “The cockpit ripped
open,” she admitted.

His
eyes drew wide. “Jesus Christ, how did you get out
alive?”

“Well . . . .”

“Did
you get into a spacesuit quick enough?”

She
shook her head.

“The
entity protected me. Somehow . . . space didn't
affect me. The cold, the vacuum—it didn't matter. The entity just
kind of, well, controlled the remnants of our vessel, and managed
to make it to the Farsight.” When she stopped, she looked carefully
at Carson to see whether he would burst into laughter.

He
didn't. Instead, he swallowed heavily. “I guess I shouldn't be
surprised. That thing can do incredible things, and this is just
another feat to add to its growing list of impossible abilities.
Wow, I'm sure every single scientist in the Milky Way would want to
get their hands on it to study that thing,” he added.

Nida
stiffened. She didn't do it on her own. And suddenly her eyes
narrowed. “We will return to Remus 12.”

Carson
immediately put his hand up. “It was just a comment. It was just a
comment. We are returning to Remus 12. You have my
word.”

Slowly
Nida relaxed.

She
even let a tight breath of air through her clenched
teeth.

Carson
whispered a “sorry” and winced at his mistake.

Then
silence descended between them again. She wondered whether he had
finished asking his questions, but he didn't appear ready to leave
her alone yet. He just sat there, occasionally running a hand down
his armour, then shooting her a surreptitious look when he thought
she wasn't watching.

In a
rush, she realised how lucky she was. If Carson hadn't showed so
much interest in her, things would have ended very differently,
wouldn't they? For one, she would have been killed by multiple
flying TI objects. For another, the Barbarians would likely have
destroyed her ship.

She
wanted to say something to him, but she didn't know how to frame
her statement without sounding sappy.

Carson
finally pushed to his feet, touching the slash in the side of his
armour as he did, his lips drawing into a thin frown. “Well, I
suppose I should probably do something about this before the next
surprise comes slamming our way.” He turned to walk
away.

She
punched to her feet.

He
stopped and looked at her slowly over his shoulder.

“Thank
you,” she blurted.

“For
what?” He shot her a curious smile.

“For
bothering me even when I told you not to,” she managed.

He
chuckled. “Are you trying to say thank you for saving your life
from the TI objects? Because if you are, you're not doing a
particularly good job.”

She
shuffled her feet, and when she looked up at him, he was still
staring at her unblinkingly. “Okay, fine, thank you for saving me.
If you hadn't showed so much . . . interest,
I'm sure I would be dead by now,” she choked over her
words.

He
took a step back, then he did something strange. He bowed. “You are
welcome. And I suppose I should return the thanks. If
you . . . ,” his voice shook on the word you.
“If the two of you hadn't boarded the Farsight when you had, I
would either be dead or a Barbarian slave. I think we're even. Now,
I really need to get this armour off and see to my damn
arm.”

“Do
you need some help?” She walked forward awkwardly, not because the
entity had control of her—it didn't—but
because . . . well, she simply felt
awkward.

Carson
considered her and appeared to pay special attention to the blue
glow encasing her skin, then he shrugged. “Okay.”

For a
brief moment, she wondered if anybody else would have done and said
the same thing in his position. She convinced herself they
wouldn't. The doctors and scientists back at the hospital had been
scared of the entity, and had been scared of her in the process.
But Carson . . . . He was different.

Yes,
Carson Blake was different.

He was
also injured, however, and she was going to do her best to help
him.

They
had several hours left until they reached Remus 12, and they would
need them.

Yet,
in that moment, she could not appreciate how much they would need
them. Waiting on Remus 12 was a terrible, terrible
surprise.

Carson
Blake

Things
were working out far better than expected. When Admiral Lara Forest
had given him the seemingly impossible task of fixing everything,
he had imagined it would take herculean effort and ridiculous,
ridiculous good luck.

But it
hadn't. No, things just seemed to
be . . . working out. Nida had found him, and
the powerful entity residing within her had dispatched the
Barbarians with terrifying ease.

And
now they were all returning to Remus 12.

In
several hours, this whole sorry chapter would be over, and he could
return to the Academy with Nida at his side.

And
though she was sure she would get in trouble or be transported to
Jupiter substation for a lifetime of tests, he would be true to his
word, and he would fight for her. He would do everything he could
to convince the Admiral that she was not a problem.

Because she wasn't. Nida herself was not dangerous. She
was . . . well, nice, sweet, and yes, very
awkward, but underneath that remarkably practical.

He
couldn't imagine anybody else surviving what she had with such
resilience. There was an enormously powerful entity within her
body, sending her terrifying dreams and visions, and yet she was
still capable of smiling and functioning normally.

He
wanted to say that he was proud of her, but couldn't think of a way
to do so that didn't sound sappy and really, really
pathetic.

He
kept telling himself that he hardly knew her.

Okay,
so they'd gone through some particularly harrowing events together,
but still, he didn't even know her middle name, let alone how many
years she had left at the Academy. The majority of her life was
just a big question mark in his mind, and he longed for the
opportunity to find out as much about her as he could.

First,
they had to get to Remus 12 though. Everything else could
wait.

Well,
apart from his injury.

His
arm throbbed. It had been throbbing ever since the Barbarian had
attacked him, and it had only gotten worse whilst Carson had been
talking to Nida. But he hadn't dared interrupt the
conversation.

Because finally, finally he'd gotten the answers he'd been
looking for.

Her
dreams . . . . They now made sense.

And
the injuries she'd received on Remus 12, in fact, everything was
starting to fall into place.

Though
Carson wanted to head to engineering and the primary armoury locker
that was there, he didn't want to walk Nida through the rest of the
ship. He couldn't let her see the Barbarians.

He had
already confirmed with the computer that there were no life signs
other than himself and Nida, and as he'd rushed through the
corridors following her to the bridge, he'd seen what she had done.
No, he corrected himself, what the entity had done.

To put
it succinctly, it had been effective.

The
Barbarians had been neutralised.

That
was the only way he wanted to describe it, because if he delved
into the true facts, it would terrify him, and he really, really
didn't have the opportunity to be terrified right now. He had to
stay strong, at least for the next several hours.

So
instead of heading down to engineering, he simply walked over to
the armoury cupboard on the side of the bridge.

He
rooted around in it until he found a set of tools.

Then
he ran his hand over his damaged shoulder again.

Assessing it, he finally realised it was probably easier to
take the armour off, and brought up his wristwatch, typing
something into it.

Instantly the armour receded from his body and back into the
gloves it came from.

However, when it came to his injured shoulder, there was a
strange beep, a crackle, and that section of armour simply fell off
and tumbled to the floor.

“Well,
that answers that question,” he muttered under his
breath.

“What?” Nida asked from his side.

“Whether I had broken this armour or not. And the answer is
yes. This one is stuffed. Luckily enough,” he pointed to the open
armoury cupboard,” I have a supply to last me a
lifetime.”

Nida
leaned down beside him and picked up the broken section of armour.
Little tendrils of blue light escaped from her skin and played over
the surface of the cracked plating, as if they were exploring
it.

Now
completely distracted from his task, he stared at it, and he stared
at her.

She
didn't appear to be aware of what she was doing, or at least not of
what the entity was doing. “I can fix it. Is it important to you?”
she asked.

Her
voice was not her own.

It was
the entity's. It was calm, it was sure, and it was
ancient.

Terrifyingly ancient. There was no other way to describe it.
The sense you got when you listened to it was one of incalculable
age.

He
swallowed, trying to control his reaction. “It's okay,” he answered
clearly. “It isn't important.”

She
looked up at him sharply, and her already blue eyes flashed with a
far more vibrant spark of colour. “We do not know what is important
until it is important,” the entity commented.

“Okay,” he answered dumbly.

Really? Okay? He had been schooled in how to deal with alien
races. Diplomacy, cultural sensitivity, and yes, negotiations. And
yet here he was acting like a freaking three-year-old around one of
the most powerful entities the United Galactic Coalition had ever
discovered.

He
swallowed nervously.

Then
the entity appeared to withdraw, and Nida shrugged her shoulders,
letting the broken armour plating go, and throwing it lightly to
the floor. Then she looked up at his shoulder and winced. “That
looks really painful,” she pointed at him.

For
the first time he looked down and considered his injury.

Damn
cheap prefabricated armour sets, he thought bitterly. If only he'd
gone to the trouble of creating his own set of armour before the
Barbarians had boarded, he wouldn't have this injury. “It's okay,”
he managed in a falsely light tone, “it will fix pretty quick,” he
added as he reached further into the armoury cupboard and grabbed a
first aid kit.

“Do
you want me to run to the infirmary to get better equipment?” she
offered.

“No,”
he said too quickly and too loudly.

She
blinked, her shock obvious.

“I
mean, there's no point,” he said as he coughed, forcibly calming
his tone. “This will do fine,” he added, trying to smile at
her.

Though
she still looked a little shocked at his sudden reaction, she
shrugged her shoulders.

He
didn't want her exploring the rest of the ship.

She'd
appeared overcome by what she'd done to the Barbarians, and he
couldn't let her go and remind herself by seeing the
bodies.

“Are
you sure you don't want to do this in the infirmary?” she asked
carefully, “I mean, take it from someone like me who gets injured
all the time, you can do some pretty miraculous healing with the
right equipment.”

He
laughed, but it was really awkward, and it petered out to a wheeze.
“Yes you can. But I'm really not that injured. Plus, I don't want
to leave the bridge, and I don't want you to leave the bridge
either,” he added quickly when she looked ready to offer again. “We
should just stick together until this is over,” he said
firmly.

This
appeared to convince her, and she nodded.

“Right,” he managed, lumbering over to the captain's chair and
sitting in it roughly as he opened the first aid kit on his lap.
Shifting through the contents, he finally found what he wanted. A
long dressing made of a specific type of nano fibber that would
release nano particles into the blood that were programmed to heal
everything from a bruise, to completely shattered bone.

“This
will do,” he muttered as he took hold of the bandage. Then he
awkwardly tried to pull up the sleeve of his uniform.

“It's
not going to roll up that far,” she pointed out lightly. “I can
turnaround if you don't want to take your top off in front of me,”
she managed with a little cough.

His
cheeks immediately flushed with heat. “No, I,
umm . . . ,” he trailed off.

Well,
damn, wasn't this awkward.

She
looked intensely uncomfortable at his reaction, but he couldn't
tell whether she was blushing; her skin was incandescent blue,
after all.