“I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I found a number of anomalies in your test results that puzzled me. If my hypothesis holds true, then this would explain everything. Let’s get you to the lab then.” Doc tilts his head toward the right corridor, opposite from the way March went with Keri.

Hypothesis? This is my life, not a science project. I like Doc, but sometimes I think he doesn’t realize that I’m more than an “interesting specimen.” He’s the only one I trust to help me, though, so I have to accept his bedside manner.

I come down again and fall into step with him. As I recall, the house is laid out in wings. We move off toward his research facility, but before we’ve gone ten paces, the lights flicker, as if somewhere, someone has drawn an absurd amount of power.

Doc breaks into a run. “Hurry, Jax. We don’t have much time.”

“Before what?”

He doesn’t pause to answer. I trot behind him nonetheless because Doc isn’t one to manufacture crises. We’ve just reached the door to his lab, which is oddly—and ominously—made of reinforced metal, when I hear screaming.

“Doc?”

“Get inside. Now.”

I do, and he seals the door. “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

“Teras,” he says briefly.

Just the word alone sends a cold shock through me: hideous subterranean creatures you can’t see coming. Just hear the rush of their wings through endless night. And once the dying starts . . .

With some effort, I shake myself out of it. I rub my hands together, trying to warm them. We survived them once, and we’re safe inside this time. It should be fine.

“What about them?”

“I haven’t deduced how, but Clan McCullough has figured out a way to train . . .” He pauses, listening to the distant sounds of combat, cries of rage and pain. “Well, if not train, then use the Teras. They seem to strike on command now. It’s not safe to leave the compound. They hit us at all hours, no rhyme or reason to it.”

“Doesn’t the shock field help?” I remember the way they fried the monsters. The smell the next morning nearly did me in.

“We can’t keep it up all the time,” he says tiredly. “Not enough juice. We run on solar panels and wind turbines, mostly the latter during the winter. Gunnar-Dahlgren is officially at war, Jax. Clan McCullough wants everything we have, and with the Teras on their side, they think they’ve figured out a way to get it.” He sighs. “I’m not sure they’re wrong.”

No wonder Keri said I came at a bad time.

“I guess jump research isn’t at your top priority at the moment.”

He manages a wan smile. “No, they’ve got me trying to sort out why the Teras are attacking like this instead of their usual feeding patterns. We’re weakening by the day, and I don’t think the McCulloughs have lost a single man.”

How do you fight when you can’t see your enemies? It would take bioengineered poisons or type-three battle droids to clean this planet out. I have no idea how the loss of the Teras would impact the planetary ecosystems either.

“Do you have the resources to build battle droids with heat imaging?” Lame, I know. I remember the way the Teras dismantled the Rover. Could they find their way into the main house as easily? Are there weak spots?

Doc shakes his head. “That’s not the way things were done here. The McCullough has changed everything. He doesn’t risk his own men or his own life for a hostile takeover. Instead he’s killing us by centimeters.”

Again, I find myself cowering while others take the risks on my behalf. That stings like nothing ever has. No. I won’t do this. Not again.

March is out there. Jael. Dina. March. I have to help them.

I stride over to the door, tap on the panel. “If it’s that bad, I should go see what I can do.”

“You can’t get out,” Doc tells me. “The doors are sealed until the attack ends. And I’m not going to release you when you’re clearly ill.”

Bastard. Is he trying to make me feel useless? My hands curl into fists, but who am I going to hit? Doc? He won’t fight back. Nothing like impotent anger to make you feel ineffectual.

“Fine,” I bite out. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come in here with you, though. I can’t believe you tricked me into hiding out.”

Again. I hate this. I’ve got to find some way out of here, or I’ll never be able to live with myself. I can’t devolve back into the selfish bitch who doesn’t care whose ass is on the line so long as it isn’t her own. I won’t let fear become my mistress.

“I know,” he says gently. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. Try to ignore the noise. It’ll be over soon. They never stay long; not sure why that is either. If I can put the pieces together, we might have a chance, even weakened as we are. At any rate, let’s get started on your tests.”

“Then cure me. Or kill me. Because I can’t live like this.”

* * *

CHAPTER 27

Soon as Doc looks away, l lunge toward the emergency

override panel. Unfortunately, I’m not as fast or agile as I used to be, and he wheels round to catch my wrist. He radiates frustration, but before he can yell at me, a boom sounds.

The whole house shakes.

I hit the floor, expecting the roof to come down on me. “I didn’t know Lachion was prone to quakes.”

“It’s not,” Doc says grimly. “They’re bombarding us.”

I’m not even sure what that means. For a moment, I envision Clan McCullough dropping giant rocks on us. “They’re what?”

On his hands and knees beneath the exam table with me, he looks as though he’s considering one of his university-style explanations. Then he shakes his head. “This is a hostile takeover, Jax. Welcome to stage two.”

Shit. We did come at a bad time.

Between Teras who attack on command and the McCullough war machines, things don’t look good. Oh, Mary, I might never see March again. Dread threatens to close off my throat. It can’t end here, before I can make him understand.

“I guess we were lucky to land before they struck.”

He stays low, duckwalking toward the back of the lab. “I suspect your arrival prompted them to step up the attack. They can’t take the chance the ship carried reinforcements, or that the Conglomerate means to interfere with local politics. You’re not just Jax anymore, Ambassador. Not that you were ever ‘just’ anything.”

He can’t be serious. I did this by showing up? I am the fucking butterfly, causing ripples everywhere I go.

“It’s a tiny little cutter,” I protest, crawling after him. Wherever he’s going, I’m headed there, too. We weave around a tall metal cylinder that quivers like it wants to crush my spine. “What the hell could we possibly haul? And it’s not like we could’ve carried many mercs in it.”

“A fair number of Threshers would fit into the cargo hold,” he answers over his shoulder.

The McCulloughs hit us again, and this time, the walls tremble. Dust spills from the ceiling, powdering my head. Not far away, something collapses. Mary curse it, I hope Doc has a plan.

“I would’ve brought Threshers,” I say, “if I’d known you were at war.”

Made by Veratech, Threshers represent the gold standard in killing machines for terrestrial combat. I couldn’t have afforded them, but he doesn’t need to know that. Let my financial embarrassment die with me.

“Keri tried to tell you. Didn’t her message go through?”

I remember the way it hissed and cut out. “Not all of it. Not the crucial bit. We thought there might’ve been a problem with the bounce-relay. It’s never stable here.”

The freedom of a backwater planet also comes with a certain amount of technological disadvantage. There’s no grid in place, no warning system for natural disasters, and no help forthcoming if people get in trouble. To the folks who live here, that’s a plus.

Advance teams told Farwan that Lachion offered nothing special in the way of natural resources, no money to be made via exploitation, so they packed up and left the place to the settlers. That’s why the Corp called this place a frontier world and paid them no mind. So for the last fifty turns, the Clans have policed themselves and made it up as they went along.

Another hit sends me sprawling. As he rights me in a casual motion, I note the pack slung across his shoulder. Doc pushes a heavy piece of equipment over to the side with the sheer physical strength that never ceases to amaze me. Head down, he looks like a short, squat ox.

“Plan B,” he says.

That happens to be a small escape hatch built into the floor. The house will come down around our ears if we don’t get a move on. Even so, I hesitate to skin down the ladder after him, gazing into a vertical shaft that measures less than a meter. He descends carefully to accommodate his shoulders.

Soon he disappears from sight. A cold sweat breaks out over me, but I don’t make the leap onto the skinny little ladder until another boom threatens to collapse the ceiling on me.

“Close it!” Doc shouts, an echo inflating his voice.

I yank on the short chain to seal us off from the surface world. The light vanishes. My hands feel slippery on the rungs, and I can taste the dark, thick as rancid meat grease.

Down one step. I can do this.

The shaft shudders. Overhead, huge chunks of rubble slam against the trapdoor. If I hadn’t moved, I’d be crushed up there, along with all of Doc’s expensive equipment.

We’re buried alive.

Pure terror paralyzes me. They’re going to find my bones on this ladder, twenty turns from now. Trembling, I remember the Sargasso, how I felt while buried in the wreckage.

Why isn’t March here? He promised, damn him. He said I’ll always come for you. That probably doesn’t hold true anymore, though. If it ever did.

What a dickhead. Why couldn’t he understand I just needed some time? Anger, even the manufactured variety, lends me some strength, but it’s not quite enough. I can’t make myself move.

“Jax?” I can’t see him, but I hear sympathy and understanding in his voice. “One step at a time. Closing your eyes might help. Forget about the dark.”

How embarrassing. He knows. Sirantha Jax, afraid of the dark. Nonetheless, I take his advice and squeeze my eyelids shut. Feel my way down.

Somewhere along the way, I miss a rung, but I don’t fall far. Solid as a brick wall, Doc’s placed to catch me. I think he could hold a baby elephant. He holds me for a moment, effortlessly, while we listen to the sky falling above us.

I’m sure it’s just my imagination, but I swear I can hear the rustle of wings. “Is this a good idea? I mean, don’t the Teras live underground?”

“Clan Dahlgren dug the bunkers,” he assures me. “And secured them. They don’t connect to the natural caverns where the Teras make their home.”

“If you say so.”

I remember what he said about magnesium mines. You couldn’t pay me enough to work down there. Or maybe it’s all automated, like some of the moon mining facilities, just a skeleton crew to oversee and repair the droids.