Page 51 of Vindicated

"Why are you in Hal's room?" Vallia asked, tilting her head.

I glanced at Hal, and he glanced back at me, and the brief, loaded silence between us was apparently answer enough for Lettie, whose bright smile dropped away in an instant.

"What's going on?"

I drew in a breath, weighing how much to tell them, before deciding they deserved the truth more than they deserved my caution. "There's a Zagrath battleship closing in on us. Even though the Vandar horde is supposed to be cloaked and invisible to enemy sensors."

Lettie staggered back a step, sinking heavily onto the edge of one of the lower bunks, her bouffant hair smacking against the frame of the bunk above her without seeming to register the impact at all. "They're coming afterus?"

"I don't know for certain," I admitted.

“All we know is that the Zagrath have chased down this horde and this ship. Coincidence?” Hal’s eyes bugged out as his gaze pinged from person to person. “I think not.”

At least Hal’s flair for the dramatic hadn’t been extinguished entirely.

Vallia's iridescent lashes fluttered rapidly. "What does that mean?"

I looked between the two women, my stomach twisting as I forced the words out. "It means the explosion in the munitionsbay wasn't the end of it. It was only the beginning. And it means someone aboard this ship wants the Zagrath to find us."

Lettie's hand flew to her chest, and she glanced around the small room as if the walls themselves were harboring a traitor. "You don't think it's one of us, do you?"

Vallia reached over and patted her friend's arm, though her own voice trembled as she spoke. "It kind of has to be, doesn't it? None of the Vandar would betray their own ship."

Hal's cheeks flushed a deep, mortified red. "Well, it wasn't me. I’ve barely left this room since we got here." He shuddered, wrapping his arms around his knees. "This warbird is too frightening to go exploring on my own. Give me a nice, messy theater any day over this terrifying metal monstrosity.”

Lettie and Vallia both glanced around the cramped room and I watched the realization settle over their faces at the same time. Hal was the only one of the three men assigned to the room who was currently in it. There was no sign of the pair who were supposed to be sharing it with him.

“It can't be Vern or Dell," Lettie said quickly, as if saying it fast enough might make it true. "They were locked away in a Zagrath prison. They wouldn't help the people who threw them in there."

I wanted to believe that as much as she did. Vern had always seemed hapless and eager to please, especially when it came to his older sister. And Dell had barely spoken two words to me since he'd come aboard. He was quiet and unassuming in a way that made him easy to overlook, but maybe that was the point. Then I circled back to the fact that he’d been a Zagrath prisoner, and he’d never expected to be rescued by the Vandar. You couldn’t exactly plan to plant a spy if you had no clue they’d get snatched up by your enemy.

“Then that leaves Hatch and Ringo?" I said looking between the two women. "What do we actually know about where they'vebeen, or what they did before they turned up at the theatre a few months ago?"

Lettie's mouth opened, then closed again, and for the first time since I'd known her, she seemed to have nothing at all to say. Did no one know anything about the two men we’d been calling friends?

Chapter 43

Lorken

Ifollowed my brother's swift stride through the twisting corridors of the warbird, Dawz keeping pace at my other side, both of us descending through the warbird without question. I still wasn’t sure where Zarn was taking us, but I’d learned to trust his wild ideas.

"Does this mean he's battle chief again?" Dawz asked in a low voice, pitched only for my ears.

I growled, low and noncommittal. I was not yet ready to forgive Zarn for what he'd done to Athena in that room, for the marks still fading from her wrists, for the fear I'd seen in her eyes when I'd found her pinned against that wall. But I was also leader enough to know that my horde needed its sharpest mind at a moment like this, and whatever bitterness still sat between my brother and me would have to wait until the enemy was no longer bearing down on us.

We pounded down a wide staircase, the metal clattering beneath our boots, and emerged on the hangar bay, the vast space stretching out around us in rows of sleek fighters and raiding vessels, their hulls gleaming faintly. Pilots were moving between ships in preparation for launching a counterattack and mechanics stood under open engine panels inspecting the shipsbefore they might be deployed. Tools clanged against metal and orders echoed up through the ship’s central chasm.

"We checked the comms hub here already," Dawz said, gesturing toward the far wall where the central console sat dark and undisturbed.

"You checked the hub," Zarn said, already striding between into the rows of ships. "Not each individual vessel."

Tvek.I hated that he was right. Any fighter or raiding ship carried the ability to transmit, and, although they were used for ship-to-ship communication, any of them could be used to send a signal when parked inside the warbird. It was a simple way to bypass using any exposed communications hub. It was actually a clever strategy.

But how would any of the refugees from Kashara know enough about Vandar ships to operate such a system? Weren’t they all theatre types, better with stages than spaceships? Unless one of them wasn’t who they claimed to be. Then a memory snagged in the back of my brain. Wasn’t one of them the one who’d helped Kolt and Skye access a ship in the Zagrath shipyard? Didn’t he work with ships for a living? I almost growled at myself for not thinking of that sooner.

Dawz's device pinged at his hip, and he checked it quickly, his expression tightening. “From the command deck. There’s been another transmission. Just now. A single signal."

"Split up," Zarn ordered, already moving. "Search every ship in this bay."