Alien Heart by Alex Timothy

Author:Alex Timothy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction romance
Publisher: Alex Timothy

Squire

“Why didn’t you already have a squire? One made to order for this job?” I looked up at Zaeth from my spot on the floor of a cavernous training room. The basic setup didn’t look all that different from the dojo on Orbit 3. Padded flooring, open space, holo projectors imbedded in the walls. Only bigger, immensley bigger, and with a curved wall and ceiling made of thick clear ice looking out into space where Uranus and all its orbiting moons floated. I stared out both mesmerized by the robin’s egg blue planet and filled with dread thinking of the impossibility of that view. For a human. For me. For any hope of rescue.

“A squire does not stare into space. He does not show emotion.”

“I can’t help it!”

As one of my duties I had to inspect Zaeth’s reflective suit and helmet for any tears or cuts that would affect his performance, or put his life in danger outside the ship. An easy job at the moment because we hadn’t left the beehive once since our arrival. The Sorg and the Hush had reached a kind of standoff with the black capsules making flyby attacks every couple hours that did no damage at all to the massive Hush ships. But Zaeth insisted I go through the motions of a suit check, like a devoted squire would.

“You will want to finish that before the others arrive, Landon.” As part of his pre-training routine, Zaeth stretched his slim legs and arms, flexed his fingers and rolled his neck while I worked. I never stretched before a fight, not even in training, but I didn’t have anything near his skills. He could do all the leaping and flipping moves that Yulia did.

Flickering light dropped onto my lax hands, the silver material limp in my fingers. “Okay, okay…I’m doing it, don’t worry.” And I started feeling inside the suit’s lining again, slick and cold, and free of all the buttons or sensors I expected it to have. I had no idea how the suits worked. When my skin caught on a raised nub in the fabric, Zaeth showed me how to dab a finger inside a cylinder of the liquid metal, then let a droplet absorb and mend the suit. The metal behaved like mercury… no…like magic… but it wasn’t anything so fanciful. The Hush had built it. Tech, more of their astonishing, undefeatable tech. They’d made their beehive ships of just that fluid tech and ice. “So why didn’t your progenitor…”

“Vareech.”

“Right. Var-eeeech,” I quipped. No one used titles, not when respect and deference literally came built into their DNA. Vareech’s name in Hush sounded like a door slamming shut. It fit him, the crusty snob. It seemed like every trip outside our quarters and into the ice corridors of the ship involved a run-in with the old Hush. His eyes glittering black as they examined me, like I didn’t know what that meant. Or like he didn’t care if I knew. “Why not just

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