[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 23 - Milla

"We have to go after them," Milla said. "That ship is hardly armed--they can't fight whoever's chasing them."

Milla circled the command platform on the Countess' frigate, the bead of her halo still tucked in her hand. She didn't know what she'd do with it if she had the chance to draw it. The Countess' guards, discreetly tucked around the bridge, would shoot her down in seconds. But she had to hold onto something.

It had taken two hours of all the techs on the Countess' ship analyzing everything that had happened at the station, but someone had finally found something--a Kaireyeh blip at the moment that Damon and Luc had disappeared, and another blip a split second later, on the Resistance ship. Then Kaireyeh had surged on the Resistance ship, and it had entered Kaireyeh.

Another hour of arguing had brought about a conclusion that most of them were willing to live with: whatever Damon had done, it had taken him to the Resistance ship. The pale attackers had been after Damon--that much had been clear from the corridor in the station. He'd fled the station--disappeared in the same way the pale people had teleported, so it was likely he'd done the same--and fled on the Resistance ship. The ship's Kaireyeh signature, at least, had shown that the ship had entered Kaireyeh rather than being destroyed as they'd all first feared.

The Countess glanced up from the wrap of holos surrounding her. "You might not be old enough to remember Kaireyeh travel, Milla, but ships in Kaireyeh can't actively be tracked."

Elise, standing like a pillar across from Countess, drew her lips tight. "Then we must find a way to track Zivali, for surely she has a way to track them if she sent them to get Damon--"

The Countess swept aside part of her wrap of holo displays. "I want that ship back as much as you do, Radego. I have set as much of my network as I can safely task to tracking it now, but if we find anything, it will be when they reappear. That might be a few days, or weeks, or hours." She paused as one of the screens on her partial wrap started blinking.

"What is it?" Elise stepped forward. Milla tensed, too, and tried to read through the translucence of the wrap screen.

The Countess swept the screen aside. "Nothing to do with you. Excuse me, I must see to this. Coda," she said, calling to one of her guards, "please see the Radegos to their allotted quarters, and see they have everything they need--"

"What I need is--" Elise growled.

The Countess paused midway down the short steps to the lower level of the bridge. "What you will get is everything I can give you. I cannot give you more."

Milla gripped her mother's arm before Elise could pounce on that. Elise shot her a glare and shook Milla's hand off, but the pause forced her to take a breath. They were on the Countess' ship, travelling away from her station. They weren't prisoners, but that could change.

One of the Countess' guards came over to them. "If you will follow me?"

Milla glanced around. The Countess had left. She turned back to the guard. It was the woman who'd first met them when they'd boarded the station. Coda, was it?

She gave a tight nod and Coda led them off the bridge.

"Where are the rest of my people?" Elise asked.

Milla cringed. In the chaos that had followed what happened on the station and their rush to get off it, she'd known that the rest of their group had boarded the Countess' frigate...but she didn't know what had happened to them after. She vaguely remembered the Countess saying Elise and Milla couldn't bring their guards onto the bridge.