The forest passed by quickly beneath them as they flew in awkward silence. On foot, it would take at least three days hiking over irregular, dangerous terrain at a brisk pace to reach the base of the mountain chain from the beach. By hovercraft, it took half an hour.
He pressed the button to hail the base on approach, and Cordelia sat forward in her seat to watch the massive metal blast door retract back into the face of the mountain. This close, the purple stone of the mountain glittered brilliantly with mineral deposits. He lowered them into the dark maw of the base, and the blast door closed behind them a moment later.
It stayed closed at all times unless someone was coming or going, thanks to the Aurillon ship in orbit above them. He released the controls and dismissed them back into the dash, popping the latch on his harness.
Cordelia paid no mind to him, her wide eyes darting all around the cavernous room outside the cab. He wondered if she’d seen anything like it before. Her people must have been advanced if they’d achieved space travel. Though, if Fendar’s testament held any weight, their software had been more than a few centuries behind the Aurillon tech they were running in the base.
He leaned over to pop her harness loose, and she startled at the contact.
“Sorry,” he blurted out, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace.
She still glared at him as she shrugged off the harness. She didn’t look away as her hands moved blindly over the door at her side. He hit the release to pop both doors at once. They flared open with a hiss that made her jump and glare at him again. The more she came to her senses, the pricklier she became. That stormy look stayed glued to him until she slid out of the far side of the hovercraft. Her knees buckled as her feet hit the ground. He cursed under his breath, hustling out of the far door and jogging around the craft to meet her.
She slid down to one hip on the polished stone floor. Her head hung, and her long hair brushed the ground as she braced herself on trembling arms. He knelt beside her, hands hovering, uncertain how to help her without the ability to communicate. He rested a hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her, but she batted it away.
Not only was she more annoyed with him as she recovered from her daze, but she was less tolerant of him touching her. His tail wilted at the realization, an uncharacteristic whine threatening to escape the back of his throat. Why did that make him feel such despair?
A series of loud clanks echoed through the hangar as the huge, secondary door to the rest of the hidden base unlocked. Cordelia watched through the curtain of her hair as the door ground open with a metallic shriek, wariness set into her pallid features.
“It’s alright,” he said. “It’s just the others. No one will hurt you here, Cordelia.”
At the sound of her name, her eyes flicked over to him, and some of the tension in her shoulders seemed to ease. His mood rebounded at the tiny display of trust.
Elten came through the door first. His tail lashed behind him, and he wrung both pairs of hands together in front of himself as he stared at Cordelia. The bioluminescent stripes thatzagged over Elten’s blue skin flickered in the dim light of the hangar, another indication of the fervor he’d worked himself into over their new alien acquisition. Elten’s gaze flicked toward Rentir, and he drew up short; the eager flash of his lights dimmed. For once, Rentir was glad of the wariness he inspired in most of the other hybrids.
Haerune and Thalen followed closely behind Elten.
“Easy,” Rentir said. “She’s uncertain of us.”
Elten stopped a few feet away—notably just out of reach of Rentir’s scyra—crouching down and craning his head to study her. His long, dark hair spilled over his shoulder. The nervous way his focus kept drifting back to Rentir was enough to curb his desire to issue a more dire warning.
“What is she?” Elten pondered aloud, propping his upper hands beneath his chin as the lower pair braced against his knees. “Has she spoken? Does she show any signs of being part of our genome?”
“Elten,” Thalen rumbled as he approached, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat. “Give her space, as he says.”
Sighing, Elten rose to his feet and took a step back. Haerune stepped around Thalen, his shrewd eyes studying Cordelia with his usual stoicism, but each flick of his tail ended with a rattle of excitement.
A strange sense of territoriality welled in Rentir, despite the fact that he’d only known Cordelia for an hour longer than the rest of them. He shuddered against the impulse to bare his fangs. A familiar dread turned his stomach at the mere thought of harming his batch brother.
As he was busy naval-gazing, Cordelia rose to her feet unsteadily. She pushed her hair back with one hand, straightened her spine, and began to speak in her odd language. Her voice, loud and authoritative, echoed off the cavernous walls of the hangar. Thalen looked to Rentir for guidance.
Rentir sprang to his feet. “She’s worried about the others, I think.”
Cordelia looked at him sidelong, frowning. She began to speak again, pantomiming the other pods as she had in the hovercraft.
“I understand your concern.” Thalen interrupted her, holding up a hand. “The others are being extracted as we speak. You have nothing to worry about.”
She looked at Rentir again, frustration plain on her face. He pantomimed the pods deploying, just as she had, then gestured to the hangar around them. A flicker of hope lit in her eyes. She said something hoarsely, sagging back against the side of the hovercraft.
“She reeks of blood and salt,” Haerune noted, taking a step closer. The tentacles at the base of his neck, usually hidden by his waist-length hair, writhed over his shoulders to taste the air.
Cordelia shuddered, stepping closer to Rentir. Their shoulders brushed, and the contact jolted through his arm like an electric spark. It was a sensation he had no frame of reference for; it left him oddly breathless.
“She’s injured,” Rentir said, looking at the scrapes that covered her body and the blood still soaking into her white clothes. “She was nearly eaten by an ateela.”
All three males grimaced.
“Take her to medbay,” Thalen said. “Haerune will treat her injuries.”
