She turned her palms over to find them unblemished. The throbbing ache in her knee and ankle was gone, along with the rest of her scrapes and cuts. God, Dr. Jones was going to lose it when she saw the tech these aliens had. She wondered if they even had medical doctors, or if they’d become superfluous to whatever insane engineering had invented the pod.
The other alien left the room, leaving the door open behind him. Rentir gestured that they should follow, so Cordelia slid to her feet. Her knees wobbled like Jell-O, threatening to buckle. After a moment braced against the pod’s table, they solidified.Rentir’s hand hovered just below her elbow. It seemed he’d finally recognized that she didn’t appreciate being touched.
On shaking legs, she stepped out into the hall, clutching the fabric of the jacket closed like a robe without a sash. Rentir gestured toward the intersection they’d come from, and they followed the other alien at a distance until they came to a room that opened up massively.
It looked like a corporate break room, with a huge sectional couch curving around an elaborately carved coffee table. There was a kitchen and a number of tables and chairs along one side of the room, along with what looked like some type of game table. Everything that wasn’t chrome was white or cream colored. It was so… normal.
There was a wall of windows set into the far side of the room, revealing a breathtaking tableau of the natural scenery. They were so high up she could see clear past the mountain range and its sprawling forest to the beach beyond.
She abandoned the other alien to stand by the sloping windows, pressing her fingertips to the glass. Somewhere out in that vast wilderness, the passengers and crew she was responsible for were trying to find their way to safety.
Something in the distance caught her eye, so small it looked like a fly buzzing above the treetops.
The hovercraft. Her heart pounded. Had they found someone? Were they headed back?
“Cordelia.” Rentir stood beside her, gesturing that they should continue following the other alien.
She pointed to the speck in the distance, and he leaned in to follow the path of her finger until he saw it. His breath fanned over her neck, and she struggled to suppress a shiver.
Rentir said something in an affirming way, smiling encouragingly at her. He pointed at the same thing, repeating the word. He gestured to the speck and then to her, then held upboth hands with his fingers threaded together, speaking slowly as though it would help her comprehension.
“Youarebringing them back,” she murmured, relief loosening some of the tension in her gut. “I can’t believe I’ve made first contact with an alien species, and I can’t even phone home about it. No one on Earth would believe how nice you guys are, you know that? They’d definitely start building a bomb to shoot you out of orbit.”
He grinned at her as she spoke, his gaze flicking between her eyes and her mouth. She turned away from him and cleared her throat. Her attention turned skyward to the ship she couldn’t make out but knew was just beyond the atmosphere.
Were they the same aliens as the ones she’d met here? They hadn’t seemed quite so… friendly. Someone on this planet had definitely been shooting up at them, which had to mean they were enemies. But why?
She scrubbed a hand over her jaw. So many questions, and no way to ask them. It was a clusterfuck. She needed to get her footing in this situation, needed to understand the politics of whatever the hell was going on and where she and her crew stood among it all.
There had been more ships in the hangar when they’d come in. If she and Eunha could figure out how the hell to operate the alien tech, she might be able to get them off-world. What would be the point? Where would they go? The last comm they’d received from mission control had been grim, and even if they could navigate back to Earth… as far as they’d traveled, centuries had passed. More would pass by the time they arrived again. What if there was nothing to return to? That final transmission…
Her mind raced, her breaths coming too quickly, too shallow. She could feel the panic attack looming, pressing in on her with every quiet gasp of air.
“Cordelia?”
She looked up at Rentir, whose brow was knitted in concern. “I’m fine.” Sucking down a deep, painful breath, she turned to the other alien. He was waiting in the doorway on the far side of the room with an air of annoyance. “Let’s go,” she said.
The other alien led them to a room covered wall to wall in metal drawers that he rifled through as they watched, finally emerging with a strip of metal. With webbed fingers, he reached for her wrist.
She stepped back into Rentir at the same time that he reached past her, batting away the other alien’s arm and snarling something over her shoulder. Her back pressed flush against his chest as something slithered around her waist. She looked down to find his tail curled around her, pressing her possessively back into him as he argued with the other alien, whose tentacles had begun to writhe angrily over his shoulders. His teeth were different, more human, but fangs still flashed to either side of his flat front teeth as he raised his voice at Rentir.
She was stunned into silence until she felt something growing hard behind her, pressing against the small of her back. Rentir’s breathing was becoming ragged, the clutch of his tail suddenly biting. With both hands, she wrenched it away from herself, spinning out of his grip until she stood a few steps from both of them.
“Enough!” she shouted, holding her hand up. “Whatever the hell is going on, just—enough.”
Rentir’s tail sagged at the reprimand. An inhuman whine escaped him, like he was a dog who’d been scolded for doing his business in the house. Absurdly, guilt twinged within her at the desperation of his reaction.
The other alien made a sound of frustration, grabbing Rentir by the wrist and slapping the strip of metal into his hand. He muttered to himself as he turned back to the storage to rifle through more of the metal drawers.
Rentir sheepishly approached her, holding the strip out. When she tried to take it from him, he pressed it against her wrist instead. It coiled around her, sealing into itself seamlessly. Startled, she turned her hands over, clutching at the metal, wondering if he’d put some kind of handcuff or?—
It beeped cheerfully and began rattling off to her in the alien language. She looked askance at Rentir, but he was watching the device with interest. A holographic image popped up, projected over her wrist—a circle. She prodded at it, but all that did was make the picture waver.
“Lerat,” Rentir said, gesturing to it. He tapped his lips and pointed at it again.
“Um…”
He pointed at himself. “Rentir.” He pointed at her. “Cordelia.” Then he pointed at the circle expectantly.
