“It’s as good as we could ask for,” Bryce decided, but then glanced my way to check my opinion anyway. “Hill? This okay?”
“Works for me,” I agreed. That was another thing I liked about Bryce. He never let the power go to his head. In a situation where one person might overlook a risk, or where the cooperation of the whole team was needed to achieve a goal, he always let other people voice their opinions.
“All right, folks,” Bryce announced. “Let’s get the beds set up and some food sorted out. I want two people on guard at all times. Two hour shifts. Me and Vosh will take the first one. Bidge and Associate Nors, that means you two get to take a bed each, and then Vosh and I will take Aiden and Kade’s beds when they’re up. Vosh, I want you watching westward right now. I’m going to go take a walk around this chunk of rock and see what the lay of the land is.”
He dumped his pack on the ground, checked the ammunition in his rifle, then set off. Vosh did the same, taking up a sentry position a few metres away.
With Bryce gone, that left me in charge of getting our injured pilot and civilian tagalong settled. “Okay, folks, we’ve got four meal packets between the six of us for dinner, and the same again for breakfast. Kade, can you fish them out and start dividing them up into six portions? Associate Nors, can you give me a hand to get the beds set up? Bidge, I’m giving you a one-time-only pass to sit down and watch the rest of us work.”
That got a grin from Bidge, and I was relieved to see that he wasn’t in too much pain to appreciate the bad joke. It was going to be a rough night for him, trying to sleep on a thin mat on hard ground, but Bidge had been military trained, just like the rest of us. And to be fair, no one was going to be having a good night. I told myself that we only had to last until dawn, which was at about oh-six-hundred, and then another two hours to walk the rest of the way to the outpost. Unless, of course, the Hon base managed to get a transporter out here before that to pick us up. And after that, there would be the luxuries of hot showers, fresh meals and some heavy dutypainkillers for Bidge, until they could get him back to the base and fixed up with some proper medical attention.
Thirteen hours stood between us and safety. But we had a good team. We’d been trained for this. And once again, Kade had blown all my expectations out of the water, back in the battle with the Geshtoch. He’d somehow managed to blow three of them upwith their own grenade, and then shot one who was literally standingbehind a rock. It was no wonder his intended master, whoever they happened to be, had spent such a ridiculous sum of money on him.
Associate Nors helped set up the beds willingly, though it was clear she was feeling sore from the long walk – likely not something a parliamentarian often had to go through. By the time we were done, Kade had the meals arranged, and he handed out the portions, taking one over to Vosh as she stood guard.
I ate slowly, attempting to pretend there was more food than there actually was. Just as I was finishing, Bryce came wandering back, from the opposite direction from the one he’d departed in. Presumably, he’d gone all the way around the cluster of rocks we were camped beside.
“There’s a bit of a canyon over on the eastern side,” he said without preamble, as he took the offered meal and ate standing up, keeping an eye on the desert around us. “If we need a bolt hole, that would be more defensible than anywhere else. And there are plenty of nooks and ridges, if we need cover for a gunfight. Anyone know what the moon is doing tonight?”
“Three quarters full, rising at about twenty-one thirty,” Kade answered immediately. How the fuck did he know that? I knew we were coming up to a full moon in a few days, but that was as much help as I would have been.
“That should help us a bit,” Bryce said. “We’ll at least have a little bit of light if we need to move.”
That was about the extent of the conversation for the evening. After we’d eaten, we all crawled into our beds to get what sleep we could.
It felt like I’d only been out for about five minutes when Bryce’s firm hand was shaking me awake. “You’re up,” he said simply. I gave a token grumble, but got myself out of bed and into my boots, while Bryce set his weapons neatly beside the sleeping roll, toed off his boots and took advantage of the warm little cocoon I was leaving behind. I immediately grabbed one of the spare blankets and wrapped it around myself. On a clear night, the desert was fucking cold.
Kade appeared beside me a moment later, a gentle nudge of his shoulder against mine his only greeting. I bumped him back, then made a point of checking the position of the stars and the moon. With our comms fried by the EMP, we were back to using the sun, moon and stars to track the passage of time and to navigate. Kade took a short walk around, checkingthe nearby area, then he wandered back to my side. I felt a hand on my arm and turned to face him.
“I’m going to change colour,” he said quietly. For a brief moment, I wondered why he was bothering to tell me, my tired brain assuming he was going to revert to his natural blue. But instead, he flashed to pitch black, just like he had in the jungle that first day I’d found him. And I was suddenly glad he’d warned me. In military grey fatigues and black scales, and with the moon on the far side of the rocks, leaving us in shadow, he was damn near invisible, and given what I knew about his combat skills, I wouldn’t have liked to run into him unexpectedly in the dark – regardless of the fact that he was on our side.
He glanced up at the rock tower above us. “I’m going to climb up there,” he said, with total nonchalance, as if scaling a four metre rock wall without any sort of attachments was a perfectly normal thing to do. “I’ll be able to see further, and in more directions. Can you whistle if you need me?”
“Sounds good,” I said, noting once again that the part that was giving me instructions was phrased as a question. Then, because I couldn’t quite help myself, I added, “Be careful.”
I wasn’t sure in the darkness, but I thought I saw him grin. “Always,” he murmured. He stepped over to the side of the tower, and I forced myself to turn my back on him and pay attention to the desert. It would have been awe-inspiring to watch him climb, I was sure, but this was no time to be admiring my boyfriend’s physique.
Huh. Boyfriend. Fuck. Had I really just thought that? But honestly, what else was I supposed to call him? I wasn’t going to go around referring to him as my slave. He was more than a friend or a colleague. I certainly couldn’t call him a brother, if I was sleeping with him. So apparently, boyfriend was it. Or partner, maybe? Did that make it sound a little more professional?
Pay attention, I scolded myself. There were creatures out in the desert who wanted to kill us, and I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that they would all be asleep, just because it was dark. From what we knew of them, Geshtoch appeared to be cathemeral; they could be active at any time of the day or night, depending on the circumstances at the time.
Leaving Kade to watch the eastern side, I paced in slow strides up and down the length of the rock, using not just sight, but sound and smell to pick up any hint of trouble. While notalwaystrue, quite often, the Geshtoch smelled heavily of solvent and smoke, which came from maintaining old or rundown machinery and cooking their food on wood fires.
Tonight, the light breeze smelled clear and fresh, and there wasn’t even a hint of footsteps or rumbling engines. But I didn’t dare take our safety forgranted, not even for a second. Things could change all too quickly out here, and I was not going to be caught off guard.
Roughly two hours later – or as close to it as I could tell from the position of the moon – it was nearing the end of our turn on guard duty. I turned around to look up at the rocks and see if I could spot Kade. I hadn’t heard from him for the entire time I’d been out here, and if I hadn’t been quite so confident in his skills, I might have been worried.
I spotted him after two or three sweeps of the rock tower. He was mostly lying down, but propped up on his elbows and staring at something to the south. I drew in a breath to whistle at him, but something in his body language made me pause. He was still, but he was… listening? Or watching something? Either way, he was not merely scanning the horizon. He was keenly focused on something, and I felt a cold chill run down my spine.
Acting on that instinct, I moved swiftly and silently over to where Bryce was sleeping, waking him and Vosh at the same time with a hand on each of their shoulders. If it turned out I was overreacting, it was more or less time to swap places with them anyway.
“That time already?” Bryce asked groggily, but I silenced him with a soft ‘Shh’.
“I think Kade’s spotted something. Get up.”
He scrambled out of his bedroll, Vosh close behind him. “Where is he?” Bryce asked, once he was on his feet and had his boots on.
“Up there.” I pointed up the rock tower. But Kade wasn’t where he had been. Instead, I saw him slithering down the side of the tower, little more than an inky stain in the darkness. Once he reached the bottom, he strode swiftly over towards the camp.
