The Sineater answered almost right away with a barked, “What’s your status, Jaxin?” He sounded mean as always, but I knew that just masked his genuine concern. I thought of the Sineater as the ultimate Karikari, a type of bird native to Rumcas, where I’d been born. Rumcas had very cold winters, and the Karikari hen would gather her flock under her wings to keep them warm, protecting them. That was what the Sineater did, herding us where he wanted for our own good, always a little snarly when he was concerned. He’d deny it, but I was onto him. Asmoded wasn’t much better; he embodied the credo “Leave no man behind,” which was why I’d firmly given my loyalty to this crew.
“We’re fine, Sin,” I said. “The payload is alive and well.” I eyed Dani, but she was struggling to keep up in the ruggedterrain. A fine sheen of sweat shimmered along the intriguing anthracite color of her skin; it picked up silver and deep obsidian notes. “We’ve got a giant tailing us, however, and I’d sooner not lead him to his death if we don’t need to. You understand?”
There was such a deep sigh of annoyance from the Sineater that I laughed, the chuckle rumbling from my chest. “Numb my ass,” I muttered. I’d failed again, but I did feel calm, unruffled, so that was good. Dani was staring, her eyes big as she absorbed the sound I’d made, and I wondered if she was trying to sense my feelings again. Could she? Maybe if she wasn’t experiencing burnout…
“Fine, be the good guy, Jaxin. We can’t stick around much longer; the Kertinal are getting blazing anxious to see us go. I think they’re preparing to use annihilating force on this local unrest.” He didn’t say more, but I could fill in the blanks. They wanted any witnesses gone from the planet before they did so, because they knew other forces in the galaxy—like the Aderians—would not agree with their tactics.
The giant trailing us had fallen back, but I knew we had not shaken him yet. Would the Sineater argue that there was no point in trying to spare his life, when he could be killed by the Kertinal next week? But the Sineater didn’t say that; instead, he gave me a general direction to head in. “That’s where the nearest official landing strip is located. I suspect that’s going to be your extraction point, so get your ass moving that way.”
He clicked off the communication directly after that information, but I discovered more precise coordinates in an incoming text message courtesy of Mitnick. Very well, then—that’s where we’d be headed. It would takeus a day or two, at the very least, to walk that far, and that should be enough to get rid of our nosy and hostile escort.
Dani was beginning to lag behind, struggling to keep up with my pace. I slowed, but that wasn’t going to help us shake the giant. Her strange, mobile features were hard for me to read, and I wasn’t certain if it was fatigue or something else I saw in the furrow of her brow. Her breathing was growing labored, that was my strongest indicator that something was not right. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
She looked up from her feet, and the instant glare in her eyes tugged at my self-control. Was I smiling? I hoped I wasn’t, but I couldn’t quite tell. I firmed my resolve not to respond emotionally to everything she did; she needed me to stay calm, quiet.“Nothing’s wrong with me!” she snapped in a sharp tone. Even I could tell she wanted to wound me for the rude remark. But shewasan empath, and soft at the core.“If you must know, I have not slept much. I rarely do, but the past few days, I’ve barely slept at all. I am simply tired.”
Simply tired. I saw it then, the weary lines of her shoulders, the droop of her proud head, and the struggle to so much as lift a foot from the muck on the jungle floor. She was not simply tired; she was exhausted—driven to an extreme far beyond what the Aderian body could take. No sleep, constant stress, and intense emotional pressure from all sides. It was a miracle she was still standing.
I had wanted to keep my distance; that’s why I hadn’t picked her up again after taking care of her injuries. If I didn’t carry her—hold her close—I might not be tempted to start feeling possessive. She needed me; I could see that in every sluggish step she took. It was not in me to let a femalesuffer when I could do something about it. Call it a character flaw, call it a weakness, but seeing the struggle Bexlin had gone through while trying to raise me had shaped me.
“Come here,” I said, and even to my own ears, I sounded angry. I slung not-Bex on its strap behind my back in a comfortable, practiced move that had no right feeling so familiar. Then I turned fully toward her, and while she hesitated, confusion written loud and clear across her face, I leaned in and picked her up. If I carried her against my chest, that would feel far too intimate again. I couldn’t have that. Bonding instincts would start prickling at my mind, and I needed to avoid those at all costs.
What I should be feeling—if I were allowing any feelings at all—was annoyance. She was slowing us down, and why in the blazing suns hadn’t she been sleeping well? She made it sound like she never did, and she should be taking better care of herself than that. Much better care, because if she didn’t, she couldn’t keep up when running for her life from a big, lumbering Radin giant.
“Icanwalk,” she said, her hands slipping along my arm and back. The armor prevented skin-to-skin contact, but I felt that touch all the way to my bones anyway. She sounded like a hissing Riho, all claw and fang and fluffed-up fur. “I don’t need you carrying me around like a sack of Haras wheat. I’m perfectly capable of…” She abruptly sputtered to a halt. “Are you even listening?” Her hand slid along my back again, and I thought she was going to try to push off, leverage herself upright. Instead, she found the edge of my fin and pinched.
I yelped in surprise because that was a good pinch, strong, firm, sharp. I yanked her down in fury,ready to read her the riot act the way I would a misbehaving grunt aboard the Varakartoom. Her pretty, elfin face came into view, wearing a mutinous expression. Large black eyes reflected me back at myself, and I was briefly confronted with a brutish blunt gray nose, heavy jaw, and rows of sharp, triangular teeth. Damn it, I had to be such a beastly male in her eyes; too many teeth and too much gray skin.
“You should rest,” I grunted. It didn’t have the desired effect. Rather than agree and relax, or give back some more mouthy objection, she cocked her head and stared. Oh, stars, she was a perceptive empath, and she was sensing things from me again. Wondering if I was feeling things a Rummicaron shouldn’t. She would be right, because I was. I shoved away the annoyance I had successfully riled in myself, then pushed harder to get rid of the concern. Cycling through a few mental exercises felt better too, mostly because I stopped feeling things.
“Interesting,” she said after a while. It had been a long while—one in which she’d only looked at me, allowing me to stride rapidly through the underbrush without complaining. “I could have sworn I sensed something, but it swept away like the tide.” It was the puzzled curiosity in her voice that made me answer the unspoken question in her words.
“Rummicaron mental exercises to dampen feelings. Would you like me to talk you through a few?” It might even help her with the empathy burnout, you couldn’t feel burnout if you couldn’t feel anything. Though I doubted she could suppress her emotions the way I could with those exercises. I’d spent years conditioning my brain to let feelings disappear using those mental patterns.
I did not think she would take me up on it, but she leaped at the chance. It was an odd way to spend the next two hours. I walked and I talked until my throat began to ache, just a little. She hung in my arms, intimately close against my chest, and stared avidly up at my face or closed her eyes to do the exercise I’d just explained. There was such earnestness in her attempts that they seemed to bury her fatigue.
If not for the ache that started to develop in my chest, worsening the farther I walked, I would have wanted to keep going. The giant was still following our trail, keeping his distance and shockingly quiet for a creature his size. The not-Bex cannon hung heavily from its strap against my back, and though Dani was slight, I was beginning to feel a mild ache in my arms from carrying her. It was when she yawned—her jaw cracking—that I knew she needed a break too. She needed sleep.
I flicked the comm on my wrist with a thumb, reaching out once more to the Sineater. Before I set up camp anywhere, I wanted to make certain we were heading in the right direction. I wanted to know that all the crew had made it safely back to the Varakartoom.
It wasn’t Sin who answered, but Mitnick, which meant they were all back on the ship, flying somewhere high in orbit above Radin. “Jaxin, do you need assistance?” he asked, and when I denied that, he began listing helpful information simply because he couldn’t resist. “You’re still on for the same coordinates, I see you’ve already made decent progress in the right direction. The captain is trying to navigate the red tape with the Kertinal, but they’re trying to pretendyou and our payload aren’t down there at all. Don’t worry, we’ve got this covered.”
I had no doubt they had it covered; Asmoded could arm-wrestle any official into doing as he wanted. By the time we reached that landing strip, they would be ready and waiting for us. Dani had gone still in my arms, her head cocked and one daintily pointed ear aimed toward the wrist with the comm strapped to it. For her sake, I found myself asking, “What about the scientists you retrieved? Did they all make it?”
“We’ve got four accounted for, safely aboard the Varakartoom,” Mitnick said immediately. “Everyone else is good, too. I think Raukesh had a busted rib from a blast his battle-form didn’t quite block, but that’s it.” That was a good score, and I’d make sure to run Raukesh through some evasive drills once I was back on the ship, to make sure he didn’t do something that stupid a second time.
“Thanks,” I said, my chest aching as muscles and fake ribs seemed to keep falling out of alignment. Dani was practically beaming in my arms, and even to my underdeveloped senses when it came to recognizing emotions, the relief on her face was obvious. She was relieved the scientist male who had been shot had made it. Mitnick had said all four, and our list had only included five names to retrieve.
When I ended the call, I ignored her attempt to start a conversation and focused on the more immediate problem: a place to sleep for the night. The giant would surely seize the opportunity at night to approach and ambush us in our sleep. I had to make us a camp somewhere he couldn’t reach.
Inhaling deeply, I tested the water in the air, analyzed the taste, and arrowed myself in the right direction. We’d crosseda stream earlier and briefly followed the curving bank of a river before it swerved away again in the wrong direction. Radin was a jungle world with an endless warm season on its one continent. It was also a world with huge oceans and waterways that crisscrossed every stretch of land.
What I smelled now had to be a large body of water, and that was hopeful. An island might work, or a cave under the waterline—if it had enough of an air pocket. A cave would work, period, if the entrance was deep and narrow enough, but so far the ground had been soft and muddy everywhere I’d walked. Then the lake came into view, dark and placid, shimmering with the reflection of a million stars.
Better yet, this lake had a ridge of pale rock lining the opposite bank, and that meantcaves.
Chapter 8
Danitalin
