My fear grows as we run and my mind runs through the many possibilities of what would happen if we were to be captured by the Vikar. There is no guarantee of good treatment at their hands, and we are almost certain to be enslaved and used most awfully.
We run through the forest until Thor grabs me and pushes me down and orders me to crawl into the interior of a rotten fallen log that has been hollowed out by disease and time. I crawl in as far as I can, and he follows, stuffing the hole we came through with a piece of wood that was usefully sitting at the edge of it.
“Stay quiet,” he says, his voice low. “But listen to me.”
I nod, silent. He is on his hands and knees in this tight space. I am able to sit, sort of, but in a coiled-up kind of way. It’s not comfortable for either of us, but it is considerably better than being caught.
“They’re going to hunt for us,” he says. “But there is no guarantee they will find us. I haven’t been relying on rescue.”
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“It means I have caches spread out in the forest. I didn’t want Drako to know, so I left you to entertain him while I was preparing.”
I stare at him, feeling a welling of a sensation I haven’t had before. He’s so fucking hot right now. Muscular and prepared for all eventualities? He has a plan B?
“Did you think the ship wouldn’t come?”
“Drako was too fucking smug,” he says. “And I always have a backup plan. They’re going to hunt, but they’re going to getbored. They’ll take Drako, I think, and leave this planet. Then we can try and…” He breathes. “Survive.”
I nod. Right now I don’t care what tomorrow brings as long as tomorrow doesn’t bring Vikar custody.
I snug as far as I can to the end of the log to try to make space for Thor, who looks impossibly uncomfortable. He is able to lie on his side after a little shuffling, his head in my lap. I pass the time by braiding his hair. Neither one of us speak. It’s not safe to.
We’ve been in danger the entire time we have been on this planet, but we have never been in danger like this. This feels like death itself is stalking us. Suddenly, I am deeply afraid of Drako as well. He has shifted in my mind and become a horror again.
A little time passes, and we hear voices approaching. I used to think it would be nice to be around other people again. Right now, I would be so happy to never, ever hear another person’s voice again.
“They can’t have gotten far. They were on foot.”
“If we had hounds, we could apprehend them in a matter of minutes.”
“If we had hounds, they’d rip them into pieces. Jarl Drako wants them in one piece. Keep looking. They came through here in a panic.”
Thor and I make eye contact. Drako is giving orders. He must have a lot of rank. He tried to make himself sound like a settler, little more. But this is not what happens when a settler…
“What the fuck is that?”
We can’t see what it is, but the tone of the soldiers hunting us suggests that they don’t like the look of it.
“Looks like a big bug,” the other one says.
Thor and I make even more intense eye contact, our eyes widening as we understand something the men trying to kill us do not. I have a brief impulse to help them, but there’s nothing we can do.
“It’s coming over this way… argh!”
There is the sound of weapons fire, and then a general screaming and sounds of what I can only describe as consumption. Maybe some stray horde creatures are out here looking for food. They seem to have found it.
We are not going to be able to leave this hiding place until the horde goes back to sleep. Right now they are crawling everywhere, searching for remnants of crash proteins and such. It’s awful. But they have just saved our lives.
I do not know how long it is until we speak again. Hours, certainly. No more voices come our way, and the forest is still, as far as we can tell.
“It’s going to be okay,” Thor says. “Two ships lost around the same planet will draw further attention. We still have a chance at rescue, and one hopes that there was some distress signal sent before it was destroyed.”
I don’t think there was. I think that ship was there one moment, and gone the next. Whatever weapons the Vikar are using, our ships are not able to stand up to them. I do not argue, though. I will not steal hope from him, even if I cannot manifest it myself.
By the time we crawl out of that log, I can no longer properly feel my limbs. That is a mercy, because as feeling returns, they start to burn and ache complaining about the abuse they have suffered in the course of survival.
Thor then moves us to a dense part of the bush, where he has set up a very small camp under a tarp. It’s barely a camp in the proper sense of the word. It’s a few rice rations that we cannot heat, and a flask of water. Both of them taste like heaven to our parched throats.
