I found Auby by touch, at least. I hoped that was Auby and not something else. A warm, fluffy ear, a soft, slightly wet nose. It blew against my fingers, and the light briefly flashed brighter. Through streaming eyes, I saw in that brief flare of illumination that we were not alone. When Levant called it a nest, he was not wrong. Broken eggshells lay scattered around, their size indicating what had hatched from them had been big. Fluffy shapes the size of Saint Bernards lay scattered around Auby, silent, staring at me with large eyes and sharp teeth.
Hulking over them was their mother, or at least I assumed that’s what the massive creature was. Bigger than a pony, that was certain. The nest must have been built around her, because there was no way she could leave through that narrow opening. She was hunched low, and as I met her eyes, she opened her maw and growled. Oh fuck, that was bad, and so was her breath. It smelled of decay, of rotting flesh, and sulfur.
“Easy there,” I murmured. “I’m just going to take this bad food; it’s going to make your, eh… pups sick if they eat that. It’s all good…” My voice trailed off. The light ebbed and flared, andwhen I saw her again, she was closer. At least in here, the sand wasn’t raining down, and my vision was beginning to clear. My fingers closed around Auby’s ear; had he been a real calf, I wouldn’t have pulled, but he wasn’t, so I did. He was heavy, scraping across sand and sticks with awkward bumps. “Hurry, hurry,” I whispered under my breath like a chant.
Auby didn’t move, perhaps couldn’t, and he seemed unable to vocalize like before as well. That his flashing lights, the pale blue beaming from his eyes, were fading couldn’t be good either. Closer now, I slid my hand over his small shoulder, dug deeper into the thick fur there, and pulled again. I’d dropped my own light, but I still clutched the knife. The next flash of fading brightness was a pale lavender, the color of Auby’s eyes. The mother Dushka hunched over her pups, her legs bunched, and then she lunged.
My knife hand swung up on pure instinct. It caught something, burying much deeper than last time. Hot liquid spurted over my hand and turned the handle slick. I could not hold on. Hot breath blasted into my face, and then it was gone. The moment after the attack stretched like a lifetime. I scrambled to gather Auby’s body against my chest, awkwardly crawling backward into the passage. By sheer luck, my hand found the light I’d dropped along the way.
I tumbled out of the nest’s opening with a crunch, some eggshell stuck to my knees. I rolled onto my back, threw the hand with the light up so I could see, and saw only another maw of teeth and a hook-like beak. This one was not nearly as big as the mother, but that didn’t matter; those teeth were still deadly. The beast winced back, and I thought it must have been Levant, with another well-timed blow of his tail. It wasn’t; it was the light.When another lunged at me from the left, I swung my hand at its face, and it yelped and dropped low, blinking as if I’d blinded it.
An advantage that only lasted a short moment; I made the most of it by lunging to my feet, Auby against my chest, and booking it across the walkway toward the entrance. “I’ve got him, Levant!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “I’ve got Auby—get out of there!” A roar was the answer. My hand waved wildly above my head, aiming the light in random directions. I saw Levant, still fighting with more Duskha, red blood streaking him. Leaping over his tail, I kept going, forcing myself to have faith that he’d follow.
He caught up to me when I was almost to the entrance, with the elevator bank and the stairs beyond. His hands caught me by the waist, hauling me into his arms. I was winded from that sprint, but he seemed barely bothered at all. “She’s coming,” he warned, and he swung us through the entrance and then around the corner, his back slamming into the wall. I found myself shoved behind his back next, awkwardly stumbling onto my feet and pinned between metal and muscle.
She’s coming? I didn’t have to ask to know what he meant. A crashing noise preceded her, my mind conjuring up an image of that weird nest/burrow bursting apart as she lunged outside. Howling followed that crash, and there was nothing silent or stealthy about a pack of Dushka giving chase. Paws thudded on metal flooring and sand, the sound of growls and yips echoing in the massive chamber.
I saw the beak come through the doorway, and in that brief moment registered a few things. My light and Levant’s sigils were enough to see by. First, my knife was stuck through thebottom jaw of the beast, and blood coated much of her front. Second, she was even bigger outside the narrow burrow. Third, she seemed blinded by rage, and that did her in. The beast threw herself through the doorway without thought, and Levant was ready for her.
His claws reached, knives flashing, and his tail whipped through the air like lightning. The female Dushka dropped to the ground, dead, paws twitching as if she were still running a few more steps. Her flanks were coated with white foam, and the pack she’d led into the charge screeched to a stop, milling around her body and licking at both foam and blood. It would have been sad to see, if not for how terrifyingly close they were. I feared they’d retaliate by attacking, but they didn’t.
“The males will collect the pups if they are big enough to survive without their mother, and then they’ll flee.” Levant seemed very certain of that, but I didn’t believe it until they trotted away and left us unharmed. They did not attack, barely even seeming to notice we were still there at all. In minutes, silence returned, except for the rapid panting of my breath and the pounding of my heart.
We waited until the last sound of claws against metal had long since faded and my heart rate had almost returned to normal. Only then did Levant slide away from the wall and let me up. A chill immediately struck my skin, and goosebumps broke out. Pinned against his heat, I hadn’t realized how cold it was in there.
“Let me see him,” Levant said, and the husky sound of his voice in that deep silence made me twitch. It was so sad, like he was bracing himself for the worst. Perhaps he’d smelled what Ihadn’t yet, picked up clues even without sight that I couldn’t. My heart began pounding again, suddenly certain that we’d gotten to Auby too late.
I slowly lowered him away from my chest and revealed Auby’s small, compact frame. He was light as a feather as I laid him out on the floor between us and raised the bloodstained light I still held so I could see. Levant lowered himself to the ground, hands already reaching. Perhaps he meant to obscure the damage from me, just for a moment, but there was too much of it. A pale white fluid had leaked from the gashes in his realistic hide, and beneath it, very advanced machinery was revealed.
The little bot was not responding now, his lavender eyes closed and no longer lit at intervals. He seemed dead, or, I should say, powered down, broken. “Can you fix him?” I asked, because in such a short time, Auby had come to mean as much to me as Levant had. The thought of losing either was beginning to sound like a nightmare. To never hear Auby’s factual explanations followed by a sassy commentary, or the clip-clopping of his six hooves…
“I don’t know,” Levant said, but when he lifted his eyes, they were far from bleak; they were determined. “But I know someone who can. Don’t worry, sweet mate. We will do right by him.” It was a vow, earnest, filled with conviction and that same affection I felt for the little bot. If I hadn’t been halfway in love already, I was now. Levant was sweet, caring, and loyal.
I reached up a hand to cup his face, then halted in horror when I realized it was still covered in blood. Halting, I stared at it, saw his eyes flick to the side, and quickly yanked my fingers back. “Sorry, that’s disgusting.” The sleeve of my flight suit was alsostained with the female Dushka’s blood, but that white liquid that had seeped from Auby was also all over my front. I was a mess, Auby was a mess, and I wanted my buddy back—far more than I wanted to go back to my ship or to Earth. Well, that said enough, didn’t it?
“You could never be disgusting,” Levant drawled, a hint of a smile on his handsome face. Somehow, dirty and bloodstained from the fight himself, he still looked handsome to me too. So I guessed that feeling was mutual. I’d never had real feelings for a guy before, so I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that. Brushing over the moment, I focused on the things Icoulddeal with. Like figuring out what our next move was, and how to carefully transport Auby’s immobile body and check that he wasn’t missing any important parts.
Thankfully, Levant seemed to think action was better right now, too. With the Dushka gone, we could check the fishery more thoroughly, so once Levant had secured Auby’s small body in a leather satchel, we set out to do that. It felt wrong, strange, to move on when Auby was out, but what else could we do? Levant’s people depended on these fisheries for food; they had to be fixed.
Chapter 18
Levant
I carried Auby on my back the way I would any injured patient, but he was so slight and small I barely noticed he was there. That was not at all how it should be, because if there was one thing that was true, it was that Auby loudly let his presence be felt. All the time. If he was the only patient I had to worry about, I would have pulled my multi-tool from my belt and gotten to work on him right now. Unfortunately, my Clan depended on us finding this energy source and figuring out what it was. They just didn’t know it.
“I wish Auby could help us with his blueprints,” Felicia muttered when we’d gotten back across the massive pool and close to the energy signature. We’d circled around the water teeming with fish again, via the side where the Dushka had made their nest, because I’d wanted to scour the remains just to be sure no parts of Auby had been left behind. I hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean the beast that had bitten him and hauled him off hadn’t swallowed some parts.
Felicia had been very cute and a little strange in her relief at discovering that no Dushka pups had been left behind; they had all been hauled off by their fathers. The eggshells had been speckled blue and green, with a sandy hue beneath that would have helped them camouflage had they been laid in a less secure place than this. The nest’s insulated bottom had been made up of sticks and fur, plucked and groomed from the pack’s pelts.
I touched Auby’s ear, the soft pelt whispering against my fingertips. It stuck out from the edge of the satchel I’d tucked him into, a reminder to hurry so I could fix him. I didn’t think the damage was so severe that I couldn’t do it, but if it proved to take too long, I was not above asking Altare for help. After all, any technology touched by that Shaman’s hands came out better for it. Male was simply a miracle worker with anything that had a power source.
Then I considered my communicator and wondered if I’d be able to reach him if working on the fishery’s complex-looking machines proved too hard for me. I hoped not, but you never knew when it came to machines built by our ancestors. We were once again deep underground, so my communicator might have a very hard time reaching anyone at all.
“Let’s start with this hatch,” I said when we’d circled around the sides of the machine and the pipes leading from the water with the fish. There was also a massive pipe that aimed straight up, going through the ceiling above us and vanishing into the rock. I pried the metal panel open carefully, and both Felicia and I leaned in to peer inside. She aimed her light left and right, revealing the complicated circuitry, pipes, and cables of the device. This was going to take a while.
My handheld scanner indicated we were in the right spot, though. This was definitely the device that was emitting an EM field, disrupting things with some kind of interference. “I need to study this before I change anything,” I told my mate, and I shrugged helplessly. I’d brought my toolkit from the Burrower, but it wasn’t precise enough to fix Auby, and looking at this machine, I wasn’t sure if it would be precise enough to fix this one either.
“How can I help?” she asked. Silently, I handed her the satchel with Auby in it, and then the pouch with perimeter sensors. “Set these up by activating the button on the side. They will alert us if anything approaches.” She nodded and immediately headed for the nearest exit, then diligently scouted all around the massive chamber. She called out when she found the crack in the wall and the tunnel the Dushka had used to get in. Then, without prompting—probably just to feel useful while I fiddled with the innards of the machine—she began stacking rocks and dirt back into it to block it off.
