“They did. But it was in spite of me. I am proud of them.”
She shook her head, “You’re being way too hard on yourself. I think Kaj’k is right. You are very capable. He speaks of you like you are his hero.”
She said it with such conviction that I really wanted to believe her. But the truth of the matter still remained. “I am the first overseer to lose an entire mothership. I am the first to have been stripped of the title because of circumstances and not because I’d gone on my last battle. Perhaps I should’ve been lost with my ship. That should’ve been my last battle.”
Dottie’s face flushed red, and I could tell immediately that I had said something to upset her. “Hold on one stinking moment. The whole scourge thing isn’t your fault. You couldn’t havestopped it. It was the first time it had ever happened, and it’s not fair to blame yourself for that. And second, what the hell is this about your final battle? I’ve heard about this ritual where old hunters plan one last big battle against the scourge and die in blaze of glory. I think it’s dumb. And you’re not anywhere near old enough for that.”
“I am the oldest hunter on this planet.”
“I don’t give a damn!”
As if to add in her own opinion, the mother cat yowled from the corner of the tarp where she sat nursing her kittens.
“See! Her Highness agrees. You can now add kitten rescuer to your list of achievements.”
I could not find a logical protest, so I told her the truth. “I decided it wasn’t my time yet when you kissed me that evening outside the hunters’ compound,” I admitted.
“Oh!” Her eyes went wide. “Then I’m glad I did it.”
I bent to nuzzle her face with mine, and her hands drifted up to my horns. She snatched them away as if hurt.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your horns!”
I grimaced. “That did feel different.”
“Painful?”
“No, not painful. Just different.”
“There’s a new crack in it, and it’s sharp.” She took a good, proper look at my horns, and I lit up the space with my communicator to give her more light. “The crack goes pretty deep too. We need to be careful with it until someone can repairit. Considering the tip of this horn never grew back, I’m thinking it’s one part of the body you can’t regenerate.”
“After our last horns shed, it is permanent,” I said. “And no, we cannot regenerate it. We can only regenerate soft tissue. The old Xarc’n military’s scientists would’ve loved to get a hold of the animals on your planet that could regenerate entire limbs.”
“Imagine that! Being able to regenerate an entire arm would probably be super useful for you hunters. But it’s kind of creepy.” Dottie shuddered.
My stomach chose this moment to announce to the room that it was unacceptably empty.
Dottie placed her hand on my stomach and laughed. “Okay! Got the message loud and clear. You’ve been working hard, healing, and using up all your reserves. This flashlight won’t last much longer anyway. Let’s go find that food Tilly left behind. It’s in the same building your shuttle chose to take a nap in. I hope it’s not in too bad a shape.”
“It will survive to New Franklin.”
“If it’s as tough as you, then I’m sure it will. Come on, let’s go see the damage.”
Chapter 23: Dottie
I stood at the broken edge of the floor and stared down, down, down at the rubble below, regretting it immediately as a relentless rush of vertigo threatened to send me sprawling over the edge to my doom. Ror’k had his arms wrapped around me instantly, enveloping me in a sense of safety. I leaned back against him and closed my eyes, willing the dizziness to pass as he guided me back away from danger.
“This is a problem.” His voice sounded more tired than I’d ever heard it.
I took in the crazy-looking scene before me. We were in one of the units on the third floor of the repurposed factory lofts, though it barely resembled a place meant for living anymore. Furniture lay scattered around the room in uneven piles, and the couch was upside down. Shattered glass glittered across the floor in uneven patches. A toppled bookshelf leaned against a cracked support beam, and a trail of debris stretched from the kitchen to the far wall.
But all that was nothing compared to the gaping hole in the exterior wall with a Xarc’n shuttle wedged in it. The edges of the breach were jagged, torn inward as Ror’k’s shuttle had punched straight through the concrete.
The rear end of said shuttle was hanging out of the building, while the nose was firmly parked in some guy’s living room. It balanced there so precariously that I wondered how the storm had gotten it to stay in that position in the first place.
The worst part? The only way to getinsidethe shuttle wasoutsidethe building,andit was upside down.
