“I do not understand your question.”
She swallowed, regretting asking, but recognizing the importance of the question. “You aren’t going to go back on your word?”
Both eyestalks swiveled hard in her direction. “I would not dishonor myself or the Multitude by lying about a tribute.” Niis stood. “I did not speak with the Myla directly. My binaries handled the transaction. Information about the healer inexchange for assistance freeing her brother from a cage and protection when she and her brother flee the planet.”
“Protection?” Eleri frowned. Did anyone even know what Myla had done? She had no doubt she would try to take Minio off planet, but if they were clever about it, no one would even know she had broken him out of the lone jail cell in Pyo’s office.
“Additional questions are not included in your tribute. I will give my information and escort you to our settlement border. Then our tribute is complete.
Eleri nodded and tried to futilely rub the pounding headache away from her temples. She wasn’t about to press her luck. Learning more about Myla wasn’t worth gambling with her freedom, and she had a feeling if she infuriated Niis, his devotion to the Multitude would matter little.
CHAPTER 27
S’samph
“You took your time,” K’kaen hissed, frill flaring as he smacked a flat palm on the handle of his pulsar gun.
"Someone had to go collect the arsenal,” S’samph hissed back as his own frill lifted in challenge. It wasn’t much of an arsenal. Pyo had promised them the town’s whole collection, but it was really just two ancient plasma cannons and a collection of half-broken laser blades. They’d have to rely on their personal pulsar guns to do most of the damage. The IA hadn’t outfitted a small farming town like Laurus with much in the way of artillery.
“Where was the arsenal yesterday when they snatched her on a main road in the middle of sunlight? While you were visiting with a drug addict locked in a cell!”
“Don’t even think about starting with thisf’fretagain,” S’kasia smacked K’kaen with her tail hard enough to send him off balance. S’samph was already gearing up a seething response when his clutch-sister leveled him with a hiss loud enough to raise the bones in the sand. “We are going to leave now and get Eleri. Keep your tongues civil, or I will go get her myself.”
“The raviks are the enemy,” S’samph growled as he holstered his own pulsar gun and strapped one of the plasma cannons across his back.
“Only good ravik is a dead ravik,” K’kaen agreed, frill flaring along his back.
“Let’s get moving,” S’kasia gestured skyward to the ominous clouds overhead. “Any hour now. We don’t want to be caught out in the rains.”
In grim silence, they mounted their levibikes and sped off down the dusty road toward the ravik encampment. With each moment passing, a feeling of mounting dread suffused itself through S’samph’s chest. Eleri had to be alive. The raviks wouldn’t have taken her for no reason. Her death would be a tactical disadvantage. Although these things were all true, this did little to ease the fear. Once again, he’d proven himself unreliable when she needed him.
When they arrived, they took cover behind a copse of thorny bushes. S’kasia produced her holomap. “There is a back entrance over here, I believe.” She gestured to the far side of the settlement. “If we wait a standard hour to check for patterns of movement, we can learn more.”
S'samph’s tail lashed from side to side in barely disguised franticness. “The longer we wait, the longer Eleri is frightened and alone.”
“I can take a few klatches of idiot raviks.” K’kaen started to unholster his blaster. The two males were about to advance on the camp, despite S’kasia’s growing frustration, when a flurry of activity near the entrance stilled their movement. S’samph disliked the unexpected pattern. Something was happening, and he would bet his last scale it had something to do with Eleri. But a grip on his shoulder prevented him from surging forward, in disregard of every proper military protocol he had ever learned.
“If you have a single intelligent thought between the two of you, then you will wait,” S’kasia’s frill rose high around her neck as she yanked both of them back down to crouching behind the bush.
A klatch of three barely adolescent raviks came escorting Eleri out of their makeshift camp, led by their singularity. S’samph was no fool. He kept his pulsar gun trained on the leader. Perhaps this was a unique opportunity. To destroy their singularity would sow infighting in the ravik settlement, while all the binaries and older klatches would annihilate each other for a chance to ascend to the open leadership slot.
“Why have you taken my mate?” His voice boomed through the fine mist of drizzle. By the next sunrise, it would become true rain. More raviks began to cluster around the entrance to their encampment. S’samph’s shoulder stung in reminder of his last encounter. He glanced over at K’kaen and S’kasia. The others hadn’t dropped their weapons. Although they’d been removed from combat situations for several standard years, K’kaen could take out an entire horde in hand-to-hand combat, and only a fool would tangle with a priestess of I’lata. S’samph would lead with calm. He would try to lead with calm. Seeing Eleri bedraggled and injured in the arms of the enemy seemed to shred through the long-established reserves of calm that had earned him his title of ‘stone-tailed’ squad leader.
“Your mate has bargained the terms of her own release. We will return her to you. If you incite violence on my camp, I will answer in kind.” The male prodded Eleri forward, and she made a motion to cover her mouth. S’samph rushed toward her, but thesingularity’s arm spikes raised in warning. Bargained? What did she offer these creatures? If they’d done any lasting damage to her, he wouldn’t hold back.
“You think to make demands of me after you stole my mate?” S’samph couldn’t quell it any longer. The anger and fear he’d been tamping down came roaring out with a ferocity he didn’t recognize.
“Stay where you are, latil’e, or I cannot promise her safe passage.”
S’samph hissed at the obvious threat in the singularity’s words. Rage and relief warred with each other, both bubbling to the surface of his emotional well. If he lost someone else, he would never recover. He would abide by the terms and wait until Eleri was safe at his side, and then he would blast the entire settlement into oblivion. The raviks continued to prod Eleri forward until they passed a boundary line demarcated by a collection of jagged datadisk shards. No doubt all of them were stolen from Indras and Laurus.
His mate stumbled forward, off balance and wearing only one of her boots. S’samph rushed forward to retrieve her. She stared up at him with her dust-blue eyes and then promptly vomited directly onto his pulsar gun. Her sickness dripped down onto his boots. Eleri’s face turned a violent shade of green and then switched back to its familiar magenta of embarrassment.
“I’ll buy you new boots,” she rasped before falling unconscious in his arms.
“F’fret,Eleri. You really think I care about the boots?” He murmured the question into her hair, knowing it would go unanswered. In the end, he left K’kaen and S’kasia to parlay a reluctant truce with the singularity of the ravik encampment. Getting Eleri to safety was more important than his own selfish desire to blast their community to the ground. It was a risk to let the raviks go unpunished for their actions, but he wasn’t foolish enough to let his own pride get in the way of his responsibilities to his mate again.
He held Eleri close to his chest as he mounted his levibike with her in his arms. His clever mate hadn’t really needed rescuing after all. But he’d worry over her all the same. He did acknowledge, with grim amusement, that S’kasia had been right. Eleri was the right female for him after all.
