He kept moving with her, and she managed to raise herself up, getting a view of the chaos around them.
At the ship, many girls were standing near the edge and looking down. Some were crying and upset. Others were pointing.
“Let me down,” she said.
“I am going to get you--”
She grabbed his horn and started to pull on it.
“Stop that!” he snapped and shifted his grip on her. His big hands ran over her thighs and up to her rear. It pissed her off because she liked the way his big hands felt.
“Watch it,” she snapped and slapped his hand. “Put me down. I am not incapacitated.”
He lowered her to the ground. “Fine.”
She pointed at him. “And don't be touching me like that! My ass is not open for test feels.”
He glared at her. “If you had just behaved--”
“Look, buddy, I'm not your little pretend date. I have a purpose here, and I'm not about to let you muck it up for me.”
“As you should,” he said.
She nodded, and boy did that make her head spin. But she wasn't going to let him know that. Instead, she marched over to where the other girls were freaking out. When she got over there, some of the staff was attempting to get them back on the ship.
“We can't get on there!” one girl said that Adryel recognized, but she wasn't positive on her name. Chola. Chloe? Cholka? Something like that.
The ground still felt wobbly and unstable, though Adryel wasn’t sure if it was the landing pad or her own balance all mucked up from hitting her head. “We have to get out of here,” Adryel said. “We need to get back on the ship and get back into orbit.” Whatever had happened, they were safer on their ship and in orbit until whatever happened was figured out.
Was it an accident? Or something worse.
In Adryel’s experience, it was almost always something worse.
Space was amazingly easy to get lost in, the vastness made it very easy to hide in whenever it was necessary. There were even known to be colonies that just lived in space. They floated around from system to system, bartering as needed and generally keeping to themselves. It would be easy for them to drift off somewhere until this whole mess was cleared up, and everything was safe.
It seemed the most logical thing to do, under the circumstances.
The girl pointed at the edge. “But, but, they're down there.”
“Who's down there?” Adryel asked, looking over the edge. She couldn't see anything. Debris. Smoke. All she could see was the jungle beneath the landing platforms. It looked like a huge pile of shades of green and black. Where the floor of that jungle was, she couldn't make it out. It was too far down. “There's nothing down there.”
“Graecey's down there!”
Adryel looked back over the edge. “Oh no.”
She glanced around for the big Kantenan who had picked her up. He seemed like an important guy. Others were deferring to him about things, anyway. He must know something to get them through this.
She finally saw him across the way, talking with other guards, some were with the Galactic Alliance, and others were more of the red-skinned Kantenans. None of them had the same fancy clothing that he wore, though.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Hey, you. Big Kantenan.”
He turned and looked her way. The horns on the side of his head looked bigger than they had before.
Maybe she just didn't realize how large they were, coiled around the side of his head. She glanced at some of the other Kantenans that looked her way as well. They all had horns, but they all varied in shape and size.
None of them looked at her quite like he did, either.
It was unnerving.
