Every muscle in my body locks. Behind the nearest trunk, pressed close enough that his body heat bleeds through the humid air between us, I wait.
He's completely still, head tilted, tracking something with senses broader than mine. After a long moment, he points to a shimmer in the air roughly twenty metres ahead. Faint distortion, like heat haze with the wrong frequency.
"Drone," he breathes. "Scanning in a grid. Active sensors."
"I can barely see it."
"Varkaani visual spectrum runs broader than human. It will pass in approximately forty seconds. Then a three-minute window before the next sweep."
Forty seconds. My back against the tree trunk, Horgox close enough that his scent cuts through the jungle's damp rot: something warm, mineral, alien. Not unpleasant. The opposite of unpleasant, which is a thought I'm firmly not having.
"When I move, you follow. Stay low, maintain contact." His hand finds my wrist, fingers closing with a control that registers as deliberate. He could crush the bones without effort. Instead, his grip is precise, calibrated to communicate without constraining.
The shimmer passes. He moves.
Three minutes of sprinting through undergrowth, my hand locked in his, his stride shortened to something I can match. By the time we hit cover behind a fallen trunk, my lungs burn and my legs are shaking.
"Two minutes forty remaining," he says. His thumb presses against my wrist, checking my pulse. Quick, professional. The kind of assessment someone does for a teammate, not a liability. "Wreckage is another eighty metres. Can you move?"
"Can I—" Offence cuts through the breathlessness. "Yes. I can move."
His mouth twitches. Not a smile, not quite, but something in the architecture of his expression shifts. Then it's gone, and he's scanning the approach to Buttercup's crash site.
My ship looks worse in daylight. Crumpled against three massive trunks, hull split open, purple rain etching acid-bright patterns into exposed metal. The cockpit section is twisted but partially intact. The cargo hold gapes like a wound.
"Oh, sweet girl." The words are automatic, the same way I've always talked to my equipment. Machines respond to care, even when they can't hear it. "I'm sorry."
"The crash should have been fatal." Horgox is scanning the perimeter, but his voice has dropped to something quieter. "The structural integrity held longer than it should have."
"She always did her best." Blinking hard. Not the time. "Cockpit access is there. The opening's tight; I'll need to squeeze through."
He assesses the gap, then the twisted metal surrounding it. His hands find load-bearing points along the frame with a precision that speaks of structural understanding. "Unstable. The front section is holding on friction and habit. If the balance shifts—"
"Then I need to be fast." Tools are already in my hands, muscle memory from a thousand salvage operations on equipment that was never designed to survive what it survived. Mining station life. Making do. Keeping things alive with spit and stubbornness and spare parts nobody else would think to repurpose. "Bebo's core is mounted behind the main console. Biometric lock keyed to my DNA; he should reactivate once I'm in range. But the mounting system has redundant safety locks to prevent crash ejection."
"So you'll need to release each lock individually while preventing power surges to the quantum lattice."
My head snaps up. "That's exactly right. How do you—"
"I maintained my own equipment." Something shutters behind his eyes. "Different application. Same principles."
I maintained my own equipment.Because ApexCorp's gladiators were property that had to keep itself in working order. The implication sits in my stomach like a stone, and the anger that rises isn't the useful kind; it's the kind that makes my hands want to shake.
I channel it into work instead. "I go in, you keep watch. If the structure shifts too far, you let go and get clear. Don't get crushed for me."
He positions himself against the damaged sections, bracing with his full weight. No response to my instruction, which I'm learning means he heard me and has no intention of following it.
"Next drone sweep in four minutes. Go."
The cockpit is a nightmare of twisted metal and sparking wires. What used to be the ceiling is now the floor, and orientation takes a full five seconds to recalibrate before my hands find familiar surfaces. The control panel, cracked but mostly intact. The biometric reader beneath it, dark but structurally sound.
My palm presses flat against the reader. "Bebo? Come on, buddy, talk to me."
The panel flickers. Once. Nothing. Then again, and a familiar voice crackles through damaged speakers like the best sound in the known universe.
"Krilly. Your vital signs indicate elevated stress, multiple contusions, and decisions I would categorise as suboptimal."
"Bebo!" My eyes sting and I don't care. "You're alive."
