“Yes, actually.I would.”
Gus eyed the boy’s scrawny arms and then Roake’s unconscious commander, half tempted.Unfortunately, Caius’s frame dwarfed the boy’s.Even with the aid of soul’s breath, the boy would have a hard time getting him into the container.Let alone these two others.
“You complain a lot,” Gus observed, reaching down to take Caius’s ankles.
The boy’s response was lost as faint shouting came from a distance.
They froze, listening.
“Quick,” Gus urged.
When possible, she preferred to hide rather than fight.
Once again, Gus bent to grab Caius by his ankles.A lot of grunting and straining ensued as she dragged him inch by painful inch toward her container.
Unlike some of her siblings, Gus wasn’t adept at usingkito strengthen her musculature and skeleton.It took her hours of training to be just barely stronger than the average human.
The boy was a bundle of nerves next to her, fidgeting anxiously, his fear of the orchid forgotten as he clutched its pot to his chest like some kind of talisman.
Despite his rising anxiety, he never once urged Gus to leave Caius behind.Nor did he tell her to hurry.He stayed quiet and focused.A protective shadow as they made their way the short distance to her container.
Finally, Gus slapped her hand on the hidden bio scanner on the container’s side, murmuring her password in a low voice.
The container unsealed, allowing them entrance.
“Inside,” Gus ordered.
The boy dashed inside as Gus renewed her struggles.By the time she got Caius’s lower half into the container, Gus was red faced and sweaty.She pushed and shoved, not the least bit gentle, until at last he was all the way inside.
Even then, her job remained unfinished.Something had to be done about the trio of dead humans and the blood trail that led straight to her door.
“Stay,” Gus ordered the boy as she grabbed a couple of madras.A particularly interesting sub species of moss that thrived and quickly multiplied in damp, wet environments.She’d once seen a single plant replicate enough to cover a ten-meter surface in less than half an hour.The most fascinating aspect was the way it had completely absorbed the liquid it had taken root in.To the point there was no trace of it left afterward.Not even a molecular bio-signature.
She was hoping it had the same effect on blood.
The people who had done this to Caius likely had their own method of tracking.After all, even humans had long possessed chemical reagents capable of identifying the presence of blood.She needed a way to wipe all traces of his passage.The madras were her answer.
Hopefully, it also worked against those species, many of them Tsavitee, who came equipped with natural biological traits that made them excellent trackers.
God, Gus hoped it wasn’t a Tsavitee tracker.They were worse than bloodhounds, possessing a sixth sense that was almost impossible to fool.
After summoning a cargo trawler and several cleaner bots, Gus darted back outside to scatter the madras over the pool of blood that Caius had left.
She waited with bated breath as they remained inert, floating on the bloody surface, doing nothing.Round specks of unassuming brown and green.
Then, gradually, the tightly furled leaves began to uncurl.Wiry hairs extended from their bottom as the body of the madras started to poof out.
“It’s working,” Gus whispered, feeling excitement and fascination as tiny child plants sprouted from the extended leaves of the moss.In a few minutes, the blood would be gone, and she would have several more madras mosses to add to her collection.
That left her only the bodies to hide.
That’s where the trawler came in.A second later, it rounded the corner, trundling toward Gus like a well-behaved beast of burden.
She bent, loading the first of the three humans into the trawler.It wasn’t as difficult as it had been with Caius; human muscle mass wasn’t nearly as dense as Tuann.Not that these three had much muscle on them to begin with.Most of their bulk was due to fat.
The boy poked his head out to see what was keeping her.Gus waved him back.At the same time, she programmed the trawler to carry the bodies inside.
Once that was done, she set off to follow Caius’s blood trail, not forgetting to toss out a madras for every few drops she came across.They poofed out satisfyingly every time.Like fuzzy dandelion seeds.
