nineteen
. . .
Kex
It tookus another three days to reach the crash site. The pod lay on its side, split open, with lmmp escape fluid splattered across the forest floor like a cracked, rotten egg. “This will be atrocious to clean up,” I said.
“They won’t need to remove the goo, will they? It’s not tech,” my mate said.
“Technically, it is,” Rainair said. “The lmmp communicate through electrical inputs. Their whole bodies are receptors. That fluid is engineered to support their forms and transmit their signals.” He grinned evilly. “If the ormonai are serious about purging the forest, they’ll have to remove every speck by hand.”
I winced. He was right, and I was endlessly grateful that job would not fall to me.
“Well, that sucks for them,” my mate said, a hint of a smile in her voice. “But my friends aren’t here. How are we going to find them? They could be anywhere at this point.”
Rainair and I both pointed to a path in the trees, a clear trail of slime and broken, bent, and trampled foliage making it very clear about a dozen creatures as uncoordinated as my matetrampled in that direction. “I do not think they will be hard to follow.”
“Oh good, lead the way,” my mate said, perhaps not noticing my sarcasm. Our translation tech was not perfect.
I led the way. It took us only a few minutes to reach a small river. The trail of slime led upstream a short distance, where we came out of the trees onto a small stony bank with humans scattered about completing various tasks. A protector was the first to notice us, tall and pale purple, he stepped out of the tree line and observed us. I raised a hand in greeting, and that was when the humans noticed us. My mate stepped around me.
“I’m back, bitches,” she called. And the humans broke out into yells and shrieks.
While the humans swarmed my mate, I stepped to the side and greeted the protector.
“Lord Kexanoplus, how can I serve?” the man asked, offering a bow of respect.
“Please, it’s Kex. This is Rainair.” I gestured to my friend who had followed me, casting weary eyes at the excited women. “And we are here to help. We have brought additional supplies, and my mate has a translation device so we can properly communicate.”
A second protector stepped up to us. “Your mate is the woman who was taken by a ranook?” the green man asked.
“Yes, it brought me my mate, a good distance east. We made it to the city and saw your report, and my mate wished to return and help her friends. Have you been able to communicate with the humans?” I asked.
“Sort of,” the green man said, pinching his temple, as if in pain. “I returned to the city for a check-in and downloaded the entire database.”
“Fucking stupid, that was,” Rainair said.
“Yes, well, it seemed necessary in the moment, and it helped to understand the women, even if they can’t understand us. I am Immun, by the way, and this is Zelphinus, First Protector.”
I gestured acknowledgment to both men. “The cleanup file says backup should be here in about two days. Do you wish to wait for them before escorting the humans out?”
“Yes,” Zelphinus sighed. “Only one has injuries preventing her from walking, but they are all weary. A larger group to support them would make travel easier.”
I nodded in the human way, but caught myself. “I follow your leadership in this,” I said, and returned to where my mate was holding court among her people. As First Protector, Zelphinus’s head would be on the line based on how well this cleanup went. It would be a political nightmare once it was widely known, and while I easily outranked the man, he knew the protector’s procedures better than I did, and I wasn’t about to clip the man’s claws.
Emily
“Oh my God, you’re alive!”
“But how are you still alive?”
“Emily!”
“She’s clean, how is she clean?”
“She’s not dead!”
“Is that a cat-man?”
