Page 26 of Feral Tamed

“Your suit is on correctly, not too bothered by the Riho?” Camila asked, her hands already running over her own suit in practiced moves. Giving herself a final check as well to make sure we were protected from the vacuum of space.

Four of the gladiators, including Fierce, had made their way off the shuttle ten minutes ago. They were supposed to clear us a path before with Camila guarding us, Luka and I would board the small station. We didn’t want to alert the Aderian authorities on the planet as Luka had stridently recommended against it. So Ziame had stayed behind to pilot the Vagabond with Chloe. While Kitan was flying us on the shuttle; both ships would need to be in constant contact and remain hidden.

It had been a tight squeeze, the shuttle was tiny, but trying to fly Ziame’s old ship, which apparently had some kind of cloaking tech, would have been impossible. We wouldn’t have all managed to get aboard it, and we needed enough numbers to make sure we could handle any resistance on that base.

I twitched, rubbing my glove-clad palm over my suit-clad thigh anxiously. Ten minutes was a long time to wait without hearing anything from the guys. What if something had gone wrong? I’d practiced the com with Fierce, so I knew he could make calls now. We’d agreed on complete radio silence though…

When the signal finally came, a thud on the outside of the shuttle’s airlock, I just about jumped into the air. Heart racing, I watched as Camila calmly opened the airlock and stuck the point of her laser riffle through it. Thorin was on the other side, flanked by Fierce and Snarl.

The Ferai beast was kitted out in a special suit, the kind that they made for aliens like Ziame or Sunder, who had weird extra appendages or horn shapes. The suit apparently conformed to the body it was put on, regardless of its shape. It made Snarl, who was a muscled, terribly fluid-looking, beast of a creature look even more impressive. The black suit almost made his shape seem like a strange mechanical creature, and when you saw the glint of his red eyes through the face plate.

When Fierce had helped Snarl into the suit earlier, Camila and I had stared. There was something so freakish about what looked like a mix between a huge hound and a black panther, patiently letting itself be suited up for a space walk.

I had been certain Snarl would refuse with the chance at weightlessness ahead of him, he certainly freaked out on the shuttle ride off the planet. After his calm and intelligent behavior down on the planet, I had been shocked to see him act like that. So it had been a surprise to see him so calm now, maybe the mission itself was focus enough for him, and as far as I knew, we hadn’t been without some kind of gravity yet.

“Ready to go, my love?” Thorin drawled with a smirk at Camila, stepping up close to the point of her riffle, letting it rest against his chest. Camila immediately pulled the weapon back and slung it from its strap over her shoulder, her face disgruntled as she wagged her finger in his face. “What did I say about gun safety? You’re a former police officer, you know better than that!”

I figured it was entirely for that reason that Thorin did shit like that because he was grinning this shit-eating grin. As he stepped aside and gestured his female into the darkened interior of the base, the two seemed to make a unified front, despite the fact that she was still quietly reprimanding him for being an irresponsible idiot.

Fierce was watching me quietly as I stepped nervously out of the shuttle and onto the base, my boots making odd clunking noises as they hit the metal flooring. The heavy pack with supplies hanging from my shoulder, along with a travel cage in my hand. Luka had a similar kit and cage with him, together we hoped to be prepared for the basics.

Emergency lighting was flashing across the ceiling at intervals, the orange flashes painting everything in dramatic streaks. Rust coloring the metal walls and some floor panels shifted and creaked ominously as I stepped on them.

Snarl fell in behind us, guarding the Doc who was following us. Luka hadn’t said a single thing, but if anything, he looked more nervous than I felt. Fierce took me by the hand, guiding me through corridors streaked with dirt, my HUD was telling me the air was breathable here, but I was fairly certain there was going to be some kind of smell. Neither Fierce nor Thorin had taken off their helmet so I was following their example.

The hallways were giving me flashbacks to horror movies I had seen. My imagination was supplying images of scary, killer aliens hiding in ducts or around corners. I walked a little closer to Fierce’s large bulk, which was delightfully outlined in the form-fitting black spacesuit. I liked him in his leather kilt, but damn was he sexy like this too.

“Jakar and Da’vi are in the control room,” Thorin said, “We haven’t run into anyone yet. So they’re trying to figure out if they’re hiding or abandoned this place.” My heart sunk in my shoes, if they were all gone, were there going to be no Riho to rescue? Besides feeling disappointed and sad myself, I couldn’t imagine what that was like for Fierce. I found his gloved hand and clung to it.

This creepy corridor was not very long, with another thick door at the end. Thorin spun the round handle with a grunt, rust staining the edges of the portal. When the door opened to a room with stacks upon stacks of cages inside it I froze and stared. It was hard to tell if there were any animals inside any of these. Fierce used his hand to guide me over the threshold, leading us to the center of the space. Luka was already holding out his scanner and searching the cages, his gaze glued to a spot in one of the corners.

“This room seems to only have empty cages, but there’s more in the next one that we should search,” Thorin said, indicating a door. It was as rusted and derelict looking as the first one; this place looked absolutely trashed. I was starting to feel like the small station could fall apart at any second. This wasn’t some new kind of built, it looked really old and very abandoned.

“The smugglers retrofitted this place didn’t they?” Camila demanded of her male, indicating a panel on one wall with some writing I couldn’t understand. “Hey Doc, isn’t that Aderian script?” Luka barely glanced up from his handheld scanner, nodding with a grim look in confirmation. It had Camila nod in satisfaction, “See, I think this might be an old drilling facility, look at the mounts on the ceiling over there.”

I had no clue what she saw, I couldn’t figure out what the bolts and hooks on the ceiling were meant for. Camila seemed pretty sure of her case, and I did think it made sense, the smugglers must have discovered it and used it for their own purposes after it had been abandoned by the Aderians.

Fierce looked as grim as the Doc did when we headed for the second door. He leaned in close to talk more privately to me, “The next room is pretty shocking, there are several animals still in cages there. They’re pretty miserable.” I was glad he’d prepared me, because stepping through into the next room, which was bigger and even still held some kind of crane, I was hit with the sight of a dozen cages stacked against a wall. In each, an animal had been locked up, but most of those were dead.

Fluffy made a sad keening noise next to my ear, her body shivering, and her tail curling around my neck. I hated the helmet covering me at that moment because I couldn’t reach out and pet her, I had to settle for tilting my head and rubbing my cheek against her.

Thorin and Camila went over to one of the other doors and looked inside it, I could hear their voices as they talked with Jakar and Da’vi. I followed Fierce to one of the cages where an animal was still moving. Not all of these were Riho, in fact, I saw only two dead ones of Fluffy’s species. Other animals in various sizes littered the others, sometimes four in one cage, crowding the small spaces.

“Best we can figure, they stacked empties in that first room, and the ones they wanted to take with them here. Only they never came back to pick up this last batch,” Fierce explained. His hands were patiently working to open one of the cages, which had rusted shut. A thick layer of animal droppings covered the bottom. Inside was a Riho, maybe the only one still alive. This one was bigger than Fluffy, with dark blue and bright blue spots. It was lying on its side, its fur matted and gone in spots, its breathing labored.

The animal was so out of it that Fluffy’s presence wasn’t even required. When Fierce pulled the poor animal out of the cage, it didn’t move, didn’t respond. “Doc, come here, I got one that needs your help,” Fierce called out, cradling the animal against his chest as he got up and looked around. I did too, noticing that Thorin and Camila were sifting through the cages, looking for a survivor, but Luka was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did he go?” I demanded, unclasping the water flask from my belt as I spoke so I could carefully dribble a little of it into the poor animal’s mouth, there was no doubt that it was severely dehydrated. The Doc had prepped us a little on what to expect, so I knew to only give a little, and that this one needed an IV for more fluids quickly. But where was he?

“I’ll go look,” Camila said, abandoning the empty cage she’d lifted from the stack to hurry back to the first room. Thorin gave a nod at Fierce, before hurrying after her, clearly not about to let her go anywhere alone on this base. Probably a smart choice, we already knew that the gravity generator was a little faulty and could fluctuate at any moment.

I took the sickly animal from Fierce, so he could search the rest of the cages while we waited. It didn’t take too long though before Camila and Thorin returned, “He’s missing. The stack of empties toppled but he’s not beneath them, it looks to me like a struggle,” Thorin explained. “Keep your eyes open, we’re going to do another sweep of this shithole.”

They ducked into the control room to update Da’vi and Jakar and then jogged out with Jakar in tow. The three fanned out, Camila with her rifle at the ready, while they headed back to the previous room. I’d seen a few more doors leading off that place, so they were likely going to search them one by one, and hopefully locate the Doc.

I shared a worried look with Fierce, if the Doc was gone, did that mean we weren’t alone here? What had gotten to him? Was he hurt? Regardless, we needed to let the others do their job, while Fierce and I tried to do ours. I wasn’t going to be of any help searching this base with a gun in hand, I’d shoot myself in the foot. I could probably attempt that IV though, Luka had shown us how to do it in case there were a lot of animals to help. I figured I was the only one actually willing to try, Fierce had been far too squeamish about sticking a needle into Snarl’s paw for practice.

I knelt on the floor, placed the animal on his side, and took out the kit Luka had prepared for this. I got the IV ready, and then with some trepidation hooked it up to the sick Riho. All the while, Fluffy was purring encouragingly in my ear. I was grateful that Luka’s IV kit was meant to be dummy-proof, locating a vein automatically and smoothly sliding into that thin paw. I taped plas film around the site, and then carefully tucked the animal into the new, clean travel cage.