Page 74 of On a Barbarian World

She stopped. “You were afraid they wouldn’t be?” She grabbed his arm and squeezed. “Kavon, it doesn’t matter. It is who the Markarians are now that matters, who your people have made yourselves. Honorable, protective, maybe a bit autocratic with a hint of arrogance.” She winked at him. “The first two are pretty awesome.” Her face turned serious. “You don’t have poverty or hunger, or people living alone and suffering. Most of the galaxy can’t claim the same. You should be proud, whatever you came from, you’ve made yourself into a great people, a great person.”

“You should be proud, too,” he said quietly. “It matters little who your father was. Your mother was clearly a good, strong woman.”

Aurina smiled. “Thank you. And yes, she was.” She squeezed his arm again. “Let’s go find this sword.”

They moved into yet another cavern. They’d been through several other ones, and they still hadn’t found anything related to the crash survivors. Aurina released a breath and studied the map again. According to this, they should have come across it already.

Had she read the map wrong? Had they missed it? Maybe after all this time, there was nothing left to find?

Then she heard a sound. The tinkle of running water.

She turned her head and followed it.

“Aurina?”

She heard the crunch of Kavon’s boots behind her. There. She saw a small waterfall running down the rock from above. It pooled in a small puddle at the bottom…a pool with smooth metal sides.

She glanced around, holding up her light. “Look at this.” She saw a wide, neat entrance cut into the rock wall of the cavern. She looked up and saw numerous similar rooms carved into the rock. A few metal ladders still dangled from above.

Kavon strode into the ground floor room. “They lived here.”

She saw tables and chairs made from debris from the ship. A pile of animal furs sat in one corner. They’d used what they had and what they’d found here to make a home. “The smaller rooms above must be where they slept.”

She didn’t see any sign of the sword.

Then she saw something strange. A glass door at the back of the cave. Frowning, she moved toward it. The glass was frosted, and, as she touched it, lights flared to life. The door slid open.

Kavon was behind her in a second, sword drawn. Behind the door, more lights clicked on.

She gasped. This was no primitive cave. This was a lab.

She stepped inside. Metal benches lined the room, and an old-fashioned comp dominated a table in the center. Lots of scientific paraphernalia was scattered around—beakers, test tubes—and at one end of the lab, large cylinders filled with colored liquids.

Wandering closer, she tapped the comp. The screen flared to life, filled with text and images.

As she read, the meaning of the text seeped in, and she gasped.

“What?” Kavon demanded.

God, should she tell him? She’d seen that he’d been worried about the true intentions of the First Warriors.

“I…” She turned to face him, sliding her hands over his chest. “Are you sure you want to know?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Yes.”

That was her warrior. Straight to the point and ready to face anything. “They were researching the nanami. They…created the nanami. They actually called them nanamites.”

Kavon frowned. “No, the nanami have always been here, a part of us.”

She glanced at the comp again. “It seems the original organisms, the mites, were here, living in the cave, glowing on the walls. What you call the primitive nanami. The First Warriors started experimenting on them. Some of the group were high-tech military scientists. This world was harsh. They believed the entire planet was like the Wilds, filled with wild animals, and a primitive humanoid species.”

“My ancestors.”

“The natives and the Terrans, they are both your ancestors, Kavon. And the Terrans, they spliced their nanotechnology—small machines they could program—with the mites, creating nanamites. Then they infected themselves to make themselves stronger, faster, more suited to surviving here.”

He ran a hand over his head. “There is more?”

“They also infected the primitive species. To increase their intelligence. To make them a more viable species for the survivors to mate with.” She strode away, anger bubbling in her chest. “They were playing God, Kavon. They came here and did things they shouldn’t have done.”