ROHILEK, KURU SYSTEM
Groaning, Eija struggled to free herself of the oppressive weight restraining her. She moaned and pushed at the thing against her shoulder. Jagged pain tortured her body. Arching her spine, she cried out, adrenaline snapping her awake. Slumping back, she realized her fingers were sticky. Mentally, she knew there was blood—but from what? Her blurred vision and mind wouldn’t make sense of the distorted scene around her.
“Careful,” a voice trilled. “You’re injured.”
“Reef . . .” she murmured, the fog of unconsciousness lifting. Relief whispered through her body, not only that she had survived, but that he had, too.
“I’m here, Ei, but this beast won’t let me near you.”
The sound of a scuffle ensued—a huff, a thud, a few more thuds, then a shout. A chortle-growl.
“Back down, BeastieBoy,” Reef ground out. “I was here first.”
Wait. Eija blinked furiously, her thoughts a jumbled knot.
The shape returned and zoomed into focus.
She went cold at the red slits staring back. Undulating ashen black surrounded those eyes. “What . . .?” The few beats her heart skipped seemed trapped in her throat as she realized it hadn’t been Reef extricating her from the harness. “Daq’Ti.” Something about his nearness proved disconcerting, strange—her brain finally processed it: he was changed. Different.
You’ve djelling lost it. The crash—it’d addled her brain.
“With care, Xonim,” Daq’Ti trilled, the noise gentler, less . . . beastly.
Eija frowned, trying to discern if it was her imagination or—
No. No, his eyes were definitely changing. Still red, but less . . . slitted. More full, though not quite oval. “I don’t . . . How are you . . .?”
He pried her harness apart with little trouble, and she stole a greedy breath of sanitized air. Clearly his strength hadn’t changed, but his lavalike skin had resolved to an ashen gray that mirrored plague-infected Tryssinians.
Right—not creepy at all.
The ship suddenly canted. Dropped. With a yelp, Eija dug her fingers into the armrests, her rear still sliding left.
Reef, his balance upended by the jolt, stumbled into her couch. As the hull groaned in complaint, he fell forward but steadied himself, narrowly avoiding a full-on collision with her by planting his hands on either side of her couch. “Slag.”
“Keep still,” she hissed, doing her best not to stare into his brown eyes. Or to let her thundering heart betray her. It’s just fear, that’s all.
“Trying.”
They hesitated, waiting for more shifting, for a heavier, bigger fall. For death.
Reef’s gaze held hers. A smirk hit his dark eyes, mischievous. “If you wanted me in your lap, all you had to do was ask, Ei. Didn’t have to knock the ship off its support.”
There went those beats again. Eija shifted. Swallowed, hating the effect he had on her, yet . . . glad for it, too.
Daq’Ti chortled.
Reef flinched, apparently expecting the same blow from the Draegis as she did. “Easy, BeastieBoy,” he muttered.
But Daq’Ti’s eye slits glowed brighter.
“Maybe you should step off.” Eija focused on their dilemma. She nudged him aside and pulled herself upright, which was tough with the ship listing portside, threatening to drag them down. Her foot slid on the deck.
Reef hooked an arm around her waist, angled his leg against hers, forcing her to draw in a breath.
What was he doing?
Daq’Ti’s chortling warned he didn’t like the close proximity. Though Eija certainly wouldn’t complain, this wasn’t really the time for . . . whatever this was. But then she felt the clunk of his boot against hers and the subtle magnetic pull of the deck against the back of her legs.
“Oh.” Amused at how effortlessly he’d used his own boots to magnetize hers, she felt foolish for having thought it was something . . . else. “What happened—did the dreadnought hit us?” She did, however, notice that he took his time removing himself from her personal zone.
Reef grinned, unfazed by the intimacy of their position. “Could be, but it’d be weird.”
“Why?”
“They were all over us when we broke atmo, but it’s been quiet since. If they were targeting us, they could have easily destroyed us since we crashed.”
Daq’Ti trilled his objection and pushed Reef away from Eija.
Reef thrust the hand aside. “Get off me, BeastieBoy.”
Her Draegis protector seemed to grow by several feet as he bellowed, the encounter reminding her of docuvids of otherworld animals guarding their territory.
Reef went livid. Pitched himself at Daq’Ti.
Eija scrambled around and wedged between them. “Whoa-whoa-whoa!” Holding them both at arm’s length, she struggled with the way the odd angle exerted gravity against her—which, nice to know Rohilek had gravity at least close to 1g. Both palms rose and fell on their chests that heaved from the anger roiling through these two. She homed in on Reef. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Me? He wouldn’t let me near you. I’ve been trying for the last six hours.”
“Six—what?” Eija jerked to Daq’Ti, then back. “Are you kidding me?”
“It was dark when I came to.” Reef shrugged and motioned to Daq’Ti. “He was moving around but wouldn’t let me check your head wound.”
Reflexively, Eija touched her temple, which she finally registered was throbbing. Ah, so that’s where the blood came from. The blood was drying, so she guessed the injury wasn’t too bad. “I’m fine.” Her gaze hit her protector’s. “How’d we land? They were firing . . . we were crashing.”
Daq’Ti bobbed his head. “We come in fast, but they stay with us. The only way to evade was to cut engines, go out of control.”
“Hold up.” Reef twitched and frowned. “The spin—that was you?” His eyes went wide. “You put us into a spin to make them think we were crashing.”
“Unfortunate but necessary.”
So that’s why they’d blacked out.
“You could’ve killed us.”
“No,” Daq’Ti said. “I am skill at flying this ship. We hit hard, then drop.”
Was it her imagination again or was he talking more clearly? “You mean, we dropped, then hit hard.”
He stared back but said nothing.
“We crashed,” came Reef’s gruff intrusion. “Does it matter if Lavabeast gets his human grammar mixed up?”
She supposed not. Disoriented and shocked, she sidestepped. Her grav boot collided with a tool case that must’ve come loose in the fake crash landing. Strips of metal dangled from the bulkhead, and she eyed the hole in the side of the hull. Fake crash landing but not-so-fake ship damage. Only . . . there was something weird about that hole. Then again, wasn’t everything weird right now?
Once more she looked at Daq’Ti. “How long have we been here?”
“One journey of Coliex and Ju’Mar,” he said.
“One journey—is that their version of a day?”
“I don’t know.” She gave Daq’Ti a sidelong glance. “Is it just me, or is he easier to understand?”
Consternation crawled through the smooth planes of Reef’s face as the realization hit him, too. “Yeah, and I don’t like it.”
Daq’Ti’s voice was different. Less trilling-rumbling. More . . . human. She shuddered at the realization as she studied him, trying to comprehend what was going on. Aboard the dreadnought, she’d attributed her perception of change to merely getting used to the startling appearance of the Draegis. Now, however, there was no doubt—he was changing. As in transforming. But how? How was that possible? “Daq’Ti . . .”
Something in his gaze seemed sad, ashamed, and pushed hers away. That’s when she spotted an unmoving Marco and, next to his leg, a hole in the hull that exposed them to the hot, dry planet. “Marco!”
“He’s okay,” Reef said, joining her. “I checked him earlier. No visible injuries and his heart rate is normal. He’s unconscious, but okay.”
Eija touched the hunter’s shoulder. “Marco.” Internal injuries were possible . . . but unlikely, since his vitals were stable. “Hey, you with us?”
Eyelids fluttered. His icily pale eyes rolled to her. “Yeah.” Barely a breath, the word seemed to hurt him.
“Are you injured? Hurting anywhere?”
“No.” Groggily, he struggled to lift his head.
“If Shad was here, she could run a full scan . . .” But she wasn’t. They weren’t sure any of their friends were alive, and it’d been impossible to find out what happened to the others who’d jettisoned before making the hyperjump to Kuru. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” Marco sighed.
Why did he seem bereft all of a sudden?
Reef braced himself in the shorn hull, then glanced at the hole near Marco. “Guess the air’s not toxic.”
“Could be we just haven’t felt the effects,” Eija noted. Or maybe they were—oxygen deprivation could account for the perceived changes in Daq’Ti. Right? Could’ve made them a little loopy. Though she’d be disappointed if this was as loopy as she got—hearing some alien creature better.
“We’d know if it was toxic,” Reef said.
“We can’t be sure of that or anything at this point,” Eija growled.
“Your BeastieBoy would be clamoring to save you, so”—Reef bounced his shoulders, one of which sported a nasty scorch mark—“no threat.”
She ignored his nickname reference as Marco sat up and faltered. What was with the armor clinging to his forearm? It’d become a weapon powerful enough to kill a Draegis, and it looked similar to Daq’Ti’s arm when it powered up. Should she be worried that the hunter might change, too?
Marco noted her studying his arm and shifted away. Squinted at the hole, his left cheek twitching beneath those pale irises that were now a creepy silver. If not for the thin black line separating the iris from the white of his eye . . . yeah, she got jeebies thinking about it.
A loud, metallic groan startled Eija—and she felt herself flying backward. Felt a searing fire across her arm even as her back slammed against one of the crash couches. She coughed the air from her lungs and blinked to get her bearings. What the . . .?
Her gaze swept the interior. Daq’Ti had pitched her out of the way of a support that had swung loose and now pinned—
“Marco!” With a yelp, she threw herself toward him.
Reef shoved against the beam. “It’s crushing him!”
“Can’t . . . breathe . . .” Marco groaned.
Daq’Ti pushed himself between Marco and the beam, which he gripped. The digits of his hand seemed more distinct and jointed, rather than the moving molten form that easily shifted to form his weapon. With a chortling growl, he pushed.
The beam lifted.
Marco’s eyes widened, and he rasped a breath as he rolled out of his crash couch. He landed on his knees, a hand to his side. Slowly, he unfolded himself, again looking at the large steel beam that had attacked him, but then his gaze settled on the hole in the ship. And stayed there, a frown deepening beneath his long black hair.
What was he looking at?
Eija searched for an explanation and . . . decided there was something wrong about that hole. Some oddness that wouldn’t let her ignore it. Wanted attention because it meant . . . something. “What is it?” whispering, she joined him, almost afraid to ask, to know. Because this? It felt like a game changer.
Djell. Hadn’t they already had enough of that?
“The metal isn’t flexing inward.” Marco moved his gaze very slowly to Daq’Ti, a stiff tension roiling between the two. His finger danced below that strange Draegis armor on his arm—as if powering it up. “It bows outward.”
Why hadn’t she pieced it together? “The dreadnought blew a hole in it,” she said, knowing it was wrong, yet her brain wouldn’t let her voice anything different.
“No.” Reef’s brown eyes were strange, dark. “That would cause inward bowing. And it’d be uniform.”
Which also meant the hole wasn’t from the crash or from hitting some structure.
Only one possibility: someone or something had forced its way out. And the only one among them who could do that . . .
Her stomach squirmed. “Daq’Ti.”
Marco’s jaw muscle twitched as his gaze took in something else. Something Eija wasn’t sure she wanted to see or know about. “How long were you out?” he asked Reef.
“No idea. It was dark when I came to.”
Marco nodded. “It was daylight when we broke atmo.”
“Yeah.”
She understood their thoughts, what they didn’t say. That Daq’Ti had been the only one conscious long enough to have slipped away and . . . “What? You think he’s betraying us?”
Marco’s sober gaze met hers.
“That makes no djelling sense. He saved us—nearly got killed helping us escape.”
“Did he?” Marco asked. “He seemed to always know how to avoid them. Gets away unscathed every time.”
“Because they’re his people—he knows their tactics, their weapons.”
“Yeah.”
She was losing this argument. “Why would he come back and play dumb if they were coming for us?”
“To be sure we didn’t escape,” Reef said.
“We already escaped!”
“Easy.” Marco locked onto Daq’Ti, who hadn’t moved, responded, or intervened, though she was clearly distressed.
What did that mean? Eija shifted, desperation curling through her midsection. “Tell them!” Her heart thrashed. “Tell them you didn’t betray us.”
Daq’Ti lifted a pack to her. “We should go. Sun’s too hot. Draegis coming.”
“Go where?” Marco challenged.
Slits pulsing, Daq’Ti stood facing Marco as if waiting for him to do or say something. Then, he glanced out the hole he’d made. “The ridge. I scouted—there are caves.”
They all looked in that direction but saw nothing. Then Eija realized the very thin wavering heat wakes on the horizon, which she’d thought were striations of rock, were actually elevations. The horizon slowly morphed into the skyline of a city with strange red hexagonal structures jutting up from the surface. “Djell.” That had to be a day’s walk. Newfound fears over Daq’Ti digging out of the craft and scouting that distance dug into her shallow arguments, making her question . . . everything.
Reef cocked his head. “Drop, shop, and crop.”
That Eidolon mantra had always sounded dumb to her, but its meaning carried—drop into a location, shop around for the objective, and return with the crop of whatever they’d gone after.
In other words—get it done.
She hated the uncertainty that followed her off the craft and into the Rohilek desert. More than the uncertainty, she hated the nagging thought that by crossing the terrain, Daq’Ti was marching them to their deaths. But no sooner had they covered the first klick than they heard the screaming shrieks of Draegis ships.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to side with the Lavabeast.