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“Where have you been?” Tigre’s mouth formed a grim line, and his facial stripes had darkened.
Shaking his head with disgust, Wingman leaned against the console. Inferno and Shadow scowled, and Psy, his lone ally, appeared disgruntled.
“I attended an Earth event called a crafts fair. A spring fling,” Chameleon said.
Tigre stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “For almost two days? You left yesterday morning. We were starting to wonder if something had happened to you.”
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t planned to be away so long.” He’d gone to the spring fling to see Kevanne one last time—he hadn’t expected to be invited to her house for dinner or to have sex with her. He’d spent the night, had sex with her again the following morning, then accompanied her to the spring fling to help her man the booth. After they tore it down, they grabbed take-out burgers from Millie’s, and then went back to her place and had sex again. He would have spent the night—he’d been invited—but he’d figured he’d better report in. Apparently he’d waited a little too long.
“How do we know you haven’t contacted the consortium and told them where we are?” Wingman accused.
“With what? An Earth telephone?” He should have notified them he’d be gone for a while, but the accusation of betrayal hurt. Hadn’t he proven himself yet? “I’m fed up with your crap! If I’d wanted you captured, I wouldn’t have brought you to the Castaway.”
“Unless you needed somebody to help you pilot it,” Wingman said.
“Maybe I should have left you on ’Topia,” he fired back.
Wingman shoved off from the console. “Once a Xeno, always a Xeno.”
“Knock it off, all of you! Fighting among ourselves won’t solve anything.” Tigre shot a quelling glance at Wingman. “I doubt Chameleon would bring us this far to betray us now, but”—he turned his attention to Chameleon and folded his arms—“I do want to know what you’ve been doing for so long.”
Chameleon massaged his temple. “I apologize to all of you. I shouldn’t have disappeared. I should have gotten word to you. It won’t happen again. Remember I told you I’d gotten a job as a handyman? I went back to check on the woman who’d hired me.”
“I thought she asked you to leave,” Shadow said.
“And we don’t need jobs anymore,” Psy added.
“I’d scared her, and I wanted to check on her. I helped her sell lavender at the fair. Afterward...we went to her house. I spent the night there.” He could feel a crawling sensation indicating his color was changing. He glanced at his hands. Blue skin had turned purple.
Doubtful expressions turned to wide-eyed surprise.
“You dirty welhound!” Inferno smirked and slugged him in the arm.
“Is establishing a...relationship...wise?” Tigre asked. “We voted to leave Earth as soon as we can and reunite with the other ’Topians.”
“He’s not ’Topian,” Wingman said.
“He’s a target,” Tigre said. “Xenos don’t like to lose, and they’ll try to capture every last refugee. Since Chameleon helped us escape, there’s probably a galactic bounty on his head.”
“I would have thought so, but so far...nothing,” Shadow interjected.
“How do you know that?” Wingman asked.
“With Mysk’s assistance and his equipment, I was able to tap into subspace-anonymized communications to try to determine what the consortium knows. I’ve picked up a lot of discussion about the bombardment itself, but there’s no mention of the Castaway. I think maybe because Xeno is light-years away and Earth technology is primitive, there’s a delay in the signals getting here. Next time we visit Mysk in Seattle, I’ll check again.”
That didn’t reassure Chameleon. That Shadow had found a way to keep tabs on the consortium was good news, but it was old news. Because of the time delay, the Xenos could be at their doorstep before they realized it. “The High Council won’t give up searching for us. If they ever suspect Earth has assisted us, they will retaliate. Earth’s primitive weapons would be useless against the Xenos.” It would be like the bombardment all over again.
“What if this woman is your mate?” Psy asked quietly.
“All the more reason to leave.” He would never do anything to put his mate or her people in jeopardy.
The moment Kevanne had entered the diner, his being had gone still and his spirit reached out to her. He’d never experienced such an intense, passionate yet comfortable connection with another person. It seemed like they’d always been together. And then this morning, he’d awakened to find the mating glands at the base of his throat swollen, which strongly indicated she was his genmate. She hadn’t been genetically programmed to bond, but he had, and this suggested he had more human DNA than he’d suspected.
“If she’s your mate, how could you stand to leave her?” Shadow asked.
“It kills me,” Chameleon said. “But knowing she’ll be safer with me gone makes it bearable. I don’t think the consortium will look for us here—but with such a large bounty on all of us, they will expand the search to places they never considered. They will leave no planet unscanned.”
“You said you scared her—how?” Tigre asked.
“I showed her my natural form. She’d never seen a nonhuman before.”
Tigre’s stripes darkened. “We agreed to keep a low profile. What good does it do to remain hidden on the Castaway if you’re out in public showing yourself?”
“First of all, I revealed myself only to her. Second, we—all of us, revealed ourselves to Edwin Mysk.”
“We had no choice. We needed his help,” Tigre said. “Besides, he is interested and sympathetic to our situation.”
“So is Kevanne.”
“But she can’t help us. And what if she doesn’t keep our secret?”
“She will. I trust her.”
Wingman snorted.
Kevanne had promised to keep their secret, and he believed she would, but Tigre was right. How she made him feel didn’t matter. Their connection didn’t count in the big picture. He’d been close to forgetting his responsibilities. Locating the other refugees and leading them to safety came before everything else. If there was any solace, it was that leaving would ensure Earth escaped any possibility of retaliation by the Xeno. It would be many, many millennia before the consortium remembered the existence of a little blue planet in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way.
“Do you have any updates on the repairs?” Chameleon asked.
“Actually, yes. Yesterday afternoon, Mysk sent an aeronautical engineer, a fabricator, and a designer to inspect the ship,” Tigre said.
So much for maintaining a low profile, he thought, but stifled the retort. Logically, his irritation had no basis. Mysk’s people needed to study the Castaway to fix it. Thus, it was a reasonable risk.
“They estimate they can fabricate the parts and repair the Castaway in less than two months—if they have easy access to it. They would like to move the ship to a hangar on the Mysk campus.”
Two months left little time to spend with Kevanne. “How do we move the Castaway without people seeing it? We can’t lift off and fly it over there. I can’t imagine anyone on Earth would have a vehicle large enough to tow it if we could haul it down the highway, which we can’t.”
“That’s the problem,” Tigre admitted. “If the ship remains here, and they have to travel back and forth to remove and test parts, the estimate is four months to completion.”
“That’s still much faster than we estimated,” he said, trying to sound upbeat. Four months was better than two but still inadequate. He probed the swollen, tender mating glands with his fingers. Duty and desire, logic and emotion warred. For Kevanne’s own safety, he had to leave—not to mention finding and ensuring the survival of the remaining ’Topians.
Tigre made eye contact with everyone on the bridge. “You all chose me as a captain when we left ’Topia. We’re not in space anymore. I don’t have the authority to give orders. Personally, I recommend minimizing our contact with the local populace—” He looked right at Cam. “Telling you to avoid the woman won’t do any good. For herian’s sake, don’t show yourself to anyone else, and at the least, keep us apprised of your coming and going. You’re a part of this crew. You’re one of us. What you do affects us all, so take that into account.”
Tigre had rebuked him in front of the others, but the dressing-down had the opposite effect, causing a lump of emotion to form in his throat. You’re a part of this crew. You’re one of us. Nobody had ever said that to him. Perhaps the distrust had started to fade. Not with Wingman—Chameleon wasn’t stupid—but maybe he had proven his loyalty to Tigre and some of the others.
“I promise I won’t leave you wondering again.” Then he added, “I’ll uh, see Kevanne tomorrow.”
“Excuse me. I have work to do.” Wingman swept by, and the door opened at his approach.
“Hey. I’m sorry for saying I’d wished I could have left you behind on ’Topia,” Chameleon apologized, trying to mend fences. He’d spoken out of anger, and even though he and Wingman had their differences, he would never wish the man dead.
“I stand by my words. Once a Xeno, always a Xeno.” The door slid shut behind him.
Inferno glanced between Tigre and Chameleon. “I’ll talk to him.” He hurried after the Avian.
“Wingman has a big chip on his shoulder for reasons none of us can ascertain. Ignore his attitude. You are part of the team.” Tigre clapped Chameleon on the shoulder.
“Yes, you are,” Psy said, and left with Tigre.
Shadow started to follow but then halted. His face contorted. “If she is your mate—”
“It complicates things.” Chameleon sighed.
“For me, it would simplify things,” Shadow said.
