Alliance: An Intersolar Alien Romance, Book 6

30

Roav flexed his hands, missing the feel of his usual choice of weapons as he stared at Jharim”s back, walking in silence along the service tunnel beneath Home Tower 01.

It was straight with conical walls and a deep, lazy stream of sewer water that emptied into the Saphed River in the valley below. It had already been filtered, so the stream smelled fresh. If it was murky, it was because of the mangrove roots and algae inching its way in.

Every sound bounced off the walls, including Roav and Jharim”s footsteps as they walked in single file along the narrow bank, clicking code to each other from time to time by rapping their knuckles against the stones rather than emitting any bodily noise. They”d turned off a majority of their functions, limiting the data halo they”d emit for when the security team checked on their empty cell in the morning and began their search.

It had taken them several days of intense listening to choose the right time of night to actually escape their cell. No longer privy to the security team”s rotation, they had to assume that their last schedule was obsolete. So they reconstructed it, listening for transmissions, vibrations in the soil through the rock walls, murmurs from above the door hidden beneath the break chairs outside the hangar. Any time Vindilus or Imani paid a visit, they recorded the data halos surrounding their holotabs for scrutiny, piecing together an admittedly spotty patrol schedule.

Then it was a simple matter of execution. Biognostics excelled at action under stress.

But Jharim wasn”t a bog. When he said he could get them out, he hadn”t expected for his partner”s casing to open like that. How much of him was still intact? Was his body a suit? A crypt? A pair of biological arms had been pressed into the space between his ribcage and his hips had dehydrated to the point of mummification. Two fingers, talons longer than a living...

”Venandi,” Roav murmured into the echoes of the tunnel. He and Jharim stopped in sync, and the older bog—man—looked back at him.

”Yes.”

The memory of that hand flashed across Roav”s memory as it reached through the bars of their cell to press the ”meal” button on their access panel.

”You have no plates,” Roav challenge. ”And there is no example in my xenobiology database of venandi with brown coloring.”

”All leaves bow to the soil when they rot.” Impatience skittered across Jharim”s face, but Roav”s was more incessant. Yes, he knew they needed to hurry, but there was time. He needed answers. The fixation was all-consuming.

More quietly, Jharim added, ”I was an unremarkable shade of dark blue in my youth.”

”How did you—” Roav stalled, unsure where to take his hasty question. Jharim”s expression darkened.

”Immense personal sacrifice. Come.”

As they walked, Jharim spoke softly.

”I have precious little of myself left,” he said as they climbed over roots. They passed a small camp littered with rusted rations and a bedroll. ”But it is enough. My secondary diaphragm, my primary heart. Most everything else was replaced by my parumauxi swarm.” He jumped down from the root system without a sound, nimble and athletic. Not the corpse housed inside his thoracic cavity.

”Parumauxi are relatively new technologies.”

”As they are now, yes. When I was given mine, they were experimental and unregulated. My swarm is wild and acts on my whims as it pleases.”

”I do not sense one in you.”

”It rarely spends time in me anymore.”

Jharim glanced over his shoulder and the facets Roav had come to read as his face pulsed like a ferrofluid. The phantom of a venandi face pressed against their surface, making eye contact with Roav before it dissipated into nothing. It was a fraction of a moment, but Roav”s dermal mesh zinged with shock. He tripped over a seam in the walkway, joints whirring to make up for the lapse.

Then Jharim”s face was his again. Or theirs, perhaps.

Roav nearly walked into his back as he stopped. The water was moving faster and louder, but the echoes had lessened significantly. A breeze churned the air at their feet. Roav would have walked straight off the end of the tunnel to a long drop if Jharim hadn”t been in front of him.

The older bog—man—the older man unwound the climbing cables from his chest and hooked them into his shell where anchors rose from his silicone suit. Roav followed with numb digits, his mind completely enthralled with Jharim”s movements. How his vents expelled air, his joints clicked, his lenses moved in smooth, rotating angles. He tried to find the parumauxi swarm, reaching out with his sensors while Jharim”s back was turned.

”No data halos, Roav,” Jharim reminded him.

Roav snapped them off with embarrassment.

A howl rose from the jungle, just audible above the crash of the water. All the revelations around his partner dimmed, their mission taking priority. Sizzle knew they”d escaped, and he was coming for them.

Roav”s analysis of the world had shifted under his feet. Everything had changed, but also nothing. They worked in perfect sync, just as they always had. They anchored themselves to the walkway, tipped back over the edge of the cliff, and rappelled down to the riverbank in silence.

As the cables retracted back into their bodies with a high-pitched, dangerous zzzzzzzing, they looked at each other. Jharim”s lenses went out just as his did. Their systems followed the same rhythm as they shut down one by one. First filtration, then thermoregulation. Next, quantum speech pathways and their sense of touch, smell, and taste.

They disappeared into the Saphed, sinking to the riverbed step by step. Auxiliary batteries kicked on and their vents opened, feeding off the current, keeping their skeletal scaffolding moving upstream towards the slaver ship”s wreckage.

Biological species always forgot that biognostics evolved without convenient charging cables and ports. Wind, solar, and hydro powered them just as well. And it would ensure they remained undetectable beneath the water.

Waiting for the doll to come.