Chapter 5
I must make the most of this trip before I return and forget I ever met a human named Gerri.
With a tap of my finger on the viewscreen, I selected the opposite end of Barkley and zoomed in on a large building, clearly defined on the map as a botanical garden and ordered the computer to take me there.
Several messages scrolled across the console panel: three from Baraxen and two from his brother. I glanced at the communication readouts. There were still plenty of Earth hours left before my return to Mars, so I would salvage what I could of this trip.
For several hours, I stealthed above the city, scanning the university, the medical facility, the weatherworn church, and the city park. Nothing in the data screamed for my attention or felt very inspiring. Maybe I should just accept I am an engineer gifted with a knack for creating ships to get from point A to point B—nothing more. Getting my people to Voldera in one piece should be my focus. Let someone else worry about their mental well-being.
“The mind cannot survive without the heart, though.”
Gerri’s brown eyes and slow smile flashed in my thoughts, and I imagined her touch on my skin again as we painted, her soft breath in my ear.
“Get out of my head,” I growled. But similar to a pleasing song, I could not turn off my thoughts. She had become a harmony of emotions to my lonely heart, a breath of clean air for my lungs, a sweet song caressing my ears.
I must concentrate.
Forcing my mind to the present, I reached for the lifecord around my wrist to ensure its mode remained in projection so I could blend in with humanity.
Only the smooth skin around my wrist met the ends of my fingers. My heart stopped, and I cursed.
I never retrieved it when I left. Besides the lifesaving medicinals loaded into its core, lifecords also contained highly evolved Volderen technology. In the wrong hands, such as the United States government, it could prove deadly to my race.
My skin prickled with panic, but I forced the sensation down. I needed calm, not chaos.
The first order of business would be to track the bracelet with the Sparrow’s scanning system, which detected Volderen technology across vast distances.
Although I had lost the bracelet on the other side of town, no more than half a rugar away, it did not mean the device still lay on the ground. Out in the open, anyone could grab it and accidentally trigger a pre-programmed routine. Knowing how dedicated and persistent the military’s Xeno Vigilance Unit could be, one bleep from the lifecord would send XVU to that person’s doorstep almost instantly.
How could I have been so ignorant? But I knew why.
Gerri Johnson.
Another horrible idea took shape. What if Gerri had taken it after I left? What if she, at this very moment, slapped it around her wrist and activated its self-destruct feature with a few taps of her finger?
Panic burst from its invisible box inside my chest and my heart pounded. “Why did we make them self-contained? A simple deactivation code from the spacecraft could render it useless.” I understood the reason, though. Keeping one’s lifecord independent of any other systems and networks ensured it could not be hacked, denying humans from gaining access to Volderen intelligence, including the Mars base and the sister facility located right under their noses.
Reversing the engines, with a tight voice, I instructed the computer to backtrack my course.