Chapter 1 #2
"Asteroids?" My hands are already on the stick, threading Buttercup through a gap that's technically wide enough but practically terrifying. "You said the drift patterns were acceptable!"
"The drift patterns are acceptable. These masses are not asteroids."
My blood drops three degrees. "What are they?"
"Scanning. Preliminary identification suggests—"
The first Gorganth dragon slams past the viewport close enough to fill it. Every scale, every tooth, every bit of predatory intent in its eye before it banks for another pass.
"Nope!" Buttercup rolls hard, restraints biting into my shoulders. "Nope, nope, nope. Bebo, tell me those aren't—"
"Identification confirmed: Gorganth swarm. Count: seven individuals. Assessment: extremely hostile."
Seven. Space-faring pack hunters that see courier ships as convenient snack packaging, and there are seven of them. Another one hits the shields, and Buttercup screams in protest.
"New plan! Shortest path out, maximum burn!"
"Warning: shortest path requires entering the gravity well of Ursuris Prime."
"That's my destination planet?" The nav display confirms it; we're way too close to the system, herded further than I thought. "At least I'm headed the right direction. Emergency descent to the facility coordinates!"
"Current trajectory will result in uncontrolled atmospheric entry. Additionally, the planet is experiencing Category Five storm activity."
"The dragons or the storms, Bebo. Pick one."
The dive toward Ursuris Prime is pure survival instinct, a purple-and-green monstrosity filling the viewport while seven Gorganths trail behind us.
Something in the cargo hold shifts with a metallic bang, and Buttercup lurches sideways, suddenly lighter than the manifest weight should allow.
The crates shudder against their restraints, but the sound is wrong, hollow, like the mass inside them has changed.
No time to investigate. The ship groans with a sound that means money I don't have.
The dragons peel off at the upper atmosphere. Ambush predators, not atmospheric flyers. They know better than to follow prey into a gravity well.
I, apparently, do not know better.
"Come on, Buttercup, come on, sweet girl—" The controls shake under my grip as the ship punches through turbulence that rattles my teeth. "Emergency landing at the research station!"
"Multiple system failures." Bebo recites damage with the calm of someone reading a grocery list. "Shield generators offline. Port thrusters compromised. Hull integrity at seventy-three percent and falling. Unable to achieve controlled descent to facility coordinates."
Through the viewport: dense jungle canopy, purple rain with an acidic sheen, terrain that screams nothing here wants you alive.
"How far off are we?"
"Facility landing coordinates located forty-seven kilometers northeast of projected crash site."
Forty-seven kilometers. In a hostile jungle, on a planet with compromised security, with cargo that weighs twice what it should and hums at body temperature.
"Bebo, tell me we can make it to the facility."
"Negative. Gravity well has captured the vessel. Recommend immediate emergency landing protocols."
"There's nowhere to land! It's all jungle!"
"Correction: there is everywhere to attempt landing. None of it is optimal."
The ship shudders again, and the controls fight me, and the canopy rushes up too fast, too green, too real.
My hands know what to do; I've trained for this, run the simulations, kept Buttercup's emergency systems in the kind of condition that made Mother call me obsessive.
Slowing the descent from instantly fatal to maybe survivable is all muscle memory now, the work happening faster than the panic.
We hit the canopy.
Trees explode. The hull screams. Something tears away from the ship's underside with a sound that means expensive repairs I cannot afford, and then impact, and the world becomes violence and noise and the absolute certainty that I'm about to become a very stupid statistic in OOPS disaster reports.
When the chaos stops, I'm hanging upside down in my restraints, staring at what used to be my control console and is now abstract art made of sparking wires and shattered displays. Purple rain hammers against the cracked viewport with a hiss that confirms acidic.
"Bebo?" Shaky. "Bebo, status report?"
Nothing. The kind of nothing that means either my ship's AI is dead or the entire computer core is offline, and either way I'm alone in a crashed ship on the right planet but the wrong part of it.
Three tries to release my restraints without landing on my head. When my boots hit what used to be the ceiling, my legs buckle, and I grab the pilot's seat until the shaking passes. Emergency kit. Cargo. Beacon. That's the order.
The cargo hold is worse. Two of the six crates have torn free from their restraints, temperature regulation displays flickering between normal and dangerous.
Something inside the nearest intact crate is moving.
Not shifting, not settling. Throwing itself against the durasteel walls hard enough to make the metal flex.
Not tissue samples. Whatever ApexCorp classified as "biological specimens" is alive and very unhappy about the landing.
A crack spiders across one corner of the crate. Then another. My hand finds my tool belt by instinct, fingers closing around the grip of my molecular torch, backing toward the emergency exit with my pulse in my ears.
The crate shudders one final time and goes still.
Ten seconds. Twenty. The only sound is the hammering rain and my own breathing, too loud in the wrecked hold. Whatever was fighting to get out has stopped, and I don't know if that's better or worse.
The emergency exit releases with a hiss, and humid air floods in, thick with moisture and the smell of growing things underlaid with something rank and predatory. Ursuris Prime in all its hostile glory.
The trees tower overhead, bark pulsing with bioluminescence that casts shifting patterns across the undergrowth.
The leaves track my movement, turning to follow me with an awareness that plants should not have.
Purple rain stings where it hits bare skin; not enough to burn, but enough to warn that prolonged exposure would be a problem.
And the sounds. Screams in the distance, high and terrible. Roars that vibrate through the ground. Chittering from too many directions at once, like the jungle itself is deciding whether I look edible.
The emergency beacon comes out of the kit. Activation stud pressed. Nothing. Pressed again. The display flickers once, spits an error, dies.
No. No, no, no. My fingers work the housing, checking connections, checking power cells, doing the thing I've done since I was old enough to hold a circuit tester on the mining station where keeping equipment alive was all that stood between us and vacuum.
The beacon is dead. The connections are fried.
Not a loose wire, not a bad cell. Crash damage, deep and structural.
Something crashes through the undergrowth to my left. Something big.
The beacon drops from my fingers. My boots are already moving, carrying me into the jungle with no plan beyond away. Branches whip at my face. Roots grab at my ankles. The purple rain makes everything slick, and within minutes I'm panting and completely turned around.
Behind me, the crashing gets closer. Not one source. Multiple, moving in coordination, herding from different angles. Pack hunters. Efficient ones.
A glance over my shoulder, trying to gauge distance, and my body slams into something solid, warm, and taller than any tree.
Large hands catch my shoulders before I hit the ground. My gaze travels up. And up.
Gold eyes. Vertical pupils. A face all sharp angles and emerald skin, darker jade markings shifting beneath the surface in patterns that pulse with dim bioluminescent light.
But cutting across those natural markings are harsh electric blue lines, circuit traceries that glow cold and artificial against his skin.
Two swept-back black horns curve from his temples.
The hands on my shoulders are careful, controlled, claws retracted but visible at the tips of his fingers.
Seven feet of something that looks built to kill, holding me upright with the kind of restraint that costs effort.
"Varkaani," I breathe.
His gold eyes narrow. No greeting, no introduction. He listens to the jungle behind me for half a second, then lifts me clean off my feet and moves.
Fast. Inhumanly fast, toward a massive root system that creates a natural cave in the jungle floor.
Protests die in my throat because the crashing behind us is close now, close enough to hear individual footfalls, and whatever instinct overrides my dignity is screaming that this stranger is currently the better option.
The root cave is barely large enough for his frame. With both of us inside, his body presses against mine, solid muscle radiating heat that cuts through the jungle's damp chill. One hand settles over my mouth. Not pressure. Readiness.
"Silence." The word vibrates through his chest and into mine, bass with harmonic undertones. "They hunt."
His heartbeat thuds steady and strong against my back. Mine hammers so hard I'm sure it's audible. Through gaps in the roots, massive shapes circle our position; scales gleaming purple-black in the rain, claws gouging the earth. The predators that were herding me. They know we're here.
One pauses directly outside the shelter, close enough that the rows of teeth are visible when it opens its maw to taste the air. Its head swings toward the root cave.
The Varkaani's hand tightens fractionally over my mouth. A reminder.
Above us, a new sound cuts through the rain. The whine of engines. Drones, moving in systematic search patterns, scanning beams slicing through the canopy in precise geometric sweeps.
Every muscle in the Varkaani's body goes rigid. His markings pulse from dim jade to near-black beneath those blue circuit traceries, and a growl builds in his chest before he kills it.
"Patrol," he whispers. Barely audible over my own heartbeat. "Searching."
The drones pass overhead. One, two, three, moving in coordinated patterns that speak of practice and persistence. The predators outside shift nervously, caught between the prey they've cornered and the threat from above.
The drones circle back. Tighter sweep.
"Thermal scanners," the Varkaani breathes. "They'll detect us."
"Can we run?" Against his palm, the words come out muffled.
Those gold eyes meet mine in the dim light filtering through the roots. Up close, faint scars cut through the jade markings on his face, pale disruptions in the emerald skin. "The hunters outside will hear us before three steps. The drones will track us before ten."
Trapped. Predators below, corporate retrieval drones above, and the escaped gladiator Mother warned me about pressed against me in a space too small for breathing.
One of the predators releases a hunting call, high and keening. The others answer.
The drones' engine pitch changes. They've found something.
His jaw tightens, markings pulsing darker.
"I should tell you. The drones are here for me.
The facility I escaped from, three months ago.
" His voice is flat, stripped of everything except the fact.
"You were bringing cargo to that place. And now you're trapped in a cave with the most wanted being on this planet while the guard force closes in above us. "
The drones' scanning beams sweep in tighter and tighter patterns. The predators start digging at the root cave entrance, claws scraping stone.
In the suffocating dark, pressed against a seven-foot alien who radiates heat like a reactor core, I run my options.
No ship. No beacon. No AI. Forty-seven kilometers from where I'm supposed to be, with apex predators outside and corporate security overhead and mysterious cargo that was alive and trying to break free the last time I checked.
Mother is going to be so disappointed.