Chapter 3
What the Wreckage Keeps
Krilly
The jungle wakes up screaming.
My body jolts against Horgox's chest before my brain catches up, and for two disoriented seconds I have no idea where I am.
Roots. Soil. The smell of wet vegetation and something mineral-sharp.
Then the rest floods back: the crash, the predators, the root cave, a Varkaani gladiator's arm around my shoulders and the steady rhythm of his breathing that apparently lulled me to sleep like some kind of oversized, emerald-skinned white noise machine.
"Dawn chorus." His voice vibrates through his ribcage where my cheek is still pressed. "Territorial calls. Not a threat."
"Could've fooled me." My neck has a permanent crick.
My legs are numb from the roots. Something with too many legs is exploring the vicinity of my left boot, and I decide that ignorance is bliss on that particular front.
The sensible thing would be to pull away from the heat of him, put professional distance between myself and the fugitive I'm inexplicably cuddled against.
The sensible thing and the warm thing are at odds, and I'm stiff and cold and human.
I pull away anyway. His arm drops from my shoulders without resistance, and in the grey dawn light filtering through the roots, those blue circuit traceries stand out sharper than they did in darkness.
Cold artificial lines cutting across the natural jade of his skin.
Technology that doesn't belong on a living body.
"The predators?" I ask.
"Gone before first light. Nocturnal ambush hunters; they won't press during the day." He's already unfolding from the cave, moving with a fluidity that shouldn't be possible for someone his size. "The drones will resume search patterns within the hour. We move now."
Right. Drones, ApexCorp, murder jungle. Whatever strange truce the night created, the morning is all business. Good. Business I can do.
Crawling out of the root cave with considerably less grace than his exit, I take stock.
Jumpsuit: filthy. Tool belt: intact. Emergency kit: present.
Molecular torch, multi-driver, circuit tester: all accounted for.
My hands check them by feel, the same way I've been checking tools since I was old enough to hold a spanner on the mining station.
"You inventory your equipment by touch." Horgox is watching me, head tilted. Not judging; cataloguing. The way a tactician notes a relevant detail.
"Habit from growing up in low-visibility conditions.
Mining station, deep asteroid belt. You learn to find your tools in the dark or you don't fix things.
" My fingers close around the molecular torch, and the familiar weight settles something in my chest. "Buttercup's wreckage is northwest. Half a kilometre, maybe less. "
"The drones surveyed the crash site extensively last night. They'll widen their pattern today, assuming no survivors." He scans the canopy, gold eyes tracking something I can't see. "Which gives us a window."
"Then let's use it. Bebo's quantum core is hardened for crash survival. If it's intact, I can get him back online. Maps, environmental analysis, communication protocols."
"The canyon first."
"The crash site is half a kilometre. The canyon is three. If we hit the wreckage on the way—"
"The wreckage is northwest. The canyon is northeast. They're not on the way."
Damn. "Okay. Then we detour."
He stares at me. Not angry; calculating. Running the risk assessment behind those gold eyes with the practised speed of someone who's been weighing survival odds for longer than I've been alive.
"How important is this AI?"
"He's been with me for four years. He's family.
" The word comes out without hesitation because it's true.
Bebo predicted my imminent death on our first run together and has been doing it every run since, and somewhere in the middle of all that statistical pessimism, he became the closest thing I have to a partner.
"And he's our best chance at contacting Junction One. "
He processes this. Then: "We approach from downwind. Through the dense canopy to the northwest, where there's better cover from aerial surveillance. If the drones have moved on, we extract your AI and continue to the canyon. If the drones are still on-site, we leave. No arguments."
"No arguments on the drone part." I shoulder my pack. "Lead the way."
He moves into the jungle, and I follow, trying to memorise his choices.
He reads the terrain the way I read circuitry: instinctively, with a fluency that speaks of deep familiarity.
Wind direction dictates our angle of approach.
Certain plants get a wide berth; others he brushes through without concern.
His feet find the stable ground without looking, and he keeps the thickest canopy between us and the sky.
Three months of this. Three months of learning a hostile planet's rhythms while being hunted across it. The kind of education you don't survive unless you're very good or very lucky, and Horgox Ka'reen doesn't strike me as a male who relies on luck.
"The purple moss grows on the north face of these trunks," he says without turning. Low voice, instructional. "The bioluminescent flowers close at dawn, but their stems angle toward water. If you need to find a stream, follow the stems."
"You're teaching me." The realisation catches in my throat.
"Observation is survival."
"That's not what I mean." My boot catches on a root and I correct without breaking stride, a small victory in this obstacle course of a planet. "You're teaching me in case we get separated. In case something happens to you and I have to navigate alone."
His shoulders tighten. He doesn't turn around, doesn't slow down, doesn't acknowledge the accuracy of my read. After a few paces, he says: "The vines with the oily sheen are toxic on contact. Avoid them."
Which is not a denial.
We move in silence after that, and my traitorous brain uses the quiet to catalogue things it shouldn't.
The way muscles shift beneath emerald skin when he pushes aside a branch.
The precise economy of his movements, every gesture calibrated to produce minimum sound and maximum efficiency.
The blue circuit traceries crossing his shoulders like a harness, pulsing faintly with each exertion.
Evidence of what they did to him. Modifications he never asked for, still embedded in his body.
Forty years, he'd said. Spoken flat and factual, like a data point in a mission briefing rather than a lifetime of violence.
I want to ask. Want to know what those years looked like, what they made him do, why a gladiator built to fight chose to catch a panicking courier instead of letting the jungle sort her out.
But his back is rigid with the kind of tension that says not now, and I've been reading body language since before I could read circuit diagrams.
So I file it away. For later. When he's ready.
"Stop." His hand comes up.
Every muscle in my body locks. Behind the nearest trunk, pressed close enough that his body heat bleeds through the humid air between us, I wait.
He's completely still, head tilted, tracking something with senses broader than mine. After a long moment, he points to a shimmer in the air roughly twenty metres ahead. Faint distortion, like heat haze with the wrong frequency.
"Drone," he breathes. "Scanning in a grid. Active sensors."
"I can barely see it."
"Varkaani visual spectrum runs broader than human. It will pass in approximately forty seconds. Then a three-minute window before the next sweep."
Forty seconds. My back against the tree trunk, Horgox close enough that his scent cuts through the jungle's damp rot: something warm, mineral, alien. Not unpleasant. The opposite of unpleasant, which is a thought I'm firmly not having.
"When I move, you follow. Stay low, maintain contact." His hand finds my wrist, fingers closing with a control that registers as deliberate. He could crush the bones without effort. Instead, his grip is precise, calibrated to communicate without constraining.
The shimmer passes. He moves.
Three minutes of sprinting through undergrowth, my hand locked in his, his stride shortened to something I can match. By the time we hit cover behind a fallen trunk, my lungs burn and my legs are shaking.
"Two minutes forty remaining," he says. His thumb presses against my wrist, checking my pulse. Quick, professional. The kind of assessment someone does for a teammate, not a liability. "Wreckage is another eighty metres. Can you move?"
"Can I—" Offence cuts through the breathlessness. "Yes. I can move."
His mouth twitches. Not a smile, not quite, but something in the architecture of his expression shifts. Then it's gone, and he's scanning the approach to Buttercup's crash site.
My ship looks worse in daylight. Crumpled against three massive trunks, hull split open, purple rain etching acid-bright patterns into exposed metal. The cockpit section is twisted but partially intact. The cargo hold gapes like a wound.
"Oh, sweet girl." The words are automatic, the same way I've always talked to my equipment. Machines respond to care, even when they can't hear it. "I'm sorry."
"The crash should have been fatal." Horgox is scanning the perimeter, but his voice has dropped to something quieter. "The structural integrity held longer than it should have."
"She always did her best." Blinking hard. Not the time. "Cockpit access is there. The opening's tight; I'll need to squeeze through."
He assesses the gap, then the twisted metal surrounding it. His hands find load-bearing points along the frame with a precision that speaks of structural understanding. "Unstable. The front section is holding on friction and habit. If the balance shifts—"