Chapter 15 #2
I kept my expression neutral, pretending I hadn’t understood, but my skin betrayed me with streaks of dark blue and purple. My hearing was better than Zara’s, who hadn’t heard the exchange and glanced at me with concern, but I shook my head slightly. Not now. Not here.
We followed Vikkat through the fortress corridors, passing D’tran civilians who stopped to watch our procession with curious eyes.
Young ones peered from doorways, and I found myself wondering what they’d been told about our presence here.
Were we saviors who might fix their broken world, strangers passing through, or enemies who could not be trusted?
The transport that awaited us was different from the one that had brought us to the fortress. This one was smaller, more maneuverable, with treads instead of wheels, and what looked like reinforced plating on all surfaces.
“Cave crawler,” Vikkat explained, seeing my interest. “For underground travel. Narrow passages, unstable terrain.”
“How far underground are we going?” Zara asked, and I heard the slight edge in her voice that meant she was thinking about her grandparents, about being trapped in spaces where safety was supposed to be guaranteed.
“Deep,” Vikkat replied. “Old tunnels. Natural caves expanded by sky-stealers for their purposes.”
The cave crawler’s interior was cramped compared to the fortress transport, with barely enough room for all of us and our gear.
Zara and I ended up squeezed together on one of the benches, which would have been pleasant under different circumstances but now just felt confining.
Worse, the two warriors who’d been talking about me were seated directly across from us, their expressions carefully neutral but their eyes watchful.
The vehicle lurched into motion with a grinding of gears that suggested its best days were behind it, and we began descending into darkness lit only by the crawler’s forward lights and the occasional emergency beacon mounted on the tunnel walls.
I settled in beside Zara, acutely aware of how she clutched the bag containing her remaining scientific equipment. She’d been working on them before we left, making modifications she’d explained to me in detail, even though I only understood about half of it.
“How confident are you that the modifications will work?” I asked quietly, keeping my voice low enough that only she could hear.
She grimaced. “Honestly? Maybe sixty percent. I’ve altered the atmospheric sensors to try to detect heat signatures and life forms through rock, but they weren’t designed for this application.
The signal penetration might not be deep enough, or the interference from the planet’s electromagnetic field could scramble the readings entirely. ”
“But there’s a chance they’ll work.”
“There’s a chance,” she agreed, though her tone suggested she thought it was a slim one. “If we’re lucky and the Kythrans are relatively close to the surface, and if the cave walls aren’t too dense, and if my modifications don’t just fry the circuits the moment I turn them on.”
A lot of ifs. But then again, everything about this mission seemed to be built on ifs and maybes.
More D’tran conversation drifted from the back of the crawler, and I strained to hear it over the grinding of the treads.
“If female fails to fix towers, what then?” one voice asked.
“Then they useless to us,” another replied. “Vikkat has soft feelings for star-cousins, but the rest of us remember what was lost.”
“Old knowledge. Ancient ways. They abandoned all to live in floating cities.”
“Not cities. Living ships.” There was a pause. “Unnatural things.”
I felt Zara’s hand slip into mine, her fingers lacing through my own in a gesture that was becoming familiar. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she could sense my tension through the bond.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” I lied, then reconsidered. Partners meant honesty, even when the truth was uncomfortable. “Some of Vikkat’s warriors don’t trust us. They think Destrans are corrupted, that we’ve lost our connection to the old ways.”
Her eyes widened. “You can hear them? They’re barely audible.”
“I caught enough of it.” I glanced at the warriors across from us, who were studiously avoiding eye contact. “Unfortunately.”
“How bad is it?”
“They’re questioning why Vikkat brought us. Why they should help us.” I squeezed her hand. “And they’re curious about how I have a mate from another species, and how I have a mate at all when my markings are so sparse.”
“Your markings aren’t sparse,” she said indignantly. “They’re perfect.”
Despite everything, I felt a smile tug at my lips. “I’m glad you think so.”
“How long until we reach the search area?” I asked Vikkat, partly to change the subject but also because I genuinely wanted to know.
“Two ticks. Maybe three. Depends on cave conditions and weather above.”
Two to three ticks. Roughly two and a half hours of travel through underground passages to reach an area where unfriendly aliens might be hiding.
And that was assuming the caves were stable and the crawler didn’t break down.
All while surrounded by warriors who saw me as a corrupted version of what they should have been.
I could sense Zara working to control some anxiety, possibly pushing down the memories of her grandparents trapped in their supposed safe room. Underground had not been safe for them, and I had no doubt that Zara was aware of the parallels here.
“Tell us more about the Kythrans,” I said to Vikkat, partly to gather intelligence but mostly to distract Zara—and myself—from the walls closing in around us. “You said you’ve hunted them. What do you know about their biology, their culture?”
Vikkat’s expression darkened, and he leaned back against the crawler’s hull. “Sky-stealers are smaller than D’tran. Similar size to the human, maybe. Skin changes colors like yours but only to camouflage when scared. Otherwise, they’re gray and soft-skinned.”
“Have you ever captured one?” Zara asked, her scientific curiosity temporarily breaking through her anxiety. “Studied their physiology?”
“No.” The word came out flat, final. “We have tried. Many times. But they are too fast, too clever. They know these caves better than we do. They blend in to walls and disappear like smoke.”
“When was the last time you encountered one?” I pressed.
Vikkat was quiet for a long moment, and something that might have been uncertainty crossed his weathered features.
“Many, many seasons ago. When I was new leader. We tracked group of them to cave system in eastern ranges. There was fight. We lost three warriors. They lost at least two, maybe more. But we never found bodies. They take their dead with them.”
“And since then?” Zara leaned forward. “Nothing?”
“Nothing in recent cycles.” He shook his head slowly. “Some believe they are dead. That last fight killed final survivors, or that they died from sickness, from starvation in caves too deep for even them to survive.”
“But you don’t believe that,” I said, reading the stubborn set of his jaw.
“I believe nothing without proof, and there have been signs of something living in these caves.” His eyes met mine, and I saw the weight of years of fruitless searching in their depths.
“For generations, my people have hunted sky-stealers. Tried to make them fix what they broke. But maybe…” He trailed off, then seemed to change his mind about whatever he’d been about to say.
“Maybe we find them. Or maybe those voices are true and we chase the dead.”
One of the warriors across from us spoke up, his voice carrying a clear challenge. “And if the star-cousins fail? If the alien female cannot fix what the sky-stealers broke?”
Vikkat’s response was swift and sharp. “Then we try another way. But we do not turn on those who came to help.”
“Help?” The warrior’s laugh was bitter. “They came because they crashed. They need us more than we need them.”
“Enough, Dorek.” Vikkat’s voice carried the weight of command. “I lead this expedition. You follow, or you return to the fortress.”
The warrior—Dorek—fell silent, but the hostility radiating from him was palpable. I could feel Zara stiffening beside me, picking up on the tension. Even with her lesser hearing, she could hear Dorek’s words.
The admission about the Kythrans hung in the air, heavy with implication.
If the Kythrans were truly gone, if there was no one left with the genetic markers needed to access the weather control systems, then this entire expedition was pointless.
And Zara’s ability to help them fix the planetary crisis became even more critical.
The pressure of that responsibility settled over us like a physical weight, made worse by the knowledge that some of our escorts were actively questioning whether we deserved their protection.
“Even if they’re gone,” Zara said quietly, and I knew she was speaking as much for the benefit of the D’tran as for Vikkat, “there might be other solutions. If we can study the control systems, understand how they were designed to interact with the atmosphere, we might be able to find a way to shut them down or stabilize them without Kythran genetic access.”
Vikkat studied her for a long moment, and I could see him weighing her words, trying to decide if this was a genuine possibility or desperate hope. “You believe you can do this?” he asked.
“I can try,” Zara replied, and I heard the honesty in her voice. “But I can’t make promises about success. The technology is different from anything I’ve worked with before.”
“Trying is more than we have had for many generations.” He nodded slowly. “We show you everything. All records, all attempts we made. Maybe together we find answer sky-stealers never gave us.”
Another voice from the back. “And if she fails? What then, Vikkat?”
“Then we try again,” Vikkat said, his tone brooking no argument. “We do not give up. And we do not abandon those who try to help in good faith.”
But I could hear the uncertainty beneath his words.
Vikkat believed in cooperation, in the possibility that Zara and I represented a chance to finally solve the crisis that had plagued his people for generations.
But he was one leader, and the warriors with us had their own opinions about Destrans and our place in their world.
If things went wrong in these caves, if Zara’s equipment failed or the Kythrans proved hostile or any of a dozen other things went sideways, I wasn’t sure Vikkat would be able to keep his people in line.
The thought of being trapped underground with warriors who saw us as corrupted and useless made my skin shift through darker and darker shades.
The crawler lurched over a particularly rough patch of terrain, and I automatically reached out to steady Zara as she bounced on the bench.
“Hey,” I said softly, leaning close so only she could hear. “Tell me about those modifications you made to the sensors. The technical details.”
She blinked at me, clearly recognizing the distraction for what it was. But she played along, her voice taking on the lecturing tone she used when discussing her work.
“I had to recalibrate the atmospheric composition analyzers to function more like ground-penetrating radar, which meant completely rewiring the sensor array and boosting the signal amplification by a factor of ten. The problem is that the increased power draw means the batteries will drain in about three hours instead of the usual twelve, and there’s a significant risk of overheating if I push them too hard… ”
I listened to her explain the science, not really understanding half of what she was saying but grateful that it was pulling her attention away from the enclosed space around us and the unfriendly eyes watching us from across the crawler.
Her voice steadied as she talked, her grip on my hand relaxing slightly as she lost herself in technical details.
“You’re not even listening,” she accused after a few minutes.
“I’m listening enough to know you’re brilliant and I’m lucky to have you.”
Her cheeks flushed, visible even in the crawler’s dim lighting. “Flattery won’t get you out of actually learning some atmospheric science.”
“Won’t it?”
“Definitely not.”
But she was smiling now, and that was worth any number of scientific lectures I’d have to endure later. Even if we were heading into caves with people who questioned our right to exist, who saw us as corrupted versions of what they should have been, at least we had each other.
The crawler continued its descent into the depths of this wounded world, carrying us toward answers we might not want to find.
If the Kythrans were truly gone, if we were chasing ghosts through abandoned caves, then everything depended on Zara’s ability to do what generations of D’tran scientists hadn’t been able to accomplish.
And if she couldn’t, I had no doubt that some of the warriors traveling with us would see that as proof that Destrans were indeed corrupted, that helping us had been a mistake. Whether Vikkat could protect us in that situation was anyone’s guess.
The weight of that responsibility should have terrified me. Instead, looking at my mate’s determined expression as she clutched her modified equipment, I felt something that might have been hope mixed with fierce protectiveness.
Because if anyone could solve an impossible problem with inadequate tools and no guarantee of success, it was Dr. Zara Rivers. And if anyone tried to harm her because she couldn’t perform miracles, they’d have to go through me first.
Even if that meant fighting my own distant cousins in the dark.