Chapter 8
Klausan moved silently through the snowy forest. The pain in his side had faded to a dull, manageable ache, no longer compromising his mobility. The med kit had done its work, knitting tissue and sealing the wound with Tandroki precision, but his thoughts refused the same discipline.
He should be focused on the ship and on calculating repair timelines.
Instead, his mind kept circling back to a small cluttered house and the female who'd stood at the window, watching him leave with an expression he couldn't quite categorize.
Concern, yes, but there was something else beneath it, something that had made his pulse quicken in a way combat never did.
Illogical. He was a trained warrior, not some juvenile experiencing his first assignment away from home.
An emotional response to an alien female served no tactical purpose and provided no strategic advantage.
Yet he could still feel the phantom warmth of her hand beneath his and catch the lingering sweetness of her scent, bypassing rational thought and reaching somewhere deeper.
He forced himself to concentrate on his surroundings.
The forest here was different from the cultivated landscape of Tandroki settlements—wild, chaotic, utterly lacking in geometric precision.
Trees grew where they pleased, in irregular clusters rather than calculated grids, and undergrowth tangled in organic disorder.
It should have disturbed him, but instead, he found it oddly compelling.
The crash site appeared through the trees and he slowed, scanning the area for threats.
Nothing moved. No tracks disturbed the snow beyond his own, and the smaller ones that belonged to Talia and Theo.
The wreckage of his scout ship was still half-buried in the furrow it had carved through earth and stone, but he approached carefully, his hand resting on the grip of his weapon.
The clearing remained empty, silent except for wind rustling through broken branches.
He circled the ship first, assessing the damage with a critical eye. The hull was compromised in several locations and the structural integrity was questionable, but the core remained intact, which meant the nanobots could still function. Assuming they had enough raw material to work with.
He keyed open the emergency hatch—one of the few systems still responding to commands—and descended into the darkened interior. Emergency lighting flickered to life, casting everything in a pale red glow that reminded him uncomfortably of blood.
The main cabin was a disaster. Equipment had torn free during the crash and the instruments shattered.
The navigation console was still sparking intermittently.
His sleeping chamber had sustained less damage, the reinforced walls having held, and his meager personal effects remained secured in their designated storage.
The damage in the engine room was even more severe. The primary coupling had fractured and the power core's housing showed stress fractures that should have been catastrophic. I should be dead. Somehow the medical override had kept him alive long enough for Talia to find him.
Talia. There she was again, that disruption to his thought patterns.
He called up a diagnostic scanner and began a systematic survey.
The hull integrity at forty-two percent.
Life support was offline. The communications array was completely destroyed—but he found that didn’t bother him as much as it should.
The engines were repairable but would require significant reconstruction.
Despite the level of the damage, the ship’s nanobots could handle it. He accessed the repair bay and activated the maintenance sequence. Billions of microscopic machines would begin analyzing damage, sourcing materials, and reconstructing systems according to their programming.
The estimated completion time appeared on his display—seventy-three days.
Seventy-three days. More than two standard months. He should have felt frustrated, anxious to report to command and explain his absence. Instead, something that felt suspiciously like relief settled in his chest.
Skef. He was exhibiting classic signs of compromised judgment—relief at mission delays, preoccupation with alien contact, and emotional responses overriding tactical assessment. His father would be disappointed. His instructors would consider him a failure. And he found he really didn't care.
He pulled up the repair priority matrix.
Standard protocol would be to restore communications first and contact command headquarters.
His fingers hovered over the controls for a moment, and then he adjusted the parameters, shifting priority to the engines and life support systems. Communications could wait.
After all, communications would be of little use without a working ship.
The rationalization was transparent even to him, but he executed the command anyway.
The nanobots hummed to life, their collective activity registering as a faint vibration through the ship's frame. They would work continuously, rebuilding what the crash had destroyed, and gradually returning the ship to operational status. In seventy-three days..
He moved to his personal quarters and opened the storage locker.
His spare clothing hung in neat rows. With typical Tandroki efficiency each one was identical to the last. He selected one and changed quickly, stripping off the damaged suit he'd worn for two days. The new one was a familiar weight against his skin, but it wasn’t as soft as the blanket Talia had covered him with.
Comfort is the enemy of discipline. His instructor's voice echoed in his memory, but Talia wasn't soft.
She was steel wrapped in gentleness, her strength hidden beneath her compassion.
She'd hauled his considerable weight through the snow, had opened her home to a potential threat, and had stood her ground when fear would have been the logical response.
She'd fixed Glimmerhorn with hands that shook but didn't falter.
He refastened his utility belt and began gathering supplies. Most of the ship's stores remained intact. Standard ration packs would provide protein but the thought of consuming them was remarkably unappealing after sampling her cooking.
He collected a portable heating unit. Her house had been cold despite the wood stove and the Tandroki unit was both compact and efficient. It also wouldn't require the constant fuel consumption her current system demanded.
Medical supplies came next. He had extras, and Theo was small and potentially vulnerable to illness. Better to be prepared.
At the equipment locker he picked up a storage container filled with different sizes of molecular bonders and other precision tools.
She'd been fascinated by the technology and had grasped the process with impressive speed.
What else could she learn, given time and proper instruction?
What other abilities lay dormant beneath the exhaustion and grief he'd seen in her eyes?
He added the container to his growing pile.
Fabric came next. The ship carried emergency thermal blankets—lightweight and compact, but capable of retaining heat far better than the worn quilts he'd seen in her house. He took them all.
When he stood in the small cargo bay, surveying his selections, he acknowledged what he was doing. He was gathering resources not for his own comfort but for Talia’s and Theo's. It was irrational and completely contrary to his training. He added a water purification unit to the pile anyway.
Loading everything into a carry pack took several minutes. The weight was easily manageable—far less than full combat gear. He secured the pack and moved back to the main cabin for a final assessment. This had been his home for weeks during the mission, but now it felt like a shell, empty and cold.
Before picking up the pack, he paused to consider the crash site. Despite the thickness of the trees, the ship was visible from multiple angles, its metallic hull reflecting sunlight despite the damage. If anyone came this way they would see it immediately.
She had warned him about the village's reaction to anything they didn't understand.
He needed to hide the ship. Fortunately, the crash had felled several large trees.
Their trunks lay scattered around the clearing, some still attached to root systems, others torn free entirely.
Raw materials, waiting to be repositioned.
The nearest trunk was massive—at least a meter in diameter, ten meters long.
Under standard gravity, it would require mechanical assistance to move, but he wasn't under standard gravity.
This planet pulled at roughly point-nine-four Tandroki standard, barely noticeable to someone of his strength and training.
He gripped the trunk, braced his legs, and lifted.
The wood groaned but rose, dirt and needles cascading from the exposed root ball.
He adjusted his grip and started dragging the massive tree across the clearing towards the ship.
His muscles flexed and strained pleasantly—this was a familiar effort, pure physical exertion without the complexity of emotional variables.
He positioned the trunk against the ship's port side, angling it to obscure the hull.
Then he returned for another. The work fell into a rhythm.
Lift, drag, position. Repeat. His breath came faster, his body warming despite the cold.
The task was meditative in its simplicity, just muscles and mass and the basic physics of leverage.
Three trunks shielded the port side. Four more covered the starboard. He wove smaller branches between them, creating a lattice that would break up the ship's outline, then added evergreen boughs, their needles still green enough to provide coverage.