Chapter 6 #2
“Orders are orders. I didn’t realize Aderian scientists had strict rules like that.
It sounds military,” he told me. Something in the tone of his voice made the skin on the back of my neck prickle with intuition—not fear, precisely, but awareness.
I closed my eyes and listened, but my empathic senses were so overworked that it felt like static in my ears.
Maybe it was just that this guy was ex-military, it was a popular profession for Rummicaron, and many became mercenaries after their service ended.
Ah, mercenaries. I had a sudden feeling that’s what he was.
Whether he was here to rescue or steal me, it was the only way he and his crew could have gotten onto Radin.
Aderia would not get through its red tape fast enough to send a rescue party already, but they might hire mercenaries if they were close enough and had a trustworthy reputation.
“What’s your name? Seems fair, since you know mine,” I asked. He stepped over a fallen tree then, and the high step made me sway against his chest, so my head landed on his shoulder. I stubbornly angled my head back and gave him what I hoped was a look that demanded answers.
“Jaxin,” he said, with that same curl of his mouth that made me wonder if he wasn’t smiling just a little—secretly, as if I wasn’t supposed to realize that he was.
“But you don’t want my name, do you, little one?
You want to know what I want with you…” He trailed off, letting the words hang in the air between us, almost as a threat, a little like he was building anticipation.
He did not answer his own question until I’d nodded.
“I am a mercenary of the Varakartoom, the finest, most notorious crew in the Zeta Quadrant. Your government hired us to rescue you.” Rescue!
He said it. My heart leaped with hope, but then crashed, because life had taught me that things were never that good and true.
Then I remembered seeing—and feeling—how Jeltom got shot.
Jaxin’s timing could have been much better, sweeping in to rescue us.
It had saved me, but it hadn’t saved Jeltom, who was probably the closest I’d ever gotten to having a real friend.
“What, no further questions?” he asked, and I shook my head mutely.
What could I say to that? It wasn’t a surprise that the Aderian government had gone through a mercenary intermediary to provide aid.
The only surprise was their swiftness, since Litarun hadn’t been executed until two days ago.
That must have been when they stopped getting believable updates from our little research post. Aderia was not known for its swift response time in any matter.
Two days couldn’t possibly be long enough for them to dispatch Jaxin and his crew.
He seemed to think I should be asking him lots of questions, so I asked what was bothering me about the timing.
He grinned, his mouth growing wide and revealing all those sharp teeth; I couldn’t help it, I winced back.
He did not even seem to notice my response.
“Two days? Your outpost has been out of contact for nearly three weeks by now, sweetheart.”
I blinked at him in confusion, certain I’d heard wrong.
That had to be a mistake, I’d uploaded my last report last week and gotten the usual response: verified message received.
It had looked fine… and I was pretty sure I’d overheard Litarun and D’aron talking about word from Aderia, about Koratalin, my half-sister.
How could we be out of contact for three weeks?
Surely I hadn’t lost track of that much time after D’aron took us hostage.
Though I could not deny that I was running on so little sleep that my brain felt sluggish and slow.
I might have lost a bit of time here or there, but not that much, right? Not two whole weeks?
“You’re frowning awful hard, little one.
Why is that?” Jaxin asked, with a tone that, to my ears, sounded friendly, warm, a bit concerned.
I didn’t think he was that good at faking emotion in conversation when he felt nothing of the sort, because he felt nothing at all.
I sought to find the truth with my gift but met silence, and an ache in my brain that warned me not to try that again for a while.
Burnout was so close, and so dangerous, that it could permanently stunt my gift.
A traitorous voice at the back of my mind, driven by sleep deprivation, wondered if that would be so bad…
No gift might finally mean a normal relationship—and actual intimacy—with a male.
My eyes went to Jaxin’s strange, alien face.
His gray skin had a fascinating texture I wanted to study more closely, as if it weren’t skin but minuscule triangular scales overlapping one another.
Before I could curb the impulse, I reached up and dragged my fingertips over his skin.
It was slightly rough, but pleasantly slick at the same time.
“All right, that stopped you from frowning. I guess you can do it again.” I froze, eyes widening in shock.
He was doing that not-smile again, the one that felt like it was a secret, and I wasn’t supposed to see his amusement.
He was Rummicaron; he couldn’t feel amusement.
At least he didn’t seem to mind that I’d touched him, uninvited.
Then the enormity of what had just happened crashed into me: I’d touched him, and I hadn’t gotten blasted with his feelings.
“I believe I have complete empathic burnout,” I told him, to explain the frown, and perhaps the strange impulse to touch him.
If I could touch him, was this my one chance to be intimate with a male before my gift recovered?
I opened my mouth, ready to proposition him then and there, but snapped my teeth back together in a rush.
No, that was the lack of sleep talking. I couldn’t just ask a stranger to have sex with me—especially not on the heels of Jeltom getting shot, the research facility getting demolished, and my safety still hanging in the balance.
“You’re probably talking to the one person least equipped to deal with that,” Jaxin huffed, still smiling. I was certain of it. How could he smile? And why did I like his smile so damn much that it made my belly feel all twisty inside? I couldn’t recall ever feeling that way before.
I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong.
His quiet, emotionless Rummicaron mind was like a balm to my frazzled senses.
For the first time in days, I wasn’t on overload, and things could begin to heal; that was the theory, at least. My eyes were locked on the corner of his mouth, waiting for it to tilt into that minute smirk again.
I did not expect him to snarl, to be confronted with a massive maw of jagged teeth in the blink of an eye.
I might have screamed, because it was terrifying, suddenly staring down the gullet of a beast.
The teeth had so much of my terrified attention that I didn’t register the sound of his roar until later, when my ears were ringing.
He broke into a run, abruptly throwing me back over his shoulder, and my aching shoulder flared with renewed pain.
Everything was happening so fast that my brain struggled to keep up, but I saw it—Jaxin charging at top speed through the underbrush. A Radin giant.
It was huge, as tall as the trees, with thick legs and a leafy sort of skirt tied around his massive waist. He also had a black, segmented tail with a very scary-looking barb at the tip.
The massive chest was streaked with red dirt, and that same dirt had been rubbed into his hair.
He was a wild creature, nowhere near civilized, and hard to subdue by the Kertinal.
His language was crude as he shouted at us, long, thick legs eating up the distance as he gave chase.
“They smell blood,” Jaxin said. “Are you still bleeding from somewhere?” I began to shake my head immediately, but froze, because he could not see that.
No, my lip; he’d taken care of that with the pad from his healing kit.
Then my blood chilled in my veins. The nick on my chin, I’d forgotten I had it.
My fingers went to the slight cut and felt the tiny dried crust. It was so little; was that really it?
“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice, my eyes locked on the giant pursuing us with shocking agility through the trees. “I forgot.”