Chapter 15
Jaxin
I called the Varakartoom once we’d resumed our tired walk through the jungle.
Dani had her small hand in mine, and I very much enjoyed that casual touch.
Now that I wasn’t constantly trying to suppress all my feelings, it seemed a little easier to accept the things that came to me.
It also meant I could not ignore the danger that hung over our heads with every step we took.
“Jaxin, I was just about to reach out to you,” Mitnick answered.
“You’ve got a giant right on top of you.
” I laughed, because that was old news, then joked about how that would be extremely inconvenient and had the pleasure of stunning the hacker into silence.
“Who are you, and what have you done to Jaxin?” he demanded after he’d recovered.
“Listen.” I ignored the jab to focus on the much more serious matter at hand.
“The giant does not intend harm, at least for now. What I need to know is if there are any other nearby signals. I fear they might have been tracking Dani’s tablet.
” She was quiet as she walked beside me, and I was beginning to recognize the look on her face.
She was focusing on her empathic gift, perhaps searching for a threat in the jungle in her own way.
“I’ll have a look,” Mitnick responded immediately.
His words were followed by a silence filled with a murmur of voices in the background; other crew aboard the bridge on the Varakartoom.
In the jungle, there was the rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds, and other local fauna, but nothing to indicate danger.
It was peaceful, but I knew better. Dani abruptly yanked her head up to the canopy above our heads, her timing matching Mitnick’s, who swore, “You’ve got a shuttle right above your fucking head! ”
I took in the situation in a heartbeat. We had managed to cross a couple of miles and angle ourselves back to the bank of the river in the past couple of hours.
Darkness had truly begun to fall, but the heat from the planet hadn’t faded yet.
The hum of the shuttle that Mitnick and Dani had both sensed came shortly after their combined warning.
No, not one. My ears picked out a second, so close to the first that it had appeared as one to Mitnick’s sensors.
They came to a hover above us, and it was too late to urge Dani into a run toward the river in the distance.
Pushing her to her knees, I aimed Bex up toward the hovering shuttles just as their hatches opened and warriors began dropping out along ropes.
A tactic I’d employed a million times myself for a quick deploy in dangerous terrain, it wasn’t one I was about to let them use to corner us.
Too dark for my eyes to make out how many men there were or what their species were, I just aimed and fired.
Bex exploded with a sizzle of dangerous laser fire, lighting up the dark.
A dozen silhouettes lit up as the laser streaked past before it exploded against the hull of the nearest shuttle.
Males screamed as their ropes snapped and they plunged to the unforgiving ground.
The shuttle roared as its engines blew and it spun sideways, narrowly avoiding its buddy.
“Run,” I told Dani, yanking her with me. It was a good blow, but if this was a well-trained crew—and I didn’t doubt that it was—they would quickly recover. We had only a small window to escape.
My little scientist kept pace at my side boldly, even though she’d curled both her hands over her ears and was grimacing in pain.
Then she stumbled, and I caught her by the waist and slung her over my shoulder.
That definitely wasn’t good for the aching muscles in my chest, but I’d worry about that later.
I could smell the water, we were close, and I knew they would not be able to follow me in there.
Shots were fired, but their aim was wide; they didn’t want to risk striking Dani, and cradled over my shoulder, she was essentially shielding me.
I hated it, hated that it put her in danger, that I was using her that way, but it worked.
Then shouts and laser fire were drowned out by a huge roar.
At first, I thought it was the shuttle I’d fired at crashing into the jungle, but then I recognized the sound.
These mercenaries had stumbled into the path of the giant, and he was fighting back.
I dove toward the river’s edge with a shout, a last push of strength in my legs, and then we were there.
Dani struggled instinctively in my arms as the water closed over her head.
I held her tight and let the current sweep us downstream.
We could not rise to the surface yet, not when the threat was still so close.
She had to be nearly out of air, but she’d calmed rather than continued to fight.
I saw her long braid coil through the water next to my shoulder, the improvised ties coming undone.
Surfacing cautiously, I curled onto my back and kicked my feet as I helped Dani draw breath.
It was too dark for my eyes to see everything, but I wanted the use of my gills more than I needed the night-vision mode my helmet could provide.
The Radin giant was visible on the riverbank where we’d gone in, his tail whipping through the firing mercenaries with a dangerous blow.
The second shuttle came around, using the open area over the river to get a clean shot at the massive target.
I kicked my feet to propel us farther away, covering Dani’s head with my hand so she couldn’t see.
I thought for sure the giant was done for, and she didn’t need to see that.
If I could, I’d shield her from the empathic backlash she’d surely feel from this.
What if it burned her out again? Would it harm her even more, so soon after the first time?
The giant was a much more dangerous adversary to the shuttle than I’d given him credit for.
Perhaps the pilot had underestimated him too, making the craft a target as he took his time taking aim.
The giant ripped a tree from the ground with a roar, bleeding from several wounds and burned in many more places by the laser fire.
Hurling the unearthed tree through the air, he crashed it into the shuttle, sending it plummeting into the river.
Then the giant dove himself, a rather graceless forward leap into the black water’s surface.
I saw him go under, bob back up, and, with a few strokes, propel himself downstream.
After that, he did not move again, but the currents had him in their grasp.
As the sounds of the fire and the downed shuttles drifted away from us and we headed downstream, I drew in a relieved breath.
“Are you okay, Dani?” I asked. During the battle, the danger, my natural Rummicaron training had asserted itself.
I’d grown cold and distant, unable to feel fear or worry.
That conditioning had already begun to unravel when Dani lifted her head on my chest and looked at me.
She was in shock, with white showing beneath her dark eyes.
Her anthracite skin had grown pale, and her dark lips had taken on a purple hue, which I was pretty sure meant she was getting cold.
“He’s really hurt, Jaxin. We’ve got to help him,” she said, because, of course, her first thought would not be of herself but of others.
I knew who she meant right away: the giant, slowly drifting on the currents with us.
I could not tell whether he’d passed out or if he was simply conserving energy, but even without night vision goggles, I could see that his injuries were severe.
“A little more distance, little one,” I said firmly.
I was preserving energy myself by not swimming but drifting on the current.
It was more rapid than it appeared on the surface, and we’d already drifted several miles from where the attack had taken place.
I couldn’t believe how quickly they’d found us after I’d discovered the security issue.
If it were just Dani and me, I would have kept drifting downstream for many more miles.
She was right, though, the giant was in trouble.
He’d rolled, and now his face was submerged.
That meant he had to be unconscious. I had to drop Dani on a safe spot on the bank and then rescue him.
I was pretty sure we owed him our lives, or at the very least, he’d done us a great service by taking out that second shuttle.
“Here,” I said when I spotted a small white beach up ahead, surrounded by many trees with low-hanging branches.
They would offer a natural sort of roof over our heads and provide shelter.
Shifting Dani against my body, I lifted her to my shoulders so she could hang onto my fin.
I did not need to tell her what to do, she instinctively hung on.
Then I cut a path through the current to the bank ahead of us.
There wasn’t much time, and the moment we hit the shallows, I pushed Dani to her feet.
Then I slung Bex’s strap over my head and shoved the cannon toward the bank with a rough shove.
The bag with Dani’s precious samples followed, but since it was lighter, I managed to throw this one onto the beach entirely.
“Stay here,” I warned her, and then I dove in after the giant, who’d drifted almost past our spot on the bank.
Slicing through the water with a few kicks of my feet was easier on my chest.
When I reached his massive form, I knew I was going to be in trouble hauling it back to the small beach and Dani, against the current.
The massive shape was bleeding thick curls of black blood into the water.
The blood tasted salty and metallic on my tongue as I swam through it to surface beside the giant’s head.
With a shove, he rolled onto his back, able to breathe again—if his lungs weren’t full of water.
It was the best I could do for now. Then I curled my fists into the rope and leather that held his loincloth around his waist and swam with all my might.