Chapter 34
Jessa shielded her eyes from the bright morning light and smiled at me as we helped Jiith from his sick room and outside. After our long night of interrupted sleep and hours of gentling, she had dark circles under eyes but had refused to go back to sleep when I’d come back with Sal.
The baby percer was full of energy and she wanted to give him a chance to run around and check on Jiith. The syto was moving stiffly but had jumped at the chance to leave his cot and I let him lean on me as we slowly walked through the center of camp and toward the open ground past the tents.
“I want to say you look better,” Jessa said, eyeing Jiith as he hissed out a breath and winced with each halting step.
“I feel better,” he rasped, tentacles flaring weakly around his shoulders. The two missing appendages were still scabbed and swollen where they’d been ripped off and the stumps didn’t react like the rest of them.
“Do you?” she asked. “Because you look like death.”
Jiith let out a harsh laugh and closed his eyes. “My body may be irreparably damaged, but I feel lighter than I ever have. I think I may even be happy.”
“You could have a good life here,” I said, pausing when his grip on my arm tightened. “But it will take time for you to be up for anything more than this.”
“Hobbling a few steps at a time?” he asked. “I begin to wonder if I’ll ever walk on my own again.”
“It hasn’t even been a week,” Jessa chided. “Give your body some time. Rest, food, lack of torture, all great healers.”
“If I was in a cruiser, I would have been recycled already,” he confided. “Any injury that required more than a quick bandage and a med pack was a death sentence under the Kwin.”
My mate let out an unhappy sound at that.
“She’s a monster,” she muttered. “She told me she’s lived hundreds of years and she wouldn’t even give her own people time to rest?”
“She doesn’t see us as her people,” Jiith said plainly. “The Elite consider themselves separate, the rest of us were easily replaceable.”
I looked out over the flat ground, awed as always at the vast open space. The years I’d spent in the cruiser, cramped and locked away had been torture even without the beatings and constant threat of death. Turochs were meant for wide plains and fresh air.
Sometimes I wondered if this planet was a fever dream created from my longing for freedom. A strange shape caught my attention, a blur on the horizon that hadn’t been there yesterday.
I stiffened as I scanned the terrain, wondering if I was imagining the shape in the distance.
“Do you see that?” I asked, pointing it out.
Jessa and the syto followed my gaze.
“The dark spot?” Jessa asked, squinting. “Is it a car?”
“I see it,” Jiith said, confirming my worry.
I tilted my ears forward, staring at the shimmering horizon and slowly the growing smear of blue in the distance.
“The Kwin?” Jiith asked, his voice resigned.
“Sytos,” I confirmed. “I doubt the Kwin would risk going into battle herself.”
“She wouldn’t,” Jiith said, his shoulders tensing as we stared at the approaching threat.
The camp’s location had been carefully chosen.
There was little cover for miles unless you approached from the city.
The mass of sytos was too far for me to guess at their numbers, but close enough to confirm they were headed this way.
Jessa slipped her hand into mine, Sal squirming as she pressed him to her chest.
“How long until they get here?” she asked.
I looked down at Jiith and he grimaced. “We’ve never engaged an enemy on the ground, but we don’t have the stamina to run that distance and still fight.”
“Without the scout ships they lack the advantage,” I said, knowing I had to warn the camp but loathe to turn my back on the incoming threat.
“They have stunners, and shock sticks.” Jiith offered. “The stunners won’t be effective against turochs at a great distance, but it gives them more space than hand to hand.”
“How much distance?” I demanded, starting to back up.
“Six strides?”
“Too much, then.” I was confident we could win the battle, but armed with stunners, the sytos could do more damage than I liked to admit.
I squeezed Jessa’s hand and bent to loop one of Jiith’s arms over my shoulder, taking most of his weight as I moved us quickly toward camp.
“Sytos incoming,” I barked at the nearest turoch. “Sound the alarm.”
His eyes widened and he sprinted off, shouting a warning toward the turochs clustered at the fire as I dragged Jessa and Jiith toward the last place I’d seen Adak.
The one-eyed male was talking to Dargo when we found him, and his head jerked up as more voices called out, spreading the word of the coming attack.
“Sytos?” he questioned, knowing the answer.
I nodded, dropping Jiith into a nearby chair as he groaned from too much movement.
“Less than thirty minutes out. More than I saw with the Kwin when we escaped.”
His jaw clenched. “Gather the humans,” he ordered Dargo. “Top of the building, like we planned. Have your mate gather all the guns she’s found and arm them.”
Dargo nodded sharply and strode off. Adak turned to me.
“The rest of us will fight from the ground.”
Jessa tensed at my side. “We’ll be separate?”
I looked down at her and cupped her face. “You’re no good in a fight.” I said honestly. “Taz has been practicing with human weapons, she says they have range and power that the humans can’t equal with an ax. It’s not the turoch way to war, but you can help from the safety of the roof.”
Her lips trembled. “I’ve never shot a gun,” she whispered. “I’ve never killed someone.”
My heart ached for her. Jessa was fierce when she needed to be, but she had a gentle spirit and I hated that we had no choice but to fight with the females so close.
“You will be safe,” I promised. “I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
“What about you?” she asked, her face paling as the seriousness of the situation settled on her.
“I have my brothers fighting with me,” I said. “The sytos are dangerous, but they’re no match for us without their ships and their tech.”
She bit her lip and wrapped her fingers around my wrist, turning her face to press a kiss to my hand. Just hours ago, I’d been deep inside of her, rejoicing in our completed mating, dreaming of thousands more opportunities to glory in her soft body under mine.
There would be more of those nights, I swore it to the ancestors. We just had to handle the sytos and make our world that much safer for the future.
“I love you,” she whispered.
I bent down and pressed my forehead to hers, smiling at the truth I heard in those precious words.
“I love you. I will prove it by keeping you safe and taking you to bed tonight. Look forward to what I will do to your feet and don’t dwell on your worries, mate.”
She let out a tense laugh and shook her head. “I told you to stop with my feet.”
“Never,” I grinned.
Dargo reappeared, his arms filled with the strange wood and metal weapons his mate liked so much, Taz at his side carrying a large box filled with smaller containers.
Kes carried Amy and his sons out of the building and the rest of the humans clustered behind them.
Penny’s father and brother dragged a large cushion between them, I guessed for Amy to rest on.
I hated that she’d just given birth, her face still pale from exhaustion as she cradled her tiny babies in Kes’s arms. It was cruel indeed that a new mother had to fear battle so soon after bringing helpless children into the world, but I knew every turoch in camp would die before the sytos reached them.
Dargo led the humans around the back of the building, and I pulled the thin metal ladder down.
It was too fragile to bear a turochs weight and Penny’s father and brother went up first. Kyle dragged the cushion up onto the roof and Penny’s father carefully took Amy from her mate’s arms and slowly carried her up the steps.
Kes stood below, his hands fisted, tail flicking furiously as he watched his mate and children disappear to the safety of the roof.
“You can guard the way,” I said. He shook his head, ears pinned with rage.
“We’ll never let them that close, I want to be with all of you, killing as many as it takes to keep my sons safe.”
I nodded. No turoch wanted to watch their band do battle without them.
“We’ll post Tine here, then. He’s willing and strong.” Tine was young enough he would be better served away from the fighting, but I had no doubt the male would lay down his life for any of the humans.
The rest of the females filed up the steps and Jessa clung to my hand until she was the last.
“Go,” I urged her. “It won’t last long. A few hours, maybe less.” I was confident it would be a quick and brutal battle. There simply weren’t the numbers on either side for it to drag out. Maybe, if we barricaded ourselves inside the building, the battle would turn into a siege.
But that wasn’t the turoch way. We fought on open ground, face to face with our enemies. And these enemies had never truly dealt with a band of turochs on their element.
Jessa wrapped her arms around me and kissed my chest.
“Be safe,” she whispered.
“I love you, mate.”
“I’ll say it back when it's over,” she said. “Because we’ll both be fine.”
I smiled at her brave face and her eyes watered before she turned away and hurried up the steps. Kes pushed the bottom section off the ground, leaving the females safely tucked out of reach.
He turned to face Dargo and I, his eyes narrow.
“Let’s deal with this so I can hold my mate in our bed.”
I slapped his shoulder, and we strode toward the group of turochs assembling to face the coming sytos.