Four
RENJIK WANTED TO march Willow back to the pod and seal her inside while he hunted every piece of Scozid wreckage across the planet until nothing remained.
It wasn’t a practical plan. At that moment, he resented practicality.
Willow knelt beside the fragment with the creature she’d named pulsing softly around her shoulders. He wanted to jerk her away, but he recognized the focus on her face. The discovery had given her something to focus on besides the pain that still tightened the corners of her eyes and mouth.
Focus gave a warrior strength to stand when pain wanted him on his knees.
“The casing cracked before impact. Probably due to heat stress and damage from the station exploding.” She stood slowly and surveyed the area. “However much was in there, is gone.”
“Gone where?”
“That’s the part I hate.”
“There are several parts of this situation to hate.”
She sighed and Na’ashq’ii started a temple massage in a rough circle. “This is an especially hateful part.”
She swayed and on instinct he caught her upper arm.
With his cybernetic hand.
She inhaled sharply and he released her and backed several steps away. Cold flooded his veins from his head to his toes. “I hurt you.”
“No,” she rubbed at her arm but stopped when she caught his eyes. “No. You startled me. I didn’t expect the cold.”
“I shouldn’t touch you with it. It’s dangerous.” The fingers opened and closed without conscious thought. He locked the arm at his side.
“Lots of things are dangerous. I still drink coffee. I still eat too much sugar.”
“This isn’t—”
She cut him off. “Don’t make me argue with you while my brain is actively trying to evict itself from my skull. I was close to passing out. You caught me. You let go the second I reacted. That isn’t the same thing as hurting me. You. Did. Not. Hurt. Me. Got it?”
The fragile resistance of her skin against the metal fingers pulsed through his hand. Not the cybernetic one. The phantom one. The one the Scozid took. Pain ghosted up nerves that were no longer there.
Willow’s expression softened. She was too perceptive. He was a warrior. He could survive many things—had survived many things. He didn’t know if he could withstand her looking at him like that.
“We need to move.”
She nodded and he turned away. She was gentle. Too fragile for a broken warrior.
They moved from debris field to debris field, moving either up or parallel, but not down. They found two more fragments in close range. One was harmless hull plating. The second was the same type of container.
Willow muttered under her breath about incomplete data, homicidal arrogance, and people who put weapons in containers designed to break.
The creature on her shoulders clicked whenever they neared contaminated material. More interestingly, it stopped clicking the moment they moved away. Not warning. Detection.
He disliked coincidence. He also disliked creatures with too many limbs, but the little thing had proven useful, which earned it another temporary stay of execution.
Renjik heard the click and training kicked in without thought. He shoved Willow behind a rock as weapon fire burned through the moss where she’d been standing. The creature flattened, its shell plates rising in a defensive posture.
“Scozid?”
Her voice was barely a whisper. He nodded and whispered back. “Two, maybe three.”
“You can tell that from one shot?”
“No. From the smell.”
“Oh, right. Why wouldn’t this situation include scent tactical math?”
A second shot struck the rock and chips exploded from the impact. His cybernetic arm moved, slamming into the rock beside Willow, shielding her face from the shards. The impact vibrated up the arm and into bone. Pain flashed white behind his eyes.
“Stay low.”
Willow snorted. “I’m five four. Low is my default.”
The first Scozid was positioned behind a fan of fronds growing from a rock upslope. Renjik fired once. The Scozid popped. Another shot came from his left. He twisted and his prosthetic arm took the impact. The surface sensors shorted and he lost feeling from elbow to wrist.
The remaining Scozid tried to get a better angle to fire and discovered the razor grass.
It cleanly sliced off one of its limbs. Renjik reached through a gap and grabbed another, pulling it through.
He pinned it to the ground as he pulled a blade from his belt.
It clacked beneath him, one tentacle scrabbling for something clipped beneath its slick armor.
Memory slammed into him. Restraints, cold light, pain and the guttural clicks as the Scozid discussed where to cut him next.
The Scozid trembled beneath him.
Cut it. Make it scream.
“Renjik.”
He froze. Her voice pulled him back. The memory faded, but his intent to kill the thing beneath him didn’t.
“Renjik!”
He turned to look at her. She braced herself with one hand against the rock, pale but steady. The creature glowed at her neck like a ring of stars. “The device. Don’t let it trigger the device.”
The Scozid’s tentacle closed around a flat black oval.
Renjik struck its limb hard enough to crack the casing. The oval skittered across the moss, lights flaring in a sequence too deliberate to be random.
Willow sucked in a breath. “That’s not a weapon. That’s a transmitter.”
The animal screamed.
The sound sliced through Renjik’s skull. He grabbed Willow and threw both of them behind the rock as the device flashed white. The wounded Scozid convulsed once, its body going rigid before it collapsed.
Willow stared at the dead Scozid, then at the smoking oval. “Well. That answered several questions in the least helpful way possible.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Probably. Everything currently is.” She crawled forward before he could stop her and snapped a scan of the device from what she clearly believed was a safe distance. It wasn’t far enough. “It transmitted before it burned out.”
A third Scozid broke cover and ran. Renjik started after it, but Willow made a sharp sound of warning.
“Let it run.” Her eyes stayed on the scanner. “It wants us chasing the obvious threat while the quiet one keeps talking.”
He hated that she was right.
A distant hum turned into a roar. A Denchui shuttle punched through the clouds, alliance markings leaving no doubt.
Willow smiled with a sigh. “Rescue. Finally. I’ve never been so happy to see bureaucracy.”
Renjik returned to her side just in time to catch her as her knees buckled—with his real arm.
Of course she noticed. She trailed her fingers down his synthetic arm, wrapping them around his hand. “It’s okay to touch me.”
Rhun pulled tight in his chest and he swallowed, hard.
The shuttle landed with a thud and sent moss pieces rolling toward them. The ramp opened before the landing gear locked in place. Two warriors, weapons ready, emerged. A third completed their inverted triangle.
The last member of their group scanned them. “Report.”
“Possible creeping death contamination. Two dead Scozid. A third fled. One damaged Scozid transmitter recovered.”
“And I appear to have adopted local wildlife.” Willow added with a weak smile.
The warrior looked at her more closely. “Dr. Benally, is that animal safe?”
She chuckled. “It is for me. No idea otherwise.”
His eyes flicked between Willow and Renjik. “Should we remove it?”
The creature’s plates rose. Renjik stepped between the warrior and her. “Don’t touch her.”
She patted his arm. “It’s okay. I’ve tried to set it down several times, but it made its desires quite clear. It’ll be fine, just stop threatening my scarf.”
Willow stepped close and turned her face into his chest. “I need to tell command what we found.”
“You need to rest.”
“Both can be true.”
“Rest first.”
She tilted her head back and gave him a withering look.
Renjik scooped her into his arms.
She let out a squeak. “I can walk!”
“Badly.”
Her lips twitched. “I hate it when my own words are used against me.”
“Noted.” He carried her up the ramp, his synth arm supporting her legs. Carefully. He felt every point of contact, terrified it would malfunction.
She twined her fingers with his, holding the metal hand.
He sat and arranged her on his lap. She curled into him with a deep breath. He looked out the hatch at burning debris still falling from the sky.
The Scozid hadn’t come to negotiate. They brought a weapon to a peace talk, shattered it across a planet and expected them to be too slow to understand.
Whatever came next, Renjik knew with deadly certainty that he’d protect Willow.
If the stars had finally seen fit to give him Willow, only to place her in the path of an empire’s cruelty, then they’d learn what a Rucieth warrior did when his rhun was threatened.
SHE’D BEEN BACK on Lannidies for less than twenty minutes before a politician asked her to help plan the end of a civilization.
That was fast. Damn near hypersonic for government work.
She sat in a quarantine room with a cool strip across her forehead and Na’ashq’ii wrapped around her shoulders like a judgemental shawl. She probably could have come up with something cooler, but she was working with a brain that she still contemplated evicting.
Na’ashq’ii pulsed with a soft blue light that kept the worst of the pain at bay. Every time a Molzaed came too close, it lifted one tentacle in warning. She found that deeply relatable. She wished she could be alone.
“It doesn’t seem to be carrying anything harmful,” the healer said.
“Great,” Willow murmured. “Gotta love a parasite-free accessory.”
The Molzaed blinked and made a note on its tablet.
Across the transparent quarantine barrier, Alliance leadership argued over the debris scans she’d brought back from the planet. Premiere Det’ae stood at the center of the adjacent room with the Ka’atari chief and two warriors, two science ministers, several cabinet members, Razili and Calyx.
Renjik stood inside with her, having simply said “No” every time he was reminded he should leave due to quarantine protocols.