Chapter 5
IRIS
Ieased off the accelerator as we approached the ridge, letting the Raycer slow to a more manageable speed. The rollerballs beneath us adjusted automatically, their hum dropping from urgent to gentle as we navigated the final stretch of terrain.
Behind me, Baleck was a wall of warmth.
His thighs pressed against the outside of mine, solid and steady despite the tension I could feel in his muscles.
The heat of his body radiated through the thin barrier of my pack, through the material of my bodysuit, settling against my back like something alive.
I was acutely aware of every point of contact between us.
The way his knees shifted when I turned.
The slight pressure of his chest when we decelerated.
The rhythm of his breathing, close enough to feel on my neck.
During the tunnel, that breathing had been rapid.
Shallow. I’d heard it clearly in the darkness, felt the tension through his body as we plunged into absolute blackness.
He’d been afraid. Part of me had wanted to say something.
To reassure him that the Raycer’s systems were more than capable of navigating without light, that I had made this kind of run dozens of times in worse conditions, that he was safe.
I hadn’t.
He had fought in the Brakken war. I’d read the briefings, knew that the Destrans had endured horrors that made my own experiences look tame.
He had been young, yes, but he was a warrior.
Warriors could handle fear. Warriors could process new experiences without needing someone to hold their hand through it.
What I admired, though, was that he hadn’t tried to hide his fear.
He could have. Could have forced his breathing steady, clenched his muscles tighter, pretended that the speed and the darkness and the unfamiliarity weren’t affecting him at all. Most people I’d worked with would have done exactly that. Fuck—I would have done it.
Baleck had simply let himself be afraid. Let himself experience the newness of it without shame or pretense. There was something refreshing about that. Something brave in its own way. No ego. No pride. It was not often that I was surprised by the males I encountered.
I guided the Raycer to a stop on a relatively flat stretch of ground and engaged the upright lock. It stabilized. Its rollerballs locked into position to keep it balanced, even without a rider.
Baleck climbed off first. His movements were slightly unsteady. I followed, swinging my leg over the seat and stepping onto solid ground with a relief I didn’t show. Riding was easy. Riding with someone else’s body wrapped around mine, distractingly warm and distractingly present, was not.
“So,” I said, turning to face him. “What did you think of the ride?”
He pulled off my sunglasses and blinked against the brightness, his eyes adjusting. His skin was cycling through colors I was beginning to relate to emotions. Blues and greens that suggested he was calming down, with occasional flickers of something warmer around the edges.
“Exhilarating,” he said, and there was a wry twist to his mouth. “I have a new appreciation for walking. Very glad I didn’t eat a big breakfast.”
I allowed a small smile. “You handled it well. Most people would panic in the tunnel.”
The words came out before I could stop them. A compliment. An acknowledgment. The kind of thing that built rapport and established connection and led to exactly the sort of familiarity I didn’t want. I wished I could take it back.
Baleck was the type of person who made friends easily.
I could see it in the way he interacted with everyone.
The diplomats, the D’tran guards, even Rezor himself.
Baleck had a natural warmth that drew people in and a genuine interest in others.
He was the type who made others want to open up to him.
It was partly his personality, enhanced by skills he’d picked up through years as a communications specialist. But mostly, it seemed to be simply who he was.
I didn’t make friends. I didn’t want to make friends. Friends were complications. Attachments that could compromise judgment, cloud decisions, create vulnerabilities. Friends were liabilities that enemies could exploit. I had learned that lesson early.
Baleck would not be an exception.
“The object is this way,” I said, turning away from him before he could respond to the compliment. “About twenty paces.”
The terrain here was brown and rocky, scarred by the storms that had ravaged this planet for so long.
But life was already pushing through. Small plants sprouted from cracks in the stone, their leaves a vibrant green that seemed almost defiant against the barren backdrop.
Moss spread out like a fuzzy carpet. Not far away, I could hear the sound of water.
A stream, probably, flowing down and carving new paths through the landscape.
It made something in my chest loosen, seeing it.
The resilience of growing things. The way nature reclaimed what had been taken from it, slowly but inevitably.
I had seen too many dead worlds, too many places where nothing grew and nothing ever would.
This planet was healing. It was good to witness.
The object sat on a flat stretch of ground ahead, exactly where I’d seen it from the ridge the day before. My cybernetic eye adjusted automatically, bringing it into sharp focus.
Tear-shaped. Brushed metal that caught the morning light with a dull gleam.
Roughly the size of a bed pillow, though more elongated.
Several protrusions extended from its surface at odd angles, and even from here I could tell they hadn’t been there when the thing landed. They’d emerged afterward. Deployed.
“A probe,” I said.
Baleck came to stand beside me, studying the object with obvious curiosity. “You’re certain?”
“The shape. The protrusions. The way it’s positioned.” I moved closer, circling it slowly. “Something designed to land, deploy sensors or transmitters, and gather information. I’ve seen similar designs before, though not this exact configuration.”
“I’ll defer to your expertise,” he said. “My knowledge of alien probes is not comprehensive.”
I pulled my pack around and retrieved my handheld scanner. It was a compact device, military-grade, capable of detecting a wide range of materials, energy signatures, and technological components. I powered it on and swept it over the probe in a slow, methodical pattern.
The readout confirmed what I’d suspected.
Standard probe mechanisms. Power source, minimal but functional.
Sensor array, currently dormant. And there, buried in the data, evidence of a transmission.
The probe had sent something. A signal, a data packet, a message.
But it wasn’t transmitting now. Whatever it had needed to communicate, it had already done so.
“It sent a transmission,” I said, showing Baleck the scanner display. “Recently, based on the energy residue. But it’s stopped now.”
“Sent to whom?”
“Unknown.” I crouched down beside the probe, examining its underside. The metal was smooth, unblemished except for…there. Markings. Etched into the surface with precision, small enough to miss if you weren’t looking for them. “There’s something here. Symbols of some kind.”
I tilted my head, trying to get a better angle. The markings were unfamiliar to me. Not any human script I recognized, not any of the alien languages I’d been trained to identify. But Baleck might know. He was a communications specialist, after all. Languages were his domain.
“Can you take a look at these?” I asked. “Do you recognize the language?”
He moved closer, handing me the sunglasses he’d been holding. Then he crouched down beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him again, and peered at the etched symbols.
For a moment, Baleck said nothing.
Then he let out a hiss and his skin changed.
This was different than the Destran color shifts I’d seen before.
It wasn’t the calm blue and greens of contentment.
Not the violet of cold. Not the warmer tones of amusement or interest. This was vivid red flooding his face and neck, electric blue crackling through his skin like lightning.
Colors so intense they seemed almost to glow.
Then, just as quickly, it all vanished. His skin shifted to match the rocks around us. Browns and grays, mottled and dull. The instinctive response of a species that had evolved to camouflage from predators.
He scrambled backward, nearly falling in his haste to put distance between himself and the probe. His expression was stricken. Pinched beneath the camouflage pattern. Eyes wide with something that went beyond fear, into territory I couldn’t name.
I moved without thinking, closing the distance between us and grabbing his arm. His muscles were rigid under my grip, trembling with tension.
“Baleck.” I forced him to look at me, putting myself directly in his line of sight. “What’s wrong?”
He swallowed hard. His gaze met mine, and I saw it there. Not just fear. Recognition. Horror.
“Brakken,” he said, and the word came out rough, scraped raw. “Those symbols. That language.” He looked back at the probe, and his skin flickered red again before settling into that defensive camouflage. “It’s Brakken. The language of the Destrans’ old enemies.”