Chapter 2
Na’Ren
––––––––
The last jolts of pleasure slither from my muscles and I shudder at the loss.
The Terran reached out. He reached out and touched me. Through the metal alloy of the ship. Through the circuitry and mechanics and my own resistance. The man’s curiosity had burned through the barriers and touched me.
Have I ever felt a physical joy like this one? While my cohort had spent their adolescence sneaking off with each other, I had been too busy. Too busy with my studies, too busy with my ambitions. I had never made time for these physical pleasures.
Now, with the Terran’s touch singeing through my body, I have to wonder why I waited so long.
Electricity sends a last tremor through my extremities, and I try to calm myself with breath.
The Terran—the movements of his body, the scent I could detect even through the metal carapace of the ship, those blazing blue eyes—the man had drawn the physical reaction out of me like poison sucked from a wound. I am electric with it—the touch and the sex of it, the aching need for more of it, more of him, and—
—another shallow breath reams me through with pain.
Ah, yes. The shrapnel.
I cast my eyes downward.
The long jagged spear of fuselage had impaled me on impact. It extends out from my abdomen, hooks sharply to the right in front of me, and scrapes raggedly against the control panel. The metal shines black with— what ?
Right. My own smeared blood.
I shudder at the sight.
Outside the cabin, my crew is assembling. Their voices drift into my head on waves of pheromones. The sound is crackly, incomplete, but the signal is strong enough for me to count their voices. I come up with the full ship manifest and close my eyes in relief. Everyone made it.
Everyone survived.
“ Sir.”
Ja’Lin’s voice is the clearest in my head, clearly audible above the din. Though all members of our hive had bonded pheromonally in childhood, my connection with Ja’Lin has always been the strongest. It was an honor to select my oldest friend to serve at my side for this mission. And he had accepted the offer with golden, unwavering faith.
Look where his trust has gotten him.
I owe him apologies greater than I could ever summon.
“Ja’Lin,” I call out loud. I swab my tongue over my bottom lip and swallow. “I require your assistance.”
Immediately, the cabin door slides open and my first officer is at my side.
Ja’Lin is calm and collected. Tall and steady. The sight releases some of the tension coiled in my shoulders.
His black eyes draw over me, assessing. I am in good hands, I know it. There is no one that I trust more.
“Sir,” Ja’Lin says as he kneels beside my chair, and I hear his sharp intake of breath when he sees the wound. “ Sir .”
“Yes,” I agree. “Please.”
A sharp ache radiates out from the wound. The weight of the shrapnel pulls down on my muscle and exoskeleton, and Earth’s atmosphere stings against the open flesh. The composition of the air is wrong. It burns like salt in a wound.
Even in pain, my brain responds with a captain’s focus. We will need our respirators if we plan to exit the ship for long periods of time. Possibly we will adjust. I will have to consult with our medical officers.
Ja’Lin’s steady hands grip the metal and begin the slow, gentle process of pulling it free. I hiss against the pain. I have been through worse. I have lived through worse, and I will live through this, too.
My first officer reads my thoughts even if I do not voice them.
“Sir,” he says in an even voice as he works the shrapnel further out of my body. “Read me the manifest.”
A breath huffs out of my mouth. I’m not sure if the sound is one of pain or amusement.
“ Mission objectives,” I grit out, willing myself to sharpen my mind.
Ja’Lin works with stern concentration, his eyes only flicking to mine briefly to urge me on.
“Assemble a crew of— ah —thirty-eight,” I breathe. “Exobiologists. Microbiologists. Archaeologists.”
Ja’Lin eases a sharp burr past the carapace of my abdomen, and I gasp.
“Yes,” he says. Steady. Calm. “What else?”
My inhalation is shaky but I continue. “Meteorologists. Linguists. Engineers and assorted mechanical staff.”
“Don’t forget medical officers,” Ja’Lin offers, a wry smile pulling at his mouth.
A pained laugh rasps its way up my throat. “Yes. Medical officers. Where are they anyway?”
“I wish I knew.” Ja’Lin steadies my body with his free hand. “Keep going, sir.”
My insides make a wet sound as Ja’Lin twists lightly to ease the shrapnel past a curve in its metal.
“And once you assembled your crew,” he says, “what then?”
“ Shin’Ah , how much longer?” I ask. The pain is a white-hot glimmer at the edge of my vision.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” Ja’Lin says.
My mental itinerary evaporates, and I can’t help the shout of pain as the shrapnel squelches free of my body with a sickening suck. The metal leaves nothing but ache and empty air and cold, black blood in its place.
Ja’Lin frowns down at the wound. “That will heal,” he says, though I don’t like the uncertain note in my first officer’s voice.
Where was I? Ah, yes.
Gather biological, chemical, and meteorological data from each landing site.
And do not crash the blasted ship.
“Sir?”
Back on Gamma Andromedae, this wound would close within minutes. Here, with the chemical sting of an unfamiliar atmosphere...
I am not sure.
Outside the cabin’s window, the ship is surrounded by open space, and in the distance, one box of light. A human dwelling. A single window glows out into the darkness, and my blood tingles in my veins.
The Terran from earlier. The one who sent prickles of electricity through my body. The man and his terrifying beast had been frightened as they approached the ship. Is he still afraid, sitting there in his box full of light? Has the adrenaline seeped out of his body yet? Have the tremors ceased?
Had he sensed me in the same way that I sensed him?
“Sir,” Ja’Lin says with a slight hesitation.
I stare out the glass for a long time, not answering. My mind is a swarm. It is a buzzing mess of distraction, because I know I must check on the safety of my crew. I must investigate this new world. I must make a plan. However.
However, my mind has hooked into the Terran’s presence and it keeps dragging me back in. I need to see him.
“Sir,” Ja’Lin repeats, infinitely patient with me. “May I make a suggestion?”
I swallow against the tightness of my throat.
“No,” I say, and I reach for my respiration device.
Ja’Lin grips my shoulder. “Wait. This is unwise.”
My heart is pounding so hard, I can taste the metal of my own blood. I rest a calming hand over Ja’Lin’s fingers for a moment, grip them briefly, and then I slide away from him. Dragging the respirator over my head, I step out into the night.
The humidity condenses on my skin, a million pinpricks of cold, a million glittering stars, and I draw in a sharp breath. The respirator adjusts the atmosphere, filters it, and the air does not sting as it enters my lungs.
I scan for threats: more Earth organisms, more growling beasts, threatening botanical entities, but even in the dark, I can tell that the land barely supports life. Dust clings to my damp skin. Ground cover crunches dryly beneath my feet as I close the distance and approach the dwelling.
My body is a live wire, and it sparks more violently as I close in.
The ship is a distant memory. The crash, a mirage. Ja’Lin and the crew blur and fade, and then a figure moves across the warm, glowing window of the Terran home. My body stills.
The man from earlier pauses there, framed in the glass. Fair hair, pale skin, a delicate musculature of creature who was not raised to be a soldier. He shrugs out of a garment and drapes it over a chair, and my gaze drifts over the fluid lines of his arms.
A sharp howl pierces the air.
Through the glass, the Terran bends down. When he resurfaces, he is lifting his growling beast, carrying him toward the window. As he gets closer, the growls shift into vicious barks. It snaps its jaws in my direction.
With shaking hands, I reach for the slim stem of metal that hangs from a chain on my neck. Thumbing over its surface, I activate my cloaking field. As it settles over me, my skin tingles at the sensation of cool mist. I know it’s working. It’s keeping me safe.
But the Terran leans nearer to the window, his eyes of ocean blue squinting out into the darkness, and I swear— I swear —he can see me.
The impossibility draws a gasp out of my mouth, and I dart back into the black night, toward the ship. Toward my first officer, toward my crew. And, as always, toward my sacred duty.