Chapter 17
Enslak
The sound invaded my dreams first—a low, mechanical throb that didn't belong.
My eyes snapped open, every instinct screaming wrong. The rhythm was artificial, pulsing, growing louder with each passing second. Not the wind through Avalon's canopy. Not the distant calls of nocturnal creatures. Not the gentle rush of the river.
Engines.
I was on my feet before conscious thought caught up, my body moving on pure survival instinct honed by a century of captivity. Beside me, Niki stirred, her hand reaching across the bedding.
"Enslak?" Her voice was thick with sleep, confused. "What—"
"Ship." The word came out as a growl, sharp and urgent. "Landing here. Now."
She bolted upright, every trace of sleep vanishing from her face. In the dim pre-dawn light filtering through the cave entrance, I watched her snap into focus—the shift from drowsy to battle-ready in less than a heartbeat.
"How did they find us?" Despite the fear I could smell rising from her skin, her voice stayed steady. "Binwee disabled the tracker. She promised she'd wait thirty days before telling the Prime."
The tracker.
The word unlocked something—a memory pushing through the fog of my mind, sharp and clear and terrible. I staggered.
The laboratory. Cold metal table beneath my back.
Ulkommenian scientists standing over me with instruments I didn't understand, their clicking voices discussing me like I was already dead.
One of them held something small—so small I could barely see it even with my enhanced vision.
A needle, impossibly thin, injecting it directly into my bone marrow while I screamed and thrashed against restraints that wouldn't break.
"This is experimental," one of them said in their clicking, hissing language. "DNA-based tracking. It replicates with his cells. Becomes part of him at the molecular level. No surgery can remove it. No healing technology can detect it."
"And if it works?"
"We'll never lose another test subject."
"DNA tracker," I said, my voice rough with the memory of that pain. "They tested it on me years ago. Injected it into my bone marrow."
Niki's face went pale in the growing light. "Oh God. That means—"
"They've been tracking me this whole time." I moved to the cave entrance, scanning the sky through the canopy. There—a dark shape descending fast through the dawn. A sleek Ulkommenian vessel, its hull reflecting Avalon's strange sunrise in crimson and gold. "We need to move. Now."
She was already on her feet, throwing on her clothes despite the fear I could smell intensifying—sharp and acrid, mixing with the lingering scent of our lovemaking. She grabbed our supplies, her movements economical, wasting no motion.
"The ship," she said, her tactical mind already working the problem. "We can send a distress signal—"
"Yes." I pulled on my clothes, my mind racing through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly. "Signal first. Then we hide. The forest is dense—it'll be harder to track us on foot."
"How long until they land?"
I listened, calculating the engine pitch and distance. "Minutes. Maybe less."
"Then we run."
We ran.
The ship was a couple of miles from the cave, hidden in a clearing we'd camouflaged with branches and vines. From above, it looked like nothing more than a natural outcropping of vegetation. But that wouldn't matter if the Ulkommenian landed close enough to see through the disguise.
My legs burned as I pushed harder, faster, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to break free.
Above us, the Ulkommenian engines grew louder—a high-pitched whine that made my teeth ache and my skull throb.
The ozone stench of their thrusters filled the air, acrid and choking, cutting through Avalon's rich soil and the sweet scent of crushed flowers beneath our feet.
Niki kept pace beside me, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Despite her smaller frame, she moved through the undergrowth with a grace I couldn't match. Branches whipped at us, drawing blood—I felt the sting across my face, my arms, but the pain was distant, unimportant. Neither of us slowed.
The clearing appeared through the trees—our ship, still camouflaged, still hidden. But not for long.
We burst into the open at full sprint. The Ulkommenian vessel was descending now, close enough that I could see the weapon ports opening along its hull like hungry mouths. Too close. Far too close.
Niki reached the ship's hatch first, her hands flying over the external panel.
The ramp descended with agonizing slowness—each second stretching into eternity—as I grabbed her waist and pulled her up, my eyes locked on the sky.
The Ulkommenian ship hovered maybe two hundred meters up, its landing struts extending with mechanical precision.
"Controls!" I shouted, pushing her toward the cockpit the moment we were inside.
Her fingers flew over the panel, activating the emergency beacon. The ship's systems hummed to life around us—lights flickering on, engines beginning their startup sequence with a low rumble that vibrated through my bones.
I moved through the ship's interior with frantic purpose, yanking open every storage compartment I could find. Weapons. We needed weapons. Anything that could give us an edge against what was coming.
The first panel revealed nothing but emergency rations and medical supplies. I slammed it shut and moved to the next. Empty. The third held navigation equipment—useless.
"Fuck." The word came out as a growl.
I dropped to my knees and pried open the floor compartments near the cargo hold. My fingers found the edge of something cold and metallic. A blade—short, maybe eight inches, with a serrated edge designed for close combat. I pulled it free and kept searching.
Another compartment yielded a second blade, this one longer and curved. Vaktaire design, meant for slashing rather than stabbing. I tested its weight in my hand. It would do.
I tucked one blade into my belt and gripped the other as I moved back toward the cockpit, my jaw clenched so tight it ached.
"Done," she said, her voice tight with controlled fear. "Signal's broadcasting on all Alliance frequencies. If anyone's listening—"
She paused, her hand darting to the small blaster mounted near the pilot's chair.
She checked the charge—full—and tucked it into her waistband with the kind of casual competence that came from years of practice.
Her eyes met mine, full of determination.
She was a warrior and a survivor, and I was falling for her.
"They'll come." I pulled her away from the controls, back toward the ramp. "But we need to hide. Now."
"The forest?"
"Yes. Stay close. Don't let me lose you."
We plunged into the trees just as the Ulkommenian ship touched down in the clearing with a thunderous impact that shook the ground beneath our feet.
I pulled Niki deeper into the undergrowth, moving as quietly as I could manage.
The vegetation was thick here, the canopy dense enough to block most of the light and cast shadows deep enough to hide in.
Behind us, hatches opened with pneumatic hisses. Footsteps—heavy, coordinated, military. Then voices speaking in that clicking, hissing language I'd learned to hate with every fiber of my being.
"Spread out. The tracker signal is present but degraded."
"Degraded?" The second voice carried frustration, confusion.
"It should work better than this." Another voice cut in, sharp with irritation. "The augmentations were supposed to amplify the signal, make it stronger. Instead, it's just a shadow of what it should be. Scattered. Fragmented. It took far too long to track him to this planet."
"So he's close?"
"He's here, but it's not giving us a precise location."
I felt something shift in my chest, something that might have been grim satisfaction.
The tracker had been keyed to the altered DNA, the genetic signature the Ulkommenian had created through their forced augmentations.
When the Garoot Healer reversed those modifications, he'd changed my genetic code back toward what it had been before their experiments.
The tracker was searching for a DNA pattern that no longer existed in quite the same form, and that degradation would buy us time. Not much, but some.
We ran.
Deeper into the forest, away from the landing site, away from the coordinated search patterns of the Ulkommenian soldiers. I could hear them calling to each other, their clicking voices cutting through the trees like knives, but we stayed ahead. Barely.
Hours passed. The double suns climbed higher, turning the forest into a cathedral of light and shadow. Niki stayed right beside me, never slowing, never complaining. Just running. Her endurance impressed me—she was human, smaller, theoretically weaker, yet she matched my pace without faltering.
By the time the suns dipped low on the horizon, painting the sky in shades of purple and orange, I could no longer hear them.
We collapsed beside a small creek. Not gracefully—we simply fell, our legs giving out simultaneously like puppets with cut strings.
Niki hit the ground hard, gasping, her chest heaving so violently I thought she might be sick.
My own lungs burned like I'd inhaled fire, each breath a knife to the ribs.
Every muscle in my body trembled from the sustained sprint, from the adrenaline that had finally crashed, leaving nothing but raw exhaustion in its wake.
The water was cold and clear. We both crawled to it on hands and knees, too spent to stand, and drank greedily. The shock of cold against my overheated body made me shudder, but it was exactly what I needed.
"We can't keep doing this," Niki said after what felt like hours of silence. We were both lying on our backs now, staring up at the darkening sky, our breathing finally slowing to something approaching normal. "We can't run forever."
"I know."
The words sat heavy between us. They wouldn't stop. They'd never stop. Not until they had me back.
Or until I was dead.