Chapter 9 #2
“Hang on,” I said, in a bit of a rush, because I knew it wouldn’t be long before the Elders reached the bridge now, and I wanted to have a grasp on this before they did.
“Are you saying the Digmaster, you, and your companion were sent to the pole to search for that specific energy signature? To study it?”
“Yes,” Auby chirped cheerfully. Well. He could have just said that.
Just in time, because I heard the shuffle of scales against metal.
Chen, Frearsosh, and Erish arrived, huddling close together so all three were visible to me on my communicator’s small screen.
Chen was in the middle; he was usually the more vocal one, though he was the youngest of the three.
Erish had only milky-white eyes that were supposedly sightless, but we all knew to tread carefully around him anyway.
It was Frearsosh who held the true power.
He was the decisive vote in everything they did, and he was the one I needed to convince of the importance of what I’d found.
“Levant, you have news?” Chen said, his eyes twinkling in a way that made you think he was laughing at you, but kindly, not like he was mocking you.
Chen had always been my favorite teacher when I’d trained at the Shaman Training Grounds.
I had definitely not been his favorite student; I made too much trouble for that.
Those twinkling eyes seemed to say: clearly, you haven’t learned your lesson yet.
His mouth said, “Have you found the source that’s destabilizing Serant’s natural EM field? ”
My eyes darted to Felicia, who had approached but hadn’t quite pushed herself into the camera’s view yet.
I couldn’t help it; I felt a shard of guilt lance through me when I answered Chen’s question.
“Yes, I believe I have.” Then I explained the Burrower’s behavior, the energy signature I’d found, and how I’d located the ship.
I could not bring myself to mention Felicia, because I was suddenly struck with the fear that they’d take her away from me if I did.
They had sent me to the North Pole as punishment for interfering with humans, after all—to prevent me from interacting with the newly freed ones and from finding my mate.
“Where are you now?” Frearsosh asked midway through my explanation about the ship’s engine powering up and the Burrower coming after it.
I drew in a deep breath and felt a tingle of pride even though I hadn’t technically done this, Auby had.
I’d found Auby and accidentally turned him back on, though, so it was a little because of me.
“Aboard the Burrowing Revenant. It’s called a Digmaster 6-20D; I know this because I also found a much smaller Revenant that had its access codes.
” I turned my communicator around to show the bank of consoles and screens, before finally angling it toward Auby, sitting on the tip of my tail.
He had his six legs splayed wide around him, and he was swinging the front and back ones back and forth, tapping them against his middle legs with little clicks.
“That’s a Revenant?” Chen asked. “It looks just like a Vakarsa calf.” Auby rolled his lavender eyes in a manner I’d only ever seen a human do, Nala, when she thought something her mate said was ridiculous.
How had Auby learned that? I swung my eyes to Felicia, but I was certain she hadn’t done it.
Perhaps behind my back, when I couldn’t see?
“Correction, I am a companion bot, Vakarsa Calf model 3-Z-54,” Auby said, in typical Auby fashion.
I muffled a laugh; Felicia chuckled with more abandon than I did, and I was certain that, at the very least, Erish would have heard it and recognized that it couldn’t be me.
The sound was too high-pitched, too feminine.
“We call him Auby. It’s short for the human word aubergine, which describes the color of his fur.
Or so I’ve been told, the naming was done by the human I recovered from the ship.
” There was no avoiding that topic now; Erish had already opened his mouth to say something, and it was always better to come clean yourself. Always.
Then I had to explain Auby and Felicia, and I hesitated to show her, feeling an odd amount of possessiveness.
The old males had no interest in my female, not in that way.
They were not rivals. Rationally, I also knew they were extremely unlikely to remove her from my care.
When I showed them my blooming mating marks, Chen even laughed and called me lucky.
“Some things are just fated,” I told them haughtily.
It made Frearsosh frown in a way that made my scales itch, but Erish was so hearty in his congratulations that I knew, at least in this, it would be all right.
“You didn’t tell them the biggest news yet,” Felicia reminded me. She might not have realized that the Elders could understand her, because they’d treated a human at the Amaratha last summer—a male named Reid. At the sound of her voice, and the very intriguing comment, all three of them leaned in.
“That is true. Felicia is talking about the Naga we encountered—a Clan. We only saw males, but they were very savage and hostile. There is no record of a pale Clan of Naga with pelts, is there? These had pelts instead of scales.” It was silent for a very long moment, the three Shaman Elders exchanging looks, huddling close as Erish whispered something I could not hear.
“I have no record of Nagas with pelts either,” Auby announced into that silence.
His eyes glowed faintly, not quite that blue from before, but definitely glowing in a way no true Vakarsa eye could.
He was accessing his records, as it turned out.
“I do have a reference in a journal about the Naga genome that indicates a gene is present that could be expressed as fur under the right circumstances.”
“The Revenant is correct,” Erish said. “I have come across such a mention regarding Naga genetics on several occasions as well, but as far as I know—and that is not saying much—it has never occurred in our known history. It is assumed our very ancient ancestors might have needed such an adaptation to survive.” Erish could launch into a very complicated and technical explanation on genetics if you let him, and I was not the only one ready to cut him off before he got truly started.
“Yes, this is a triple discovery of astounding proportions. The ship, you have disabled it? We’ve been monitoring the situation.
There was an EM spike an hour ago, but all is calm now.
” I nodded, my arm finding Felicia because I saw her mouth grow tight.
She did not like being reminded of having to turn her engine off and abandon her ship.
When she tucked herself into my side like she had always done that, my chest felt two sizes too small.
She was perfect; I just needed to convince her to stay.
“Then you must stay with the Burrowing Revenant to study it. We will send another Shaman to your camp to assess the situation with this lost Clan.” That was Chen, smoothing over the moment and quickly giving direction.
Frearsosh nodded, said nothing, but I knew Chen would not have spoken if he did not think the oldest of the three agreed.
“Stay on the Revenant, okay, we can do that,” I agreed.
I checked the screen where the energy lock was displayed, my eyes roaming the depicted landscape.
“It appears to be headed straight down across the continent right now, toward a smaller energy spike similar to Felicia’s ship.
This energy signature is located in the Serqethos Desert. ”
“Perfect,” Frearsosh said, his voice dry as dust and grinding across my senses like the droning of a machine.
He creaked, he moved slowly, he was ancient, but he knew everything.
“Your home turf. You’ll have the advantage.
” It wasn’t my home turf in the sense that I was born there; my birth Clan came from clear across the continent we were on, but it was home.
I had missed Serqethos, missed the desert heat and the dry sand.
I could not wait to show it to Felicia. I hoped she’d fall in love with the sand dunes and the oasis by the lake as much as I had.
I hoped that if I could not convince her to stay, maybe Serqethos could.