10. Rhaek
RHAEK
T he first claw came out of nowhere.
I caught it. Barely.
Twisted hard. Sent the thing skidding back across the sand.
Then the next one hit me.
Then three more came at once.
Chuck-chuck-chuck.
Oh, this was bad.
They didn't rush. Didn't need to. Just advanced in that slow, horrible arc — claws up, stalked eyes tracking, completely certain of the outcome. Like they'd done this before. Like they did this every night.
I hit one so hard the shell split down the middle.
It came back.
That's when the name surfaced. From somewhere deep in memory, floating up slow.
Keth'var.
I knew these things. There'd been a briefing. Three lines in a file I'd skimmed on the transit in. Something critical about how they operated. How they hunted. How they found things in the dark.
What was it?
Gone.
A claw opened my thigh. Hot. Deep.
Another found my forearm before I could turn.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about being a fighter: distraction gets you killed. Simple as that. No exceptions. No second chances.
And I had been distracted all evening.
By her laugh. By the way she'd asked questions about the stars like she actually wanted to know the answers. By the way she'd leaned toward me in the dark and I'd leaned back and neither of us had moved away.
By approximately a hundred things I had absolutely no business thinking about on an active extraction.
Now I was paying for it.
We both were.
"Get behind me."
She moved. Fast. No argument. No questions.
Smart female.
I planted my feet and went to work. One came low — I kicked it hard, my leg rang like struck metal. One came left — I swung the burning wood two-handed and put everything into it.
The thing cracked.
Kept coming.
They all kept coming.
Hit one. Two filled the gap. Drive them back. They reset. Over and over, relentless, mechanical, the claws finding me every few seconds like they were running a schedule.
My forearm. My shoulder. A line of fire across my ribs that I didn't look at .
Behind me I could hear her fighting. The hard crack of shell. The catch of her breath. The kind of language I wouldn't have expected but absolutely should have.
I did not turn around.
Turning around was how this ended in the worst possible way.
I kept myself between her and them. One job. Just the one.
More came out of the dark. More after those.
Keth'var. Something about how they sense the world. How they track. There was something in that file and I needed it right now?—
A claw found my knee.
I went down on one hand.
Got back up.
My shoulder again. My arm again. I was bleeding from more places than I was keeping count of and the arc was tightening and I was running out of room in every direction and the name in the file that I needed was still just out of reach?—
Come on, come on. Remember!
I thought about her for one half-second.
Couldn't help it.
Kept fighting.
My back hit the rock face.
End of the line.
Nowhere to go. Angle completely compressed. The keth'var knew it too — their arc pulling tight with that slow, patient certainty.
I threw one. Hard as I could.
It hit the sand. Righted itself in under two seconds. Came back.
I was fighting a wave that would never stop .
My breathing was ragged. My leg was wet. My forearm had gone past hurting into something quieter and more serious that I wasn't going to think about right now.
I threw another one.
Same result.
The arc closed another foot.
I thought, with a strange flat calm:
Well.
At least it was worth it.
I'd spent the evening thinking about her instead of doing my job. I'd walked straight into this with my eyes open and my brain somewhere else entirely. I'd made every mistake available and then produced new ones from nothing.
But she was still on her feet.
I could hear her behind me. Still fighting. Still moving. Still swearing with impressive range.
The arc tightened again. I raised my arm for a swing I already knew wasn't going to be enough?—
Her voice cut through everything.
"The rocks! Get on the rocks! They can't reach me up here! They just stop at the bottom!"
I looked up.
She was on the ledge. Two feet up. They could easily grab her… if they could sense her there.
The keth'var nearest to her had simply stopped.
Not climbing. Not trying to climb. Just stopped. Claws raised. Stalks wheeling with agitation.
She was completely untouched.
Something fired in the back of my mind.
That’s it!
She lifted her foot. Stamped hard on the ledge.
Every stalk in the cluster snapped toward the rock face at exactly the same moment. Searching. Straining forward. Then swung away again in confusion when solid stone gave them absolutely nothing.
She did it again.
Pointed at her feet.
Looked straight at me as if I were too dense to notice the pattern.
They’re vibration-sensitive.
There it was.
That was the line from the file. The one critical detail sitting just out of reach this entire fight while I bled all over the sand like an amateur.
They didn't see. Not the way I understood seeing.
They felt.
Movement through the ground. Every footfall a signal sent radiating outward. Every step broadcasting location, distance, speed — straight to every creature within range.
And I'd been standing on sand for the entire fight.
I'd been giving them everything.
I looked down at my feet.
Sand. I was standing on sand!
I took one step forward.
Every stalk in the nearest cluster snapped to exactly where my foot had landed. The ones furthest back turned too. The whole arc reoriented in an instant — completely, perfectly — around that single point of contact.
They were already moving toward it.
She was still stomping on the ledge above me. Patient. Deliberate. Watching my face.
I had it.
Three of them were within striking distance.
I dealt with those first. Fast. No elegance. Just bought myself two seconds of clear sand.
Turned .
Ran.
Every step gave me away.
I knew it and ran anyway.
The surge behind me tracked each footfall in real time. The chuck-chuck-chuck rose fast and sharp and loud. I hit the rock face with both hands and moved.
It was not pretty.
Wet rock. Near vertical. A crack that went nowhere. A ledge that crumbled. A handhold that flat out lied to me. Something caught my ankle hard from below. I wrenched it free but it cost me.
My knee bashed stone and I saw white for a half second. I pushed through it. Fingers finding the next crack. Boot finding the next edge.
Just keep moving.
A hand locked around my wrist.
She hauled. Wrong leverage. Right timing. I got one knee onto the ledge. Then the other. Dragged myself up and over and lay flat against cold wet rock for exactly one second.
Just breathing.
Then I pushed up and looked down.
The keth'var filled the space I'd been standing in ten seconds ago. Every claw raised. Every stalk sweeping the air in slow arcs. Finding nothing.
The signal was gone.
One by one, slowly, they gave up looking.
Then one grabbed a piece of wood from the remains of our fire. Another grabbed the other end. A third arrived and immediately took issue with the whole situation. Two more found a piece of bark and declared war over it.
One of them had my boot .
Carrying it sideways. With tremendous purpose. Going nowhere in particular.
Back to their aimless wandering.
"They might like it," she said, nodding to my boot. “But I doubt it’ll fit any of them very well.”
Fit them well? She thought they would wear my clothes? I’d been around humans many years and I didn’t think I would ever fully understand their humor.
We watched it disappear into the dark.
“Maybe they’ll worship it as their new deity,” she said.
I just frowned at her.
"You're welcome, by the way."
I looked at her.
Hair wrecked. A cut on her forearm she hadn't mentioned and clearly wasn't planning to mention. Watching a giant crab commit armed robbery against another giant crab with an expression of complete personal offense.
I thought — not for the first time that evening, not even close — that she was extraordinary.
"You saved my life," I said.
"Running tally." She held up two fingers without looking at me. "I'm winning by a significant margin."
"Are you hurt?"
"Am I hurt." She turned and looked at my leg. My forearm. Took her time. "That's cute. That's a really cute question."
"Grazes. Nothing more."
"Uh huh. The blood might have something different to say about that."
Talking blood? I shook my head. "Doesn't matter right now. "
"You say that every single time something is very clearly mattering enormously."
I didn't have an answer for that. Mostly because she was right.
She looked back down at the chaos below. At the creatures tearing apart everything we'd had, fighting over debris with complete moral conviction and zero self-awareness.
"I want you to know," she said, "that I will never eat seafood ever again.
" A pause. She watched one of them steal the bark back.
Then steal it again. "Actually no." Another pause.
"Every single time I eat it from now on —" the boot disappeared around a rock corner "— I am going to think of this exact moment.
" She nodded slowly. "And I am going to savor every single freaking bite. "
I reached over and took her hand.
She looked down at it. Still. Considering. Weighing something I didn't have a name for.
Then she looked up at my face.
Whatever she found there — her shoulders dropped. All the tension went out of her at once. Completely. Like she'd finally decided something.
Her fingers closed around mine.
Warm. Sure.
"Higher," I said. "Away from the sand. There will be more of them before morning. They can’t sense us but they could accidentally end up here."
She nodded.
Didn't let go.
I stood. Drew her up with me. Turned toward the dark rock above.
And she followed without hesitation.