Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
AIRIK
Airik approached the smoldering craft with his gun drawn and his finger on the pulsar charge. His suit grated uncomfortably against his sweating skin.
The flimsy craft had barely survived atmospheric friction but somehow held its shape.
Corroded yellow paint was scrawled across the hull but beyond recognition.
Against the towering rock wall, it looked pitiful.
Had it not landed on the forgiving beach, it would’ve been annihilated against the boulders.
Smoke escaped from a single porthole and from tears in the hull, like the final, humid breaths of a dying animal.
He ran an identification scan using his suit’s arm pilot.
“Unknown craft. Propulsion method unknown. Sector of origin unknown.”
A little of the anger that had been keeping him tense evaporated. Not reapers, then. A tingle gripped the back of his neck, radiating into his arms and fingers. It pushed him toward the craft.
The outline of a door and lever handle emerged. Made for a hand like his own, if a little small.
An abrupt sadness struck him, welling in his eyes and throat. The last time that door had been opened, someone had pushed the lever down and stepped through the port, never suspecting they’d end up at his mercy, he who was oath-bound to kill trespassers.
The hull’s metallic sheeting sagged, and more smoke gushed out of the holes and around the door frame.
“One unknown biological signature detected.”
Airik’s head jerked down, finding his arm pilot still scanning. His heart thundered against his ribs as he ran another biological scan. Please be dead. Don’t make me kill you.
“Sapient species detected. Status: Distressed. Proceed with caution—do not engage.”
He reran the scan, his chest aching at the possibility that anything could have survived the crash and fire. On the display, a red circle formed, closing in on a spot at one end of the craft. The signal beeped in time with what must have been a heartbeat. Erratic. Unbalanced. Fading.
Without thinking, Airik sprinted to the door. He dug into the small gap around the door, then heaved. The suit’s load-bearing mechanics clicked over his joints, resisting the tension he demanded of it.
The biological detector stuttered, losing its lock on whatever it’d detected.
Knowing time was scarce, he blasted the door with a plasma charge. What remained of the door tipped forward and fell, kicking up a small plume of dust.
Stooping to clear the doorway, he stepped through. Tentacle-like cords dangled from the ceiling, still sparking and swaying from the impact. He ducked, cutting away wires and clearing a path through the narrow corridor, clearly built for people smaller than he.
The red circle from his arm pilot focused on a fogged glass box at the end of the short corridor. Beside it, a broken screen displayed the text Multiple Systems Failure.
His breath caught as he recognized the letters and the word failure.
Ingelesh. Below that were the letters OK over and over, each struck through with red lines. A word he didn’t know, but given the condition of the craft, it couldn’t have been good.
The audio receptors in his helmet picked up the sound of scratching coming from inside the glass box.
Airik stilled, gripping the sword, his mouth going dry. A shadow collided with the glass, then fell away. It left behind a handprint. Five fingers, smaller than Airik’s but precisely the same shape.
“DO NOT ENGAGE. DO NOT ENGAGE.” His arm pilot’s alarm grew deafening. “Unauthorized approach. Arming—”
Fueled by an overwhelming and maddening impulse, Airik tore the small rectangular pilot from his suit and crushed it in his fist. It wouldn’t help him anyway.
This territory’s terrain had been purged from the neural engines, and he could only hope the compendium back on his ship had archaic, physical maps if he needed them.
He dropped the pieces at the base of the glass box.
His sword hovered a hair’s width from the glass.
This would certainly earn him a brand—to intervene with a species deemed irrational and not yet worthy of contact by the Ourex.
A brand that would agonize him for months if it didn’t kill him.
The cost of breaking the oath. Of being touched, taken, or conquered.
Kill it with the plasma charge—you can keep your hands clean.
A small, miserable moan came from inside the box, jolting Airik from his thoughts.
He could do nothing else—he had to see this creature’s face. Focusing on the tip of his sword, he pressed it into the brittle glass. The glass parted for his powered blade as if slicing through water.
When he saw what waited on the other side—a small face slumped over, blue lips, and golden skin—he felt his heart falter. So did his grip on the sword. The blade slipped, and the remaining glass shattered. He tightened his grip, steadying himself.
This was a human.
A sudden, sinking awareness burst in the pit of his belly. He’d just made a grave mistake. The smell of iilas berries—he hadn’t tasted one since he was a child—overcame him in a breath, then was gone the next. He shook his head, unwilling to let the madness take him here.
You can fix this. Keep moving.
Airik had never seen a human in the flesh, but he’d seen a few pictures in contraband texts from the vault. He knew their species had skin pigmented in varying degrees, from deep brown to near white. He knew their eyes could range from black to the lightest shade of the sky.
He’d never seen an image of blue lips, so he knew this human was wrong. Dying.
A distant thought told him he should announce himself, but he had no words. All he could do was move. He’d faced death hundreds, if not thousands, of times as a morazir. Never had his heart raced like this.
He cut the straps holding the human, jamming his body partway into the box to reach all of them.
His ear pressed against their chest as he freed their ankles, which were bound so tightly it was a wonder they hadn’t sliced off their feet.
The suit’s audio amplifiers picked up a slow, weak beat from the human’s chest and a soft rattle as air moved through their lungs.
Any relief gained from hearing signs of life vanished when their body fell forward, limp, in his arms.
Airik pulled them out, shocked at their slight size and weight. He lost a glove when it caught on one of the bolts holding the straps in place, but he left it behind, not wanting to let the human go to retrieve it.
He held the human up. They had thick, dark hair, nearly black, pulled back and long enough to fall into the collar of their suit.
All he could see of their face was mostly obscured by a shorter mop of hair falling over their eyes.
This one’s nose flared with each weak breath, and their blue-tinged lips quivered with erratic gasps.
Cloth-covered toes peeked out of the suit’s pants, brushing just below Airik’s knees as he held them at eye level. Did humans not have shoes?
A sudden crack echoed. The ceiling sagged, grazing the top of his helmet. On impulse, he crushed the human to his chest, curling over her.
Her.
His breath hitched. Why did he suddenly think they were a “her”? The suit was shapeless and too large to hint at what it covered, yet there was an inherent softness to her form that told every instinct in his body that what he held was female.
Another crack sounded, this time much louder. The ceiling above the box, where they’d just been seconds earlier, caved in.
Determined not to die among the wreckage, Airik positioned her over his shoulder. She hung with terrible slackness against him.
“You are with me,” he told the human as best he could with the Ingelesh words he remembered.
He turned her so light could hit her face as he carried her to relative safety. If she was meant to die, at least she’d feel the sun’s warmth one last time.