Aftermath (25 page)

 

 

 

I’ll hop a ship and be there ASAP to help you search.

 

As night falls, the temperature drops, and I’m dressed
for Marakeq weather. For the first time in ages, Vel grows out his camouflage skin, but this time it’s for insulation, not to pass as human. But in honor of my aesthetic sensibilities, he takes human form instead of just permitting the faux-skin to shape as it will. This is the first time I’ve seen him make the transformation, and I am intrigued by the amount of physical sculpting he does.

He did it one other time in my presence—in the cave on the Teresengi Basin, but he was wearing weatherproof gear, and it was dark, so I couldn’t see what he was doing. There’s just enough light for me to make out the details, and it’s fascinating. When given his preferences, he chooses a height that doesn’t force him to compact his body or his limbs, so he’s tall and slender. Though he can, in order to pass as a specific target, that physical manipulation causes him pain. His features are so average that he’d never draw a second glance. I know for a fact that he’s created this identity out of a composite of a hundred male human faces. When he finishes, he’s warmer, but we still haven’t found anyplace to spend the night.

It’s all jungle, as far as the eye can see. No structures, no signs of sentient life. Well, higher-evolved sentient life, that is. I wonder if Dace sees this as some kind of rite of passage. If we can survive this world and make our way back, then we will prove ourselves worthy. No, that doesn’t ring true. I still believe she wants us to discover something here, mentioned in those Oonan prophecies.

I only want to find the way back.

“What do you think?” I ask Vel.

“I have been attempting to locate signs of passage, but this part of the planet appears to be unsettled wilderness.”

A sigh slips free. “How the hell do you think we got here? You’ve traveled even more than me. Ever had anything like this happen?”

He makes a sound in his throat that I recognize as laughter. “Never. Our adventures own the distinction of uniqueness.”

“That’s small comfort at the moment.”

I don’t know how long we’ve been walking, but I’m stumbling with exhaustion. At last, to my vast relief, Vel spots something in the canopy. It looks like an old tree house, a platform that uses the leaves as a roof and has vines leading down from the height so we can check it out.

“Wait here and remain alert. I will signal if it is safe.”

I whip out my shockstick and stand ready as he ascends. A few moments later, he calls, “Come up, Sirantha. This will suffice for tonight.”

It’s a hard climb, but my time in prison left me with serious biceps, and I haul myself up almost as fast as Vel. From here, I can tell the platform has been built with some measure of expertise, free-fall wood lashed together with vines. An old structure, but it appears stable, and we’ll be safe from ground-dwelling predators. Of course, there are still fliers and climbers to worry about, but I’m so tired I don’t care if a giant bird swoops down to eat me. Besides, its wings wouldn’t clear the canopy.

The ledge is also fairly narrow for sleeping. I can’t imagine its purpose, except as a lookout post. But if we turn on our sides, we can both manage to lie down, and that’s all that matters.

“I will take the outer edge.” Vel twines a vine about his arm so he won’t fall off if he rolls in his sleep, leaving me the relative safety of the side against the trees.

I don’t protest his chivalry. Though I’m by nature a scrapper, I don’t mind someone taking care of me—a little, anyway, as long as it doesn’t cut into my intrinsic freedoms. And this doesn’t. It’s just Vel’s way of showing affection, I think. He doesn’t have the words, so he does practical things instead. Nobody else ever has, not like this. Not Kai. Not March. They both assumed I would reject such gestures because I’m so independent, but Vel doesn’t take away my autonomy; he’s so matter-of-fact that I can’t take umbrage. Maybe
because
he’s Ithtorian, I can accept it from him. There are no species-specific snares to avoid.

“Wish I’d packed a thermal blanket,” I mutter, trying to get comfortable.

“I have one,” he says. “If you are amenable to sharing it.”

“Hell yes, I am.” It’s fragging cold.

But after he digs it out, and we arrange ourselves front to back, it’s weirder than I thought it would be. Because he feels human behind me, his chitin covered in two centimeters of skin. So the hardness beneath could be construed as muscle and bone, not what it is, and that’s disorienting because he doesn’t feel like my old friend. He feels like a human male spooned up against my back.

“It is a practical decision,” he says quietly. “The faux- skin is an excellent conductor, so we both benefit from proximity.”

I guess he read something of my thoughts, which takes some doing since my back is to him. Then I realize I’ve tensed against him and make a conscious effort to relax. Of course, I’m being ridiculous; this is Vel, whom I trust as much as anyone in the universe.
And he just lost the woman he loves. Try not to be an idiot, Jax.

Beneath the blanket, it’s delightfully warm, and he offers additional heat at my back. But my side hurts where the creature bit me; it’s a heated throb, as if the Nu-Skin and our antibacterial isn’t enough to fight the alien microbes.

I shift several times before he says, “Are you in pain?”

“Yeah.” Mary, I hate admitting that.

“I can administer a local painkiller.”

Ordinarily, I’d say,
No, I can tough it out.
But without it, the only way I’ll sleep is if I roll over, and I don’t know if I can drop off while curled up against his chest. The alternative is no better; I feel strange about spooning my front to his back.

“Please.”

He rummages and comes up with a disposable drug kit. One tiny prick into the skin of my side, and I already feel the delightful numbness spreading. It might not solve the problems my wound is causing, but it makes me care less.

“Is that better?”

“Much, thank you.”

Vel sets his pack within easy reach, and I set my shockstick near my head. This time, it’s easier to settle against him. I don’t know if it’s the drugs, but since it’s a local, it shouldn’t affect my state of mind. I let myself enjoy the reflected warmth from his faux-skin and the snug protection of the thermal blanket. Wind whispers through the canopy, lulling me, then new noises echo through the jungle: shrill shrieks, raucous calls, gentle chirrups. The sounds blur into a soothing symphony, and I fall asleep faster than I expected.

I wake to a nightmare of teeth and claws scrambling up the tree below me. These creatures are different from the ones on the ground. Smaller, lighter, with talons curved for climbing, and they bear spines on their backs for impaling their prey. I scramble backward, conscious of how far I have to fall. The narrow ledge will make fighting a bitch, and where the hell is Vel?

He drops from above, his twin blades in hand, in the time it takes me to locate my shockstick. Though I’m hardly awake, I wade in swinging. The movement pulls the bite in my side, but there’s enough painkiller left in my system that it’s a bearable ache, not a sharp, stabbing pain. Right now, there are only two, though their screams may bring others.

I hit mine hard enough to knock it toward the edge, and I follow up with a side kick, which sends it tumbling off the platform. It tries to control its fall, clawing at branches and vines, but succeeds only in battering against the trunk on the way down. It hits hard and does not get up. In the time it takes me to dispatch mine, Vel has already sliced the other creature’s throat. The blood smells different from the other monsters we fought, less rotting vegetation and more mineral in origin. Life on this planet is truly strange.

“Have you slept?” I ask him.

“No. I moved to stand watch after you drifted off.”

So he only lay with me long enough to permit me to relax, as I wouldn’t have done alone. How well he knows me. That makes me smile despite the fact we haven’t survived our first night here yet.

“Then it’s my turn. You found a good vantage point above?” At his nod, I ask, “How far up?”

He directs me with an arc of his arm, and then I do something I’m sure he doesn’t expect. “Would you like me to stay until you fall asleep?”

Vel hesitates, his posture a clear Ithtorian expression of surprise. Then he simply answers, “Yes.”

So I lie down at his back, listening until his breathing steadies. I wonder if Adele suspected even before she saw the truth of him. Because he does not sound human at rest, even clad in faux-skin. His inhalations are too deep, slow and long, hinting at extraordinary lung capacity. I wait until I’m sure he’s out, then I slip out from under the thermal blanket and scramble up to the higher lookout position; it’s no more than a notch carved in a thick branch, but it offers a stable place to sit.

The rest of the night is quiet. I can only presume that the bodies at the base of the tree offered predators both an alternate food source and a warning. By the time the sun comes up, I’m tired again but glad of the light as well. Vel stirs as the day brightens, and we suck down packets of paste from my pocket. He swore once he’d rather die than eat the stuff, but we can’t cook up here, not even on his chemical burner, and we have no idea if we can safely eat any of the native flora and fauna. That problem is complicated by the fact that our technology is fried, so we can’t scan for local toxins. I don’t know what we’ll do when our food runs out.

“How are we for water?”

“We need to find a local source. I have purification tablets in my pack.”

“Of course you do. Just in case you get stranded on a class-P world with no functional technology.”

His amusement manifests in a quirk of his hidden mandible that almost resembles a smile when it pulls at his face. “Precisely so.”

“I’ll go down first. Warn me if anything’s about to swoop down on me.”

“Assuredly.”

On the ground, I note that the corpses have been gnawed while we slept. When he joins me, he slices off one of the beast’s legs with his knife. I don’t know if I can stand to watch him eat it; his people enjoy fresh meat. But instead, he pares the flesh away from the bone.

At my inquiring look, he explains, “I am making you a knife.”

After using his own blades to sharpen the bone to a fierce point, he lashes the blade to my shockstick with a thin, tensile vine, and then he cements them with resin seeping from the trees. I take the makeshift weapon and test it with a couple of swings.

“Thank you. We might live through this after all.”

“We will,” he says quietly. “Never doubt it.”

We’ve spent seven nights without seeing anything
capable of communicating with us. Ten different species have tried to eat us. This is our eighth day.

The jungle thins ahead, opening to a dark plain where nothing grows, all obsidian and basalt. Deep trenches have been cut in the distant land, though I can’t tell whether it was nature or machinery. I hope for the latter because that’s a sign of civilization.

“Good thing we found the river,” I mutter.

Vel’s purification tablets rendered the water safe to drink but we’re running out of prepackaged meals. Soon, we’ll have no choice but to eat local food and hope for the best. That’s a hell of a gamble, and not one whose odds I like. Though I haven’t said anything, the wound in my side isn’t healing like it should, and gray streaks web my skin around the wound. I’m running a low-grade fever constantly, and nothing in his pack can help me; I searched one night during my turn on watch. I’m not worried because I hope, in time, my nanites will work out a way to repair the damage from alien parasites. I just have to sweat and shiver through their learning curve. I hope.

Of course, if they don’t, there’s nobody to fix them, nobody left who understands how they work. In which case, I’ll die a horrible death. Or maybe I’ll mutate into some hideous alien monster. That’d be okay, too.

On one hand, it feels good to leave the jungle I’ve grown to hate so passionately, but I don’t feel confident about the land looming ahead. It doesn’t much look as if it can support life, but the only alternative is to backtrack to the broken gate, presuming we can find it and set it off in another direction . . . with no guarantee anything better lies ahead. I wish Dace had given us a map or more indication of what the hell we’re supposed to see.

But that presumes she knew this would happen. Point in fact, we’re sure of nothing—and it’s frustrating as hell. For all I know, she only meant to show us a star-walker artifact because she thought we might know something about it.

“Any bright ideas on how to get us home?” I ask him hopefully.

“Working on it.”

I glance at Vel, who’s studying the terrain ahead. Yesterday, he shed his faux-skin and didn’t generate more, as the temperature has been climbing the farther we head . . . well, since I don’t know the directions on this world, I’ll just call it west. It looks to be hot as hell out on those plains, and geysers of smoke puff up periodically.

“Sulfur springs?” I guess.

“I believe so. The smell indicates volcanic craters.”

If we’re not careful, we’ll get cooked alive out there. I eye the steam and the rugged landscape with more than a little trepidation. At this point, I feel like I have to abdicate judgment, as I’m too sick to think straight. Not that I’m admitting it to Vel. There’s nothing he can do, and there’s no point in his worrying unless I keel over.

“What do you think? Push on or head back?”

“The jungle is no more hospitable,” he answers. “Only dangerous in a different way. Perhaps once we cross these flats, there will be . . . something.”