Burning Stone (3 page)

He settled the tray down on the small table in the galley, and once again, she noted that the chairs were odd and had a lot of room behind them for such a small space.

“Who designed this interior?”

“An old race. They don’t leave their homes anymore, so they have sold off their spacecraft.”

His mouth tightened and she didn’t pursue it.

He changed the conversation by getting up and retrieving a data pad. “The first stop on our tour is Jurkidal. They have found a mineral with incredible potential, but it can’t be extracted without damaging the cellular structure. They need your help to get it out of the surrounding deposit. A few pounds of it will apparently be sufficient.”

She stared at the information and cleared her throat. “May I?”

He slid the pad over and Leyhara took in the details of the rock they wanted her to work on. A vid of attempts to chisel, melt and otherwise extract the mineral from the rock face with rather unfortunate results was included. The mineral in question simply turned to dust.

“Well, this does explain the drills that Halwis-Iskan had me doing. It should be possible but it might take a bit of practice.”

He nodded. “I am sure that you will do what you can or she would not have accepted this assignment on your behalf.”

She sipped at her tea and nodded. “Right. What comes after?”

“I will give you the briefing after this assignment. You might want to look up the people of Jurkidal. You might need a bit of fortification to step out and greet them.”

With his amused warning ringing in her ears, she looked at the images of the indigenous people and she swallowed hard. “Tentacles and nudity?”

“And they exude a particular slime that can be caustic to the touch. Be careful and keep your robes hot enough to repel those who want to get close to you. Talents are rare on their world and something as powerful as you is even rarer.”

She nodded and flicked him a quick smile. “So Halwis was telling me, but she is surrounded by strong talents and I am guessing that she just says that to keep the morale up.”

“I am sure that if the Avatar said it, she meant it.”

“Bohr, how did you get picked to fly me around?”

“I volunteered for it once Iskan contacted me.”

“That is quite a trip. Where were you retired?”

“Oh, I was in the area.” He chuckled. “If that kind of thing can be imagined.”

“I can imagine it, but it seems very strange. How long until we arrive at our first destination?”

“Four hours. It is enough time for you to either rest or to get to work on a language lesson. Your Common is good, but you need to work on your sibilants.”

She nodded ruefully. “The flash download didn’t quite take. My brain doesn’t process properly, or at least properly for a Resicoran.”

“That was in your file.” He nodded.

Leyhara blinked. “You read my file? Wait, I have a file?”

He chuckled. “You do and I did. I needed to know what Iskan was asking me to do.”

“You think you know?”

He laughed and his teeth were displayed, white and sharp. “I think I have been undersold on your abilities, but I am more than willing to go out and help you in your journey of mastery of your talent.”

She leaned back and groaned. “That is what this is about, isn’t it? I am just trying to prove something to myself.”

Bohr shook his head. “No, your services have been requested and you are answering that call. In the future, you may be called out on emergencies with other elementals and these missions are exercises for the variety of duties you may be asked to perform. Halwis-Iskan is very intelligent and understands what can befall a world with little to no notice.”

Leyhara felt a little bit better after that. She sat while he refilled her tea again and began to work her language skills. The language that she would need was a series of gargles and her enunciation was a little muddled. She worked on it for hours until her mental translation stopped coming out with insults to his lower tentacles.

A low chime got Bohr’s attention and he grinned. “We are here. I will gain us landing clearance, and they will have land-bound transport ready for you. I will accompany you and do most of the talking. Your opinion of my lower tentacle is far too derisive. I am going to tell them you are mute.”

She snorted and got to her feet, following him to the command deck and settling into her seat while he communicated with Jurkidal ground control.

She breathed deep as they lowered into the atmosphere of her second alien world that month. Leyhara was definitely coming out of her shell, but she had no idea what was on the other side.

She wore her robes with the hood covering her flame-coloured hair. The people she was near did indeed want to touch her. The robes kept their slime from touching her skin, and she was intensely grateful for the warning.

Bohr was wearing a bodysuit, belt and two thigh weapons, which was enough to keep the locals from trying to touch him.

Leyhara rubbed her palms together under the cover of her robes and watched as they approached the mountain that was her target. She was looking for something that translated into
bright rock
. A stone that was radioactive enough to use as a power source and even the dust worked as small-site illumination.

When they landed, she let her hosts go first before she approached the barrier that had been erected for safety. One of the perks of her talent was her resistance to radiation. Her body repaired itself faster than the cells ruptured. That had been a test on day three of her training. Kedna had been nervous about it, but Halwis had hauled Leyhara away and they had covered her with monitors to see what her body did.

They gurgled at Bohr and he nodded, “They want you to walk through the barrier and bring out a sample of bright stone. They need a few pounds to work with and have a carrier ready for you, to your left.”

She nodded and smiled.

The large canister was heavy, and she checked the weight. She would need to increase it slightly to gain the correct amount of material.

There was a security guard waiting for her, and as she approached the barrier, it flickered and lowered. She stepped through and into her new workspace.

The outcropping of stone she stepped onto was exposed to the wind on the far side. The barrier was to stop folk from running off the edge.

As she looked around for the first flicker, she sighed at the portion of the file that had indicated that the material was only slated for research and energy production. The locals had no need of weapons. They had a sparse population and no wars. There was no territory to claim because it was a completely communal society.

Humming to herself, she touched the rock face that bore the marks of picks and hammers. The throb of excited energy was there. It would take a bit of work, but she was confident that she could get samples out intact.

Four hours later, covered in sweat, she staggered to the barrier and pounded her fist against it. It went down and she staggered out with her prize.

She spoke to Bohr. “I turned the bright stone into pellets. They are in the canister and about half an ounce each. They are intact and have all the properties of raw stone.”

Bohr spoke quickly, and the watchers were excited, their tentacles wiggling and their pale grey bodies quivering.

Leyhara clenched her hands together and tried to keep the blood from the inside of her robes. Clawing through molten stone was not fun, but it had been the only way to scoop out the vein once she had exposed it.

Bohr took her by her shoulders and steered her onto the skimmer. They were taken back to the shuttle amid the excited murmurings of the scientists that now had bright rock to play with.

The moment they were flying by instruments again and on their way to her next mission, Bohr got to his feet, eased her to hers and shepherded her to the medical unit at the back of the shuttle.

He hissed when he saw her hands. “What did you do?”

She winced as the robes brushed her skin when he removed them. “The stone kept breaking and the stone around it had a much higher melting point, so I had to reach in with my hand and scoop it out.”

He squeezed gel packs into a container, and he eased her hands into it. She sighed in relief and sat while her skin soaked up the liquid.

“You should have mentioned that you had burns.”

He scowled and she swore she saw something flicker behind him.

Leyhara sighed. “It is an occupational hazard. I usually keep heated air between me and the molten rock, but I couldn’t really do that in this case.”

He got another gel pack and poured it over her hands.

“You are just absorbing this. Is this normal?”

She shrugged. “Normal is a strange concept for me right now. It is not unknown. How is that?”

Bohr gave her a sly glance. “Not great, but I will take it. Does it still hurt?”

The dull throb where her fingers should be couldn’t really be classified as hurt, but while she tried to make up her mind, he prepped a hypo and shot her in the shoulder.

“Ow.”

“You took too long. That is an analgesic that should last you until your body finishes the process. You are already healing well.”

Her hands were no longer blistered, charred and bloody. Pink was rising rapidly.

Leyhara sighed. “Could you read me the details of the next assignment?”

He chuckled and retrieved the data pad.

He helped her settle comfortably on the medical bunk with her soaking hands in her lap. The shot he had given her made her lightheaded and dizzy, but it also made her imagine him with huge, glittery wings.

“Your next assignment is to create a walk-through tunnel in a mountain range. We have four days allocated for it.”

“Why do they want the pass?”

“They have a coming-of-age ritual that involves going through the mountains and creating a new life on the other side for a few years. Life on the other side is hard enough without having to take that step.”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes and his sparkly wings disappeared. “You sound like you have been there.”

“I was once. Kremlod is a lovely world, a hard world to live on. Its people hate outsiders, so them asking for help is a tremendous step forward.”

“So, head down, hood up?”

“Not in this case. Robe off, just you. The Kremlod respect minimalists. Seeing that you have no tools and no weaponry, you will be given immediate acceptance and that will make your days there easier.”

She chuckled. “How is my accent for Kremlod?”

“Passable. You will be able to manage just fine as long as you have a good reach.”

He showed her a scale diagram of herself standing next to a Kremlod. A fifteen-foot lizard was going to be hovering over her and she was going to make a hole large enough to accommodate it.

“That looks like it will take a while.”

“You have four days from the moment we land. Their holy days will kick in and all the young males and females will surge toward the western range. They are the reason that this is urgent. The population can’t grow when so many don’t make it over the mountains.”

Leyhara looked at her hands, all bright and pink but very soft. “Hooray! I have skin again.”

“Can you do this without injuring yourself?”

“Yes. This is surprisingly easy. I was trained to do this one on Iskan.”

She flexed her hands as the skin thickened. This part always went faster.

Her skin had taken in all of the gel and she set the container aside where it was swept away by Bohr. “How is it that you have so much burn treatment stuff?”

“It happens a lot.”

He left it at that.

Her room was large and the bed was wide. She was asleep the moment she had peeled free of her clothing. It was eighteen hours until Kremlod and she planned to spend seventeen of them fast asleep.

* * * *

Bohrvin ran his hands through his hair, and he watched the monitor in Hara’s room for a while. She slept like the dead.

He chuckled and made a call to Iskan.

“Hello, old friend. How are you this fine day?”
Iskan was in a good mood.

“Fine, but Leyhara nearly burned her hands off juggling molten, radioactive material.”

“How is she now?”

“Healing and asleep. Her hands were burned so badly I don’t know how she was up and moving. Most species would have been paralyzed with pain.”

“I told you, she is different. Her own flesh is one of her elements, but there was never a way to tell her. She could literally become anything, but she holds to her birth shape.”

“I don’t care if she can learn to shift. I want her just the way she is, I just hate having to hide from her.”

“It will only be until she is willing to consider joining with a Drai. You woke too early.”
Iskan sighed.

Bohrvin grinned. “I woke just in time to be there when she needed me. I would never call that bad timing. I call it courtship. Anyway, she’s alive and recovering and we are on our way to Kremlod. This one promises to be easy for her. Over and out.”

He sighed and flexed his wings, keeping the motions small to use the visual-containment field. It was a genius piece of design, and it kept his wings available while Leyhara was unable to see them. A neat trick and a switch from simply swooping in and grabbing the woman they were after once they separated her from other ladies.

The formalities of the new generations of Drai were so stilted as to have lost all true meaning. There was no passion, no surge of discovery, only cold introductions and tepid acceptances. They had locked themselves in the formula of mating and lost the passion, the meaning. The goal was not just to find a mate but was to bring light to her eyes and brightness to her soul. When she glowed, it would be a light that both could share and everything that followed would be touched by that illumination.

It was worth the effort from what he had seen all those years ago, and he could bide his time until his chosen mate could accept that she was his. He had nineteen treaties to prove it. Drai mating took precedence over free will. Even his. He just had to make sure that he did it right.