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I’d somehow forgotten where I was. So much had happened to me in such a short time. On one hand, my old life as a virgin on Eden felt impossibly far away. Ancient. It really hadn’t been so long though, and my brain was still trying to catch up to its new reality.
At first I’d thought I was still in my apartment in Ginsburg, then I saw the snow, and I wondered why I was outside, then I saw the big orange Khetar body holding up a knife, putting himself right in front of us and crouching down low.
“What is it?” I asked. In that moment, everything flooded back to me. I knew exactly where I was, and exactly how much danger I was probably in.
No, it was probably just Tschenkar returning.
“Tschenkar?” I asked in a low whisper.
Kantus shook his orange head with almost no delay. A few moments later, I saw the red body coming through the trees. His red body still held the railgun, and Kantus walked it almost backward, the railgun always pointed out at the tree line in front of us.
The yellow body came in from the other direction, but it walked right past us, knife raised. The yellow body hid behind a tree, holding the knife up as if he were ready to ambush someone with it.
“Pirates?” I asked.
Cleopatra’s eyes were wide and glassy, and she nodded absently, never taking her gaze from Kantus’s bodies.
“He’s a lover, not a fighter,” she whispered.
“He’s got weapons, and he’s strong.”
We had weapons too. I grabbed my knife, then handed Midwife another one. If we had guns, then maybe I’d try to actually help Kantus hold off the attackers. I wasn’t Weapons Sojourner, but Icouldaim a gun, every woman on Eden could.
Knives were a lot less effective, especially against guns. Even if Midwife and I could hide behind a tree like Kantus’ yellow body was doing, we’d need the physical strength and reaction time to quickly ambush a pirate—walking within a meter or so of us—and then we’d need to be able to kill him before he could get a shot off on us.
I was an engineer. Midwife was a ski coach. Neither of us were likely able to pull off anything like that. Even if I was physically capable, I doubted I’d be able to mentally drive myself to actually drive a knife into another human’s throat. Cleopatra and I would only get in Kantus’s way.
“We should hide you,” Midwife whispered.
“Where? How?”
No, we should radio Thuliak. I grabbed the radio, turned it on, and—
Gunshots rang out from the forest. Old guns. It sounded like the kind of old guns High Command kept stockpiled in case of an EMP attack. Guns that used chemicals and shot out little bits of metal. Each shot sounded like an explosion that echoed through the forest and bounced off the tree trunks.
Kantus ripped the radio from my hands. “Wrath, this is Kantus. I’m with Matron Eve, your life mate. Tschenkar isn’t here, and I’m under attack. Know that I will prioritize my mate above all else, but Matron Eve is my second priority. Even my own safety is third to Matron Eve’s. I may be fromInseminator, Scion, but I am still a Khetar, and I will die fighting like one.”
Cleopatra grabbed his forearm and squeezed.
Kantus met her eyes, and even though he looked at her only with the orange body’s eyes, he spoke through all three bodies, his warning to us ringing out like a funeral song. “Run! Both of you.Run!”
He handed Midwife the rope to the sled as the yellow body jumped out from the tree. Someone yelled, then I saw the knife sink into a human man’s throat. His yell turned into a gurgle, and the snow below turned red.
“GO!” Kantus shouted, kicking my sled and sending it a few feet. “I’ll find you, my Love,” he said to Midwife, “butgo.”
I don’t know if I could have done it myself, but Midwife Cleopatra somehow made the risk assessment in her head and decided to run. Or maybe she simply had made the decision to trust her mate fully and unconditionally. Yes, that was more likely. She’d have run off a cliff right now if he’d told her to in that commanding tone.
She pulled us away from the fighting. I looked back as she pulled. The autumn leaves coloring of Kantus’s bodies faded from view as we put more and more trees between us and the fighting.
“Do you even know what direction we’re going in?” I asked.
Cleopatra stumbled, falling into the snow. She got back up just as the sled hit the soles of her boots. She tugged and got us moving again despite the setback. “I know these mountains, Engineer. I know what direction I’m going in, but I don’t know where it’s s—”
The radio was still on. I debated whether to turn it off or not, because no one had responded even after Kantus had hailedWrath. Just when I was about to turn it off, some words crackled through the headphones.
“...failing…faster…no visual…damaged…find you…”
“Thuliak!” I shouted into the other side of the headphones. The sound was so garbled I couldn’t even tell if it was him or not.
