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"Thank you. I'll make sure nothing bad happens to you too," I told him. "Or Slek, or Brinley."
She gave no sign that she was bothered by me getting the attention of two guys. In fact, she seemed happy for me. Once in a while, I caught her smiling when one of the guys held my hand, or said something sweet. A lot of girls would get jealous, even bitchy, but not her. That made me like her all the more.
Brinley grinned. "Yeah, take care of the one who can fly us off this rock."
"You're not the only pilot," Slek said, speaking as though he was teasing a younger sister.
"Just the best," she said tartly. She even stuck out her tongue at him.
He stuck out his in return.
I stared in fascination as he spilt the tip of his tongue in two, until it looked like a fork. Both sides curled upward, so he looked like he was sticking up two fingers at her.
I laughed.
He grinned, then rejoined the sides of his tongue together before drawing it back into his mouth.
"Do you think we should be more mature?" Danec suggested.
"Pfft, maturity is overrated," Slek said. "So I've heard anyway."
"Who do you know who is mature?" Brinley asked. "Apart from Danec. And maybe J'avet."
Slek rubbed his chin. "No one I can think of," he admitted.
"Exactly," Brinley said.
"Shhh," Danec said suddenly.
"What—" I stopped to listen.
"There's nothing—" Slek started.
"Yes there is," I said quickly. In the distance, engines thrummed. They rapidly grew closer.
"Friend or foe?" Brinley wondered out loud.
I shook my head. I didn't know. At least until a pod appeared over the trees, followed by another. And another.
They passed overhead and kept on in the direction we were going. My eyes followed them the entire way over and my heart followed them down to the ground.
"Keep walking," Selvia ordered. Her expression offered nothing, no hint of her thoughts on seeing the pods.
For some reason, that gave me chills. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms and stomped on behind Landu. If my eyes could bore a hole in the back of his head, they would.
"Shardu," he said after about another twenty minutes of walking.
"I figured," I muttered. Shardu was a collection of buildings made from sheets of metal. Some bore signs of having been a ship of some kind. Others looked like flooring or walls. Several buildings had two stories and balconies made from catwalks.
"Reduce, reuse, recycle," I muttered. "Is that why you destroyed the IF ship?" I directed the question to Landu. "For housing parts?"
He half turned his head toward me. "We destroyed nothing."
"Right." Then why did I sense a 'yet' at the end of his sentence?
"This way." Selvia waved to the open field beside the town where the pods were neatly parked, side by side. Six of them. Their passengers stepped out into the sunshine, followed by several Iri armed with bows and even a knife here and there.
"This can't be good," Brinley said softly.
