AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Zoey nodded, her long braids bouncing as she straightened. I couldn’t help but let my gaze dip to the small swell of her abdomen. She pushed her glasses up her nose, fixing me with her deep brown eyes.
“Just saw it on the scanner. The shuttle’s coming back.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. My heart galloped in my chest. Burning pins rushed into my fingers, making them numb with anxiety. I flexed and relaxed my hands, fighting to keep my stress levels in check.
“Do you think... Is that a good thing?” I asked. The two of us started walking quickly down the hall together, followed closely by Kor and Malachor.
“Don’t know,” Zoey said.
The shuttle had only just left the settlement recently.
Which meant they’d found something quickly.
Something good...
Or something very, very bad.
Zoey and I didn’t need to speak to confirm where we were going – we both walked with purpose towards the cargo bay, the closest exit onto the sands. We picked through the shelves and boxes of the cargo bay until our boots hit the sand. She shrugged into the jacket that had up until a moment ago been tied by its sleeves around her hips.
“If we hurry, we should meet them at the settlement when they land. They’re still way out,” Zoey said, putting on her jacket. I nodded quickly, doing up my own jacket’s zipper.
“Please tell me you do not plan to run the entire distance across the open sands, too,” Kor said, helpless worry choking his growling voice.
“No way,” Zoey said, grinning up at the underside of Kor’s scaly snout. “That’s what I have you for, isn’t it? I did my cardio and now I amdone.”
“Malachor?” I asked, spinning to find the warrior. Unlike Zoey, I didn’t have a nine-foot-tall lizardman to mount. I had to ride back on an irkdu with Malachor.
Luckily, Malachor was on the ball. He turned to the open sands, calling out a high, loud yipping sound. A few moments later, his irkdu crashed into view, circling around the silvery dome of our desert-bound ship.
The irkdu were massive creatures with dusty greyish purple hide, long reptilian snouts, and too many eyes to count. Too many legs, too, the various skittering appendages turning the whale-sized creature into something very centipede-like. A lot of the girls were more than a little freaked out by the things.
Not me.
My heart fluttered as it got closer, the setting sun gleaming on the soft leather of the saddle upon its back. It wasn’t as pretty or as elegant as a horse. But it was the closest thing I had.
Malachor had learned on our ride out here not to bother offering to help me up into the saddle. The irkdu may have been bigger than a horse back home, but my muscle memory and my own strength were more than enough to get me up on its back. Plus, I’d fashioned stirrups for the saddle I used. My boot slipped into the stirrup and I pushed upwards. For the briefest moment, I could imagine I was home. Well, not exactlymyhome, but the closest thing to home I had – the ranch I’d worked at back in Alberta. My eyes closed as I executed the mounting movement I’d done so many times before, my chest calming, my breathing steady as I got up onto the back of Daisy or Rocket or Coal.
But it wasn’t Daisy’s dappled coat or Coal’s shining black back that met my eyes when I finally opened them.
It was the dry, dusty purple of the irkdu.
I gritted my jaw against a wave of grief. None of us human girls had people to miss – at least, not living ones – on Earth. But I’d had the horses. And they’d been just as important to me as any human member of my family could be.
Swallowing against a thick, sore throat, I patted the irkdu’s back, just in front of my saddle. It snuffled, casting its many eyes back to look at me.
It wasn’t the same.
But it helped.
Once Malachor was up on the irkdu and Zoey was safe and secure on Kor’s back, we took off. The sun sank lower and lower. The stars and asteroids fought against the stain of the night, splashing down silver over the darkening sands as we raced back to the settlement. It wasn’t long until the deep whirring of Valeria’s shuttle could be heard above and behind us. As the settlement came into view, the sound of the shuttle’s engines overtook us, flying over and past us, though we couldn’t see it with its cloaking tech. Luckily, Valeria and Zoey had reprogrammed the big ship’s scanners to see the shuttle even when cloaked. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known it was coming back until we heard the engines overhead.
The shuttle decloaked, shimmering into view ahead of us, blotting out the stars and asteroids. It didn’t land on the sands, instead heading up to a large stone ledge in the Cliffs of Uruzai. The shuttle was small enough that when it landed it didn’t usually create enough of a shock to call zeelk up out of the sands. But this close to the settlement, every precaution was taken to avoid a zeelk attack. The shuttle disappeared from view as it descended somewhere in the dark mass of cliffs ahead of us.
In front of the cliffs, on the sand, was a band of tents, bending outward from a carved-out, sheltered part of the cliffs that comprised the settlement. The human women and families stayed closer to the shelter of the cliffs. These tents out here belonged to unmated warriors, many of whom were now leaving their tents and sprinting for the evening fire at the settlement. I knew it wasn’t the usual draw of dinner at the fire calling them with such haste, but the return of the ship.
We felt that haste, too. We sped forward until we’d passed the outer tents and had entered into the broad, stony arms of the cliffs. I dismounted the second Malachor commanded the irkdu to stop. Zoey was a little slower, but even so, the two of us, followed by Kor and Malachor, reached the evening fire just as the group from the shuttle approached from a crack in the cliffs.
I crowded into a bubble of human women.
