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“The ship needs repairs. I could likely manage enough of them to make it space-worthy again, but I do not have the parts. Even the distress beacon is not working correctly. I have set it to send passively, so if we manage to get into a straight line with one of Thorzan’s communication satellites they should see us, but it will not send the beacon actively.”
“And what are the chances of them seeing us?”
“Excellent.” He hesitated a moment after that, then sighed. “Eventually.”
I considered all the difficulties of space travel and took a wild guess at what was freaking Jax out. “Are we going to starve to death before that?”
“No. The ship is outfitted for a full complement of officers, for many weeks of duty. It is enough food to last us months.” He hesitated again, but before I could prod, he took a deep breath and continued. “But this is a dangerous world that we have landed on. It is—it is very cold. And the ship’s life support systems are one of the things not working. Unless I can find a way to repair them, it is possible we will freeze to death.”
I almost choked. For a guy who’d been trying to beat around the bush a second earlier, that was straightforward. “And you don’t have the parts?”
“For the life support, I might. That is what I was working on while you slept. To get us off the ground again, I will have to try to find some things outside the ship.” I blinked, trying to imagine how he was going to find parts on a planet where we might freeze to death. Was I the only one actually in danger of freezing? He must have thought me terrified, because he jumped back in, his tone soft and soothing. “I can fix it. Iwillfix it. I will not let us die on this forsaken frozen rock.”
Somehow, I thought that was less reassuring than he was going for. Still, I gave him the best smile I could muster. My glasses sure seemed a lot less important, given that. “Tell you what, you go ahead and try to fix the life support. I’ll just lie here and try not to freeze to death.”
He nodded, like that was a fabulous assignment for me, stood, and headed back out.
I hadn’t even been cold a moment earlier. Was it my imagination, or had the temperature gone down?
CHAPTER6
JAX
We crashed on Zathkar, but I knew that Crux would not dare follow us here. He was no warrior, and the Zathki made up a swarm that would overwhelm him.
A swarm that would overwhelm me, too, if I didn’t find a way to get off planet soon.
The life-support systems in the ship were failing. The ship’s engines lost or smoldering from the crash. I was no engineer, but there was no warrior among my people who took to the stars who couldn’t care for the vessel that kept him alive. If I had the parts, I had to believe I could get us out of this.
After I cared for Wesley and he fell asleep, shivering in the cot in the medical bay, I inspected the damage. I did what I could, but there was not much.
The first thing was to keep the temperature manageable, lock out the cold, keep warm air flowing. Zathkar’s bitter chill was more pervasive than that of space, creeping through metal from the sheets of ice outside.
While Wesley rested, the best thing I could do was close up the ship, using the walls and doors to try to trap the heat inside, to coax the air systems to focus on the smallest possible area—the bridge and medical bay, central to the ship and least likely to come to harm in the event of an attack. I was no expert on human anatomy, but I suspected Wesley would not last very long if the temperatures dropped too far.
Stars above, neither would I.
Before my people had settled on Thorzan, they had considered the alternative of Zathkar. But the moon was icy, the surface uninhabitable. Instead, we had chosen to settle on Thorzan. Despite the dangers there, our lives were full, vibrant, and beautiful. The jungle was warm and provided all the resources we needed.
Zathkar was a dead moon, and I had brought a vulnerable human to its surface. The Zathki lived underground, burrowing through tunnels like worms to try and escape the barren frigid surface.
I hoped, because of that, we would not cross paths with them here. But it made me feel better to seal all the doors, to lock them from the insides to keep out our enemies. The cold, I might defeat, but a single Thorzi warrior could not stand against the Zathki swarm, even with a mage at his side, and the last of those had died before I was born.
When I had done all I could, I roamed the ship’s sleeping quarters for blankets, cushions, and pillows, not simply to wrap around the small human in my care, but to stuff against doors and crevices to keep any heat in that I could.
I took many trips from the sleeping quarters back to the medical bay, but on my last, I dropped my mattress and the bedding near the hall to look for Wesley’s glasses.
He had been there, in the captain’s chair—a safe seat for any Thorzi, but where our ribs or shoulders might have hit the seat, there was a smear of Wesley’s blood, bright red against the chair’s sharp edges.
It was a simple seat, innocent of all intent, but I cursed it nonetheless. Wesley was hurt. He had been sick from the force of the impact. And if I did not find something else to blame, I would take all that weight on my own shoulders.
Fair as that may have been, first, I needed to keep my thoughts clear, figure out a way to save us. There would be more time for self-recrimination when we were back, safe, on Thorzan.
I found Wesley’s glasses under a control panel, tucked in a corner. The wings of them still functioned, folding in toward the lenses and back out without issue. There was a mark on one of the lenses, but they seemed to have taken less damage than Wesley’s skull.
I would rather he have broken his glasses. Those, we could find a way to replace.
Tucking one wing into the waist of my trousers, I hefted the bedding back into my arms and headed for the medical bay for the last time, pausing only to close the doors behind me.
