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JAX
Adrenaline kept me going through the barren icy plains. I avoided ridges and any place it would be easy for the Zathki to hide and attack me.
If I did not make it back to Wesley, he didn’t have a chance of surviving on this planet. Stars above, neither one of us did, isolated and alone.
But if I could find the right part to repair the distress beacon, we could be off this forsaken planet in a matter of hours. Assuming it was a friend who answered our call, and not Crux come to finish the job when he realized we were alive.
But he was not a warrior. When we had crashed here, he had not risked following us. Surely, he would not risk it now.
He would, however, cause problems for Kaelum when the prince returned from Earth. Wesley and I were relying on our friends and allies to track us down, but Crux was tricky and duplicitous. If he could find a way to strip Kaelum of the king’s favor, of the people’s, we might never make it off this planet. And once more, the idea of sitting back to wait and see what happened, while every day risked the Zathki finding us, had become intolerable.
I did not have a shirt or a jacket like Wesley. Thorzi did not cover their marks as a point of pride, and once, as a point of practicality, when mages needed access to the marks to activate them. Still, as he had demanded the previous day, I had brought one of the blankets with me into the snow, kept it wrapped close around my body, and relied heavily on a warrior’s adrenaline to keep me going across the sheets of thick ice.
Soon, I found an area that seemed to be abandoned—a junk yard that was a veritable treasure trove when weighed against the nothingness that surrounded us.
And even after the light had shifted, the suns moving to cast long shadows, I didn’t have much luck scavenging for parts. It seemed that everything the Zathki had discarded out here truly was useless. And why not? It wasn’t like they had endless resources underground, where they hid away from light and life.
My people had been watching the Zathki from the edge of Thorzi territory for many cycles, but their ships were capable of camouflage. They could hide their tunnels as well. Even though we occasionally marked their navigation patterns, we’d never been able to map them. Presumably, they used similar cloaking technology to hide underground. They were, after all, cowards.
The longer I stayed out here, looking through Zathki garbage, exposed with nothing to hide behind except ice and more ice, the more I risked being caught by our enemy.
I hated to think of what they would do to Wesley if they caught him. The Zathki were cowards, yes, but they were clever. They would poke and prod and cut and test until they made Crux look like a magnanimous friend. What else could they possibly do with their time in the dark but grow bitter and dangerous?
Time to return, count the hours and effort lost, and tell Wesley that I’d had no luck finding further resources.
There were few options left to try. Soon, there would be nothing for us but to rely on luck and hope the Zathki did not find us.
If that happened, it would be Wesley’s optimism that saw us through. Already, I was finding it difficult to rest, to count ourselves safe here.
I returned to the ship with little chance of repairing the distress beacon or saving Wesley myself. But while I was not looking forward to more tasteless travel rations, I was looking forward to getting back to him. The nervousness I had felt all day away from him would disappear when I saw he remained safe, took him in my arms, and kept him warm the whole night through. I was tired, but that did not mean I wouldn’t enjoy the feel of him in my arms. Knowing he was still safe was the last comfort I had in this place.
But when I crested that last ridge of ice, cut from the fall of our ship, tension thrummed in the air. Even before I saw why, my first star mark zinged, alerting me to danger.
And there, right outside the ship, was a being in a thick coat, a hood over his head.
He stood much taller than Wesley, closer to my own height, and he was walking around the ship, leaning in to inspect it every so often.
Despite his thick clothing, he was thinner than a warrior. No one in living memory had seen a Zathki up close. I did not know precisely what they looked like—had only heard that they were slight and pale and weak.
But now, I would be the first to see one outside of the protection of their ships or tunnels.
The nearest door to the ship was still closed. Wesley remained safe inside... I hoped. Perhaps he was even watching, hiding in there, waiting for me to return.
There was still time to save him, though we had no hope of eluding the Zathki here any longer. Now that one had found our ship, they would scramble and scuttle over every inch of it, stripping what they could. Even if I killed this one, we had to leave.
I would have to grab Wesley, take all the warm things and travel rations we could carry, and make for the cave systems near where we crashed, hoping that they weren’t connected to the Zathki tunnel network and we weren’t simply making it easier for them to capture us.
I would need to take a way to contact this ship so when my people found us, they would know we had not died in the frozen waste, but simply hidden nearby.
But that was all for later. First, I had to take care of this intruder and see Wesley safe.
It was strange to see a Zathki on two legs, walking tall. We spoke so much of their spinelessness, I had expected them to crawl across the ground.
Crouching, I crept closer to the ship, using the power of my mark to sense the Zathki’s attention and avoid it. He was speaking into a cuff on his wrist. Soon, I was near enough for my interpreter chip to kick in.
“The ship is badly damaged. It will take days to—”
I leapt, grabbed him by the shoulder, and spun him around. His back hit the ship. His breath escaped in a swift grunt. His gleaming blue eyes flashed wide as he took in my cocked fist.
