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Though I had an idea of how we could shorten it. I stepped around a dravar flower and glanced back to make sure Zo-Fee knew to avoid the yellow blooms. She did. “Are you afraid of heights?” I asked.
“Nope.”
The kreecat gave a little growl, and Zo-Fee huffed with amusement. “Lila says she’s not afraid of anything.”
Kreecats were not only intelligent. Their ability to communicate with their person meant they understood emergency situations far better than any regular animal could. It made them one of the only species safe to keep on a spaceship. It also meant my mate could explain what we’d need to do to fully escape the senator’s people.
My plan just might work.
My plan was never going to work.
Not at the rate we traveled.
Zo-Fee did the best she could with her short Hyoo-mon legs, and it wasn’t her fault I’d failed to properly take our physical differences into account when I’d made my plan.
A growl rumbled through my chest as the light level dropped along with the sun. The map on my comp confirmed it. We were nowhere near our destination, and there wasn’t any help to be had in the middle of the Tularian jungle.
The Zaarn males sent to Roam no longer had a planet, a home. We banded together for a feeling of community and out of necessity. The Daredevils were one of the finest mercenary groups in the seven sectors, and I was proud to be among their number, but we were only a fraction of the total number of banished Zaarn.
Over the decades, a network formed, with Zaarn creating safe houses and stashes of emergency supplies on every planet and space station they could. Yet places like Tularia—the lizard alien home world—were much tougher to infiltrate than a colony planet where the four species of the seven sectors freely mingled. There weren’t any safe houses here, and very few emergency caches, which meant only one proved close enough for us to have any chance of reaching it.
But not today.
The small flying lizards stopped swooping overhead, settling into their nests for the night. The noises of the jungle began to change. The deeper snorts and grunts of larger predators now punctuated the soft rustle of smaller animals scurrying through the underbrush.
The wide petals of the dravar flowers began to glow like little yellow lanterns dotting the ground.
I paused and pointed as an insect the size of my palm fluttered over one of the flowers, its transparent wings iridescent in the golden light. It extended a long tube, sucking up some of the nutrient-rich fluid from the flower’s central cup. “The cloflutter evolved alongside the dravar flowers. It’s got its own enzymes to counteract the dravar’s corrosive juices. It gets a free meal, already digested.”
“It’s so beautiful!” Zo-Fee said, her voice filled with wonder. “What does the flower get out of it?”
“The insects suck up some of the seeds, which pass through their body unharmed. The cloflutters ensure the dravar flowers remain spread evenly around the jungle, and the flowers provide them food.”
With a flicker of wings, the cloflutter lifted into the air, remaining only a couple of feet off the ground as it flew to another glowing flower.
My mate glanced down at the kreecat by her side. “I expected you to chase after it.”
Lila slashed her tail from side to side—fortunately, her stinger remained retracted—and made a quiet growl.
Zo-Fee met my eyes, her own filled with amusement. “She says the ‘floaty bugs’ taste horrible.”
The thought of food made my stomach grumble. “We need to make camp for the night.”
“Where?” Her head swiveled as she squinted into the fading light.
A deep grunt came from the left, far closer than before.
The spaces between the trunks of the closest reva trees were turning into rectangles of darkness. Nowhere looked defensible.
“I will find a place.” I had to. Nothing else would be acceptable.
We marched on, moving slower than ever in the darkness. Finally, I spotted an area where two reva trees grew so close together that no large animal could squeeze between their trunks. “Here.”
I slid the pack from my shoulder and opened it, handing my mate a can of water. My left arm tingled with pins and needles, but I could move it a little. While she drank, I set up the tent so its back rested against the trunks.
We made a quick meal of ration bars, their chalky fruit flavor turned into deliciousness by hunger. Even the kreecat wolfed hers down without complaint.
Zo-Fee’s eyes kept shutting as she sat beside me, her head nodding. Then she’d jerk awake and chew another bite.
