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The voice cuts through my pleasant waking dreams as it always does, leaving a sour taste in my mouth and shame ringing in my heartspace. No matter how I try, I cannot slip back into my imaginings, leaving the voice to keep pricking at me.
You failed in your duty.
Sam almost died because of you.
There is only one thing I can do to silence it, and that is to get up, go down to the room with thepodsand gaze upon my linasha’s sleeping face. The voice might fill me with doubts about how she will feel about me, but her nearness is still a balm. When I look at her, stand close to that place where she rests, everything else quiets for a time.
But I do not wish to go until I can go alone. Get up too soon and Razhan or Delfom will hear me, and troubled by their own disquiet in this strange, straight place, they will join me. I do not mind their company, but I wish to be with my linasha only when this mood grips me.
It is not so long before I can hear the snores of my brothers, letting me know they have gone to their dreams. It is fully dark now, and not much of the moons’ light makes it inside the Mercenia hut, but still no sleepiness settles over me, my headspace still alert. I toss and turn in my pelts for a while, until I can resist the pull of my linasha no longer.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust as I head out of my room, turning toward the steps that will take me down to the room with thepods. It is partly this darkness, partly my own distraction, that makes me take a moment too long to realise there is someone standing in the space ahead of me.
A human female someone.
No, not just any human female. Mine. I have not stared at those lips, that nose, that brow for so long not to recognise it in the darkness. My heartspace leaps up to my throat at the shock that she is here, standing before me, even as I register her tall frame, the broadness of her shoulders. She stares up at me, those lips of hers parting just slightly, but it is not nearly so far up as little Sam would have to look. Or any of my other tribe sisters, in fact.
I have imagined the rest of my linasha many times, filling in what thepodhides, making pictures of her in my headspace. Small and delicate like Sam or Lorna, strong and fierce like Ellie or Khadija - with only the smallest glimpse of her features known to me, I could picture her so many different ways, and each of them held their appeal.
But in all my imaginings, I never pictured my linasha would be this…
Magnificent. The sight of her, even in the gloom of the corridor, steals the breath from my lungs.
I raise a hand towards her - slowly, conscious that she might be confused, afraid.
“Linasha,” I say, my voice made hoarse by the flood of desire and need and joy that races through my spirit.
I do not see the object she is gripping in her hand until it is colliding with the side of my head.
CHAPTERTHREE
Brooks
The hostile goes down like a ton of bricks, crashing to the floor in front of me. I don’t hang around to see if he’s out for the count or just stunned, dropping the broken table leg to the floor, then hopping over the tangle of limbs he makes and running for the door. There are two others sleeping in their rooms and I have to figure they’ll be disturbed by the noise. Come to investigate. I don’t want to be around when they’ve got their wits together, picked their friend up off the floor.
It’s dark in the corridor, but the night is lighter by comparison, the twin moons in the sky casting down ample light to see by in the clearing. That will change as soon as I step under the trees, but that’s what I have to do. If it’s hard for me to see out there, it will be harder for me to be seen. My memory is still too patchy to recall whether we know if these aliens have good night vision, but even if they do, the trees will provide cover. I need to get lost amongst them.
Just not too lost. I can’t afford to lose my bearings. I need to be able to make my way back here.
I can’t leave those women to rot in the basement.
But that’s definitely a tomorrow problem. Right now, I just need to concentrate on putting some distance between me and the hostiles. The aliens. They’re taller than I am, more used to the terrain. There’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll be faster, stealthier, too. My only advantage is surprise, and unfortunately I’ve already had to use it.
Why couldn’t that one alien have just stayed in bed? I could hear the snoring of the others, figured all three of them had turned in for the night. That just left the one out on patrol to slip past. Tricky, because I don’t know where he is, but if he’s walking a reasonably wide circumference around the base, probability is on my side. The chances of being able to sneak past him are pretty high.
Now all four will probably be after me before long.
I take a moment to look round the clearing. Always better to take a moment to make a smart decision than to just barrel through and hope for the best. Immediately, I clock some pathways the hostiles must be using regularly, the ground more compacted, the foliage cleared. I dismiss those as options, but can’t go for something too overgrown either, or I’ll leave a really obvious trail. Stealth classes weren’t my strongest area in training, but lessons start to come back to me. Quicker than my more recent memories, anyway.
Water. I need to find a stream to follow. It would cover my tracks, but also provide a path straight back to this place for when I’m ready to return. There must be a water source somewhere near here. Unless aliens on this planet don’t need the liquid to sustain their lives. The fact that the atmosphere is breathable to me, the gravity comparable to Earth’s, makes me think that they must have a similar chemical makeup to humans, even if they’ve adapted differently to their environment. Ergo, they must need water and there must be some close.
I keep half my attention on the forest, listening out for the babble of running water, the other half on the base behind me, waiting for the enraged roar that’s surely about to sound. I’m beginning to second guess my decision to get out of there as quickly as possible, wondering if it might have been more strategically sensible to stay long enough to make sure the hostile was incapacitated properly. I doubt my blow did much more than irritate him. Despite being from military tier, I’m still a good foot, maybe even foot and a half shorter than him, and only half as wide.
So, yeah, he’s not going to be down long. And maybe I should have stayed, slit his throat with my knife or something. Made sure he bled out before he could come for me, fangs and claws bared, like the one in my memories.
I don’t know why the thought sits so uncomfortably with me. I’ve killed before. When someone’s coming at you, firing their gun, you don’t stop to question the ethics of it. It’s kill or be killed. And that’s what that was in that corridor. Kill or be killed.
Only no guns.
