by Tana Stone
Bridget followed his line of sight. “What are we hoping is in the buildings?”
“This used to be a mining colony that was part of a galaxy-wide network, so I’m hoping the communications systems are still in place. Not to mention, the chance that there might be something that could help me repair our engine.”
“Any chance of a hot shower?” Bridget asked with a grin. “Maybe a bubble bath?”
“Slim,” he said.
Her grin widened. “Slim is not none.” She stood up. “I’ll take it.”
“Let’s pack the rations,” he said, joining her and opening his now-empty pack. He avoided staring at her long legs as she helped him fasten the bunk back into the wall and empty the contents of the storage unit into his pack. He swung the pack onto one shoulder.
Bridget picked up the black environmental suit she’d left in a heap on the floor. “I guess I need the suit again.” She sighed and stepped into it, flipping the hood up over her head.
He glanced back at the controls to make sure he’d powered down and locked all the systems, when he saw a flash of movement near the closest building. He blinked hard, but it was gone.
“I must be seeing things,” he muttered to himself as he scoured the murky landscape and saw no movement. “This place is deserted.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Her nervous voice made him hesitate. No, he told himself, this was their best option. They needed to get a message to his people, and floating around space in a damaged ship with no light-speed or jump capability made them easy prey. He spun on her. “You stay behind me and follow my orders, okay?”
She bobbed her head up and down, her own expression solemn. “I’ll do exactly what you tell me to.”
He thought of her following orders having nothing to do with getting to the building, and he jerked his eyes away from her face with a grunt. He flipped his hood up and sealed it, and she did the same.
Opening the shuttle door, Kax stepped out and Bridget followed him. Now that they were outside, he could feel the heat of the air and the force of the wind. He hadn’t seen any indications the colony was inhabited, but not being able to see anything or get clear readings made him wary. His senses were on high alert, and he unhooked the blaster from his belt.
After pressing his wrist controller to close the door, Kax began trudging toward the nearest building, keeping Bridget behind him with one arm and holding his blaster out with the other. The roar of the wind made it impossible to hear anything, and the churning air slammed against him from all sides. He focused on staying upright and moving forward. He had to get them inside the building before they were blown away.
He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he fired out of instinct. More laser fire came their way, and he pushed Bridget to the ground, his heart hammering in his chest. So much for the planet being uninhabited and the colony deserted. Clearly, someone was here, and whoever it was wasn’t happy to see them.
His body was pressing against hers as he pinned her to the ground, but he couldn’t allow himself to think about anything but keeping her safe. Peering through the storm, he saw a blink of red and fired again, seeing something drop. He paused, waiting for more blaster fire to come. Nothing.
He shifted slightly but didn’t get up. Kax found it hard to believe there was only one hostile. Where there was one enemy, there were usually many. When another few seconds passed with no weapons fired, he pushed himself off Bridget, pulling her up with him as he stood. Their suits had morphed to match the environment, so she looked like a red-orange outline. Since the wind still screeched around them, he couldn’t ask if she was okay, but he met her eyes through the clear masks and gave her the okay hand signal he’d seen humans use. She nodded and gave him the okay signal back.
He realized he was practically standing on top of her, so he stepped back and turned toward the building, pulling her close behind him. Knowing the colony wasn’t completely deserted made him even more cautious as he moved forward, his head swiveling from side to side as he tried to catch any more movement. Where were the rest of the inhabitants? There had to be more than one.
As they got closer to the building, he saw the figure he’d shot. His chest constricted. It was Kronock. He edged forward, a feeling of dread overtaking him as he realized that wasn’t exactly true. The legs and arms had the familiar scales of his enemy, but the trunk of the creature looked entirely robotic, as did the machinery encasing his head. Instead of the one red eye he’d seen on the Kronock fighters, this version of his enemy had two mechanical eyes and held only a scant trace of the organic being. The circuitry on the alien’s chest looked charred—no doubt from his blaster fire—and the flashing red eyes he’d seen through the swirling haze were no longer illuminated.
Kax felt Bridget clasp his arm as she stared down at the dead creature. He put a hand on hers to reassure her, even though he felt a growing panic. He didn’t have time to think about what these half machine Kronock meant, or how many they’d built. One fact filled his head—the Kronock would not have left just one soldier behind. There were more, even if he couldn’t see them yet.
He turned to signal Bridget they should go back to the ship when he felt an impact to his chest followed by a burning sensation. Out of instinct, he twisted and fired at the flash, seeing the red lights drop through the fiery haze before the roar of the wind became a roar inside his head, and he fell to his knees.
Chapter Eleven
Bridget screamed as she saw Kax fire his weapon and then collapse, but the storm swallowed her sound. The figure that’d shot him lay unmoving on the ground, but Bridget kept it in her sights as she knelt beside Kax.
She couldn’t tell if he was breathing through his face mask, so she pressed her fingers against the side of his neck and felt grateful the suit’s fabric was thin. There was a faint pulse, although it seemed erratic.
Looking around, she saw nothing but red haze. If there were any other enemies with blasters, she couldn’t see them, although an army could be approaching and she wouldn’t be able to hear it over the wailing wind. The only sound as loud as the wind was the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. It wasn’t so much fear for herself that had her heart racing as fear for Kax. He’d taken blaster fire fully on the chest, and she didn’t know if it was like being shot with a gun or like being shot with a Taser. Either way, he wasn’t moving and she needed to get him inside.
“Let’s go,” she muttered as she tucked his blaster under her arm, hooked her elbows under the Drexian’s armpits, and began dragging him, stopping once to readjust her grip.
When she reached the side of the nearest building, she propped him against her legs as she tried to open the door. Luckily, it had a handle. Unfortunately, the handle was locked and no amount of jiggling would budge it.
She slammed the palm of her hand against the metal door as it held firm. “Son of a . . .”
Bridget considered going back to the ship, but she knew they needed to get a signal out to the Drexians, and now she needed to treat Kax’s wound. Plus, she didn’t know if she could drag Kax all the way back to the ship without them being shot at again.
Crouching low, she hurried the few feet to the alien they’d left lying face up on the ground. Her stomach clenched at the sight of the metal grafted to scaly skin, and she tried not to think how the Kronock had turned their own people into robots.
Bridget averted her gaze from his mechanical face as she patted him down. He must have keys or a remote control, or anything that might get her inside. Nothing. She felt like kicking him as she stood up again. If he was outside, he had to have a way to get back in. He was near the door when he’d shot at them.
She bent down again and rolled him slightly in case he was lying on top of something. His arm flopped down with the palm facing up, and Bridget saw a circle of blue light blinking in the center of his mechanical, clawed hand.
“This had better work,” she said, as she tugged him by t
he arm to the door, lifted his blinking hand to the round panel beside it, and pressed it as hard as she could.
The panel glowed blue, the latch snapped open, and the handle snapped down automatically. “Bingo.”
Bridget rolled the Kronock out of the way and pulled Kax inside the building, pressing the door shut behind them. The sound of the wind died out and she unzipped her hood, taking a tentative breath and finding the air in the dark hallway to be clean if a little stale. She knew Kax had said the colony had been abandoned and scans showed no life forms, but the presence of the Kronock made her nervous. Since the creatures outside were more robot than living being, would they have registered on a sensor? And if not, did that mean there could be more?
Hearing nothing, she dragged Kax down the narrow passageway until she found a room that held a set of bunk beds. Very long, skinny bunk beds, which made her wonder what kind of creatures had lived there. She lifted him one end at a time onto the lowest bed and a puff of dust rose from the thin mattress. Maybe the colony truly was uninhabited, and the Kronock had left some security guards, of sorts. Since they weren’t living, breathing creatures, maybe they could be left alone for years.
She unzipped Kax’s hood and began to tug his suit off to get a better look at his injury. She was reassured by the rise and fall of his chest, although her breath caught when she pulled off his shirt and got a glimpse of his hard muscles. For a guy who served on the High Command, he was ripped. She couldn’t resist running her fingers down the swell of his chest and the rippled surface of his stomach. She knew he’d recoil from her touch if he was conscious, but she couldn’t resist touching him, even though she felt guilty as she did it.
It was obvious he didn’t really like her. He avoided looking at her, he flinched at her touch, and he didn’t seem to be affected by her flirting. Even when they’d been the maid of honor and best man in Mandy and Dorn’s wedding, he’d been cordial but not overly friendly. Too bad for him, she thought, because he was exactly her type.
Her hands lingered on the scorch mark high on his chest near his shoulder. The skin wasn’t broken, but it looked burned and felt hot to the touch. He moaned as she touched it, and she snatched her fingers away as if she’d been burned.
At least he was alive, she thought, glad he hadn’t caught her feeling him up. That would be a tough one to explain, since she was technically promised to another Drexian. Not that she’d met the warrior she’d been matched with, she reasoned. Was it possible to cheat on someone you’d never met? If you’d asked the guy who was supposed to be on his way to marry her, the answer would probably be yes. Anyway, she wasn’t a cheater. Never had been. She’d been cheated on, though, which was part of the reason she despised the idea. Even if she didn’t believe in love, she did believe in honesty.
She stepped back from Kax as he lay on the bed, his chest bare and his suit pulled down to his hips. “I’m going to go look for. . . something that might help.”
She knew he couldn’t hear her, but she had to break the ominous silence of the room that had been untouched for years. She pulled off her own suit and crept down the hallway in the oversized black T-shirt, noticing more rooms with elongated bunk beds to her right and left. The building must have been a barracks of some sort back when the mining colony had been operational. She peered into a larger room with a pair of armless, beige couches and tall, straight-backed chairs hunched around square tables. Something that looked like game pieces with unusual markings on them lay scattered across one table, as if the game had been interrupted.
Farther down the hall, Bridget found a galley kitchen. After opening the high cabinets, she determined whatever food had once been there was now gone. Only a few dusty and empty boxes remained on the shelves. She pushed a button next to the faucet, and after a moment’s hesitation, water shot out—first brown, and then clear. She grabbed a cloth from a peg and soaked it with cold water, enjoying the feeling as the liquid spilled over her hands.
She ran back down the hall with the dripping towel and pressed it to Kax’s burned chest. He inhaled sharply, his brows furrowing, and let out a long breath. Bridget felt the cool cloth absorbing the heat of his wound. When the fabric was warm, she hurried back down the hall and soaked it again, returning to press it on the blast mark and absorb the heat, then doing this several more times until Kax’s skin no longer burned.
He made soft noises, his eyelids fluttering, and Bridget took this as a good sign. “Thank you for not leaving me here alone,” she whispered, as she removed the cloth from his chest and noticed the scorch mark was lighter. “I’m used to being alone in the world. Doesn’t mean I like it.”
He moved one hand so it rested on her bare leg as she sat next to him. His voice was faint and husky. “I would never leave.”
Bridget froze, the wet cloth in one hand dripping water on his chest as he slid his hand farther up her bare leg. She was suddenly very aware she had nothing on underneath the big T-shirt. As far as she could tell, he was still out of it. His eyes were closed, and his breath was slow and steady.
He murmured something unintelligible and moved his hand up. Any farther and he would be able to feel how wet she was. Bridget stood quickly and let his hand drop, backing out of the room and rushing down the hall. She returned to the galley kitchen, dropping the wet cloth in the sink and leaning against it with both hands.
What was that? Kax must have been dreaming and thought she was somebody else. She knew he wouldn’t hit on her if he was conscious. She was promised to another Drexian, and Kax was all about honor. Plus, he wasn’t into her. Aside from the little he’d told her in the shuttle, she didn’t know much about Dorn’s brother. As far as she knew he wasn’t married, and didn’t have a tribute bride waiting for him. She snorted. If he wasn’t into humans, maybe he was dreaming about a sexy alien with three breasts, or something.
She’d heard whispers on the Boat that Drexian females looked different than humans—taller, more muscular, more breasts. Of course, that had been back when there were available Drexian females. None had been born in a generation, which was why the tribute bride program had been created in the first place. Not that every Drexian wanted a human mate. She knew some opted to remain single. She wondered if Kax was one of those who didn’t find humans attractive. It would explain why he flinched at her touch. Too bad for her because he was hot as hell, and she hadn’t been with a man in so long she was afraid she’d forgotten how.
“Get it together, girl,” she whispered, pressing the button for the water and letting it run. It had clearly been a long time, considering how fast she revved up when he touched her. Even thinking about the feel of his hand on her leg made her body warm with desire. She hung over the sink, her head near the rushing water—the sound calming her.
She pressed the button again to stop the water and turned to the door, screaming when she saw the hulking Kronock standing in the hall. She let the towel fall to the floor with a wet splat.
So much for there being only the outside sentries. She backed up as it took a step toward her, the clawed feet echoing off the tile.
“You are unauthorized,” it said in a halting, mechanical voice. “This colony is off limits. You are unauthorized.”
“Okay,” she said. “I get it. I’m not authorized.” Her back touched the wall, and she wished she hadn’t left Kax’s blaster back in the room.
Chapter Twelve
Kax’s head swam as he forced his eyes to open. He blinked a few times, his blurred vision coming into focus. Instead of peering through the fiery-red storm, he seemed to be in a dimly lit room, looking up at the underside of a bed. He rolled on his side and felt a hard mattress beneath him. He breathed in and smelled dust, coughing as his movement sent up a cloud from the bed. He wasn’t on the shuttle and he wasn’t back at the Drexian space station. Where was he?
The last thing he remembered was coming out of the shuttle and heading toward one of the buildings then seeing something move in the distance. He raised a hand to
his bare chest, remembering firing and then being fired on. He felt the tender skin where he’d been hit, but it was also strangely wet and cool to the touch. Looking down at his naked chest, he vaguely recalled a female’s voice as she pressed something cold to his wound. She’d been talking to him. What had she said?
His head throbbed as he sat up. Bridget. The tribute bride he’d rescued from the Kronocks. The beautiful, dark-haired girl with the warm, brown eyes. That must have been the voice he’d heard, but where was she?
He picked up his blaster from the floor and stood, taking a breath to steady himself. His head swam, and he clutched the bed railing for balance. It looked like he was in a barracks. It reminded him of the Drexian military academy—spartan and spare, although all the furniture looked stretched out. Unless that detail was just his vision playing tricks on him. Nothing like the modern Kronock outpost where he’d found Bridget.
He found that reassuring. Even though he remembered the creature he’d fired on had been Kronock, and a Kronock who was more machine than animal, he didn’t see evidence of his enemy inhabiting the building. He knew it couldn’t be safe if they’d been fired on, but it was also obvious no one was living there. At least, no one who liked to clean.
He stepped into the hallway—high ceilings, bare walls, and no natural light. Overhead lights flickered, giving the hallway an ominous feel, and the tile beneath his feet was dingy. From the thin coating of dirt on the floor, he could see small footprints leading away from the door and down the hall. Before he could call out for Bridget, a metallic clicking made him whip his head around.
A Kronock—with mechanical, red eyes and metal circuitry all over his body—jerkily raised an arm as Kax fired on him. One metallic hand flew off and then he jerked back as Kax shot into his chest. The creature collapsed, his circuitry spluttering.
Another one appeared behind the pile of broken machinery, and Kax blew its head off before it could advance on him. He paused to regroup and looked at the broken Kronock. These were unlike the fighters they’d encountered during the Kronock incursion, and he wondered if they were an early model, or a special sentry variation designed to guard and not necessarily battle. These had been much easier to defeat, for which he was grateful.
