“Let’s go,” I say, and turn my head to lead the way, allowing my long hair to fall in front of my face so he can’t see the disappointment on my face.
Chapter Twelve
Tyr
I settle down in front of the controls, inside the skeletal structure that made up my little ship, and I stare at the blinking lights in front of me in silence.
“General?”
Since my title has not been revoked, he is still my superior, and I feel guilty for treating him with such little respect. Yes, if I were an admiral I would not spend my time behind a desk, but as long as he is still doing his job, I should be treating him as best I can.
“Admiral,” I say. “What do you think? The Aeon farmers did this?”
He clicks his tongue. “They have no reason to order an entire Merrel village to sabotage you.”
“Who then?”
He pauses, and I can hear the unease in the silence. “Where is your crew, General?”
Icy tingles across my skin make me frown deeply. “My crew would die for me and for the Eclipse.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I am—”
“Tyr, you must find out if there is a traitor in your midst before we bring you back to Paxia.”
“You can?”
“Yes, the Prototype has left Paxia with five trusted military men. They will pick you up within three hours.”
Luckily the trip from Paxia to its moon is a short one, especially in a brand new ship.
“How is the human?” he asks. His question surprises me. I didn’t know he cared about others enough to enquire — but I remind myself that this is a matter of intergalactic relations. He does not see my Alyssa as a wonderful unique woman; he sees her as a trade. Perhaps even as a burden, as I once did.
It feels like so long ago. I feel like a different man. No, not different. The same, but refreshed. No longer bitter and cynical for no reason but loneliness. I had accepted a life of solitude, and I hadn’t even realized that it wasn’t what I wanted.
My own decisions had isolated me because I had thought it the easiest path forward, but if I had been reminded sooner that happiness like this existed I would have lived a very different life.
But I have no regrets.
“Perfect,” I say evenly. He doesn’t react to my word choice.
“And the Eclipse? Is it a work in progress or is it a lost cause?” He can’t hide the pleasure from his voice, and I look up at the sky and sigh.
“I don’t know yet, Admiral. I may yet have to pilot your precious Prototype.”
“I am glad to hear it. Alko out.”
The line goes dead, and I am left feeling a mixture of emotions.
Could my crew really have betrayed me?
Do I really have to bow before Alko for the rest of my military career?
How will Alyssa react when I tell her I lied about who her genetic match is, in order to keep her at arm’s length? I hope she will be happy, but I don’t claim to be an expert on females.
I must start with the highest priority on my list, though. My crew are gone. The Aeon farmers are a day’s walk away so they should be back any minute, really. I look forward to seeing the looks on their faces when they see the Eclipse almost rebuilt and my legs better than ever before. I have my gun strapped to my waist, and I am itching to use it.
As I stand with arms folded waiting for any number of things to happen — Alko’s Prototype arriving to take Alyssa back to Paxia, or my crew to show up and give themselves away with their reaction — I cannot help but marvel at my new legs.
They have a lot more give to them than even the bendy, green wood I used before. I had assumed metal would be harder and more uncomfortable, but the Merrel know what they are doing.
“I wanted to thank you,” I say to the head engineer creature, supervising the hammering of the ship’s tail.
“Harrison,” he introduces himself, and I take his paw and give him my full name, too. “Why thank me?”
“For the legs, and the ship,” I explain.
“Letting us fix?” he asks, looking genuinely perplexed. From the other end of the ship, Alyssa shoots me a look and I try not to smile at the friendly creature’s naivety.
“You did a great job,” I say. “I am very impressed.”
Harrison looks delighted, and this pleases me. I can’t believe how much the human has changed me in so little time. I keep smiling. With someone to share humor with, the universe suddenly seems funnier. Lighter.
It’s exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
“Drop point,” Harrison says suddenly, moving closer to me.
“Drop point?” I repeat.
“Ship will arrive elsewhere on planet. Signal incoming.”
“You know where?”
He nods.
“Is it far?”
“Know shortcut,” he says simply, and takes my hand in his paws. I snatch it away. He takes my hand again, tighter this time.
“Harrison,” I address him. “What are you doing?”
He lifts up my hand and shows me my own palm. I frown, but I look anyway. And see the long jagged scar from my recent cybernetic implant. I raise my eyebrows. “There is Firosan tech on this rock?”
He nods. “Tram.”
“An old tram system on Aeo? Built by the Firosans, and inaccessible except by their cybernetic keys? That is an interesting development...”
Harrison nods excitably.
Alyssa strolls over, and throws a grin my way — she must have overheard our conversation.
“Riding the rails, are we?”
I make a low noise of uncertainty. “I would prefer you stay out of harm’s way.” She stares at me while I think. “So coming with me would be best, yes.”
“Great.” She turns on her heel and starts to walk in a completely random direction, and I’m about to call her back when I see she is just saying goodbye to the Merrel. I rake her body from head to toe with my eyes, and swallow hard.
At least I can spend the next few hours alone with her.
Harrison waddles closer to me at that moment. “Need a guide,” he says. “Will come with you. Should leave now.” With that, he starts to wander away, expecting us to follow him. I let out a low grumble and attempt to lope after him, but these mechanical feet haven’t been built for dragging broodily across the ground, so instead I march with purpose.
Travelling halfway across the moon again isn’t the way I had planned to spend the day, but as I look at Alyssa tilting back her head and laughing at something Harrison has chirruped to her, I find that I can think of very little I’d rather be doing right now.
Even with the company of this awkward Merrel engineer, there are worse ways to kill the next few hours. Before rescue arrives.
But I can smell something strong, impossible to ignore, hanging in the air, and I can sense that something important has changed. So there is no putting this off anymore. I must deal with my future, right here, right now — before the Prototype arrives on Aeo.
It’s been fun messing around on the moon, but it’s time for Alyssa and I to face the uncertainty of our real lives.
Chapter Thirteen
Alyssa
Harrison waddles ahead of us, looking so purposeful and serious it makes me want to laugh, but Tyr looks just as serious next to me, striding across the ground even faster than normal with his new Eclipse legs. I have learned to make my strides longer to better keep up with him, but walking with him still expends more energy than I am used to.
“You OK?” I ask him quietly, glancing at the Merrel to make sure he isn’t eavesdropping, not that it matters. Aphrodite doesn’t seem to believe his species cares much about anything, but if they aren’t considered ‘sentient’ by this AI then I clearly have no idea what the word means.
“I’m perfectly fine,” he says, but he isn’t making eye contact with me.
Just minutes earlier he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. I could feel the heat of h
is gaze on the curves of my body, and it felt amazing. I’ve never felt so adored before. So appreciated, physically and otherwise.
Having him stare at me makes me think of the things I know he’s wishing he could do to me. And then I start to think about them more and more until I can’t think about anything else.
I wonder if he understands the effect he has on me just by being nearby. I glance sideways at his firm muscles, tensing and relaxing in a lithe, big cat-like way as he covers ground. The way his brows furrow with concentration about every little thing.
“You seem … distant.”
“I’m fine,” he says again, more abruptly than before. My eyebrows twitch at him in confusion, but he says nothing more.
“Here,” Harrison says proudly, silencing me before I can say anything — probably for the best; I don’t know if this conversation will go well. Clearly my general has something on his mind and I don’t think I want to know what it is.
Except of course I do. I totally do.
We look over to what the Merrel is gesturing wildly at, and for a moment I’m really stunned into silence. But that doesn’t last long. It never does with me.
“Look at that!” I say, and jog closer, my backpack bouncing against my back. I’m reminded of my Mahdnium serum.
All Tyr needs to do is say the word. If he’s not my genetic match, and he decides that he does want to be with me, I can increase the possibility that I won’t die to the maximum with my final shot of the compound.
But he needs to say the word first. I lay the backpack gently on the ground, somewhere safe by a knot of roots.
There is a platform barely rising above a sea of fallen branches and twisting vines. It looks like a combination of the old west and old futurism, with a couple of big rusted control boxes and glimpses here and there of the railway. It seems as though there was a storm some time ago that knocked over a huge gnarled tree but didn’t kill it, and the plants just continued to grow mostly horizontally.
It looks beautiful, like all the best abandoned structures reclaimed by nature back on Earth, but with a twist of the completely unfamiliar. It also looks completely unusable.
“Be careful,” Tyr snaps, striding after me. Harrison hops and skips over vines and roots to follow us. “There are tracks underneath. You might trip.”
I toss a look over my shoulder. “Why are you so worried about me all of a sudd...oh—”
A root catches my toes as soon as I look away from the ground and I begin my inevitable descent to the ground, my arms windmilling fruitlessly. Tyr clicks his tongue, irritated, and launches towards me — and then his face twists in shock as his legs shoot him the entire seven foot distance and he catches me in his arms before he seems to realize what is going on.
“Wow, those legs!” I say breathlessly. I pick myself up out of his arms and laugh at the look on his face. “Why didn’t you just let me fall?” I shove him playfully. “It’s just soft plant stuff on the floor. No need to break a sweat for me.”
He doesn’t take his protective hands off of me, his dark, colorful face contorting into something far more serious, if possible. My own face falls.
“What?” I ask him. He says nothing. Harrison is pulling himself up, legs flailing, onto the platform to stick his head inside the rusty control box. “What?” I ask again, louder this time. I give him another light shove that barely moves his body at all. “What is your problem, Tyr?”
He glares, flashing teeth, and I drop my arms to my sides. “We should talk,” he says, something tinging his words that I don’t recognize — and I don’t know if I deserve.
“Well, alright,” I say, picking my way over the tracks and roots. “I was hoping you would talk. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. That is part of the problem.”
I look at him. At the perfect proportions of his body. The way he radiates competence — nothing like any of the men I knew back on Earth. Tyr is a whole different type of man. I feel sick with worry suddenly. He’s going to talk to me about my genetic mate.
He’s going to let me down.
I knew this would happen, but … I hadn’t really thought about it. I haven’t wanted to.
“This is about my mate,” I say quietly. “You want to make sure I haven’t fallen for you, because I’m being sent to someone else.”
He looks at me with alarm. “Alyssa, no. This is much more important than a worthless genetic matching program. I’m not even sure I believe in things like lifemates, DNA matches … anything like that. I have never seen any evidence. Ignoring that for a moment, I can sense certain things, and I sense…”
“You can tell that I’m too into you,” I finish for him, hopping onto the platform and kicking my legs with a frown. “That’s OK. Really. You don’t have to do this.”
Inside I feel like I’m being torn apart and it’s threatening to leak out through my eyes, but I’m good at hiding things like that. I’ll be alright.
I won’t ever feel this way about anyone else. I know that, deep down, to be a fact, but I’ll be alright. Won’t I?
“Let me talk,” he says, stopping at the platform and resting his palms on either side of my thighs, on the cool surface, and staring intensely into my eyes.
“Sorry,” I say quietly. It’s hard to maintain eye contact without letting them water, but I do anyway.
“You are pregnant.”
“I—” I begin, but then my mouth snaps shut and I lean backwards. “The hell did you just say to me?”
“I told you, I can sense certain things. Humans can’t, I know, but Mahdfel have more powerful senses for some things.”
“He’s right,” the AI speaks into my ear. She’s coming in handy. “The Mahdfel find it quite sweet that the woman tells the man when she is pregnant on Earth. Often for them it is the other way around.”
“Am I pregnant?” I whisper. Tyr nods, not knowing I’m talking to Aphrodite.
“I can’t tell you that, but from what I am programmed to know, it’s unlikely he would lie about this.”
“What?” I say. “I … I guess it makes sense. We did have unprotected sex, twice.” I rest my face in my hands and groan. “I’ve never done something so stupid before. I just got caught up in the moment. Two moments. Oh, god. What do we do?” I look up at him, face tight with worry, and watch as his own face relaxes. He softens into something sweet again. I missed this Tyr.
“It’s good news,” he says. “I think.”
“How? I’m probably going to die if the pregnancy lasts to labor. And the dude I’m meant to end up with … he’ll be so mad. It could be an intergalactic … thing. You know?”
I go to bury my face in my hands again but he takes my wrists gently and pulls them down to my lap, and then takes my face in his own hands and kisses me on the lips.
It instantly relaxes me.
I have Tyr. I don’t need to worry.
“I…” he begins, his hands solid and warm against my thighs. He grips me, stares right into me, and then…
There is a thundering boom and the dirt and roots to our right fly into the air and spray us with debris, making me cough and wipe at my mouth.
“What the—” I demand, but Tyr is already leaping into action.
“Ship!” Harrison cries, standing as tall as he can and pointing beyond the trees.
“I hear nothing!” Tyr argues, but then I see it. A sharp, angular creation, that looks nothing like what I’ve seen of the Eclipse, crests above the nearby canopies and seems to point its impersonal nose right at us. The windows at the front look like the beady black eyes of a predator.
And it charges up its laser again.
“The Prototype?” Tyr sputters. “Impossible. Who is piloting it?”
He doesn’t have any more time to think as another blast is levelled at us, exploding into the dirt where we just were. Just in time, Tyr snatches me and ducks under the platform.
“Alko!” he roars, but I don’t know what that means or whether he actu
ally thinks the operator of the spacecraft can hear him.
“Tyr, what’s going on?” I shout. His arms are circled protectively around me but the ship can only miss so many times before it locks onto its target and there’s nowhere left to run.
“Harrison, are you alive?” he bellows. There is a squeak of affirmation from above us on the platform and my alien general nods. “Calculate the angle. Train to ship via fallen tree. Got it?”
“Good idea,” I hear, and then a determined scuffling. “Got it.”
“Amazing creatures, the Merrel,” Tyr mumbles. “Fastest mathematicians. Apart from the Quazlar, of course. And any non-organic species, too.”
“What is happening?” I cry a second time. “Tyr, is someone trying to kill us? Who is that?”
He turns and looks me right in the eyes. “Do not panic,” he says. “Stress is terrible for a baby. But that is my boss. The head of the most powerful military force in the known universe.”
“What?!” I scream. “You work for some kind of murderous—”
“I did not realize he wanted us dead!” he interrupts. “Honestly, I thought him to be incapable of taking a stand on anything. I must admit, I’m impressed, in a way. Stay here.” He leaves me under that platform, partially concealed by foliage and roots, and ducks out, and scrambles up above me to rendezvous with the Merrel.
“Tyr!” I yell out.
“Stay still,” he roars. “What is the angle?”
“Ship must be … there,” Harrison says. “Impact at sixty miles per hour. Ship must be there for impact low as thirty.”
“Thirty,” Tyr says gruffly. “Start the train. I will lower the ship. Alyssa!”
I scramble backwards as the dirt in front of the platform explodes again. “Yes! What do I do?”
“Stay there!” he roars. “Do not move.”
“Right,” I say, backing up. “Don’t move. Stay put. Fine.” I pout. Because I’m pregnant. I need to stay alive long enough to reach my Mahdnium injection … or I’ll die anyway.
Tyr: Warriors of Firosa Book 2 (Warrior of Firosa) Page 9
