Haven 6

by Aubrie Dionne

  Eri nervously tugged on a thread from the roughly woven blanket. Part of the weave un­raveled and she blushed, glan­cing at the door. She hid the loose strand un­der­neath a fold. “Ar­rows, I think, and darts that put you in a coma.”

  “They don’t have the same tech­no­logy we do?”

  On second thought, Eri did find it odd that people who came in space­ships now lived in tree huts. “Ap­par­ently not, but I can’t be too sure.”

  “Why didn’t the lasers work against them?”

  “They were cam­ou­flaged, and they am­bushed us. They know the ter­rain and were able to use it to their ad­vant­age. Please, you have to send help.”

  Her im­age flickered and Eri’s heart skipped. Not now.

  Com­mander Grier’s face so­lid­i­fied, her beady eyes cold. “Stay where you are. Learn as much as you can about these tribes. Re­port to me in six hours with ac­cur­ate num­bers and de­tailed de­scrip­tions of their weaponry.”

  “B-but…you’re not send­ing a res­cue party?”

  “Ms. Smith,” the com­mander snapped back. “You must be­friend this wel­com­ing tribe, get them on our side. We may need them be­fore the time for Delta Slip comes. You are only to re­port to me. I’m block­ing any fur­ther trans­mis­sions to oth­ers on the Her­it­age. I can­not al­low wide­spread panic.”

  Block­ing her loc­ator? But what about Aquaria? How would she let her know about Litus? The im­age flickered out and Eri couldn’t tell if the com­mander had ended the trans­mis­sion or if she’d lost it. But one thing was for sure. No help was com­ing, and Litus, Tank, Mars, and the oth­ers might still be alive.

  Us­ing her loc­ator, Eri searched for the mem­bers of the team. A weak sig­nal came from North­w­est, show­ing the life signs for Litus and Mars. Hope­fully the oth­ers were just too far away to re­gister. She re­fused to be­lieve the rest of the team was dead.

  Eri stood up. The floor pitched un­der­neath her, but she re­gained her bal­ance and took a deep breath. She’d have to ask that gor­geous man for help.

  …

  “Do you think we can trust her?” Striver whispered as he led his mother into her thatched hut. The dim glow of the dy­ing torch made the rings un­der her eyes darken with shad­ows. She shouldn’t have left her bed, but he could only bring so much of the world to her. She wanted to meet the girl who’d des­cen­ded from the stars. Her en­thu­si­asm gave him hope that her own battle wasn’t yet lost. Be­sides, he needed her ad­vice.

  “I looked right into her eyes. She has a good heart.” His mother lowered her­self into bed slowly and waved away his help. “You know I have a good gut in­stinct when it comes to people.”

  “Of course.” He res­isted the urge to roll his eyes at the men­tion of her psychic tend­en­cies. No one had shown powers like that since the last gen­er­a­tion on Out­post Omega. Either those old for­tune-tell­ers were bogus, or those with the gift chose to stay be­hind.

  Maybe they were right.

  He shrugged off his doubts. Their colony hadn’t lost any­thing yet.

  His mother settled un­der­neath the blankets. “She’ll do the right thing.”

  “Yes, but for her people or for ours?”

  “Gut feel­ings don’t an­swer spe­cif­ics, Striver. All you can do is spend time with her. Get to know her.”

  Im­pa­tience bubbled in­side him and he clenched his fists. “I don’t have time for that. There’s a whole mother ship hanging up there in the sky, the Law­less seized who knows what from the col­on­ists, and they’re prob­ably in­ter­rog­at­ing the rest of them as we speak. Our re­la­tions with this new fac­tion are chancy at best, and I have to de­cide what’s best for our people.”

  She gave him the same look she used when he cursed bad weather or couldn’t wait un­til twi­light to hunt—the look that told him he couldn’t save the world all by him­self. “Whether you have the seconds to spare or not, only time will tell.”

  Striver calmed his frus­tra­tion by fo­cus­ing on his mother. He took her hand, the bones thin as twigs, and squeezed her fin­gers gently. “Rest now. I’ll come if I have any more news.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes. Her voice soun­ded sleepy, her mind already drift­ing. “The way she looked at you…”

  The way who looked at me? The girl?

  He opened his mouth to ask, but she’d already fallen asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. She’d had a long day. Rarely did she leave the bed, never mind ven­ture from her hut. The fa­tigue must have weighed on her, mak­ing her ima­gine things.

  Shrug­ging off her com­ment, Striver par­ted the ferns and walked into the crisp morn­ing air. He hadn’t slept since they dragged Eri home, and the sleep­less night had pulled on his muscles, mak­ing him feel like he had stones tied to his arms. Rest was not pos­sible, though, be­cause the young beauty lay in his bed.

  He slumped against the out­side of his own tree hut, try­ing to re­mem­ber what he’d learned about the ships from his an­cest­ors who’d foun­ded their colony, Striker and Ar­ies. Striker had been a space pir­ate from Out­post Omega, but Ar­ies had es­caped a colony ship called the New Dawn. Their strict rules of lifemate pair­ings and job as­sign­ments based on test scores had been too much for her. Ar­ies had met Striker after she es­caped, and with his help, they re­claimed his map to Refuge and trans­por­ted the rest of the space pir­ates.

  Those colony ships had strict ob­ject­ives, and he doubted they’d change their plans to in­clude des­cend­ants of the very space pir­ates who took over their space sta­tion and severed their com­mu­nic­a­tions with the other ships. Es­pe­cially when the Law­less had already fired the first shot.

  He rubbed his fore­head, the situ­ation worsen­ing in his mind.

  The ferns rustled be­hind him and Eri stuck out her head. “Ex­cuse me, Striver, could I speak with you?”

  His name soun­ded for­eign on her tongue, like she’d found a dif­fer­ent way to ac­cent the syl­lables that he wasn’t used to. At least she re­membered it.

  “Of course.” He stood and ges­tured in­side. “For pri­vacy.”

  She ducked her head, and he fol­lowed her into his own room, feel­ing as though he were the in­truder.

  Eri paced, her small boots walk­ing the same planks of wood he’d paced him­self many times. She wrung her hands, worry creas­ing her pretty face. “I’ve spoken with my com­mander, and she’s hes­it­ant to send down any more teams.”

  He nod­ded, un­sure what this new de­vel­op­ment meant for him and his people. Would these people just fly away, find an­other planet that was hab­it­able?

  “What are you go­ing to do?”

  “I need your help. Some of my team mem­bers are still alive. I’ve tracked their loc­at­ors with my own, and they have steady life signs.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The loc­ator wouldn’t work if they didn’t. It’s em­bed­ded in our arms, a part of us. Our elec­trical en­ergy drives it.”

  “I see.” He cast a glance at the loc­ator on her arm and stifled his usual dis­trust of tech­no­logy. If she had such a fancy device, why did she need him? “What do you want me to do?”

  “We’ve got to res­cue them be­fore some­thing hap­pens.”

  He shook his head, run­ning his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. We lost many good men and wo­men just try­ing to get you.”

  “You don’t un­der­stand. They took our weapons as well. Once they fig­ure out how to use them, the com­bin­a­tion of their cam­ou­flage tech­niques and our tech­no­logy will be un­stop­pable. I mean, they already pummeled us with just bows and ar­rows. Ima­gine what a gal­lium crys­tal void ray would do in their hands.”

  She had a point. A gal­lium crys­tal void ray soun­ded pretty dan­ger­ous. It only meant one thing: these people came to con­quer. “How many weapons did they take?”

  Eri shrugged. “I’m not sure. Ma
ybe twenty laser guns? Maybe more? How many did your tribe re­cover?”

  “Count­ing yours?”

  She nod­ded, eyes open wide in ex­pect­a­tion.

  “One.”

  “Damn.” She stomped her foot, mak­ing a dent in the wood. His glance dropped to the floor and she looked up, the corner of her lips curl­ing. “Sorry.”

  He raised an eye­brow. “That’s okay. I was go­ing to fix that soon any­way.”

  Eri looked around and Striver sud­denly felt self-con­scious about his clothes thrown in the corner and his shav­ing blade next to the stone wash­basin. “This is your room?”

  “Yes.”

  She touched the bead neck­laces hanging from his mir­ror. “These are beau­ti­ful.”

  “Thank you. My mother threaded them. One for every year of my life.” He walked up be­side her, his heart beat­ing faster with the close prox­im­ity. He reached out, se­lect­ing a blue bead carved in the like­ness of a fish. “This year was the first time I caught a trot­ter with my father.”

  Eri touched the bead, run­ning her fin­gers over the ridges. “We have noth­ing like this on the Her­it­age.”

  “I wouldn’t think you would.”

  “So much is done by com­puters and ma­chines, noth­ing by hand.” She reached up and touched one of the beads woven into his long hair. Her hand brushed his cheek and sent a rush of warmth through­out his body. A flash of vul­ner­ab­il­ity shone in her fea­tures be­fore she pulled away and her face hardened.

  “So, we have to go after them, right?”

  Striver had to pull him­self to­gether to real­ize what she re­ferred to. Her team. He sighed, mostly talk­ing to him­self. “I’m think­ing about it. It would mean gath­er­ing an­other force. And we’d have to ask the Guard­i­ans.”

  “Who are the Guard­i­ans?”

  Striver smiled for the first time all night. Des­pite the warn­ings that screamed in his mind, a sud­den urge to show her his world came over him. He offered her his hand. “Want to meet a real alien?”

  Chapter Ten

  Newbies

  The last thing Weaver wanted to do was sit in a dark cave, tra­cing an­cient scratch­ings with his fin­ger. An alien ship in the sky? Send­ing a scout ship in their dir­ec­tion? And here he was ly­ing next to swirly golden sludge.

  Keep work­ing. This li­quid may be the key that gets you out of here. The ticket to tak­ing over. He’d make the world what he wanted it to be. How it should be. With him in charge in­stead of Striver.

  Weaver watched as a golden swirl ed­died around the smooth out­crop­ping, teas­ing him. He wanted to touch it, but Jolt’s warn­ings held him back. He didn’t need any of his old memor­ies troub­ling him. Not when such an im­port­ant job sat in his lap.

  If only the writ­ing matched the hiero­glyphs on the S.P. Nautilus. But they didn’t. Not even one sym­bol. This was an en­tirely dif­fer­ent race, and he was no more of a forensic lin­guist than Jolt was a babysit­ter.

  Rolling on his back, he closed his eyes. Golden swirls erup­ted be­hind his lids, and he wondered if he’d stared at the li­quid for too long. Jolt’s words haunted him.

  If you spend too long in prox­im­ity, the golden stuff will bring up all sorts of things you want to re­mem­ber. And some you don’t.

  A shiver slithered across his shoulders, and he struggled to shrug it off. There was noth­ing he did or didn’t want to re­mem­ber. The past was the past, and you couldn’t change some­thing that had already happened. So what was the point of trav­el­ing back in time?

  Ig­nor­ing the strange sen­sa­tion, he drif­ted to sleep.

  …

  The river rippled, clear wa­ter bub­bling and foam­ing around the up­turned rocks and fallen branches. Weaver bal­anced by the shore, us­ing his wooden fish­ing rod as a walk­ing stick. A wave of cold wa­ter slapped at his boots, icy droplets sting­ing the bare skin on his arms. Wip­ing away the wa­ter on his shirt, he jumped to the next rock.

  “Be care­ful, Weave. The rocks are slip­pery,” Dad called from be­hind him.

  “I’m as limber as a weasel worm, Dad.” He chanced a look over his shoulder. His dad fol­lowed with Striver be­side him, hold­ing a pot of wrig­gling scrub­ber worms. Mom had al­most kept him be­hind again, but today he’d prove he could fish with the men.

  He used his rod to probe the next foot­step, mak­ing sure the boulder wouldn’t tip un­der his weight. If only his rod were as long as Striver’s. When Dad gave it to him, the size was a smack in the face. How could he catch gi­ant trot­ter in the middle of the river with a stun­ted pole? They’d given him a dis­ad­vant­age from the start. The fa­mil­iar swell of bit­ter­ness welled in his chest, and he swal­lowed it. They al­ways tried to keep him down.

  He jumped onto the boulder. No mat­ter. He’d prove his worth any­way.

  “Let’s stop here. The rap­ids get worse be­low,” Dad shouted.

  “Don’t get too far from us, Weave,” Striver called after him.

  “I won’t.” He took three more steps be­fore he found a rock flat enough to sit on and set up his pole. The closer you got to the rap­ids, the more trot­ter you caught. He had a pocket full of scrub­ber worms, and he pulled out the longest one, its scaly skin catch­ing the rays of sun. He stuck it on the hook and cast his lure into the wa­ter with a splash.

  The rock grin­ded against his boney butt as he waited for the bait to lure the fish. The golden swirls in the wa­ter hyp­not­ized him, mak­ing him slump for­ward sleepily. He sang the song his mother sang while cook­ing to keep alert.

  Gentle, si­lent breeze

  Lift me up

  Where stars twinkle in the night.

  Where no walls di­vide

  Or laws abide

  Where no one needs to hide.

  Weaver’s words trailed off and he fell for­ward. The rush of air on his face woke him up and he stuck out his hand, catch­ing him­self be­fore his nose smashed into the rock. He checked on Dad and Striver, but they hadn’t no­ticed. Fish­ing took longer than he thought.

  Pulling him­self up, he heard Striver shout­ing. “Got a bite!”

  “Great job, son. Reel it in.” Dad leaped up with pride beam­ing on his face.

  Weaver propped him­self on the heels of his hands, his neck and cheeks heat­ing. Of course Striver caught the fish. He had a longer pole. Weaver’s own bait flickered blue-green in the wa­ter, taunt­ing him, un­touched. His gaze shot back to his brother. Striver yanked, and a glor­i­ous trot­ter the size of his arm slapped the air, sil­ver body flail­ing in the river mist.

  Striver and Dad laughed to­gether and envy boiled in­side him. He’d have to try harder to outdo Striver now. As they reined in the trot­ter, he pulled up his pole and climbed down two more rocks to where the cur­rent flowed much stronger, ed­dy­ing around a log. He stuck the end of the pole in the crevice between two rocks, the wa­ter rush­ing around it. His bait swirled in the cur­rent, spark­ling in the sun.

  A fish was bound to see it now.

  Weaver sat back just as a rush­ing wave dis­lodged his pole. He threw him­self on his belly and reached across the wa­ter grab it, and the wood slipped from his fin­gers. The pole splashed into the wa­ter and his heart jumped to his throat. He could hear Dad lec­tur­ing him on re­spons­ib­il­ity as the rod bobbed and caught on a rock to­ward the middle of the river.

  The spray stung his face as he leaned over the rap­ids and stretched his arm, wig­gling his fin­gers. His reach ended cen­ti­meters from the rod. He scraped his belly as he climbed for­ward on the rock. One hand braced him while the other one reached. His fin­gers grazed the slick pole.

  Just a little farther.

  The spray from the river trickled down the sides of his face and un­der­neath his shirt. The rock slipped be­low his sweat­ing hands and he began to slide.

  “Weave, watch out!” Striver called after him just as he skid­ded for­ward and
plunged into the icy river.

  Roar­ing wa­ter raged in his ears. His body tingled, turn­ing numb. He struggled to gulp for air, but the cur­rent spun him head over heels and he couldn’t tell the sur­face from the grav­elly bot­tom. His lungs threatened to burst as pre­cious air bubbles es­caped his lips.

  Fail­ure slapped him harder than the cur­rent against the rocks. He’d die today as a nobody, just a clumsy kid who couldn’t catch a trot­ter in spawn­ing sea­son. A little voice nudged him to keep try­ing, that there was more to life than ex­cel­ling at trot­ter fish­ing, but un­der the weight of his fail­ure it seemed like too little en­cour­age­ment too late.

  Hands reached around him and pulled him just as the last bubbles of air slipped from his mouth. He breached the sur­face and gulped in a deep breath, his en­tire body shak­ing.

  “You…okay…Weave?” Striver struggled against the cur­rent, hold­ing Weaver’s head above the wa­ter. Weaver coughed and spat.

  “My rod. I lost it.”

  “It doesn’t mat­ter as long as you’re safe.” Striver gripped him un­der his arms and swam them back to shore.

  Em­bar­rassed and de­feated, Weaver felt like a pin­cush­ion with prickles stick­ing him every­where. A deep, dark shame festered in his soul.

  “I thought I’d lost you. But you’re gonna be just fine.” Striver dragged him to the shore and laid him on his back. Weaver hacked up wa­ter and hugged his arms close to his chest, shak­ing.

  “Is he all right?” Dad ran be­side them and draped his shirt over Weaver’s shoulders. The warmth of the boar’s hide blocked the bit­ing wind but could not take away the sting in his heart.

  “I think so.”

  “I knew he was too young to take with us. I should have listened to your mom. Thank good­ness for your quick re­ac­tion and your ex­cel­lent swim­ming skills, Striver. I couldn’t have reached him in time with my bum leg.” Dad’s pride in his brother made Weaver feel like he’d eaten a whole bowl of pearl ber­ries, the sweet­ness sick­en­ing him to the point of hurl­ing. Every time Striver looked good, it made him look bad.