The Vanished Specialist

by K. Webster

  “We’ll make several trips and bring back as much as we can,” I agree without hesitation. One solar, I hope for Emery to carry my own mortyoung. And I want them both to be safe and healthy.

  Breccan frowns. “This geostorm is gearing up to be one of the worst in our history. Potentially cataclysmic. I’ll have all morts here hunting and gathering. We’re going to fortify the facility against it. According to the reports, you have around four solars to safely get there and prepare yourselves against it. We’ll remain in contact.”

  “When will the storm pass?” I ask, hating the dread pooling inside me.

  “Our best guess is over two hundred solars.”

  Sayer chimes in above us. “Give or take. Galen and I have been watching the geostorm and it keeps changing course. This one is unpredictable, but two hundred solars is our best guess based on its size and movement.”

  “Two hundred solars,” I hiss in confusion.

  “We can only hope it is enough time…before…” Breccan’s jaw clenches and he looks away. “I cannot lose Aria or my son.”

  Son?

  “We will be back in time,” I vow to my commander, who has finally gifted what I need. “Everything is going to work out.”

  Emery squeezes me. Even she believes my words.

  I rekking hope I can stay true to them.

  7

  Emery

  I have to leave Calix to go with Aria to the sub-faction where empty rooms wait for the other women still in cryosleep. She leads me to a big observation area and keys in a command that opens the huge window in what she calls the common room.

  The view on the other side causes me to stumble backward, even though I’ve seen it before. The vast, empty plains angry with red-orange dunes as far as the eye can see. In the distance, thick storm clouds blot out the horizon. Just before the clouds, looming like a malevolent shadow, are the mountains that could mean my salvation—or my death.

  Was I an idiot for even attempting this? The facility here is safe, I know this for sure. Whatever awaits on the other side of those mountains? A total question mark. The sector Calix has read about in his father’s notes could have been destroyed. I could be risking both our lives in this crazy endeavor.

  “I know you hate me,” Aria begins.

  I look up from the minnasuit—one that’s smaller and more form-fitting than the other—I’m trying to figure out how to fasten. “I don’t hate you,” I say before she can speak again. “I wish you’d let me make decisions for myself.”

  My response stuns her to silence and then she gives a little wry laugh. “You sound just like my little sister, Limerick. I used to boss her around, too. I guess when I realized Calix woke you up, I tried to be your big sister, too, rather than the friend I should have been.” She pauses, rubbing a hand over the gentle swell of her belly. “I guess I was a little desperate for her and I took it out on you. Can you forgive me?”

  Family.

  The concept is a foreign one to me, that’s for sure. It hadn’t occurred to me she looked at me in that way. The only family I’d ever known—my mother—died when I was younger. I admit as much to her. “I lost my only family when I was a teenager. It’s probably as much my fault as it is yours. I don’t have much experience in the family department lately either.”

  Aria lifts her hand from her stomach and starts forward like she might pull me in for a hug, but I sidestep her attempt. Hurt flashes in her eyes, briefly, but she blinks it away. Maybe one day I’ll feel comfortable with her, but I’m still harboring some hard feelings toward her and how she’s handled things on my behalf.

  “I hate that you’re leaving just when we’ve started to work things out,” Aria says with a small smile. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid while you’re out there?”

  I think of the mountains, the long, almost impossible trip, and the burning in my chest I’m trying to ignore. “I’ll do my best,” I tell her. “Do you know exactly how we’re supposed to be traveling?”

  She pulls me to the window. “That’s what I was going to talk to you about before you left.” Aria points to a dock of sorts outside the facility. “Calix requested you use one of the little four-wheeler like vehicles they have. They call them terrainsters. It’s not in the best repair, but we can’t afford to let the other go, not with the geostorm coming.”

  “I understand.” Nerves jangle in the pit of my stomach, but I’ve committed to our plan now. There’s no turning back.

  “You’ll be safe,” Oz, the mort covered in grease, explains in an almost shy way. He squints his eyes and then smiles reassuringly. “I have tested it several times.”

  “Trust,” Calix murmurs to me. “Oz can fix just about anything. Between him and Jareth, I know it will work just fine.” He saunters over to the vehicle to toss in some gear.

  The entire faction—the group of morts and us two human girls—stands on the ship deck, fully covered in what they call zu-gear over our minnasuits. Several morts, who are unrecognizable behind their masks, load items into the back of the vehicle we’ll be taking.

  “Remember,” the one with slightly slanted eyes says. Galen, I think. “Don’t eat any plants on your journey. They most likely aren’t safe. The rations I prepared will be sufficient.”

  I nod my understanding.

  The one named Jareth bounds over to me the moment Galen leaves. “Just push the button and watch the brilliance happen.” He points at Oz. “Genius, that one.” His lips turn up in a cocky way from behind his mask. “Of course, the vacuuroom wouldn’t be possible without my knowledge of metals and their capabilities. You’ll understand later.”

  I barely utter out my thanks before someone else is in my face.

  “I’d take you for a ride in Mayvina,” Theron, a guy just as energetic as Hadrian, says, “but she’s a little ill at the moment. We’re working on making her as good as new.”

  Another giant mort nudges me with his elbow. “Don’t take rides from the likes of him,” a familiar voice says. “Stick with Calix. He’ll keep you safe.” Sayer. I recognize his voice from many of the times he spoke over the comms.

  “I trust him,” I tell Sayer firmly.

  He grins from behind his mask.

  “Magnastrikes,” someone growls from farther away, making me jump. My eyes lock with the wild ones of Draven. “They’re explosive radiation strikes. You may encounter them near or within a geostorm.” He mutters out a few more technical things about these terrifying things before backing away.

  Before I know it, Calix is ushering me into the vehicle and Hadrian throws up what I now know are “rogcow horns,” to bid us goodbye.

  Definitely no turning back now.

  I want to turn back.

  Calix whips across the dunes in what I’ve not-so-lovingly named the dust-mobile. It cuts over the dunes of red-orange sand with ease, but leaves thick clouds of the stuff in its wake. The heat outside is a relentless onslaught and bakes me inside the tight-fitting minnasuit. I’m reminded back to the hazy lesson that Aria gave me not long after I’d awoken. The R-levels, they’d called them. Or radiation levels. Made worse by the intensity of the sun. Aria’s face had darkened at the mention of how easily both humans and morts could burn from exposure.

  If I thought it was hard to breathe inside the facility, it’s almost impossible outside.

  I can’t tell that to Calix. The look of determination on his face behind his mask snaps my jaws together. I got us into this and I’ll survive. For Calix, I’ll do what I have to do to make it to the other side of that mountain.

  “Do you travel outside the facility often?” I ask through our comms units that are located inside our helmets. The sound of wheezing between the words echoes back through my headset, but I ignore it and pray Calix will, too.

  “No, unless it is required. I am of more use in the lab. It is rare a mort volunteers to go outside the facility because it can be so dangerous. The R-levels are a big problem,” he explains. “And then, there are pathogens
in the atmosphere that cause The Rades.” The deadly disease he’d already mentioned that had wiped out most of their numbers some years ago.

  My chest tightens. “You won’t get it, will you?” Swamped with despair, I reach over and squeeze his thick, muscular thigh, hoping for some comfort in the touch. Selfish. You should have thought of this before you made him leave the safety of the facility.

  “Do not fret. I have taken every precaution. As long as we wear our rebreathers under our masks when we travel, we will both be protected.” He pats my hand reassuringly.

  “How far away is Bleex Mountain?” The landscape is mostly obscured by the murky dust clouds that seem to hover a few feet above the dunes, but what I’ve seen is identical in every direction. I’m glad he’s driving because we’ve only been traveling for a short time and I’m already lost.

  "Three, maybe four solars' travel."

  Sector 1779 is probably a pipe dream and I know that. If we survive the journey, it may be damaged beyond repair. The tools Calix believes are there could be destroyed or lost. For once in my life, I’m being selfish…I just hope it doesn’t cost Calix his.

  “Are you sure we can make it there safely?” I shift in the seat, unable to get comfortable. It’s not for lack of the dust-mobile, its seats are surprisingly nice.

  “Worry not, lilapetal, I am not going to let anything happen to you.”

  I blow out a breath. I’m starting to annoy myself. “Remind me again how it will go. Just one more time.” I’d had Calix explain the trip to me several times before we left, and several more once we got on the road.

  “We will travel as much as we dare during the daylight hours. The weather conditions are too unfavorable at night to risk it. Then we will set up camp with our portable vacuuroom.”

  Even though Oz hinted at it and Jareth bragged about it, I still don’t get it.

  “Tell me more about the vacuuroom.” I rest my head against his shoulder and wish I weren’t wearing the helmet so I could inhale his comforting scent. I’ll have to settle for the memory, at least until we camp for the night.

  He humors me, explaining how the portable tent-like structure is a mini-version of the facility in the way that it has a decontamination area and impenetrable walls, which will allow us privacy and protection against the elements and predators as we travel. Aria already filled me in on the horrors of sabrevipes and I am in no hurry to run into one.

  We travel for an eternity and I rest in fits. At first, I try to take in the wonder of the foreign landscape surrounding me, but the uniqueness only lasts so long when we’re surrounded by barren, towering dunes and scraggly mountains as far as the eye can see.

  The only reason I even considered risking this trip—the reason I haven’t quite mustered the nerve to tell Calix, is the longer I’m on this planet, the less energy I seem to have. Even in the sterile environment of the facility, I struggled to breathe. There has to be a cure. There has to. I cling to that thought rather than wondering what it will be like to be alone with Calix in our little tent with nothing but time.

  My mind drifts to the past.

  After my mother died. Everything was so hard back then. It changed me. The things I had to do to preserve my life were what ended me up on that vessel in the first place. These guys saved me, unbeknownst to them. And no matter how awful this planet is, I have no intentions of ever leaving it.

  Sooner or later, I’ll have to tell him the truth. I just hope he can forgive me when I do.

  Hours later, Calix slows the dust-mobile to a stop and I shake off the remnants of sleep. It doesn’t seem like it’d be exhausting, but the long day of travel has my thighs quaking as he helps me off the seat.

  “What can I do to help?” I ask.

  He gestures to the dust-mobile. “Retrieve our rations for the night from the side compartment. I will set up the vacuuroom.”

  I nod wearily, wishing I had his endurance, but I’ve never been able to do much for very long, not even when I had medications back home. Packed away in neat little sections are a variety of what looks like freeze-dried food in metal boxes. I select two of them, not caring what they contain, just knowing I’m starving.

  “Is the food out here really not edible?” I ask as I join him by the already erected tent of sorts. Galen mentioned it, but only briefly. The land may be desert and mountains, but there are trees interspersed throughout the dunes and throughout the journey I caught the shadow of animals moving from time to time.

  “Once it has been tested and cleared, we can eat a lot of the meat,” he explains. “We try to grow our own plants in a safer environment, well away from the radiation.”

  Calix helps me to the vacuuroom with one hand bracing my elbow. The structure stands maybe five by seven feet and I come to a startled halt at its entrance, my eyes bulging.

  Turning to him, I say, “How in the world did that fit on the dust-mobile?”

  “Dust-mobile?” he repeats. When I gesture to the vehicle, he nods in understanding. “It is collapsible technology Oz developed with Jareth. It is really quite remarkable.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Calix uses his armband at the door much like they did at the facility. With a beep and a whirring sound, the door springs open into a small decontamination room where we remove our outer suits and helmets, leaving us in the skintight minnasuits underneath.

  He presses a command on a keypad in the wall and the second door opens. Oz and Jareth must be friggin’ geniuses because if I didn’t know any better, it would feel as though we were in one of the rooms at the facility.

  “This is incredible,” I whisper.

  “I hope it eases your worries about traveling.”

  I give Calix a wry smile. “I guess I wasn’t too good at hiding it.”

  Calix lifts a hand to caress my cheek. “I do not want you to hide anything from me, lilapetal.”

  Hopefully he can’t see my nervous gulp. I smile hesitantly. “So, what’s for dinner?” I ask instead of bringing up the one thing I know will take away the loving look he sends me.

  My secret.

  Something I’m terrified for him to find out.

  8

  Calix

  Her mood has changed and I can sense it. I can see it. I can practically taste it. But then she shifts her blue eyes away from mine, hiding her thoughts from me. All it does is make me want to pull them straight from her, destroy the bad ones and coddle the good ones.

  “Ahh, good choice,” I praise as I begin prepping the meal packets. I am distracted from my task as I watch her settle on a cushion, tucking her thin legs beneath her. Her skin is pale and I am not pleased with the dark smudges under her eyes. She seems weakened from our travels. Quickly, I prepare our food and hand her the one that is most palatable.

  “Thank you,” she rasps, her smile thin and forced.

  My brows furrow as I regard her. I barely register inhaling my food as my attention is solely focused on her as she nibbles at her meal. “When you finish eating, I would like to check your vitals.”

  Her panicked eyes fly to mine. “I’m fine. We should rest.”

  “Your vitals will determine how long we rest, Emery.”

  She nods in resignation and tears well in her eyes. I search her face, but she turns her nog to look out the window to avoid my gaze. Her fingertip runs along the glass and she lets out a heavy sigh. “I feel like I am suffocating.”

  Often, these little aliens say things that have other meanings. And since she’s not clutching at her throat for air, I assume she means she feels trapped. “This is not the facility and we’re no longer with our faction,” I tell her gently. “We are on Mortuus, free to travel about as we see fit.”

  She swipes the heel of her hand over her cheekbone, erasing the evidence of her tears. “Not figuratively, Calix. Literally. I didn’t want to say anything…” she trails off and a sob catches in her throat. “I feel like I’m dying too quickly and nothing is slowing it down. If anything, I feel like I’m on
borrowed time.”

  I prowl over to her and move the tray of food from her so I can cradle her face with my hands. “I will not let you die.” The growl that rumbles from me is fierce and terrifying, but it is so convincing, even I nearly believe it.

  “Promise?” she chokes out, her hands gripping my wrists as though I might vanish from her sight.

  “On my own life,” I vow.

  The sadness bleeds from her as her expression changes from one of worry to desire. Her nostrils flare, a slight pink burns across her cheeks, and her supple lips part. When she licks them, I let out a groan, remembering how sweet she tastes. Desperate for another sample of my lilapetal, I lean forward and press my mouth to hers. She moans and it stirs my cock to life.

  “Calix,” she breathes as she climbs into my lap. Her legs straddle me and her kisses intensify. I love the way she runs her fingertips through my messy hair. “I need you.”

  “What do you need me to do?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

  She rolls her hips, grinding her center against my cock through our suits. Pleasure surges through me and my hands grip her waist in warning.

  “I need you to make love to me…” she trails off, her breath hot against mine. “I don’t want to die without being with you. It’s irrational to you, I’m sure, but I’m yours if you’ll have me.”

  I kiss her deeply until she seems to melt within my arms. So soft and trusting. I could spend eternity adoring her. “You want to mate with me?” I clarify, making sure I understand her intentions both spoken and unspoken.

  “Yes,” she insists, nipping at my bottom lip in a playful way.

  I grin and trail kisses along her jaw to her cute little ear. “Our people mate for the purpose of reproducing.”