by Viola Grace
She held up two fingers. “Twice.”
Hivr chuckled. “Oh, when the gas jet nearly flipped us. I remember that.”
Tohba frowned. “It is dangerous. Are you sure you don’t just want to get an appearance generator for the day?”
She shook her head. “Nope. They don’t care what I look like if I am compatible. From previous reports, if I am compatible, it’s going to be very obvious to him. I don’t want to be anywhere near that.”
Tohba nodded. “Fair enough. Check in regularly with two clicks, and we won’t send out a search party and put it on your bill.”
Athena held out her fist and bent down. He bumped it, and the other guys gave her a thumbs up. The plan was set.
The trip out to the lava field was easier on the rider. It was a motorcycle mounted onto a hovercraft with a magnetic pulse engine. It was a lot of fun.
She used the tracker on the rider to find the sensor and worked out a careful and safe path that would take her over the cooler portions of the field. She hummed to herself and landed the rider in a safe zone. She settled and clicked her com twice to keep Tohba calm.
The ground under her feet was warm, and she felt a disturbing flexing. There wasn’t time to fool around. If they wanted the sensor back, it was in danger.
Athena sprinted to the sensor and wrapped it in the thermal protector before yanking it out of the ground. She hiked it onto her shoulder and ran as fast as she could as the rock flexed upward. She strapped the sensor on, fired up the rider, and got the hell out of there.
She tried to focus on getting to the coastline. The wind might give her some protection from the pyroclastic cloud.
She throttled the rider faster, but the rumble was starting behind her. The Broken Coast was under her, and she used the cliff face for protection when the explosion happened. A glance behind her showed that she was racing against the cloud of molten minerals and gas.
She kept the rider low and finally came to a halt and tucked it against the cliff face. When the cloud hit her, she had chipped a safe haven into the sandbank with a thermal blanket over her. The roar of the cloud rushed past her, and she heard the ticking of the hot rocks against the blanket. She hoped that it was quick because the thermal blanket wasn’t rated for lava chips.
Athena slumped down as a wave of fatigue rippled through her. Her plan to get treatment for the K’liir venom had been genuine. She had been feeling dragged down recently but had been trying to space out the treatment.
When the ticking on the blanket ceased, she checked her com. No signal. Of course. Why would it have a signal? She was in the centre of a magnetic particle storm. Nothing would work. Athena sighed. The air outside stilled, and she removed the blanket and checked on the rider. She could possibly have lifted off to continue over the sand, but the rider hadn’t had protection on it. It was pitted with punctures from the mineral shower.
“Right. Step one. Check the atmosphere.”
The world was coated with grey and small black particles. She covered her hands and swept as much of it as she could onto the ground, and checked the systems of the rider. She sighed in relief. The rider’s com system was intact, and it was shielded against the magnetic interruption.
She called the base and winced at how much a rescue was going to cost. “Base, this is Theena of Team Vel calling for immediate assistance.”
“Very funny. Team Vel is with the overseer.”
She winced. “Not a joke. Check the roster. Theena of Team Vel took a retrieval mission to the lava fields. Check on it. The place has blown, and I am stuck on the Broken Coast.”
“Remain on standby while I verify.”
Athena had nothing else to do but stand by.
* * * *
Tohba was smiling and conversing with the overseer, talking about his looking forward to having his family with him. Theena’s absence had been brushed aside. The overseer was curious but not intent.
A messenger came up to Tohba and handed him a slip. Tohba read the message and got to his feet. “Please, pardon me, Overseer. Our fourth has had a problem during the retrieval we mentioned. She requires our assistance.”
Hivr got to his feet reluctantly. “Please, pardon us, Overseer.”
Tber nodded. “We need to make sure she is okay, Overseer. She’s our meal ticket.”
Tohba elbowed him, and he looked to the overseer. “May we be excused?”
The overseer paused. “Where is she?”
“She was at the lava fields, but there was an eruption. She is now sheltering on the Broken Coast.”
The overseer got to his feet. “I will retrieve her, and then, we can all have a proper meal.”
Tohba paused.
“It is not like I am giving you a choice, Tohba. Do you have the location?”
Tohba winced. Theena was going to be furious and terrified. He handed over the message with the origin coordinates.
The overseer nodded. “I know the area. I will return in two hours.”
Tohba stared as he left the private dining area that overlooked the colony. “She is going to be pissed.”
“You heard him when he met with us. He wants to make us his primary foraging team. She was going to meet him eventually,” Hivr murmured.
Tohba watched the black wings fly off, and then, the overseer shot out with incredible speed. “She is still going to be pissed.”
* * * *
She waited, and her strength drained from her as the heat waved over her. The com clicked. “Rescue is on the way, Forager Theena. Expect it within the hour.”
She swallowed from her dry mouth and chuckled. “Yay.”
She slumped against the rider and weakly dug around in her supplies to get some water. A few sips and she was a little more alert, but she was fading fast—stupid blood poisoning.
She felt the cool breeze on her skin, and she smiled. Ah, to be at the beach was nice. Maybe if she could get to the water, she could wake up a little. She felt hot. Was it still hot?
The moment that she got to her feet, she was down again. Darkness soon followed.
Someone was picking her up. This was going to cost her. There was a tsking sound, and then a lot of pressure downward, cold air rushed across her face, and she opened her eyes. She was in the air. She was being carried like she had passed out in a bar, and the person carrying her had a dark brown chest with silver designs tattooed or embossed on it. The heavy beat of wings made her swallow, and she glanced up at him. She tensed. “Overseer.”
He looked down at her and smiled. “Forager Theena. Your team speaks well of you.”
“That is a good thing.”
“They were also willing to charge out here through that cloud to retrieve you. That shows that you can elicit loyalty. None of them is your lover, though.”
She tensed even more.
He laughed. “Don’t worry, little one. My type is very specific.”
She exhaled in relief. She wasn’t a match. All that worry for nothing.
He smiled. “Don’t look so relieved. It is a little bit hurtful.”
She blushed. “I apologize, Overseer. From what I have been told, interactions with the Hmrain are complicated.”
He whispered in her ear, “And who has been telling you our business?” He paused and cocked his head. “What species are you?”
She murmured, “One of the new ones.”
“Which one?”
“Humans of Earth?”
He chuckled. “You are not sure? Wait—”
He dropped altitude and landed, holding her in his arms. Standing in a meadow, he set her on her feet and leaned down to kiss her.
Her eyes went wide, and he held her head as his lips teased hers, and then, his tongue eased inside. She shivered, and her blood tried to rush to her extremities as her heart pounded. She tried to hold off on participating, but she was tired, he was warm, and the slow strokes of his tongue were hypnotic. He tasted really good, t
oo.
He slowly raised his head, and she swayed in his grip. “Well, that is a surprise.”
She blinked, and his eyes were made of slowly swirling stars.
He bent and picked her up carefully, launching with her head tucked against his shoulder, and his wings slowly took them the rest of the way to the colony base.
“Your team is gathered and waiting for you.”
“I am sorry that you had to leave the colony and come for me.”
He chuckled as he landed on one of the wide decks on the main building. “It was my choice. Team Vel has one of the highest useful foraging ratios, and I am interested in having them become my primary team.”
She wanted to step down, but he was still holding her.
Tohba looked at them, the way she was being held, and the fact that the overseer hadn’t just set her down. “Oh, shit.”
The other two just went to a minty green.
The overseer chuckled. “So, your whole team knows that you are a match for me. And no one reported it. Do you know what the punishment for that is?”
Athena looked up at him. “Nothing. There is no punishment as there was never any proof. Until a Hmrain meets an individual, there is no penalty as there is no proof that they are a possible companion.” She huffed. “Afterward... all hell would break loose.”
The overseer squeezed her. “Just so, and such, I will render to you all a finder’s fee.”
A wave of fatigue came over Athena, and she felt her head nodding. She blacked out again and heard rapid words before the roaring in her ears took over.
Chapter Three
She heard quiet voices and then felt the hypos striking her arm in a familiar pattern. “How much is this going to cost me?”
The room went silent.
“K’liir poisoning? You were so worried about being selected as a companion that you picked a fight with a K’liir?”
She heard the sound of Taya’s shriek followed by the grunt of the impact, and then the calls for medics. She opened her eyes, and the tablet playing the moment was being held in front of her. “I just needed to leave a broken world. I didn’t want to link myself to one person for a century if I survived that long.”
The overseer gave her a bland look through his stellar eyes. “You thought you were a match to the Hmrain?”
“I thought it was a possibility. I met most of the indexes.”
“And you risked your life for that possibility.”
She shrugged. “It was a calculated moment. It was what it was.”
“How did you know the K’liir would attack?”
Athena sighed. “Taya’s voice had a slight tremor in it when she laughed that the K’liir found offensive. There had been previous incidents, so I used this opportunity, told a joke, and Taya laughed. The rest is history.”
He tapped his screen with a finger. “And you changed your name when you arrived here?”
“No. There are only first names on Hyrnan, and my team couldn’t pronounce Athena without choking. So, Theena was an acceptable substitute.”
“Hmm. Annoyingly logical.” He frowned.
“You are... Etska?”
He smiled. “You are correct, Athena Fox.”
She licked her lips, which brought his attention to her. “I wasn’t going for K’liir poisoning. Not directly. I was going for a disfiguring mark that they couldn’t fix easily.”
He nodded. “And yet, knowing that you were probably a Hmrain match, you endangered yourself.”
“There are already three of us linked to Hmrain, and there aren’t that many of you. I didn’t want to hog anyone who could find a better match elsewhere.” She smiled hopefully.
He snorted. “There are so few that can match to Hmrain that even among your kind, it is exceptionally rare. The only reason that we have found what we have is that the ones who are most suited to being companions have a strong survival instinct. You are apparently proving that statistic wrong.”
She grimaced. “Fine. Be that way.”
He looked at her and laughed, flashing some very sharp teeth. “You appear to have gotten over your fear and panic.”
“I will just blame it on the supplements and boosters I just got injected with.”
“So, you have been paying to keep the infection at bay?”
She nodded as he loomed close, and he brushed his lips over her scars. Her heart sped up again, and she clenched her thighs together.
The monitors around the room began to go berserk as he leaned in and kissed her again. Her wrists were restrained as they always were for treatment. He held her head in his hand and kissed her very slowly, very carefully.
The sudden spike in her vitals caused the monitors to shriek.
When he lifted his head, he smiled slowly, and his eyes burned. “Just confirming my earlier assessment.”
Her body was humming as he gave his orders to the med team. When one of the doctors asked, “What about the scars?”
“If she wants them gone, remove them. Personally, they do not concern me.” He left without a backward glance.
She looked at the med team, and they started to order the necessary treatments to purge the poison from her system. Athena wondered when she was going to get something to eat. It had been a long day already, and it looked like it was getting longer.
Medic Timmons came over to her and frowned. “You are really a companion?”
Athena looked at the other human and shrugged. “I have companion potential. I didn’t hear him say anything about me actually being his companion.”
“True. But, in that case, why is he ordering us to remove the toxin then?” Timmons raised his eyebrows.
Athena looked at her calmly. “Hedging his bets? I don’t know. Did he explain anything here in the medical facility while I was out? No? Then you know more than I do.”
Timmons looked away, and the other medics brought the prepared trays forward, sedating her in preparation for the purge. This was not going to be pleasant.
Athena woke up in one of the private cubicles. She didn’t feel hot, cold, and shaky, so that was different. She wasn’t hooked up to anything, but she also was butt naked except for the sheet that covered her. She checked under the sheet, and there were no weird tattoos or anything, so she wasn’t marked. Her skin was still hers.
She looked for her coveralls, but they were gone. So were her com unit and her chronometer, which she still thought of as a watch.
Athena wrapped the sheet around her toga style, and she examined the cubicle. Nothing. She tried to leave, and the door was locked. No scan or pressure point would open it.
“Well, dang it.” She grimaced and hopped back onto the bed, cleaning invisible specks of dirt from under her fingernails. There was no monitor, no com unit, nothing to get in touch with the outside world. Athena was hungry.
In what she guessed was thirty minutes, the door swung open. She blinked. “Administrator Kel. Good afternoon?”
He smiled. “Good guess. Wrong but good.”
She grimaced. “I don’t think you are here to have a splinter removed from your finger.”
“No, I am here to work on a pain in my ass. Come on, Forager Theena.”
She smiled and hopped down off the bed again, following him out of the cubicle and into the med centre recovery room. From there, they passed different medical staff who nodded respectfully to Kel and bowed to her.
“Aw, balls.”
He chuckled. “You are catching on, I see. Overseer Etska has filed a formal claim over you as his companion. As you are nearly out of bond, he has completed that payment, paid for your medical treatment, and you have the remainder to do with as you will.”
She frowned. “A nice house and piece of land for Tohba so he can bring his wife and child. And... bring his wife and child. Two houses on the same plot of property for Tber and Hivr. They can finally draw the ladies.”
“So, you have given this some tho
ught.”
“Well, this is what I was doing for my team after I had paid off my bond. Since my liberty is no longer accessible, I will have to focus on what I can do for my team.” She shrugged.
“The remaining funds will also be enough for you to buy a small mining asteroid or a reasonably sized moon.”
She snorted. “I don’t need that. I have one lifetime, and it will be as long as it is. If Etska has filed a claim, then he will be responsible for my upkeep.”
“He has also paid the colony a hefty sum for keeping you safe.”
Athena snorted. “Of course, he did. So, that is why you are running escort?”
“It would be worth my life to let anything happen to you.”
“Ah.”
They exited the med centre, and she paused at the edge of the sidewalk.
“What is the problem, Forager Theena? It is a little late to be playing shy. The Hmrain want what they want.”
She twisted her lips. “I know that. I was briefed on that. I also know that there are rocks in the rough road, and I don’t have any shoes. Do you want my feet carved up before I even end up with the overseer?”
His blue skin darkened. “Ah. Right. Apologies.” He walked up to her and was going to touch her when he paused. “I am not sure that I am allowed to do this.”
She snorted. “Turn around, and I will jump on your back.”
Administrator Kel was relieved. “Yes, of course.”
He walked up to her, turned, and she hiked up the sheet and jumped onto his back. It would have been easier if he had crouched, but his dignity was taking enough of a hit.
Her unorthodox means of transport brought her to the bunkhouse. She thanked him and went inside. Her team was sleeping, but they bolted to their feet when she shuffled inside.
She was hugged carefully, and they helped her to the shower, getting her a change of clothing and some fresh boots from their equipment dispenser.
She went through the sonic shower and put on her underwear and then yanked her coveralls on. It felt nice to be covered. She pulled on her socks and boots and went to brief and be briefed by her team.
