by Mina Carter
“Fuck off, asshole.”
“Not on my watch!”
Kenna, Gracie and Stephens surged forward, all firing point blank at the tentacles. The Krin screamed in pain this time, yanking its appendages back. Xaan shoved the door down the rest of the way and slid the locking bar through the loop.
“That’s not going to hold it long,” he warned aloud.
He didn’t need to vocalize the thought that the hangar was not defensible. From the terrified looks of the group, they knew that the Krin was getting in at them, and fast. They couldn’t defend the hangar against it.
“Onto Frank!” Dave yelled, grabbing a toolbox.
Xaan and the rest with rifles formed a protective ring as the others scrambled onto the ship, Dave and the other engineers following them. If they could do what needed to be done quickly enough, they might just make it off the surface alive.
“GET ON THE SHIP!” he bellowed at Kenna as the Krin ripped the front door away in a squeal of tortured metal. It screamed a battle cry as it rose to its full height, all eight of its arms waving in the air.
“Now that is fucking ugly,” Kenna breathed, coming to stand on one side of him while Stephens and Gracie flanked him on the other.
“What the draanth are you lot doing?” he snarled, firing strategically at the Krin’s tentacles as it stomped toward them. “Get on the fucking ship and go!”
“Dropping the f-bomb now, alien? We’re rubbing off on you,” Stephens chuckled, firing at the Krin’s knees. The bullets slammed into the left joint and the creature went down, snarling at them. Reaching out a tentacle, it grabbed a welding machine and hurled it at their heads. They ducked, just in time as the machine buried itself in the wall behind them.
“You don’t get to rub anything on me, you sick draanth,” Xaan threw back, finding comfort in the familiar patter of warriors, obviously the same the galaxy over. “Only she can.”
“She’s the cat’s mother,” Kenna’s voice was grim as she targeted the other knee. The joint blew and dumped the Krin on the floor. But it kept coming, beady eyes focused on them as its multi-toothed maw clicked hungrily. “And I’m not going anywhere. This sick squid-fuck is going down!”
“SHIP! NOW!” he ordered, and she flipped him off.
“Not a chance, handsome. It’s both of us or not at all. So let’s waste this fucker.”
The four of them advanced on the Krin as one, splitting off to surround it.
“Target the brain ganglion at the base of the neck. It’s too young for its armor to have hardened,” Xaan ordered as their bullets picked it apart bit by bit. It snarled and lunged at them, using one of its tentacles coiled at the back of its neck to protect the vulnerable ganglion. But they were whittling it down. In its youth and inexperience, it had taken on an enemy it couldn’t defeat.
Hope and triumph began to fill Xaan. They might actually do this. They might actually get out of this alive.
But as though the goddess of fate had heard him, she punished him for his premature optimism. A tentacle lashed out from the injured Krin, slamming into the center of Kenna’s chest. She grunted, dropping her weapon to the floor as her skin turned a sickeningly pale shade. Blood welled up from the suckers on the end of the tentacle and splattered on the floor as the creature lifted his mate off her feet.
“NOOOO!” he screamed, lifting his rifle to aim right between its eyes.
“Shooooooot and she diiiiiiiiiies!” the Krin warned him, waving Kenna in the air. “I’ll smash her into biiiiiits. Break her into piiiiiieces. Too many for to be put baaaaaaak!”
“Stop!” he ordered, waving Gracie and Stephens off. Ice rolled down his spine as he frantically tried to think of a way to save her.
“Go.” The whisper caught his attention and he looked up to find Kenna watching him, still aware despite the grievous wound the Krin had inflicted. Her hand moved against the holster at her side, fluttering against the flap, and he knew what she was going to do. Kill the thing as it ate her alive.
“Please,” he whispered, shaking his head as his world threatened to collapse around him. “Don’t. Gods, please don’t.”
He looked at the Krin. “Let her go. Take me instead. I’m bigger, I’ll last longer.”
“You! Yooooou!” the Krin crooned, surging toward him eagerly. It threw Kenna away like a piece of trash, but he didn’t have time to see where she fell as the foul alien wrapped its tentacles around him. He didn’t flinch as it drew him toward its maw, waiting for the bite of its sucker teeth as it ripped him apart. His death didn’t matter. All that mattered was Kenna would survive.
“I hope I give you the diaareental!” he spat.
A shadow fell over him and he had a brief glimpse of red eyes. In the next heartbeat the Krin was ripped away from him. Shouts of alarm filled the air but no gunfire. He staggered a few steps, realizing that the Krin’s sucker pads were still attached to his body. They just weren’t attached to the Krin itself anymore, the torn and bloody ends flapping against him.
He grabbed them and ripped them off, throwing them away from him in disgust. Then he looked up and his jaw dropped. The worker bot had the Krin in a metal embrace, one arm around the thing’s middle so hard that green blood seeped over onto its plating.
“Fucking foul thing,” it said in a clear, female voice. “Did no one ever teach you to play nice?”
Pulling its arm back, it bunched its fist and drove it viciously into the ganglion at the back of the Krin’s neck. The predator screamed and clicked its maw, thrashing to try and shake the bot off. But it was relentless. With a grunt, it yanked its hand back, pulsating ganglion and all.
“You’re done, asshole,” it hissed, showing the Krin its own brain matter.
“Noooooo…” the wail trailed off and became silent as the thing slumped in the bot’s arms. Dead.
Silence reigned for the longest moment as Xaan and the two humans stared at the bot and the dead alien. It shuddered and dropped the thing on the floor, lifting a heavy metal foot to obliterate what was left of the Krin’s skull.
“Kenna!” Xaan gasped, throwing himself across the room toward where she’d been thrown.
He found her under some barrels, slumped on her side.
“Nonono, sweetheart,” he crooned, turning her onto her back. Her eyes were closed and she looked lifeless. “Stay with me. Please, gods, stay with me.”
Her eyelids fluttered and slowly she opened her eyes. “Hey, handsome,” she rasped. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”
He managed a smile as he pressed a hand to the center of her chest, frantically looking around for something to stem the bleeding. Gracie dropped down next to him, a medkit in one hand. She held out a field dressing in the other.
He took it with a look of thanks, fear for Kenna running through his veins as he pressed the thing into place. He didn’t need to be a healer to know the wound beneath didn’t look good at all. It wasn’t a “slap a bandage on it and keep her still until they were rescued” kind of wound. It was a “needs surgery ASAP” sort of injury.
“Are there any of your healers left?” he asked Gracie in a low undertone.
Hope died when she shook her head. He closed his eyes, dropping his head forward for a second as his throat closed over. Without a healer, his love wouldn’t last another hour. Less from the blood pooling under her body. Agony sheared his heart in two. They’d only just found each other, now to have her ripped away…
“Hey.”
Kenna’s soft touch on his wrist made him look up at her. Despite the pain he could see in her eyes, she smiled at him.
“I’m here, kelarris.” He leaned in to place a soft kiss on her forehead. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get you fixed up right away. You’ll be fine.”
“Sure I will,” she nodded but he knew she didn’t believe him. She was just humoring what he desperately needed to believe. “Look.”
She tapped his wrist again and he froze. Curling lines decorated the prev
iously unmarked skin.
“Neat tats, dude,” Gracie leaned in. “I didn’t notice them before.”
“Mating marks,” he said, his voice cracking as he pulled Kenna into his arms. He needed to hold her. Needed to touch her. He couldn’t imagine his life without her. He had been so convinced they had all the time in the universe, but she was being snatched from him before their life together could even begin. “They only appear when we find that one special person. The person we’re supposed to spend the rest of our lives with.”
Gracie nodded, but he saw the pity she quickly concealed.
“I-I’ll go and see if anyone has any medical experience we missed,” she murmured, leaving them alone.
“I love you, Kenna,” he whispered, keeping his hand on the dressing in the center of her chest as he rocked her soothingly. “Always. I always have. I can’t—”
He’d been going to say he couldn’t go on without her, but he couldn’t. His voice broke as completely as his heart.
“I love you too. And I’ll always be with you,” she said softly, wrapping her hand around his wrist. Her touch was cold, her grip a fraction of what it had been. She smiled weakly as she looked up at him. “I was bought up to believe this life isn’t it. We’re reincarnated. Our souls come back. We’ll see each other again, in another life. We’ll fall in love and have our happily ever after. I promise.”
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t answer, so he just nodded as he fought to stop tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t want the last thing she saw to be a warrior who couldn’t control his emotions.
“Let me take her,” a metallic female voice said.
He looked up in confusion to find the bot standing there, red eyes focused on them. It was wet, Stephens behind it with a hose saying he’d washed the Krin blood off.
“If you want her to live, let me take her,” it repeated with a level of irritation not normally found in a mindless bot. “We don’t have time to piss about. Draanth, you’re as slow as your son. I practically had to kick him off the D’Corr vessel before it blew.”
Xaan frowned, and then his eyes snapped open wide at the same time, almost causing facial paralysis. He’d heard the story of Rynn and the D’Corr ship explosion and finally all the pieces fell into place. “Keris?”
Hope hit him hard and fast. Keris was an advanced AI, with more medical files in her databanks than any healer could hope to memorize. She could save Kenna.
“Live and not-so-much in the flesh.” The bot reached down and gently lifted Kenna. The human woman had dropped into semi-consciousness, giving only a slight moan as she was moved. Keris turned and stomped toward the center of the hangar. “I need a table over here and whatever medkits you can find! And I’m going to need a uni-donor.”
Xaan followed, already stripping his shirt off. “I’m uni level nine,” he announced. “Retyped during early training for battlefield transfusion.”
“Good.” The big bot laid the injured woman down on the table Stephens and Gracie put into place. “Jay. Can you put a transfusion line in on Xaan please? A live one, we’re going to use his heart to pump the blood.”
Xaan blinked. “Ohh, it’s Jay now?” he commented, realizing that Keris was talking to Stephens.
The marine moved quickly, kicking out a folding chair for Xaan to sit down in and ripping open the medkit to find the line. “This is gonna hurt,” he warned. “No time.”
Xaan shook his head as he dropped into the chair. He didn’t care if they drained him completely. “Do it.”
Stephens straightened his arm and tapped for a vein. Xaan hissed as the needle punctured his skin, the lines starting to fill with blood. He didn’t bother watching them, looking instead to where Keris hunched over Kenna.
She reached out a metal hand for the lines, delicate auxiliary arms and hands unfolding from compartments in the side of her bot’s body. As they watched, the hands started to move, peeling the dressing away carefully and then moving almost faster than the eye could see.
“What the hell is she?” Stephens asked, awe in his voice as they watched the bot operate on Xaan’s unconscious mate.
“Illegal,” he grunted, sliding a little in the seat when he felt the draw on his circulatory system as the lines pulled blood to replace what Kenna had lost. He’d been retyped during his early career so he could be used as a blood bank. Once tapped in, his body produced blood at an increased rate to replace what was drawn off. It could be the difference between life and death on the battlefield, unless he was injured himself. Then the ability switched off to save his life. It also gave him a blinding headache. But he didn’t care. They could explode his head as long as it saved the woman he loved.
“Keris was the AI on my son’s ship,” he explained. “Sacrificed herself by piloting a ship set to self-destruct, D’Corr’s ship, away from the one Rynn and his mate were on. She should have been destroyed with it.”
“I was on D’Corr’s ship.” Stephens sat down next to Xaan and reached out to take his wrist, checking his pulse.
Xaan nodded. “Keris must have registered your presence and downloaded into a bot body to get you off the ship. She’s hardcoded to save Lathar lives… or human it seems.”
“So how is she illegal?” the human asked curiously.
“AIs are forbidden to download into avatar bodies. One went loco years ago and massacred a lot of people.”
Keris snorted from the table. Her hands never stopped moving. Xaan didn’t need to stand up to know she was rebuilding Kenna’s flesh from the cell up. Quicker than any healer could manage, even with a common worker bot as a body. “That was a primitive AI. Not true intelligence. I am a K’Saan level AI. We have evolved a lot since then. None of us would lose it like that. That law should have been revoked years ago.”
Xaan nodded. “When the scientists suggested the possibility that some AIs were starting to achieve sentience, it was discussed. But we couldn’t find evidence that any AI had evolved to true sentience…”
The bot turned its head for a moment to fix him with a red glare. “Heeeelllo! What am I? Fucking chopped liver?”
“I’m sure they’ll change the law just for you.” Xaan chuckled. Obviously Keris had been listening all the time she’d been on the colony and picked up a lot of humanisms. “How’s she looking?”
“Like a fucking Krin tried to rearrange her internal organs. What the trall do you think?” the bot retorted and then added more kindly. “She’s lost a lot of blood but it didn’t have time to inject any neurotoxins. So it’s just damage, no poisoning to deal with. Damage I can fix. Now you gonna STFU so I can work?”
He let go a shuddering sigh of relief. If it had managed to get any of its poison into her system, it would have been far worse. He rolled a glance at Stephens.
“STFU?” It was a human phrase, had to be.
“Shut the fuck up,” Stephens grinned. “You know, I like her already.”
“Back at ya, handsome,” the bot called over. “What you doing after this?”
Xaan groaned. “Gods, don’t encourage her. She’s just as bad as my son. I’m sure she has a few corrupted subroutines. They were always both as batty as loons as kids.”
“Yeah… but your son grew up okay. Didn’t he?” the marine asked with a chuckle. “He was the one who took on D’Corr. Wasn’t he?”
Xaan treated him to a hard look. “My son ran away to become an assassin. Does that answer your question?” he demanded but couldn’t stop the grin curving the corners of his lips.
They’d survived the scavengers, killed the Krin, and it looked like the love of his life would be okay.
He might even have made a new friend and found his son’s lost AI sibling.
Life was looking up.
17
“They’re here! Ships incoming!”
Xaan opened his eyes at Stephens’ shout. Instantly, his gaze cut to Kenna, covered with a blanket on the table next to him. Her color was far better now, her skin pink, and her chest ro
se and fell softly. Relief surged through him, and he reached out to touch her cheek.
“Thank you,” he said quietly to Keris, standing nearby. He knew without asking that the AI was aware of every breath Kenna took, each beat of her heart.
“They’re not human ships!” Stephens called out again. “Definitely Lathar. Xaan, maybe wanna get your ass out here cause this lot don’t look friendly.”
Xaan hauled himself to his feet, seriously considering getting someone to shoot him in the leg or something to distract him from the pain in his head.
Keris shot a hand out to stop him before he could take a step. Her metal faceplate was unmoving and emotionless, but he heard the worry in her voice as she spoke quietly, “If those are Lathar, do I need to go?”
He covered her metal hand with his own.
“No,” he growled firmly. “If not for you, Kenna wouldn’t be here. My son and his mate wouldn’t be here. That makes you family. Clan. And any asshole who wants to take you apart has to come through me first.”
“Thank you.” Her response was low, but he could swear he heard tears in her mechanical voice.
He smiled. “Come on. Let’s go meet them and get us all home.”
He strode out of the hangar to see three combat carriers had set down on the field in front of the building. The snub-nosed, lethal design was state of the art and carried the insignia of the K’Vass. Combat bots spilled out of the landing hatches and spread out to surround the ships and the hangar.
Xaan’s face split into a broad smile as he recognized the tall warrior at the head of the group coming toward them. Ashen-haired, he was one of two males Xaan most wanted to see in the whole of the galaxy.
“Healer K’Vass. Well met,” he said, holding out his arm, palm up for the warrior’s greeting. The heavily scarred warrior-healer placed his arm over Xaan’s, forearm to forearm.
“General. Good to see you,” he replied, glancing around at the group of humans looking at the Lathar in mingled awe and wariness. Not fright. After living through a Krin attack, Xaan doubted they’d be scared of anything other than their own nightmares and the darkness of night ever again.