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.
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