Chen

by JC Hay

  The thought hooked in her gut and twisted, and she forced it away before it took root. Want was one thing but giving in to it was entirely different and not what she needed right now. No matter what her body might think.

  Chen rubbed at her eyes before starting back toward the door. She’d spent too long hiding back here to be reasonable, but at least she could claim to be straightening up the nonexistent clutter. It wasn’t like he’d see the inside of her bedroom to know any different.

  Or if he did, he’d damn well better not be noticing the lack of bric-a-brac.

  “The chiller’s pretty well stocked. Pantry seemed to be okay, though I didn’t check how old some of it was.” Priddy spoke as soon as she opened the door. “Do I need to ask about the water supply?”

  “I’m on well water,” Chen replied. “If it runs out, then the aquifer’s gone dry, and that’s a much bigger problem.” She knew he was right, and mostly knew what food was in the cabin, but she’d been planning on a week’s worth of meals for her and Nujalik. Adding a person cut her supply down dramatically. If they took too long to reopen the pass, she’d be following him down the mountain to restock. She walked to the window to check the position of the distant, red sun and tried to calculate how much light they had left.

  “I’m sorry,” he said from the vicinity of the stove. “I know you’re frustrated with the situation. I can almost hear you cursing me in your head.”

  “You should get your telepathy checked, Doc. I wasn’t cursing you.” Much.

  “Then what were you thinking?” His smile oozed with the sort of unconscious charm that probably drew partners to him like honey. Another good reason to give him a wide berth. She refused to poach from someone else, and there was no way he wasn’t involved with someone already.

  “That I’m going to need to go out and collect firewood before it gets dark.”

  His self-assurance melted into quiet confusion. Somehow it was cuter. “Like, go outside?”

  Chen snorted. “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t think to have it delivered, what with an entire forest literally right there.”

  Priddy moved to look out the window, and the way he studied the woods set off a warning bell in the back of her head. Even from across the room, she couldn’t miss the tension that set in his tightly held jaw and pursed lips. “What if there’s another quake?”

  Good question. She wouldn’t disrespect his concern by lying to him. “If there’s another, it won’t be any safer or more dangerous out there than being in the cabin. Any aftershocks would theoretically be smaller than the initial tremor. We can bring whistles just in case we get separated, but we’ll be fine.”

  “We?” He glanced at the door, then at Nujalik who had sprawled out on the couch. “Which of us do you mean?”

  “The one with opposable thumbs. Call me silly, but I find they come in handy when carrying things.” Nujalik shot her a dirty look, and she laughed. “Also, she knows I don’t have a sled harness for her, so I can’t force her to help. Thirdly, isn’t the whole reason behind this predicament the fact that you’re worried she has a lingering injury? And now you want to make her haul wood like a pack animal?”

  He pouted then looked over at the blur on the couch. “I know, but we’ve got bigger things to talk about, but I promise, you’re on the list.”

  Chen tried not to glare. It was possible he was just projecting and not actually feeling the annoyed caution seeping into the wolfbond. And even if he was, it didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was really sensitive to animals. He was a vet after all. She set her jaw. “What, exactly, are you talking about?”

  He crossed back to the couch, folding down into the seat like some kind of shorebird. He pulled off his glasses, which somehow made him look younger and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, the part your wolf’s upset about is this. Her left hip is starting to fail, and she favors it. It’s not a lot. Not yet. But what I’m seeing could only get worse.”

  The statement stabbed into Chen like an icicle falling into deep snow. On reflex, she crossed the room and ran her fingers through Nujalik’s coat. The wolf made happy, grumbly noises and rolled over to expose her belly for rubbing. Chen wanted to deny Priddy’s words. She hadn’t felt anything wrong, hadn’t noticed any changes. At least not before the incident during training. Her wolf wouldn’t lie to her, not with the bond they shared.

  But if it was fading, or damaged?

  Chen closed her eyes and reached out to see if she could sense any of her wolf’s pain through the bond. “How long?”

  “It’s hard to say. With exercise and careful use of the leg? We could stave it off for several years. On the other hand, if it’s an aggressive progression, or she re-injures it? She’ll need surgery to stabilize the hip.”

  “She can’t go under anesthesia again. It’s not good for her.” Or for me. The idea of losing the wolfbond sent her heart racing and made the sweat pool between her shoulders, cold despite the warmth of the room. Their CO had been broken by losing his wolf, but that had been sudden. A slow descent into that empty hollowness? Terrified her. “What’s the other thing?”

  Priddy looked stricken, glanced at the door and then the window before turning his attention back to her. “I think someone is going to try to steal Nujalik while you’re out here.”

  JAVAD SLUMPED, HIS throat too thick to allow better words to pass. The fist crushing his stomach had stolen all his air, even if he could speak. Or look Chen in the face.

  “What?” Her voice was quiet. Hard. “Say it again, because it sounded like you just said someone was planning to steal Nujalik.”

  He hadn’t felt this low since he’d ratted out his sister’s addiction to their parents and then had to face her after they’d dragged her back home. At least then he’d had his family around him to soften the blow. Here he had no protection. “That’s because it’s what I said.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I just do. Please. You have to trus—”

  “Don’t you dare.” Her words were colder than the wind outside the cabin, and it was all he could do not to shiver. “I don’t have to do anything. You, on the other hand, need to start talking.”

  He knew she was right, but the shame of it didn’t make it any easier for him to dredge up. “I only ever wanted to be a veterinarian. It didn’t have to be working with umbra wolves, it could have been goanna all the time, and I’d have still been happy. Dogs and cats were rich people’s pets. My parents run a restaurant. There was no way I’d be able to get into a school where I’d get the credentials I’d need.”

  Dogs and cats had to be brought from Earth as genetic stock during the exodus. Generations later, it was still prohibitively expensive to own one, and certain breeds were status symbols among the very rich. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, still able to remember the conversation that had taken place.

  “After class one day, some men approached me. I knew one of them. Liam Ratliff was a regular in my parents’ restaurant and a bigwig in the university system. He and I talked all the time. He was always interested in my pre-vet work. I thought he, they, were interested in helping me.” He got up, walked to the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of water. He checked it in the light before taking a sip. “Water’s clean by the way. Liam offered me my dreams on a plate. A chance to attend the veterinary academy on Farhope, get credentialed with canine and feline certifications. I’d make enough money to help support my parents, so they wouldn’t have to work so hard.”

  She nodded, and he couldn’t decide if she was too disgusted or too angry to say more.

  “I knew at the time it was too good to be true, but...”

  “But,” Chen finished, “you did it anyway. Who wouldn’t jump at a dream offered?”

  “Someone as smart as I was supposed to be? Someone with their eyes on the present instead of filled with clouds?” He shook his head, self-disgust warring with guilt. “At the academy, things just came a little too easy. It was easy to convince myself I was exc
elling on my own merits, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “When did they contact you the first time?” He must have looked incredulous, because Chen gave him an apologetic smile. “Whoever it was clearly had a use for you. It never starts with the big request. They needed to know you could be trusted once you were in position.”

  It almost sounded like she understood. Like she believed him. “The first message came about two days after I joined the ship, from Liam’s omni. He asked if I was getting settled in, asked which ship I’d been assigned to. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but what if that’s how they knew where to put another mole?”

  “There’s another mole? We need to be telling the commander.” She jumped up and checked her omni. “Damn, they’re on the far side of the moon. It’ll be ninety minutes before I can get through, even with my booster. Are you certain?”

  “Not one hundred percent, no. But it feels like there’s someone else, checking if I was lying.” Saying the words out loud disgusted him, but it was what he’d become. A plant for someone else. A threat. “Other requests were weird. How many suture kits in the second theater? How many screws are in a ventilation faceplate? It didn’t seem to make sense, but they all came with the words ‘Time to deliver’.”

  “They wanted to see if you’d feed false information.”

  Javad nodded. The water hadn’t calmed his stomach any, and he swallowed against the acrid taste of bile. “This last set of messages was worse.” He pulled out his omni and showed her the messages and the photos of his parents and sister. “They threatened my family if I couldn’t get them what they wanted.”

  “An umbra wolf.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, and I didn’t tell them you and Nujalik were headed planetside. They got that through some other source. I wouldn’t have sold you out like that. Either of you.”

  “Did you tell Penzak about the messages? Or May?”

  “I couldn’t!” he snapped. “They clearly had other tracks to inside information beyond just me. And if I was compromised, anyone else could be too.” He walked back to the couch with his glass, but the water from the tap wouldn’t cool the fire in his throat.

  “The pack is family. We don’t turn on each other.”

  “I get it, but I’m talking about my flesh-and-blood family, not my teammates. If you had a choice between your wolf and one of your friends? Could keep yours safe at the expense of another?”

  She shook her head. “You should have told us. We could have done something. We stand by each other.”

  “I’m telling you now.” The hurt in her voice made him not want to look at her, but he forced himself to meet her gaze. “And I’m not part of your pack.”

  A faint squeeze of warmth pressed in on his heart before it faded. When she spoke, it was quiet. “My wolf trusts you. That’s good enough for me.”

  “I don’t deserve it.” He glanced away, only to find the blurry smear of Nujalik watching him with her night-sky eyes.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  Javad swallowed, his throat scratchy in ways the water wouldn’t fix. “I still need to warn my family, but there’s no signal up here.”

  “Emergency wavelengths only, I’m afraid.” Chen stood and started to shrug into her coat. “But once you get through the pass, you can call them. In the meantime, the avalanche works in our favor as well. No one is getting up here while the pass is closed. So, whoever is coming after Nujalik isn’t going to know you warned me until its open. That means your family’s safe too.”

  It made a certain amount of sense when she put it like that, but he’d still feel better if he could give them time to prepare. If he could be with them. He didn’t know how he’d protect them yet, but he’d find a way. “Where are you going?”

  Chen walked into the bathroom then came back out with a pair of bulky sweaters, which she tossed at him. “We,” she emphasized, “still need to get firewood. And we should do it before it gets any darker, or colder.”

  It didn’t sound like forgiveness, which he didn’t deserve anyway. But he thought it might have sounded like understanding, which was better than he expected. Now all he had to do was get back down the mountain and off-planet before she called in any rangers to back her up. Fewer people around meant fewer people to stop him when he ran.

  Seven

  Bringing Javad into the woods was a mistake, Chen thought. She should have been able to guess from the state of the clothes he’d brought along, but she needed the extra set of hands to get the wood back to the cabin. Or so she’d believed—it might have been faster to do it alone. Certainly it would have been quieter.

  Behind her, Javad grunted and cursed in time with the heavy footfall that meant he’d tripped. Again. She shouldn’t take such amusement in his clear misery, but... She stopped and turned around. Nujalik was already padding across the short distance to check on him. “You okay back there?”

  “I didn’t expect there to be so many roots. Or rocks. Or tufts of whatever this is.” He swept his hand at a moss-choked tussock, against which he’d apparently stubbed his foot. “The treadmill keeps the ground level.”

  He looked ridiculous. She’d given him two sweaters to pull on, in an effort to keep him warm, but the arms were two short, and he practically swam in the torso. And his soft-soled trainers were completely unacceptable for the terrain. She reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. “I’m just going to pretend like I know what you’re talking about there.”

  “On the ship. You can set your own virtual environment on the treadmill when you’re running. I always pick ‘forest path,’ but the ground’s a damn sight more level than this. How do you do it?”

  That explained things slightly. The closest he’d been to spending time in the forest was a digital recreation. The revelation did not bode well for the next day or two.

  “Years of practice,” she said at last, though he wasn’t likely to realize the understatement. Her grandfather had had her walking the perimeter of the property from almost as soon as she could walk, and he’d never bothered to help her up from a fall. Toughening, he’d called it. When the land accepted you, you could move through it. To him it had been simple. She hated that she had to struggle against the incursion of his black-and-white thinking sometimes.

  With Javad, especially. Her grandfather would have had no problem with the decision. Javad had betrayed the pack; intent didn’t matter. Let the woods, and who- or whatever was coming have him. Chen had spent a lifetime unlearning things like that.

  “Khonsu doesn’t have forests, not really,” Javad said. “There are some parks, especially in the old city and U-town. But most of the nature areas are designed to preserve its unterraformed appearance.”

  Chen nodded. After the terraforming of Farhope had begun, a lot of the other worlds in the TriSystems pushed for keeping the natural environment, at least in places. She’d been to Khonsu once; The only two things she could remember were rocks and brimstone-stinking air. “Every environment has a rhythm to it. Did you ever go out into Khonsu’s deserts?”

  Javad scoffed. “No chance. Like I said, my parents ran a restaurant. Vacation time didn’t exist. We had an aborted camping trip to one of the preservation sites that ended when someone let the oven go cold, and my family had to rush back. After that, if we couldn’t walk there, we didn’t go. The only trees I knew had vast lawns around them. My only other exposure to cabins in the woods was through holovid, and those stories usually had an axe murderer in them.”

  She smiled. “There’s no guarantee this one doesn’t.”

  He laughed too, fortunately, and bent down to ruffle the fur on Nujalik’s head. It disturbed Chen the way he could unerringly pick out her wolf even when camouflaged, but the man spent a lot of time around umbra wolves. He’d probably trained himself to pick out the shimmer. It still felt suspiciously like her wolf and the doctor bonding, and that was going to be bad for everyone.

  “Well, according to the vids, as long as we d
on’t drink or have sex, we’re safe.”

  That conjured a string of thoughts that she had no business entertaining. He was sexy in his own, academian style, and he clearly took care of himself. But he was also a problem that needed solving, and intentional or not, sorry or not, he’d created a situation for her and Nujalik that she wasn’t certain how to deal with. The silence dragged on longer than she intended, and Javad looked like he wanted to swallow his own tongue from fear. “Can’t help you there. I brought good whiskey with me, and I’ll be having a glass when we get back.”

  He laughed quietly, though it rang with discomfort. Chen turned and started walking, rather than probing deeper.

  He followed along in silence for a few steps, then asked, “How are you planning to down a tree?”

  “I’m not. Tree clearing is by license only in these woods. It’s part of a preserve. Besides, the last thing you want to do is burn a fresh, live tree—the sap and green will smoke and pop, and that’s worse than useless. No, I’m looking for downed and dead, which anyone can grab. Something we can get back to the cabin and off the ground to finish drying.” She dug into the thigh pocket on her trousers and pulled out the hatchet she’d brought. “And I’ve got this to clean it up if we need it.”

  She’d spotted a likely candidate on the walk in from the clearing where the shuttle had dropped her. Big enough to be a decent supply of wood, small enough that she and Javad could carry it if they had to. If they could avoid any more incidents, they should be there in a few minutes.

  To her shock, he didn’t fall during the final leg of the trip. She stepped off the animal track to survey the short tree. It looked like it had fallen earlier in the year, but not so long for rot to set in. She’d have some work cutting it into usable pieces, but it should transport back to the cabin easily enough.

  Nujalik had moved to check on Javad, and she made her goofy, yowling noises as he scritched along her ribs and back.