Alien Slave (29 page)

“
Thanks to Gelan’s love for
hunting, I’ve got plenty of experience seeing obstacles. I’m better
prepared than you to deal with the terrain. So get behind me before
I turn that cute butt of yours red enough for the Tragooms to see
for miles.”

Dani blew a raspberry at him but fell
behind. At least she had a nice view of his rear.

It was warm enough that the continuing
rain wasn’t too miserable. Slopping along in the muck left a lot to
be desired however. There was less vegetation for their feet to
grab onto, leaving the ground slimy and slippery. Dani fell on her
ass once when her feet went out from under her. She cursed
colorfully as Krijero helped her up.

“
I can’t believe I used to
pay top dollar for illegal mud baths,” she fumed.

“
The rain will wash it
away,” the Imdiko told her gently.

Since he was trying to make her feel
better, Dani held her sarcastic tongue from thanking him for his
brilliant input.

Minutes later, Krijero suffered his own
fall. Rain couldn’t fix the damage it did to him.

He came to an abrupt stop so suddenly
that Dani nearly ran into him. They stood at the top of a slope
that angled down steeply towards a small stand of woods. Dani was
cheered by the trees. At least they wouldn’t be rained on so much
down there.

Backing up a couple of steps after
nearly colliding with the Imdiko, she asked, “What’s
up?”

He frowned at the muddy slope. “We’ll
need to be careful going down. It looks—”

The ground beneath his booted feet gave
out. An instant later, Krijero was somersaulting down the incline,
falling hard all the way to the bottom.

“
Krijero!”

As his body bounced one last time, the
Kalquorian loosed a pain-filled howl. When his fall finally halted,
he flopped about like a landed fish, holding his right
ankle.

Dani went after him, wanting to hurry
but forcing herself to descend carefully. By the time she had
gotten halfway down, Krijero had forced himself to sit up. He
watched her come, his face drawn with pain and concern.

“
Slowly, Dani. Don’t get
hurt!”

“
How bad are you?” she
called, navigating around an exposed tangle of roots that wanted to
trip her up.

Krijero shifted, wiggled his foot a
little, and hissed in agony. A stream of Kalquorian left his lips
in staccato bursts. Dani had a feeling he wasn’t reciting
poetry.

When he’d recovered enough to remember
to speak in English, he reported, “Not too good. I don’t know if my
leg will hold me. Typical clumsy me.”

Dani reached the bottom and ran to him.
Poor Krijero looked bedraggled and miserable. “Let’s get you under
some shelter. I’ll help,” she said.

He huffed with disgust at himself. “All
right.”

Keeping his injured foot off the
ground, Krijero levered himself up with Dani’s help. As she
supported the heavy man’s effort to limp to the stand of trees, she
remembered calling him a moose.

Moose, hell. This guy weighs a
ton.

She could only feel sorry for him as
every step he took on the injured leg made his face scrunch in
pain. He made no complaints, however, and they finally gained the
edge of the woods. A few more steps and they entered beneath the
cover of the trees. Raindrops fell lazily down, rather than pelting
them.

Dani helped him sit down, his back
using a large trunk for support. “Let’s pull your boot off and see
what the damage is,” she suggested.

“
All right.”

She ended up doing most of the tugging
while Krijero did all of the groaning from pain. Dani tried to be
careful, but it was impossible to take the knee high boot off
without hurting the damaged limb. She peered at the Imdiko’s
ankle.

“
It’s swelling up like a
balloon. No way you should be walking on this. I wish we had
something to wrap it.”

“
Use this.” Krijero tugged
at one of his long sleeves, and it separated from his formsuit with
a purring sound.

Dani wound the black stretchy fabric
tightly around his foot and ankle, tying it off at the end. “I hate
to do this to you, but we should get your boot back on.”

“
I’ll do it in a little
while,” he gasped. “It hurts too much right now.”

“
What else can I do?” Dani’s
first aid expertise was at its end. She was at a loss as to how to
make him more comfortable. And how would the rest of the clan ever
find them? Fear stabbed her heart.

Krijero’s next statement drew panic
even closer. “You’ll have to go on ahead to that rock formation.
Get to Gelan and Wynhod.”

She stared at him. “I can’t leave you
here for the Tragooms to find. They’ll kill you!”

Dani grabbed his boot and crouched by
his injured leg. She would get it back on him, find some straight,
sturdy branches to use as splints, tie them on with his other
sleeve. She jabbered, “You can lean on me and we’ll both go. We’ll
take it slow and you’ll rest when you need to.”

Krijero leaned forward, pulling the
boot from her rain-pruned hands. “It will be faster for you to get
the others, sweetness. I’ll follow as I’m able.”

She fought the tremble of her lower
lip. Dani couldn’t leave him. “But Tragooms— ”

He stroked her cheek, managing an
encouraging smile despite his obvious pain. “You can’t fight those
monsters and I’d never forgive myself if you were hurt because of
me. Trust me Dani, like I am trusting you right now.”

He trusts me? Well, he had no choice
about that, not with his ankle turning into a fat tube of sausage.
Even through the sudden swell of tears, Dani could see it wouldn’t
hold him up, not even with her as a crutch.

She wiped rain and tears away. “Okay.
It sucks, but okay.” She gave him a kiss, her lips cold against his
warm ones. He started then returned the kiss, wrapping his arms
around her for a moment.

He gave her his handheld, which
displayed her route. “Keep northwest until you find that rock
plain,” he reminded.

“
I will. Be safe, Krijero.
I—” she broke off, startled at what she’d almost said.

“
You be careful too, little
Dani.” His purple eyes held her for an instant. Then he prodded her
to her feet. “Go as fast as you can.”

It took herculean effort to leave him
there, alone and helpless. Dani felt something inside slowly
ripping with every backwards step she took from him, as if she was
physically joined heart to heart with the Imdiko. The pain was
wrenching.

“
Turn around and go,”
Krijero coaxed her. “You have to hurry. Run, Dani.”

She nodded, but it was another half
dozen steps before she was able to turn her back on Krijero. Then
her feet took off, and she raced away, choking down
tears.

Please God, if you’re really there,
please let him be okay.

* * * *

Dani’s legs burned as the ground rose
steadily upward, taking her out of the marshland. The trees began
to be sparse again, and she finally saw the rock formations,
drifting into view like mirages, far ahead of her. The tallest one,
where she would hopefully find Gelan and Wynhod, shimmered behind
the gauzy veil of rain.

She paused to catch her breath. The
flat, rocky plain wasn’t far now, and the vegetation was already
petering out. Rain rat-a-tat-tatted on the firmer ground. The
distance to the protuberances of rock was impossible to gauge.
Besides bits of brush dotting here and there, she could see nothing
else on the puddle-strewn landscape to reference between her and
the strange jutting formations. They might be half an hour’s walk
or five hours. She hoped for the shorter. Krijero was back there,
defenseless.

So what? Why are you so worried about a
man who doesn’t care about you?

The thought froze her. Out loud she
said, “That’s not true. He likes me. He thinks he might fall in
love with me.”

So he says. Maybe he just wants your
cooperation. It wouldn’t be the first time someone told you what
you wanted to hear to get you to do what they want.

Dani wanted to argue with the voice of
experience. But she couldn’t. What it said was all too
true.

I know the route from here. I could run
ahead, take their ship and be free. Gelan and Wynhod will probably
find Krijero in time to save him from the Tragooms. They’re
excellent survivors, much better at it than I am.

“
More rash impulses, Dani?”
she asked herself. Anger at having such a selfish notion bubbled
within her, challenging the fear that she was no more to the
Kalquorians than a piece of property to be used and discarded.
“They cared for me when I was sick. They’ve done their damnedest to
keep me safe from the Tragooms rather than leaving me behind and
saving their own hides.”

But do they really care? Do you really
matter to them? The thought was an insidious whisper, refusing to
be silenced.

She thought about Krijero, injured and
vulnerable. Trust me Dani, like I’m trusting you right now, he’d
said.

Her chin lifted. “It’s not important if
I matter to them. They matter to me. I’m not leaving them to rot on
this stupid moon. That’s all I have to say on the subject, so shut
the hell up!”

For a wonder, that part of her mind
did.

Dani set her sights on the tallest
formation and started running again, forcing her burning legs to
hurry, hurry.

Chapter 16

Red streaks from the setting sun clawed
vicious tears in the sky. The bloody light turned the rocky plain
and its stark formations to rust. The clouds were slowly
dissipating, sending down halfhearted spats of rain. The deafening
torrent of before had become a tired patter on the plain, as if the
sky had worn itself out.

Gelan and Wynhod paced around the
tallest spire of rock in the forest of the strange formations.
They’d been here for hours, but there was still no sign of Krijero
and Dani.

Wynhod’s mood was a pendulum, swinging
from worried to angry every few seconds. As he passed Gelan he
muttered, “I hope she didn’t give Krijero any trouble. She must
have. They should have been here long before now.”

Gelan blew out a breath. It relieved
none of his tension. “Our only option besides waiting and hoping is
to retrace our steps and probably run into the full Tragoom
party.”

Neither choice made him a happy man. At
least searching would allow them to do something. He was no more
suited to inaction than his Nobek.

Wynhod’s disposition arced in the other
direction, and he stopped pacing for a moment. “Maybe our ploy
didn’t work. Maybe the Tragooms followed them instead. We should
try to find them.”

Gelan itched to do just that. But night
was coming on, and while Kalquorian eyes saw well in the dark, it
would still be difficult to pick up the Imdiko and Earther’s trail.
And if they found the full party of Tragooms instead of their
clanmates, he and Wynhod would be killed.

Death didn’t bother him so much as
leaving Krijero and Dani unprotected. But they were that way
already, wherever they were.

Wynhod went completely still as Gelan
struggled to make a decision. “Wait. Someone’s out
there.”

Gelan peered in the direction Wynhod
faced, his eyes, ears and nose searching the dimming plain. A tiny,
far-off figure moved slowly. The jerk of its limbs showed it worked
with great effort to cross the rock-strewn landscape. A breeze
carried the scent of things decomposing in the distant marsh, of
Wynhod’s spicy aroma, and the salt-tinged musk he’d grown familiar
with in a very short time.

“
Dani,” he breathed and took
off racing towards her, Wynhod hard on his heels.

He tried not to think too hard about
why she would be alone, why Krijero was nowhere to be seen. Dread
knotted the pit of his stomach however. As he neared the bedraggled
Earther, her stumbling efforts to run betraying her exhausted
desperation, he knew something bad had happened. She clutched
Krijero’s handheld and was pushing herself beyond her limits to
reach them, to find help for the Imdiko.

Wynhod put on a burst of speed,
reaching her seconds ahead of Gelan. “Where is Krijero?”

Dani halted and folded over, bent
double as she gasped for air. “Fell. Hurt his leg. Can’t walk.” She
burst into tears. “Hurry so Tragooms don’t find him.”

Wynhod took only a moment to tell
Gelan, “You take her. I’ll go for Krijero.” Then he was gone,
backtracking Dani’s trail as Gelan caught her up in his
arms.

She sobbed, shaking all over from
emotion and fatigue. It was hard to understand her speech for all
the crying, but as Gelan carried her back to the tallest rock
formation, he managed to decipher most of it.

“
I came as fast as I could,
but it took so long. What if Wynhod is too late? What if they got
Krijero?”

Gelan kissed her forehead, his worry
for his Imdiko offset a little by his pride in Dani’s efforts. “It
won’t be for your lack of trying. Thank you, Dani, for coming so
quickly. You may have saved his life.”