Beneath the Twin Moons of Haldae (10 page)

He looked for her, and for a second his heart was in his throat when he couldn’t see her. She emerged from inside the shuttle with an object in her hand, small and square, that she fastened around her throat with a strip of fabric. She slipped another object inside the shell of her ear and looked at him in triumph.

She started speaking, the words coming out as Ccomat h fast as they were incomprehensible. He shook his head. She fell silent and took a deep breath, then rested a hand on her chest and said, “Zaren.” She looked at him expectantly. Was she losing her mind? She took his hand—he shivered at the unexpected contact—and laid it on his chest. “Kris?”

“Yes my name is Kris, what do you want—”

Her face lit up with excitement and she gestured toward his mouth.

“What? You want me to talk?”

She nodded; her smile widened.

“Why? What do you want me to say? It’s not like you can understand what I’m saying. I could tell you you’re beautiful and you wouldn’t know it. I could say I’ll miss you when you leave and that wouldn’t make a difference, now would it?”

Her smile wavered. “Keep talking, Kris.”

He could hear her voice, the words as strange, as meaningless as ever. He could also hear a strangely distorted voice coming from the box against her throat, and
that
voice he could understand. He stared at her, his eyes going wide.

“I... I can understand you. Can you understand me? Do you understand what I’m saying? How is that possible, how can you—”

“Not everything yet. Keep talking.”

He suddenly felt numb. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he wanted to ask, he didn’t know where to even start. Before he could figure it out, he heard something behind him. Footsteps. He turned on his heel to find a group of five Ushias warriors marching closer. The tips of their lances gleamed harshly in the morning sun.

The change took him before he even knew what was happening. He couldn’t have stopped it if he had tried. His last thought, before he lost himself to the wolf, was to hope he wouldn’t hurt Zaren too badly.

* * * *

Zaren stared at Ilona Brink in shock. Things were not going well for her? What did Brink mean by that?

“I don’t know what you mean.” She l
icked her lips. “I’ve told the c
ouncil everything that happened to me.”

For a few seconds, Brink considered her, her light blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Zaren tried not to squirm under her piercing gaze.

“Let me tell you a story,” Brink said at last, dropping her gaze to her robes and smoothing them out on her lap. “I was an observer once.” Her lips curled into a wry smile, and she looked at Zaren again. “Long ago.”

Zaren nodded automatically, too worried to do more than listen absently.

“One time,” Brink continued, “I touched down on a planet to do some flora sampling, and met an indigenous woman. I was not authorized to Cuthe timmake contact, it was an accident, but once she was standing in front of me, it was too late to hide.”

Zaren took a sharp breath as Brink’s words permeated her consciousness, and she focused on her, frowning lightly. Brink noticed her frown and nodded.

“Yes, you heard that right. I had unauthorized contact with indigenous people. Not only that, but I was a guest of the woman and her village for a couple of days. They sang for me. They had beautiful, multi-harmonic chants that dated back hundreds of years, as far as I could figure out.” Brink sighed. “Some songs had been old before their people had come to this world, they said, and I believed them.”

Her gaze drifted toward a cluster of flowers a few
paces
from them, and she fell silent.

Zaren’s heart hammered in her chest. She tried to wait patiently for the rest of the story, but after a moment she had to ask, “What happened then?”

Brink gave a small start and blinked very fast two or three times, her attention returning to Zaren.

“I was grounded once I came back to the base and reported what had happened, but I expected as much.” Her voice began hardening with each word until Zaren wondered if this was truly the same woman in front of her. “I didn’t think my superiors would send in more observers, despite the planet being categorized as no-contact. But they figured since I had already breached the natives’ isolation, more contact wouldn’t hurt. Within the time of a generation, the natives’ entire way of life was shattered. There is nothing left of that civilization today but a few holo recordings of their songs.”

There was a knot at the back of Zaren’s throat, but she pushed a few words past it anyway.

“It’s very sad,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Brink inclined her head, and for a moment as her shoulders curved, she seemed old and tired. When she looked at Zaren again, it was with the same gentleness that had filled her words when she had asked her first questions at the start of the hearing.

“Believe me,” she said, taking Zaren’s hand in between both of hers, “the last thing I ever want to see happen is the loss of another civilization. I couldn’t do anything to stop it back then, but I have a little more power today.”

In the end, it was her self-deprecating smile that convinced Zaren.

She breathed in deeply and said, ve
ry quietly, her eyes begging Brink not to make her regret this, “His name is Kris.”

A weight lifted off her chest, and the rest was easier to confess.

Chapter 10

The Wolf

 
Futhe widt

Zaren couldn’t understand what was happening.

Only moments earlier, she had been talking to Kris—finally! The translang had picked up on his language almost at once, translating most of his words in the shell of her ear after analyzing only seconds of his speech. It confirmed what observers had suspected for some time; the habitants of this planet had once been part of the space diaspora hundreds of years earlier. Their ship, like so many others, had to have become stranded on this planet, forcing them to start from scratch. She was certain that, if she asked Kris, he would tell her about ancient myths that explained his people had come from the stars.

The only problem was, she couldn’t ask Kris.

Kris was gone.

And in his place stood the wolf that Zaren had first seen in the river moments after crashing, the wolf that she had since realized must have dragged her out of the water. The wolf she had seen every night since then, that had come always closer to her despite her fear, that had spent the last night curled at her feet, warming her. The wolf she had believed was Kris’ pet.

The wolf who was—

“Kris?”

It—he?—looked at her as she said his name, and she shuddered. Until now, there had always been something in the wolf’s eyes, a gentle spark that she now recognized as Kris’ own. That spark was gone, though, and in its place was steel. Without thinking, she took a step back, then another, until she could feel the curved body of the shuttle behind her. The wolf watched her with his cold gray eyes but did not come toward her. When she stopped moving, he turned away.

Only then did Zaren manage to tear her eyes off him. Only then did she notice the group of armed men advancing toward them.

The wolf—Kris—flattened his ears and started growling, his fur rising as though electrified. The man who stood at the front of the group came to a halt and raised his arm to the side, stopping his companions. They were dressed differently from Kris; while he had worn simple clothes in the natural color of the fibers they were woven from, these men seemed to be wearing animal skins that had been dyed bright colors.

Their faces were painted with lines of red and blue, the number of lines and pattern different for each man, and they all had their hair cropped very short. They also each carried a spear tipped not in stone or bone, like the knife she had taken from the cave, but in metal.

In the couple of seconds Zaren needed to take in all these details and realize that these men and Kris probably did not belong to the same indigenous group, the man at the front brandished his spear. She flinched once, then a second time when he let out a long, wordless yell. She unconsciously moved back along the body of the shuttle. At the same moment, the wolf leapt forward.

“Kris!”

She watched in horror as the warrior stabbed his spear toward Kris. In this form, however, Kris moved remarkably fast, and the spear missed him. His front paws hit the warrior in the chest, toppling him backwards onto the man who was standing behind him. Before any of the other warriors could do more t Kuldssed dihan gasp in surprise, Kris had retreated. He was now out of reach of the spears if the warriors stabbed—but not if they threw them.

The first launched spear missed Kris by mere inches. The second glanced off his flank, leaving a long red line in his fur. Zaren shrieked, but neither Kris nor the warriors took notice of her. The men were facing him now while he trotted back and forth, changing his rhythm with occasional bursts of speed, never standing still for more than a couple of seconds. Even so, there were two more cuts tinting his fur red. The second wound must have been deeper; the tip of the spear had imbedded itself in his flesh, and he wrenched it out with his mouth.

Zaren had to help him. But how? Even if she had had any sort of weapon, she was not allowed to fight, that was one of the most sacred rules of observers. If she was in danger, she was supposed to flee, hide, but never, never strike at native people. She couldn’t run, though, not when Kris was in danger. If she could only scare the warriors away…

Inspiration came in a flash. She scrambled into the shuttle and pulled the emergency box out of its recessed nook. She hurriedly pulled the flare pistol from inside it, armed it, and aimed toward the moons gliding on the horizon, high and in the direction of the warriors now surrounding Kris. She ground her teeth when she saw how close they were to him and pulled the trigger.

The bang was deafening. The flare, this early in the morning, was bright enough to bathe the clearing in green light. The warriors immediately started running, frightened shouts echoing behind them. Zaren didn’t have time to rejoice, though.

Leaving the flare pistol inside, she grabbed the medikit and practically jumped out of the shuttle. As she slowly approached the wolf, she kept her eyes on him and waited to see how he would react. When he lay down, resting his head on his paws and whimpering quietly, she came to stand beside him.

“Kris? Are you okay? Can you change back?”

She felt a little silly talking to the wolf and expecting him to answer, but she had seen Kris change into this animal right in front of her. She knew it was him. She had heard stories about shape-shifting, but she had never believed they were anything more than legends, nor had she expected to discover there was any truth to them.

When Kris did not answer, she crouched in front of him and extended her hand toward him. He raised his head just long enough to flick his tongue at her palm before lying down again, his eyes closing for a few seconds before they opened again.

“Don’t die,” she murmured. “Don’t die now. There’s too much I want to say to you.”

Kneeling on the ground, she opened the medikit and pulled out the spray. It was designed to close wounds and cause human flesh and skin to knit itself together again, but she didn’t dare wait for Kris to change back to his human form. He seemed too weak for her to wait.

He growled quietly when she touched him where the blood had stained his fur, brushing it away to expose the first wound. Raising his head again, he looked at her through narrow-slitted eyes.

“This will help you heal,” she said very gently, hoping that her tone, if not her words, would soothe him. K soikit a“It won’t hurt.”

He settled down again, his eyes closing once more. She sprayed the ointment along the wound and bit her bottom lip when Kris shuddered, a sound halfway between a growl and a whine rising from his throat. At least, it seemed to be working; the flow of blood was stopping, and as the ointment was absorbed she could see pink, tender skin forming over the wound. With a quiet, shaky sigh, she sought the next cut on his skin and treated it the same way, then the next one, until she had treated every wound.

She stayed next to him when she was done, lightly running her hand through his fur. His heart was beating fast, but no faster than it had when he had curled up against her at night. Soon, he fell asleep. That was good. The ointment worked fast, but it drew a lot of energy from the body.

As she watched him sleep, his transformation kept playing over and over in her mind. It had taken no more than a couple of seconds, so fast that it was all a blur, but she hadn’t imagined it; the thick fur under her hand left no doubt about that. One second he had been a young man, and the next instant, this beautiful wolf.

Had he tried to tell her? He had talked to her, sometimes, as they walked or when they stopped; had he tried to explain that she didn’t have to be afraid of that large wolf that seemed to turn up everywhere they went? Would she have believed him if she had understood his language and he had told her he was the wolf?

And now that she could understand his language, now that she could talk to him and make herself understood, he couldn’t communicate with her anymore.

He’d said she was beautiful, just before he had transformed. He’d also said he would miss her. Did that mean he was gone for good and wouldn’t return to his human form? The mere thought of it tightened Zaren’s throat, and she had to stop herself from shaking the wolf awake and demanding that he turn back into Kris at once.

Forcing herself to move away from the wolf, she returned to the shuttle and tried to gather her wits. They had trekked through the woods for a reason, she couldn’t forget everything now. If she could just manage to send a message…

The systems were down, like they had been when she crashed. The shuttle was intact, though, so the systems must have come back online for an emergency landing. What could possibly be wrong with it?

She didn’t know much more than the very basics about the shuttle’s electric systems. As far as she could tell when she cracked open the panels, everything seemed to be in working order. She couldn’t see any sign of damage or anything to explain why the system wasn’t working.

Sitting in the co-pilot chair, she sighed, giving up on the notion of fixing anything when she didn’t even know what was wrong with the shuttle. Far in the distance, the two moons had finished their low circuit in the sky and were slowly disappearing below the horizon. It was a beautiful planet, Zaren thought, a little wistfully. If she had to stay there, live there for the rest of her life, maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. As long as Kris regained his human form.

As soon as the curved edge of the second moon vanished far in the distance, a low trill resonated throughout the shuttle, startling Zaren. She watched, incredulous, as the system slowly Ksysn t came back online, one display after the other.

Her hands shaking hard in her excitement, she turned on the transmitter. At once, the display announced that she was connected.

“This is observer Zaren Hall,” she said quickly. “Immediate assistance required. I crashed on the fifth planet of System
fifty-nine
. I repeat. I need immediate assistance. My OV crashed—”

The transmitter beeped, and she fell quiet, listening as the message she had been hoping for rose from the transmitter.

“Central command speaking. Zaren, we have your coordinates. A rescue shuttle will be launched as soon as possible. What is your status?”

Zaren could have wept in relief. Afraid that the transmitter would stop again, she spoke quickly, reporting that she was fine if tired, explaining about the odd behavior of the shuttle’s electric systems. She had just finished when she heard a sound outside. She peeked out to see the wolf, his front paws against the body of the shuttle, barking insistently.

“What is it?” she asked, relieved to see that he was better but uncomfortable at how frantic he sounded. “Why are you…”

Her voice trailed off when he turned his head in the direction where the warriors had disappeared. She followed his gaze and her breath caught in her throat when she saw something glint in the distance, reflecting the light of the afternoon sun.

“Are… are they coming back?” She was so alarmed, she stumbled over the words. “Are they going to hurt you again?”

Kris growled quietly.

“All right, maybe you have a point,” she said, glancing once more toward the approaching warriors. She could see the light glinting off several spears.

“Let me finish here.”

Contacting Central Command again, she decided to say as little as she could.

“Indigenous people are coming toward the shuttle. I will leave and hide.”

“Take a personal beacon with you so the rescue party can localize you. Initiate the shuttle’s camouflage program before leaving.”

She acknowledged the order and took the beacon attached to the side of the co-pilot chair. The camouflage program seemed to work fine when she launched it, but she could only wonder how long it would last before it started failing again.