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He jutted his chin in the direction we were headed. “We’ve got a problem.”

Brows pinched, I squinted into the distance. All I saw was the beautiful terrain of KR-732, nothing alarming. Damn aliens and their enhanced senses.

I punched a button on the crawler’s dash, and my side of the windshield zoomed in like binoculars. A joystick allowed me to pan around the area but with limited functionality.

As the magnified image on the screen slowly rotated to the right, something moved. I shot upright in my seat. Adrenaline twisted the muscles tight along my spine. Just a smudge of pixels, but there shouldn’t be anything in the vicinity to cast a moving shadow.

I was afraid to blink, lest I miss whatever was out there. My eyes began to water. I sat stiff and still in my seat, staring hard at the screen, waiting for the image to pan fully to the right. Pixel by pixel, the screen focused.

Near the mouth of the cave that was our destination, several blurred shapes separated from the stony surface. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. The pixels continued to smooth and coalesce into something recognizable. Dread bubbled in the pit of my belly. The figures vanished off the edge of the area I’d focused on, but before they vanished, it was apparent they were humanoid.

“Raiders.” I spat the single word like the curse they were.

Thrash made a growly grunt of agreement. The bioluminescent rings in his horns pulsed with the colors of a flame—a bright, rolling gradient of crimson to white gold. Briefly, the interior of the crawler glowed like an inferno.

My heartbeat pulsed in my throat. I swallowed and focused on my breath. Damn it to the nine suns and back, I’d only brought my daggers. They were good weapons, and I was lethal with them, but depending on the size of the crew, they weren’t enough. I looked at Thrash. As usual, he carried no weapon. My nostrils flared with frustration. Was this man anything more than an aromatic aphrodisiac? How did he even end up on this team?

Since he joined, he’d been in dustups with raiders and survived, but I hadn’t witnessed the skirmishes. I had no idea how capable he was in a fight. Sure, he was very large and visually formidable, but his continued existence could be because of his capable crewmates.

In the distance, at least three more blurry figures moved across the screen.

Why couldn’t they come next week? I’d be gone, retired, and drinking too many starfruit daiquiris on the toasty beaches of the first empyrean planet I parked my space cruiser on. Some preferred Goldilocks planets, but I built these perfect worlds, and by the stars, I would live on one. Curse this entire situation to the black hole void.

Two more figures came and went while at least three entered the cave.

“Three raiders just entered the cave,” I said. “I’ve counted at least seven—” A cluster of figures exited the entrance, carrying something enormous and huddled too close together to count their precise numbers. “Scratch that. We’re at more than ten. If we don’t play this right, we might not walk away.”

There was a high probability we were about to follow in the footsteps of all the terraformers who had fallen before us, but if we could stop the raiders before they took all the life-sustaining machinery, we could at least save the colony and all the work we’d accomplished.

“I will handle this. Stay behind me.” His tone was flat and authoritative, as if his words were law.

“The fuck I will.” I swiveled in my seat and blasted a glare at the arrogant alphahole next to me, taking up too much space. My hand slipped from the console joystick and the front screen bounced back to regular viewing distance. “Maybe you don’t know this about me, but there is a reason I’m team lead,” I said, my words clipped. “Through all the jobs I’ve worked—and there have been a lot—I’ve fought off my fair share of raider parties.”

We drove on, inching closer and closer to the raiders. Silence swelled inside the crawler’s stuffy interior.

Thrash glanced in my direction and did a quick second glance, apparently realizing my lack of commentary and my death-glare meant I was waiting for some form of acknowledgment. “I reviewed all the team member’s files before I joined.”

Again, weird, since he was a nobody joining the most decorated terraforming team in the entire ETP, but whatever.

“Then you should know this planet’s distance from anything habitable under jurisdiction of United Federal Interstellar Space has resulted in a higher than usual number of attacks.”

He nodded. “That is the reason I was recruited. Allow me to handle the raiders.”

A whooshing sound swept against my eardrums. My blood boiled through my veins while fire erupted in my chest. “Don’t you worry your pretty little horns. I can take care of myself. Through all the raids we’ve endured on this mission, I hold the highest kill count.” I sneered. “Perhapsyoushould stay behindme.”

Beneath his forehead plate a deepVformed while iridescent light spiraled up Thrash’s horns. Thin lines of fiery bioluminescence traced the edges of the flexible obsidian scales across his broad chest, arms, and shoulders. “I admire your bravery, but I will not allow you to be harmed.”

“You will notallowme?” My voice went shrill, and I clenched my fists against my thighs. “I had no idea you were so damn sexist.”

“You are my mate. I must protect you.”

“Ugh! Not the mate thing again? If my response to your advances wasn’t already a hard no, it would be now with this ‘stay behind me, little woman’ attitude.”

As he steered us off the main path, he glanced in my direction, giving me a head-to-toe appraisal. His lips flattened, but he nodded. “You’re right. I know you can handle yourself, but it’s damn hard for me to disregard genetic instincts.”

I softened, if only a little, at the apologetic tone and acknowledgment that I didn’t need his protection.

The crawler rolled and bumped over the rocky terrain, shaking like an asteroid buster hard at work breaking up a belt. To avoid unintentionally piercing my tongue, I kept my jaw locked until we reached smoother terrain.