Page 4 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

“Welcome back, brother!”

Vin’s voice boomed, cutting through the crackling whir of the trans-atmo vessel as it jettisoned its heat. Novak breathed a lungful of fresh air for the first time in a sol and would have withered to the tarmac in relief if not for the elderly yiwreni woman he was assisting down the gangplank. Their kind usually experienced vertigo on new planets.

“Good to be back,”

he called truthfully.

Being on the Tidus for a sol had been torture. Half the crew was shilpakaari women–including Commander Xata–and their pheromones leeched his senses. He was swallowing so much of his own venom that he felt tipsy and tingly, on the verge of making catastrophic decisions while holed up in a floating tin can with dozens of curious women that subsisted on bravado, sparring, and cosmetic oils. Xata’s team was no better than a crew of pirates, fighting and fucking their way to victory.

But the female-tainted recycled air of the Tidus wasn’t nearly as potent as the anticipation of setting foot on Renatan soil again. Novak breathed in deep, greedily gulping down the strong sting of plasma. Because once it dissipated…

Vin ran up and clapped his shoulder with a wide venandi grin, his massive chest vibrating like an engine beneath his black shirt. Novak bumped his brother’s head and they both snapped their teeth at each other. They’d taken to secret handshakes and greetings in their youth, both orphans in a HIXBS lab that chewed up their childhoods and spit them out to face the world. The habit lingered into adulthood, making Novak smirk.

Ezraji Zarabi, looking and smelling like he hadn’t slept in two days, wasn’t far behind the others. His scent was astringent with a hint of human sweat. His tabard was on backwards, and his tendrils writhed over his shoulders in a jittery tangle. He swallowed hard, jaw clenched, and nodded his head to Novak before immediately approaching the yiwreni doctor.

“You must be Caillghrid Singh,”

he rasped, clutching her ancient, knobby hands.

“Thank you for coming.”

She petted his teal arms, fuzzy ears turned towards his voice. Her eyes were milky with cataracts, but she was observant and sharp.

“Ah, the tadau-to-be. Good. How is she?”

Ezraji let out a tense breath.

“She’s uncomfortable. It comes and goes. And she’s shaking, but her skin is warm. She refuses to eat anything. Just ice chips.”

The midwaif nodded.

“Yes, we wouldn’t want anything in her stomach, just in case.”

“In case? In case what?”

Ezraji stopped breathing.

“It’s been twenty-eight turns since her water broke, shouldn’t she have something?”

The yiwreni elder blinked up at him with an indulgent smile.

“Why don’t you take me to the mamau now. Is anyone else with her?”

Ezraji let the old woman take his elbow and lead him towards a levicart set to chair level. She swayed to-and-fro like a drunken sailor on dry land, but vertigo hardly seemed to phase her after a lifetime in the stars.

The father-to-be caught Novak’s eye and he nodded, inhaling the old woman one last time. Cataloging her herbal, musty scent in his colear? was second nature. He committed her to memory as their voices faded off and the levicart hovered down the path.

Once they were gone, Novak’s ear twitched.

“How’s the human doctor?”

“Mel.”

Vin winked, but didn’t smile.

“It’s been an entire sol already and no spats. Doesn’t seem normal to me, but the other humans aren’t panicking yet, so I’m not either.”

Novak dropped his long nose in understanding, staring down the hill where the burn of the midwaif’s scent pricked his vision with little pale pink and yellow dots. The effect would fade in a few minutes, but left him feeling like someone had shined a flashlight in his eyes. Vin nudged his ribs with a plated elbow, pulling him back out of his thoughts.

“Come on, brother. Let’s unload and do a little early celebrating, huh?”

Vin glanced back at the other members of their guild who stood like the world’s edgiest welcome party. Hunar with all four hands in his coverall pockets, Fasach rubbing the base of some new serious horns, Sizzle smiling a thousand-tooth grin, Imani crossing her spotted arms, and Pomahrutvi just happily kicking a little sack of rice with her foot, oblivious to the sort of company she grew up with.

“You brought the whole wrecking crew, I see,”

Novak hissed affectionately. He squinted, pointing in their direction.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen guild dues from anyone here in at least three satbits. Our guildmates on Huajile rely on you deadbeats.”

Imani raised her hand, grinning ruthlessly.

“I’ve only been a member for two.”

Pom Pom also raised her hand.

“I’m a minor.”

She missed kicking the little sack and it flopped to the tarmac.

“Aw, nuts.”

Sizzle guffawed up at the trees, scaring a flock of birds.

Vin and Sizzle both coughed up enough cache to cover Imani and Pom Pom while Hunar and Fasach unloaded Ferulis’s ostentatious delivery from Helion. The softest blankets and towels, nutrient-infused oils for delicate shilpakaari infants, and real persici fruit from his clan’s estate on the capital station. Their scent was powerful and sweet, drawing a hum of appreciation from both Imani and Pom Pom. Novak’s eyes narrowed on Vin’s vira as her throat bobbed with a wet swallow of thirst.

He looked away and swallowed too, the peachy scent and venom mixing in his mouth.

Now that the plasma odor was fading away, Novak breathed in shallow gusts, his nose slitted only enough to take what he needed. Vin watched him, sniffed against his thumb, then slung an arm over the kral’s shoulder.

“Walk with me, brother.”

Novak leaned into Vin’s familiar scent, letting it drown out anything else that might be lingering. He turned his head towards him and relaxed his ears so they slanted in a casual tilt.

“So,”

Novak hedged, tail gliding across the soft mulch of the foot path behind them.

Vin grunted, gauging the distance to the three white home towers still half a mile away. He slowed their pace.

“Excited to meet the little ones?”

Novak’s tail whipped with a snap at its slender tip.

“I probably have hundreds of progyny, Vin.”

Vin’s tone was bitter when he responded.

“Yeah well, none from volunteering.”

The kral stopped, crossing his arms. They were shielded in both directions, standing near a bend in the path that was overgrown with bloody red ferns.

“Vindilus.”

His venandi brother snapped his mandibles, scrubbing a hand over his short, broken spires.

“Imani got an invitation to this human charity thing on Piaoguo, but there’s too much at stake here to go. Pretty sure it’s a lure anyway.”

“What do you mean there’s too much at stake?”

Vin pulled a tiny black puck from his pocket and activated it. Vwump. Both he and Novak went temporarily blind, all of their bionic systems down. Their optics, linguitors, transitors, holotabs… Both of them blinked as their eyes adjusted.

“EMP. You good?”

he asked. Their voices were rough and heavily accented without linguitors to help bridge the physiological differences, but both of them spoke Hja Erle thanks to their lab rat youth.

“Hurry up,”

Novak snapped.

“You know Fas’s girl, right? Roz?”

“I know of her. Fas never introduced us.”

With good reason. She was a doll with living code modeled after the human Novak had accidentally shot dead outside of the Conrad.

“Well, there’s a hiccup in her code. An echo like what we saw on the Palembre during that media blitz. It’s like something was erased.”

Vin bared his fangs.

“After she arrived.”

“Are you saying that the Figment wasn’t Lokurian?”

Novak creased his brow.

“That’s impossible.”

“Oh no, that fucker was definitely walking arround invisible.”

“So you think there’s another conspirator.”

Vin nodded like a human, his golden eyes glowing brighter with anger.

“This invitation to Piaoguo is a bright red flag, Novak. Thel and Liv are off on a diplomatic mission, Roka’s rotting below the hangar, and there’s suspicion infecting the rest of us. I put the bogs on ice when I went to Huajile and it damn near cost us the colony. I can feel it in my fangs, y’know? Something’s not right, but we can’t say no to Piaoguo either.”

Novak swallowed another pool of venom. The need to relieve the pressure was uncomfortable, tinged with a bloody, iron tang. His brow creased as he pressed his plume mail tighter to his skin.

“You need me to be Imani’s bodyguard?”

As soon as he said it, he knew it was wrong. Ferulis wouldn’t have forced him onto a ship without meeting his donor appointment for a gig with Imani James. Either Ferulis planned for him to donate to the colony again or…

Novak’s heart kicked into high gear and Vin looked at his chest. Advenans had an impressive scent organ, but venandi plates were primed for vibrations like heartbeats. His brother’s eyes flicked to meet his shocked stare, both men frozen in place on the side of the path.

“It was Ferulis’s idea,”

Vin started slowly.

“And it has to be you.”

“Why was I called here?”

Novak snapped.

“Brother…”

Vin’s jaw parts clenched, his stare hard and unyielding.

“Did you pick up any chemia trails last time you were here?”

The question forced Novak to take in a gulp of air out of instinct and he instantly regretted it. His lungs filled with the hustle and bustle of the colony. Hundreds of people, walking to and from on this very path. Needles, levicarts, and drones. Steaming jungle decay.

But also her.

His nostrils flared as he pressed his long fingers over the bridge of his muzzle to quell the intense swelling of his coleara He clamped his long mouth shut so that he couldn’t taste the air with his tongue or drop his desperate, heavy fangs. His tail whipped through the ferns, cutting them apart like a bullwhip as he grimaced and snarled.

“Oh shit,”

Vin said, an unmoored, uncertain look on his scarred red face.

“Srrra?,”

Novak swore between clamped teeth, both fists holding his maw shut. His plume mail rose like hackles, exposing the collar of bright orange downy feathers around his neck and shoulders. The sound they made was like a thousand knives on a grinding block as the hard plumes shifted and sang.

“I’ll take that as a yes,”

Vin sighed, leaning back on the soft bark of a dark pink tree. He put his talons in his pockets and waited for Novak to rein himself in. But he couldn’t. The draw was too strong. His feet flexed in his boots to run. To hunt.

“It was only a guess. Humans are so potent, y’know?”

Instead of following her trail, Novak stumbled into Vin, sinking his long claws into the bark by his brother’s head. He fisted one of Vin’s spires with his other hand, tilting his face away so that the meat of his neck was exposed. The massive venandi tensed, thick cords of red muscle bulging with the effort to stay still when Novak snarled and hot venom dripped down the front of his shirt.

“Brother–”

Vin growled.

“Don’t move.”

The kral hissed, nose pressed into Vin's familiar scent. His nose found the venandi’s three-beat pulse and he fixated on the rhythm. Counting, counting. He needed something else to drown out the scent burn from the mystery human. The one he’d been so careful not to breathe in too deep. He dragged in a lungful of Vin’s spice, the lingering oils of his vira from when they woke up that morning. The sex on his mandibles and hands that make Novak’s helices swell. Plasma discharge from his hand cannon.

“Getting pinned is against my nature, y’dig?”

Vin rumbled, forcing himself to relax even as Novak’s tail wound its way around his calf. Vin was bulkier but the kral was the lord of their guild for a reason. He could slice his brother apart like ribbons faster than the venandi could unholster his hand cannon.

“Almost,”

Novak rasped, breathing in against his shirt.

Vin raised his free palm, talons extended to their full, lethal length. Novak clutched at it, smashing it against his snout.

“That’s it, big guy. Take whatever you need,”

Vin murmured.

“Fuck of a thing, seeing you lose your shit like that.”

“Fuck of a thing for me too,”

Novak croaked with a grimace. His scent organ felt scorched and stung when he spoke. His cock throbbed in his cloaca where it was pressed tight against the seam of his pants.

“What happened?”

Novak’s ear twitched. He wanted to look down the path, to see how visible her chemia trail was, but he couldn’t trust himself to do it. Instead he clenched his fists and managed one more step away from his brother.

“Scent burn, I think.”

He brushed a hand over his ears and they popped back upright. His snout wrinkled with a snarl and he licked his teeth with the prongs of his tongue.

“It’s part of the Hunt, which Ferulis apparently wants,”

he snapped angrily.

“So tell me what I’m doing here, Vin.”

The venandi held up both hands in surrender.

“Alright. But don’t kill the messenger.”