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Olivia

Drasuk lets out a roar and barrels out of the end of the tunnel. There is a crash of glass and screech of metal, then pops of gun fire and Kira’s cackling laughter. I’m bouncing on my heels in my impatience, claws digging into the soil, as everyone boils out into the facility.

Thivoll lets out a roar that makes me shiver and soon after I stumble out into the room, taking a quick look around at a carnage of broken screens and some sort of interfaces, then Kroaicho is beside me, shielding me with zha’s body as we run into a hallway to catch up.

There are multiple dead bodies in the hall, none of them genali, just what look like the little green men Kira said braceaaer look like. Some have been shot, some completely crushed, others slashed with the knife I can see Kuret holding as he dashes down the hall in front of us, yelling his own war cry.

It seems insane to run in like this, but I can’t deny it feels pretty amazing. Or it will be if there is anything left to fight. I increase my pace, Kroaicho grinding zha’s tusks together loud enough beside me to be heard over all of the sounds of battle.

A moment later we burst through into a large room. There are multiple fights happening. Kira has abandoned her rifle and is holding on to Drasuk’s spines as he rears up and crushes a pair of aliens. Kuret is slicing another. Thivoll and Ree’s tails are whipping around them, eliciting keening screams from the few braceaaer they have engaged.

“Dammit,” I mutter once it’s clear that nothing will be alive long enough for me to get over to it.

Then Kroaicho chitters, pushing me to the side right before a chunk of the display next to me shatters. I fall, my extra limbs hard to balance, but then scramble back up. Kroaicho’s large limbs are swinging, the braceaaer dumb enough to take a shot at me screaming as it flies through the air before crunching against the wall on the other side of the hallway we just left.

I dig my claws in, running into the hall to help zha. Kroaicho is lit up bright purple, anger clear in every swing into the group of braceaaer that flanked us. But from where?

I stop thinking about it and hurl myself into the fray, screaming out my rage as my own limbs start swinging.

As my claws rake through the alien closest to me and the blood starts flowing, I feel just as amazing as I remember with the bugs. Not as good as it was to be with Kroaicho… but close.

Then I hear a sound of pain from Kroaicho and my skin lights up with such a bright purple every one of the braceaaer’s wide, overly large black eyes reflect my whirling outline. I whip my tail around and slice through the alien about to stab Kroaicho’s back segment. They are still screaming as I use the momentum of my tail to swing my body, holding all four arms out, fists tucked back and wrist claws positioned to gut the one to Kroaicho’s right.

Another crash lets me know that Kroaicho has launched another one into a wall and I have a vicarious shot of pleasure.

It’s over far too fast for my liking. The hall falls silent for a long moment before Kira skids back into the hall.

“The fuck? Where did they come from?” she calls out harshly.

I shake my head, trying to slough off the pleasure and move over to check Kroaicho’s wound. “Are you alright?”

“I am. It will heal,” zha responds

Thivoll slides past us, pulling in a long breath before pacing up and down the corridor. “There’s too much blood.”

“From there,” Kroaicho says, a claw pointing at a section of the wall.

“Are you sure?” Kira says skeptically. “It just looks like stone.”

I take a closer look, then see where the striations of the cave move from the subtle blue glow that seems to be common in the rock here to a dull, obviously fake section.

“It’s not real,” I tell her.

“Oh. Nice eye, glow bug,” she says before whacking Kroaicho’s middle right limb.

Kroaicho’s skin moves from purple to bright blue and zha looks down at zha’s arm, then to Kira, then back. I have a feeling zha will mostly be that color when Kira is around and it makes me smile, the glee of the fight rising again now that Kroaicho is no longer under attack.

“We’ll get this opened up,” Kira says with a dismissive wave. “You all should check out the main room. Maybe there is something you can salvage in there.”

Ree comes up behind us. “It would have been nice to see what it was like before it was crushed, I agree.”

“You’re a fucking wrecking ball, Drasuk,” Kira mutters. “We’ve talked about this over and over again.”

“You are quite welcome,” Drasuk replies in his usual rumbling voice.

“Idiot,” Kira mutters, then turns to the wall, poking at it in random spots.

We leave Kira and Drasuk behind to work on getting access to the hidden room, moving back into the much larger one. I take a closer look around, noting the broken panels with large metal wires running into an even larger area. Bodies litter the area and it’s hard to believe there is nothing but scrapes and the odd stab wound on everyone.

One of those scrapes is on Ree and Thivoll is inspecting it, growling.

“So there really is tech. Is this from the failed colony?” Ree asks.

“No,” Thivoll answers. “It’s too recent.”

Ree hums. “Why have all of these displays without power?”

I close my eyes and concentrate, but, no, I can’t hear the hum. “There’s no power,” I share.

“Oh, there wouldn’t be,” Ree says distractedly. “Technology doesn’t work here.”

“What? At all? Then why the machines?”

“I don’t know,” she says, biting her lip. “I thought you said the atmosphere destroyed tech, Thiv.”

He stops growling and turns to look at the displays. “No, it’s just power sources that don’t work. They degrade or explode.”

“Fuck, fluff brain. You’re just saying that now?” Ree gripes.

Thivoll lets out a series of chuffs and his tail dances over to Ree to tap her shoulder from behind. She jumps, yelping, and Thivoll’s chuffing gets even louder.

She lets out a growl, claws extending and swiping at his tail but he’s already dodging.

“We don’t have time for playing, Commander,” Drasuk says in a needling tone from behind us as he enters the room.

Ree lets out a huff. “Later, superkitty. Alright, so why aren’t we running?”

“Because there is no power source,” Drasuk answers with his usual superior tone.

I’m still trying to catch up. “But why do power sources explode, Thivoll?” I ask.

The big cat stops chuffing and settles down on his haunches, tail still twitching like it wants to get up to no good.

“I have no idea. I never looked into it,” he admits.

“Useless felines,” Ree grumbles, but there is a laugh in her tone and my lips quirk.

I turn a more critical eye on the structure. Panels, screens, long wires, chains…

“Was something really big held here?” I mutter out loud.

“I think so, yes,” Ree says.

Kira stalks in, foot falls light and with a giant smile on her face. She glances around. “Something big? Holy fuck it must be enormous.”

“Hmm…” She draws out the sound, then glances around. “It’s a battery.”

Thivoll and Drasuk both hiss, then Thivoll groans.

“Yes, I see it now,” Thivoll grates out. “The leads are like a cryogenic chamber pumping nanites through a large body and then through a generator. How did you know, Kira?

She shrugs. “Seems obvious.”

Drasuk breaks in. “A large body wouldn’t be enough to be a power source. Whatever it was will be highly intelligent and I assume also very angry.”

“A trakeldon,” Kroaicho adds suddenly, skin lit up red.

“Really?” Thivoll asks, all trace of amusement gone. “How do you know?”

“I recognized the tracks,” zha replies.

“You got out of your hoarding cave long enough to learn some tracking, glow pop?” Kira teases.

“So far Kroaicho seems like a walking encyclopedia, Kira,” Ree breaks in. “He’s essentially a treasure trove inside that mind.”

“Zha, not he,” I interject.

“Sorry,” Ree says with a grimace. “Zha knows a lot and I respect that. It will prove very useful.”

I glance over to Kroaicho and notice that most of the red on zha’s skin has been replaced with thrumming orange. Zha’s eyes are big and zha is blinking slowly, like some realization is coming.

“Stories are important,” is all zha says in response.

“Not right now they aren’t. We should leave,” Drasuk says forcefully. “Regroup.”

“I agree,” Kira says, grin dropping. “But there’s what looks like a lab behind that fake cave wall you two meat heads should look at first.”

“Which two what?” Drasuk grumbles. “Speak plainly for once.”

“Oh, I only meant the wisest and strongest among us. Obviously you and Thivoll,” Kira drawls.

“Well, why did you not just say?” Drasuk replies, puffing up his spines and stalking out of the room as Kira turns and rolls her eyes at us.

I blink, suddenly feeling far more at ease in the group. Just like Kroaicho, Drasuk is even more socially oblivious than I am and everyone still somehow likes him. Even though he’s also a giant ass.

I mean, I mostly just struggle with facial expressions and it’s starting to feel like not that big of a deal now that there are so many different types of faces with a whole range of different meanings.

It feels… good and I give Kira a grin.

“Lead the way, small human,” Drasuk calls back imperiously.

Ree holds her arm out to Kira, mouthing something, raising her eyebrows and wiggling her head and even I can get that she’s making fun of Drasuk and I burst out laughing along with them. Thivoll is still chuffing as we move out of the room.

We make our way down a long hall, the dead bodies of aliens making me smile, then move into a smaller room. Thivoll rushes over to a storage shelf, big scaled hands grabbing at silver canisters, turning them like he’s reading something.

“Nanites. Translation and healing,” he says, voice betraying his excitement.

“Wouldn’t they be destroyed, though?” Kira asks.

“No, they just need a host body,” Drasuk replies.

“But you said to never disconnect from the black suit, Thivoll,” Ree adds.

“The suit is different,” Thivoll says. “Manticorids didn’t design it. It has to be calibrated and manually connected when it's attached to a spine. These will have base, inert coding that simply needs a living battery.”

“But why?” I ask, not fully understanding, but knowing enough about systems to know that doesn’t make sense. “Wouldn’t the process be the same?”

“No,” Thivoll rumbles out, distracted by piling canisters into Ree’s pack. “Manticorid design is superior.”

I blink, not quite sure how that explains it.

Kira chuckles. “No need for clothes when you have fur and scales, right? You let the ‘inferior’ species design those?”

“Exactly,” Thivoll says, purring as he starts filling another pack. “Now let’s get out of here.”

***

“He won’t do it,” Eli explains, her tentacles drooping.

She doesn’t need to translate for the group, but I can tell she’s stuck in the habit. Everyone in the clearing, with the exception of Wroahk, agreed to use the translation nanites if they didn’t already have them.

We can all understand his whale calls as he slaps the water in the stream. “Don’t want to hear. Don’t want to know all of the endless, endless words. This water is terrible. Even worse than the lake. Terrible.”

“We get it, big guy,” Kira sings out to him in whale voice. “You’ll be back in your favorite muddy-ass water as soon as possible.”

He lets out a series of clicks and hits the water even harder, but at least he stops complaining.

“What kind of water does he want?” I ask, suddenly putting it together that Kira is goading him.

Judging by how deadly he seems and pissed off he is, it seems crazy.

“Salt water,” Eli says. “Fresh water just feels… wrong, somehow.”

Rin stirs, flipping long white braids over her shoulder and stepping away from the argila, all three of them staring at Wroahk like they don’t know what to make of him. “There’s a dock,” Rin exclaims, voice excited. “I forgot all about it in all of the commotion of finding Olivia. It’s up north and, from what I gathered, I think that’s where the hunters come from.”

Drasuk nods, the motion oddly stilted. “That would make sense, yes. There is usually an island in between two large continents on a hunting ground, though it was impossible to tell if we were on the northern or the southern one. We must be southern.”

Ree lets out a long breath. “That sounds like an important objective, then, but first we need to get back to the island. There are more women to gather before we take that sort of risk. For now, let’s gather up anything of use here.”

Ree looks up at the purple sky. “We’ll head out at dark. Tell Wroahk, Eli. Hopefully he’ll be in a better mood before we need to truss him up again or Drasuk might bite one of his tentacles off for real this time.”

Kira snorts. “He should. It’ll just grow back and even I’m getting fed up with the tantrums.”

“He’s working on it,” Eli says in a cheerful tone. “It’s getting better every day.”

I look over at her huge smile, then at the murderous bared teeth behind her, tentacles wrapped around her like he can’t let her take one step away from him. Even I can see the mismatch between them… but it must work for them.

Somehow.

Everyone starts to move away and I crane my neck, looking for Kroaicho. Once we got back and zha allowed Thivoll to use the nanites, zha hustled off, likely to check zha’s hoard although zha wouldn’t admit it. My shoulders slump as I slowly make my way back to the little cave, then make a detour, wanting to take advantage of the peace and open air while I can.