Page 3 of Entangled by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #4)

Tasseloris

My hands felt good around the yoke of the shuttle—confident, competent. When was the last time I’d flown one of these alone? We were all required to have basic flying skills for ship-to-surface transport. I must have flown by myself the last time when I got my qualifications. How bizarre. I blinked at the sensors as I oriented myself toward the city and the jungle that surrounded it. That last flight had been in space, and it was very different to fly inside a planet’s atmosphere.

I could also not shake the feeling that the clock continued to tick down, heading for a climax I could not name. What was it counting down to? This meeting with the contact? I knew shockingly little about this mission when I thought about it—just that I was supposed to locate a contact with vital information on Jalima’s operations. A contact who had apparently come through Brace, our elusive, mysterious chef aboard the Varakartoom. Brace, of all people, knew someone who knew things about Jalima? I’d never seen that coming.

I wasn’t even sure I knew what species Brace was. I’d never seen more than a glimpse of his hands when he slid food beneath the kitchen hatch. Excellent, fantastic food, mind you. But the male who cooked it was as elusive as he was grumpy when he snarled at us through the metal hatch. He had zero people skills. I was starting to see a trend here—most males on the Varakartoom were a little nuts when it came to social skills. At least the ones I’d been dealing with today.

Darkness had settled over the planet, but Bloom was glittering with lights. Tree-lined thoroughfares glowed with lanterns, and people were still out in droves in the heart of the city, where parties always brewed. I felt a pang of homesickness that I quickly pushed away. This was not a time to reminisce about my childhood on a planet just like this; I couldn’t afford to get distracted.

The beep of an alarm called my attention then, and I forced all those pesky feelings and distractions from my mind. Flicking my comm line open, I hailed the Varakartoom even as I worked to alter the course of my shuttle. The meeting coordinates had been set, and we’d had no warning that they were compromised, but clearly, they were. “Captain,” I said without preamble. “There’s a missile locked onto my shuttle. Commencing evasive maneuvers.” My fists tightened around the yoke as I twisted the small vessel into a sharp twirl, but I was not Aramon, our expert pilot. This type of flying far surpassed any of my skills.

“Eject, Tass. That’s an order!” I heard Asmoded, my captain, growl roughly over the line. It was all the permission I needed, though frankly, survival was at the top of my mind anyway. Leaping from the seat, I snatched up my backpack with one hand and ran for the hatch at the back of the ship. It was already opening under the loud screeching of several alarms. I did not wait, diving out of the gap before it was fully open. Then I was tumbling headfirst toward the ground.

I slapped at my collar just in time. As my helmet slipped into place over my head, sealing me inside my armor and protecting me from heat and cold, the shuttle exploded. Wreckage and debris were flung in every direction, chasing me to the ground. Hunching my head, I twisted my body to change my direction and fired up the boosters embedded in my boots. They propelled me up, but they weren’t going to be quite enough to keep me from crashing to my death. For that, I’d need to pull out something far more dangerous and powerful than technology.

Heart thundering in my chest from the adrenaline—your imminent death did that to you—I closed my eyes and forced myself to focus. My body fought me as it fought for survival in those fast seconds. It did not want to go quiet so I could concentrate, my instincts screaming at me. With a growl of frustration, I pulled, and in my mind, things began to unravel. With a wrenching feeling, things began to unfurl, no longer just in my head, but all along my body. My armor split along my back, the seams specially designed by Ysa at my request.

My body jolted as the sails that had unfolded caught air, billowing and pulling, but thankfully slowing my deadly descent. With the boosters in my boots, I had just enough control to steer myself around the rapidly approaching trees as I came in for what was certainly going to be a rough landing—though no longer deadly. The shuttle crashed to the ground before I reached it, setting a section of forest on fire. I couldn’t see who had shot it down, but I was going to make sure every last one of them paid for this. Aramon was going to give me so much crap for getting one of “his” shuttles blown up. And then they shot me.

I didn’t see the laser fire in time, only felt it streak across the left side of my body. It burned through one of the sails I’d unfolded, the leafy material combusting and scorching my shoulder blade, where it had been anchored. With half of my parachute suddenly missing, I swung wildly to the left, crashed against the tree, and went head over heels in a spin toward the ground. I had just enough time to fold the remaining sail around my body to protect myself, and then my body struck the hard, unforgiving surface with a crash. Everything went black.

I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but when I blinked heavy eyes back open, I knew I was in serious pain. Everything felt like one big bruise—throbbing, aching—warning me that moving so much as an eyelash was a bad idea. Stars, that hurt. What had happened? It took long, agonizing seconds for memory to sink back in. When it did, I didn’t feel any better. I’d screwed this up. Here I’d been, thinking I could handle this mission on my own, and I’d managed to get shot down, get a shuttle destroyed, and I was willing to bet the contact was dead.

There was no point in feeling sorry for myself. I had to call this in, and then I was going to get payback. Maybe there was even a way to salvage this; the contact had information for us. Could I still locate it if I took out the goons that had shot me from the sky? I was eager to try, and that kind of motivation helped. Groaning in pain, I managed to sit up, my remaining sail unfolding from around me. Reaching over my shoulder, I grabbed it by the root and yanked it free. Now separated from my body, the leafy sheet began to wilt and wither, browning at the edges, then curling in on itself until little remained but a scattering of brown flakes and dust.

I staggered to my feet next, head spinning from the movement, and I was forced to pause with my hand pressed against the nearest tree trunk. There was a stick protruding from my side; it had managed to pierce my armor and lodged itself between two ribs. My left wrist was banged up badly, and the comm device strapped to it had been shattered by the fall. Shards had wedged into the black carapace beneath it but hadn’t broken the skin. There would be no calling for help, but maybe the tracker in my suit still worked. The captain would send down men to investigate this crash—there was no way they hadn’t noticed.

Sagging against the trunk of the tree, I wrapped my fingers around the piece of wood embedded in my flesh. It had to come out; there was no other way. Biting down on my bottom lip, Iredese lit, and my hair bristling around my head, I yanked the stick out with a growl. Spots danced in front of my eyes—the pain intense—but it ebbed and flowed as I breathed through it. Red blood seeped from the wound through the tear in my armor, and I pressed my hand against it, applying pressure.

“Stars, where’s my pack?” I groaned, casting my eyes about and searching the ground nearby. The sail had still been around me, so the pack couldn’t have gone far. I located it wedged beneath a root right next to the spot I’d woken up in. Stumbling toward it and kneeling to dig around for my first aid kit were almost insurmountable tasks. I made it—just. But the pressure bandage and a shot of Dravion’s healing stimulants made a huge difference. With a much clearer mind, I reassessed my situation a few minutes later.

The fire still blazed, but its noise was not enough to cover the sound of male voices. They were far away, and the distance appeared to be growing. It gave me a heading, and it meant I was not in any danger where I was. It was possible they were looking for me, but I doubted it. Who in their right mind would assume that anyone survived that? The dark of the night had covered my leap from the back, I was certain of that, and my suit and my biology would meddle with a scanner looking for biosignatures, if they even had one.

Hauling the backpack onto my shoulders, I checked my weapons one by one, assured myself the bandage was in place, and then set out. Along the way, I refamiliarized myself with Viridara’s flora. There were so many plants I knew, and even if I did not know all of their names, I recognized their uses with an innate ability no one but another Viridara would understand. Purple leaves from the Haysher bush would numb my pain if I chewed them, and a mush from the berries of the Virad would hasten wound closure and blood clotting. I took a grateful moment to smear the juice on my skin beside the bandages and watched as my green skin absorbed the purple smears in seconds.

I wasn’t going fast and could no longer hear the voices. Skirting the wreckage, I started to pick up the tracks of the males who had inspected it. They led back in the direction of a clearing beyond the largest burning piece of ship. That had to be the meeting point my contact had set for us—a perfect spot to land a shuttle and speak privately. That they had shot me down this close to the meeting spot could only mean that the contact had been followed, compromised, or was dead.

A soft mewling sound drew my attention when I reached the edge of the clearing. I crouched, the wound in my side aching fiercely with the motion. Popping another Haysher leaf into my mouth, I chewed viciously and wished the pain away. Searching for the source of the sound, I quickly realized it wasn’t one of my enemies. This was the sound of something else, and thoughts began to tickle the back of my brain as I considered the options.

All terraformed Viridara worlds were next to identical as far as flora and fauna went. So, though I’d never been to Viridara Six, I could expect exactly the same animals as I had seen and lived with on Viridara Eight, where I’d grown up. There, I saw movement twitch beneath a slab of jagged black steel. It was a piece of hull that had been blown off or flung away by the crash. Unmistakable as anything but a piece of hull from the Varakartoom’s shuttle, the sinuous black lines were unique.

The metal was heavy and had pierced the ground at an angle, a pile of rocks supporting much of the jagged piece. It trembled, and the mewling noise came again. Casting my eyes around the clearing, I assured myself that nobody was there; it was abandoned. Tracks indicated that a heavy, wheeled thing had moved there, surrounded by dozens of footsteps—the surface-to-air missile that had been used to shoot my shuttle. Whoever had used it had left, taking their machine of destruction with them.

My footsteps were as quiet as I could make them as I left the cover of the trees and began to cross the clearing toward the debris and the source of the mewling. Was it a rodent? A forest scuttler? Trapped in its nest by the metal piece? The sound it made wasn’t quite right for something mammalian, but it did not occur to me what it could be until I saw the pink tendril trailing from beneath the black shard.

“Oh, no… That’s impossible,” I caught myself saying out loud. It was crazy to even contemplate the possibility, but that tendril...it left so few options that this was the only one that made any kind of sense. Sinking to my knees with a groan, I held my wounded side with one hand and braced myself on the other to peer beneath the metal. A large, green eye blinked back at me, and my breathing stalled in my lungs. “How did you get here, little one?” I said when my tongue finally managed to curl itself around the words.

The Entling was stuck. Some of its tendrils were caught between metal and rock. Its small body was wedged in a crevice between the rocks, which had probably saved it from getting crushed when the metal panel struck the ground. There was no way it could get out without help.

Lifting my head, I glanced around, wondering where its sire was, but there was not a single trace. This one looked small, young; it should not be out of its pod yet, but here it was, anyhow. There was no other option but to delay my quest and free it. “Make yourself small, little one. Curl up,” I instructed it, though I was not sure how much an Entling this young was able to understand. The Sires could supposedly speak, but only to the priests, so I wasn’t even sure how much was fable or truth. I mimed what I wanted by holding my open hand in front of the small crack I could see it through and then gently closing my fist.

Tendrils withdrew from around the panel, and the metal began to slide, perilously tipping closer to where the small Entling was pinned. I immediately braced it with both hands, but it was a large piece, too heavy for me to shift on my own without better leverage. Groaning, because none of this had ever come easy to me, the way it was supposed to, I forced myself to focus on the parts inside my brain that could unfurl the way that little Entling could. Twice in one day? I had never managed that before, but I was not the same man I’d been when they’d thrown me out, discarded me like so much garbage. Not even good enough for the compost heap.

Everything ached, all the bruises on my body clamoring for attention. The wound throbbed in my side, and my jaw hurt from how hard I was clenching it. I forced myself to push it all aside, sucking furiously on what remained of the Haysher leaf tucked in my cheek. Numbness spread then, blessed numbness. Finally, I could focus. My shoulder blades itched along the spots where I’d grown the leafy sails. This time, I did not need a parachute to guide me safely to the ground; I needed extra arms so I could shift this heavy piece of metal and free the Entling. In the back of my brain, the distracting thoughts began—the ones that always picked at my mind when I needed to focus. My crewmates would think me an idiot for wasting time and energy on this; my former teachers would pick at my shape and form, at my technique. My mother would nag until my ears bled that I was not trying hard enough.

Almost, they won out, those doubts and insecurities, but then the Entling mewled again, and my heart felt like it was bursting inside my chest. No, not on my watch. I was helping this little one. An Entling that surely had to be lost, stolen, or worse: orphaned. Metal squeaked as it scraped past rock; the dirt it had sliced partially into buckled and shifted beneath my feet. I had not even felt it when the vines sprouted from my shoulders, but there they were, lifting the metal like I’d envisioned. With a final growling heave, the whole panel came free in my grip, and I flung it away from the Entling.

It was a tiny thing when it slipped from the rocks and rose to its full height, and the grateful glow of its green eyes was all the reward I needed. Pink tendrils writhed from a slender waist, almost like a skirt. Green, twig-like legs stuck out from beneath it, and pink flowers bloomed all along its shoulders, chest, and the crown of its head. The Entlings and Sires had no gender—they were plant beings, after all, distant relatives of my own species—yet I wanted to call this one a "she." It was the pink flowers and the dainty, elegant shape.

She pointed her narrow chin at me, and a pink tendril elongated, reaching for the thick brown and green vines that had sprouted from my shoulders. Shifting the vine toward her, I watched in wonder as her thin pink one curled around my much more tree-like appendage. Then she pulled, and I ducked my head toward her. Though I was kneeling, she still barely came up to my hip—so tiny and fragile, so young. Her arms were more like several large leaves folded together, but it felt like a tiny hand was cupping my chin, nimble and soft as a breath of air. “Cheeeem?” she said, the sound similar to her earlier distressed mewls but edging toward a true vocalization that mimicked speech. My heart began thundering in my chest. Was it true? Did the Sires indeed master speech when they matured?

“You’re safe now,” I whispered. “Where is your pod? Your Sire? You need to find them.” I did not move because I did not want to spook her, but I thought that maybe her large green eyes took on a sadness. She withdrew her tendrils and her hands, growing impossibly small before my eyes. When I backed away and rose to my feet, she seemed as tiny as the grass I walked on. It felt wrong to turn and walk away, to leave her. But there was nothing else I could do. Taking an Entling was considered a heinous crime, as was harming one. A Viridara civilian wasn’t even allowed to touch one, but I was going to argue that in this case, she had touched me .

At the edge of the clearing, I paused and looked back, searching for any sign of the small, pink-hued Entling. She was gone, and she’d left no trace of herself. I hoped that meant she was safe. Turning to the tracks I needed to follow, I continued on my way, and it wasn’t until I’d taken several steps that I noticed the difference in me. My side no longer ached, and not because I’d gone numb from the Haysher. Yanking the bandage from my wound, I stared in amazement. My injury had healed—it was gone.

There was no time to consider the implications, though my mind struggled with it anyway. A shout went up in the distance, and then another—high-pitched, scared. They were male, but then a new voice joined them: a female, high and shrill. I knew instinctively what was happening, and I also knew that I couldn’t miss this opportunity. As I began racing toward the sounds, I felt the ticking of that clock again, a timer that was running out.