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The stripes got relegated to his chin as he plundered my lips with a kiss that revealed more of his desperation than his stoic features would ever disclose. I raised a hand to his face.

“Promise you’ll be back,” I said. “That is an order.”

His eyes flashed, but he didn’t bother to try dissuading me. I appreciated the respect that offered.

“I will… I’ll be back,” he promised. His accent gave the phrase a nuance that reminded me of another accented version.

“After we get through this, we’ll watch the movie that made that line famous.”

He arched a brow. “Did he who spoke the words—come back?”

I sketched up a tremulous smile. “He did, actually. Many times.”

Pulling the scarf back up across his face, he shouldered the pack containing extra gear for Zyair. If Plan A worked, they wouldn’t need it. And I fervently hoped it would work. If it didn’t…

I swallowed as he and Xandros walked away down the ramp. The blowing sand hid them from view before they got to the bottom.

Yani put her arm around me and squeezed.

“We have our own piece of the puzzle to complete,” she reminded me. “We won’t be able to stage much of an escape without shields.”

I knew she was right, but when we descended the ramp and turned in the opposite direction from that taken by my Drakes, each step was torturous. In more ways than one—I ached all over, and I didn’t think the sweat that prickled beneath my cloak was entirely due to the stifling heat.

The gusts of wind channeled sand down the street, forming drifts against every surface.

It was everywhere I looked—piled in every corner, coating the road beneath our feet, drifting over the metal skins of the ships we passed by.

Visibility was only about twenty feet—it was like walking through an abrasive fog.

It obscured the natural sunlight enough that the streets were lined with lights—they had to be on 24/7 in this murk.

“Is this normal?” I asked Yani .

“Apparently. Certainly glad I don’t have to live here.”

I glanced skyward. “Are they going to be able to fly in this?” The conditions were way worse than what Xandros and I had previously experienced.

Yani’s mouth straightened. “Drakes can fly in anything.” But I thought she looked concerned.

I had visited more than a few alien dockyards while delivering merchandise across the cosmos.

This one wasn’t really any different, although there were ships I hadn’t seen before.

Ordinarily, I would have scanned them with interest. Today, I just pulled my pink scarf higher over my face, and passed them by.

But as soon as Yani and I entered the market, I noticed distinct differences from others I had seen. Most had tents with bright awnings to showcase the wares of multitudes of vendors. Due to the wind and driving sand, this one had permanent roofed structures.

The cross section of species among the customers was familiar, though, as were the vendors shouting out their latest supposedly irresistible deals.

Most of the market patrons had likely arrived in the spaceships at the dockyard.

A few could have passed for human, although if you looked closely enough, you detected they weren’t.

Then a three-foot, four-legged, round bodied form stepped in front of us and waved squinted eyes at the ends of long stalks.

Squinted, because the blowing sand made anything else nearly impossible. For just an instant, I expected it to wave a banana in my face and proclaim it a carrot. But this Vrep had adapted to its surroundings rather well.

It instead waved a piece of brown meshed cloth at me. “Mask?” it offered hopefully in Primal.

My eyes narrowed. “Used or new?”

The eyestalks quivered. “New, of course,” it protested.

“They are rather ugly,” Yani stated. “But I am tired of eating sand.”

We bought two off the Vrep, and it trotted off to accost another Drolgok. There were a few around. No Drakes, though. Not a single one.

As I wound the mask over my nose and mouth, my own Drakes were a permanent component of my thoughts—and I caught repeated glimpses through their eyes.

They were walking a sand-blasted street, angling closer to Brentoq’s stronghold.

I sensed their satisfaction that the locals wrote them off as Nirzks on a stroll—the manticores were the only other two-legged aliens of any size on their street.

The storm definitely helped them to blend—pedestrians emerged and disappeared into it so rapidly it was difficult to get a good look.

I pulled my attention back to the other marketgoers. Because it wasn’t only the vendor buildings that made this place unlike any market I’d ever visited.

The biggest difference had to do with the local population.

They were the grease that made the market run smoothly, escorting vendors to their assigned booths, arranging tables and racks, providing security and sanitation duties.

And they were all slaves.

They even wore collars. Most were a humanoid species with spots over their skin, but there were others as well. And you also didn’t have to look far to recognize their masters.

Because the Nirzks were everywhere.

It was the first time I’d seen them in anything other than pictures. They strutted through the marketplace like the lords they clearly believed they were. Males, mostly, with full manes of hair often twisted into knots or held high with elaborate combs. But then I saw a female…

She was larger and more heavily muscled than the males, and with a shaved head—only a couple of small ponytails of coarse hair had been saved. I had a hard time not staring at the four large breasts pushed up by an elaborate bustier. Then something waved over her shoulder—and I saw the tail.

Much longer than a Drake’s, it arched over her head and had a bulbous tip armed with a wicked stinger, just like a scorpion back on Earth.

When I glanced to the males that accompanied her, I realized they had them too, but most kept them so low that their cloaks disguised them. Only one held his high.

Yani leaned close. “The alpha of her harem,” she whispered.

I ripped my eyes from him and back to the female.

She was—grotesque. It was the only word to describe her appearance.

She was also powerful. But the cruelty that stamped her flattened features robbed her of anything positive that should come along with it.

This was what had hold of Zyair? My eyes flicked to her tail, and my stomach clenched.

“Come on,” Yani said, taking my arm. “Think the mechanical sector is this way.”

She steered me through booths that offered everything from baked goods to jewelry. I paused—very briefly—to buy a dozen sweet gooey pastries, remembering how Xandros’s eyes had lit up at the one Yani had given him. The stuff drizzled over them even tasted like chocolate.

Perhaps understanding my need to believe Xandros would return to eat them, Yani didn’t complain at the delay. But she moved us swiftly through the booths afterward. They took on a distinctly utilitarian feel as we passed among a conglomeration of spare parts, new and otherwise.

Moments later, Yani was immersed in a discussion with an alien who had four limbs and weirdly articulated fingers. He escorted her into a labyrinth of a booth, with shelves higher than my head, loaded with a mishmash of parts. After diving into the mess, he emerged with a shield actuator.

“How much?” Yani spoke in Primal.

He—I think it was a he, difficult to be sure—named a price that would have had my eyes popping. Yani merely snorted a laugh and named something that halved it.

He fluffed his pink fur. “That is not even what I paid for it.”

Yani tilted her head. “Then you paid too much. ”

His wide mouth straightened, and he named another figure. Yani cut a bit off it, and he reluctantly agreed.

We hurried back through the market and took the street leading to the dockyards. There was as section that passed between several multi-story structures, their upper levels shading the dusty street below. It turned the wind-driven sand fog into murk.

We’d just come up on an alley in the midst of it all when my precog spidey-senses went wild. I grabbed Yani by the arm and tugged her backward, just as a well-wrapped form jumped out at us, waving a knife in one hand.

I’d thrown his aim off, though. We weren’t in range, and both Yani and I had our knives out in an instant.

For a moment, we merely stared at each other.

“Give me your money,” he snarled in Primal. He had a muzzle, and his long teeth distorted the words.

I leaned forward, rotating my knife. “Why don’t you give us yours?”

He froze, and as I sensed his uncertainty, I spun the knife between my fingers. It was a move I’d practiced since I was young, and could usually do it smoothly. Today, however, it caught oddly in mid-rotation.

His slightly confused gaze, as well as my own, dropped to my knife hand.

My forearm was exposed beyond the cloak, and I stared down to blackened skin that shone even in the shadows. I squinted, and realized it was covered in tiny scales. They clothed my entire forearm and extended to my fingertips—which now ended not in nails, but in short, curved talons.

The would-be thief was not as astonished as me. But when Yani took a long stride forward, brandishing her own knife, he proved that he did have two brain cells that occasionally connected—he turned tail, and vanished back into the alley.

Leaving both Yani and I staring at my arm. I pushed my other one out from beneath the cloak, and it was exactly the same .

“What the—” I began.

“This might explain why you’re feeling like crap.” Yani re-sheathed her knife, grabbed my scaly arm, and tugged me down the street. “Let’s get back to the ship before he spawns friends.”

Friends. Right. I kept my knife in my hand as we hurried along. But the reality was that I was so totally freaked out that Rhodes connected with me, his energy forwarding a query.

I was quick to send a pulse of reassurance. The last thing my Drakes needed was to be worrying about me.

We regained the Stardrifter without meeting any further knife-waving crazies, but I didn’t relax until the ramp sealed.

Yani pushed my cloak up on my arm—and a shower of dark scales cascaded onto the floor, along with something else that clinked.

My skin was smooth and human once again. Yani bent to scoop up a handful of the scales—they were each about half an inch around and looked black, but reflected blue and green in the overhead light.

“Where did they come from?” I whispered, examining my fingernails. They looked like they usually did, maybe a bit shorter…

“I think they appeared because that thief frightened you,” she said.

“I wasn’t scared.” My reply was automatic.

Yani’s brow rose. “Pissed off, then.”

“Is that how the Drakes shift form? They get mad?”

The Drolgok rubbed a stubby fingered hand over her face. “So I’ve been told. Emotion helps the change.” She stooped to pick something else up off the ground. It was over an inch long and curved, with a wicked point.

A talon.

Not Drake sized, but not human, either. I raised my eyes from it, and met Yani’s.

“How is this possible?” I asked.

Yani’s hand closed around the talon. “I have no idea. I can only theorize that the serum has activated your genes in unexpected ways.

“The serum? ”

Her mouth straightened. “It, and maybe the bond with the Drakes. Who knows?”

I swallowed, and asked the question to which I didn’t really want an answer. “Am I turning into a Drake?”

Did I want to turn into a Drake? I wasn’t sure.

“No,” she reassured me. “I don’t think that would be possible. Something triggered this, and we’ll have to keep an eye on it. For now, let’s get this actuator installed. That battlecruiser should almost be here.”

My gut clenched as we hurried down the hall. On the way, I stuck my head into the aft storage bay to check on Kurt.

“Hey!” he shouted. “You trying to starve me to death? When do I get?—”

I activated the door, cutting him off. We should have left him in the forest. Or better yet, fed him to the Nirzks. He deserved much worse, for what he’d done to Zyair.

Yani and I continued on to the engineering bay with the actuator. As soon as we entered it, I called up the navcube feed on the monitor.

And there it was.

A giant green dot moving up on the planet.

The battlecruiser.