Shifter Planet: The Return Page 12

  She froze as loud yipping and whining erupted from behind them, like the Earth hyenas she’d seen on video, but somehow creepier. Maybe because this time she was in a dark forest along with them. But for all that, she was grateful for the distraction. Had she been about to kiss Aidan? Had he been about to kiss her? She swallowed, desire sliding down her throat like a hard apple.

  “I’m guessing those are some of those scavengers you mentioned,” she said, refusing to look at him as she needlessly adjusted the straps on her pack. “How much farther do you think we’ll go tonight?”

  His broad fingers brushed over her bowed head to tug on her braid, which had to be a wreck by now, what with all the climbing trees and fighting off vicious beasts. Her head came up, and she fought the urge to run a smoothing hand over it.

  “Not much farther,” he said. “About half a mile’s walk, and we’ll rest for the night.”

  “And in the morning?”

  “We’ll take a look at that map of yours. Let’s hope it’s good enough to give us a trail.”

  Chapter Eight

  When Rachel woke the next morning, she was alone, nestled in the roots of one of Harp’s giant trees. The ground was soft and still warm, and she remembered curling up next to Aidan during the night. He hadn’t made it sexual, just two people sharing warmth on a cool night. But Rachel couldn’t shake the memory of their almost kiss, and how good it had felt to be wrapped in those strong arms. For the first time since she’d discovered that Wolfrum had lied to her about everything to do with this mission, she’d slept without dreams, without waking at every small sound.

  She stood abruptly, wanting to derail that line of thinking. Aidan wasn’t her protector, no matter how good it felt to be around him. And he sure as hell wasn’t someone she should be having romantic thoughts about. His interest in her had solely to do with what she knew about the second ship. And for her, he was simply a local guide, someone who knew the Green far better than she did and could get her where she needed to be—faster and alive.

  She looked around, wondering where he’d gone but not worried if he’d be back. He needed her more than she needed him. Sure, the journey to find Wolfrum would go smoother if he was with her, but she could get there on her own if she had to.

  Looking for somewhere private for her morning necessities, she started away from the tree where they’d spent the night, but she hadn’t gone more than a few feet before she encountered a strong scent in the air. Not bad, but not exactly good, either. She sniffed again, then walked the same distance in the other direction and found the same smell. She grinned, knowing what it was. Some animal had marked its territory all around the tree and her, warning other predators away. She scanned the surrounding trees looking for her golden cat. She didn’t find him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. These trees were his home, and he’d already proven he could hide in plain sight. On the other hand, the forest was remarkably still and quiet, and she wondered if the silence had to do with the cat’s nearby presence. A sudden, deep-throated rumble from somewhere in the distance brought her head up, reminding her that there were a lot more predators roaming the Green than just her cat, and they weren’t all likely to be as friendly.

  Still needing to find a place to pee, she crossed the invisible scent line and went looking for a handy tree. It reminded her that most animals used urine for scent marking. Ick. She smelled herself discreetly but couldn’t tell if she smelled any better than the cat pee. She wasn’t exactly daisy fresh after the last few days of travel.

  Marching thirty or so yards into the trees, paying close attention to where she was going and where she’d come from, she took care of her needs as quickly as possible, then hurried back to where Aidan had left her. She’d just freshened her hands and face with a cleansing wipe from her pack and pulled out her map, when a rush of noise had her jumping to her feet to scour the surrounding forest. The trees were so thick, and the underbrush so dense, that she couldn’t see much. She looked up again and saw the branches swaying as if a wind had come up in the treetops. Or as if something was using the movement as camouflage and didn’t want her to see it coming.

  “Stop that, Rachel,” she muttered, reining in her too vivid imagination.

  “Stop what?” a deep, masculine voice asked.

  She tried to conceal her jump of surprise, but from the look of amusement on Aidan’s handsome face, she didn’t succeed. Next time, she’d just pull her knife and throw it at him. She was damn good with her blade. And wouldn’t he be surprised? She fingered the knife now as she turned to face him. Being alive and female, she couldn’t help noticing that he looked way too good for someone who’d slept on the ground. Even in the dark last night, she’d been able to tell he was handsome, but with morning light filtering through the trees, she saw what a truly gorgeous male specimen he really was. The sunlight caressed the planes of his face, bringing out the almost white-blond highlights in his hair, and he was every bit as big and fit as she’d thought, with sparkling blue eyes that belied their golden gleam in the firelight and a grin that promised all sorts of wicked pleasures. She sighed.

  “Talking to myself. Comes from too much time spent alone,” she said, managing to keep her voice cool and unflustered.

  He gave her a sample of his killer grin then tossed something in her direction. She caught it automatically. It was purple, roughly oval, and appeared to be fruit. “I’m guessing this is edible?”

  “After all we’ve been through, you think I’d try to poison you?” He put on a hurt expression, which didn’t fool her for a minute. The sparkling humor in his eyes gave it away. She liked that about him, though she’d never tell him, since his ego didn’t need the stroking. But though he did what needed to be done and was, no doubt, a fierce defender of his people, he seemed more likely to laugh than to argue. She was drawn to people like that, men especially, because she was the opposite—compulsively detail-oriented and a little too serious most of the time. She attributed some of that to her job. Her clients put their lives in her hands, after all.

  She frowned, reminded abruptly of her dead crew and the role Aidan had played in their deaths. She hadn’t been leading their mission, hadn’t been hired to keep everyone safe, but they’d all been part of the same crew. In space, you survived by sticking together.

  “If I’d been on that ship when the cats attacked,” she asked without warning, “would I be dead?”

  He tilted his head curiously, seeming puzzled by the abrupt subject change. “No,” he said after a few seconds. “The cats would have known your scent.”

  “All of them? Or just the one who—”

  “All of them. They…communicate. You’re some kind of biologist, right? You took care of the cat when it was injured. You must know about pack hunting behavior, and how predators instinctively know what each member will do. It’s something like that.”

  “And the rest of my crew?”

  He shrugged. “They were all part of the hunt that shot up the Green and killed any number of forest dwellers, before drugging and capturing the cat. They act on instinct, Rachel. And, in one way, every life on Harp is part of their pack. You threaten one, you threaten them all.”

  She nodded slowly. “They weren’t all bad people, but they were willing to kill for money. And I’m no innocent. I know what would have happened if they’d succeeded in taking my cat back to whoever hired them. I’ve seen what the fleet and Earth corporations can do to an unspoiled planet.” She exhaled a long, deep breath. “I can’t blame your people for defending your home. I just wish it had turned out differently.”

  Aidan studied her for a long moment, his blue eyes coolly serious. Then he gestured at the fruit she’d forgotten she was holding and said, “You’ll want to peel that first. The skin’s edible, too, but it has a bitter aftertaste.”

  He walked into the trees a short way, back turned as he crouched down to gather his few things.

  Rachel watched him go, then took out her small pocket knife an
d quickly peeled the fruit, making a small pile of the skin and covering it with detritus from the forest floor, before walking over to offer him a piece of the fruit. It felt like a peace offering, and maybe it was. Because she’d meant what she said. None of the crew had been friends, but she mourned their deaths. She would have fought side by side with them against an enemy. But not when it came to the ruthless destruction of a planet, and not if the job was murder for hire.

  Aiden look up, his expression registering surprise at the offering. His smile was slight, but pleasure was in his voice when he said, “You’re much neater than I would have been.”

  “It’s a curse,” she said, only half joking, then tasted the fruit cautiously. It was sweet but still refreshing, with the consistency of a peach from back home. She split the remaining pieces between her and Aidan, which continued to amuse him, though he winked his thanks and ate his share. She could have eaten more, but she didn’t know if there was more. He’d only brought one piece, and besides, strange fruit could sometimes wreak havoc on an unprepared intestinal tract. She pulled out an energy bar instead. She’d never had dinner last night—her plans being interrupted by the apelike creature and then Aidan’s arrival—and she was hungry. She offered Aidan a bar, too, but he declined.

  “I don’t know how you eat those things,” he commented. “At least the ones we make have some moisture to them.”

  Rachel tilted her head curiously. “You make energy bars?”

  “We call them trail bars but, yeah. There’s a lot more fruit and honey in ours.”

  “That’s because they don’t have to last as long. These are guaranteed fresh for five years.”

  He made a face.

  “Nobody actually likes them,” she admitted. “They’re meant to be nutritional, not tasty.”

  He laughed. “Well, when you’ve finished your nutrition, maybe we can look at the map. I’d like to take as much advantage of the day as possible. We can travel at night if we have to, but it’ll be harder on you.”

  “Why not you?”

  He pointed at his eyes. “I see better at night. Evolutionary adaptation.”

  Rachel stepped closer, intrigued by this confirmation of her observation about his eyes. “Does everyone on Harp have the same ability?”

  “No. Only some of us.”

  She became aware of two things. One, the reluctance in his voice told her he didn’t want to unravel that particular thread of conversation. Societal exclusion, maybe? The question was whether the eyes were considered a good thing or a bad thing? If he was unwilling to talk about it, however, there was no point in pushing. At least not until she got to know him better. Or until she found someone else who was willing to talk. Which brought her to the second thing.

  Her curiosity about his eyes had left her standing far too close to him. He put a hand on her hip to stabilize her. She blinked in surprise at the unexpected touch, abruptly focusing on him instead of his retinas.

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “No need,” he said smoothly, and there was a trace of heat in his expression.

  Her heart stuttered, but she covered up her own reaction, pulling out the used cleansing wipe that she’d balled up and shoved into her backpack and wiping fruit juice off her face and fingers. Shoving the now twice-used wipe back into her pack, she opened a different zipper pocket and retrieved her map. Unfolding it, she crouched on the ground and then looked up, inviting him to join her.

  “This is an orbital map, which partly explains the bad quality. It wasn’t intended to be used for ground navigation. The rest of the problem is all of this.” She circled her finger, indicating the Green. “It puts out so much heat that, combined with that weird magnetic field of yours, it fucks with the instruments. I’m sure the fleet has more detailed scans, but since I’m also sure this mission wasn’t authorized, they had to make do.” She made a dismissive gesture.

  Aidan hunched next to her, and she was exquisitely aware of how close they were. She could smell the fresh male scent of him, could feel the heat coming off his body. It seemed more than usual. “Usual” meaning the other men she’d been around, mostly the ones she’d worked with in some capacity. She’d had lovers, but nothing serious, and not for a long time, even before she’d joined Wolfrum’s ill-fated mission. And certainly not since. She had a general policy against shipboard romances, though she’d never been close enough to any of Wolfrum’s crew for it to matter.

  Aidan studied the map, giving it a quarter turn, Rachel assumed to line it up with their current position. “You see that?” he asked softly.

  Rachel gave him a sharp look. “What?”

  His gaze was still on the map, but he didn’t seem to be studying it, his thoughts elsewhere. He finally stood up, paced a few feet away from her and then back, standing with both hands on his narrow hips as if trying to decide what to tell her.

  She stood up to meet him. “Is the map inaccurate or—?”

  “No, no. The map’s fine. It’s what it shows” He shook his head. “Or more likely what it doesn’t.”

  “You’re not making any sense. Just tell me.”

  He crouched again, pulling her with him and taking the map from her unresisting hand. “You see this?” He pointed to what looked like a particularly dense band of trees that formed a dark stripe across nearly the entire width of the Green not far from where Rachel figured they were now.

  She nodded. “And there’s the city.” She pointed at the obvious heat signature of Harp’s main population center, ignoring the tiny indicator for the second ship. Both were on the other side of the band from their current location, which seemed to be his concern. “Is that a problem?”

  He snorted a laugh. “Yeah, sweetheart, that’s a problem.”

  She turned her head and gave him a narrow-eyed glare.

  He shook his head impatiently. “Okay, look, I understand your confusion. You look at this lousy map and see a bunch of trees.”

  “The entire Green is a bunch of trees,” she snapped. “What I see there is an area of exceptional density compared to the rest of it.”

  “And you’d be wrong. You have something I can write with?”

  Rachel produced a pencil from another pocket. Pencils were simpler and much more reliable than almost any other option.

  Aidan took it without comment and began making notes. “This is us,” he said, marking the map with the usual X. “This is the city.” Another X, just where the ship’s survey indicated it was. “But that’s where your map goes wrong. Your river’s all fucked up. I’m guessing your instruments are having trouble distinguishing above and below ground water, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is right here.” He made several slashing marks in that dark line of trees.

  “What’s that?” she asked, leaning over to study it.

  “That, sweetheart, is the swamp.”

  Rachel ignored her gut reflex to the “sweetheart” part of his declaration and focused on the rest of it. “The swamp?” she repeated, puzzled. “There’s no swamp on Harp. The geography, the climate…hell, the orbital tilt doesn’t support it. You can’t—” She stopped, aware he was giving her the kind of patient look one did a crazy person who was ranting nonsense. She blew out a breath. Okay, so he obviously knew more about Harp than she did. “Never mind,” she said. “Please continue.”

  He studied her a moment longer, then said, “We do have a swamp, but maybe not the kind you’re used to. Ours is a microclimate created by a deep rift that runs north/south, right where you see it there. There’s no river flow, no lake, so it’s not your usual freshwater swamp, but it acts like one. Rain, and some snow at the northern end, drains down from the ridges, and seeps in from ground water. Since there’s no outlet, it accumulates in the deepest part of the rift and it just sits there, stewing in the heat. It’s only about a mile wide as the crow flies, but neither one of us is a crow. It can take days, or even weeks, to cross. You have to go down one side, transit the swamp itself, and then up the other
side. And that’s just surface stuff. There are things living down there that are deadly, even by Harp standards.”

  Rachel scowled at the map, blaming herself for not having a better one. Sure, she hadn’t planned on hiking through the Green on her own for days, or maybe even weeks. She hadn’t planned on hiking anywhere that didn’t involve returning to the ship at night. But she knew better than to assume the best possible conditions would prevail when visiting an unknown planet like Harp. Of course, part of her optimistic planning had been based on Wolfrum’s involvement and his assurance that Harp’s government had given permission for their journey. Of all the things that she might have foreseen going wrong on this trip, Wolfrum’s complete betrayal of his life’s work would have been the very last.

  “We’ll have to go around,” Aidan said in disgust. “It’ll take three times as long, but there’s no way you’ll make it—”

  “No way I’ll make what?” she demanded. “Look, buddy, I’ve trekked through some of the most dangerous environments in the universe. Hell, I’ve guided treks through those places. I think I can handle this one.”

  “No, you can’t,” he said bluntly. “You people never learn. Harp is unique. That’s a lesson your fleet had to learn to our peril. You must have read the First Con—”

  “Yes, I read Harp’s First Contact report and every report filed since then. I know about the explosion, and I know your planet is deadly, but I have far more experience—”

  “Those reports are limited to the parts closest to the city. They cover the smallest fraction of the Green and its dangers,” he insisted, almost angrily. “You’re well beyond what they deal with, and I’m telling you that you are not prepared.”