Page 30 of 20% Stud 80% Muffin
I paced like a helpless idiot, eyeing the hoverbike I had never learned to fly. The morning sun turned the sono’s pink walls an orange that reminded me of vomit.
The reply from Sisip was taking much too long. It grated on my nerves to ask Sisip for help, but my crew backed me up one hundred percent without bombarding me with a million questions, keeping my fraying sanity in check.
All the waiting left my imagination running wild to place my Makir in the evil clutches of an alien villain, about to be eaten.
My Makir?
Tino took a long drink from a container of javae as he exited the sono. “Sisip is putting together a team. We’ll meet them at the base of the Towhees’ aviary in one moon.” Tino relayed Sisip’s com, and three determined heads nodded back at me.
Damn it! It will take forever to assemble a crew this early in the morning.
“Bish, you need food.” JayJay gripped my elbow, yanking me out of my stupor.
In dry clothes and armed, the Rock Dwellers bristled with knives. Sully tucked me in front of JayJay like a child on his hoverbike. My cheeks burned, but I stuffed my embarrassment into the deep recesses of my mind as I white-knuckled the handholds. My unease grew so great I rocked forward on the seat, wanting to take control and leave everyone behind. I needed to protect Makir all by myself. Prove myself to him.
The downdraft of the engines coated us in a cloud of pink dust, and we lurched ahead. My connection to Makir hummed with tension and pulled directly toward the Towhees. Tether. I rolled the label over in my mind. We were tethered?
Though I was one step closer to Makir, my foot bounced so hard against the hovercraft that JayJay clamped his boot over it to hold it down.
At last, the steep trail to the Towhees’ aviary, perched high above us in the shadows, opened before us. My foot resumed its restless tapping while we waited for Sisip, and once again my mind played havoc with my nerves conjuring visions of Makir in the venomous mouth of some giant alien.
In a haze of dawn-lit dust, three enforcers arrived with Sisip and dismounted. Loaded with gear, a blaze-orange spinal board hovered behind one of the bikes. Fuck! My heart drummed. Would Makir need to use that? A clock appeared in my mind. The second hand hung suspended, paused, and the next tick would mean detonation. We needed to fucking go.
After what felt like hours, Sisip stood before our search party on the dusty ground, legs spread wide, and spoke in a voice that demanded attention. “Thanks for volunteering to search on such short notice. I know for many of you, you’re sleep—”
“Let’s go! We need to go!”
“Can you lead us to him?” Sisip’s hand rat-a-tat-tatted against her thigh.
“Yes.” The word flew out of my mouth before I considered what it meant.
Sisip ignored my biting tone and placed JayJay and me at the front of the search party. Her gaze dropped from my shoulders to my waist before she pulled a belt out of her gear bag and wrapped it around me. Silently, she tucked a long dagger into the sheath that now hung at my side and patted it before her eyes caught mine. Though her face remained free of judgment, my cheeks flushed red.
I can’t even protect myself. How am I going to protect Makir? Trying to remain neutral, my eyes scanned Sisip up and down. She oozed confidence, and her hair was nice, I supposed. Is this what Makir finds attractive? She’s much more competent than me.
“Thanks,” I growled, “Let’s go.” The hoverbike vibrated between my legs and JayJay formed a solid wall behind me. To our left, Sisip’s hand circled in the airin a signal to head out, and the rest of the team shot off, filling the air with a loud drone.
With Makir’s rescue in motion, I focused one hundred percent of my attention on the strange link between us and slowly led the caravan. JayJay quickly figured out my hand directions and flew where I guided him, taking my cue from the tether’s strong pull. The dangerous vibes quieted, but replacing them was something just as urgent. I shook my hands out, trying to relax, but they wanted to grip the tether as if it were physical and yank Makir straight into my arms.
I can’t see a thing, so why do I know where he is?
“Doesn’t look like they camped here,” Sisip said as we arrived at their base camp. Four hoverbikes stood neatly parked below a giant rocky outcrop, and Makir’s beat-up duffel bag sat next to a dip in the ground that hadn’t yet been slept in. I fingered his pelts. His scent was too old to be fresh.
The Rock Dwellers’ sonorous humming broke my increasingly disturbing train of thought—jaws clamping over Makir’s head.
One of the enforcers approached me. “What are they doing?” he asked, as if I had a clue.
The Rock Dwellers caressed the rocks as if they’d found a long lost family member. Sisip sidled closer to me. “They’ve been here nearly a year now, and all they’ve seen is the silty pale pink earth of Tern.” She idly thumbed the holster on her hip. “I’ve seen pictures of their home planet, and it looks a lot like this.”
Spikes of ebony stood before us as if they’d erupted from the ground. The morning sun glistened on the rocks and would have been beautiful on a different day. Right now, it was nothing more than an obstacle course made up of shattered rock so sharp it cut like glass.
My eyes fixed on where JayJay, Tino and Sully stood humming. Not unlike a holy pilgrimage, it was as if they were reconnecting and recharging their spirits, worshipping the rocks. My skin itched, a fire spread through my chest, and my muscles bunched and grew. Makir was close.
Enough of this singing already. It’s time for action.
A flash of white caught my eye, and I scrabbled up the rocks, cutting through the calluses on my hands for a closer inspection. The tiny pricks of pain were not enough to compete with the agonizing pulling of my muscles as they stretched to their fullest. My bicep expanded to the point it almost tore into two. First a tether, now this?
A white beaver, the same type of creature Makir had trapped when his hoverbike had broken down and trapped us in the wastelands, lay dead in the snare in front of me. My imagination concocted an alien creature strangling Makir in the same way, a sharp wire against his neck.
