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I winced as I landed behind him on the saddle, my leg still not recovered from where I’d ground it to a pulp against the volcano last week. A moment later, the dorat’s soft paws settled in my lap, and I sighed when she let me smooth my hand up to her head, petting her. She blended with my tattered clothes, invisible to anyone but me.
My large hand dwarfed Saluda’s much smaller shoulder, where I squeezed it. “Nice work out there.” Then I opened my com to Hill. “Report back to Sisip at the west entrance and rest up.”
Saluda landed near my upside-down hovee. I stifled a groan as I bent to turn the ignition. The engine stuttered and jerked, spraying Saluda in greasy starbug remains, and I laughed. A piercing pain had me clutching my rib cage.
“You think that’s funny, huh?” Smoke shot from his nostrils as he jumped out of the way. “I think the team needs to know you let little itty bitty bugs crash you. That’s whatIthink will be funny.” Saluda smeared goopy guts over his jacket, grinning while making the mess worse. “Blant, I didn’t think anything smelled worse than hellsna breath.”
I told Saluda to report to Sisip and waved him off. Favoring my sore leg, I slowly repositioned it over the seat and adjusted the footrest. A few more dings decorated the hovee’s silver housing, but it got me in the air.
If it lightened the mood, Saluda could embarrass me all he wanted, though Makir shouldn’t have to deal with my carelessness. I’d clean out the engine. A wet nose nudged my hand and pulled me from my thoughts, where I hovered above the wasteland’s wreckage.
“We need that bloodroot fungus, little dorat.” I ran my hand over her soft spine, adjusted the bandage on my head and massaged my leg. “Let’s get some food and sleep.”
I was chasing sundown when I parked my battered hovee in the temporary bay and blew the sticky guts out with a blower wand. Makir was a genius when it came to patching up the fleet. They may not have looked any prettier when finished, but they sure moved fast. I had complete confidence that my hovee would be tuned to perfection the next time it went out. As I limped to the lift tube, I hoped to reach my room before a new catastrophe kept me from bed.
The lift tube shot up the side of the volcano to the entrance. Before it opened, the dorat leaped to the ground, preparing to escape to our little private cave, and I braced for the barrage ahead.
“Protector JayJay, great work as usual,” Efred exclaimed as he stepped into the lift, passing me. I smoothed out my limping gait and moved into the lobby. Judging by the effortless way his scales tucked into his body, he was no longer in pain and would soon be out of his sling.
“You’ll be back out there in no time.” I mentally added him back into my team’s rotation.
D’Rasma and D’Argon slapped me on the back, sending jolts of pain through my ribs as I moved through the upper cave lobby. Bathed in orange, light licked over the black volcanic rock like flames.
The brothers’ sharp-toothed Boola grins beamed at me, and D’Rasma’s eyes sparkled when he said, “Have a good sleep, Protector.”
“Protector JayJay, we’ve got them exactly where we want them, right?” another young enforcer called out, darting down the tunnel, likely to relay a message. The thick volcanic rock blocked coms in the lower cavern.
“One hundred percent.” What else could I tell the fresh-faced Boola?
“Give the male a break.” D’irk held out a hot drink for me, then cleared the way to a quiet corner away from the main lobby that had been transformed into a command center. “You look like a heap of mantu dung.”
“Feel like it too.” I didn’t need to pretend with D’irk, but morale needed to be maintained for anyone passing by, so I forced my battered body to stand tall. Hot javae warmed my insides, and I took another long sip. “Where’s Sisip?”
“I sent her to bed,” D’irk replied.
“Good male. She’s no good to us if she burns out.”
D’irk’s expression remained flat, but the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Great, you’ll understand when I keep you grounded tomorrow.”
“That’s not—”
He spoke over me when I went to protest. “Now go clean up and eat. And for the goddess Sola’s sake, go to the infirmary tomorrow. Sisip will brief you at mid-rotation.”
Then, before I could say another word, he pointed toward the long passage that tunneled to the volcano’s humid center.
The kitchen was empty. I sighed, relieved at no longer having to hide my weariness, as I limped to one of a dozen tables Geo had built, piled high with graneth puffs and mantu sandwiches and some sort of tinga dish. My mouth watered at the sight. With a sandwich between my teeth and a second in my pocket, I shuffled to my room without bumping into another soul. The shower I needed would have to wait until tomorrow because my leg grew stiffer with every step.
As I slid the door open, the aroma of the most beautiful tree on Yagras, the linnea, filled my nose. But linnea didn’t grow here.
I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought. The scrape on my scalp had crusted over where I rubbed it.
Not sure whether she would eat it, I set the second sandwich near the door for the dorat. In moments, my ruined clothes landed in a heap. Sighing, I poured a few trumpet flowers of water over my head and body. The liquid absorbed into the soft moss under my feet. Through the warm orange glow of the cave, I trudged, bleary-eyed, to my beckoning blankets.
The dorat paced over the quilted fabric, lit up like a fiber-optic display, bits of sandwich hanging from her whiskers. I smiled, happy to have done something for her for a change. She arched her back as if affronted at having to wait for me.
I dropped to a crouch, my throbbing leg making itself known, when the scent of my favorite flower from home hit me like a laser blaster, weakening my knees. “Ginger?”
The dorat arched her back and bared her teeth before camouflaging. Her wordless message was clear. Who the blant’s in my bed?
