Page 18 of Silver Slayer

"Cats are considered highly intelligent," I said. "Excellent hunters. Self-possessed. They decide who they allow to touch them."

"Then yes," he said. "Perhaps like a cat."

The analyzer chirped sharply in my hand, pulling me back to the screen. I frowned at the readings scrolling across the display. The biological data fluctuated in bizarre overlapping waves, unlike anything I had documented on this planet so far.

"Wait..." I muttered, staring harder at the display. "What the hell?"

The scan pulsed again. Two distinct rhythmic signatures echoed through the reading. Almost like...

"Two heartbeats?" I whispered.

"An ancillary heart," he said. "It remains dormant until a male finds the female whose spirit complements his." A silence settled between us. I watched his jaw tighten before he added, low enough that I wasn't sure I was meant to hear it, “If only he can prove himself worthy.” He stood abruptly and was already turning away by the time the words reached me.

I watched him retreat across the ruined command deck, his broad shoulders rigid beneath the pale light of emergency lighting. He crossed to the opposite side of the ship and lowered himself heavily onto the floor beside the damaged wall plating, forearms braced on his spread knees, his head bowed as if something weighed on him and had finally become too much to carry.

A strange ache tightened in my chest at the sight of him. We'd met less than an hour ago, fought void weavers together, patched each other's wounds, and somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, some fragile thread had formed between us. Whatever this attachment was, it had happened far too fast and far too intensely for me to trust it.

I wasn't looking for anything here. Not with him. I was eventually going home to Earth, and Vennox belonged to Valose. That alone should have made keeping my distance easy.

So why did he look so alone sitting there, and why did every instinct inside me suddenly want to cross the room and sit beside him?

I forced my focus elsewhere before I did something stupid, like go after him. I hadn't meant to hurt him, but I couldn't let whatever this was go any further. It was easier if we kept that distance.

I tightened my grip on the analyzer and was halfway to the back of the ship when the thing vibrated sharply in my hand. I frowned at the display as the bio-readings surged and fluctuated in dense, overlapping waves, the device struggling to resolve a single, massive lifeform.

“What is it?” Vala asked, stepping in close behind me to peer over my shoulder at the screen.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted, adjusting the scanner’s sensitivity. The readings steadied, collapsing into one dominant signature, massive and closing fast. “Something big is coming.”

Behind us, Truxxet straightened from where he’d been crouched beside Brunnex, his hand moving instinctively to the spear at his side. Tyrk and Ruze exchanged a look of alarm before moving to the shattered viewport, scanning the clearing beyond.

“The void weaver carcasses,” Vala said grimly. “They’re drawing predators.”

I edged toward the shattered viewport, drawn by the movement outside. The others shifted with me in quiet, practiced coordination. Mara pressed in close at my back, Brooke’s grip tightening on my arm, while Vala stepped beside me, his presence steady as he guided us into position.

“Stay silent,” he said, his gaze fixed on the clearing beyond the jagged opening. “And do not move until we know what we’re dealing with.”

Behind us, the Valosian males shifted into defensive positions, forming a loose barrier between the danger outside and the rest of us. Vennox moved in close at my back, not touching, but near enough that I felt the heat of him through the thin fabric of my clothes, his steady breathing a controlled counterpoint to my racing pulse. To my left, Truxxet angled his spear toward the opening, ready, while Ruze checked his weapon with quiet precision, his focus never wavering from the clearing beyond.

Brunnex remained on his pallet where we’d left him, still too injured to move, with Mara at his side. She kept low, one hand braced against his shoulder as if she could anchor him there, her attention fixed on both him and the threat outside. Tyrk positioned himself just in front of them, his body forming a solid line of defense, ready to protect the injured male if anything slipped through the opening.

I crouched at the edge of the viewport, careful to avoid the jagged polycarbon fragments still embedded in the frame. Beyond the shattered opening, the alien clearing stretched in silent menace. The void weaver carcasses we’d left scattered along the ridge had already begun to change, their translucent flesh darkening as some unseen process broke them down.

The analyzer vibrated again, its readings spiking erratically as it tracked the approaching predator. I acknowledged it with a quick tap, then focused on the treeline.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The forest beyond remained still, the alien foliage shifting only with the subtlemovement of the wind. Then, with a sound like thunder, the largest tree at the edge of the clearing simply collapsed.

Not fell—collapsed, as though its internal structure had been dissolved. The massive trunk folded in on itself, its crystalline bark shattering as it hit the ground, spraying phosphorescent liquid. And through the gap it left, a massive creature emerged.

“Fucking Helios!” Truxxet hissed out a curse.

The creature was a nightmare rendered in flesh. Its body resembled nothing so much as a centipede, but scaled to impossible dimensions, each segment the size of a small car, armored plates overlapping in a gleaming carapace of midnight blue. Dozens of jointed legs propelled it forward with horrifying speed, each one tipped with a barbed claw that left deep gouges in the alien soil. Its head, if it could be called that, was a tangle of sensory organs, mandibles, and what looked like thousands of writhing cilia that tasted the air as it moved.

It paused at the edge of the ridge, its massive body rippling as it scented the battlefield. Then, with startling speed, it lunged forward, its front segments rising high into the air before crashing down on the nearest void weaver carcass.

Even from this distance, the sound of its feeding carried. A wet, tearing crunch that rolled across the clearing and settled somewhere deep in my chest where I knew it would stay. The void weaver’s translucent flesh offered no resistance to those massive mandibles. In seconds, nothing remained but a smear of phosphorescent fluid darkening into the soil.

Before it had even finished, a second predator burst from the trees. Smaller than the first, but no less terrifying, a twisted amalgamation of insect and reptile that moved with unsettlingintelligence. It scuttled to the farthest void weaver carcass, its movements calculating as it circled the fallen creature before beginning to feed.