Page 17 of Healer Hunted

I had a sick feeling in my stomach as he started to run the scanner over me with far more precision than he did last time. “A tracker?” I asked him. Had the Dragon tagged me like an animal? Was that how they had tracked us here?

“There,” he said and one long finger pointed at a spot on my bicep. Fuck, I knew what that meant, he’d have to cut it out. Did that medkit have any kind of pain relief in it? Anything that would be safe to use on me? I was going to go ahead and say no, the Dragon was too much of a cheapskate to bother with things such as painkillers for her slaves.

Luka’s eyes were deadly serious as he riffled through the small kit, taking out a scalpel in sterile packaging, and some bandages. Yeah, I was right, that didn’t look like much. I bravely stuck out my arm for him, my eyes on the cave entrance. He had to hurry, if they located the entrance to this place while he was working on me, we’d be in real trouble.

I felt his fingers brush across my skin, “Easy Noa, this is what I’m good at. I’ll be quick.” One hand pinched gently at my skin and I wondered if he could feel the tracker that way. If I’d known it was there, would I have felt it? “On the count of three, take a deep breath.”

I didn’t want to do this, but a little pain was nothing compared to our freedom. So I counted to three, focusing on Pato when he crawled into my lap and clutched his little fingers around my hand. The cut seared into my skin, prickling, then there was a sharp pinch that hurt far worse when he dug his tweezers inside the small incision. “Got it,” he said, and then he was pressing a bandage on my bleeding injury. “Hold it tight, I’ll be right back.”

With my fingers I pressed against the small cut, it wasn’t so bad. The tracker hadn’t been embedded deeply, but I’d seen Luka’s face. He’d felt every second of it, just like I had. That didn’t seem like the best trait to have as a doctor, especially a surgeon. Although I supposed that most of his patients would be under anesthetic normally.

Digging out some tape from the medkit, I secured the bandage. Then I set myself the task of cleaning everything back up and making sure our meager belongings were packed. I didn’t know how we’d get out of here yet, but I was sure we’d think of something. At least now the Dragon and her goons wouldn’t be able to follow us.

Luka returned after what seemed like an hour but was probably only ten minutes. He had flakes of ash in his hair and a sheen of sweat coating his pretty skin. He was grinning triumphantly, “I located a heat vent further in the cave system, with a shaft going up to the surface. I threw the tracker in and I’m pretty sure it just floated right on out on that hot current of air.”

I hoped he was right. We crawled to the opening of the cave together, hiding behind the gleaming purple crystals that surrounded the opening. The guards searching on the ground were returning at a fast jog to the landed shuttle. The second one, that Luka had mentioned had been circling the area, was flying off into the distance. Were they following the signal of the tracker? Did the actually believe we were suddenly traveling that fast?

“Come on, quickly,” Luka urged me as the second shuttle took off and followed the first. We couldn’t be sure if anyone had stayed behind to watch for us, so we kept low to the ground and ran or jogged for each spot of cover we could find. My shoes were really starting to fall apart but I didn’t complain, there was no stopping until we’d gotten far enough away from that cave to be sure they wouldn’t find us. Surely they would come back to that area and search it again when they realized they were following a floating tracker the hot winds here had gotten hold of.

It was fully dark and we were both panting for breath, dirty and sweaty. Luka suddenly pulled me to a stop in the safety of a large, melted, twisted rock outcropping. “Let me fix up your shoes before you hurt yourself again,” he said. Then he proceeded to tear up a portion of one of our blankets and snugly tied them around my feet. We drank some water, ate a ration bar, and shared a quick kiss. Then we were back to hiking but at a slightly more sustainable pace this time.

The trek to the science outpost took us a good eight hours, I was a wrung-out mess by the end of it. If not for Luka making an admirable attempt at fixing up my terrible, torn to shreds, shoes, I would have never made it. By the end of our hike, the strips of fabric, hung in tatters, but they’d done their job, I had no new cuts or scraps.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at the outpost, whether it was going to be big or small, with many people or few. It was a dome at least ten times smaller than that of the resort, shimmering silvery against the purpling sky. It was going to be dawn soon, but we didn’t fear another round of search vehicles this time, technically, Luka’s mom was not allowed to fly her shuttles near the research outpost. Luka said it was likely she wouldn’t risk such a thing because she wouldn’t want to draw any kind of attention to her operations from the Aderian government.

I could see a small landing area cleared near the dome, a square bit of rock outcropping that looked solid, steady. There was one ship on it, a re-supply ship of some kind, it had a big rounded belly, and a blunt nose. It looked more like a squatting toad than anything space worthy, but I’d seen ships just like it come and go from the resort’s landing area, they were as reliable and steady as an atom clock.

Inside the dome, a squat low building with a bristling array of antenna and disks took precedence, but they also had what appeared to be a greenhouse so they must grow at least a portion of their own food themselves. There was no sign of anyone outside, and only a few lights were on in the outpost.

“We’re not going in, we’re going to board that ship and wait until it’s left the planet before we make contact with the pilot,” Luka said quietly next to my ear, his lips brushing against the ear shell, a pleasant shiver shot down my spine, and I turned into his body, letting myself rest against his firm chest.

“You really think that pilot will help us? That’ll he’ll let you contact your friends once we’re out of the system?” I asked Luka, still not trusting the idea of just blindly putting our safety into the hands of a crew of Aderians Luka didn’t even know. Even though he’d told me repeatedly that most of his species was empathic to some degree and would abhor all the things his mother and his cousins had done… I still struggled to wrap my head around it.

I would put my faith in Luka though, he’d proven to be true, he’d been kind to me, and he was kind to his monkey. So when he lead the way between the rocks dotting the landscape, I followed, and when he helped me climb onto that plateau, I let him.

That ship was much larger up close, looming over us when we rushed across the flattened rock. It had a dull black finish that was dotted with pockmarks and dents, a ship that had been in service for some time. When I saw several panels that had been welded with clumsy, ugly fixes, I worried if this ship wasn’t going to fall apart when it tried to break the atmosphere. I had heard that leaving Jihari took a little something extra, that the planet’s gravity had an extra bit of punch for any ship trying to leave.

Luka was quick to locate a hatch into the ship, and to my surprise, it wasn’t locked when he spun the handle to open it. “Who in their right mind would walk up to a ship out here?” Luka explained with a shrug, “Not as if this is a densely populated city hub.” He had a point, none of the resort’s guests ever ventured outside of the dome, unless it was in one of the special windowed shuttles for a tour of some of the volcanoes.

He boosted me up through the hatch and I crouched just inside the darkened interior of the ship, listening intently for any sign of life. Pako leaped through the hatch after me and he ran on all fours, quickly disappearing inside the ship. “Damn it Pako, come back here!” I hissed in a low whisper, if there was anyone aboard the ship and they saw him…

I turned to look over my shoulder just in time to watch Luka hoist himself inside. It was a hatch at the rear of the squatting toad, so we were in the cargo area, it had mostly been emptied as the ship had unloaded its cargo here. But there were stacks of old crates, empty, that would make a good hiding spot for us.

“He’ll come back, don’t worry,” Luka assured me, “Let’s make ourselves comfortable back here.” He didn’t even bother to look at the front of the ship, towards the two stairs leading to a corridor and what was likely the engine, bridge, and crew quarters of the ship. I wondered how many people manned a short-range supply vessel such as this.

We didn’t want to move any of the already secured crates about in case it would tip anyone off, but we wedged one open and climbed inside it. Luka used a bit of scrap found inside the crate to carefully prop it open so that the crate couldn’t close on us and prevent us from getting any oxygen. “They oxygenate the hold, right? When in space?” I asked him, staring longingly at the stairs towards the rest of the ship and the possibility of a shower and a real bed. The hike had left us covered in ashes once again, and I felt icky from sweat too.

“It will be cold, but it will be safe,” Luka assured me, his face breaking out into a grin that I could see by the light of one of our precious raw sunstones. “I’ll keep you warm,” he added, and he waggled his eyebrows, I even saw his pointed ears twitch through his long black hair.

Making a nest with the blankets, we risked leaving out a sunstone a little longer while we shared some of our food. I didn’t complain about the tough, chewy texture of the bars, even if I was getting really sick of eating the same thing for months on end. Pato returned while we were eating, but he turned up his little nose for the proffered piece of ration bar so we had to assume he had found food somewhere else. I just hoped he hadn’t made such a mess of things that the crew would notice it as soon as they came back.

We tucked the sunstone away, much to Pato’s chagrin, but the little monkey curled up on the blanket we’d tucked them under and went to sleep. Luka and I did the same, wrapping ourselves in our second blanket and in each other’s arms, we’d best try to get some rest after that long and difficult hike.

It wasn’t until a vibration rattled through our hiding place that I shot awake, only to be reassured by Luka’s steady, calming presence. “The ship is taking off, hold on tight, we’ll be losing gravity for a moment,” he warned me. What followed was a hectic, and on my side, rather panicked moment as I fought to find a good place to anchor myself when everything went weightless. It could have been a fun experience, but in the dark, with nothing to orient myself on, it was pretty horrifying. When strands of Luka’s long hair swept against my cheek I almost screamed.

“Sssh, it’s okay Noa, I got you,” Luka murmured in my ear, his arm curling around my waist and anchoring me to his solid body. We crashed into the bottom of the crate, our blankets tangled around us, and Pato angrily squeaking from beneath some flap of fabric. Luka let go of me in favor of digging out his animal companion while I scrambled to locate all our sunstones and stuff them in our bag.

We’d settled down, huddled together in the dark under the steady hum of the ship’s engine, avidly listening for any sound of someone approaching. I wasn’t sure when exactly Luka thought we’d be alright showing ourselves to the crew, but I was fairly certain, now wasn’t it. We’d only just broken atmosphere, to be out of range of the planet and his mother’s influence, we needed to at least be out of the system. Not that I was onboard in the first place with showing ourselves to the Aderian crew, nothing was stopping them from ratting us out for a reward. Nothing except for Luka’s assurance that most Aderians were empaths.