Page 13 of Logic Broken

“We both came, but there was no undressing and no… joining of bodies?” I tried to explain, dragging my fingers along the soft weave of his shirt. He made a good pillow and now I was getting drowsy. This was not a bad place to go to sleep for a while, we were safe, and Akri was finally holding me in his arms again. I’d been craving that ever since that first night.

“Ah, I see,” he murmured. “Rest. This is an optimal time for it.” With those final words, I surrendered myself to settling in for a nap. We probably both would have liked to clean ourselves up a little, but since our supplies were at our feet, there was just no way to reach them. It would have to wait.

Under the noise of the last crates being loaded onto the ship, I surrendered myself to sleep. Only to wake up what felt like seconds later to Akri gently squeezing my shoulder. “We have arrived, Jenny,” he said quietly. “And we need to hurry before they start unloading.”

I was still groggy and a little out of it but I hurriedly wiped my face and checked his chest to see if I hadn’t drooled all over him in my sleep. Akri was already busy getting the hatch opened, which was much harder now that cargo was stacked almost entirely up against the wall. We had to contort ourselves pretty far to crawl out of the tiny gap left to us, and Akri had to help me pull to get my pack of supplies free.

I only knew the plan in rough strokes; Akri needed to get on this base to make use of their supercomputer. He’d shown me the green gemstone amulet he wore, indicating that it was the storage device he wanted to crack. Beyond that? I had no clue, but Akri was sure of where we should be going, so I followed his lead.

He disabled some alarms on a small emergency hatch, and then the two of us slipped outside into the cold desert night. We were beneath the belly of the short-range supply ship, which squatted like a giant toad on the landing pad. The cold air made my skin break out in goosebumps, but there was no time to grab my thick coat from my bag.

The two of us had to jog across the small landing area for cover behind a rock formation before anyone came out onto the landing pad to unload this ship. If it was anything like how deliveries were often timed down to the minute back on Earth, it wouldn’t be long before they came to empty the ship.

What took my breath away was the shimmering white facility that lay beyond the landing pad. It was a bit like a mirage in the desert, made of quartz stone that reflected heat back into the desert during the day. It was much bigger than I expected it to be and far prettier too. I’d been imagining a gray lab with antennas on the roof and a big dome somewhere. Or maybe some kind of evil supervillain lair. This just looked like a sprawled-out office complex made of the purest white stone. Green plants dangled over the edges of the roof and down the walls, and the clatter of a fountain could even be heard in the distance. This was built not just to be functional but beautiful.

We ducked behind a pile of rocks just as the noise of the cargo hatch opening disturbed the silence of the desert. “We wait. Once all this has settled down and the sun is up, we will breach the facility.” I didn’t like the sound of waiting till sunrise; it would get super warm out here almost as soon as the light started hitting the sands. I’d burn to a crisp if we didn’t have adequate cover and water. A pile of rocks didn’t count as cover since it only kept us out of sight of the people on the landing pad…

“This way, if my information is correct, this area is abandoned right now.” Akri’s tentacle on my shoulder tugged me away from the rocks, and I followed his low crouched run across the sands to an outbuilding in the distance. Some kind of garage by the looks of it.

The sudden hand on my arm stopped me in my tracks, “On my mark, run as fast as you can. Hit the wall there and stay in place until I say otherwise,” Akri instructed me, his tentacle pointing at a specific spot along the wall. I felt extremely exposed without the cover of the rocks, just sitting there on the sand while I waited for his signal. When it came, it felt like my arms were clumps of ice, though it was only half a minute at most. The two of us sped across the remaining stretch to the building as fast as we could run in the loose sand. I did as he said, thudding my body up against the freezing stone wall, and then I didn’t move until he told me otherwise.

My teeth chattering, my body trembling from the cold, I was not the best statue, but I sure tried. He was timing our movements to avoid camera detection; that was the only explanation, though I had no clue how he could possibly know all that. Akri was right next to me, not even winded from our run in the difficult terrain. His shoulder against mine, one tentacle curling around my neck, they were the only points of heat on my body.

At his mark, we scuttled along the wall to a metal side door next to the much bigger garage doors. Akri had a little gadget in hand already, and it made short work of the lock, allowing us inside the building in a matter of seconds. I froze in place once there, the complete darkness blinding me, but at least the air inside here was much warmer than outside and my body stopped shaking.

When the lights came on, I was blinded again, my eyes aching from the sudden transition. Akri didn’t seem to have any such problems, taking my backpack from my shoulders, pulling out my coat, and draping it around me with care. “My apologies Jenny; I should have taken into account the temperature regulation of your body.” And then he added much less stiffly, “I can’t believe your teeth clack together like that when you’re cold. It seems so inefficient.” There was a teasing note in his voice that invited me to laugh with him. Now that I no longer felt like a frozen Popsicle, that was easy.

“Come on, we will hide here before we make our way into the base.” Akri urged me away from the workbench-lined wall right off the garage bay filled with various all-terrain vehicles. There were several doors leading away from this garage area, and he picked the nearest one, showing me into what had to be some kind of break room. I was very grateful when this place proved to be air-conditioned to just the right temperature for me.

As far as hiding places went, this was definitely a step up from the last one, space-wise. I convinced Akri to eat, and then the two of us hunkered down for the next few hours, waiting for our window of opportunity. We filled the time talking, planning out our next moves, or rather, Akri explaining what was ahead of us. Then he told me little stories about each of his friends back on ‘home,’ as he called the ship he previously lived on.

Vagabond

Sunder

I jogged to the bridge just as Kitan and Chloe dropped us out of FTL on the edge of Ovt’s solar system. The twin suns permeated this part of space with visible purple light; they heated the two planets in the Goldilocks zone to high temperatures. One planet was a desert rich with minerals and ores. The other was a tropical jungle with high humidity that only a few species preferred, species like the Sythral such as Drameil.

Aggy was standing at the coms console with her feet braced to absorb the changing speed. Her long brown hair hung in thick, luscious waves down her sweater-clad back, and the simple ‘leggings’ she wore lovingly clung to her curvy behind. My tail twitched at the sight, my eyes lingering on her ass just a little longer.

“Sunder!” Ziame greeted me, and I jerked my eyes off my mate to look at the Captain sitting in his chair on the bridge. He’d called me to let me know we were arriving. Now it was up to me to figure out what the situation was down on the planet. I tapped my closed fist to my chest in greeting and nodded at the pilot and navigator couple sharing a heated look, as usual lost in each other.

“Let me get in touch with my contacts,” I announced, and I hurried past everyone so I could curl both wing and arm around my smiling mate. “Hi, beautiful,” I said to her, tipping her chin up with a claw so I could kiss her. “Let’s go rescue our wayward AI.”

With her eyes on me, I was extra aware of doing a good job, the urge to preen for her as though I were a youngling powerful. Then my own youngling came racing onto the bridge, followed by his adopted sibling. Respectively gray and blue, the two were a striking contrast to each other and greatly differed in size as well. With Jet and Amar watching me with complete admiration on their faces, I couldn’t help but add a little flourish to each touch of the console, sharing a wink with my son as I did so.

“I have something,” I announced after only a few minutes. A store that Akri had visited had lit up on my searches, and a contact I had on the planet had given me the lowdown on what clientele it catered to. “This has to be the store that made the amulet Brake was wearing in stasis. Akri visited the shop; he must have hoped he could decode the data on it with their help.”

Aggy shook her head, “More likely, he hacked into their system and took all information they had on it. He wouldn’t have asked. They wouldn’t have given him what he wanted if they had it anyway.” She pointed a graceful hand at my display, “Look at the names of their clients your contact supplied; those are all shady people. Including Drameil.” She was right.

“So now we know why he came to this planet,” Ziame said, “Do we know if the authorities managed to arrest him?” That was a worry we’d all struggled with over the past few days, but Da’vi had gone above and beyond to give us extra speed for this journey. We’d halved our time in part by risking a dangerous smuggler’s route past Serant, home to the barbaric Naga.

“My search so far indicates that he and an escaped human slave are still on their most wanted list,” I announced. The words were met with a cheer from everyone present. Jet bounced on his feet and flapped his wings, and hugged Amar to let his younger sibling know that Uncle Akri was being a badass.

Thorin was the only one who hadn’t responded to that news. He was hunched over the tactical console with a deep frown on his elfin face. Just as I looked at him, he jerked upright, the leather of his jacket creaking. “Oh shit, I spot Drameil’s warbird in orbit over Ov’Korad. He beat us here…”

Chapter 9

Akri