Chapter 3 – Aidro
The Guardian crash-landed miles from our safe zone, but miraculously it landed at a slight angle and Himari and I had been on the side that hadn’t touched the ground. The biggest problem now was that it was still holding her rather tightly. She squirmed as I examined the mechanical arm that had grabbed her. It looked almost like the arm you’d see on a science exploration drone, and I wondered briefly if it considered Himari a specimen for study.
“It’s too tight; it hurts,” she whimpered, pulling at the metal, and I turned back to her. Her obvious pain made me a little queasy. The pretty little scientist was not supposed to be in pain, not ever. She was supposed to be irritating me with chatter about plants.
Frantically I tugged at wires and joints, finally locating a hydraulic pump and slicing through it with my knife. With a hiss of air the arm loosened, and she fell to the ground, gasping. I resisted the urge to pick her up and cuddle her, because I wasn’t entirely sure she would appreciate my touch. The effort of resisting made my chest ache.
“Thank you,” she whispered, standing a little shakily and smiling up at me, her dark eyes wide and dilated with fear. “And thank you for that craziness with the axe. You didn’t have to risk yourself for me.”
“You said it yourself: Your role is more important than mine.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She frowned, lifting her hand to a cut on my shoulder. She then reached into the little bag she had around her waist and pulled out a first aid kit, sorting through it before dabbing at my cut with an antiseptic wipe.
“You carry a first aid kit around?”
“It’s just bandages and antiseptic. Some of the plants have thorns, and you can never be too careful with new species. I also have water and a few protein bars.And you should wear a shirt,” she said as she dabbed a second cut, and I hissed in pain. “You would have had some protection.”
I shot her a look. “That’s what you have to say about what just happened?”
“Umm. I mean, how was I to know that it was lurking right there?”
“Because we told you not to go outside the perimeter,” I snapped. And just like that the relief of knowing that she was unharmed faded, and a new set of worries rushed in. “How are we going to survive this? I don’t have the goggles.”
She tilted her head. “The goggles? All we need to survive is goggles?”
“Trina’s goggles help us see the drones. You can fight what you can see, and they’re not that difficult to disable now that we know how. But with their cloaking technology, how am I supposed to protect you? They could pop up at any moment.”
“Are you supposed to protect me? Can’t we protect each other?” She spun around, her eyes searching the sky and vegetation that surrounded us, and my hands twitched. But my needs had to be buried, because Himari’s safety was the only priority.
“No. I’m supposed to protect you. And we have no shelter, so what do we do? How do I keep you safe when we’d have to head out across the open grasslands that are patrolled by murder drones…” I trailed off when I realized Himari wasn’t paying attention to me. She was poking the side of the drone.
“It’s a ship. Or a shuttle, anyway.” She yanked at something, frowning, tracing her fingers over a crack in the metal paneling. This one was larger than most that we’d encountered since the crash, though the ones we’d battled in orbit had been massive. “Is this a door?”
“Theywere originally manned. Before the Meraxians all perished in the Great War, the big ones were some sort of transport drones. The small ones were used for security and deliveries.”
“This was surely built after that, though. You’d think the AI would eliminate that part of the design as it built and repaired new drones. Perhaps it’s not that adaptable,” she said, tugging at a panel on the side. It popped open, and she stepped inside. “Fascinating.”
“Hamari, that doesn’t look like a good idea!” I yelled after her. This woman had zero common sense. Less than zero. Negative common sense. I refused to follow her into the innards of the thing that had just tried to collect her as a sample. I was nervous to think about her in there alone, but I could ignore my emotions. Witnessing the attack had shaken me to the core. Watching her snatched away by that thing and thinking I’d lost her had been the stuff of nightmares. I took a deep, shuddering breath as I forced myself to wait.
She peeked back out and waved, irritatingly cheerful, then tilted her head, studying me. “Aidro, are you shaking? Are you injured worse than you’re letting on?”
“No,” I snapped. “Please come out here.”
“Actually,I think we can hide in here while we figure out what to do. The berry bushes are everywhere, so we have something to eat. They’ll give us some fluids, too, though we’ll need to find water, because my little bottle won’t be enough. But things are not so dire, Mr. Crankypants.”
“Mister what?” I frowned, narrowing my eyes at her. “Please step out of the ship.”
“Listen, I understand that you’re afraid of it, but it’ll be okay.” She held out her hand. “I’ll be there with you. It’s a weird thing to be afraid of, though, after you went all badass with your axe.”
My mouth ticked up at the corner, even though I told it not to. “You think it was badass?”
“And sexy, too. The first thing, not the second thing, was reckless.”
“Are you really in a place to be criticizing recklessness right now, Himari?”
“Right. So I can admit that I was wrong about the barrier. But it wouldn’t be worth getting yourself killed.” Was she kidding? I couldn’t tell. It was worth getting myself killed. The other choice would have been unthinkable.
“I was following the Tholkon Code. Besides, my moves were better than what you did, which was hang there and scream,” I muttered, but I followed her into the ship because she was right that it might serve as good camouflage. “We need to figure out if there’s a homing beacon of some sort that’ll bring other ships here,” I said, pulling out my communicator and switching over to the signal scanner app. Usually I used it to determine whether a meeting we were in was bugged, but I figured it should work for these purposes, too.