“I’ll be yours for as long as you want me,” she whispered.
A purr rattled from him, his hands tightening around her legs. “Never would there be a time or place where I would not need my anastha, or lay my life and honor before you. You may be mine, but I am yours as well,” he replied, the heartfelt lengthiness of his response surprising Terri.
Azan sighed. “You two are disgusting. How unlikely that your relationship survived this long intact. How is that, I wonder? Regardless, it was worth the attempt.”
Veral snorted and shook his head. “You do not understand mating. It is not about what is pleasant in fortunate circumstances, but that which survives and is tempered by life. My anastha is the other half of me. She carries my heart and all of my future, pirate.”
Azan directed a twisted grimace in his direction. “You are saying that because she is capable of carrying your offspring…”
“No,” Veral interrupted, his voice sharp with anger as he cleared rubble that lay in their path. “Offspring are desired but are not the soul of a mating. She is my future not by what her body may issue but that her presence in my life provides a richer meaning by sharing my life with her. She is a light that brings greater clarity to my purpose. Darkness that descends upon us does not extinguish that light, but makes it that much clearer to see when that bond is focused upon rather than things that cannot be changed. She was made to be by my side, and the gods have seen fit to provide her with what she needed to accomplish this. Our experiences together, even the difficult ones, provide the tools.”
“I did not realize that the Argurma were so romantic,” Azan teased with a devilish smirk.
Veral snorted. “It is not romance. It is sound reasoning.”
“So you say… How much longer until we get out of here? I have had all that I can stomach of this mated bliss.”
Her reply was met with a loud chuff from Veral as he peered about. He veered to the left, his limber body practically gliding across the floor with predatory grace that Terri could feel shifting in his muscles.
“The exit is ahead. We will arrive in the main chamber of the wreckage in…”
A loud groan started above them as the entire ship shook, an odd blast shaking it violently, casting apart debris as it fell everywhere. Terri shouted as a large section of the roof began to cave in, the metal buckling as it slid downward at an angle toward them. It squealed and screeched, jumbled among the other sounds as the ship appeared to be tearing apart. She wasn’t even sure she could isolate the sound from that part of the ceiling specifically from the death cries of the ship.
“Veral, the ceiling is collapsing to your right!” she shouted around the sudden pressure of her heart leaping to her throat.
In a lightning-fast response, he spun to the side just enough to see the falling sheets of metal before darting out of range with Azan trailing close behind them. The sounds of falling metal and more distant sliding stone filled the air with such a blast of noise that she was uncertain exactly how long the world fell around them as they raced against destruction. She was aware, however, as the dust settled, that everything in the corridor had changed.
Veral lifted his head, looking around...listening. Terri noted that the AI, whose voice had been garbled during the collapse as it issued barely audible commands to evacuate, made no further attempts to communicate. There was nothing but a yawning gulf of destruction all around them. Terri’s eyes roved over it from where she was still perched overlooking Veral’s shoulder, an uneasy shiver sliding over her skin as she could make out patches of dim sunlight filtering down.
They were now more exposed than they had been, and all that noise…
“I don’t suppose that went unnoticed…” she murmured.
She jerked as one of the large bird-like creatures swept overhead, its wide wings filling the air over the gap in the ceiling as it squawked. She swallowed nervously, but tensed further as she noticed that Veral wasn’t even looking at the animal. Instead, he was completely still, head turned to the left as his expression tightened.
“Wha—”
He shook his head in admonishment, bidding her to be silent as he shifted his weight on his feet. Azan turned in the same direction as she palmed her blaster.
“Experiment 302,” he hissed as the ground quivered with a small vibration, and then another.
The creature emerged from the shadows slowly, languidly, as if it didn’t have a care in the world, secure in the knowledge that its prey wouldn’t be able to outrun it. Unlike the larger monsters, its body was smaller and lithe with six long, narrow legs supported by clawed paws. The fact that it was smaller wasn’t much of a boon, however, since it was still twice as tall as Veral.
The creature looked like no animal that Terri was familiar with. Its face was sharply tapered, six eyes blinking at them, forming a half ring on its face as two pairs of ears flicked and moved. As it stared at them with glowing, blood red eyes, its rigid upper lip rose, revealing sharp teeth offset by four sets of deadly fangs. A sail-like fan of skin at the end of its tail opened and snapped closed again as it studied them. Its mouth opened wider as it snarled just as a long tongue uncoiled, whipping erratically as it vibrated in the air not unlike one of Veral’s vibrissae. This, however, had a hollow, sucker-like tube at the end that made Terri’s stomach heave with fear.
With slow, gliding steps, it moved closer, a low, trembling whine drawing through its throat. The sound was not the pitiful noise made by Krono when he was denied something he enjoyed, but a whine pitched in such a way that it made the hair on her arms stand up. A chill ran through her as it ceaselessly filled the air with desperation.
It was a sound of starvation. The sound of deep-seated hunger.
Veral moved back, one of his hands dropping away from supporting her as he allowed his claws to slide out from his free hand. 302 crouched down further, its muscles coiling as it readied itself to spring. A gurgle rose in Terri’s throat. Exhausted as she was, she couldn’t even help her mate beat the creature back with her handy symbiont as she had before.
It crouched even lower, its belly nearly touching the floor. It sprang at them with a snarl, a sound of rage mixing with its keening cries of hunger. Terri tucked her face into Veral’s neck, prepared to meet her end. A blinding light flickered behind her eyes just as a loud blast cut through the air. Screams of pain rang out, stopping after only a second. Jerking her head up, she stared in awe as the plumes of smoke disappeared, revealing a bubbling mass of the creature lying on the floor. A chuff of laughter left Veral.
“Plasma cannon, warrior class,” he stated with no little pleasure just as a large mass dropped down in front of them.
The figure uncurled as he stood, revealing himself to be an Argurma male somehow even bigger than Veral. His face was broader, with a more sharply defined square jaw. His vibrissae practically stood straight out from his head in an enormous halo as he absorbed information on everything in the area. His expression was hard and foreboding despite the small smile that just barely turned up the edges of his mouth.
“Veral,” he said, his glowing amethyst eyes narrowing.