Chapter 19

Chigs's feet shushed over the sand, kept from sinking by his ionic powers. Every inch of his skin felt alive, sensitive to Emmy's reassuring weight on his back, her breath warming his neck as he moved. He hadn't been able to stop grinning since he'd felt the mate bond settle into place.

Emmy is mine. His entire soul sang with elation.

To think she'd been with the rebellion for nearly a year, right in front of him almost every day, and he'd been too blind to notice the perfection so close at hand. No wonder Ellam Cua tormented me with that damnable dream.

Emmy adjusted her grip on him, her soft, feminine scent like a drug in the dusty air.

"Doing okay?" he asked. The edge of a pale pink moon had just crested the horizon, outlining the forms of towering beige rocks that jutted into an obsidian sky.

"Yes," Emmy said, adjusting her hold. "Am I too heavy? Do you need to rest?"

He chuckled. "Not at all. I barely know you're there." Which wasn't quite true, not when his every thought was about her. But now wasn't the time to be thinking about getting her naked again. "How's our progress?" he asked, pulling the scanner from his belt and handing it to her.

She took it, propping it on his shoulder to look at it as he continued walking. "I think we need to head left a bit more."

He adjusted course and trekked on, aiming toward a cluster of rocks in the distance.

"Does it look like those rocks are moving?" Emmy asked, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

He paused, realizing the rocks were indeed wavering like a mirage in the night air. The ground beneath his feet rumbled like the purr of a well-tuned burn drive. This wasn't good.

"What's happening?" Emmy whispered, voice barely audible. But he felt her terror vibrating along their mate bond as if it was his own.

Chigs peered into the darkness, trying to discern the source of the sound. He released one of Emmy's legs and reached for the gun at his hip just as the ground beneath them erupted. He arced through the air, landing hard on the sand before the surface tension gave way like water beneath him. Emmy's weight had vanished.

A shadow blocked the moon's light as a colossal beast with what looked like hundreds of tiny legs rose from the sand. Its body gleamed amethyst in the pale moonlight, hardened by what looked like overlapping plates of metal or chiton.

He'd managed to keep hold of his gun, but it suddenly felt woefully inadequate.

Pulse racing, he scrambled upright and scanned the area for Emmy as the sand bucked and rolled under his feet. He spotted her half-buried in the sand on the other side of the creature, floundering like a drowning woman in its wake.

"Emmy, I'm coming!" The deafening sound of its tunneling filled the air as he leaped past the creature's undulating body. Even with his ionic shielding engaged, the churning sand threatened to swallow him whole.

Emmy's head dipped out of sight, only to rise again a few meters away. Arms flailing, she futilely clawed at the shifting surface. "Chigs!"

The creature drilled forward with relentless speed. Its length seemed to stretch forever, throwing a choking cloud of sand into the air with its many legs.

With a surge of adrenaline, Chigs launched himself up and over the beast's back, landing on the rolling sand and focusing all his energy into his feet to keep himself from sinking. Grasping one of Emmy's arms, he pulled her free of the sucking maelstrom and bolted for some nearby boulders.

The rumbling continued behind him, and he didn't stop running until they were on solid ground. Finally, he paused to catch his breath.

Emmy clung to him, coughing up sand. "What the hell was that thing?"

"No clue," he said, mouth dry with grit. "But at least it isn't chasing us."

They both gazed back at the creature, now fading into the distance, its trail marked by a haze of dust.

Chigs turned back to Emmy, running his hands down her arms and hips to reassure himself she was unharmed. "Are you okay? I thought I'd lost you for a moment."

"Yeah, me too." She hugged him tightly. "I'm okay, though. Thanks for saving me."

"I'll never let anything happen to you," he promised, though fear still rattled his bones. He couldn't wait for this mission to be over. "Let's keep moving. Which direction do we go?"

With a grimace, Emmy looked down at her hands. "I don't know. I lost the scanner."

"Uminaq." Then, realizing the curse might've come across as a reprimand, he added, "Don't worry, we'll find the base without it." He looked around, hoping for some sign of the base on the monotonous landscape.

Emmy pointed at the horizon. "I think we were heading toward that cluster of stars. The one shaped like a crescent."

He smiled at her, glad she'd been paying attention, since he'd apparently been too caught up in thinking about their mate bond. "Great."

She clambered onto his back, and he once more continued their journey. As the pale purple light of pre-dawn filled the sky, he spotted a metallic glint among a cluster of stones in the distance. "I think I see something," he said

Emmy rested her chin on his shoulder. "The rocks?"

"Syndicorp likes to hide their bases underground," he said. "That's probably the entrance to the shuttle bay we're seeing."

"How do we find the back door?"

"Once we're closer, we'll circle around. I can use my ionic senses to detect the electromagnetic signature on the lock."

He picked up his pace, relieved when they visually confirmed a pair of massive cargo bay doors hidden under a broad overhang of stone. Giving the doors a wide berth, they circled around to the back of the rock formation. The sand was firmer next to the boulders. He let Emmy slide down his back, though she still sank up past her ankles. The desert's nighttime chill seeped through his clothes.

"I can't maintain my shield and focus on finding the lock at the same time," he told her. "Stay here while I look for the door."

"No way." Arms crossed over her chest to ward off the chill, Emmy glanced toward the expanse of desert. "What if another monster appears? I'll crawl behind you if I have to, but we're sticking together."

He opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. He didn't like the idea of her being left behind, either. "All right."

Dropping to the ground, he began to half-swim, half-crawl on his belly like a snake across the powdery surface. Every few meters, he paused to search the area with his ionic senses, seeking a faint tingle to alert him of nearby electronics.

Emmy lagged behind, white clouds of fog a sign of her labored breathing. Though it was cold now, the sun would rise all too soon, and the heat would be unbearable. He had to find the back door quickly.

As he faced ahead once more, a small golden creature with ten legs darted across the dark sand in front of him. Chigs tensed, wary of another dangerous encounter. The animal scaled the nearby rock wall and disappeared somewhere overhead. As Chigs followed its upward path, he felt the familiar pulsing prickle of an electromagnetic field.

Standing, he spotted a telltale indentation in the stone about an arm's length above his head. Using his ionic power, he jumped and pulled himself up onto a ledge that led to a shallow cave. A biometric security panel glowed on the far wall. "Praise Ellam Cua," he murmured.

He released a wave of ionic energy that should scramble any active surveillance equipment, then jumped down and hurried to help Emmy.

When they were safely inside the cave, she leaned against a wall, panting hard. Black sand caked her flushed, sweaty cheeks. She smiled at him. "Nice job."

He smiled back, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "We should take a minute to clean up before going in."

She grimaced and shook sand from her hair before finger combing it back into a bun. "You mean me. You have your holo projector."

While she brushed more gritty sand from her forehead and cheeks, Chigs activated the device, feeling the familiar tingle as the holographic disguise enveloped him. Like Emmy, he already wore a Syndicorp uniform purloined from one of the lockers on board the Icarus, so the projector was only required to hide his copper skin.

Emmy glanced at him and her eyes went wide. "Oh, no..."

"What?"

"Your face..." she gulped. "The projector isn't working."

He looked down at his hands. Patches of his natural copper skin showed through the brown pigment there. His blood felt like it turned to ice as he met her gaze once more. "Uminaq. The sand must've rubbed off the paint."

Emmy took a deep breath and pushed her shoulders back. "It'll be okay. Stay here. I'll go find a biohazard suit, or at least a surgical mask. That should cover enough of your features for us to move undetected."

He frowned. "There's no way I'm sending you in there by yourself."

"I have my credentials. I can do this." She clasped his arm briefly. "Trust me."

"Fine. But don't go too far." Checking the settings on his pulse pistols, Chigs ensured they were primed and ready while Emmy pressed her hand against the security panel. A metal hatch embedded in the stone floor released with a soft click and the hiss of falling sand.

Praying there were no guards stationed inside, he lifted the hatch the rest of the way, releasing a gust of musty air, as if it had been trapped inside for far too long. A metal ladder descended into a corridor lit by a single yellow emergency light. The rest of the hall waited in darkness. Is the base abandoned? His heart squeezed.

Emmy voiced his concern before he could. "What if we're too late and they've already moved the lab?"

Even as she said it, a faint noise reached his ears, the distant echo of laughter followed by a quick fade of voices.

"Someone's here," Chigs whispered. "We're not too late."

With a quick nod, Emmy swung her feet over the edge and started down. The clang of her boots on the metal rungs seemed overly loud in the silence. At the bottom, she looked up. "I'll be back soon." He barely caught the reflection of her teeth as she gave him one last grin.

Then she disappeared into the darkness.