15. Noelle

Ryklin wentlimp in the middle of the kiss.

On instinct, I wrapped my arms around him and gently guided him down before he could fall near the fire. My heart beat wildly, both from the kiss and from the fact that the guy who"d kissed me had just passed out.

What in all the hells?

"Ryklin, wake up." I ran my fingers down his cheek, flashing back to yesterday when he landed on Nebula. How was that only yesterday? It felt like a lifetime had passed since then, since everything had changed. "Come on."

He had a pulse, so that was good, and his nose wasn"t bleeding. Was he going to wake up? Why was he unconscious?

Oh gods, what if he"d hit his head in the river and I hadn"t noticed? I"d heard that head wounds could be tricky like that; that a person could be walking and talking one minute and go down the next.

I wanted to shake him, but if something was wrong with his brain, that would definitely make it worse.

Panic pulsed in my veins. If we were back on the ship, this would be okay. They had actual medical equipment there and professionals who knew what they were doing.

But people still died sometimes even with access to the best medbots and doctors we had.

I squeezed my eyes shut before I did something stupid like cry. Tears wouldn"t help anyone at that moment.

Maybe I should splash water on his face? I"d seen that work in vids. But I didn"t think adventure shows from far off planets were good guidelines for medical treatment.

How long had he been out? A minute? Two? Why wasn"t he waking up?

Something snapped in the woods, and I froze. As far as I knew, there weren"t any large animals on Nebula. Nothing should be making noises I could hear.

But woods had a sound of their own, I reasoned. Back home on Thanatos, sometimes the shadows seemed to whisper with minds of their own.

The whispers I was hearing now weren"t the shadows. A second twig snapped, and then someone spoke, though the words were swallowed by the encroaching night around us.

There wasn"t supposed to be anyone on Nebula. The place had been abandoned a decade ago after the explosion. But I was definitely hearing voices. Was there someone down there with us?

Or was there some hallucinogenic quality to the fish I"d eaten for dinner?

"Do you want to miss the shipment, idiot?" a man said. He was speaking Interstellar Common and sounded like the kind of guy that liked to hit things. Though the smack of flesh and "ow!" from his companion could have been my tip off there.

They had to be close. If they came out onto the beach, they might see the fire. Ryklin and I had set up in a natural alcove that protected us from some of the elements and possibly from sight, but we hadn"t been thinking of hiding. What need was there on an abandoned planet?

Ryklin twitched and then groaned, and my relief was short lived as I worried the sound might echo. I shoved my hand over his mouth and gave him a harsh shake of my head.

"Did you hear something?" one of the men asked.

"We wouldn"t hear anything out here," said the other.

Ryklin covered my hand with his own and eased it off his mouth. He looked at me gravely as he sat and then stared towards the woods. The voices were starting to move away.

He stood. "Stay here," he whispered.

I stood up too. "Not a chance."