16. Noelle

Night hadn"t completely fallen.We wouldn"t have been able to follow if it had. The two men weren"t making any effort to hide their trail, but after a few minutes, their voices disappeared completely. I heard the sound of an engine firing up, and Ryklin took off running with me right behind him.

We made it to a spot farther down the beach just in time to see a small craft launch itself into the air and break for the sky.

We weren"t the only ones on Nebula. At least, we hadn"t been.

"What"s going on?" I asked, as if Ryklin might have any more answers than I did.

"I don"t know." Once the ship was high enough in the sky that there was no way they could spot us on the ground, he moved forward to examine the launch area.

There were three large, empty pallets sitting near an indentation in the mud that might have been from the ship"s ramp. There was also a flashlight laying on the ground. I scooped it up and pressed the power button, letting out a whoop of joy when it shined bright. The sun had nearly set, and it was getting hard to see.

"Any ideas?" I wasn"t a sleuth; I was a tech. I fixed things that were broken. I hated puzzles, and this had all the makings of something bad.

"Do you know why they never reopened the mine?" Ryklin asked. "Or why whatever company owns it never used the planet for anything else?"

"Something about contamination, maybe?" I"d asked the same question not long after arriving on Nebula Outpost and had been given a similarly vague answer.

"Then why keep the Outpost running?" He held out his hand, and I handed over the flashlight. He ran it over deep ruts in the ground that I realized came from wheels. I didn"t see a vehicle, so either it had been driven away or the two men in the woods had taken it with them.

"What are you thinking?" I asked. I remembered the drug dealers up on the station, the crime that seemed to get worse by the day. Nebula Outpost was no paradise, but it couldn"t be that much worse than any other place. "They don"t need a whole planet just to run drugs." Sure, there were incredibly expensive, exotic substances that were only produced in certain corners of the galaxy, but those drugs tended to stay there. You couldn"t charge enough to move Lux or Benit in quantity. Small shipments came from specialty couriers and only for the insanely rich.

Solar Flare and other drugs like it could be made anywhere. No need for an empty planet or complex shipping.

"Not drugs." Ryklin followed the tracks for a few steps before stopping and flashing his light into the dark woods. "This could be a way station for smugglers, a convenient place to repair without taxes or questions. Or perhaps there"s some illegal mining going on. We won"t know if we stay here." The beam from his flashlight still shone into the darkness, telling me exactly where he wanted to go.

"Seems like it might not be wise to follow in the dark with no backup." I strained to hear any hint that the two in the ship had friends, but there were only the sounds of wildlife and the breeze in the trees.

"It also wouldn"t be wise to wait on the beach if we"re so near their launch path. They might have seen our fire." His voice was as steady as ever, but I could have sworn I heard a hint of a dare in it.

Emotionless, my ass.

I wavered for only a moment before gesturing for him to lead on. We had no one to report this to, and no help was coming. If some shady figures had taken over the mine, we"d never be able to use it to get a message back to Nebula Outpost. And, hey, maybe there"d be an extra ship waiting for us. If we were really lucky, we"d be home in a matter of hours.

Nothing about the last two days told me we were lucky.

The trail cut a path through the forest, and there was no attempt at covering the tracks. Whoever was working here was confident they wouldn"t be discovered. Or that they could handle anyone who crossed their path.

"Are you feeling alright?" I asked Ryklin after a few minutes of walking. I"d been keeping my eye on him, and not just because he was the only light in the forest. There was no hint that he"d passed out, nothing to give away that I"d worried he might die less than an hour ago.

"Yes, I"m functional," he said.

So, we were back to that.

I wasn"t letting it stand. "We kissed, and you passed out. What was that all about?" My voice got a bit louder than intended, and I had to claw it back.

"I don"t know. It should not happen again." Robot. He was back to being Mr. Robot, acting like there was nothing between us and he was all neurons and programming.

I didn"t buy it for a second.

And he said should not.

Not could not.

That was an opening.

"So, you don"t want to kiss me again?" I asked. I wanted his lips on mine again desperately, even as I dreaded it. What if he had an even stronger reaction? Could my kiss kill him?

Maybe we really shouldn"t kiss again.

"I cannot want anything," he reminded me. Even tone, unbothered. I hated it.

"I think you"re lying to me." This wasn"t the time or place to be having this conversation. I knew that. There could be bad guys at the end of this trail, and Ryklin was the only one with any chance of winning a fight. But I feared that if I let it go for the night, he"d never let me bring it up again. There was something intimate about the darkness, something that allowed secrets to slip out.

I wanted all his secrets.

"The soulless do not lie," he said.

Lying.

I took two long steps and grabbed his wrist, forcing him to stop walking. "Talk to me, Ryklin, tell me what"s really going on."

He looked down at me, and his nostrils flared. I couldn"t say for sure with the flashlight pointed the other way, but I thought he was looking at my lips. We definitely couldn"t kiss here, not if he might pass out again.

But my tongue darted out anyway, lips suddenly dry. I wanted to taste him again. And I wanted him awake for the whole thing. "Why did you pass out?" I asked again. It felt like the key to this whole thing, as if this was some solvable puzzle. And even if I hated puzzles, I had a pressing need to solve this one.

He"d told me he was soulless, that he felt nothing. I knew that meant there could be nothing between us. I"d never wanted anything between us.

And now it was all I could imagine. It was in my grasp, if only I could figure this out.

He said he was nothing like Drex, but I had to wonder if that was true. I wished I could talk to Pippa. Maybe she would have the answers I needed. And it would also mean we weren"t stuck on a not-so-abandoned planet and possibly in danger from smugglers.

He opened his mouth to answer, but then his head snapped to the side, and he twirled away, standing in front of me, the claws on one hand out while his other hand clutched the flashlight.

Then the first stone came flying our way.