Chapter 21

Corin

My mate was still sleeping in our furs; furs I'd replaced early this morning so they'd be dry and warm while she rested. I couldn't regret any of our wild matings, and I certainly wanted her to taste my seed again so we could experience passion like that, but it had exhausted her. This wasn't the best time or place for her to be anything less than at her best. Despite my bold words, the Queen could challenge her, and that would be deadly. Deadly unless I leveled the playing field.

Min-Ji would be safe inside the tent, but I needed to check on Reid and find out what Asizza was up to. I didn't trust that yesterday was the end of it. I also needed to find out what the elder Shamans and my teachers thought of the confrontation. I hadn't meant to start one right in front of the younglings. That wasn't right.

Triff was sitting at the flap of our tent, hibernating with his shimmering energy panels aimed at the first rays of the sun peeking over the edge of the woods. He hummed merrily when he noticed me, shaking off his sleep mode and reaching out to brush my tail with his polishing disks. "Thanks," I said to him. "Can you keep watch over my mate? Come get me if anyone starts to bother her." He beeped in what I could only assume was an affirmative.

Then I turned away from the tent with Min-Ji's empty "pistol" clutched in one hand. First, I needed to locate Altare and talk to him about my idea for charging the weapon. He wasn't far away; his shuttle was parked only a short distance from our tent, just as he'd said yesterday. The hatch was still shut, but he wasn't asleep. Morning classes had already been started by Avrish, which meant her mate was up too.

He wasn't talkative, but he let me fiddle with the cables and even use his shuttle as a power source. Once I was satisfied the weapon might function again, I went off to complete my second task that morning. Erish was with Reid, but otherwise the prime med bay aboard the medical skyship was empty. My human friend looked peaceful, deeply asleep inside the large Naga-sized medical nest.

"How is he doing, Shaman Erish?" I asked politely as I moved to hover at the foot of the nest. There was a small device attached to Reid's bare chest, and it blinked with lights. I didn't know what kind of device it was, but I hoped it was helping. He didn't look quite so gray, and he wasn't making any sounds of pain.

"Steady," the blind elder announced without looking at anything. "But you'll have to be patient. It is going to take us several weeks to repair the damage and restore balance in his body. The invading nanobots that were introduced nearly decimated the ones native to his system." He was happy to outline the problem in further detail for me, but I was more interested in the audience listening in on our conversation.

Sazzie. She was just around the corner, but I scented her. Hanging onto every word Erish said—it seemed that way, at least. Or maybe she was waiting for me to leave med bay so she could confront me. By the time I left Reid in Erish's capable, and clearly very inspired, hands, Sazzie was gone.

Triff, chased by two eager younglings who had managed to avoid lessons, came to fetch me then. I rushed to our tent, worried that the Queen was about to harm my mate. As I passed Altare's shuttle, I quickly retrieved her weapon. All that worry was for nothing; Min-Ji was in front of the tent, going through some stretches, completely alone and at ease. When she saw me, her face broke out in a wide smile.

I swept her into my arms and hugged her close, my heart still pounding. Clearly, I hadn't realized how much of a threat I still considered Asizza. I needed to keep my mate in sight. Even if it wasn't necessary, it would give me peace of mind. "Here," I said to her as I lowered her to her feet. The laser pistol felt flimsy and small in my hands, but the soft glow at the side of the handle made Min-Ji squeal.

"You found a way to charge it! That is fantastic, Corin. Thank you!" She bounced on her toes inside her big ‘boots' and flung her arms around my neck. I was all too happy to dip down so we could kiss. I loved kissing my mate, and I loved it even more that I was now able to do it in public, so everyone could see that she was mine.

"Keep it on you, always," I warned her gruffly when we finally parted. "The Queen could challenge you, and that should ensure your victory." Her face fell, but she gave me a determined nod. I remembered that she'd told Kalani about shooting someone who tried to harm the females in the odd sleeping pods. She didn't want to harm anyone else, but I knew that she would if it came to that. My Min-Ji was brave that way. She hadn't flinched from fighting the Slithrazer Revenant.

"Corin, Min-Ji, I trust you slept well?" I hadn't heard Chen approach; the Shaman elder was as stealthy as a Rakworm. He watched us from a short distance, his customary dark blue robes hanging elegantly from his shoulders. A belt with a knife and a healing device sat around his hips today. He was prepared for something, expecting more chaos in his domain.

"Yes, Shaman Chen," I agreed politely and caught the flicker of a smile at my mentor's mouth before his expression turned serious again. He was here to tell us bad news. I'd just seen Reid and gotten a status update that was promising a slow but certain recovery. So what was it? The Queen? Haven?

"Follow me. You have an incoming message from Shaman Artek." The Shaman elder turned and started moving away at a rapid pace. Min-Ji and I shared a worried look, and the two of us hurried to catch up with him. Triff was hot on my tail, and to save time, I snatched him up so he wouldn't have to struggle on the moss. I was certain our little cleaning buddy was going to be very happy to be back on stone floors once we got home. Home. I hoped nothing bad had happened. What if Vrash had struck again?

Despite worry for Haven's safety filling me, I kept Min-Ji tucked safely beneath my arm, my eyes scanning for any sign of the Thunder Rock Queen. She was not going to catch us by surprise, right when my guard was down. That watchfulness didn't turn out to be necessary; we reached the communication hub of the camp without incident. The three of us hurried into the small skyship bristling with all kinds of signal boosters and antennae, the door hissing shut behind us.

"Artek!" I exclaimed as soon as I saw the face of the white-scaled Shaman on the big viewscreen inside the vessel. His scales glittered with hints of blue and pink in the Serant sunlight, and his blue eyes caught purple highlights. He was outside, which meant he was using some sort of mobile communication device.

It must mean that using Haven's system wasn't safe; it had been compromised. I didn't think Artek would have left Haven and the three pregnant females without medical assistance on standby—not when these were the first hybrid children, and we didn't know how things were going to turn out yet.

"Ah, Corin! Thank the stars. How quickly can you make it back here? Haven's systems have gone completely crazy. We need your help," Artek rushed out as soon as he laid eyes on me. He didn't even glance at how I was holding Min-Ji beneath one arm and a cleaning bot beneath the other. "I think Vrash got into the main control hub, but I can't figure out how to get him out. You're the only one who might."

It was exactly as I'd feared: Vrash was back. I rolled a helpless shoulder and looked from my Shaman friend to my mentor. Even if we moved as fast as we could, we were without a dragon to hitch a ride, and it would take at least a week, maybe longer. They could send Zsekhet back for us as soon as they returned to Haven, but that came with the risk of the dragon missing us entirely. The other option was to wait, but if the situation was as dire as Artek's worried eyes seemed to indicate…

"Have you tried a complete shutdown?" I asked, and Artek launched into a hurried spiel of what he'd tried and the troubles that were happening. Doors were locking people in, the lights and water had turned off entirely, and even the greenhouse was off, with plants already withering inside it. As a precaution, Zathar had moved everyone to tents outside. The med bay was off-limits, and Artek was of half a mind to move Vera down to his own home so he could better monitor her. She was having such trouble with nausea, and it made Zathar absolutely frantic with worry.

"I tried everything. But you are the one who knows this place. You know it, Corin. Chen," Artek aimed his next words at the elder near my elbow, "can't you spare a ship to send them? A shuttle would only take, what, half an hour to bring them here? Corin is the only one with the knowledge to take care of this Revenant once and for all." Whew, no pressure at all. It was daunting to realize that Artek knew less of Haven than I did, that he thought only I could solve this problem. At the same time, I knew he was right. I had sunk so many hours into figuring out its systems. I knew it inside and out. Artek's primary focus had always been healing.

"A ship? I can't spare any pilots," Chen harrumphed. Pilots? He was using the word that Min-Ji had called herself: pilot. There was an obvious solution to this problem, but I was afraid to utter it out loud. Asking the elders here to borrow a shuttle and expose that kind of knowledge to a new, unknown Clan of former outcasts was a big ask. That the Sacred Training Grounds were made up of functioning skyships was knowledge only Shamans, Shamans-in-training, and Queens knew.

Chen was wearing a thoughtful expression on his face, tapping his chin horn with a claw as he pondered the situation. "I agree that a ship would be the best solution. This Revenant is a serious threat we cannot allow to spread. If it keeps control of a hub like Haven, who knows what other systems it could take over?" I had not even considered that yet, but he was right. Haven had a communications hub, currently only able to access Artek's home. But if it hopped to Artek's systems, it could spread to any other system from there.

Min-Ji shuffled her feet, one of her small hands landing on my forearm. I felt her blunt nails dig into my scales just before she opened her mouth and announced boldly, "I'm a pilot. If you can spare a ship, I can fly it."

A stunned silence filled the communication shuttle's interior, all eyes turning to my tiny mate to stare—two sharp pairs of blue eyes and mine. Even Triff seemed to spin his lights to look at her, blinking rapidly. "You can?" Chen said carefully. "Interesting."

He gave a nod to Artek on the screen. "Expect them soon. We'll arrange something." Then he closed the connection and moved to rise on his tail in front of us, arms crossed over his chest. Only a braided leather cord with a disk just like the one I wore hung from his neck. They had not taken mine yet, but I was certain my old master would not forget about it before we left.

"I am spread thin this autumn," Chen said. "More Shamans than usual have needed to be dispatched to Clans around the planet, and more skyships than ever seem to fall from the stars. I have sent my best male to investigate that problem. I can't spare a pilot, because that would mean too few to care for the sick and to teach the young. You understand that?" I nodded before glancing at Min-Ji. She was smiling; that was her natural way of protecting herself. Strain tinted the corners of her eyes—I could see it now that I knew her as intimately as I did, now that I had a mating bond to guide my instincts."

"So that leaves you, my dear," Chen sounded much kinder than he usually did when he offered Min-Ji those words. Her breathing shuddered out of her, her ribs trembling against my side from the forceful expelling of her breath. "A Naga vessel is not the same as one of your human ships, I am sure. Are you certain you can do this?"

Min-Ji's bright spirit rallied under that challenge, as I knew it would. Her brown eyes sparkled when she pointed a blunt, clawless finger at the front of the shuttle we were in. "I see a yoke; I can fly that. Someone just needs to give me a rundown real quick. I can do it. Small craft like this were all I flew for five years straight. Trust me."

I did, but would my mentor? My clever mate was certainly looking at him like he didn't have a choice; we were lucky my mentor seemed to find that amusing rather than offensive. "Very well, this way." Min-Ji seemed eager as she slipped from beneath my arm and followed Chen out of the shuttle and across the clearing.

I spared a quick look at Avrish beneath the central tent, inside the main classroom. She had only a handful of students at the moment; the rest were paired off with other teachers in small groups around the clearing. I saw several bright heads bent over the guts of a machine under Altare's watchful eye, and younglings practicing with handheld healing devices beside cages of rescued animals under Erish's supervision.

Chen led us to a shuttle hitched with tethers to the back of one of the larger cargo vessels; I remembered it. Some of the older Naga had been allowed to practice their flying skills in that ship. I hadn't been old enough yet to try, and I'd been so envious of them. It was a much smaller skyship than it seemed in my recollection; it was barely big enough to fit two Naga sitting behind one another.

"Oh," Min-Ji exclaimed. "It looks like a fighter jet. How quaint. It's adorable." I didn't have to look to know that she was clutching at her chest again; she really couldn't help herself. I looked because she was mine now, and all that cuteness belonged to me. Chen was staring at her with a similarly bemused look on his craggy face, likely just as unused to that kind of behavior from a female as I was.

Then he looked at me. "Right. I'll give you the rundown, and I'll set your navigational system for the right course. As soon as I have a male to spare, I'll send him to retrieve the ship. Understood? It's not for keeping. We need it." He repeated that a few more times because Min-Ji was caught up staring, full of admiration, at the small and clearly old ship. Her hand ran reverently along the nearest wingtip.

"I'll make sure it's understood," I told my old master when he snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. "She knows, sir."